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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 72 119
Rank change year-on-year +37 +47 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,645 1,021 827
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.20% 3.40% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.12% 3.73% 2.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,578 609 403
10th Percentile £333 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £595 £630 £596
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -9.22% +3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 68 182
10th Percentile £17.23 £17.70 £26.99
25th Percentile £26.88 £41.78 £47.87
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £71.29
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.75 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +2.51% +0.81% -0.88%

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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +17.29%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +35 2,302 £500 -4.76% 828
UK excluding London +31 1,241 £468 -9.22% 661
London +48 1,101 £513 -6.82% 304
Work from Home +51 780 £481 -3.78% 309
North of England +34 311 £440 -2.22% 129
Midlands +37 277 £492 +9.36% 107
South East +3 272 £505 +0.90% 239
West Midlands +31 201 £481 +18.83% 55
North West +20 175 £425 -5.56% 66
East of England +14 135 £500 - 65
South West -1 135 £504 -12.39% 91
Yorkshire +23 121 £460 +10.42% 39
Scotland +37 86 £407 -14.26% 33
East Midlands +24 71 £525 +15.51% 52
Wales +10 25 £455 +193.55% 11
North East -20 18 £425 -22.73% 25
Northern Ireland +7 11 £394 -33.26% 10

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 89 (3.36%) Confluence
2 63 (2.38%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (1.93%) SAS
4 46 (1.74%) Apache Spark
5 45 (1.70%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.95%) Apache
7 14 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.30%) Appian
11 7 (0.26%) CMS
12 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 170 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 2 (0.076%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.076%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.076%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.076%) Sketch
11 2 (0.076%) Windchill
12 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 126 (4.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.36%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.60%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.30%) iTrent
9 8 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.26%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 536 (20.26%) Azure
2 333 (12.59%) AWS
3 258 (9.75%) Power Platform
4 140 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
5 129 (4.88%) GCP
6 121 (4.57%) GitHub
7 88 (3.33%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.61%) Entra ID
9 68 (2.57%) Serverless
10 67 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 61 (2.31%) Azure Data Factory
12 59 (2.23%) Amazon S3
13 54 (2.04%) SaaS
14 47 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
15 42 (1.59%) OCI
16 39 (1.47%) dbt
17 38 (1.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 35 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
19 33 (1.25%) SuccessFactors
20 32 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.08%) Firewall
2 67 (2.53%) Network Security
3 47 (1.78%) VLAN
4 42 (1.59%) DNS
4 42 (1.59%) WAN
5 40 (1.51%) VPN
6 35 (1.32%) TCP/IP
7 32 (1.21%) BGP
8 23 (0.87%) LAN
8 23 (0.87%) OSPF
8 23 (0.87%) SAN
8 23 (0.87%) Wireless
9 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.79%) Ethernet
11 17 (0.64%) DHCP
11 17 (0.64%) Internet
12 16 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
13 14 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.45%) NAS
14 12 (0.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (9.15%) Power BI
2 134 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
3 100 (3.78%) Metadata
4 99 (3.74%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
6 75 (2.84%) Tableau
7 71 (2.68%) Data Lake
8 68 (2.57%) Relational Database
9 36 (1.36%) Big Data
10 33 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.17%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.10%) NoSQL
13 28 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.02%) Power Query
15 26 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 24 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
18 21 (0.79%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 246 (9.30%) JIRA
2 154 (5.82%) Git
3 100 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.68%) GitLab
5 59 (2.23%) Selenium
6 50 (1.89%) Postman
7 47 (1.78%) JMeter
8 39 (1.47%) JUnit
9 36 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.17%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.98%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.60%) Gatling
14 16 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.53%) MLflow
16 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.38%) Gradle
18 10 (0.38%) Maven
General
1 782 (29.57%) Finance
2 780 (29.49%) Social Skills
3 481 (18.19%) Analytical Skills
4 228 (8.62%) Public Sector
5 208 (7.86%) Banking
6 150 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (3.33%) Manufacturing
8 75 (2.84%) Aerospace
9 65 (2.46%) Retail
10 56 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
11 49 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
12 47 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 46 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 44 (1.66%) Legal
15 42 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
16 41 (1.55%) Front Office
17 40 (1.51%) General Ledger
18 39 (1.47%) Marketing
19 35 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
20 34 (1.29%) Military
Job Titles
1 463 (17.50%) Analyst
2 275 (10.40%) Senior
3 259 (9.79%) Lead
4 221 (8.36%) Business Analyst
5 201 (7.60%) Consultant
6 197 (7.45%) Data Engineer
7 159 (6.01%) Architect
8 154 (5.82%) Developer
9 127 (4.80%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.21%) Project Manager
11 79 (2.99%) Test Engineer
12 67 (2.53%) Tester
13 56 (2.12%) Network Engineer
14 53 (2.00%) Test Manager
15 50 (1.89%) Systems Engineer
16 49 (1.85%) Senior Analyst
17 47 (1.78%) Technical Analyst
18 45 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 44 (1.66%) Security Engineer
19 44 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (5.18%) REST
2 80 (3.02%) JSON
3 73 (2.76%) Kafka
4 55 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.00%) PySpark
6 52 (1.97%) Middleware
6 52 (1.97%) XML
7 51 (1.93%) OAuth
8 42 (1.59%) Spring
9 40 (1.51%) SOAP
10 39 (1.47%) .NET
11 38 (1.44%) pytest
11 38 (1.44%) RESTful
12 37 (1.40%) Swagger
13 35 (1.32%) Web Services
14 34 (1.29%) Playwright
15 31 (1.17%) Pandas
16 30 (1.13%) Node.js
17 28 (1.06%) JWT
18 27 (1.02%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 134 (5.07%) Legacy Systems
2 130 (4.91%) Onboarding
3 127 (4.80%) Data Structures
4 114 (4.31%) Product Ownership
5 110 (4.16%) Cloud Native
6 86 (3.25%) Data Centre
7 65 (2.46%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
10 41 (1.55%) Life Science
11 40 (1.51%) SCADA
12 34 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
12 34 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
13 32 (1.21%) AI Agents
13 32 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
13 32 (1.21%) NHS
14 31 (1.17%) Operational Technology
14 31 (1.17%) Replication
14 31 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 29 (1.10%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 140 (5.29%) Windows
2 100 (3.78%) Linux
3 32 (1.21%) Unix
4 31 (1.17%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.49%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.076%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.076%) HPUX
12 2 (0.076%) Solaris
12 2 (0.076%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.076%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 709 (26.81%) Migration
2 527 (19.92%) Agile
3 469 (17.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 446 (16.86%) CI/CD
5 444 (16.79%) Data Validation
5 444 (16.79%) Problem-Solving
6 421 (15.92%) User Acceptance Testing
7 412 (15.58%) Data Migration
7 412 (15.58%) Data Modelling
8 407 (15.39%) Analytics
9 335 (12.67%) AI
10 322 (12.17%) ETL
11 320 (12.10%) DevOps
12 318 (12.02%) Test Automation
13 303 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
14 283 (10.70%) Business Intelligence
15 279 (10.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 245 (9.26%) Data Governance
17 244 (9.22%) Data Analysis
18 239 (9.04%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 621 (23.48%) SQL
2 465 (17.58%) Python
3 122 (4.61%) Java
4 69 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 55 (2.08%) C#
6 47 (1.78%) Bash
7 42 (1.59%) JavaScript
8 41 (1.55%) C++
9 40 (1.51%) C
10 33 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 32 (1.21%) TypeScript
12 29 (1.10%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.06%) Bicep
14 26 (0.98%) PL/SQL
15 22 (0.83%) R
16 21 (0.79%) Ada
16 21 (0.79%) Scala
17 18 (0.68%) MATLAB
17 18 (0.68%) VBA
18 17 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 482 (18.22%) Security Cleared
2 357 (13.50%) SC Cleared
3 191 (7.22%) Degree
4 66 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (1.93%) DV Cleared
6 44 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.17%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.13%) CCNP
10 26 (0.98%) PMP
11 24 (0.91%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.79%) CISSP
13 20 (0.76%) ACCA
13 20 (0.76%) Azure Certification
14 19 (0.72%) Master's Degree
15 18 (0.68%) CIMA
16 16 (0.60%) CCNA
17 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
18 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
19 13 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (17.20%) Data Quality
2 314 (11.87%) QA
3 123 (4.65%) GDPR
4 62 (2.34%) NIST
5 54 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.40%) SLA
8 33 (1.25%) PMO
9 32 (1.21%) GxP
10 27 (1.02%) IFRS
11 18 (0.68%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.64%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.60%) GMP
13 16 (0.60%) GRC
13 16 (0.60%) HL7
13 16 (0.60%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.49%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.45%) NCSC
15 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (4.16%) Docker
2 75 (2.84%) Active Directory
3 68 (2.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.64%) Firmware
7 17 (0.64%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.60%) vSphere
9 11 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.23%) KVM
10 6 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.076%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.076%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.076%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.038%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 155 (5.86%) Kubernetes
2 126 (4.76%) Terraform
3 54 (2.04%) Prometheus
4 51 (1.93%) Ansible
5 48 (1.81%) Grafana
6 28 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.87%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.30%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) Kibana
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 5 (0.19%) Puppet
13 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 353 (13.35%) Microsoft
2 240 (9.07%) SAP
3 227 (8.58%) Oracle
4 118 (4.46%) Databricks
5 91 (3.44%) Salesforce
6 81 (3.06%) VMware
7 80 (3.02%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.27%) Cisco
9 47 (1.78%) Google
10 40 (1.51%) Splunk
11 37 (1.40%) Workday
12 33 (1.25%) Informatica
13 32 (1.21%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 27 (1.02%) Fortinet
15 27 (1.02%) Sage
16 23 (0.87%) IBM
17 21 (0.79%) Juniper
17 21 (0.79%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.76%) OpenAI