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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 75 123
Rank change year-on-year +37 +48 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,429 964 799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.95% 3.33% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.84% 3.66% 2.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,445 577 396
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £524
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% +0.24% -5.63%
75th Percentile £588 £626 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -9.76% +2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 61 168
10th Percentile £17.02 £16.50 £26.07
25th Percentile £26.52 £37.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -4.94%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year - +0.81% -0.80%

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 41,594 26,332 36,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.70% 91.01% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,970 16,762 23,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,502 1,133 2,525
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.29 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.09% -34.02% +8.91%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 2,104 £500 -4.76% 1,150
UK excluding London +29 1,155 £463 -9.76% 848
London +51 1,003 £513 -6.82% 404
Work from Home +50 719 £481 -3.80% 538
North of England +44 286 £439 -2.50% 179
Midlands +39 261 £500 +11.11% 144
South East -5 242 £500 - 236
West Midlands +26 186 £490 +21.43% 93
North West +33 165 £423 -3.43% 94
South West +1 130 £500 -13.04% 121
East of England +9 126 £475 +5.56% 109
Yorkshire +22 109 £460 +2.22% 63
Scotland +43 81 £400 -15.79% 42
East Midlands +16 70 £525 +15.51% 51
Wales +4 25 £455 +193.55% 19
North East -18 15 £438 -25.53% 24
Northern Ireland +15 14 £400 -32.20% 18

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 (3.42%) Confluence
2 57 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.89%) SAS
4 45 (1.85%) Apache Spark
5 32 (1.32%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.95%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.37%) Appian
9 9 (0.37%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) CMS
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
12 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.082%) Documentum
Applications
1 154 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.44%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (0.99%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.37%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.16%) Simulink
9 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.082%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.082%) Sketch
10 2 (0.082%) Windchill
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.041%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 118 (4.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.49%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.49%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
9 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.33%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
11 6 (0.25%) iTrent
11 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
11 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 475 (19.56%) Azure
2 308 (12.68%) AWS
3 236 (9.72%) Power Platform
4 124 (5.10%) GCP
5 121 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
6 114 (4.69%) GitHub
7 79 (3.25%) Snowflake
8 66 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.51%) Serverless
10 59 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
10 59 (2.43%) Entra ID
11 57 (2.35%) Amazon S3
12 55 (2.26%) SaaS
13 41 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
13 41 (1.69%) OCI
14 36 (1.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 35 (1.44%) dbt
16 33 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
17 29 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 90 (3.71%) Firewall
2 59 (2.43%) Network Security
3 42 (1.73%) VLAN
4 39 (1.61%) DNS
5 34 (1.40%) TCP/IP
5 34 (1.40%) VPN
6 31 (1.28%) WAN
7 24 (0.99%) Ethernet
8 19 (0.78%) BGP
8 19 (0.78%) LAN
8 19 (0.78%) SAN
9 18 (0.74%) OSPF
9 18 (0.74%) SD-WAN
10 16 (0.66%) Wireless
11 15 (0.62%) DHCP
11 15 (0.62%) Internet
12 14 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.49%) HTTP
13 12 (0.49%) NAS
14 11 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (9.02%) Power BI
2 121 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (3.75%) SQL Server
4 84 (3.46%) Metadata
5 71 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
6 69 (2.84%) Tableau
7 66 (2.72%) Data Lake
8 50 (2.06%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.40%) Big Data
10 31 (1.28%) Oracle Database
10 31 (1.28%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 30 (1.24%) NoSQL
12 29 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
13 26 (1.07%) Power Query
14 25 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
15 24 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
16 23 (0.95%) Delta Lake
17 22 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 22 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 21 (0.86%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 213 (8.77%) JIRA
2 132 (5.43%) Git
3 95 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 65 (2.68%) GitLab
5 54 (2.22%) Selenium
6 51 (2.10%) Postman
7 47 (1.93%) JMeter
8 37 (1.52%) JUnit
9 34 (1.40%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.24%) WebDriver
11 27 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.66%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.62%) MLflow
15 10 (0.41%) Gatling
15 10 (0.41%) Gradle
15 10 (0.41%) Maven
16 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
General
1 718 (29.56%) Finance
1 718 (29.56%) Social Skills
2 430 (17.70%) Analytical Skills
3 205 (8.44%) Public Sector
4 199 (8.19%) Banking
5 135 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
6 85 (3.50%) Manufacturing
7 68 (2.80%) Aerospace
8 54 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
9 49 (2.02%) Retail
10 48 (1.98%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
12 39 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 39 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
12 39 (1.61%) Legal
13 36 (1.48%) General Ledger
13 36 (1.48%) Marketing
13 36 (1.48%) Telecoms
14 35 (1.44%) Front Office
15 30 (1.24%) Law
Job Titles
1 428 (17.62%) Analyst
2 248 (10.21%) Lead
3 224 (9.22%) Senior
4 204 (8.40%) Business Analyst
5 187 (7.70%) Data Engineer
6 174 (7.16%) Consultant
7 148 (6.09%) Architect
8 132 (5.43%) Developer
9 117 (4.82%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.50%) Project Manager
11 66 (2.72%) Test Engineer
12 63 (2.59%) Tester
13 48 (1.98%) Test Manager
14 46 (1.89%) Network Engineer
14 46 (1.89%) Software Engineer
15 44 (1.81%) Senior Analyst
15 44 (1.81%) Technical Analyst
16 43 (1.77%) Systems Engineer
17 40 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
17 40 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (5.27%) REST
2 82 (3.38%) JSON
3 68 (2.80%) Kafka
4 54 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 49 (2.02%) OAuth
5 49 (2.02%) XML
6 48 (1.98%) Middleware
7 43 (1.77%) PySpark
8 40 (1.65%) Swagger
9 39 (1.61%) SOAP
10 38 (1.56%) .NET
10 38 (1.56%) RESTful
11 36 (1.48%) pytest
12 33 (1.36%) Pandas
12 33 (1.36%) Spring
13 32 (1.32%) Web Services
14 30 (1.24%) Node.js
15 29 (1.19%) OAuth2
16 27 (1.11%) PyTorch
17 25 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 128 (5.27%) Legacy Systems
2 121 (4.98%) Onboarding
3 117 (4.82%) Data Structures
4 107 (4.41%) Product Ownership
5 95 (3.91%) Cloud Native
6 78 (3.21%) Data Centre
7 60 (2.47%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.52%) Life Science
11 36 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (1.40%) SCADA
13 31 (1.28%) Operational Technology
14 29 (1.19%) NHS
14 29 (1.19%) Replication
15 28 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.15%) Reference Data
15 28 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 27 (1.11%) Public Cloud
17 26 (1.07%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 126 (5.19%) Windows
2 96 (3.95%) Linux
3 34 (1.40%) Unix
4 24 (0.99%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.49%) Android
5 12 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 2 (0.082%) HPUX
10 2 (0.082%) Solaris
10 2 (0.082%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.082%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.082%) zOS
11 1 (0.041%) Debian
11 1 (0.041%) pSOS
11 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 648 (26.68%) Migration
2 466 (19.18%) Agile
3 418 (17.21%) Problem-Solving
4 412 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 406 (16.71%) Data Validation
6 400 (16.47%) CI/CD
7 385 (15.85%) Data Migration
8 378 (15.56%) User Acceptance Testing
9 376 (15.48%) Data Modelling
10 361 (14.86%) Analytics
11 303 (12.47%) ETL
12 297 (12.23%) AI
13 294 (12.10%) DevOps
14 289 (11.90%) Test Automation
15 264 (10.87%) Continuous Improvement
16 263 (10.83%) Business Intelligence
17 249 (10.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 226 (9.30%) Data Analysis
19 221 (9.10%) Data Governance
20 219 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 555 (22.85%) SQL
2 435 (17.91%) Python
3 113 (4.65%) Java
4 60 (2.47%) PowerShell
5 56 (2.31%) C#
6 47 (1.93%) Bash
7 46 (1.89%) C++
8 42 (1.73%) C
9 40 (1.65%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.36%) Bicep
11 30 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (1.15%) TypeScript
13 26 (1.07%) Apex Code
14 25 (1.03%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.95%) R
16 22 (0.91%) Ada
17 20 (0.82%) Scala
18 18 (0.74%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.54%) T-SQL
20 12 (0.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 440 (18.11%) Security Cleared
2 326 (13.42%) SC Cleared
3 182 (7.49%) Degree
4 64 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 43 (1.77%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.15%) PMI Certification
9 24 (0.99%) CCNP
9 24 (0.99%) PMP
10 21 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 21 (0.86%) Master's Degree
11 20 (0.82%) ACCA
12 18 (0.74%) CIMA
13 17 (0.70%) CISSP
14 14 (0.58%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
15 12 (0.49%) AWS Certification
15 12 (0.49%) CCNA
15 12 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 420 (17.29%) Data Quality
2 296 (12.19%) QA
3 117 (4.82%) GDPR
4 64 (2.63%) NIST
5 55 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.40%) SLA
8 31 (1.28%) GxP
9 30 (1.24%) PMO
10 27 (1.11%) IFRS
11 18 (0.74%) GMP
11 18 (0.74%) GRC
11 18 (0.74%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.70%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.70%) HL7
13 14 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
System Software
1 96 (3.95%) Docker
2 60 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 56 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.91%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.82%) Firmware
7 17 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.62%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.58%) vSphere
10 9 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.21%) NFS
12 4 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.082%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.082%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.082%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.041%) etcd
15 1 (0.041%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 140 (5.76%) Kubernetes
2 109 (4.49%) Terraform
3 53 (2.18%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.98%) Grafana
5 43 (1.77%) Ansible
6 28 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.49%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.37%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) SCCM
10 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.25%) Nessus
11 6 (0.25%) vMotion
12 5 (0.21%) Argo
12 5 (0.21%) Istio
13 4 (0.16%) CASB
13 4 (0.16%) Consul
13 4 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 327 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 220 (9.06%) SAP
3 207 (8.52%) Oracle
4 115 (4.73%) Databricks
5 79 (3.25%) Salesforce
6 72 (2.96%) ServiceNow
7 67 (2.76%) VMware
8 50 (2.06%) Cisco
9 48 (1.98%) Google
10 43 (1.77%) Splunk
11 32 (1.32%) Informatica
12 30 (1.24%) Workday
13 28 (1.15%) Sage
14 27 (1.11%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 22 (0.91%) IBM
16 21 (0.86%) Fortinet
16 21 (0.86%) IFS
16 21 (0.86%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.82%) CyberArk