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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 73 120
Rank change year-on-year +38 +47 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,741 1,085 840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.25% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.17% 3.75% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,637 646 413
10th Percentile £340 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £594
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -7.39% +1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 73 175
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.68 £26.88
25th Percentile £28.50 £41.25 £47.83
Median hourly rate £62.50 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.23% -3.75% -5.11%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £68.82
90th Percentile £83.95 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +1.02% +4.17% -4.00%

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 44,398 28,953 36,844
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.10% 90.63% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,615 18,257 23,517
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,640 1,439 2,494
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% +1.65%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +35 2,383 £500 -4.76% 954
UK excluding London +27 1,280 £470 -7.39% 677
London +44 1,142 £514 -6.59% 392
Work from Home +51 797 £488 -2.50% 536
North of England +38 310 £450 - 137
Midlands +38 299 £484 +10.71% 119
South East -1 294 £518 +3.50% 224
West Midlands +36 219 £475 +17.28% 56
North West +23 167 £450 -4.10% 73
East of England +10 134 £500 +5.26% 72
South West -5 131 £514 -10.65% 87
Yorkshire +35 130 £461 +10.53% 44
Scotland +33 85 £420 -10.40% 39
East Midlands +25 75 £525 +15.51% 63
Wales +6 29 £455 +71.70% 10
North East -27 16 £425 -22.73% 20
Northern Ireland +11 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 89 (3.25%) Confluence
2 63 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (2.01%) SAS
4 51 (1.86%) SharePoint
5 43 (1.57%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.95%) Apache
7 13 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.33%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.26%) CMS
11 6 (0.22%) Appian
12 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 182 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.61%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 26 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.073%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.073%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.073%) Sketch
10 2 (0.073%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.036%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.036%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.036%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 124 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
3 16 (0.58%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.47%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.44%) iTrent
6 12 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.36%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
10 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
10 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
10 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
10 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
11 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
11 7 (0.26%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 560 (20.43%) Azure
2 328 (11.97%) AWS
3 276 (10.07%) Power Platform
4 150 (5.47%) Azure DevOps
5 135 (4.93%) GCP
6 117 (4.27%) GitHub
7 91 (3.32%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.52%) Serverless
9 68 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
10 67 (2.44%) Entra ID
11 62 (2.26%) Azure Data Factory
12 60 (2.19%) Amazon S3
13 51 (1.86%) SaaS
14 50 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
15 42 (1.53%) OCI
16 41 (1.50%) dbt
17 39 (1.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 37 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
19 35 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
20 32 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 111 (4.05%) Firewall
2 66 (2.41%) Network Security
3 50 (1.82%) DNS
4 46 (1.68%) VLAN
5 41 (1.50%) VPN
6 40 (1.46%) WAN
7 32 (1.17%) BGP
7 32 (1.17%) TCP/IP
8 24 (0.88%) Wireless
9 23 (0.84%) LAN
9 23 (0.84%) OSPF
10 22 (0.80%) SAN
10 22 (0.80%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.69%) Internet
12 18 (0.66%) DHCP
12 18 (0.66%) Ethernet
13 17 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.44%) NAS
15 12 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (9.41%) Power BI
2 142 (5.18%) Data Warehouse
3 107 (3.90%) Metadata
4 100 (3.65%) SQL Server
5 85 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
6 77 (2.81%) Tableau
7 76 (2.77%) Data Lake
8 71 (2.59%) Relational Database
9 37 (1.35%) Big Data
10 34 (1.24%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 29 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 28 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.02%) NoSQL
12 28 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
13 27 (0.99%) Power Query
14 26 (0.95%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.91%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 250 (9.12%) JIRA
2 159 (5.80%) Git
3 98 (3.58%) Jenkins
4 72 (2.63%) GitLab
5 61 (2.23%) Selenium
6 52 (1.90%) Postman
7 51 (1.86%) JMeter
8 39 (1.42%) JUnit
9 38 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.13%) WebDriver
11 27 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
12 19 (0.69%) Gatling
13 18 (0.66%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
15 16 (0.58%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.47%) MLflow
16 13 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.47%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 806 (29.41%) Finance
2 803 (29.30%) Social Skills
3 505 (18.42%) Analytical Skills
4 232 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 215 (7.84%) Banking
6 157 (5.73%) Documentation Skills
7 98 (3.58%) Manufacturing
8 76 (2.77%) Aerospace
9 68 (2.48%) Retail
10 60 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 54 (1.97%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 52 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
13 46 (1.68%) Legal
14 41 (1.50%) Front Office
15 39 (1.42%) General Ledger
15 39 (1.42%) Marketing
16 36 (1.31%) Billing
16 36 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
17 35 (1.28%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 486 (17.73%) Analyst
2 275 (10.03%) Senior
3 273 (9.96%) Lead
4 233 (8.50%) Business Analyst
5 218 (7.95%) Data Engineer
6 205 (7.48%) Consultant
7 162 (5.91%) Architect
8 157 (5.73%) Developer
9 133 (4.85%) Data Analyst
10 90 (3.28%) Test Engineer
11 82 (2.99%) Project Manager
12 70 (2.55%) Tester
13 56 (2.04%) Network Engineer
14 50 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
14 50 (1.82%) Test Manager
15 48 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 48 (1.75%) Senior Data Engineer
16 47 (1.71%) Technical Analyst
17 45 (1.64%) Security Engineer
18 44 (1.61%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (4.74%) REST
2 78 (2.85%) JSON
3 74 (2.70%) Kafka
4 57 (2.08%) PySpark
5 56 (2.04%) XML
6 55 (2.01%) Middleware
7 50 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
8 45 (1.64%) .NET
8 45 (1.64%) OAuth
8 45 (1.64%) Spring
9 41 (1.50%) pytest
10 40 (1.46%) SOAP
11 38 (1.39%) Playwright
11 38 (1.39%) Web Services
12 35 (1.28%) RESTful
13 34 (1.24%) Pandas
14 31 (1.13%) Node.js
15 29 (1.06%) Swagger
16 27 (0.99%) OpenID
17 25 (0.91%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 146 (5.33%) Onboarding
2 136 (4.96%) Data Structures
3 135 (4.93%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.52%) Cloud Native
5 116 (4.23%) Product Ownership
6 83 (3.03%) Data Centre
7 67 (2.44%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
10 46 (1.68%) Life Science
11 42 (1.53%) SCADA
12 37 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 37 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.28%) AI Agents
13 35 (1.28%) NHS
14 34 (1.24%) Virtual Team
15 33 (1.20%) Operational Technology
16 32 (1.17%) Replication
17 29 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
18 28 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 150 (5.47%) Windows
2 95 (3.47%) Linux
3 42 (1.53%) Windows Server
4 31 (1.13%) Unix
5 17 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.33%) Android
6 9 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.15%) SUSE
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.073%) HPUX
11 2 (0.073%) Solaris
11 2 (0.073%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.073%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.073%) zOS
12 1 (0.036%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 740 (27.00%) Migration
2 535 (19.52%) Agile
3 487 (17.77%) Stakeholder Management
4 462 (16.86%) CI/CD
5 459 (16.75%) Data Validation
6 449 (16.38%) Problem-Solving
7 447 (16.31%) Analytics
8 434 (15.83%) User Acceptance Testing
9 432 (15.76%) Data Migration
10 428 (15.61%) Data Modelling
11 349 (12.73%) AI
12 340 (12.40%) Test Automation
13 335 (12.22%) DevOps
13 335 (12.22%) ETL
14 327 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
15 302 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 300 (10.94%) Business Intelligence
17 265 (9.67%) Data Analysis
18 259 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
19 258 (9.41%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 641 (23.39%) SQL
2 491 (17.91%) Python
3 128 (4.67%) Java
4 69 (2.52%) PowerShell
5 62 (2.26%) C#
6 51 (1.86%) Bash
7 42 (1.53%) C++
7 42 (1.53%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.35%) TypeScript
9 36 (1.31%) C
10 35 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 31 (1.13%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.06%) Bicep
13 25 (0.91%) PL/SQL
13 25 (0.91%) R
14 23 (0.84%) VBA
15 22 (0.80%) Ada
16 21 (0.77%) Scala
17 19 (0.69%) MATLAB
18 18 (0.66%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 495 (18.06%) Security Cleared
2 365 (13.32%) SC Cleared
3 191 (6.97%) Degree
4 65 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 57 (2.08%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
6 40 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.13%) CCNP
8 27 (0.99%) PMI Certification
9 24 (0.88%) PMP
10 23 (0.84%) ISTQB
11 22 (0.80%) CISSP
12 21 (0.77%) ACCA
13 20 (0.73%) Azure Certification
14 19 (0.69%) CIMA
15 17 (0.62%) Master's Degree
15 17 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
16 16 (0.58%) CCNA
17 15 (0.55%) AWS Certification
17 15 (0.55%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 476 (17.37%) Data Quality
2 329 (12.00%) QA
3 127 (4.63%) GDPR
4 61 (2.23%) NIST
5 57 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.35%) GxP
7 37 (1.35%) PMO
7 37 (1.35%) SLA
8 21 (0.77%) GRC
9 20 (0.73%) IFRS
10 19 (0.69%) GMP
11 17 (0.62%) Def Stans
11 17 (0.62%) ISO 20022
12 16 (0.58%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 16 (0.58%) HL7
13 13 (0.47%) NCSC
13 13 (0.47%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.44%) IFRS 17
14 12 (0.44%) NIST 800
System Software
1 112 (4.09%) Docker
2 80 (2.92%) Active Directory
3 72 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.77%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.69%) vSphere
8 17 (0.62%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
10 15 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.22%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 4 (0.15%) KVM
12 4 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.073%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.073%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.073%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.073%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.036%) etcd
Systems Management
1 160 (5.84%) Kubernetes
2 127 (4.63%) Terraform
3 55 (2.01%) Prometheus
4 52 (1.90%) Grafana
5 49 (1.79%) Ansible
6 27 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.84%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.36%) SCCM
9 10 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.22%) Nessus
11 6 (0.22%) vMotion
11 6 (0.22%) VxRail
12 5 (0.18%) Argo
12 5 (0.18%) CASB
12 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.18%) Istio
12 5 (0.18%) Kibana
12 5 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 377 (13.75%) Microsoft
2 246 (8.97%) SAP
3 235 (8.57%) Oracle
4 127 (4.63%) Databricks
5 93 (3.39%) Salesforce
6 86 (3.14%) VMware
7 78 (2.85%) ServiceNow
8 61 (2.23%) Cisco
9 46 (1.68%) Google
10 42 (1.53%) Workday
11 40 (1.46%) Splunk
12 36 (1.31%) Informatica
13 32 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 30 (1.09%) IBM
15 29 (1.06%) Fortinet
16 27 (0.99%) MuleSoft
17 25 (0.91%) Sage
18 23 (0.84%) Juniper
19 21 (0.77%) Zscaler
20 20 (0.73%) IFS