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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 67 104
Rank change year-on-year +36 +37 +48
Contract jobs citing Validation 3,262 1,208 823
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 3.64% 2.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.97% 4.02% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,923 694 416
10th Percentile £350 £350 £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 £592
90th Percentile £700 £688 £661
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -6.00% +2.56% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 213 84 96
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £26.95 £41.25 £47.19
Median hourly rate £53.50 £63.75 £63.25
Median % change year-on-year -16.08% +0.79% -6.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.25
90th Percentile £79.00 £74.63 £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 46,826 30,024 32,246
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.50% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,144 18,679 19,408
10th Percentile £325 £294 £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 £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,407 1,886 1,245
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.72 £65.07 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +38 2,787 £500 -2.44% 2,405
UK excluding London +40 1,519 £470 -6.00% 1,308
London +41 1,344 £525 - 1,290
Work from Home +29 905 £500 - 956
North of England +49 374 £460 +2.22% 243
South East +9 341 £525 +5.00% 329
Midlands +39 325 £450 -4.76% 163
West Midlands +31 235 £450 -10.00% 107
North West +18 191 £469 +10.24% 131
South West +16 177 £525 -4.55% 166
Scotland +50 156 £467 -14.08% 185
Yorkshire +61 153 £470 -1.05% 79
East of England -2 149 £475 -5.00% 174
East Midlands +35 87 £444 -1.33% 56
North East -18 35 £425 -11.92% 34
Wales 0 26 £363 -3.33% 29
Northern Ireland +3 4 £363 -19.44% 37
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
1 107 (3.28%) Confluence
2 65 (1.99%) SharePoint
3 64 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
4 62 (1.90%) SAS
5 53 (1.62%) Apache Spark
6 43 (1.32%) Apache
7 23 (0.71%) CMS
8 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
9 12 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 11 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 9 (0.28%) IIS
11 9 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
11 9 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.18%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.15%) CICS
15 5 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
15 5 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.15%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 216 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.29%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.55%) AutoCAD
7 13 (0.40%) Navisworks
8 12 (0.37%) Revit
9 10 (0.31%) ProjectWise
10 9 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
10 9 (0.28%) Simulink
11 4 (0.12%) CATIA
12 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.092%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.092%) OrCAD
13 2 (0.061%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.061%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.061%) EPLAN
14 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.031%) Trello
Business Applications
1 115 (3.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.64%) SAP FI
3 17 (0.52%) Workday HCM
4 16 (0.49%) SAP SD
5 15 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.43%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 14 (0.43%) SAP HCM
7 13 (0.40%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.37%) SAP MDG
8 12 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 11 (0.34%) Teamcenter
10 10 (0.31%) iTrent
10 10 (0.31%) SAP CO
10 10 (0.31%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
11 9 (0.28%) SAP PS
12 8 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 622 (19.07%) Azure
2 388 (11.89%) AWS
3 320 (9.81%) Power Platform
4 200 (6.13%) Azure DevOps
5 166 (5.09%) GitHub
6 165 (5.06%) GCP
7 113 (3.46%) Snowflake
8 112 (3.43%) Entra ID
9 83 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
10 74 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
11 65 (1.99%) Amazon S3
11 65 (1.99%) SaaS
12 64 (1.96%) Serverless
13 63 (1.93%) Microsoft 365
14 60 (1.84%) dbt
15 50 (1.53%) SuccessFactors
16 42 (1.29%) Azure Monitor
16 42 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
17 37 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (1.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 111 (3.40%) Firewall
2 89 (2.73%) DNS
3 63 (1.93%) VLAN
4 62 (1.90%) VPN
5 60 (1.84%) Network Security
6 55 (1.69%) TCP/IP
7 53 (1.62%) BGP
8 42 (1.29%) WAN
9 37 (1.13%) DHCP
10 32 (0.98%) OSPF
11 28 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
11 28 (0.86%) VXLAN
12 27 (0.83%) Ethernet
13 24 (0.74%) Wireless
14 22 (0.67%) HTTP
14 22 (0.67%) Internet
15 21 (0.64%) LAN
15 21 (0.64%) SAN
15 21 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.61%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (8.98%) Power BI
2 176 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
3 156 (4.78%) Metadata
4 128 (3.92%) Relational Database
5 110 (3.37%) SQL Server
6 107 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
7 86 (2.64%) Data Lake
8 66 (2.02%) Tableau
9 46 (1.41%) Delta Lake
10 45 (1.38%) MongoDB
11 42 (1.29%) Power Query
12 41 (1.26%) Oracle Database
13 37 (1.13%) BigQuery
13 37 (1.13%) Redis
14 36 (1.10%) Big Data
15 35 (1.07%) NoSQL
16 32 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
17 29 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (0.89%) MySQL
18 26 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 296 (9.07%) JIRA
2 254 (7.79%) Git
3 120 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 108 (3.31%) GitLab
5 83 (2.54%) Selenium
6 47 (1.44%) Postman
7 36 (1.10%) JMeter
8 27 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 25 (0.77%) JUnit
10 24 (0.74%) Rational DOORS
11 21 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.64%) Zephyr
12 20 (0.61%) Cypress.io
12 20 (0.61%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.52%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 14 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
14 14 (0.43%) TestRail
15 13 (0.40%) Gatling
15 13 (0.40%) Gradle
General
1 940 (28.82%) Finance
2 914 (28.02%) Social Skills
3 658 (20.17%) Analytical Skills
4 306 (9.38%) Banking
5 285 (8.74%) Public Sector
6 148 (4.54%) Manufacturing
7 130 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 92 (2.82%) Retail
9 76 (2.33%) Automotive
10 75 (2.30%) Telecoms
11 71 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 61 (1.87%) Aerospace
13 59 (1.81%) Legal
14 57 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
15 54 (1.66%) Pharmaceutical
16 50 (1.53%) Marketing
17 47 (1.44%) Billing
17 47 (1.44%) Local Government
18 44 (1.35%) Front Office
18 44 (1.35%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 557 (17.08%) Analyst
2 401 (12.29%) Senior
3 287 (8.80%) Lead
4 270 (8.28%) Data Engineer
5 266 (8.15%) Consultant
6 246 (7.54%) Business Analyst
7 202 (6.19%) Developer
8 184 (5.64%) Data Analyst
9 174 (5.33%) Architect
10 115 (3.53%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.48%) Tester
12 80 (2.45%) Network Engineer
13 67 (2.05%) Administrator
14 65 (1.99%) Senior Data Engineer
15 63 (1.93%) Senior Analyst
16 61 (1.87%) Systems Engineer
17 57 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 52 (1.59%) Software Engineer
19 48 (1.47%) Test Analyst
20 47 (1.44%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (6.65%) Terraform
2 212 (6.50%) REST
3 105 (3.22%) JSON
4 95 (2.91%) PySpark
5 91 (2.79%) Middleware
6 88 (2.70%) XML
7 81 (2.48%) Kafka
8 68 (2.08%) Playwright
9 63 (1.93%) OAuth
10 62 (1.90%) .NET
11 55 (1.69%) Web Services
12 54 (1.66%) pytest
13 51 (1.56%) OpenID
13 51 (1.56%) SOAP
14 50 (1.53%) Oracle Fusion
15 47 (1.44%) OAuth2
16 45 (1.38%) RESTful
17 43 (1.32%) Spring
18 40 (1.23%) Spring Boot
19 39 (1.20%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 186 (5.70%) Onboarding
2 178 (5.46%) Data Structures
3 158 (4.84%) Cloud Native
4 132 (4.05%) Management Information System
5 125 (3.83%) Product Ownership
6 123 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
7 97 (2.97%) Data Centre
8 73 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
9 70 (2.15%) AI Agents
10 67 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 51 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
12 48 (1.47%) Life Science
13 44 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
14 42 (1.29%) Algorithms
14 42 (1.29%) Replication
14 42 (1.29%) SCADA
15 40 (1.23%) CMDB
16 38 (1.16%) Operational Technology
17 36 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 35 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 226 (6.93%) Windows
2 148 (4.54%) Linux
3 93 (2.85%) Windows Server
4 61 (1.87%) Unix
5 22 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.49%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.40%) Android
8 12 (0.37%) AIX
9 11 (0.34%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.25%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.21%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.18%) VMS
12 6 (0.18%) zOS
13 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.092%) CentOS
14 3 (0.092%) VxWorks
15 2 (0.061%) HPUX
15 2 (0.061%) Solaris
15 2 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 881 (27.01%) Migration
2 740 (22.69%) Stakeholder Management
3 680 (20.85%) CI/CD
4 630 (19.31%) Agile
5 527 (16.16%) User Acceptance Testing
6 526 (16.13%) Data Migration
7 523 (16.03%) Data Modelling
8 503 (15.42%) Data Validation
9 502 (15.39%) Analytics
10 501 (15.36%) Problem-Solving
11 467 (14.32%) AI
12 460 (14.10%) Test Automation
13 458 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 456 (13.98%) DevOps
15 372 (11.40%) ETL
16 340 (10.42%) Data Governance
16 340 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 338 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
18 327 (10.02%) Data Analysis
19 325 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 878 (26.92%) SQL
2 721 (22.10%) Python
3 163 (5.00%) Java
4 132 (4.05%) PowerShell
5 83 (2.54%) C#
5 83 (2.54%) JavaScript
6 69 (2.12%) Bash
7 56 (1.72%) TypeScript
8 42 (1.29%) C++
9 35 (1.07%) Bicep
10 34 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 32 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (0.86%) R
13 27 (0.83%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.77%) Apex Code
15 23 (0.71%) C
15 23 (0.71%) Go
16 22 (0.67%) VBA
17 19 (0.58%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 672 (20.60%) Security Cleared
2 517 (15.85%) SC Cleared
3 228 (6.99%) Degree
4 97 (2.97%) DV Cleared
5 80 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 49 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (1.47%) AWS Certification
8 43 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (1.23%) ISTQB
10 37 (1.13%) ACCA
10 37 (1.13%) CIMA
11 33 (1.01%) CCNP
12 27 (0.83%) Azure Certification
13 25 (0.77%) CISSP
13 25 (0.77%) PMI Certification
14 23 (0.71%) PMP
15 22 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 20 (0.61%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 20 (0.61%) Master's Degree
17 19 (0.58%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 694 (21.28%) Data Quality
2 379 (11.62%) QA
3 110 (3.37%) GDPR
4 58 (1.78%) Accessibility
5 50 (1.53%) SLA
6 37 (1.13%) NIST
7 36 (1.10%) GxP
8 35 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 35 (1.07%) PMO
9 26 (0.80%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 23 (0.71%) GRC
11 21 (0.64%) ISO 20022
12 19 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
12 19 (0.58%) WCAG
13 17 (0.52%) GMP
14 14 (0.43%) NCSC
15 13 (0.40%) IFRS
16 12 (0.37%) ISO 19650
17 10 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 10 (0.31%) MiFID
System Software
1 132 (4.05%) Docker
2 123 (3.77%) Active Directory
3 94 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
5 35 (1.07%) Virtual Machines
6 27 (0.83%) Firmware
7 25 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.74%) Hyper-V
9 23 (0.71%) vSphere
10 16 (0.49%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.15%) KVM
13 4 (0.12%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.061%) NFS
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.031%) HDFS
15 1 (0.031%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.031%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.031%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 176 (5.40%) Kubernetes
2 117 (3.59%) Ansible
3 47 (1.44%) Grafana
4 37 (1.13%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.74%) FortiGate
7 22 (0.67%) SCCM
8 20 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.40%) HP ALM
10 11 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.34%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.31%) Argo
11 10 (0.31%) Functional Safety
12 9 (0.28%) Control-M
13 6 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 6 (0.18%) Kibana
13 6 (0.18%) VxRail
14 5 (0.15%) Puppet
14 5 (0.15%) vMotion
14 5 (0.15%) vRealize
Vendors
1 506 (15.51%) Microsoft
2 279 (8.55%) SAP
3 252 (7.73%) Oracle
4 191 (5.86%) Databricks
5 110 (3.37%) VMware
6 101 (3.10%) ServiceNow
7 95 (2.91%) Salesforce
8 90 (2.76%) Cisco
9 83 (2.54%) Google
10 58 (1.78%) Workday
11 57 (1.75%) IBM
12 36 (1.10%) Informatica
13 33 (1.01%) Fortinet
14 31 (0.95%) Palo Alto
15 29 (0.89%) Juniper
15 29 (0.89%) Zscaler
16 24 (0.74%) Splunk
17 23 (0.71%) CyberArk
18 22 (0.67%) Ariba
19 20 (0.61%) Red Hat