Validation Contract Job Trends

Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Validation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 112 133
Rank change year-on-year +58 +21 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,601 722 857
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.17% 2.32% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.78% 2.60% 2.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 971 375 470
10th Percentile £350 £345 £324
25th Percentile £400 £409 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -4.65% -1.69%
75th Percentile £600 £616 £613
90th Percentile £700 £723 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £513
% change year-on-year -3.06% -4.53% +3.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 37 152
10th Percentile £31.51 £27.90 £23.35
25th Percentile £42.36 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.54 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.96% -11.48% +3.26%
75th Percentile £68.52 £63.75 £75.69
90th Percentile £73.63 £66.60 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.40 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.25% -11.70% +2.80%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Validation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,490 27,717 39,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.15% 89.21% 87.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,205 16,795 25,884
10th Percentile £305 £307 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £499 £500
% change year-on-year -4.06% -0.15% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,020 865 2,103
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £30.98 £35.25
% change year-on-year -20.23% -12.12% +21.55%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Validation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Validation job vacancy trend in the UK

Validation
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the UK over the 6 months to 2 February 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +52 1,386 £500 -4.76% 826
UK excluding London +36 737 £475 -3.06% 655
London +73 652 £513 -3.30% 270
Work from Home +69 504 £500 -4.76% 373
North of England +24 187 £417 -0.71% 132
South East +9 166 £500 - 209
North West +24 122 £400 +1.27% 67
Midlands +16 121 £500 +2.15% 119
South West +13 117 £475 -17.39% 92
West Midlands +17 101 £506 +3.27% 81
East of England +15 92 £478 +19.50% 95
Yorkshire -13 53 £487 -0.10% 56
Scotland +26 40 £425 -5.56% 27
East Midlands -9 20 £475 +58.33% 37
Northern Ireland +14 19 £425 -
North East -5 14 £463 -36.21% 10
Wales 0 4 £536 - 11

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 63 (3.94%) Confluence
2 39 (2.44%) Apache Spark
3 32 (2.00%) SAS
3 32 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 25 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
5 20 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
6 14 (0.87%) Apache
6 14 (0.87%) Skype for Business
7 9 (0.56%) Exchange Server 2013
8 8 (0.50%) CMS
9 7 (0.44%) Appian
9 7 (0.44%) Mattermost
10 5 (0.31%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.31%) OpenStack
10 5 (0.31%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 4 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.25%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.25%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.19%) GeoServer
12 3 (0.19%) Smallworld
Applications
1 83 (5.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.56%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.75%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.56%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.37%) Sketch
7 6 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.25%) Notion
9 3 (0.19%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.12%) Simulink
11 1 (0.062%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.062%) CATIA
11 1 (0.062%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.062%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.062%) Stateflow
11 1 (0.062%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 83 (5.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.81%) Oracle Payables
4 12 (0.75%) SAP EHS
5 11 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
6 10 (0.62%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
6 10 (0.62%) SAP FI
7 9 (0.56%) NetSuite
7 9 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.56%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 8 (0.50%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 7 (0.44%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 7 (0.44%) SAP MM
10 6 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.37%) Workday HCM
11 5 (0.31%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 375 (23.42%) Azure
2 200 (12.49%) AWS
3 135 (8.43%) Azure DevOps
4 123 (7.68%) Power Platform
5 72 (4.50%) GitHub
6 64 (4.00%) GCP
7 57 (3.56%) Entra ID
8 48 (3.00%) SaaS
8 48 (3.00%) Serverless
9 44 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
9 44 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
10 36 (2.25%) Amazon S3
11 33 (2.06%) Snowflake
12 32 (2.00%) OCI
13 31 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
14 25 (1.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 24 (1.50%) OpenShift
16 23 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
17 20 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
18 18 (1.12%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.75%) Firewall
2 24 (1.50%) TCP/IP
3 21 (1.31%) Network Security
4 20 (1.25%) Ethernet
5 18 (1.12%) WAN
6 17 (1.06%) HTTP
6 17 (1.06%) VPN
7 15 (0.94%) DNS
8 14 (0.87%) Skype
8 14 (0.87%) VLAN
9 13 (0.81%) Wireless
10 12 (0.75%) BGP
11 11 (0.69%) LAN
11 11 (0.69%) MPLS
11 11 (0.69%) OSPF
12 10 (0.62%) TACACS
13 9 (0.56%) SD-WAN
14 6 (0.37%) Cisco ISE
14 6 (0.37%) Internet
14 6 (0.37%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (7.31%) Power BI
2 68 (4.25%) Metadata
3 60 (3.75%) Data Warehouse
4 42 (2.62%) SQL Server
5 41 (2.56%) Tableau
6 33 (2.06%) Data Lake
7 30 (1.87%) NoSQL
8 26 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
9 23 (1.44%) Delta Lake
9 23 (1.44%) Relational Database
10 22 (1.37%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 21 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
12 20 (1.25%) Oracle Database
13 19 (1.19%) Big Data
14 18 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
15 17 (1.06%) Pinecone
16 16 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
17 15 (0.94%) Parquet
18 14 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 14 (0.87%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 160 (9.99%) JIRA
2 78 (4.87%) Git
3 73 (4.56%) Jenkins
4 49 (3.06%) Postman
5 46 (2.87%) GitLab
6 41 (2.56%) Selenium
7 32 (2.00%) Oracle APEX
8 24 (1.50%) Rational DOORS
9 19 (1.19%) JMeter
10 17 (1.06%) TestRail
10 17 (1.06%) Visual Studio
11 16 (1.00%) Cucumber
12 14 (0.87%) MLflow
13 13 (0.81%) Zephyr
14 11 (0.69%) Eclipse
14 11 (0.69%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.69%) SpecFlow
15 10 (0.62%) Cypress.io
15 10 (0.62%) JUnit
16 9 (0.56%) Bitbucket
General
1 597 (37.29%) Social Skills
2 447 (27.92%) Finance
3 330 (20.61%) Analytical Skills
4 150 (9.37%) Public Sector
5 140 (8.74%) Banking
6 84 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.94%) Presentation Skills
8 42 (2.62%) Manufacturing
9 36 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
10 34 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
11 31 (1.94%) Aerospace
11 31 (1.94%) Telecoms
12 29 (1.81%) Marketing
13 28 (1.75%) Electronics
13 28 (1.75%) Front Office
14 27 (1.69%) Legal
15 26 (1.62%) Military
16 24 (1.50%) Investment Banking
16 24 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
17 22 (1.37%) Billing
Job Titles
1 321 (20.05%) Analyst
2 164 (10.24%) Senior
3 146 (9.12%) Business Analyst
4 135 (8.43%) Consultant
5 134 (8.37%) Lead
6 124 (7.75%) Developer
7 93 (5.81%) Architect
8 76 (4.75%) Data Analyst
9 69 (4.31%) Data Engineer
10 52 (3.25%) Software Engineer
10 52 (3.25%) Tester
11 48 (3.00%) Senior Analyst
12 45 (2.81%) Project Manager
13 43 (2.69%) SAP Consultant
14 38 (2.37%) Test Analyst
15 37 (2.31%) Test Manager
16 35 (2.19%) Senior Developer
17 32 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
18 30 (1.87%) Embedded Engineer
19 29 (1.81%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (6.50%) REST
2 84 (5.25%) JSON
3 58 (3.62%) XML
4 49 (3.06%) Oracle Fusion
5 46 (2.87%) OAuth
6 42 (2.62%) SOAP
7 41 (2.56%) Middleware
8 38 (2.37%) PySpark
9 37 (2.31%) RESTful
10 36 (2.25%) Node.js
11 34 (2.12%) .NET
12 30 (1.87%) Kafka
13 28 (1.75%) Playwright
14 27 (1.69%) PyTorch
14 27 (1.69%) Swagger
15 26 (1.62%) Web Services
16 24 (1.50%) JWT
16 24 (1.50%) SAP Fiori
16 24 (1.50%) TensorFlow
17 23 (1.44%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 93 (5.81%) Legacy Systems
2 66 (4.12%) Data Structures
3 65 (4.06%) Onboarding
4 62 (3.87%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.00%) Management Information System
6 43 (2.69%) Cloud Native
7 32 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 28 (1.75%) Algorithms
9 27 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 26 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
11 22 (1.37%) FPGA
12 20 (1.25%) Derivative
12 20 (1.25%) Life Science
13 17 (1.06%) Replication
14 16 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
14 16 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 16 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 15 (0.94%) Security Posture
16 14 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
16 14 (0.87%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 92 (5.75%) Linux
2 80 (5.00%) Windows
3 29 (1.81%) Unix
4 11 (0.69%) Android
5 6 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
5 6 (0.37%) Windows Server
6 5 (0.31%) zOS
7 4 (0.25%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
8 2 (0.12%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
8 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.062%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.062%) pSOS
9 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 416 (25.98%) Agile
2 372 (23.24%) Migration
3 370 (23.11%) Problem-Solving
4 274 (17.11%) DevOps
5 268 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
6 263 (16.43%) Data Validation
7 262 (16.36%) CI/CD
8 230 (14.37%) Analytics
9 198 (12.37%) Test Automation
10 196 (12.24%) Data Migration
10 196 (12.24%) Data Modelling
10 196 (12.24%) User Acceptance Testing
11 173 (10.81%) ETL
12 171 (10.68%) AI
13 169 (10.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 152 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
15 151 (9.43%) Data Governance
16 144 (8.99%) Continuous Improvement
17 141 (8.81%) Data Analysis
18 129 (8.06%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 399 (24.92%) SQL
2 336 (20.99%) Python
3 97 (6.06%) JavaScript
4 88 (5.50%) Java
5 66 (4.12%) C#
6 53 (3.31%) PL/SQL
7 52 (3.25%) PowerShell
8 48 (3.00%) C++
9 45 (2.81%) Bash
10 42 (2.62%) C
11 34 (2.12%) TypeScript
12 24 (1.50%) R
13 18 (1.12%) Bicep
14 17 (1.06%) Groovy
15 16 (1.00%) Ada
16 15 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 15 (0.94%) Scala
16 15 (0.94%) Shell Script
17 12 (0.75%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.56%) XPath
Qualifications
1 353 (22.05%) Security Cleared
2 260 (16.24%) SC Cleared
3 165 (10.31%) Degree
4 60 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 54 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 38 (2.37%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.31%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.94%) ISTQB
9 27 (1.69%) PMI Certification
10 22 (1.37%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.19%) PMP
12 17 (1.06%) CBAP
13 14 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.87%) Oracle Certification
14 12 (0.75%) Azure Certification
15 10 (0.62%) CISSP
15 10 (0.62%) OCA
16 9 (0.56%) CTC Cleared
16 9 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 9 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (13.68%) Data Quality
2 201 (12.55%) QA
3 90 (5.62%) GDPR
4 64 (4.00%) NIST
5 46 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (2.12%) Accessibility
7 18 (1.12%) GxP
7 18 (1.12%) IFRS
8 16 (1.00%) IFRS 17
9 15 (0.94%) Def Stans
10 14 (0.87%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.81%) EU AI Act
12 11 (0.69%) NCSC
12 11 (0.69%) PMO
12 11 (0.69%) SLA
13 10 (0.62%) COBIT
13 10 (0.62%) GMP
13 10 (0.62%) MiFID
13 10 (0.62%) MISRA
14 9 (0.56%) GRC
System Software
1 57 (3.56%) Docker
2 46 (2.87%) Active Directory
3 28 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.37%) Firmware
5 12 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 9 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.25%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.25%) vSphere
10 3 (0.19%) KVM
10 3 (0.19%) QEMU
11 2 (0.12%) Ceph
11 2 (0.12%) Lustre
11 2 (0.12%) NFS
11 2 (0.12%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.12%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.12%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 78 (4.87%) Kubernetes
2 65 (4.06%) Terraform
3 43 (2.69%) Ansible
4 21 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
5 15 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
6 14 (0.87%) Kibana
6 14 (0.87%) Puppet
7 11 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 11 (0.69%) Grafana
7 11 (0.69%) SCCM
8 8 (0.50%) Nmap
9 7 (0.44%) HP SiteScope
9 7 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.44%) SCOM
10 6 (0.37%) Nessus
11 5 (0.31%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.25%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 3 (0.19%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.19%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 209 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 161 (10.06%) Oracle
3 136 (8.49%) SAP
4 73 (4.56%) Databricks
5 65 (4.06%) ServiceNow
6 42 (2.62%) Cisco
7 39 (2.44%) Google
8 38 (2.37%) Splunk
9 37 (2.31%) Salesforce
10 33 (2.06%) VMware
11 26 (1.62%) Workday
12 19 (1.19%) MuleSoft
12 19 (1.19%) Murex
13 18 (1.12%) IBM
14 17 (1.06%) Palo Alto
15 14 (0.87%) Sage
16 13 (0.81%) Avaloq
16 13 (0.81%) Bloomberg
16 13 (0.81%) Informatica
16 13 (0.81%) OpenAI