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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 67 115
Rank change year-on-year +35 +48 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,998 1,199 783
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.54% 3.67% 2.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.56% 4.05% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,773 687 385
10th Percentile £332 £325 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £701 £688 £656
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.45% +5.26% -7.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 87 106
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £30.00
25th Percentile £26.80 £41.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.69% - -3.70%
75th Percentile £71.60 £67.00 £71.50
90th Percentile £82.33 £75.00 £75.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.69% - -7.14%

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 45,698 29,594 32,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.53% 85.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,784 18,388 20,318
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £726 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,048 1,782 1,485
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.95 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +7.50%

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 14 September 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 14 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 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 14 September 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 +33 2,574 £500 -2.44% 3,913
UK excluding London +28 1,363 £463 -7.45% 2,394
London +41 1,272 £525 - 1,970
Work from Home +25 832 £500 - 2,492
North of England +40 330 £450 +5.88% 371
South East +4 328 £501 -0.99% 583
Midlands +37 297 £473 -0.42% 314
West Midlands +29 208 £463 -2.46% 214
North West +14 160 £450 +5.88% 219
Yorkshire +55 148 £461 -2.89% 101
East of England -4 142 £478 -4.40% 366
South West +8 139 £525 -4.55% 347
Scotland +42 121 £430 -15.02% 324
East Midlands +26 85 £490 -2.00% 98
North East -23 27 £425 -5.56% 61
Wales -3 23 £363 -3.33% 57
Northern Ireland +4 4 £363 -40.33% 66
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 1

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 83 (2.77%) Confluence
2 66 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 60 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 53 (1.77%) SAS
5 43 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.03%) Apache
7 19 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.40%) CMS
10 9 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.30%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.23%) Sitecore CMS
12 6 (0.20%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.17%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
14 4 (0.13%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.13%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 212 (7.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.33%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.17%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.50%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.33%) Navisworks
7 10 (0.33%) Revit
8 9 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
8 9 (0.30%) ProjectWise
9 6 (0.20%) CATIA
9 6 (0.20%) Simulink
10 4 (0.13%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.067%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.067%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.067%) Windchill
12 1 (0.033%) Gliffy
12 1 (0.033%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.033%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.033%) Trello
Business Applications
1 116 (3.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.47%) SAP SD
5 13 (0.43%) NetSuite
5 13 (0.43%) SAP FI
5 13 (0.43%) Teamcenter
6 12 (0.40%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.37%) Aladdin
7 11 (0.37%) iTrent
7 11 (0.37%) SAP MDG
7 11 (0.37%) SAP MM
8 10 (0.33%) SAP HCM
9 9 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
9 9 (0.30%) SAP CO
9 9 (0.30%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.30%) SAP PS
10 8 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 8 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 8 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 606 (20.21%) Azure
2 338 (11.27%) AWS
3 301 (10.04%) Power Platform
4 180 (6.00%) Azure DevOps
5 136 (4.54%) GCP
6 133 (4.44%) GitHub
7 108 (3.60%) Snowflake
8 87 (2.90%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.47%) Azure Data Factory
10 72 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 60 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
11 60 (2.00%) Serverless
12 58 (1.93%) SaaS
13 56 (1.87%) dbt
14 51 (1.70%) Amazon S3
15 41 (1.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 39 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
17 34 (1.13%) Azure Monitor
18 33 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (1.10%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 110 (3.67%) Firewall
2 71 (2.37%) DNS
3 67 (2.23%) VLAN
4 60 (2.00%) Network Security
5 51 (1.70%) VPN
6 46 (1.53%) BGP
7 45 (1.50%) TCP/IP
8 43 (1.43%) WAN
9 34 (1.13%) DHCP
10 28 (0.93%) OSPF
11 26 (0.87%) VXLAN
12 25 (0.83%) Wireless
13 23 (0.77%) Ethernet VPN
14 22 (0.73%) Internet
14 22 (0.73%) LAN
14 22 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 21 (0.70%) Ethernet
15 21 (0.70%) HTTP
16 20 (0.67%) SAN
16 20 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (9.31%) Power BI
2 165 (5.50%) Data Warehouse
3 128 (4.27%) Metadata
4 119 (3.97%) Relational Database
5 105 (3.50%) SQL Server
6 93 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
7 81 (2.70%) Data Lake
8 74 (2.47%) Tableau
9 42 (1.40%) Oracle Database
10 40 (1.33%) Delta Lake
11 37 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 36 (1.20%) Big Data
13 33 (1.10%) Power Query
14 32 (1.07%) BigQuery
15 31 (1.03%) NoSQL
15 31 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
16 30 (1.00%) Redis
16 30 (1.00%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 29 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (0.97%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 268 (8.94%) JIRA
2 211 (7.04%) Git
3 102 (3.40%) Jenkins
4 88 (2.94%) GitLab
5 78 (2.60%) Selenium
6 42 (1.40%) Postman
7 35 (1.17%) JMeter
8 23 (0.77%) Cucumber
9 22 (0.73%) WebDriver
10 20 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
11 19 (0.63%) JUnit
12 17 (0.57%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 15 (0.50%) Gatling
13 15 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 15 (0.50%) Zephyr
14 14 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.43%) Visual Studio
16 12 (0.40%) Maven
16 12 (0.40%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 856 (28.55%) Social Skills
2 849 (28.32%) Finance
3 594 (19.81%) Analytical Skills
4 256 (8.54%) Public Sector
5 249 (8.31%) Banking
6 144 (4.80%) Documentation Skills
7 113 (3.77%) Manufacturing
8 98 (3.27%) Retail
9 67 (2.23%) Automotive
9 67 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 65 (2.17%) Telecoms
11 58 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
12 56 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
13 52 (1.73%) Legal
14 51 (1.70%) Marketing
15 50 (1.67%) Aerospace
16 46 (1.53%) Law
17 45 (1.50%) Front Office
18 42 (1.40%) Local Government
19 38 (1.27%) Billing
Job Titles
1 534 (17.81%) Analyst
2 343 (11.44%) Senior
3 271 (9.04%) Lead
4 242 (8.07%) Business Analyst
4 242 (8.07%) Consultant
5 234 (7.81%) Data Engineer
6 188 (6.27%) Developer
7 156 (5.20%) Data Analyst
8 151 (5.04%) Architect
9 110 (3.67%) Test Engineer
10 76 (2.54%) Tester
11 73 (2.43%) Network Engineer
12 65 (2.17%) Systems Engineer
13 61 (2.03%) Administrator
14 57 (1.90%) Project Manager
14 57 (1.90%) Senior Data Engineer
15 56 (1.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 55 (1.83%) Senior Analyst
17 50 (1.67%) Technical Analyst
18 49 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (6.20%) REST
2 162 (5.40%) Terraform
3 100 (3.34%) JSON
4 90 (3.00%) PySpark
5 83 (2.77%) XML
6 76 (2.54%) Middleware
7 73 (2.43%) Kafka
8 53 (1.77%) Playwright
9 51 (1.70%) .NET
10 47 (1.57%) SOAP
11 46 (1.53%) Oracle Fusion
12 45 (1.50%) pytest
12 45 (1.50%) Web Services
13 42 (1.40%) OAuth
14 38 (1.27%) Pandas
15 37 (1.23%) RESTful
16 36 (1.20%) Spring
17 32 (1.07%) Spring Boot
18 30 (1.00%) HTML
19 29 (0.97%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 161 (5.37%) Onboarding
2 158 (5.27%) Data Structures
3 129 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 121 (4.04%) Legacy Systems
5 111 (3.70%) Product Ownership
6 108 (3.60%) Management Information System
7 86 (2.87%) Data Centre
8 56 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
9 52 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
10 50 (1.67%) AI Agents
11 44 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
11 44 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 44 (1.47%) Life Science
12 42 (1.40%) SCADA
13 36 (1.20%) NHS
13 36 (1.20%) Operational Technology
14 35 (1.17%) Replication
15 33 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 32 (1.07%) CMDB
17 31 (1.03%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 191 (6.37%) Windows
2 130 (4.34%) Linux
3 76 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 51 (1.70%) Unix
5 22 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.50%) Android
6 15 (0.50%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.37%) Ubuntu
7 11 (0.37%) VMS
8 9 (0.30%) AIX
8 9 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.23%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.13%) SUSE
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.10%) VxWorks
11 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.067%) CentOS
12 2 (0.067%) HPUX
12 2 (0.067%) Solaris
12 2 (0.067%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 811 (27.05%) Migration
2 635 (21.18%) Stakeholder Management
3 586 (19.55%) Agile
4 562 (18.75%) CI/CD
5 486 (16.21%) User Acceptance Testing
6 485 (16.18%) Data Modelling
7 477 (15.91%) Data Migration
8 474 (15.81%) Analytics
9 472 (15.74%) Data Validation
10 458 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
11 405 (13.51%) AI
12 399 (13.31%) DevOps
13 381 (12.71%) Continuous Improvement
14 379 (12.64%) Test Automation
15 337 (11.24%) ETL
16 320 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
17 316 (10.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 312 (10.41%) Data Analysis
19 305 (10.17%) Data Pipeline
20 299 (9.97%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 781 (26.05%) SQL
2 614 (20.48%) Python
3 150 (5.00%) Java
4 101 (3.37%) PowerShell
5 69 (2.30%) JavaScript
6 67 (2.23%) C#
7 60 (2.00%) Bash
8 41 (1.37%) C++
8 41 (1.37%) TypeScript
9 32 (1.07%) Apex Code
10 30 (1.00%) PL/SQL
10 30 (1.00%) R
11 28 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (0.83%) Bicep
12 25 (0.83%) C
13 24 (0.80%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.60%) T-SQL
14 18 (0.60%) VBA
15 16 (0.53%) MATLAB
16 15 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 586 (19.55%) Security Cleared
2 429 (14.31%) SC Cleared
3 193 (6.44%) Degree
4 82 (2.74%) DV Cleared
5 69 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.27%) CCNP
9 29 (0.97%) ACCA
9 29 (0.97%) AWS Certification
9 29 (0.97%) CIMA
10 27 (0.90%) ISTQB
11 24 (0.80%) Azure Certification
12 21 (0.70%) PMI Certification
13 19 (0.63%) PMP
14 17 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 17 (0.57%) CISSP
15 16 (0.53%) CCNA
16 15 (0.50%) Master's Degree
16 15 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 611 (20.38%) Data Quality
2 370 (12.34%) QA
3 106 (3.54%) GDPR
4 50 (1.67%) Accessibility
5 41 (1.37%) SLA
6 39 (1.30%) NIST
7 38 (1.27%) GxP
8 37 (1.23%) PMO
9 33 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 23 (0.77%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 20 (0.67%) GRC
11 20 (0.67%) ISO 20022
12 17 (0.57%) GMP
13 16 (0.53%) WCAG
14 14 (0.47%) NCSC
15 12 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
16 11 (0.37%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.37%) IFRS
16 11 (0.37%) MiFID
17 10 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 112 (3.74%) Docker
2 99 (3.30%) Active Directory
3 86 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (0.97%) Firmware
7 25 (0.83%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.77%) vSphere
9 14 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.17%) KVM
12 4 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.067%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.067%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.067%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.033%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.033%) NFS
Systems Management
1 143 (4.77%) Kubernetes
2 91 (3.04%) Ansible
3 42 (1.40%) Grafana
4 34 (1.13%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.83%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.63%) SCCM
8 17 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.50%) HP ALM
9 15 (0.50%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.33%) Failover Clustering
10 10 (0.33%) VxRail
11 9 (0.30%) Argo
12 7 (0.23%) Functional Safety
12 7 (0.23%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.20%) Control-M
13 6 (0.20%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vMotion
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 457 (15.24%) Microsoft
2 260 (8.67%) SAP
3 254 (8.47%) Oracle
4 164 (5.47%) Databricks
5 101 (3.37%) Salesforce
6 98 (3.27%) VMware
7 82 (2.74%) Cisco
8 75 (2.50%) ServiceNow
9 54 (1.80%) Google
10 49 (1.63%) Workday
11 45 (1.50%) IBM
12 35 (1.17%) Informatica
13 31 (1.03%) Fortinet
14 30 (1.00%) Zscaler
15 29 (0.97%) Juniper
16 27 (0.90%) Palo Alto
17 23 (0.77%) Splunk
18 22 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 17 (0.57%) Ariba
19 17 (0.57%) CyberArk