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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 76 123
Rank change year-on-year +36 +47 +30
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,312 916 795
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.78% 3.18% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.66% 3.49% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,381 547 391
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £505 £495
% change year-on-year -10.60% +2.02% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 57 167
10th Percentile £17.12 £16.50 £25.80
25th Percentile £26.52 £37.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £60.00 £56.04 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.07% -6.60% -6.42%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -0.08%

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 40,852 26,213 36,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.38% 91.03% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,586 16,831 23,574
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,418 1,066 2,483
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -33.82% +8.57%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +33 2,020 £500 -4.76% 835
UK excluding London +26 1,083 £451 -10.60% 639
London +55 978 £510 -7.27% 292
Work from Home +62 688 £484 -3.20% 421
North of England +39 274 £435 -3.33% 140
Midlands +36 248 £495 +8.86% 93
South East -10 225 £490 -2.00% 192
West Midlands +29 176 £481 +9.94% 58
North West +26 164 £420 -4.00% 83
East of England +8 122 £475 +5.56% 86
South West +3 120 £475 -17.39% 94
Yorkshire +12 99 £451 +0.11% 38
Scotland +45 68 £388 -15.07% 31
East Midlands +18 68 £525 +14.38% 34
Wales +12 24 £450 +190.32% 15
North East -16 14 £438 -25.53% 20
Northern Ireland +11 13 £400 -32.20% 8

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 (3.81%) Confluence
2 49 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.73%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.69%) SAS
5 22 (0.95%) SharePoint
6 19 (0.82%) Apache
7 11 (0.48%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.43%) ArcGIS
8 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.39%) Appian
9 9 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.087%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.087%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.087%) Oracle Service Bus
13 2 (0.087%) Umbraco
Applications
1 154 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.35%) CATIA
7 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Simulink
9 2 (0.087%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.087%) Sketch
10 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.043%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.043%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.043%) UXPin
10 1 (0.043%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.47%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.69%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.43%) NetSuite
6 10 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.39%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
8 8 (0.35%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.26%) iTrent
10 6 (0.26%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.26%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 443 (19.16%) Azure
2 284 (12.28%) AWS
3 231 (9.99%) Power Platform
4 114 (4.93%) GCP
5 112 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
6 100 (4.33%) GitHub
7 72 (3.11%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 59 (2.55%) SaaS
10 58 (2.51%) Serverless
11 56 (2.42%) Entra ID
12 55 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
13 54 (2.34%) Amazon S3
14 43 (1.86%) OCI
15 38 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 36 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
17 32 (1.38%) dbt
18 30 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
19 26 (1.12%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 87 (3.76%) Firewall
2 59 (2.55%) Network Security
3 42 (1.82%) VLAN
4 35 (1.51%) DNS
5 33 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 32 (1.38%) VPN
7 28 (1.21%) WAN
8 23 (0.99%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.78%) LAN
10 16 (0.69%) BGP
10 16 (0.69%) OSPF
10 16 (0.69%) SAN
10 16 (0.69%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.65%) Wireless
12 14 (0.61%) DHCP
13 13 (0.56%) HTTP
13 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.52%) NAS
15 11 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
16 10 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 217 (9.39%) Power BI
2 120 (5.19%) Data Warehouse
3 89 (3.85%) Metadata
4 85 (3.68%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.29%) Tableau
6 65 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (2.77%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.08%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.30%) Big Data
9 30 (1.30%) NoSQL
10 26 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.08%) Power Query
12 24 (1.04%) Delta Lake
12 24 (1.04%) Oracle Database
12 24 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 23 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
13 23 (0.99%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 21 (0.91%) BigQuery
15 20 (0.87%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 203 (8.78%) JIRA
2 125 (5.41%) Git
3 86 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.34%) Postman
5 53 (2.29%) GitLab
5 53 (2.29%) Selenium
6 45 (1.95%) JMeter
7 33 (1.43%) JUnit
8 30 (1.30%) Cucumber
9 26 (1.12%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.08%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.65%) MLflow
11 15 (0.65%) Rational Rhapsody
12 14 (0.61%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.61%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.52%) Gatling
14 11 (0.48%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.43%) Gradle
15 10 (0.43%) Maven
General
1 703 (30.41%) Social Skills
2 686 (29.67%) Finance
3 426 (18.43%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 190 (8.22%) Banking
6 125 (5.41%) Documentation Skills
7 80 (3.46%) Manufacturing
8 62 (2.68%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
10 48 (2.08%) Retail
11 47 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
12 43 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
13 39 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
14 36 (1.56%) Legal
15 35 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 34 (1.47%) General Ledger
16 34 (1.47%) Marketing
16 34 (1.47%) Telecoms
17 32 (1.38%) Front Office
18 30 (1.30%) Military
Job Titles
1 422 (18.25%) Analyst
2 238 (10.29%) Lead
3 205 (8.87%) Senior
4 193 (8.35%) Business Analyst
5 186 (8.04%) Data Engineer
6 162 (7.01%) Consultant
7 145 (6.27%) Architect
8 122 (5.28%) Developer
9 117 (5.06%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.72%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.55%) Test Engineer
11 59 (2.55%) Tester
12 47 (2.03%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (1.99%) Network Engineer
13 46 (1.99%) Software Engineer
14 43 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
15 42 (1.82%) Test Manager
16 41 (1.77%) Security Engineer
16 41 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
17 37 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.15%) REST
2 85 (3.68%) JSON
3 69 (2.98%) Kafka
4 53 (2.29%) Middleware
4 53 (2.29%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.16%) OAuth
5 50 (2.16%) XML
6 43 (1.86%) PySpark
7 40 (1.73%) Swagger
8 38 (1.64%) RESTful
9 36 (1.56%) .NET
9 36 (1.56%) SOAP
10 33 (1.43%) Pandas
11 30 (1.30%) Node.js
11 30 (1.30%) Spring
12 29 (1.25%) OAuth2
12 29 (1.25%) pytest
12 29 (1.25%) Web Services
13 28 (1.21%) Playwright
14 27 (1.17%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.58%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.19%) Onboarding
3 119 (5.15%) Data Structures
4 97 (4.20%) Product Ownership
5 86 (3.72%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.33%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.64%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 35 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 31 (1.34%) Operational Technology
12 30 (1.30%) Life Science
12 30 (1.30%) SCADA
13 28 (1.21%) NHS
13 28 (1.21%) Replication
14 27 (1.17%) Reference Data
14 27 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 26 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
15 26 (1.12%) Public Cloud
16 25 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 115 (4.97%) Windows
2 91 (3.94%) Linux
3 33 (1.43%) Unix
4 21 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.43%) Android
5 10 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.30%) VMS
7 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
9 4 (0.17%) zOS
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) HPUX
11 1 (0.043%) pSOS
11 1 (0.043%) Solaris
11 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 625 (27.03%) Migration
2 449 (19.42%) Agile
3 422 (18.25%) Problem-Solving
4 387 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 385 (16.65%) Data Validation
6 373 (16.13%) Data Migration
7 364 (15.74%) CI/CD
7 364 (15.74%) Data Modelling
8 345 (14.92%) User Acceptance Testing
9 338 (14.62%) Analytics
10 302 (13.06%) ETL
11 275 (11.89%) DevOps
12 272 (11.76%) Test Automation
13 257 (11.12%) Business Intelligence
14 255 (11.03%) AI
14 255 (11.03%) Continuous Improvement
15 243 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 215 (9.30%) Data Governance
17 210 (9.08%) Data Analysis
18 208 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 544 (23.53%) SQL
2 412 (17.82%) Python
3 109 (4.71%) Java
4 57 (2.47%) C#
5 51 (2.21%) PowerShell
6 46 (1.99%) Bash
7 45 (1.95%) C
7 45 (1.95%) C++
8 41 (1.77%) JavaScript
9 31 (1.34%) Bicep
9 31 (1.34%) TypeScript
10 30 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 26 (1.12%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.08%) R
13 23 (0.99%) Apex Code
14 21 (0.91%) Scala
15 20 (0.87%) Ada
16 16 (0.69%) MATLAB
17 13 (0.56%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 419 (18.12%) Security Cleared
2 307 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 183 (7.92%) Degree
4 54 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 38 (1.64%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.43%) PMI Certification
8 31 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
9 27 (1.17%) PMP
10 25 (1.08%) CCNP
10 25 (1.08%) Master's Degree
11 18 (0.78%) ACCA
11 18 (0.78%) ISTQB
12 17 (0.74%) CISSP
13 16 (0.69%) CIMA
14 15 (0.65%) CBAP
15 13 (0.56%) CCNA
15 13 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.52%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (17.04%) Data Quality
2 287 (12.41%) QA
3 114 (4.93%) GDPR
4 67 (2.90%) NIST
5 57 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.38%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.30%) SLA
8 27 (1.17%) GxP
9 26 (1.12%) PMO
10 23 (0.99%) IFRS
11 18 (0.78%) GMP
11 18 (0.78%) GRC
11 18 (0.78%) HL7
11 18 (0.78%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.74%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.61%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.56%) MiFID
14 13 (0.56%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
System Software
1 86 (3.72%) Docker
2 57 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 51 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.95%) Hyper-V
6 21 (0.91%) Firmware
7 16 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.69%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.56%) vSphere
9 11 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.087%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.087%) Ceph
13 2 (0.087%) KVM
13 2 (0.087%) Lustre
13 2 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 132 (5.71%) Kubernetes
2 100 (4.33%) Terraform
3 48 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.99%) Grafana
5 42 (1.82%) Ansible
6 28 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.48%) Kibana
10 10 (0.43%) Puppet
11 8 (0.35%) SCCM
11 8 (0.35%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.26%) Nessus
12 6 (0.26%) vMotion
13 5 (0.22%) CASB
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 314 (13.58%) Microsoft
2 201 (8.69%) SAP
3 195 (8.43%) Oracle
4 113 (4.89%) Databricks
5 75 (3.24%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.98%) ServiceNow
7 62 (2.68%) VMware
8 52 (2.25%) Cisco
9 47 (2.03%) Google
10 41 (1.77%) Splunk
11 31 (1.34%) Informatica
12 29 (1.25%) Workday
13 27 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 26 (1.12%) MuleSoft
14 26 (1.12%) Sage
15 23 (0.99%) IBM
16 21 (0.91%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.91%) IFS
16 21 (0.91%) OpenAI
17 18 (0.78%) Fortinet