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 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 74 119
Rank change year-on-year +34 +45 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,407 945 808
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.90% 3.27% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.78% 3.60% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,440 564 397
10th Percentile £325 £345 £325
25th Percentile £402 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £525 £523
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +0.48% -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £626 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £680
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -10.24% +2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 60 170
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £26.61
25th Percentile £27.56 £37.25 £51.56
Median hourly rate £62.50 £56.77 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.09% -5.38% -4.60%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.25 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £61.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.08% -2.00% -

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 41,610 26,282 36,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 91.03% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,026 16,812 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,100 2,513
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 +35 2,096 £500 -6.98% 615
UK excluding London +28 1,141 £460 -10.24% 551
London +53 1,001 £513 -6.82% 158
Work from Home +48 709 £481 -3.75% 247
North of England +40 285 £435 -3.33% 120
Midlands +30 257 £495 +9.94% 88
South East -6 242 £500 - 181
West Midlands +21 182 £481 +19.26% 57
North West +30 165 £420 -4.00% 67
East of England +8 128 £475 +5.56% 71
South West -1 127 £500 -13.04% 78
Yorkshire +14 108 £452 +3.85% 36
Scotland +41 76 £395 -16.84% 19
East Midlands +17 70 £525 +15.51% 31
Wales +9 24 £450 +190.32% 13
North East -14 15 £438 -25.53% 19
Northern Ireland +14 13 £400 -32.20% 3

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 87 (3.61%) Confluence
2 53 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.87%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.66%) SAS
5 30 (1.25%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.96%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.42%) ArcGIS
8 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.37%) Appian
9 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 158 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.45%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.33%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.12%) Notion
10 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.083%) Sketch
11 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.042%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.042%) UXPin
11 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 117 (4.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.25%) iTrent
9 6 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 467 (19.40%) Azure
2 299 (12.42%) AWS
3 236 (9.80%) Power Platform
4 122 (5.07%) Azure DevOps
5 121 (5.03%) GCP
6 109 (4.53%) GitHub
7 78 (3.24%) Snowflake
8 64 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
9 60 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 59 (2.45%) Serverless
11 58 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
12 56 (2.33%) Amazon S3
13 55 (2.29%) SaaS
14 41 (1.70%) OCI
15 38 (1.58%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 32 (1.33%) dbt
18 31 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
19 30 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
20 28 (1.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.66%) Firewall
2 58 (2.41%) Network Security
3 41 (1.70%) VLAN
4 38 (1.58%) DNS
5 34 (1.41%) VPN
6 32 (1.33%) TCP/IP
7 30 (1.25%) WAN
8 24 (1.00%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.75%) BGP
9 18 (0.75%) LAN
9 18 (0.75%) OSPF
10 17 (0.71%) SAN
10 17 (0.71%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.62%) Wireless
12 14 (0.58%) DHCP
12 14 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
13 13 (0.54%) HTTP
13 13 (0.54%) Internet
14 12 (0.50%) NAS
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 220 (9.14%) Power BI
2 119 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
3 86 (3.57%) SQL Server
4 84 (3.49%) Metadata
5 73 (3.03%) Tableau
6 70 (2.91%) PostgreSQL
7 67 (2.78%) Data Lake
8 49 (2.04%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.41%) Big Data
10 30 (1.25%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.08%) Power Query
13 25 (1.04%) Oracle Database
13 25 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
13 25 (1.04%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 24 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 24 (1.00%) BigQuery
14 24 (1.00%) Delta Lake
15 23 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 21 (0.87%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 211 (8.77%) JIRA
2 130 (5.40%) Git
3 93 (3.86%) Jenkins
4 62 (2.58%) GitLab
5 56 (2.33%) Selenium
6 53 (2.20%) Postman
7 46 (1.91%) JMeter
8 36 (1.50%) JUnit
9 35 (1.45%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.25%) Rational DOORS
11 29 (1.20%) WebDriver
12 18 (0.75%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.62%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.62%) MLflow
15 10 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.42%) Gatling
15 10 (0.42%) Gradle
15 10 (0.42%) Maven
15 10 (0.42%) REST Assured
General
1 722 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 721 (29.95%) Finance
3 428 (17.78%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (8.27%) Public Sector
5 198 (8.23%) Banking
6 133 (5.53%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.53%) Manufacturing
8 66 (2.74%) Aerospace
9 52 (2.16%) Pharmaceutical
10 48 (1.99%) Retail
11 47 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
12 41 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
13 40 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 39 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
15 38 (1.58%) Legal
16 37 (1.54%) General Ledger
17 36 (1.50%) Marketing
18 35 (1.45%) Telecoms
19 33 (1.37%) Front Office
20 30 (1.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 431 (17.91%) Analyst
2 252 (10.47%) Lead
3 221 (9.18%) Senior
4 206 (8.56%) Business Analyst
5 184 (7.64%) Data Engineer
6 171 (7.10%) Consultant
7 150 (6.23%) Architect
8 130 (5.40%) Developer
9 117 (4.86%) Data Analyst
10 88 (3.66%) Project Manager
11 61 (2.53%) Test Engineer
11 61 (2.53%) Tester
12 49 (2.04%) Software Engineer
13 47 (1.95%) Senior Analyst
14 46 (1.91%) Systems Engineer
14 46 (1.91%) Test Manager
15 45 (1.87%) Network Engineer
16 43 (1.79%) Technical Analyst
17 40 (1.66%) Migration Engineer
17 40 (1.66%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (5.28%) REST
2 84 (3.49%) JSON
3 68 (2.83%) Kafka
4 55 (2.29%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.20%) Middleware
6 51 (2.12%) XML
7 49 (2.04%) OAuth
8 42 (1.74%) PySpark
9 40 (1.66%) Swagger
10 39 (1.62%) RESTful
11 38 (1.58%) .NET
11 38 (1.58%) SOAP
12 33 (1.37%) Pandas
13 32 (1.33%) pytest
13 32 (1.33%) Spring
14 31 (1.29%) Node.js
15 30 (1.25%) Web Services
16 29 (1.20%) OAuth2
17 27 (1.12%) Playwright
17 27 (1.12%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.36%) Legacy Systems
2 118 (4.90%) Data Structures
3 117 (4.86%) Onboarding
4 102 (4.24%) Product Ownership
5 92 (3.82%) Cloud Native
6 78 (3.24%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.53%) Management Information System
8 48 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.41%) Life Science
12 33 (1.37%) SCADA
13 31 (1.29%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.25%) Replication
15 28 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.16%) NHS
15 28 (1.16%) Reference Data
16 27 (1.12%) Public Cloud
16 27 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 25 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 122 (5.07%) Windows
2 95 (3.95%) Linux
3 33 (1.37%) Unix
4 23 (0.96%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Android
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
9 4 (0.17%) zOS
10 2 (0.083%) HPUX
10 2 (0.083%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.042%) Debian
11 1 (0.042%) pSOS
11 1 (0.042%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 639 (26.55%) Migration
2 468 (19.44%) Agile
3 423 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
4 401 (16.66%) Stakeholder Management
5 398 (16.54%) Data Validation
6 382 (15.87%) CI/CD
7 380 (15.79%) Data Migration
8 374 (15.54%) Data Modelling
9 365 (15.16%) User Acceptance Testing
10 351 (14.58%) Analytics
11 301 (12.51%) ETL
12 289 (12.01%) AI
12 289 (12.01%) DevOps
13 284 (11.80%) Test Automation
14 264 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
15 263 (10.93%) Business Intelligence
16 252 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 224 (9.31%) Data Analysis
18 220 (9.14%) Data Governance
19 215 (8.93%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 554 (23.02%) SQL
2 428 (17.78%) Python
3 116 (4.82%) Java
4 60 (2.49%) C#
5 57 (2.37%) PowerShell
6 49 (2.04%) Bash
7 46 (1.91%) C++
8 43 (1.79%) C
9 41 (1.70%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.37%) Bicep
11 30 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 30 (1.25%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.08%) PL/SQL
13 25 (1.04%) Apex Code
14 24 (1.00%) R
15 23 (0.96%) Ada
16 20 (0.83%) Scala
17 18 (0.75%) MATLAB
18 13 (0.54%) T-SQL
19 12 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 432 (17.95%) Security Cleared
2 318 (13.21%) SC Cleared
3 189 (7.85%) Degree
4 60 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 50 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.33%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.16%) PMP
10 24 (1.00%) CCNP
11 22 (0.91%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.83%) ACCA
13 19 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 18 (0.75%) CIMA
15 17 (0.71%) CISSP
16 14 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
17 13 (0.54%) Azure Certification
17 13 (0.54%) CBAP
18 12 (0.50%) AWS Certification
18 12 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (16.83%) Data Quality
2 295 (12.26%) QA
3 117 (4.86%) GDPR
4 64 (2.66%) NIST
5 54 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.37%) SLA
8 31 (1.29%) GxP
9 29 (1.20%) PMO
10 27 (1.12%) IFRS
11 18 (0.75%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.75%) GMP
11 18 (0.75%) GRC
11 18 (0.75%) HL7
11 18 (0.75%) IFRS 17
12 14 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 13 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.50%) MiFID
System Software
1 95 (3.95%) Docker
2 60 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.91%) Firmware
5 22 (0.91%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.66%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.54%) vSphere
9 11 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.12%) KVM
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.083%) Ceph
13 2 (0.083%) Lustre
13 2 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 142 (5.90%) Kubernetes
2 109 (4.53%) Terraform
3 52 (2.16%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.99%) Grafana
5 46 (1.91%) Ansible
6 28 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.42%) Kibana
10 9 (0.37%) Puppet
11 8 (0.33%) SCCM
11 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.25%) Nessus
12 6 (0.25%) vMotion
13 4 (0.17%) CASB
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) Istio
13 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 326 (13.54%) Microsoft
2 217 (9.02%) SAP
3 201 (8.35%) Oracle
4 114 (4.74%) Databricks
5 77 (3.20%) Salesforce
6 70 (2.91%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.66%) VMware
8 49 (2.04%) Google
9 48 (1.99%) Cisco
10 43 (1.79%) Splunk
11 31 (1.29%) Workday
12 30 (1.25%) Informatica
13 28 (1.16%) MuleSoft
14 26 (1.08%) Palo Alto
14 26 (1.08%) Sage
15 24 (1.00%) IBM
16 21 (0.87%) IFS
16 21 (0.87%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 20 (0.83%) Fortinet