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 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 68 107
Rank change year-on-year +39 +39 +45
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,292 1,214 828
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.95% 3.65% 2.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.02% 4.03% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,942 690 418
10th Percentile £350 £351 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £593
90th Percentile £700 £688 £664
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -5.65% +3.15% -6.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 217 89 94
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.95 £41.25 £46.56
Median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.69% +4.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £80.12 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% +4.00% -8.13%

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 46,911 30,121 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.54% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,189 18,721 19,488
10th Percentile £325 £296 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,476 1,911 1,239
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.75 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.24 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.07% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.79 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.24 £22.27 £40.00
% change year-on-year +67.26% -44.34% -8.88%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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 2,810 £500 -2.44% 688
UK excluding London +41 1,531 £472 -5.65% 560
London +45 1,356 £525 - 221
Work from Home +27 908 £500 - 302
North of England +52 384 £463 +2.78% 84
South East +10 337 £525 +5.00% 177
Midlands +43 327 £451 -5.16% 90
West Midlands +32 236 £451 -9.90% 58
North West +23 196 £472 +11.06% 39
South West +16 177 £525 -4.55% 99
Yorkshire +61 157 £470 -1.00% 27
Scotland +48 156 £467 -14.08% 25
East of England +1 151 £475 -7.77% 85
East Midlands +41 88 £438 -2.67% 32
North East -14 36 £425 -11.92% 19
Wales +4 28 £394 -21.25% 11
Northern Ireland +1 4 £363 -19.44% 7
Channel Islands -4 1 - - 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
1 109 (3.31%) Confluence
2 65 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
2 65 (1.97%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.91%) SAS
4 53 (1.61%) Apache Spark
5 44 (1.34%) Apache
6 23 (0.70%) CMS
7 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
8 12 (0.36%) IIS
8 12 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
10 9 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.18%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
14 5 (0.15%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.15%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 217 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.28%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.06%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.55%) AutoCAD
7 13 (0.39%) Navisworks
8 12 (0.36%) Revit
9 11 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
10 10 (0.30%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.27%) Simulink
12 4 (0.12%) CATIA
12 4 (0.12%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.091%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.091%) LaTeX
14 2 (0.061%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.061%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.061%) EPLAN
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.030%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 114 (3.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.64%) SAP FI
3 17 (0.52%) Workday HCM
4 16 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 16 (0.49%) SAP SD
5 14 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
5 14 (0.43%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 14 (0.43%) NetSuite
5 14 (0.43%) SAP HCM
6 13 (0.39%) Aladdin
7 12 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 12 (0.36%) SAP MDG
7 12 (0.36%) SAP MM
8 11 (0.33%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.30%) iTrent
9 10 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.30%) SAP CO
9 10 (0.30%) SAP ERP
10 9 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.27%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 630 (19.14%) Azure
2 390 (11.85%) AWS
3 323 (9.81%) Power Platform
4 201 (6.11%) Azure DevOps
5 170 (5.16%) GitHub
6 166 (5.04%) GCP
7 115 (3.49%) Entra ID
8 113 (3.43%) Snowflake
9 83 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
10 75 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 69 (2.10%) SaaS
12 66 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 66 (2.00%) Serverless
13 64 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
14 59 (1.79%) dbt
15 50 (1.52%) SuccessFactors
16 44 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
17 43 (1.31%) Azure Monitor
18 39 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 37 (1.12%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 116 (3.52%) Firewall
2 93 (2.83%) DNS
3 63 (1.91%) VPN
4 62 (1.88%) VLAN
5 61 (1.85%) Network Security
6 55 (1.67%) TCP/IP
7 54 (1.64%) BGP
8 43 (1.31%) WAN
9 36 (1.09%) DHCP
10 33 (1.00%) OSPF
11 29 (0.88%) VXLAN
12 28 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
13 27 (0.82%) Ethernet
14 24 (0.73%) Wireless
15 22 (0.67%) HTTP
15 22 (0.67%) Internet
16 21 (0.64%) LAN
16 21 (0.64%) SAN
16 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
17 20 (0.61%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (8.96%) Power BI
2 176 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
3 156 (4.74%) Metadata
4 131 (3.98%) Relational Database
5 112 (3.40%) SQL Server
6 108 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
7 88 (2.67%) Data Lake
8 64 (1.94%) Tableau
9 47 (1.43%) Delta Lake
10 45 (1.37%) MongoDB
11 43 (1.31%) Power Query
12 41 (1.25%) Oracle Database
13 38 (1.15%) Redis
14 36 (1.09%) Big Data
14 36 (1.09%) BigQuery
15 35 (1.06%) NoSQL
16 32 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
17 29 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (0.88%) MySQL
18 26 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 300 (9.11%) JIRA
2 256 (7.78%) Git
3 121 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 107 (3.25%) GitLab
5 86 (2.61%) Selenium
6 51 (1.55%) Postman
7 37 (1.12%) JMeter
8 28 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.76%) JUnit
10 23 (0.70%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.70%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.64%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.61%) WebDriver
14 17 (0.52%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.39%) Gatling
16 13 (0.39%) Gradle
16 13 (0.39%) TestRail
General
1 942 (28.61%) Finance
2 922 (28.01%) Social Skills
3 669 (20.32%) Analytical Skills
4 307 (9.33%) Banking
5 288 (8.75%) Public Sector
6 152 (4.62%) Manufacturing
7 132 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
8 90 (2.73%) Retail
9 75 (2.28%) Automotive
9 75 (2.28%) Telecoms
10 70 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 64 (1.94%) Aerospace
11 64 (1.94%) Legal
12 59 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 56 (1.70%) Pharmaceutical
14 51 (1.55%) Marketing
15 47 (1.43%) Billing
16 46 (1.40%) Local Government
17 45 (1.37%) Front Office
18 44 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 560 (17.01%) Analyst
2 404 (12.27%) Senior
3 288 (8.75%) Lead
4 275 (8.35%) Data Engineer
5 265 (8.05%) Consultant
6 247 (7.50%) Business Analyst
7 205 (6.23%) Developer
8 184 (5.59%) Data Analyst
9 175 (5.32%) Architect
10 116 (3.52%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.46%) Tester
12 80 (2.43%) Network Engineer
13 69 (2.10%) Administrator
14 65 (1.97%) Senior Data Engineer
15 63 (1.91%) Senior Analyst
16 61 (1.85%) Systems Engineer
17 56 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 52 (1.58%) Software Engineer
19 49 (1.49%) Project Manager
19 49 (1.49%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (6.68%) Terraform
2 215 (6.53%) REST
3 109 (3.31%) JSON
4 95 (2.89%) PySpark
5 92 (2.79%) Middleware
6 88 (2.67%) XML
7 84 (2.55%) Kafka
8 72 (2.19%) Playwright
9 65 (1.97%) OAuth
10 64 (1.94%) .NET
11 56 (1.70%) Web Services
12 55 (1.67%) pytest
13 54 (1.64%) SOAP
14 53 (1.61%) OpenID
15 50 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
16 47 (1.43%) OAuth2
17 45 (1.37%) RESTful
18 43 (1.31%) Spring
19 40 (1.22%) Spring Boot
20 39 (1.18%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 188 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 183 (5.56%) Data Structures
3 162 (4.92%) Cloud Native
4 134 (4.07%) Management Information System
5 125 (3.80%) Product Ownership
6 124 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (2.98%) Data Centre
8 82 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
9 73 (2.22%) AI Agents
10 69 (2.10%) Distributed Systems
11 52 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 49 (1.49%) Life Science
13 44 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
14 43 (1.31%) Algorithms
14 43 (1.31%) Replication
15 42 (1.28%) SCADA
16 38 (1.15%) CMDB
16 38 (1.15%) Operational Technology
17 37 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 36 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 226 (6.87%) Windows
2 148 (4.50%) Linux
3 91 (2.76%) Windows Server
4 62 (1.88%) Unix
5 21 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.49%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.39%) Android
8 12 (0.36%) AIX
9 11 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.21%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.18%) zOS
13 5 (0.15%) VMS
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.091%) CentOS
15 3 (0.091%) VxWorks
16 2 (0.061%) HPUX
16 2 (0.061%) Solaris
16 2 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 889 (27.00%) Migration
2 746 (22.66%) Stakeholder Management
3 687 (20.87%) CI/CD
4 636 (19.32%) Agile
5 532 (16.16%) Data Modelling
6 528 (16.04%) Data Migration
6 528 (16.04%) User Acceptance Testing
7 510 (15.49%) Problem-Solving
8 509 (15.46%) Analytics
9 504 (15.31%) Data Validation
10 476 (14.46%) AI
11 467 (14.19%) Test Automation
12 462 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
13 461 (14.00%) DevOps
14 375 (11.39%) ETL
15 341 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
15 341 (10.36%) Data Governance
15 341 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 328 (9.96%) Data Analysis
16 328 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 890 (27.04%) SQL
2 734 (22.30%) Python
3 166 (5.04%) Java
4 131 (3.98%) PowerShell
5 87 (2.64%) C#
6 85 (2.58%) JavaScript
7 68 (2.07%) Bash
8 59 (1.79%) TypeScript
9 43 (1.31%) C++
10 35 (1.06%) Bicep
11 34 (1.03%) Shell Script
12 32 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 29 (0.88%) R
14 25 (0.76%) Apex Code
14 25 (0.76%) PL/SQL
15 24 (0.73%) Go
16 23 (0.70%) C
16 23 (0.70%) VBA
17 19 (0.58%) T-SQL
18 18 (0.55%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 682 (20.72%) Security Cleared
2 529 (16.07%) SC Cleared
3 235 (7.14%) Degree
4 97 (2.95%) DV Cleared
5 83 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (1.46%) AWS Certification
8 44 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
9 41 (1.25%) ISTQB
10 34 (1.03%) ACCA
10 34 (1.03%) CIMA
11 33 (1.00%) CCNP
12 28 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 27 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 25 (0.76%) CISSP
14 25 (0.76%) PMP
15 22 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 21 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 19 (0.58%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 707 (21.48%) Data Quality
2 384 (11.66%) QA
3 108 (3.28%) GDPR
4 60 (1.82%) Accessibility
5 54 (1.64%) SLA
6 37 (1.12%) NIST
7 36 (1.09%) GxP
8 35 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 35 (1.06%) PMO
9 26 (0.79%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 23 (0.70%) GRC
11 21 (0.64%) ISO 20022
12 20 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
13 19 (0.58%) WCAG
14 17 (0.52%) GMP
15 14 (0.43%) NCSC
16 13 (0.39%) IFRS
17 12 (0.36%) ISO 19650
18 10 (0.30%) Def Stans
18 10 (0.30%) MiFID
System Software
1 134 (4.07%) Docker
2 125 (3.80%) Active Directory
3 94 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
5 35 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (0.79%) Firmware
7 25 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.70%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.70%) vSphere
9 17 (0.52%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.15%) KVM
12 4 (0.12%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.061%) NFS
13 2 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.030%) HDFS
14 1 (0.030%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.030%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 1 (0.030%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 177 (5.38%) Kubernetes
2 116 (3.52%) Ansible
3 49 (1.49%) Grafana
4 37 (1.12%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.73%) FortiGate
7 22 (0.67%) SCCM
7 22 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.39%) HP ALM
9 11 (0.33%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.33%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.30%) Argo
10 10 (0.30%) Functional Safety
11 9 (0.27%) Control-M
12 6 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (0.18%) Kibana
12 6 (0.18%) VxRail
13 5 (0.15%) Puppet
13 5 (0.15%) vMotion
13 5 (0.15%) vRealize
Vendors
1 516 (15.67%) Microsoft
2 282 (8.57%) SAP
3 253 (7.69%) Oracle
4 194 (5.89%) Databricks
5 110 (3.34%) VMware
6 100 (3.04%) ServiceNow
7 95 (2.89%) Salesforce
8 90 (2.73%) Cisco
9 85 (2.58%) Google
10 59 (1.79%) Workday
11 58 (1.76%) IBM
12 36 (1.09%) Informatica
13 33 (1.00%) Fortinet
14 30 (0.91%) Juniper
14 30 (0.91%) Palo Alto
15 29 (0.88%) Zscaler
16 26 (0.79%) CyberArk
16 26 (0.79%) Splunk
17 22 (0.67%) Ariba
18 20 (0.61%) Sage