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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 73 117
Rank change year-on-year +38 +44 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,782 1,101 841
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.29% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.21% 3.76% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,668 655 412
10th Percentile £334 £350 £331
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 £468 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -8.24% +2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 75 173
10th Percentile £17.75 £19.13 £26.88
25th Percentile £28.50 £39.38 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.44 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.88 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.04%

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 44,833 29,276 36,875
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.19% 90.47% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,456 23,540
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.48% -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 2,660 1,489 2,488
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £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% -3.62%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +37 2,417 £500 -4.76% 1,094
UK excluding London +30 1,297 £468 -8.24% 817
London +47 1,163 £513 -6.82% 448
Work from Home +49 803 £488 -2.50% 424
North of England +35 315 £450 -5.26% 145
South East +4 304 £506 +1.15% 240
Midlands +36 299 £488 +11.43% 123
West Midlands +27 218 £475 +17.28% 63
North West +25 170 £450 -14.29% 77
East of England +3 134 £500 +5.26% 79
Yorkshire +32 132 £461 +10.53% 47
South West -5 130 £514 -10.65% 175
Scotland +33 88 £423 -9.87% 48
East Midlands +24 76 £525 +15.51% 60
Wales +10 29 £455 +71.70% 8
North East -27 16 £425 -22.73% 21
Northern Ireland +10 10 £380 -35.59% 15

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 (3.20%) Confluence
2 65 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.98%) SAS
4 51 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 46 (1.65%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.97%) Apache
7 13 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
8 12 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.32%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.25%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 184 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.58%) MS Visio
3 37 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.97%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.072%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.072%) Sketch
10 2 (0.072%) 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
1 127 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.29%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
3 16 (0.58%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.47%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 13 (0.47%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
6 11 (0.40%) iTrent
6 11 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.40%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
8 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
8 8 (0.29%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
8 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 7 (0.25%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 572 (20.56%) Azure
2 334 (12.01%) AWS
3 279 (10.03%) Power Platform
4 153 (5.50%) Azure DevOps
5 139 (5.00%) GCP
6 117 (4.21%) GitHub
7 92 (3.31%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.52%) Entra ID
9 69 (2.48%) Serverless
10 68 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
11 64 (2.30%) Azure Data Factory
12 60 (2.16%) Amazon S3
13 52 (1.87%) SaaS
14 50 (1.80%) Microsoft 365
15 45 (1.62%) OCI
16 42 (1.51%) dbt
17 41 (1.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 37 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
19 36 (1.29%) SuccessFactors
20 32 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 113 (4.06%) Firewall
2 67 (2.41%) Network Security
3 51 (1.83%) DNS
4 47 (1.69%) VLAN
5 41 (1.47%) VPN
6 40 (1.44%) WAN
7 32 (1.15%) BGP
7 32 (1.15%) TCP/IP
8 24 (0.86%) Wireless
9 23 (0.83%) LAN
9 23 (0.83%) OSPF
10 22 (0.79%) SAN
10 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.68%) Ethernet
11 19 (0.68%) Internet
12 18 (0.65%) DHCP
13 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.43%) HTTP
15 12 (0.43%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (9.38%) Power BI
2 147 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 109 (3.92%) Metadata
4 100 (3.59%) SQL Server
5 85 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
6 80 (2.88%) Data Lake
7 77 (2.77%) Tableau
8 73 (2.62%) Relational Database
9 41 (1.47%) Big Data
10 34 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.22%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 30 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 28 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.01%) NoSQL
12 28 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 27 (0.97%) Power Query
14 26 (0.93%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.90%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
16 24 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 253 (9.09%) JIRA
2 162 (5.82%) Git
3 98 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 73 (2.62%) GitLab
5 61 (2.19%) Selenium
6 52 (1.87%) JMeter
6 52 (1.87%) Postman
7 39 (1.40%) JUnit
8 38 (1.37%) Cucumber
9 31 (1.11%) WebDriver
10 27 (0.97%) Rational DOORS
11 20 (0.72%) Gatling
12 18 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.58%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.43%) MLflow
17 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 821 (29.51%) Finance
2 817 (29.37%) Social Skills
3 519 (18.66%) Analytical Skills
4 232 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 218 (7.84%) Banking
6 162 (5.82%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.59%) Manufacturing
8 76 (2.73%) Aerospace
9 71 (2.55%) Retail
10 62 (2.23%) Pharmaceutical
11 54 (1.94%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 52 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
13 46 (1.65%) Legal
14 41 (1.47%) Front Office
14 41 (1.47%) Marketing
15 38 (1.37%) General Ledger
16 37 (1.33%) Law
17 36 (1.29%) Billing
17 36 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 494 (17.76%) Analyst
2 279 (10.03%) Senior
3 276 (9.92%) Lead
4 237 (8.52%) Business Analyst
5 220 (7.91%) Data Engineer
6 207 (7.44%) Consultant
7 163 (5.86%) Architect
8 160 (5.75%) Developer
9 135 (4.85%) Data Analyst
10 91 (3.27%) Test Engineer
11 82 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 73 (2.62%) Tester
13 56 (2.01%) Network Engineer
14 51 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
15 50 (1.80%) Senior Data Engineer
16 49 (1.76%) Test Manager
17 48 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 48 (1.73%) Technical Analyst
18 46 (1.65%) Security Engineer
19 44 (1.58%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (4.82%) REST
2 83 (2.98%) JSON
3 75 (2.70%) Kafka
4 62 (2.23%) PySpark
5 57 (2.05%) XML
6 55 (1.98%) Middleware
7 53 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
8 46 (1.65%) Spring
9 45 (1.62%) .NET
10 44 (1.58%) OAuth
11 40 (1.44%) pytest
11 40 (1.44%) SOAP
12 38 (1.37%) Playwright
13 37 (1.33%) Web Services
14 34 (1.22%) RESTful
15 33 (1.19%) Pandas
16 31 (1.11%) Node.js
17 28 (1.01%) Swagger
18 27 (0.97%) OpenID
19 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 148 (5.32%) Onboarding
2 138 (4.96%) Data Structures
3 136 (4.89%) Legacy Systems
4 129 (4.64%) Cloud Native
5 119 (4.28%) Product Ownership
6 83 (2.98%) Data Centre
7 66 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (1.73%) Life Science
10 43 (1.55%) SCADA
11 39 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
12 37 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 35 (1.26%) NHS
14 34 (1.22%) Operational Technology
14 34 (1.22%) Virtual Team
15 32 (1.15%) Replication
16 29 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
17 28 (1.01%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 152 (5.46%) Windows
2 94 (3.38%) Linux
3 44 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 32 (1.15%) Unix
5 18 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.32%) Android
6 9 (0.32%) VMS
7 7 (0.25%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.14%) SUSE
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.072%) HPUX
11 2 (0.072%) Solaris
11 2 (0.072%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.072%) zOS
12 1 (0.036%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 750 (26.96%) Migration
2 547 (19.66%) Agile
3 497 (17.86%) Stakeholder Management
4 468 (16.82%) CI/CD
5 465 (16.71%) Data Validation
6 457 (16.43%) Analytics
7 455 (16.36%) Problem-Solving
8 448 (16.10%) User Acceptance Testing
9 440 (15.82%) Data Migration
10 432 (15.53%) Data Modelling
11 351 (12.62%) AI
12 344 (12.37%) Test Automation
13 341 (12.26%) ETL
14 340 (12.22%) DevOps
15 338 (12.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 309 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 303 (10.89%) Business Intelligence
18 271 (9.74%) Data Pipeline
19 268 (9.63%) Data Analysis
20 265 (9.53%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 651 (23.40%) SQL
2 498 (17.90%) Python
3 130 (4.67%) Java
4 73 (2.62%) PowerShell
5 62 (2.23%) C#
6 52 (1.87%) Bash
7 42 (1.51%) JavaScript
8 41 (1.47%) C++
9 37 (1.33%) TypeScript
10 35 (1.26%) C
10 35 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 31 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.04%) Bicep
13 26 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.90%) R
15 23 (0.83%) VBA
16 22 (0.79%) Ada
17 21 (0.75%) Scala
18 19 (0.68%) MATLAB
18 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 499 (17.94%) Security Cleared
2 366 (13.16%) SC Cleared
3 191 (6.87%) Degree
4 66 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 60 (2.16%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 31 (1.11%) CCNP
9 27 (0.97%) PMI Certification
10 24 (0.86%) PMP
11 23 (0.83%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.79%) CISSP
13 21 (0.75%) ACCA
14 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
14 20 (0.72%) CIMA
15 17 (0.61%) Master's Degree
15 17 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
16 16 (0.58%) CCNA
17 15 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (17.61%) Data Quality
2 338 (12.15%) QA
3 129 (4.64%) GDPR
4 61 (2.19%) NIST
5 57 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.62%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.40%) SLA
8 38 (1.37%) GxP
8 38 (1.37%) PMO
9 21 (0.75%) GRC
10 20 (0.72%) IFRS
11 19 (0.68%) GMP
12 18 (0.65%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.61%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
14 16 (0.58%) HL7
15 13 (0.47%) NCSC
15 13 (0.47%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.43%) IFRS 17
16 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 112 (4.03%) Docker
2 81 (2.91%) Active Directory
3 74 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.75%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.68%) vSphere
8 17 (0.61%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
9 16 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
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%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 161 (5.79%) Kubernetes
2 128 (4.60%) Terraform
3 55 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 53 (1.91%) Grafana
5 49 (1.76%) Ansible
6 27 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.83%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.36%) SCCM
9 10 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.25%) 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
13 4 (0.14%) Consul
13 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 385 (13.84%) Microsoft
2 252 (9.06%) SAP
3 239 (8.59%) Oracle
4 134 (4.82%) Databricks
5 93 (3.34%) Salesforce
6 88 (3.16%) VMware
7 78 (2.80%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.23%) Cisco
9 47 (1.69%) Google
10 43 (1.55%) Workday
11 40 (1.44%) Splunk
12 36 (1.29%) Informatica
13 32 (1.15%) IBM
13 32 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 30 (1.08%) Fortinet
15 27 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.86%) Juniper
16 24 (0.86%) Sage
17 21 (0.75%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.72%) IFS