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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 76 125
Rank change year-on-year +37 +49 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,360 916 792
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.84% 3.21% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.73% 3.52% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,411 547 389
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £513 £495
% change year-on-year -10.83% +3.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 57 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £25.53
25th Percentile £27.24 £37.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £56.04 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.53% -6.60% -6.42%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.70% -4.00% -0.08%

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 41,181 26,010 36,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 91.03% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,765 16,696 23,578
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.14% -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 2,462 1,066 2,486
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.73 £17.92 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £25.15 £37.75
% change year-on-year +69.72% -33.38% +7.86%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 2,053 £500 -4.76% 939
UK excluding London +27 1,106 £457 -10.83% 691
London +53 991 £510 -7.27% 344
Work from Home +56 697 £485 -3.10% 413
North of England +37 275 £436 -3.11% 155
Midlands +29 251 £492 +8.25% 99
South East -3 233 £500 - 199
West Midlands +27 177 £481 +9.94% 63
North West +30 164 £420 -4.00% 90
East of England +11 126 £475 +5.56% 94
South West +3 123 £488 -15.22% 102
Yorkshire +19 103 £452 +0.39% 45
Scotland +43 72 £388 -18.42% 36
East Midlands +15 70 £525 +14.38% 36
Wales +6 24 £450 +190.32% 16
Northern Ireland +11 13 £400 -32.20% 12
North East -18 11 £438 -25.53% 20

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 86 (3.64%) Confluence
2 49 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (1.82%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.65%) SAS
5 26 (1.10%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.85%) Apache
7 11 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.42%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.38%) Appian
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.085%) CICS
13 2 (0.085%) Documentum
13 2 (0.085%) Umbraco
Applications
1 158 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 27 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.97%) Spreadsheet
5 22 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.34%) CATIA
8 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.17%) Simulink
10 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 3 (0.13%) Notion
11 2 (0.085%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.085%) Sketch
12 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.042%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.042%) UXPin
12 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 109 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.68%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.51%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.34%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.30%) SAP SD
9 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
9 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 456 (19.32%) Azure
2 291 (12.33%) AWS
3 237 (10.04%) Power Platform
4 119 (5.04%) Azure DevOps
5 118 (5.00%) GCP
6 103 (4.36%) GitHub
7 75 (3.18%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
9 58 (2.46%) Entra ID
9 58 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.46%) Serverless
10 57 (2.42%) SaaS
11 54 (2.29%) Amazon S3
12 43 (1.82%) OCI
13 37 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 35 (1.48%) Microsoft 365
15 32 (1.36%) dbt
16 30 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
17 29 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.10%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 86 (3.64%) Firewall
2 58 (2.46%) Network Security
3 41 (1.74%) VLAN
4 34 (1.44%) DNS
5 32 (1.36%) VPN
6 31 (1.31%) TCP/IP
7 28 (1.19%) WAN
8 23 (0.97%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.76%) LAN
10 16 (0.68%) BGP
10 16 (0.68%) OSPF
10 16 (0.68%) SAN
10 16 (0.68%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.64%) Wireless
12 14 (0.59%) DHCP
13 13 (0.55%) HTTP
13 13 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.51%) Internet
14 12 (0.51%) NAS
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (9.41%) Power BI
2 121 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 88 (3.73%) Metadata
4 85 (3.60%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.22%) Tableau
6 67 (2.84%) Data Lake
6 67 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (2.08%) Relational Database
8 32 (1.36%) Big Data
9 30 (1.27%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.10%) Power Query
12 25 (1.06%) Delta Lake
12 25 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
12 25 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 24 (1.02%) Oracle Database
14 23 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
14 23 (0.97%) BigQuery
14 23 (0.97%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 21 (0.89%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 205 (8.69%) JIRA
2 125 (5.30%) Git
3 85 (3.60%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.29%) Postman
5 53 (2.25%) GitLab
6 52 (2.20%) Selenium
7 44 (1.86%) JMeter
8 33 (1.40%) JUnit
9 30 (1.27%) Cucumber
9 30 (1.27%) Rational DOORS
10 24 (1.02%) WebDriver
11 18 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
12 15 (0.64%) MLflow
12 15 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.59%) Eclipse
14 11 (0.47%) Gatling
14 11 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.42%) Gradle
15 10 (0.42%) Maven
General
1 707 (29.96%) Finance
1 707 (29.96%) Social Skills
2 424 (17.97%) Analytical Skills
3 196 (8.31%) Public Sector
4 189 (8.01%) Banking
5 126 (5.34%) Documentation Skills
6 82 (3.47%) Manufacturing
7 64 (2.71%) Aerospace
8 50 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
9 49 (2.08%) Retail
10 47 (1.99%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
12 39 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
13 37 (1.57%) General Ledger
13 37 (1.57%) Legal
14 36 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 36 (1.53%) Marketing
15 34 (1.44%) Telecoms
16 33 (1.40%) Front Office
17 31 (1.31%) Military
Job Titles
1 429 (18.18%) Analyst
2 246 (10.42%) Lead
3 213 (9.03%) Senior
4 200 (8.47%) Business Analyst
5 186 (7.88%) Data Engineer
6 165 (6.99%) Consultant
7 146 (6.19%) Architect
8 126 (5.34%) Developer
9 118 (5.00%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.69%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.50%) Tester
12 58 (2.46%) Test Engineer
13 48 (2.03%) Senior Analyst
13 48 (2.03%) Software Engineer
14 46 (1.95%) Systems Engineer
15 45 (1.91%) Test Manager
16 44 (1.86%) Network Engineer
17 43 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
18 41 (1.74%) Security Engineer
19 38 (1.61%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (5.34%) REST
2 85 (3.60%) JSON
3 69 (2.92%) Kafka
4 55 (2.33%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.25%) Middleware
6 51 (2.16%) XML
7 49 (2.08%) OAuth
8 43 (1.82%) PySpark
9 40 (1.69%) Swagger
10 39 (1.65%) RESTful
11 38 (1.61%) .NET
11 38 (1.61%) SOAP
12 33 (1.40%) Pandas
13 32 (1.36%) pytest
14 30 (1.27%) Node.js
14 30 (1.27%) Spring
15 29 (1.23%) OAuth2
15 29 (1.23%) Web Services
16 27 (1.14%) Playwright
16 27 (1.14%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.47%) Legacy Systems
2 122 (5.17%) Onboarding
3 119 (5.04%) Data Structures
4 99 (4.19%) Product Ownership
5 89 (3.77%) Cloud Native
6 76 (3.22%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.58%) Management Information System
8 45 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
11 32 (1.36%) Operational Technology
11 32 (1.36%) SCADA
12 31 (1.31%) Life Science
13 28 (1.19%) NHS
13 28 (1.19%) Reference Data
13 28 (1.19%) Replication
14 27 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.14%) Virtual Team
15 26 (1.10%) Public Cloud
16 25 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 116 (4.92%) Windows
2 91 (3.86%) Linux
3 32 (1.36%) Unix
4 21 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.42%) Android
5 10 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.30%) VMS
6 7 (0.30%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
8 4 (0.17%) SUSE
8 4 (0.17%) zOS
9 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.085%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.042%) Debian
11 1 (0.042%) pSOS
11 1 (0.042%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 628 (26.61%) Migration
2 456 (19.32%) Agile
3 418 (17.71%) Problem-Solving
4 393 (16.65%) Stakeholder Management
5 392 (16.61%) Data Validation
6 377 (15.97%) Data Migration
7 371 (15.72%) CI/CD
7 371 (15.72%) Data Modelling
8 356 (15.08%) User Acceptance Testing
9 350 (14.83%) Analytics
10 302 (12.80%) ETL
11 282 (11.95%) DevOps
12 274 (11.61%) AI
12 274 (11.61%) Test Automation
13 263 (11.14%) Business Intelligence
14 262 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
15 245 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 219 (9.28%) Data Analysis
17 217 (9.19%) Data Governance
18 212 (8.98%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 550 (23.31%) SQL
2 424 (17.97%) Python
3 112 (4.75%) Java
4 59 (2.50%) C#
5 52 (2.20%) PowerShell
6 47 (1.99%) Bash
7 45 (1.91%) C++
8 43 (1.82%) C
9 41 (1.74%) JavaScript
10 31 (1.31%) Bicep
10 31 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 30 (1.27%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.10%) PL/SQL
12 26 (1.10%) R
13 25 (1.06%) Apex Code
14 22 (0.93%) Ada
15 21 (0.89%) Scala
16 18 (0.76%) MATLAB
17 13 (0.55%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.51%) VBA
Qualifications
1 426 (18.05%) Security Cleared
2 309 (13.09%) SC Cleared
3 184 (7.80%) Degree
4 55 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.36%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.19%) PMP
10 24 (1.02%) CCNP
11 22 (0.93%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.85%) ACCA
13 18 (0.76%) CIMA
13 18 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 17 (0.72%) CISSP
15 14 (0.59%) CBAP
15 14 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.55%) Azure Certification
16 13 (0.55%) CCNA
17 12 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 399 (16.91%) Data Quality
2 286 (12.12%) QA
3 119 (5.04%) GDPR
4 66 (2.80%) NIST
5 56 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 36 (1.53%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.40%) SLA
8 29 (1.23%) PMO
9 28 (1.19%) GxP
10 27 (1.14%) IFRS
11 18 (0.76%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.76%) GMP
11 18 (0.76%) GRC
11 18 (0.76%) HL7
11 18 (0.76%) IFRS 17
12 14 (0.59%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 13 (0.55%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.51%) MiFID
14 12 (0.51%) NIST 800
System Software
1 88 (3.73%) Docker
2 59 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 52 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.97%) Firmware
6 22 (0.93%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.68%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.55%) vSphere
9 11 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) KVM
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.085%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.085%) Ceph
13 2 (0.085%) Lustre
13 2 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.085%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 137 (5.81%) Kubernetes
2 102 (4.32%) Terraform
3 49 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.95%) Grafana
5 43 (1.82%) Ansible
6 29 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.47%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.42%) Kibana
10 9 (0.38%) Puppet
11 8 (0.34%) SCCM
11 8 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.25%) Nessus
12 6 (0.25%) vMotion
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) Consul
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 319 (13.52%) Microsoft
2 210 (8.90%) SAP
3 200 (8.47%) Oracle
4 117 (4.96%) Databricks
5 76 (3.22%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.92%) ServiceNow
7 63 (2.67%) VMware
8 49 (2.08%) Cisco
9 47 (1.99%) Google
10 41 (1.74%) Splunk
11 32 (1.36%) Informatica
12 31 (1.31%) Workday
13 27 (1.14%) MuleSoft
14 26 (1.10%) Palo Alto
14 26 (1.10%) Sage
15 24 (1.02%) IBM
16 21 (0.89%) IFS
16 21 (0.89%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.85%) CyberArk
18 19 (0.81%) Fortinet