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 26 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 85 127
Rank change year-on-year +43 +42 +19
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,177 843 793
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.66% 2.87% 1.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 3.16% 2.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,320 493 401
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £703 £693
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -9.31% +2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 52 157
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.16 £23.10
25th Percentile £34.13 £47.36 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.55% -7.60% +1.63%

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 39,566 26,667 37,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 90.82% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,976 17,238 24,315
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% -0.36% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,367 1,068 2,431
10th Percentile £14.87 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.22% -16.71% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £28.00 £35.95
% change year-on-year +49.79% -22.11% +0.14%

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 26 April 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 26 April 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 26 April 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 +39 1,893 £481 -10.51% 696
UK excluding London +33 1,021 £463 -9.31% 586
London +67 904 £500 -9.09% 206
Work from Home +62 651 £481 -3.75% 405
North of England +38 254 £435 -5.95% 109
South East -3 225 £500 - 196
Midlands +32 218 £475 - 95
West Midlands +30 159 £475 - 57
North West +27 152 £413 -5.71% 62
South West +2 123 £475 -17.39% 77
East of England +6 112 £480 +6.72% 87
Yorkshire +11 91 £458 +9.04% 32
Scotland +52 65 £401 -12.11% 25
East Midlands -3 55 £513 +11.66% 38
Wales +10 20 £460 +196.77% 8
Northern Ireland +14 15 £400 -31.91% 7
North East -9 14 £450 -37.93% 16

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 85 (3.90%) Confluence
2 47 (2.16%) Apache Spark
3 42 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.61%) SAS
5 22 (1.01%) Apache
6 21 (0.96%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.41%) Appian
9 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.18%) CICS
12 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 134 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.092%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.092%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.092%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 99 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.70%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.55%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.55%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.28%) iTrent
10 6 (0.28%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.28%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 477 (21.91%) Azure
2 280 (12.86%) AWS
3 216 (9.92%) Power Platform
4 140 (6.43%) Azure DevOps
5 107 (4.92%) GCP
6 94 (4.32%) GitHub
7 65 (2.99%) Serverless
8 59 (2.71%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.53%) Entra ID
11 53 (2.43%) Snowflake
12 51 (2.34%) OCI
13 50 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
13 50 (2.30%) SaaS
14 38 (1.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 37 (1.70%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.33%) dbt
19 25 (1.15%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.72%) Firewall
2 56 (2.57%) Network Security
3 37 (1.70%) TCP/IP
4 36 (1.65%) VLAN
5 29 (1.33%) VPN
6 26 (1.19%) DNS
7 24 (1.10%) Ethernet
8 23 (1.06%) WAN
9 18 (0.83%) HTTP
10 16 (0.73%) SAN
11 15 (0.69%) BGP
11 15 (0.69%) LAN
11 15 (0.69%) OSPF
12 14 (0.64%) Wireless
13 13 (0.60%) NAS
13 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
14 11 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.46%) SSL
15 10 (0.46%) TACACS
15 10 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 204 (9.37%) Power BI
2 114 (5.24%) Data Warehouse
3 106 (4.87%) Metadata
4 75 (3.45%) Tableau
5 73 (3.35%) SQL Server
6 58 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
7 51 (2.34%) Data Lake
8 38 (1.75%) Relational Database
9 33 (1.52%) Big Data
10 29 (1.33%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
11 28 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.29%) Delta Lake
12 23 (1.06%) Power Query
13 22 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
13 22 (1.01%) Oracle Database
13 22 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 19 (0.87%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 205 (9.42%) JIRA
2 129 (5.93%) Git
3 82 (3.77%) Jenkins
4 64 (2.94%) Selenium
5 54 (2.48%) GitLab
6 53 (2.43%) Postman
7 36 (1.65%) Cucumber
7 36 (1.65%) JMeter
8 33 (1.52%) JUnit
9 26 (1.19%) WebDriver
10 24 (1.10%) Oracle APEX
10 24 (1.10%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.83%) MLflow
11 18 (0.83%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.69%) SpecFlow
13 14 (0.64%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.64%) REST Assured
13 14 (0.64%) TestRail
14 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 712 (32.71%) Social Skills
2 650 (29.86%) Finance
3 435 (19.98%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 186 (8.54%) Banking
6 120 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.12%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.62%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
9 49 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.98%) Retail
12 38 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
13 36 (1.65%) Legal
13 36 (1.65%) Marketing
14 31 (1.42%) General Ledger
14 31 (1.42%) Telecoms
15 30 (1.38%) Front Office
15 30 (1.38%) Military
16 29 (1.33%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 420 (19.29%) Analyst
2 216 (9.92%) Lead
3 214 (9.83%) Senior
4 191 (8.77%) Business Analyst
5 161 (7.40%) Data Engineer
6 152 (6.98%) Consultant
7 138 (6.34%) Architect
8 131 (6.02%) Developer
9 112 (5.14%) Data Analyst
10 80 (3.67%) Project Manager
11 58 (2.66%) Tester
12 53 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.11%) Test Engineer
14 42 (1.93%) Network Engineer
14 42 (1.93%) Software Engineer
14 42 (1.93%) Technical Analyst
14 42 (1.93%) Test Manager
15 40 (1.84%) Senior Developer
15 40 (1.84%) Systems Engineer
16 39 (1.79%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (6.02%) REST
2 87 (4.00%) JSON
3 66 (3.03%) Kafka
4 64 (2.94%) Oracle Fusion
5 57 (2.62%) Middleware
6 51 (2.34%) XML
7 46 (2.11%) OAuth
7 46 (2.11%) PySpark
8 40 (1.84%) Node.js
9 36 (1.65%) .NET
10 35 (1.61%) Playwright
10 35 (1.61%) SOAP
10 35 (1.61%) Swagger
11 31 (1.42%) RESTful
12 30 (1.38%) Pandas
12 30 (1.38%) Web Services
13 29 (1.33%) PyTorch
14 26 (1.19%) OpenAPI
14 26 (1.19%) TensorFlow
15 24 (1.10%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.74%) Legacy Systems
2 115 (5.28%) Data Structures
3 102 (4.69%) Onboarding
4 94 (4.32%) Product Ownership
5 67 (3.08%) Cloud Native
6 62 (2.85%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.66%) Management Information System
8 40 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
9 34 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.29%) Replication
12 27 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
13 26 (1.19%) Reference Data
13 26 (1.19%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.15%) Operational Technology
15 24 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
16 23 (1.06%) Life Science
16 23 (1.06%) NHS
16 23 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 111 (5.10%) Windows
2 94 (4.32%) Linux
3 33 (1.52%) Unix
4 15 (0.69%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 8 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.28%) VMS
7 6 (0.28%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.092%) Debian
11 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.046%) HPUX
11 1 (0.046%) pSOS
11 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.046%) Solaris
11 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (26.18%) Migration
2 471 (21.64%) Agile
3 427 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
4 379 (17.41%) Stakeholder Management
5 367 (16.86%) Data Validation
6 343 (15.76%) Data Migration
7 340 (15.62%) CI/CD
8 336 (15.43%) Analytics
9 332 (15.25%) Data Modelling
10 310 (14.24%) User Acceptance Testing
11 291 (13.37%) DevOps
12 287 (13.18%) ETL
13 267 (12.26%) Test Automation
14 255 (11.71%) Business Intelligence
15 238 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
16 229 (10.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 228 (10.47%) AI
18 224 (10.29%) Data Governance
19 198 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
20 191 (8.77%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 537 (24.67%) SQL
2 405 (18.60%) Python
3 113 (5.19%) Java
4 73 (3.35%) JavaScript
5 72 (3.31%) C#
6 53 (2.43%) C++
7 52 (2.39%) PL/SQL
8 47 (2.16%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.02%) C
10 40 (1.84%) Bash
11 31 (1.42%) R
11 31 (1.42%) TypeScript
12 29 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.19%) Bicep
14 20 (0.92%) Scala
15 19 (0.87%) Ada
16 13 (0.60%) VBA
17 12 (0.55%) MATLAB
18 11 (0.51%) Apex Code
18 11 (0.51%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 422 (19.38%) Security Cleared
2 308 (14.15%) SC Cleared
3 185 (8.50%) Degree
4 63 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.56%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.47%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.33%) PMI Certification
9 27 (1.24%) ISTQB
10 26 (1.19%) PMP
11 24 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
12 21 (0.96%) CCNP
13 14 (0.64%) AWS Certification
13 14 (0.64%) CISSP
14 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.60%) CBAP
15 12 (0.55%) ACCA
15 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.51%) CCNA
17 10 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (17.13%) Data Quality
2 288 (13.23%) QA
3 125 (5.74%) GDPR
4 70 (3.22%) NIST
5 62 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.33%) SLA
8 27 (1.24%) GxP
9 23 (1.06%) PMO
10 22 (1.01%) IFRS
11 19 (0.87%) HL7
11 19 (0.87%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.83%) GRC
13 17 (0.78%) GMP
14 16 (0.73%) Def Stans
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
15 13 (0.60%) NCSC
15 13 (0.60%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 75 (3.45%) Docker
2 49 (2.25%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.15%) Firmware
5 17 (0.78%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
7 13 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.55%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.32%) vSphere
11 5 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.092%) Ceph
14 2 (0.092%) KVM
14 2 (0.092%) OpenIDM
14 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 114 (5.24%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.36%) Terraform
3 35 (1.61%) Prometheus
4 33 (1.52%) Grafana
5 32 (1.47%) Ansible
6 29 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.51%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.46%) Kibana
10 9 (0.41%) Puppet
10 9 (0.41%) SCCM
11 6 (0.28%) Nessus
12 5 (0.23%) CASB
12 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 292 (13.41%) Microsoft
2 210 (9.65%) Oracle
3 185 (8.50%) SAP
4 106 (4.87%) Databricks
5 79 (3.63%) ServiceNow
6 61 (2.80%) Salesforce
7 49 (2.25%) VMware
8 48 (2.20%) Cisco
9 47 (2.16%) Google
10 39 (1.79%) Splunk
11 34 (1.56%) Workday
12 30 (1.38%) Informatica
12 30 (1.38%) MuleSoft
13 29 (1.33%) Sage
14 27 (1.24%) Palo Alto
15 24 (1.10%) IBM
16 21 (0.96%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.96%) OpenAI
17 16 (0.73%) Fortinet
17 16 (0.73%) IFS