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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 94 136
Rank change year-on-year +50 +42 +1
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,055 774 759
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.61% 2.66% 1.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.39% 2.94% 1.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,262 457 388
10th Percentile £350 £363 £324
25th Percentile £403 £419 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% -1.18% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £623
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -6.86% +2.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 45 144
10th Percentile £22.33 £25.65 £18.76
25th Percentile £43.19 £47.50 £47.96
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% +0.83% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.38 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.15 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +7.44% - -3.20%

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 38,122 26,294 38,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.61% 90.44% 86.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,155 17,082 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,251 966 2,351
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.24 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -10.48%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £31.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -12.50%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 +44 1,785 £490 -7.98% 872
UK excluding London +43 976 £475 -6.86% 714
London +66 833 £501 -9.00% 268
Work from Home +65 628 £492 -4.00% 341
North of England +36 239 £435 -5.95% 152
South East 0 203 £500 - 215
Midlands +35 194 £491 +3.37% 118
West Midlands +28 153 £486 -0.38% 77
North West +29 152 £416 -6.25% 74
South West +10 136 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +15 126 £492 +9.38% 96
Yorkshire +6 78 £458 +9.04% 51
Scotland +41 52 £404 -10.83% 42
East Midlands -7 39 £525 +42.66% 41
Northern Ireland +18 23 £400 -27.27% 5
Wales +7 18 £460 - 16
North East -5 12 £450 -37.93% 27

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 81 (3.94%) Confluence
2 41 (2.00%) Apache Spark
3 37 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (1.80%) SAS
4 20 (0.97%) Apache
5 19 (0.92%) SharePoint
6 14 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.44%) Appian
7 9 (0.44%) ArcGIS
8 8 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.24%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.24%) CMS
11 3 (0.15%) CICS
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.097%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.097%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 115 (5.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.24%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.15%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.097%) Sketch
12 1 (0.049%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.049%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.049%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.049%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.049%) Simulink
12 1 (0.049%) UXPin
12 1 (0.049%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 94 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.75%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
3 14 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.63%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.54%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
7 10 (0.49%) SAP FI
8 9 (0.44%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.39%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 8 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.39%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.34%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.34%) iTrent
10 7 (0.34%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.34%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.29%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 484 (23.55%) Azure
2 276 (13.43%) AWS
3 178 (8.66%) Power Platform
4 149 (7.25%) Azure DevOps
5 100 (4.87%) GitHub
6 96 (4.67%) GCP
7 63 (3.07%) Serverless
8 62 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
9 60 (2.92%) Amazon S3
10 59 (2.87%) Entra ID
11 58 (2.82%) Azure Data Factory
12 53 (2.58%) SaaS
13 49 (2.38%) OCI
14 46 (2.24%) Snowflake
15 39 (1.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 36 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
17 31 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (1.46%) Microsoft 365
19 28 (1.36%) OpenShift
20 26 (1.27%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 76 (3.70%) Firewall
2 51 (2.48%) Network Security
3 36 (1.75%) TCP/IP
4 27 (1.31%) DNS
5 26 (1.27%) VLAN
6 24 (1.17%) Ethernet
6 24 (1.17%) VPN
7 21 (1.02%) HTTP
8 19 (0.92%) WAN
9 15 (0.73%) SAN
10 13 (0.63%) NAS
11 11 (0.54%) BGP
11 11 (0.54%) LAN
11 11 (0.54%) OSPF
11 11 (0.54%) Wireless
12 10 (0.49%) SD-WAN
13 9 (0.44%) Internet
13 9 (0.44%) SSL
14 8 (0.39%) Cisco ISE
15 7 (0.34%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (8.08%) Power BI
2 107 (5.21%) Metadata
3 102 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 69 (3.36%) SQL Server
5 59 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (2.87%) Tableau
6 47 (2.29%) Data Lake
7 35 (1.70%) Delta Lake
8 30 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
8 30 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
8 30 (1.46%) Relational Database
9 29 (1.41%) Big Data
10 27 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.22%) NoSQL
12 23 (1.12%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 22 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
14 20 (0.97%) Power Query
15 19 (0.92%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 192 (9.34%) JIRA
2 126 (6.13%) Git
3 91 (4.43%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.26%) Selenium
5 56 (2.73%) Postman
6 55 (2.68%) GitLab
7 37 (1.80%) JUnit
8 36 (1.75%) Cucumber
9 35 (1.70%) JMeter
10 31 (1.51%) Rational DOORS
11 28 (1.36%) Oracle APEX
12 22 (1.07%) WebDriver
13 20 (0.97%) MLflow
14 19 (0.92%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.68%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.68%) REST Assured
16 13 (0.63%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.63%) SpecFlow
16 13 (0.63%) TestRail
17 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 698 (33.97%) Social Skills
2 596 (29.00%) Finance
3 402 (19.56%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (9.15%) Public Sector
5 172 (8.37%) Banking
6 111 (5.40%) Documentation Skills
7 64 (3.11%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.77%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (2.24%) Pharmaceutical
11 38 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
12 36 (1.75%) Electronics
13 35 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.65%) Marketing
15 33 (1.61%) Telecoms
16 31 (1.51%) Legal
16 31 (1.51%) Retail
17 30 (1.46%) Billing
18 28 (1.36%) Military
19 27 (1.31%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 383 (18.64%) Analyst
2 211 (10.27%) Senior
3 206 (10.02%) Lead
4 175 (8.52%) Business Analyst
5 144 (7.01%) Consultant
6 140 (6.81%) Data Engineer
7 138 (6.72%) Developer
8 132 (6.42%) Architect
9 93 (4.53%) Data Analyst
10 77 (3.75%) Project Manager
11 63 (3.07%) Tester
12 50 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
13 49 (2.38%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.09%) Test Engineer
15 42 (2.04%) SAP Consultant
15 42 (2.04%) Test Analyst
16 40 (1.95%) Senior Developer
17 39 (1.90%) Test Manager
18 38 (1.85%) Systems Engineer
19 36 (1.75%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (6.72%) REST
2 105 (5.11%) JSON
3 61 (2.97%) Oracle Fusion
3 61 (2.97%) XML
4 58 (2.82%) Kafka
5 53 (2.58%) OAuth
6 52 (2.53%) Middleware
7 50 (2.43%) PySpark
8 44 (2.14%) SOAP
9 42 (2.04%) Node.js
10 40 (1.95%) .NET
11 35 (1.70%) Playwright
12 32 (1.56%) pytest
12 32 (1.56%) Swagger
13 31 (1.51%) RESTful
14 30 (1.46%) PyTorch
14 30 (1.46%) Web Services
15 26 (1.27%) SAML
15 26 (1.27%) TensorFlow
16 25 (1.22%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 117 (5.69%) Legacy Systems
2 106 (5.16%) Data Structures
3 88 (4.28%) Onboarding
4 86 (4.18%) Product Ownership
5 63 (3.07%) Cloud Native
6 56 (2.73%) Management Information System
7 49 (2.38%) Data Centre
8 35 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
9 34 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
10 28 (1.36%) Replication
11 25 (1.22%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
13 23 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.12%) Life Science
13 23 (1.12%) Virtual Team
14 21 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.02%) NHS
15 20 (0.97%) Operational Technology
15 20 (0.97%) Public Cloud
15 20 (0.97%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 102 (4.96%) Windows
2 85 (4.14%) Linux
3 31 (1.51%) Unix
4 12 (0.58%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.54%) Android
6 6 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.29%) zOS
7 5 (0.24%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.15%) VMS
10 2 (0.097%) Debian
10 2 (0.097%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.049%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.049%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.049%) pSOS
11 1 (0.049%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.049%) Solaris
11 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 500 (24.33%) Migration
2 459 (22.34%) Agile
3 421 (20.49%) Problem-Solving
4 358 (17.42%) CI/CD
5 356 (17.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 346 (16.84%) Data Validation
7 319 (15.52%) Analytics
8 300 (14.60%) DevOps
9 295 (14.36%) Data Migration
10 292 (14.21%) Data Modelling
11 274 (13.33%) ETL
12 259 (12.60%) Test Automation
12 259 (12.60%) User Acceptance Testing
13 235 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
14 224 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 214 (10.41%) AI
16 211 (10.27%) Business Intelligence
17 209 (10.17%) Data Governance
18 178 (8.66%) Data Pipeline
19 167 (8.13%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 503 (24.48%) SQL
2 384 (18.69%) Python
3 101 (4.91%) Java
4 90 (4.38%) JavaScript
5 76 (3.70%) C#
6 53 (2.58%) PL/SQL
7 52 (2.53%) PowerShell
8 50 (2.43%) C++
9 45 (2.19%) C
10 36 (1.75%) Bash
10 36 (1.75%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.27%) Bicep
12 26 (1.27%) R
13 21 (1.02%) Ada
14 19 (0.92%) T-SQL
15 17 (0.83%) Scala
16 16 (0.78%) Groovy
17 13 (0.63%) VBA
18 11 (0.54%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 435 (21.17%) Security Cleared
2 315 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 190 (9.25%) Degree
4 64 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 55 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (2.00%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.61%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.51%) ISTQB
9 29 (1.41%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.31%) PMP
11 18 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (0.78%) CISSP
13 15 (0.73%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.73%) CCNP
13 15 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (0.63%) CBAP
15 12 (0.58%) Azure Certification
16 10 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.49%) Oracle Certification
17 9 (0.44%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (16.55%) Data Quality
2 269 (13.09%) QA
3 116 (5.64%) GDPR
4 80 (3.89%) NIST
5 68 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 31 (1.51%) Accessibility
7 28 (1.36%) SLA
8 24 (1.17%) GxP
9 22 (1.07%) IFRS
10 20 (0.97%) Def Stans
11 19 (0.92%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.88%) PMO
13 16 (0.78%) GRC
14 15 (0.73%) GMP
14 15 (0.73%) HL7
15 14 (0.68%) NCSC
15 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.63%) COBIT
16 13 (0.63%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (3.80%) Docker
2 46 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (1.36%) Firmware
5 11 (0.54%) Hyper-V
5 11 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.34%) vSphere
8 5 (0.24%) NFS
9 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.15%) Embedded Firmware
11 2 (0.097%) Ceph
11 2 (0.097%) KVM
11 2 (0.097%) Lustre
11 2 (0.097%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.097%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.097%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.097%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 116 (5.64%) Kubernetes
2 90 (4.38%) Terraform
3 31 (1.51%) Prometheus
3 31 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.46%) Ansible
5 29 (1.41%) Grafana
6 14 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (0.54%) Kibana
7 11 (0.54%) Puppet
8 8 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.34%) SCCM
10 6 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.29%) Nessus
11 5 (0.24%) CASB
11 5 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
Vendors
1 268 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 208 (10.12%) Oracle
3 174 (8.47%) SAP
4 109 (5.30%) Databricks
5 86 (4.18%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.43%) Google
6 50 (2.43%) Salesforce
7 44 (2.14%) VMware
8 43 (2.09%) Splunk
9 38 (1.85%) Cisco
10 34 (1.65%) Workday
11 32 (1.56%) MuleSoft
12 31 (1.51%) Informatica
13 28 (1.36%) Sage
14 22 (1.07%) Palo Alto
15 21 (1.02%) CyberArk
16 20 (0.97%) OpenAI
17 19 (0.92%) IBM
18 14 (0.68%) Dell
19 13 (0.63%) Bloomberg