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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 87 131
Rank change year-on-year +44 +44 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,165 829 764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.68% 2.82% 1.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.51% 3.10% 2.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 483 385
10th Percentile £337 £344 £316
25th Percentile £400 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £605
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -8.24% +2.00% +3.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 49 152
10th Percentile £17.75 £26.05 £22.91
25th Percentile £34.50 £47.50 £50.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.00 £75.18
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.05 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.25
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.43% -0.40%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +38 1,876 £485 -7.62% 825
UK excluding London +28 1,011 £468 -8.24% 652
London +66 892 £500 -9.09% 262
Work from Home +68 652 £490 -3.97% 379
North of England +38 251 £433 -8.95% 118
South East -5 218 £500 - 210
Midlands +32 210 £475 -2.56% 107
West Midlands +29 156 £475 -2.56% 69
North West +27 146 £416 -6.25% 61
South West +4 127 £475 -17.39% 79
East of England +12 118 £489 +8.63% 92
Yorkshire +12 94 £453 +7.86% 43
Scotland +42 59 £402 -11.89% 36
East Midlands 0 51 £525 +4.06% 38
Wales +10 20 £460 +196.77% 12
Northern Ireland +19 19 £425 -22.73% 12
North East -5 14 £450 -37.93% 16

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 87 (4.02%) Confluence
2 43 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 39 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.57%) SAS
5 21 (0.97%) Apache
5 21 (0.97%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 9 (0.42%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.42%) 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
11 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
13 2 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 132 (6.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) 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
1 106 (4.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.65%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.51%) SAP FI
6 11 (0.51%) Teamcenter
7 10 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 490 (22.63%) Azure
2 276 (12.75%) AWS
3 209 (9.65%) Power Platform
4 141 (6.51%) Azure DevOps
5 106 (4.90%) GitHub
6 103 (4.76%) GCP
7 65 (3.00%) Serverless
8 63 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
9 60 (2.77%) Amazon S3
10 56 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
11 55 (2.54%) Entra ID
12 51 (2.36%) OCI
13 50 (2.31%) SaaS
14 48 (2.22%) Snowflake
15 42 (1.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 36 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
17 35 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
18 33 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
19 26 (1.20%) dbt
19 26 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.74%) Firewall
2 56 (2.59%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 33 (1.52%) VLAN
5 28 (1.29%) DNS
6 26 (1.20%) VPN
7 24 (1.11%) Ethernet
7 24 (1.11%) HTTP
7 24 (1.11%) WAN
8 15 (0.69%) LAN
8 15 (0.69%) SAN
9 13 (0.60%) BGP
9 13 (0.60%) NAS
9 13 (0.60%) OSPF
9 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
9 13 (0.60%) Wireless
10 11 (0.51%) SSL
11 10 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
12 9 (0.42%) DHCP
12 9 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (9.10%) Power BI
2 111 (5.13%) Metadata
3 106 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 75 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.33%) Tableau
6 59 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
7 48 (2.22%) Data Lake
8 35 (1.62%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.57%) Delta Lake
10 31 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
11 29 (1.34%) Big Data
11 29 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
12 27 (1.25%) NoSQL
13 26 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
14 22 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.97%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.97%) Power Query
16 20 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 203 (9.38%) JIRA
2 123 (5.68%) Git
3 84 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.82%) Selenium
5 53 (2.45%) GitLab
6 52 (2.40%) Postman
7 36 (1.66%) Cucumber
8 33 (1.52%) JMeter
9 32 (1.48%) JUnit
10 28 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
11 24 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 23 (1.06%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.83%) MLflow
13 18 (0.83%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.69%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.65%) TestRail
16 13 (0.60%) SpecFlow
17 12 (0.55%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 712 (32.89%) Social Skills
2 640 (29.56%) Finance
3 424 (19.58%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (9.10%) Public Sector
5 180 (8.31%) Banking
6 123 (5.68%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.63%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
10 48 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
11 47 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 40 (1.85%) Retail
13 37 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
14 35 (1.62%) Legal
14 35 (1.62%) Marketing
15 32 (1.48%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.39%) Billing
16 30 (1.39%) Financial Institution
16 30 (1.39%) Front Office
16 30 (1.39%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 410 (18.94%) Analyst
2 216 (9.98%) Senior
3 214 (9.88%) Lead
4 191 (8.82%) Business Analyst
5 158 (7.30%) Consultant
6 154 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 143 (6.61%) Developer
8 137 (6.33%) Architect
9 109 (5.03%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.65%) Project Manager
11 63 (2.91%) Tester
12 50 (2.31%) Senior Analyst
13 45 (2.08%) Software Engineer
14 44 (2.03%) Senior Developer
15 43 (1.99%) Test Engineer
16 42 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
16 42 (1.94%) Technical Analyst
16 42 (1.94%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.85%) Systems Engineer
18 39 (1.80%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (5.96%) REST
2 98 (4.53%) JSON
3 64 (2.96%) Oracle Fusion
4 62 (2.86%) Kafka
5 56 (2.59%) Middleware
6 54 (2.49%) OAuth
7 53 (2.45%) PySpark
8 52 (2.40%) XML
9 47 (2.17%) Node.js
10 37 (1.71%) .NET
11 36 (1.66%) Playwright
12 33 (1.52%) SOAP
12 33 (1.52%) Swagger
13 32 (1.48%) RESTful
14 30 (1.39%) Pandas
14 30 (1.39%) Web Services
15 29 (1.34%) PyTorch
16 27 (1.25%) SAML
17 26 (1.20%) OAuth2
17 26 (1.20%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 126 (5.82%) Legacy Systems
2 114 (5.27%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.67%) Onboarding
4 95 (4.39%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 59 (2.73%) Data Centre
7 54 (2.49%) Management Information System
8 37 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
9 31 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
10 30 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
10 30 (1.39%) Replication
11 26 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
11 26 (1.20%) Virtual Team
12 24 (1.11%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.11%) Life Science
12 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.11%) Reference Data
13 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.06%) NHS
14 22 (1.02%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 110 (5.08%) Windows
2 91 (4.20%) Linux
3 30 (1.39%) Unix
4 17 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 7 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.28%) VMS
7 6 (0.28%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
10 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.092%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.046%) pSOS
12 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.046%) Solaris
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (25.73%) Migration
2 472 (21.80%) Agile
3 426 (19.68%) Problem-Solving
4 378 (17.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 367 (16.95%) Data Validation
6 348 (16.07%) CI/CD
7 335 (15.47%) Data Migration
8 333 (15.38%) Analytics
9 323 (14.92%) Data Modelling
10 308 (14.23%) User Acceptance Testing
11 287 (13.26%) DevOps
12 282 (13.03%) ETL
13 259 (11.96%) Test Automation
14 247 (11.41%) Business Intelligence
15 246 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
16 232 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 229 (10.58%) AI
18 222 (10.25%) Data Governance
19 192 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
20 186 (8.59%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 542 (25.03%) SQL
2 404 (18.66%) Python
3 108 (4.99%) Java
4 83 (3.83%) JavaScript
5 71 (3.28%) C#
6 54 (2.49%) PL/SQL
7 53 (2.45%) C++
8 49 (2.26%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.03%) C
10 39 (1.80%) Bash
11 38 (1.76%) TypeScript
12 30 (1.39%) R
13 28 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 26 (1.20%) Bicep
15 20 (0.92%) Scala
16 19 (0.88%) Ada
17 13 (0.60%) VBA
18 12 (0.55%) Apex Code
18 12 (0.55%) MATLAB
19 10 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 439 (20.28%) Security Cleared
2 317 (14.64%) SC Cleared
3 188 (8.68%) Degree
4 63 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 54 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (1.71%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.39%) ISTQB
9 28 (1.29%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.20%) PMP
11 23 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 20 (0.92%) CCNP
13 15 (0.69%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.65%) CISSP
15 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.60%) CBAP
16 11 (0.51%) ACCA
17 10 (0.46%) CCNA
17 10 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (17.04%) Data Quality
2 278 (12.84%) QA
3 124 (5.73%) GDPR
4 71 (3.28%) NIST
5 63 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.43%) SLA
8 27 (1.25%) GxP
9 23 (1.06%) PMO
10 22 (1.02%) IFRS
11 19 (0.88%) HL7
11 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.83%) GRC
13 17 (0.79%) GMP
14 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
15 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.60%) COBIT
17 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 11 (0.51%) NCSC
System Software
1 73 (3.37%) Docker
2 50 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.15%) Firmware
5 16 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
10 5 (0.23%) vSphere
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 (0.092%) Ceph
13 2 (0.092%) KVM
13 2 (0.092%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 110 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.43%) Terraform
3 32 (1.48%) Prometheus
4 31 (1.43%) Grafana
4 31 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
5 29 (1.34%) Ansible
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.42%) FortiGate
7 9 (0.42%) Kibana
7 9 (0.42%) Puppet
8 8 (0.37%) SCCM
9 7 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.28%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
12 4 (0.18%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 285 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 213 (9.84%) Oracle
3 192 (8.87%) SAP
4 112 (5.17%) Databricks
5 85 (3.93%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.68%) Salesforce
7 48 (2.22%) VMware
8 47 (2.17%) Google
9 44 (2.03%) Cisco
9 44 (2.03%) Splunk
10 36 (1.66%) Workday
11 30 (1.39%) Informatica
11 30 (1.39%) MuleSoft
12 29 (1.34%) Sage
13 24 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 21 (0.97%) OpenAI
15 19 (0.88%) IBM
16 16 (0.74%) IFS
17 15 (0.69%) Dell