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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 79 120
Rank change year-on-year +36 +41 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,240 891 801
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 3.03% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.57% 3.33% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,349 520 393
10th Percentile £325 £343 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £600
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.32% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 60 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £22.52 £25.53
25th Percentile £33.93 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.52 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.07% -8.23% -4.32%
75th Percentile £70.38 £65.00 £73.63
90th Percentile £82.33 £75.00 £76.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.80% -

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 40,197 26,741 37,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,242 17,210 23,886
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,094 2,440
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.44 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.95% +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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +32 1,947 £490 -7.76% 851
UK excluding London +24 1,044 £455 -11.32% 655
London +62 940 £500 -9.09% 315
Work from Home +57 676 £485 -3.00% 422
North of England +42 269 £425 -5.56% 121
Midlands +28 231 £481 +1.32% 88
South East -8 222 £500 - 215
West Midlands +25 169 £475 - 51
North West +28 164 £418 -4.46% 75
East of England +11 120 £488 +8.33% 94
South West -8 108 £475 -17.39% 94
Yorkshire +18 95 £452 +8.33% 37
Scotland +50 72 £413 -9.59% 35
East Midlands +5 58 £525 +4.06% 37
Wales +7 21 £455 +193.55% 19
North East -10 13 £450 -28.00% 10
Northern Ireland +10 12 £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 91 (4.06%) Confluence
2 43 (1.92%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (1.65%) SAS
5 21 (0.94%) Apache
5 21 (0.94%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.40%) Appian
8 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
9 8 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.18%) CICS
12 4 (0.18%) CMS
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
14 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.089%) Umbraco
Applications
1 143 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.31%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.13%) Notion
10 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Simulink
10 2 (0.089%) 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
1 107 (4.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.61%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.54%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
8 9 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
10 7 (0.31%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.31%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.27%) iTrent
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 443 (19.78%) Azure
2 283 (12.63%) AWS
3 226 (10.09%) Power Platform
4 115 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
5 110 (4.91%) GCP
6 90 (4.02%) GitHub
7 63 (2.81%) Serverless
7 63 (2.81%) Snowflake
8 57 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
8 57 (2.54%) SaaS
9 56 (2.50%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.46%) Entra ID
11 48 (2.14%) OCI
12 47 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
13 39 (1.74%) Microsoft 365
14 38 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 34 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (1.29%) dbt
18 25 (1.12%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.62%) Firewall
2 57 (2.54%) Network Security
3 40 (1.79%) VLAN
4 38 (1.70%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.29%) DNS
6 28 (1.25%) VPN
7 27 (1.21%) Ethernet
8 25 (1.12%) WAN
9 17 (0.76%) LAN
10 16 (0.71%) SAN
10 16 (0.71%) Wireless
11 14 (0.63%) BGP
11 14 (0.63%) OSPF
11 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.58%) HTTP
13 12 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.54%) NAS
14 11 (0.49%) TACACS
14 11 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 214 (9.55%) Power BI
2 115 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 101 (4.51%) Metadata
4 78 (3.48%) SQL Server
4 78 (3.48%) Tableau
5 60 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
6 57 (2.54%) Data Lake
7 49 (2.19%) Relational Database
8 31 (1.38%) NoSQL
9 30 (1.34%) Big Data
10 28 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
11 27 (1.21%) Delta Lake
11 27 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 23 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.03%) Power Query
14 22 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
15 20 (0.89%) BigQuery
15 20 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 205 (9.15%) JIRA
2 128 (5.71%) Git
3 84 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.54%) GitLab
5 55 (2.46%) Selenium
6 46 (2.05%) Postman
7 41 (1.83%) JMeter
8 32 (1.43%) JUnit
9 26 (1.16%) Cucumber
9 26 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.12%) WebDriver
11 19 (0.85%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.85%) Visual Studio
12 17 (0.76%) MLflow
13 14 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
14 12 (0.54%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 11 (0.49%) Gatling
16 9 (0.40%) Gradle
16 9 (0.40%) Maven
General
1 702 (31.34%) Social Skills
2 672 (30.00%) Finance
3 426 (19.02%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (8.48%) Banking
4 190 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 122 (5.45%) Documentation Skills
6 75 (3.35%) Manufacturing
7 58 (2.59%) Aerospace
8 50 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
9 49 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
10 48 (2.14%) Pharmaceutical
11 44 (1.96%) Retail
12 38 (1.70%) Legal
13 36 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.52%) Military
15 33 (1.47%) General Ledger
16 32 (1.43%) Marketing
16 32 (1.43%) Telecoms
17 30 (1.34%) Front Office
18 27 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 420 (18.75%) Analyst
2 234 (10.45%) Lead
3 196 (8.75%) Senior
4 187 (8.35%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.90%) Data Engineer
6 158 (7.05%) Consultant
7 142 (6.34%) Architect
8 119 (5.31%) Developer
9 116 (5.18%) Data Analyst
10 83 (3.71%) Project Manager
11 58 (2.59%) Tester
12 49 (2.19%) Software Engineer
13 47 (2.10%) Senior Analyst
13 47 (2.10%) Test Engineer
14 45 (2.01%) Network Engineer
15 42 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
15 42 (1.88%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.79%) Test Manager
17 39 (1.74%) Security Engineer
18 37 (1.65%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.31%) REST
2 77 (3.44%) JSON
3 71 (3.17%) Kafka
4 59 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.37%) Middleware
6 49 (2.19%) OAuth
7 47 (2.10%) PySpark
8 41 (1.83%) Node.js
9 39 (1.74%) XML
10 38 (1.70%) Swagger
11 36 (1.61%) SOAP
12 35 (1.56%) Web Services
13 34 (1.52%) .NET
14 32 (1.43%) RESTful
15 30 (1.34%) Pandas
15 30 (1.34%) PyTorch
16 28 (1.25%) Playwright
17 27 (1.21%) Spring
18 26 (1.16%) TensorFlow
19 25 (1.12%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 123 (5.49%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.36%) Data Structures
3 113 (5.04%) Onboarding
4 95 (4.24%) Product Ownership
5 79 (3.53%) Cloud Native
6 73 (3.26%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.25%) Operational Technology
12 27 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 27 (1.21%) Replication
13 26 (1.16%) NHS
13 26 (1.16%) SCADA
13 26 (1.16%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.12%) Life Science
14 25 (1.12%) Public Cloud
15 24 (1.07%) Reference Data
16 23 (1.03%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 109 (4.87%) Windows
2 95 (4.24%) Linux
3 31 (1.38%) Unix
4 16 (0.71%) 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 (0.22%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.089%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.045%) HPUX
11 1 (0.045%) pSOS
11 1 (0.045%) Solaris
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 606 (27.05%) Migration
2 453 (20.22%) Agile
3 425 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
4 378 (16.88%) Data Validation
5 372 (16.61%) Stakeholder Management
6 362 (16.16%) Data Migration
7 358 (15.98%) CI/CD
8 349 (15.58%) Data Modelling
9 333 (14.87%) Analytics
10 324 (14.46%) User Acceptance Testing
11 296 (13.21%) ETL
12 272 (12.14%) DevOps
13 264 (11.79%) Test Automation
14 262 (11.70%) Business Intelligence
15 252 (11.25%) AI
16 241 (10.76%) Continuous Improvement
17 234 (10.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 222 (9.91%) Data Governance
19 201 (8.97%) Data Pipeline
20 199 (8.88%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 532 (23.75%) SQL
2 408 (18.21%) Python
3 108 (4.82%) Java
4 63 (2.81%) C#
5 56 (2.50%) C++
6 49 (2.19%) JavaScript
7 46 (2.05%) C
7 46 (2.05%) PowerShell
8 44 (1.96%) Bash
9 31 (1.38%) TypeScript
10 29 (1.29%) PL/SQL
11 28 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 28 (1.25%) R
12 26 (1.16%) Bicep
13 21 (0.94%) Scala
14 20 (0.89%) Ada
15 19 (0.85%) Apex Code
16 15 (0.67%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.54%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 410 (18.30%) Security Cleared
2 299 (13.35%) SC Cleared
3 178 (7.95%) Degree
4 56 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 50 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.47%) PMI Certification
7 32 (1.43%) DV Cleared
8 31 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 29 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
10 28 (1.25%) PMP
11 23 (1.03%) CCNP
12 19 (0.85%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.76%) CISSP
14 15 (0.67%) ACCA
14 15 (0.67%) CBAP
15 14 (0.63%) AWS Certification
15 14 (0.63%) Azure Certification
16 13 (0.58%) CIMA
17 12 (0.54%) CCNA
17 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (17.28%) Data Quality
2 287 (12.81%) QA
3 121 (5.40%) GDPR
4 67 (2.99%) NIST
5 60 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 28 (1.25%) SLA
8 27 (1.21%) GxP
9 25 (1.12%) IFRS
10 24 (1.07%) PMO
11 20 (0.89%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.80%) GMP
12 18 (0.80%) GRC
12 18 (0.80%) HL7
13 16 (0.71%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.63%) MiFID
15 13 (0.58%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 12 (0.54%) NIST 800
System Software
1 80 (3.57%) Docker
2 51 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.07%) Firmware
5 17 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.58%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (0.40%) vSphere
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.089%) Ceph
13 2 (0.089%) KVM
13 2 (0.089%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 125 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.29%) Terraform
3 43 (1.92%) Prometheus
4 41 (1.83%) Grafana
5 39 (1.74%) Ansible
6 30 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.58%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 9 (0.40%) Puppet
10 9 (0.40%) SCCM
11 6 (0.27%) Nessus
12 5 (0.22%) CASB
12 5 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.22%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 304 (13.57%) Microsoft
2 197 (8.79%) SAP
3 189 (8.44%) Oracle
4 105 (4.69%) Databricks
5 73 (3.26%) ServiceNow
6 69 (3.08%) Salesforce
7 52 (2.32%) VMware
8 50 (2.23%) Cisco
9 48 (2.14%) Google
10 41 (1.83%) Splunk
11 33 (1.47%) Informatica
12 28 (1.25%) Palo Alto
12 28 (1.25%) Sage
13 27 (1.21%) IBM
13 27 (1.21%) Workday
14 25 (1.12%) MuleSoft
15 21 (0.94%) CyberArk
15 21 (0.94%) OpenAI
16 17 (0.76%) CheckPoint
16 17 (0.76%) Fortinet