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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 86 125
Rank change year-on-year +44 +39 +20
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,185 843 792
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.65% 2.87% 1.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 3.16% 2.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,324 493 398
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £609
90th Percentile £700 £703 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -9.61% +2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 52 156
10th Percentile £17.23 £25.16 £23.06
25th Percentile £33.93 £47.36 £52.19
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £82.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.55% -7.60% +0.81%

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 39,735 26,655 37,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.81% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,044 17,231 24,097
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,068 2,424
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £35.98
% change year-on-year +50.00% -22.17% -0.07%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 +40 1,900 £478 -11.16% 727
UK excluding London +33 1,026 £461 -9.61% 618
London +70 909 £500 -9.09% 261
Work from Home +62 651 £481 -3.75% 325
North of England +39 257 £425 -8.11% 106
South East -2 225 £490 -2.00% 229
Midlands +29 218 £475 - 88
West Midlands +30 159 £475 - 56
North West +30 154 £413 -5.71% 63
South West -4 119 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +9 114 £480 +6.72% 75
Yorkshire +8 92 £454 +8.10% 31
Scotland +45 69 £404 -11.56% 30
East Midlands -2 55 £513 +11.66% 32
Wales +7 20 £460 +196.77% 9
Northern Ireland +16 15 £400 -31.91% 12
North East -10 14 £450 -37.93% 14

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 85 (3.89%) Confluence
2 47 (2.15%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.60%) SAS
5 21 (0.96%) Apache
5 21 (0.96%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.50%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.41%) Appian
8 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.18%) CICS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 137 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.56%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.27%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.092%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.092%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.092%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 99 (4.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (1.74%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 13 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.55%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.55%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 473 (21.65%) Azure
2 279 (12.77%) AWS
3 219 (10.02%) Power Platform
4 135 (6.18%) Azure DevOps
5 109 (4.99%) GCP
6 91 (4.16%) GitHub
7 65 (2.97%) Serverless
8 59 (2.70%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.52%) Entra ID
11 54 (2.47%) Snowflake
12 51 (2.33%) OCI
12 51 (2.33%) SaaS
13 48 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
15 38 (1.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
18 28 (1.28%) dbt
19 25 (1.14%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.75%) Firewall
2 56 (2.56%) Network Security
3 37 (1.69%) VLAN
4 36 (1.65%) TCP/IP
5 30 (1.37%) VPN
6 27 (1.24%) DNS
7 24 (1.10%) Ethernet
7 24 (1.10%) WAN
8 17 (0.78%) SAN
9 16 (0.73%) BGP
9 16 (0.73%) LAN
9 16 (0.73%) OSPF
10 15 (0.69%) HTTP
10 15 (0.69%) Wireless
11 13 (0.59%) NAS
11 13 (0.59%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (0.46%) SSL
13 10 (0.46%) TACACS
13 10 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 207 (9.47%) Power BI
2 114 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
3 108 (4.94%) Metadata
4 76 (3.48%) Tableau
5 74 (3.39%) SQL Server
6 58 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (2.29%) Data Lake
8 38 (1.74%) Relational Database
9 33 (1.51%) Big Data
10 29 (1.33%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
11 28 (1.28%) Delta Lake
12 27 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
13 23 (1.05%) Power Query
14 22 (1.01%) Oracle Database
14 22 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
16 20 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.87%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 201 (9.20%) JIRA
2 128 (5.86%) Git
3 80 (3.66%) Jenkins
4 62 (2.84%) Selenium
5 52 (2.38%) GitLab
6 50 (2.29%) Postman
7 36 (1.65%) JMeter
8 33 (1.51%) Cucumber
8 33 (1.51%) JUnit
9 26 (1.19%) WebDriver
10 24 (1.10%) Rational DOORS
11 21 (0.96%) Oracle APEX
12 18 (0.82%) MLflow
12 18 (0.82%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.64%) Eclipse
14 13 (0.59%) Bitbucket
14 13 (0.59%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
15 12 (0.55%) SpecFlow
16 11 (0.50%) TestRail
General
1 718 (32.86%) Social Skills
2 656 (30.02%) Finance
3 435 (19.91%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (8.74%) Public Sector
5 189 (8.65%) Banking
6 120 (5.49%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.11%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.61%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
10 49 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
11 47 (2.15%) Pharmaceutical
12 43 (1.97%) Retail
13 38 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
14 37 (1.69%) Legal
15 36 (1.65%) Marketing
16 32 (1.46%) General Ledger
17 31 (1.42%) Telecoms
18 30 (1.37%) Front Office
19 29 (1.33%) Financial Institution
19 29 (1.33%) Military
Job Titles
1 419 (19.18%) Analyst
2 216 (9.89%) Lead
3 210 (9.61%) Senior
4 191 (8.74%) Business Analyst
5 161 (7.37%) Data Engineer
6 151 (6.91%) Consultant
7 139 (6.36%) Architect
8 129 (5.90%) Developer
9 113 (5.17%) Data Analyst
10 80 (3.66%) Project Manager
11 56 (2.56%) Tester
12 53 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.11%) Test Engineer
14 43 (1.97%) Network Engineer
15 42 (1.92%) Software Engineer
15 42 (1.92%) Technical Analyst
16 41 (1.88%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.83%) Systems Engineer
18 38 (1.74%) Test Analyst
19 37 (1.69%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (5.90%) REST
2 84 (3.84%) JSON
3 66 (3.02%) Kafka
4 63 (2.88%) Oracle Fusion
5 57 (2.61%) Middleware
6 47 (2.15%) XML
7 46 (2.11%) OAuth
7 46 (2.11%) PySpark
8 40 (1.83%) Node.js
9 37 (1.69%) .NET
10 36 (1.65%) SOAP
10 36 (1.65%) Swagger
11 32 (1.46%) Playwright
12 31 (1.42%) Pandas
12 31 (1.42%) RESTful
13 30 (1.37%) PyTorch
13 30 (1.37%) Web Services
14 27 (1.24%) OpenAPI
15 26 (1.19%) TensorFlow
16 24 (1.10%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.68%) Legacy Systems
2 117 (5.35%) Data Structures
3 105 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 95 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 68 (3.11%) Cloud Native
6 65 (2.97%) Data Centre
7 59 (2.70%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 34 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.28%) Replication
12 27 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
13 26 (1.19%) Reference Data
13 26 (1.19%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.14%) Operational Technology
15 24 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 23 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
16 23 (1.05%) Life Science
16 23 (1.05%) NHS
16 23 (1.05%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 110 (5.03%) Windows
2 94 (4.30%) Linux
3 34 (1.56%) Unix
4 16 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.50%) Android
6 8 (0.37%) 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 (0.092%) Debian
11 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.046%) HPUX
11 1 (0.046%) pSOS
11 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.046%) Solaris
11 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (26.27%) Migration
2 469 (21.46%) Agile
3 428 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
4 382 (17.48%) Stakeholder Management
5 366 (16.75%) Data Validation
6 343 (15.70%) Data Migration
7 340 (15.56%) CI/CD
8 337 (15.42%) Analytics
9 336 (15.38%) Data Modelling
10 313 (14.32%) User Acceptance Testing
11 286 (13.09%) DevOps
11 286 (13.09%) ETL
12 263 (12.04%) Test Automation
13 257 (11.76%) Business Intelligence
14 240 (10.98%) Continuous Improvement
15 233 (10.66%) AI
16 230 (10.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 226 (10.34%) Data Governance
18 199 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
19 193 (8.83%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 533 (24.39%) SQL
2 406 (18.58%) Python
3 109 (4.99%) Java
4 69 (3.16%) C#
4 69 (3.16%) JavaScript
5 53 (2.43%) C++
6 47 (2.15%) PL/SQL
7 46 (2.11%) PowerShell
8 44 (2.01%) C
9 40 (1.83%) Bash
10 31 (1.42%) R
10 31 (1.42%) TypeScript
11 30 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 25 (1.14%) Bicep
13 20 (0.92%) Scala
14 19 (0.87%) Ada
15 13 (0.59%) Apex Code
16 12 (0.55%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.55%) VBA
17 11 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 419 (19.18%) Security Cleared
2 306 (14.00%) SC Cleared
3 186 (8.51%) Degree
4 62 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.56%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.46%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.42%) PMI Certification
9 27 (1.24%) PMP
10 26 (1.19%) ISTQB
11 25 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
12 22 (1.01%) CCNP
13 14 (0.64%) AWS Certification
13 14 (0.64%) CBAP
13 14 (0.64%) CISSP
14 13 (0.59%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.55%) ACCA
15 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.50%) CCNA
17 10 (0.46%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (17.21%) Data Quality
2 292 (13.36%) QA
3 123 (5.63%) GDPR
4 69 (3.16%) NIST
5 62 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.33%) SLA
8 27 (1.24%) GxP
9 23 (1.05%) PMO
10 22 (1.01%) IFRS
11 19 (0.87%) HL7
11 19 (0.87%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.82%) GRC
13 17 (0.78%) GMP
14 16 (0.73%) Def Stans
15 13 (0.59%) COBIT
15 13 (0.59%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.55%) NCSC
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 75 (3.43%) Docker
2 50 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.14%) Firmware
5 17 (0.78%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.55%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (0.37%) vSphere
11 5 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.092%) Ceph
14 2 (0.092%) KVM
14 2 (0.092%) OpenIDM
14 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 115 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.39%) Terraform
3 36 (1.65%) Prometheus
4 35 (1.60%) Ansible
5 34 (1.56%) Grafana
6 29 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.50%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.46%) Kibana
10 9 (0.41%) Puppet
10 9 (0.41%) SCCM
11 6 (0.27%) Nessus
12 5 (0.23%) CASB
12 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.23%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 295 (13.50%) Microsoft
2 206 (9.43%) Oracle
3 184 (8.42%) SAP
4 106 (4.85%) Databricks
5 79 (3.62%) ServiceNow
6 62 (2.84%) Salesforce
7 52 (2.38%) VMware
8 49 (2.24%) Cisco
9 48 (2.20%) Google
10 39 (1.78%) Splunk
11 34 (1.56%) Workday
12 30 (1.37%) Informatica
12 30 (1.37%) MuleSoft
13 29 (1.33%) Sage
14 28 (1.28%) Palo Alto
15 24 (1.10%) IBM
16 21 (0.96%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.96%) OpenAI
17 16 (0.73%) Fortinet
17 16 (0.73%) IFS