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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 74 123
Rank change year-on-year +36 +49 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,454 965 804
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.97% 3.32% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.86% 3.65% 2.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,457 575 395
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £404 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £525 £515
Median % change year-on-year -5.62% +1.94% -7.21%
75th Percentile £588 £626 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -10.19% +3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 61 170
10th Percentile £17.18 £16.50 £26.61
25th Percentile £27.06 £37.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -4.94%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.08 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.51% +0.81% -0.80%

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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -34.02% +8.91%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +34 2,128 £500 -4.76% 1,132
UK excluding London +30 1,168 £463 -10.19% 829
London +49 1,014 £513 -6.82% 393
Work from Home +56 727 £481 -3.75% 455
North of England +43 293 £437 -5.46% 169
Midlands +35 264 £500 +14.29% 141
South East -2 245 £500 - 234
West Midlands +24 189 £490 +21.43% 88
North West +34 170 £420 -5.35% 91
South West +4 130 £500 -13.04% 124
East of England +9 127 £488 +8.33% 107
Yorkshire +15 110 £458 +1.67% 59
Scotland +42 81 £400 -15.79% 40
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +16.67% 53
Wales +4 25 £455 +193.55% 18
North East -15 16 £438 -25.53% 21
Northern Ireland +15 14 £400 -32.20% 18

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 84 (3.42%) Confluence
2 59 (2.40%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (1.96%) SAS
4 45 (1.83%) Apache Spark
5 32 (1.30%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.94%) Apache
7 13 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.37%) Appian
9 9 (0.37%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.20%) CMS
10 5 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
12 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.081%) Documentum
Applications
1 154 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (0.98%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.37%) CATIA
7 5 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.16%) Simulink
9 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.081%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.081%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.081%) Sketch
10 2 (0.081%) Windchill
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.041%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 118 (4.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.65%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.49%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.49%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
9 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.33%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.24%) iTrent
11 6 (0.24%) SAP Business One
11 6 (0.24%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 487 (19.85%) Azure
2 315 (12.84%) AWS
3 237 (9.66%) Power Platform
4 127 (5.18%) GCP
5 126 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
6 114 (4.65%) GitHub
7 81 (3.30%) Snowflake
8 66 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
9 63 (2.57%) Entra ID
9 63 (2.57%) Serverless
10 59 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
11 58 (2.36%) Amazon S3
12 55 (2.24%) SaaS
13 41 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
13 41 (1.67%) OCI
14 37 (1.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.47%) dbt
16 34 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 28 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 90 (3.67%) Firewall
2 59 (2.40%) Network Security
3 42 (1.71%) VLAN
4 39 (1.59%) DNS
5 34 (1.39%) TCP/IP
5 34 (1.39%) VPN
6 31 (1.26%) WAN
7 24 (0.98%) Ethernet
8 19 (0.77%) BGP
8 19 (0.77%) LAN
8 19 (0.77%) SAN
9 18 (0.73%) OSPF
9 18 (0.73%) SD-WAN
10 16 (0.65%) Wireless
11 15 (0.61%) DHCP
11 15 (0.61%) Internet
12 14 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.49%) HTTP
13 12 (0.49%) NAS
14 11 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 220 (8.96%) Power BI
2 122 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (3.71%) SQL Server
4 87 (3.55%) Metadata
5 72 (2.93%) PostgreSQL
6 71 (2.89%) Tableau
7 67 (2.73%) Data Lake
8 50 (2.04%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.39%) Big Data
10 32 (1.30%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.26%) Oracle Database
12 30 (1.22%) NoSQL
13 29 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (1.06%) Power Query
15 25 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
16 24 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
17 23 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.94%) Delta Lake
18 22 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 21 (0.86%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 217 (8.84%) JIRA
2 134 (5.46%) Git
3 96 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 66 (2.69%) GitLab
5 55 (2.24%) Selenium
6 52 (2.12%) Postman
7 47 (1.92%) JMeter
8 37 (1.51%) JUnit
9 34 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.22%) WebDriver
11 27 (1.10%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.65%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.61%) MLflow
15 10 (0.41%) Gatling
15 10 (0.41%) Gradle
15 10 (0.41%) Maven
15 10 (0.41%) REST Assured
16 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 724 (29.50%) Finance
1 724 (29.50%) Social Skills
2 435 (17.73%) Analytical Skills
3 207 (8.44%) Public Sector
4 200 (8.15%) Banking
5 138 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
6 85 (3.46%) Manufacturing
7 70 (2.85%) Aerospace
8 54 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
9 52 (2.12%) Retail
10 48 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
11 40 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 40 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
11 40 (1.63%) Legal
11 40 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
12 37 (1.51%) Marketing
13 36 (1.47%) General Ledger
13 36 (1.47%) Telecoms
14 35 (1.43%) Front Office
15 31 (1.26%) Law
Job Titles
1 432 (17.60%) Analyst
2 253 (10.31%) Lead
3 227 (9.25%) Senior
4 209 (8.52%) Business Analyst
5 187 (7.62%) Data Engineer
6 174 (7.09%) Consultant
7 151 (6.15%) Architect
8 136 (5.54%) Developer
9 117 (4.77%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.46%) Project Manager
11 67 (2.73%) Test Engineer
12 63 (2.57%) Tester
13 48 (1.96%) Test Manager
14 46 (1.87%) Network Engineer
14 46 (1.87%) Senior Analyst
14 46 (1.87%) Software Engineer
15 44 (1.79%) Systems Engineer
15 44 (1.79%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.63%) Migration Engineer
16 40 (1.63%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (5.26%) REST
2 82 (3.34%) JSON
3 69 (2.81%) Kafka
4 54 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.04%) OAuth
6 49 (2.00%) XML
7 48 (1.96%) Middleware
8 44 (1.79%) PySpark
9 40 (1.63%) Swagger
10 39 (1.59%) RESTful
10 39 (1.59%) SOAP
11 38 (1.55%) .NET
12 36 (1.47%) pytest
13 34 (1.39%) Spring
14 33 (1.34%) Pandas
15 32 (1.30%) Web Services
16 30 (1.22%) Node.js
17 29 (1.18%) OAuth2
18 27 (1.10%) PyTorch
19 26 (1.06%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 128 (5.22%) Legacy Systems
2 121 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 117 (4.77%) Data Structures
4 110 (4.48%) Product Ownership
5 99 (4.03%) Cloud Native
6 79 (3.22%) Data Centre
7 60 (2.44%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 44 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.51%) Life Science
11 36 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 35 (1.43%) SCADA
13 33 (1.34%) Operational Technology
14 29 (1.18%) NHS
14 29 (1.18%) Reference Data
14 29 (1.18%) Replication
15 28 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.14%) Public Cloud
15 28 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 27 (1.10%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 126 (5.13%) Windows
2 96 (3.91%) Linux
3 34 (1.39%) Unix
4 24 (0.98%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.49%) Android
5 12 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.20%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 2 (0.081%) HPUX
10 2 (0.081%) Solaris
10 2 (0.081%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.081%) VxWorks
10 2 (0.081%) zOS
11 1 (0.041%) Debian
11 1 (0.041%) pSOS
11 1 (0.041%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 649 (26.45%) Migration
2 475 (19.36%) Agile
3 420 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
4 418 (17.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 411 (16.75%) Data Validation
6 407 (16.59%) CI/CD
7 385 (15.69%) Data Migration
8 382 (15.57%) User Acceptance Testing
9 380 (15.48%) Data Modelling
10 368 (15.00%) Analytics
11 305 (12.43%) ETL
12 302 (12.31%) AI
13 301 (12.27%) DevOps
14 292 (11.90%) Test Automation
15 271 (11.04%) Continuous Improvement
16 267 (10.88%) Business Intelligence
17 257 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 229 (9.33%) Data Analysis
19 225 (9.17%) Data Governance
20 222 (9.05%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 562 (22.90%) SQL
2 441 (17.97%) Python
3 115 (4.69%) Java
4 60 (2.44%) PowerShell
5 56 (2.28%) C#
6 48 (1.96%) Bash
7 46 (1.87%) C++
8 42 (1.71%) C
9 40 (1.63%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.34%) Bicep
11 31 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (1.14%) TypeScript
13 26 (1.06%) Apex Code
14 25 (1.02%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.94%) R
16 22 (0.90%) Ada
17 20 (0.81%) Scala
18 18 (0.73%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.53%) T-SQL
20 12 (0.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 446 (18.17%) Security Cleared
2 331 (13.49%) SC Cleared
3 184 (7.50%) Degree
4 64 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 50 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 44 (1.79%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.14%) PMI Certification
9 24 (0.98%) CCNP
9 24 (0.98%) PMP
10 21 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 21 (0.86%) Master's Degree
11 20 (0.81%) ACCA
12 18 (0.73%) CIMA
13 17 (0.69%) CISSP
14 14 (0.57%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.53%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.49%) CCNA
16 12 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 423 (17.24%) Data Quality
2 298 (12.14%) QA
3 117 (4.77%) GDPR
4 64 (2.61%) NIST
5 55 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.39%) SLA
8 31 (1.26%) GxP
8 31 (1.26%) PMO
9 27 (1.10%) IFRS
10 19 (0.77%) GRC
11 18 (0.73%) GMP
11 18 (0.73%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.69%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.69%) HL7
13 14 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
System Software
1 99 (4.03%) Docker
2 62 (2.53%) Active Directory
3 56 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.90%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.81%) Firmware
7 17 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.61%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.57%) vSphere
10 10 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.20%) NFS
12 4 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.081%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.081%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.081%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.041%) etcd
15 1 (0.041%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 144 (5.87%) Kubernetes
2 110 (4.48%) Terraform
3 54 (2.20%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.96%) Grafana
5 44 (1.79%) Ansible
6 28 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.49%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.37%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) SCCM
10 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.24%) Nessus
11 6 (0.24%) vMotion
12 5 (0.20%) Argo
12 5 (0.20%) Istio
13 4 (0.16%) CASB
13 4 (0.16%) Consul
13 4 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 328 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 220 (8.96%) SAP
3 207 (8.44%) Oracle
4 118 (4.81%) Databricks
5 81 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 72 (2.93%) ServiceNow
7 67 (2.73%) VMware
8 50 (2.04%) Cisco
8 50 (2.04%) Google
9 43 (1.75%) Splunk
10 32 (1.30%) Informatica
11 30 (1.22%) Workday
12 28 (1.14%) MuleSoft
12 28 (1.14%) Sage
13 27 (1.10%) Palo Alto
14 22 (0.90%) IBM
15 21 (0.86%) Fortinet
15 21 (0.86%) IFS
15 21 (0.86%) OpenAI
16 20 (0.81%) CyberArk