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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 91 130
Rank change year-on-year +48 +39 +10
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,163 826 764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 2.80% 1.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 3.09% 2.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,314 482 383
10th Percentile £334 £344 £316
25th Percentile £400 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £714 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -7.54% +1.50% +3.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 48 153
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.95 £22.95
25th Percentile £34.50 £47.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £71.13 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -

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 39,324 26,741 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.82% 90.76% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,807 17,298 24,232
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.89% -0.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,048 2,416
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.00 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.31 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £28.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.01% -17.86% -6.67%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +38 1,878 £485 -7.62% 838
UK excluding London +35 1,009 £469 -7.54% 653
London +69 900 £500 -9.09% 277
Work from Home +71 641 £488 -2.50% 387
North of England +35 250 £437 -8.00% 119
South East 0 218 £500 - 212
Midlands +31 210 £475 - 108
West Midlands +33 156 £475 -1.30% 70
North West +25 147 £418 -5.80% 62
South West +2 127 £475 -17.39% 80
East of England +11 117 £489 +8.63% 90
Yorkshire +16 92 £455 +8.33% 43
Scotland +38 59 £402 -11.89% 35
East Midlands -3 51 £525 +14.38% 38
Wales +11 20 £460 +196.77% 12
Northern Ireland +17 19 £425 -22.73% 11
North East -10 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 84 (3.88%) Confluence
2 46 (2.13%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.62%) SAS
5 22 (1.02%) Apache
6 21 (0.97%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 9 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 9 (0.42%) 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
14 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
14 2 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 131 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.53%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.74%) 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
1 106 (4.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.65%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.51%) SAP FI
6 11 (0.51%) Teamcenter
7 10 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) NetSuite
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 476 (22.01%) Azure
2 279 (12.90%) AWS
3 211 (9.75%) Power Platform
4 141 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
5 105 (4.85%) GCP
6 96 (4.44%) GitHub
7 65 (3.01%) Serverless
8 60 (2.77%) Amazon S3
9 55 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
9 55 (2.54%) Entra ID
10 53 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
11 51 (2.36%) OCI
11 51 (2.36%) SaaS
11 51 (2.36%) Snowflake
12 37 (1.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 36 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
14 35 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
15 34 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.25%) dbt
17 26 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 79 (3.65%) Firewall
2 56 (2.59%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 34 (1.57%) VLAN
5 26 (1.20%) DNS
5 26 (1.20%) VPN
6 24 (1.11%) Ethernet
6 24 (1.11%) WAN
7 18 (0.83%) HTTP
8 15 (0.69%) LAN
8 15 (0.69%) SAN
9 13 (0.60%) BGP
9 13 (0.60%) NAS
9 13 (0.60%) OSPF
9 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
9 13 (0.60%) Wireless
10 11 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
11 10 (0.46%) SSL
11 10 (0.46%) TACACS
12 9 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 199 (9.20%) Power BI
2 112 (5.18%) Metadata
3 109 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 74 (3.42%) Tableau
5 71 (3.28%) SQL Server
6 59 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (2.31%) Data Lake
8 35 (1.62%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.43%) Big Data
10 29 (1.34%) Delta Lake
10 29 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
11 28 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.29%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
12 22 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 21 (0.97%) Power Query
13 21 (0.97%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 20 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 203 (9.39%) JIRA
2 125 (5.78%) Git
3 83 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.77%) Selenium
5 55 (2.54%) GitLab
6 53 (2.45%) Postman
7 36 (1.66%) Cucumber
8 35 (1.62%) JMeter
9 33 (1.53%) JUnit
10 28 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
11 24 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 23 (1.06%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.83%) MLflow
13 18 (0.83%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.69%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.65%) TestRail
16 13 (0.60%) SpecFlow
17 12 (0.55%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 713 (32.96%) Social Skills
2 643 (29.73%) Finance
3 428 (19.79%) Analytical Skills
4 193 (8.92%) Public Sector
5 184 (8.51%) Banking
6 120 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.64%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.27%) Presentation Skills
10 48 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
11 47 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 41 (1.90%) Retail
13 38 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
14 35 (1.62%) Legal
14 35 (1.62%) Marketing
15 32 (1.48%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.39%) Financial Institution
16 30 (1.39%) Front Office
16 30 (1.39%) General Ledger
17 29 (1.34%) Military
Job Titles
1 415 (19.19%) Analyst
2 219 (10.12%) Senior
3 218 (10.08%) Lead
4 191 (8.83%) Business Analyst
5 156 (7.21%) Consultant
5 156 (7.21%) Data Engineer
6 138 (6.38%) Architect
7 134 (6.20%) Developer
8 111 (5.13%) Data Analyst
9 79 (3.65%) Project Manager
10 60 (2.77%) Tester
11 51 (2.36%) Senior Analyst
12 45 (2.08%) Senior Developer
13 44 (2.03%) Software Engineer
13 44 (2.03%) Test Manager
14 43 (1.99%) Test Engineer
15 42 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
15 42 (1.94%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.85%) Systems Engineer
17 39 (1.80%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (6.01%) REST
2 89 (4.11%) JSON
3 64 (2.96%) Oracle Fusion
4 63 (2.91%) Kafka
5 56 (2.59%) Middleware
6 52 (2.40%) XML
7 48 (2.22%) OAuth
7 48 (2.22%) PySpark
8 41 (1.90%) Node.js
9 36 (1.66%) .NET
9 36 (1.66%) Playwright
10 35 (1.62%) Swagger
11 33 (1.53%) SOAP
12 32 (1.48%) RESTful
13 30 (1.39%) Pandas
13 30 (1.39%) Web Services
14 29 (1.34%) PyTorch
15 26 (1.20%) TensorFlow
16 25 (1.16%) OpenAPI
17 24 (1.11%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 126 (5.83%) Legacy Systems
2 115 (5.32%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.67%) Onboarding
4 94 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 59 (2.73%) Data Centre
7 56 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 39 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
9 31 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
10 30 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.29%) Replication
12 26 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 26 (1.20%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.16%) Reference Data
14 24 (1.11%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.11%) Operational Technology
14 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
15 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
15 23 (1.06%) Life Science
15 23 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.04%) Windows
2 92 (4.25%) Linux
3 30 (1.39%) Unix
4 15 (0.69%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 7 (0.32%) 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
10 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.092%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.046%) pSOS
12 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.046%) Solaris
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (26.07%) Migration
2 473 (21.87%) Agile
3 423 (19.56%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (17.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 371 (17.15%) Data Validation
6 341 (15.77%) CI/CD
6 341 (15.77%) Data Migration
7 334 (15.44%) Analytics
8 322 (14.89%) Data Modelling
9 309 (14.29%) User Acceptance Testing
10 289 (13.36%) DevOps
11 287 (13.27%) ETL
12 263 (12.16%) Test Automation
13 249 (11.51%) Business Intelligence
14 242 (11.19%) Continuous Improvement
15 234 (10.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 229 (10.59%) AI
17 223 (10.31%) Data Governance
18 194 (8.97%) Data Pipeline
19 189 (8.74%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 538 (24.87%) SQL
2 404 (18.68%) Python
3 109 (5.04%) Java
4 79 (3.65%) JavaScript
5 70 (3.24%) C#
6 54 (2.50%) PL/SQL
7 53 (2.45%) C++
8 48 (2.22%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.03%) C
10 40 (1.85%) Bash
11 32 (1.48%) R
11 32 (1.48%) TypeScript
12 28 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.20%) Bicep
14 20 (0.92%) Scala
15 19 (0.88%) Ada
16 13 (0.60%) VBA
17 12 (0.55%) MATLAB
18 11 (0.51%) Apex Code
19 10 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 428 (19.79%) Security Cleared
2 314 (14.52%) SC Cleared
3 184 (8.51%) Degree
4 63 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (1.62%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.43%) ISTQB
9 29 (1.34%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.20%) PMP
11 23 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 20 (0.92%) CCNP
13 14 (0.65%) AWS Certification
13 14 (0.65%) CISSP
14 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.60%) CBAP
14 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.51%) ACCA
16 10 (0.46%) CCNA
16 10 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (17.29%) Data Quality
2 282 (13.04%) QA
3 124 (5.73%) GDPR
4 70 (3.24%) NIST
5 62 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.43%) SLA
8 27 (1.25%) GxP
9 23 (1.06%) PMO
10 22 (1.02%) IFRS
11 19 (0.88%) HL7
11 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.83%) GRC
13 17 (0.79%) GMP
14 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
15 13 (0.60%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.55%) NCSC
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 74 (3.42%) Docker
2 48 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.16%) Firmware
5 16 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
10 5 (0.23%) vSphere
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.092%) Ceph
13 2 (0.092%) KVM
13 2 (0.092%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 113 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.44%) Terraform
3 35 (1.62%) Prometheus
4 34 (1.57%) Grafana
5 31 (1.43%) Ansible
6 29 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.46%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.46%) Kibana
9 9 (0.42%) Puppet
10 8 (0.37%) SCCM
11 6 (0.28%) Nessus
12 5 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.23%) CASB
12 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 285 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 213 (9.85%) Oracle
3 193 (8.92%) SAP
4 108 (4.99%) Databricks
5 86 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.68%) Salesforce
7 47 (2.17%) Google
8 46 (2.13%) VMware
9 45 (2.08%) Cisco
10 40 (1.85%) Splunk
11 36 (1.66%) Workday
12 30 (1.39%) Informatica
12 30 (1.39%) MuleSoft
13 29 (1.34%) Sage
14 25 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 22 (1.02%) IBM
16 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.97%) OpenAI
17 16 (0.74%) IFS
18 15 (0.69%) Fortinet