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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 69 124
Rank change year-on-year +33 +55 +25
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,799 1,163 758
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.28% 3.54% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.22% 3.92% 2.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,678 685 384
10th Percentile £340 £350 £340
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £493
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +6.60% -10.45%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £585
90th Percentile £700 £700 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £525 £469
% change year-on-year -11.29% +12.00% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 83 127
10th Percentile £17.33 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.90 £41.25 £49.63
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.85 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.96%

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 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +31 2,424 £500 -4.76% 1,170
UK excluding London +26 1,307 £466 -11.29% 819
London +45 1,168 £525 - 475
Work from Home +39 800 £496 -0.90% 441
South East +4 318 £505 +1.00% 252
Midlands +30 309 £475 +5.56% 129
North of England +36 301 £450 -9.09% 170
West Midlands +27 225 £473 +8.11% 75
North West +16 162 £450 -17.20% 94
East of England +1 137 £488 -2.50% 104
Yorkshire +33 128 £455 +4.60% 40
South West -10 124 £523 -9.13% 115
Scotland +39 94 £430 -9.47% 50
East Midlands +25 79 £509 +10.89% 54
Wales 0 28 £450 +20.00% 13
North East -39 15 £425 -15.00% 38
Northern Ireland +4 10 £380 -35.59% 3

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 80 (2.86%) Confluence
2 66 (2.36%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.00%) SAS
4 49 (1.75%) SharePoint
5 41 (1.46%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.11%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.29%) ArcGIS
10 8 (0.29%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
12 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 188 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 28 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 7 (0.25%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.21%) Simulink
10 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.071%) Navisworks
11 2 (0.071%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.071%) Revit
11 2 (0.071%) Sketch
11 2 (0.071%) Windchill
12 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.036%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 122 (4.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
3 18 (0.64%) Workday HCM
4 13 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.46%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.43%) iTrent
6 11 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.36%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 601 (21.47%) Azure
2 332 (11.86%) AWS
3 293 (10.47%) Power Platform
4 150 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
5 146 (5.22%) GCP
6 126 (4.50%) GitHub
7 100 (3.57%) Snowflake
8 74 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
9 71 (2.54%) Entra ID
10 70 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
11 66 (2.36%) Serverless
12 59 (2.11%) Amazon S3
13 53 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
14 52 (1.86%) SaaS
15 44 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 44 (1.57%) OCI
16 42 (1.50%) dbt
17 41 (1.46%) SuccessFactors
18 34 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 34 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 118 (4.22%) Firewall
2 69 (2.47%) Network Security
3 60 (2.14%) DNS
4 51 (1.82%) VLAN
5 50 (1.79%) VPN
6 41 (1.46%) TCP/IP
6 41 (1.46%) WAN
7 34 (1.21%) BGP
8 27 (0.96%) DHCP
9 25 (0.89%) LAN
9 25 (0.89%) OSPF
10 23 (0.82%) Internet
11 22 (0.79%) SAN
11 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
11 22 (0.79%) Wireless
12 18 (0.64%) Ethernet
13 16 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.46%) VXLAN
15 12 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.43%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (9.72%) Power BI
2 167 (5.97%) Data Warehouse
3 115 (4.11%) Metadata
4 97 (3.47%) SQL Server
5 89 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
6 87 (3.11%) Data Lake
7 80 (2.86%) Relational Database
8 78 (2.79%) Tableau
9 39 (1.39%) Big Data
10 33 (1.18%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
10 33 (1.18%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 32 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 30 (1.07%) Delta Lake
13 29 (1.04%) Power Query
14 28 (1.00%) NoSQL
15 27 (0.96%) BigQuery
16 26 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
17 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
18 23 (0.82%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 247 (8.82%) JIRA
2 169 (6.04%) Git
3 94 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 74 (2.64%) GitLab
5 60 (2.14%) Selenium
6 49 (1.75%) JMeter
7 46 (1.64%) Postman
8 40 (1.43%) JUnit
9 38 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 32 (1.14%) WebDriver
11 21 (0.75%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.57%) Gatling
14 14 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
16 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 11 (0.39%) MLflow
16 11 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 815 (29.12%) Finance
2 807 (28.83%) Social Skills
3 533 (19.04%) Analytical Skills
4 235 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 203 (7.25%) Banking
6 154 (5.50%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (3.72%) Manufacturing
8 90 (3.22%) Retail
9 66 (2.36%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
11 59 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 54 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
13 53 (1.89%) Telecoms
14 44 (1.57%) Legal
15 42 (1.50%) Automotive
15 42 (1.50%) Front Office
16 41 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
16 41 (1.46%) Marketing
17 38 (1.36%) Law
18 37 (1.32%) Billing
Job Titles
1 504 (18.01%) Analyst
2 290 (10.36%) Senior
3 276 (9.86%) Lead
4 238 (8.50%) Business Analyst
5 231 (8.25%) Data Engineer
6 204 (7.29%) Consultant
7 165 (5.89%) Developer
8 150 (5.36%) Architect
9 141 (5.04%) Data Analyst
10 97 (3.47%) Test Engineer
11 82 (2.93%) Tester
12 80 (2.86%) Project Manager
13 63 (2.25%) Network Engineer
14 57 (2.04%) Systems Engineer
15 52 (1.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 52 (1.86%) Technical Analyst
16 50 (1.79%) Senior Data Engineer
17 49 (1.75%) Administrator
18 44 (1.57%) Migration Engineer
19 43 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (5.04%) REST
2 83 (2.97%) JSON
3 73 (2.61%) Kafka
4 70 (2.50%) PySpark
5 62 (2.22%) XML
6 60 (2.14%) Middleware
7 50 (1.79%) .NET
7 50 (1.79%) Oracle Fusion
8 45 (1.61%) Spring
9 43 (1.54%) pytest
10 41 (1.46%) Playwright
11 40 (1.43%) SOAP
12 38 (1.36%) OAuth
12 38 (1.36%) Web Services
13 33 (1.18%) Pandas
14 30 (1.07%) RESTful
15 29 (1.04%) Node.js
16 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
17 25 (0.89%) WireMock
18 24 (0.86%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 154 (5.50%) Data Structures
1 154 (5.50%) Onboarding
2 136 (4.86%) Legacy Systems
3 124 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 114 (4.07%) Product Ownership
5 81 (2.89%) Data Centre
6 78 (2.79%) Management Information System
7 56 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
8 46 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
9 42 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
9 42 (1.50%) Life Science
10 41 (1.46%) AI Agents
10 41 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 40 (1.43%) SCADA
12 37 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
13 34 (1.21%) NHS
14 33 (1.18%) Reference Data
15 32 (1.14%) Operational Technology
15 32 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 31 (1.11%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 171 (6.11%) Windows
2 108 (3.86%) Linux
3 56 (2.00%) Windows Server
4 41 (1.46%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Android
7 10 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.36%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.14%) AIX
11 4 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.071%) HPUX
13 2 (0.071%) Solaris
13 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.071%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 765 (27.33%) Migration
2 548 (19.58%) Agile
3 524 (18.72%) Stakeholder Management
4 479 (17.11%) CI/CD
5 476 (17.01%) Analytics
6 459 (16.40%) Data Migration
7 457 (16.33%) User Acceptance Testing
8 453 (16.18%) Data Modelling
9 452 (16.15%) Data Validation
10 438 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
11 365 (13.04%) AI
12 352 (12.58%) Continuous Improvement
13 342 (12.22%) DevOps
14 338 (12.08%) Test Automation
15 337 (12.04%) ETL
16 312 (11.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 311 (11.11%) Business Intelligence
18 294 (10.50%) Data Pipeline
19 285 (10.18%) Data Governance
20 272 (9.72%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 682 (24.37%) SQL
2 517 (18.47%) Python
3 124 (4.43%) Java
4 80 (2.86%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.18%) C#
6 58 (2.07%) Bash
7 43 (1.54%) JavaScript
8 34 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 34 (1.21%) TypeScript
9 33 (1.18%) C++
10 30 (1.07%) Apex Code
10 30 (1.07%) Bicep
11 27 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 26 (0.93%) C
13 23 (0.82%) R
13 23 (0.82%) VBA
14 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.57%) MATLAB
16 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
17 14 (0.50%) Ada
Qualifications
1 505 (18.04%) Security Cleared
2 368 (13.15%) SC Cleared
3 183 (6.54%) Degree
4 62 (2.22%) DV Cleared
5 61 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 37 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.21%) CCNP
9 24 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 23 (0.82%) PMI Certification
11 22 (0.79%) ACCA
11 22 (0.79%) PMP
12 21 (0.75%) Azure Certification
12 21 (0.75%) CIMA
13 18 (0.64%) CISSP
13 18 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
14 16 (0.57%) CCNA
15 14 (0.50%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.43%) DBS Check
16 12 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (18.76%) Data Quality
2 351 (12.54%) QA
3 125 (4.47%) GDPR
4 55 (1.96%) NIST
5 49 (1.75%) Accessibility
6 47 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 41 (1.46%) SLA
8 38 (1.36%) GxP
9 37 (1.32%) PMO
10 20 (0.71%) GRC
11 19 (0.68%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 18 (0.64%) GMP
13 15 (0.54%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.54%) NCSC
14 14 (0.50%) HL7
14 14 (0.50%) WCAG
15 13 (0.46%) IFRS
16 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.43%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 115 (4.11%) Docker
2 96 (3.43%) Active Directory
3 77 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.71%) Firmware
8 19 (0.68%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.68%) vSphere
9 15 (0.54%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.18%) NFS
10 5 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.071%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.036%) etcd
13 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 158 (5.64%) Kubernetes
2 136 (4.86%) Terraform
3 59 (2.11%) Ansible
4 55 (1.96%) Grafana
5 54 (1.93%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.46%) SCCM
10 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.29%) VxRail
13 6 (0.21%) Istio
14 5 (0.18%) Argo
14 5 (0.18%) CASB
14 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
14 5 (0.18%) vMotion
14 5 (0.18%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Consul
15 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 410 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 256 (9.15%) SAP
3 249 (8.90%) Oracle
4 156 (5.57%) Databricks
5 92 (3.29%) Salesforce
6 91 (3.25%) VMware
7 71 (2.54%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.22%) Cisco
9 52 (1.86%) Google
10 51 (1.82%) Workday
11 41 (1.46%) Informatica
12 37 (1.32%) Splunk
13 32 (1.14%) Fortinet
14 31 (1.11%) IBM
15 30 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 29 (1.04%) Juniper
16 29 (1.04%) MuleSoft
17 28 (1.00%) Zscaler
18 25 (0.89%) Sage
19 20 (0.71%) IFS