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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 71 118
Rank change year-on-year +35 +47 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,777 1,122 837
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.28% 3.45% 1.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.20% 3.82% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,664 660 412
10th Percentile £334 £350 £340
25th Percentile £410 £420 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -9.71% +3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 82 168
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £27.66
25th Percentile £28.50 £38.44 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.95 £75.00 £75.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%

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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 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 16 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 16 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 +34 2,405 £500 -4.76% 756
UK excluding London +27 1,293 £465 -9.71% 572
London +44 1,161 £513 -5.96% 276
Work from Home +46 793 £492 -1.60% 308
North of England +35 309 £450 -5.26% 118
South East +1 305 £504 +0.75% 192
Midlands +39 301 £478 +9.26% 102
West Midlands +33 219 £475 +17.28% 53
North West +20 171 £450 -14.29% 65
East of England +2 137 £520 +2.46% 69
Yorkshire +27 127 £460 +10.31% 34
South West -5 125 £520 -9.57% 67
Scotland +41 90 £423 -11.05% 24
East Midlands +23 77 £525 +15.51% 49
Wales +11 29 £455 +21.33% 11
North East -28 17 £425 -22.73% 19
Northern Ireland +7 10 £380 -35.59% 4

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 86 (3.10%) Confluence
2 67 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (2.09%) SAS
4 51 (1.84%) SharePoint
5 44 (1.58%) Apache Spark
6 30 (1.08%) Apache
7 14 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.43%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.32%) ArcGIS
10 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.25%) CMS
12 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.14%) Appian
13 4 (0.14%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 181 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 28 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.072%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.072%) Sketch
10 2 (0.072%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.036%) Revit
11 1 (0.036%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 125 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.54%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.50%) Workday HCM
5 11 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
5 11 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 11 (0.40%) SAP ERP
6 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.36%) iTrent
6 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
6 10 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
6 10 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
7 9 (0.32%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
8 8 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.29%) Sage X3
8 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
8 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 571 (20.56%) Azure
2 325 (11.70%) AWS
3 281 (10.12%) Power Platform
4 149 (5.37%) Azure DevOps
5 134 (4.83%) GCP
6 121 (4.36%) GitHub
7 92 (3.31%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
8 69 (2.48%) Serverless
9 66 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
9 66 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 63 (2.27%) Amazon S3
11 54 (1.94%) SaaS
12 50 (1.80%) Microsoft 365
13 47 (1.69%) OCI
14 44 (1.58%) dbt
15 43 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 38 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
17 37 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
18 33 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 115 (4.14%) Firewall
2 68 (2.45%) Network Security
3 52 (1.87%) DNS
4 50 (1.80%) VLAN
5 45 (1.62%) VPN
6 40 (1.44%) WAN
7 34 (1.22%) BGP
7 34 (1.22%) TCP/IP
8 25 (0.90%) OSPF
8 25 (0.90%) Wireless
9 23 (0.83%) LAN
9 23 (0.83%) SAN
10 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
11 20 (0.72%) DHCP
11 20 (0.72%) Internet
12 18 (0.65%) Ethernet
13 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (0.47%) HTTP
14 13 (0.47%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (9.43%) Power BI
2 156 (5.62%) Data Warehouse
3 113 (4.07%) Metadata
4 99 (3.56%) SQL Server
5 87 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
6 85 (3.06%) Data Lake
7 74 (2.66%) Relational Database
7 74 (2.66%) Tableau
8 41 (1.48%) Big Data
9 33 (1.19%) Oracle Database
9 33 (1.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 32 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 29 (1.04%) Power Query
13 28 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (0.97%) BigQuery
14 27 (0.97%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.90%) NoSQL
16 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
16 24 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 247 (8.89%) JIRA
2 165 (5.94%) Git
3 93 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 70 (2.52%) GitLab
5 60 (2.16%) Selenium
6 48 (1.73%) JMeter
7 46 (1.66%) Postman
8 39 (1.40%) JUnit
9 38 (1.37%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.12%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.94%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.58%) Gatling
15 15 (0.54%) Visual Studio
16 14 (0.50%) Oracle Forms
17 12 (0.43%) MLflow
17 12 (0.43%) REST Assured
18 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
19 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 815 (29.35%) Finance
2 806 (29.02%) Social Skills
3 523 (18.83%) Analytical Skills
4 231 (8.32%) Public Sector
5 217 (7.81%) Banking
6 162 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
7 101 (3.64%) Manufacturing
8 79 (2.84%) Retail
9 74 (2.66%) Aerospace
10 61 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
11 55 (1.98%) Telecoms
12 54 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 51 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (1.66%) Legal
15 40 (1.44%) Front Office
15 40 (1.44%) Marketing
16 38 (1.37%) Automotive
17 37 (1.33%) Billing
17 37 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
18 36 (1.30%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 499 (17.97%) Analyst
2 281 (10.12%) Lead
3 277 (9.97%) Senior
4 238 (8.57%) Business Analyst
5 222 (7.99%) Data Engineer
6 204 (7.35%) Consultant
7 161 (5.80%) Developer
8 158 (5.69%) Architect
9 139 (5.01%) Data Analyst
10 92 (3.31%) Test Engineer
11 82 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 80 (2.88%) Tester
13 63 (2.27%) Network Engineer
14 52 (1.87%) Systems Engineer
15 50 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 49 (1.76%) Technical Analyst
17 48 (1.73%) Senior Data Engineer
18 45 (1.62%) Test Manager
19 44 (1.58%) Migration Engineer
19 44 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (4.83%) REST
2 81 (2.92%) JSON
3 72 (2.59%) Kafka
4 62 (2.23%) PySpark
5 58 (2.09%) Middleware
6 56 (2.02%) XML
7 53 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
8 46 (1.66%) .NET
9 45 (1.62%) Spring
10 41 (1.48%) OAuth
10 41 (1.48%) SOAP
11 40 (1.44%) pytest
12 38 (1.37%) Web Services
13 34 (1.22%) Playwright
14 32 (1.15%) Pandas
14 32 (1.15%) RESTful
15 29 (1.04%) Node.js
16 28 (1.01%) Swagger
17 25 (0.90%) Spring Boot
17 25 (0.90%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 150 (5.40%) Onboarding
2 146 (5.26%) Data Structures
3 134 (4.83%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.47%) Cloud Native
5 119 (4.29%) Product Ownership
6 83 (2.99%) Data Centre
7 69 (2.48%) Management Information System
8 55 (1.98%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.51%) Life Science
11 40 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
12 38 (1.37%) SCADA
13 37 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
14 36 (1.30%) AI Agents
15 35 (1.26%) NHS
15 35 (1.26%) Virtual Team
16 33 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
17 30 (1.08%) Reference Data
17 30 (1.08%) Replication
18 29 (1.04%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 155 (5.58%) Windows
2 100 (3.60%) Linux
3 45 (1.62%) Windows Server
4 37 (1.33%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.36%) Android
7 9 (0.32%) Ubuntu
7 9 (0.32%) VMS
8 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.22%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.072%) AIX
13 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.072%) HPUX
13 2 (0.072%) Solaris
13 2 (0.072%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.072%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (27.40%) Migration
2 547 (19.70%) Agile
3 511 (18.40%) Stakeholder Management
4 467 (16.82%) Analytics
5 459 (16.53%) CI/CD
6 458 (16.49%) Data Validation
7 452 (16.28%) Data Migration
8 451 (16.24%) User Acceptance Testing
9 448 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
10 445 (16.02%) Data Modelling
11 347 (12.50%) AI
12 342 (12.32%) ETL
13 338 (12.17%) Continuous Improvement
13 338 (12.17%) Test Automation
14 333 (11.99%) DevOps
15 307 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
15 307 (11.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 278 (10.01%) Data Pipeline
17 274 (9.87%) Data Governance
18 268 (9.65%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 655 (23.59%) SQL
2 495 (17.82%) Python
3 120 (4.32%) Java
4 73 (2.63%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.20%) C#
6 53 (1.91%) Bash
7 40 (1.44%) C++
7 40 (1.44%) JavaScript
8 34 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 33 (1.19%) C
10 31 (1.12%) Apex Code
10 31 (1.12%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.01%) Bicep
12 26 (0.94%) PL/SQL
13 23 (0.83%) R
13 23 (0.83%) VBA
14 21 (0.76%) Ada
15 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 17 (0.61%) MATLAB
17 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 502 (18.08%) Security Cleared
2 362 (13.04%) SC Cleared
3 183 (6.59%) Degree
4 65 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 61 (2.20%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.22%) CCNP
9 25 (0.90%) PMI Certification
10 24 (0.86%) PMP
11 22 (0.79%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.76%) ACCA
13 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.72%) CIMA
13 20 (0.72%) CISSP
14 17 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.58%) CCNA
16 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
16 15 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 14 (0.50%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 503 (18.11%) Data Quality
2 335 (12.06%) QA
3 127 (4.57%) GDPR
4 58 (2.09%) NIST
5 53 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 47 (1.69%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.44%) SLA
8 39 (1.40%) PMO
9 38 (1.37%) GxP
10 21 (0.76%) GRC
11 19 (0.68%) GMP
11 19 (0.68%) ISO 20022
12 17 (0.61%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.58%) HL7
14 15 (0.54%) IFRS
15 14 (0.50%) NCSC
16 13 (0.47%) WCAG
17 12 (0.43%) PCI DSS
17 12 (0.43%) Solvency II
System Software
1 111 (4.00%) Docker
2 83 (2.99%) Active Directory
3 74 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.68%) vSphere
8 18 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
9 16 (0.58%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.072%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.072%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.072%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.036%) etcd
14 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 162 (5.83%) Kubernetes
2 132 (4.75%) Terraform
3 55 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 54 (1.94%) Grafana
5 53 (1.91%) Ansible
6 25 (0.90%) FortiGate
6 25 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.40%) vCenter Server
9 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
9 10 (0.36%) SCCM
10 7 (0.25%) VxRail
11 6 (0.22%) Nessus
11 6 (0.22%) vMotion
12 5 (0.18%) Argo
12 5 (0.18%) CASB
12 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.14%) Consul
13 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 388 (13.97%) Microsoft
2 254 (9.15%) SAP
3 246 (8.86%) Oracle
4 138 (4.97%) Databricks
5 93 (3.35%) Salesforce
6 88 (3.17%) VMware
7 71 (2.56%) ServiceNow
8 66 (2.38%) Cisco
9 47 (1.69%) Workday
10 44 (1.58%) Google
11 40 (1.44%) Informatica
11 40 (1.44%) Splunk
12 34 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 33 (1.19%) Fortinet
14 32 (1.15%) IBM
15 28 (1.01%) Juniper
16 27 (0.97%) MuleSoft
17 26 (0.94%) Sage
18 25 (0.90%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.72%) IFS