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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 82 121
Rank change year-on-year +39 +39 +24
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,212 860 802
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 2.94% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.52% 3.23% 2.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,346 505 395
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £587 £630 £608
90th Percentile £700 £721 £697
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £511 £500
% change year-on-year -10.02% +2.25% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 54 162
10th Percentile £17.23 £23.65 £23.34
25th Percentile £33.93 £38.50 £51.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.50% -6.17% -3.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.12
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £63.75
% change year-on-year +12.55% -9.41% +2.00%

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 40,071 26,623 37,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.55% 90.89% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,236 17,168 24,151
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.40% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,397 1,072 2,456
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.67 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -1.39%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.31 £27.64 £37.18
% change year-on-year +56.68% -25.66% +6.23%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 +36 1,927 £485 -8.71% 868
UK excluding London +31 1,035 £460 -10.02% 651
London +65 927 £500 -9.09% 327
Work from Home +58 663 £481 -3.90% 393
North of England +41 261 £430 -7.03% 126
Midlands +33 225 £481 +1.26% 95
South East -8 223 £490 -2.00% 212
West Midlands +28 165 £475 - 56
North West +29 161 £420 -4.00% 73
East of England +9 117 £475 +5.56% 83
South West -4 115 £475 -17.39% 94
Yorkshire +18 90 £453 +7.86% 39
Scotland +44 70 £404 -11.56% 35
East Midlands +3 56 £525 +14.38% 39
Wales +6 20 £460 +196.77% 16
Northern Ireland +14 15 £400 -31.91% 13
North East -12 13 £450 -28.00% 15

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 88 (3.98%) Confluence
2 46 (2.08%) Apache Spark
3 39 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (1.67%) SAS
5 21 (0.95%) Apache
5 21 (0.95%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.50%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.41%) Appian
8 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.18%) CICS
11 4 (0.18%) CMS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.090%) Oracle Service Bus
13 2 (0.090%) Umbraco
Applications
1 141 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.32%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.090%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.090%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.090%) Sketch
11 1 (0.045%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.045%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.045%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.045%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.045%) UXPin
11 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 101 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.63%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.68%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.54%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.45%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) Aladdin
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 464 (20.98%) Azure
2 281 (12.70%) AWS
3 225 (10.17%) Power Platform
4 129 (5.83%) Azure DevOps
5 109 (4.93%) GCP
6 90 (4.07%) GitHub
7 64 (2.89%) Serverless
8 59 (2.67%) Amazon S3
8 59 (2.67%) Snowflake
9 58 (2.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 56 (2.53%) Entra ID
11 53 (2.40%) SaaS
12 48 (2.17%) OCI
13 47 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
14 40 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.18%) dbt
18 26 (1.18%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.66%) Firewall
2 57 (2.58%) Network Security
3 40 (1.81%) VLAN
4 36 (1.63%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.31%) VPN
6 28 (1.27%) DNS
7 25 (1.13%) WAN
8 24 (1.08%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.77%) LAN
10 16 (0.72%) SAN
10 16 (0.72%) Wireless
11 15 (0.68%) BGP
11 15 (0.68%) OSPF
12 14 (0.63%) HTTP
12 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
13 12 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.54%) NAS
14 11 (0.50%) TACACS
14 11 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (9.63%) Power BI
2 115 (5.20%) Data Warehouse
3 103 (4.66%) Metadata
4 79 (3.57%) Tableau
5 78 (3.53%) SQL Server
6 59 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
7 54 (2.44%) Data Lake
8 44 (1.99%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.40%) Big Data
10 30 (1.36%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.27%) Delta Lake
11 28 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.08%) Power Query
13 23 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
14 22 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.90%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.86%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 202 (9.13%) JIRA
2 133 (6.01%) Git
3 80 (3.62%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.67%) Selenium
5 55 (2.49%) GitLab
6 49 (2.22%) Postman
7 37 (1.67%) JMeter
8 33 (1.49%) JUnit
9 30 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.18%) WebDriver
11 24 (1.08%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.81%) MLflow
13 17 (0.77%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.72%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
16 13 (0.59%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.54%) Rational Rhapsody
17 12 (0.54%) REST Assured
18 10 (0.45%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.45%) Gatling
General
1 705 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 663 (29.97%) Finance
3 434 (19.62%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.68%) Banking
5 185 (8.36%) Public Sector
6 120 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (3.35%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.58%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
10 49 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
11 48 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 43 (1.94%) Retail
13 38 (1.72%) Legal
14 37 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
15 36 (1.63%) Marketing
16 32 (1.45%) General Ledger
17 31 (1.40%) Military
17 31 (1.40%) Telecoms
18 30 (1.36%) Front Office
19 28 (1.27%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 423 (19.12%) Analyst
2 218 (9.86%) Lead
3 210 (9.49%) Senior
4 191 (8.63%) Business Analyst
5 168 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 153 (6.92%) Consultant
7 137 (6.19%) Architect
8 126 (5.70%) Developer
9 116 (5.24%) Data Analyst
10 84 (3.80%) Project Manager
11 56 (2.53%) Tester
12 52 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
13 48 (2.17%) Test Engineer
14 45 (2.03%) Network Engineer
14 45 (2.03%) Software Engineer
15 42 (1.90%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
16 40 (1.81%) Test Manager
17 39 (1.76%) Security Engineer
18 37 (1.67%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (5.61%) REST
2 83 (3.75%) JSON
3 67 (3.03%) Kafka
4 59 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
5 55 (2.49%) Middleware
6 49 (2.22%) OAuth
7 48 (2.17%) PySpark
8 44 (1.99%) XML
9 40 (1.81%) Node.js
10 38 (1.72%) Swagger
11 37 (1.67%) SOAP
12 35 (1.58%) .NET
13 32 (1.45%) RESTful
13 32 (1.45%) Web Services
14 31 (1.40%) Pandas
15 30 (1.36%) PyTorch
16 29 (1.31%) Playwright
17 28 (1.27%) OpenAPI
18 26 (1.18%) TensorFlow
19 25 (1.13%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 123 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (5.38%) Data Structures
3 110 (4.97%) Onboarding
4 94 (4.25%) Product Ownership
5 73 (3.30%) Cloud Native
6 67 (3.03%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.58%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
9 37 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.22%) Replication
12 26 (1.18%) Operational Technology
12 26 (1.18%) Reference Data
12 26 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.08%) Life Science
15 23 (1.04%) NHS
15 23 (1.04%) Public Cloud
16 22 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.84%) Windows
2 93 (4.20%) Linux
3 32 (1.45%) Unix
4 16 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.54%) Android
6 8 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.090%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.045%) HPUX
11 1 (0.045%) pSOS
11 1 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.045%) Solaris
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 595 (26.90%) Migration
2 461 (20.84%) Agile
3 427 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
4 374 (16.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 372 (16.82%) Data Validation
6 353 (15.96%) Data Migration
7 347 (15.69%) CI/CD
8 341 (15.42%) Data Modelling
9 334 (15.10%) Analytics
10 318 (14.38%) User Acceptance Testing
11 294 (13.29%) ETL
12 280 (12.66%) DevOps
13 263 (11.89%) Test Automation
14 262 (11.84%) Business Intelligence
15 239 (10.80%) AI
16 238 (10.76%) Continuous Improvement
17 230 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 227 (10.26%) Data Governance
19 202 (9.13%) Data Pipeline
20 199 (9.00%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 536 (24.23%) SQL
2 407 (18.40%) Python
3 107 (4.84%) Java
4 65 (2.94%) C#
5 61 (2.76%) JavaScript
6 55 (2.49%) C++
7 46 (2.08%) C
8 45 (2.03%) PowerShell
9 40 (1.81%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.76%) Bash
11 32 (1.45%) R
12 31 (1.40%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 26 (1.18%) Bicep
15 20 (0.90%) Ada
15 20 (0.90%) Scala
16 15 (0.68%) Apex Code
17 13 (0.59%) MATLAB
18 12 (0.54%) VBA
19 11 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 416 (18.81%) Security Cleared
2 305 (13.79%) SC Cleared
3 183 (8.27%) Degree
4 59 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.49%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.45%) Master's Degree
7 32 (1.45%) PMI Certification
8 28 (1.27%) PMP
9 26 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (1.04%) ISTQB
11 22 (0.99%) CCNP
12 16 (0.72%) CISSP
13 14 (0.63%) AWS Certification
13 14 (0.63%) CBAP
14 12 (0.54%) ACCA
14 12 (0.54%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.50%) CCNA
16 10 (0.45%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (17.27%) Data Quality
2 290 (13.11%) QA
3 121 (5.47%) GDPR
4 68 (3.07%) NIST
5 60 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.36%) SLA
8 28 (1.27%) GxP
9 24 (1.08%) IFRS
10 22 (0.99%) PMO
11 20 (0.90%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.81%) GMP
12 18 (0.81%) GRC
12 18 (0.81%) HL7
13 16 (0.72%) Def Stans
14 13 (0.59%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.59%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.54%) MiFID
15 12 (0.54%) NCSC
15 12 (0.54%) NIST 800
System Software
1 78 (3.53%) Docker
2 50 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.13%) Firmware
5 17 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.36%) vSphere
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
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 (0.090%) Ceph
13 2 (0.090%) KVM
13 2 (0.090%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 119 (5.38%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.20%) Terraform
3 38 (1.72%) Prometheus
4 36 (1.63%) Ansible
4 36 (1.63%) Grafana
5 31 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (0.59%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.45%) Kibana
9 9 (0.41%) Puppet
9 9 (0.41%) SCCM
10 6 (0.27%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.23%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
12 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 299 (13.52%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.95%) Oracle
3 189 (8.54%) SAP
4 106 (4.79%) Databricks
5 78 (3.53%) ServiceNow
6 64 (2.89%) Salesforce
7 51 (2.31%) VMware
8 50 (2.26%) Cisco
9 49 (2.22%) Google
10 39 (1.76%) Splunk
11 32 (1.45%) Informatica
12 29 (1.31%) Sage
12 29 (1.31%) Workday
13 28 (1.27%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.22%) MuleSoft
15 25 (1.13%) IBM
16 22 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.95%) OpenAI
18 17 (0.77%) CheckPoint
18 17 (0.77%) Fortinet