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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 71 123
Rank change year-on-year +35 +52 +26
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,792 1,149 795
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.29% 3.52% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.22% 3.89% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,680 682 397
10th Percentile £341 £350 £343
25th Percentile £412 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £699 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -11.90% +10.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 82 140
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £27.07 £38.44 £51.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £58.75 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% -4.08% -5.77%
75th Percentile £74.63 £66.13 £69.16
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.92%

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 44,871 29,543 34,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.02% 90.39% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,803 18,563 22,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.46%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,660 1,589 2,131
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.46
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £17.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £68.13 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +82.83% -39.15% -1.95%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 24 July 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 +32 2,418 £500 -4.76% 1,075
UK excluding London +25 1,303 £463 -11.90% 762
London +43 1,171 £513 -2.38% 434
Work from Home +42 801 £489 -2.25% 433
Midlands +33 312 £475 +5.56% 115
South East +4 310 £505 +1.00% 241
North of England +42 303 £450 -5.26% 158
West Midlands +30 229 £468 +6.86% 63
North West +23 165 £450 -14.69% 93
East of England 0 134 £500 - 91
Yorkshire +33 127 £453 +8.57% 35
South West -13 124 £523 -9.13% 106
Scotland +42 94 £425 -10.53% 48
East Midlands +23 78 £505 +11.00% 52
Wales +4 30 £450 +20.00% 13
North East -28 15 £425 -15.00% 31
Northern Ireland +10 10 £380 -35.59% 6

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 85 (3.04%) Confluence
2 66 (2.36%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.01%) SAS
4 50 (1.79%) SharePoint
5 45 (1.61%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.11%) Apache
7 14 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.47%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
11 8 (0.29%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.25%) CMS
13 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.14%) IIS
14 4 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
15 3 (0.11%) Appian
15 3 (0.11%) JBoss
15 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 185 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.07%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 7 (0.25%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.072%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.072%) Navisworks
10 2 (0.072%) ProjectWise
10 2 (0.072%) Revit
10 2 (0.072%) Sketch
10 2 (0.072%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 124 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
3 18 (0.64%) Workday HCM
4 14 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.39%) Aladdin
6 11 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
6 11 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) iTrent
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.36%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 599 (21.45%) Azure
2 326 (11.68%) AWS
3 293 (10.49%) Power Platform
4 153 (5.48%) Azure DevOps
5 141 (5.05%) GCP
6 127 (4.55%) GitHub
7 95 (3.40%) Snowflake
8 74 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
9 73 (2.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 70 (2.51%) Entra ID
11 68 (2.44%) Serverless
12 60 (2.15%) Amazon S3
13 53 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
14 51 (1.83%) SaaS
15 46 (1.65%) dbt
16 44 (1.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 44 (1.58%) OCI
17 37 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
18 34 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 34 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 118 (4.23%) Firewall
2 70 (2.51%) Network Security
3 58 (2.08%) DNS
4 51 (1.83%) VLAN
4 51 (1.83%) VPN
5 41 (1.47%) TCP/IP
5 41 (1.47%) WAN
6 35 (1.25%) BGP
7 27 (0.97%) DHCP
8 26 (0.93%) OSPF
9 25 (0.90%) LAN
10 23 (0.82%) SAN
10 23 (0.82%) Wireless
11 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 21 (0.75%) Internet
13 18 (0.64%) Ethernet
14 16 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.47%) HTTP
15 13 (0.47%) NAS
15 13 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (9.74%) Power BI
2 159 (5.69%) Data Warehouse
3 117 (4.19%) Metadata
4 100 (3.58%) SQL Server
5 88 (3.15%) PostgreSQL
6 86 (3.08%) Data Lake
7 79 (2.83%) Relational Database
8 78 (2.79%) Tableau
9 42 (1.50%) Big Data
10 34 (1.22%) Oracle Database
11 33 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.18%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 31 (1.11%) Delta Lake
12 31 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 29 (1.04%) Power Query
14 27 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (0.97%) BigQuery
14 27 (0.97%) NoSQL
15 26 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
16 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 254 (9.10%) JIRA
2 169 (6.05%) Git
3 95 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 72 (2.58%) GitLab
5 62 (2.22%) Selenium
6 49 (1.76%) JMeter
7 47 (1.68%) Postman
8 39 (1.40%) JUnit
9 38 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 32 (1.15%) WebDriver
11 22 (0.79%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.57%) Gatling
14 14 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
15 13 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.43%) MLflow
17 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
17 11 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 818 (29.30%) Finance
2 807 (28.90%) Social Skills
3 530 (18.98%) Analytical Skills
4 234 (8.38%) Public Sector
5 207 (7.41%) Banking
6 153 (5.48%) Documentation Skills
7 102 (3.65%) Manufacturing
8 87 (3.12%) Retail
9 69 (2.47%) Aerospace
10 61 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
11 58 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (2.01%) Telecoms
13 53 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
14 45 (1.61%) Legal
15 42 (1.50%) Automotive
16 41 (1.47%) Front Office
17 40 (1.43%) Marketing
18 39 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
19 37 (1.33%) Billing
19 37 (1.33%) Law
Job Titles
1 500 (17.91%) Analyst
2 285 (10.21%) Senior
3 276 (9.89%) Lead
4 240 (8.60%) Business Analyst
5 227 (8.13%) Data Engineer
6 205 (7.34%) Consultant
7 165 (5.91%) Developer
8 147 (5.27%) Architect
9 141 (5.05%) Data Analyst
10 93 (3.33%) Test Engineer
11 83 (2.97%) Tester
12 81 (2.90%) Project Manager
13 63 (2.26%) Network Engineer
14 54 (1.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 54 (1.93%) Systems Engineer
15 49 (1.76%) Senior Data Engineer
15 49 (1.76%) Technical Analyst
16 46 (1.65%) Administrator
17 45 (1.61%) Test Manager
18 44 (1.58%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (5.01%) REST
2 85 (3.04%) JSON
3 72 (2.58%) Kafka
4 68 (2.44%) PySpark
5 61 (2.18%) XML
6 59 (2.11%) Middleware
7 50 (1.79%) Oracle Fusion
8 49 (1.76%) .NET
9 45 (1.61%) Spring
10 42 (1.50%) SOAP
11 41 (1.47%) pytest
12 40 (1.43%) Web Services
13 39 (1.40%) OAuth
14 35 (1.25%) Playwright
15 34 (1.22%) Pandas
16 31 (1.11%) RESTful
17 28 (1.00%) Node.js
18 25 (0.90%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.90%) Swagger
18 25 (0.90%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 157 (5.62%) Data Structures
2 156 (5.59%) Onboarding
3 136 (4.87%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.44%) Cloud Native
4 124 (4.44%) Product Ownership
5 81 (2.90%) Data Centre
6 75 (2.69%) Management Information System
7 56 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
8 47 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
9 41 (1.47%) AI Agents
9 41 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 41 (1.47%) Life Science
10 40 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
10 40 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
11 39 (1.40%) SCADA
12 37 (1.33%) Reference Data
13 35 (1.25%) Virtual Team
14 33 (1.18%) NHS
15 32 (1.15%) Replication
16 30 (1.07%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 169 (6.05%) Windows
2 107 (3.83%) Linux
3 55 (1.97%) Windows Server
4 39 (1.40%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Windows 10
7 10 (0.36%) Android
7 10 (0.36%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) AIX
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.072%) HPUX
13 2 (0.072%) Solaris
13 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.072%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 766 (27.44%) Migration
2 552 (19.77%) Agile
3 526 (18.84%) Stakeholder Management
4 477 (17.08%) Analytics
5 472 (16.91%) CI/CD
6 457 (16.37%) Data Migration
7 456 (16.33%) User Acceptance Testing
8 451 (16.15%) Data Validation
9 449 (16.08%) Data Modelling
9 449 (16.08%) Problem-Solving
10 359 (12.86%) AI
11 350 (12.54%) Continuous Improvement
12 346 (12.39%) ETL
13 342 (12.25%) Test Automation
14 341 (12.21%) DevOps
15 315 (11.28%) Business Intelligence
16 313 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 287 (10.28%) Data Pipeline
18 283 (10.14%) Data Governance
19 271 (9.71%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 677 (24.25%) SQL
2 510 (18.27%) Python
3 122 (4.37%) Java
4 81 (2.90%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.26%) C#
6 59 (2.11%) Bash
7 41 (1.47%) JavaScript
8 34 (1.22%) C++
8 34 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 32 (1.15%) Bicep
9 32 (1.15%) TypeScript
10 30 (1.07%) Apex Code
11 27 (0.97%) C
11 27 (0.97%) PL/SQL
12 23 (0.82%) R
12 23 (0.82%) VBA
13 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 15 (0.54%) Ada
14 15 (0.54%) MATLAB
14 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 507 (18.16%) Security Cleared
2 368 (13.18%) SC Cleared
3 193 (6.91%) Degree
4 65 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 62 (2.22%) DV Cleared
6 44 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 35 (1.25%) CCNP
7 35 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (0.90%) ISTQB
9 23 (0.82%) PMI Certification
10 22 (0.79%) ACCA
10 22 (0.79%) PMP
11 21 (0.75%) CIMA
12 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
13 19 (0.68%) CISSP
14 18 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.57%) CCNA
16 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
17 13 (0.47%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (18.59%) Data Quality
2 345 (12.36%) QA
3 127 (4.55%) GDPR
4 54 (1.93%) NIST
5 48 (1.72%) Accessibility
6 47 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 42 (1.50%) SLA
8 37 (1.33%) GxP
8 37 (1.33%) PMO
9 22 (0.79%) GRC
10 18 (0.64%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 18 (0.64%) GMP
11 16 (0.57%) HL7
12 15 (0.54%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.50%) IFRS
13 14 (0.50%) NCSC
14 13 (0.47%) Def Stans
14 13 (0.47%) WCAG
15 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
15 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 113 (4.05%) Docker
2 93 (3.33%) Active Directory
3 76 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.75%) Hyper-V
8 20 (0.72%) Firmware
9 19 (0.68%) vSphere
10 16 (0.57%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.21%) NFS
12 4 (0.14%) KVM
12 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.072%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.072%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.072%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.036%) Ceph
14 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 159 (5.69%) Kubernetes
2 137 (4.91%) Terraform
3 58 (2.08%) Ansible
4 55 (1.97%) Prometheus
5 54 (1.93%) Grafana
6 27 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 23 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.47%) SCCM
10 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.29%) VxRail
13 6 (0.21%) vMotion
14 5 (0.18%) Argo
14 5 (0.18%) CASB
14 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
14 5 (0.18%) Istio
14 5 (0.18%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Consul
15 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 408 (14.61%) Microsoft
2 257 (9.20%) SAP
3 251 (8.99%) Oracle
4 150 (5.37%) Databricks
5 92 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 90 (3.22%) VMware
7 71 (2.54%) ServiceNow
8 63 (2.26%) Cisco
9 51 (1.83%) Workday
10 50 (1.79%) Google
11 42 (1.50%) Informatica
12 39 (1.40%) Splunk
13 32 (1.15%) Fortinet
13 32 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 31 (1.11%) IBM
15 29 (1.04%) Juniper
16 28 (1.00%) MuleSoft
17 26 (0.93%) Sage
17 26 (0.93%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.72%) IFS