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 31 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 69 128
Rank change year-on-year +33 +59 +26
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,806 1,156 752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.28% 3.52% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.22% 3.90% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,687 676 379
10th Percentile £341 £356 £340
25th Percentile £413 £418 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £495
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +6.06% -10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £585
90th Percentile £700 £700 £668
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £525 £463
% change year-on-year -11.43% +13.51% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 84 127
10th Percentile £17.54 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £27.07 £41.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £61.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.20% -5.77% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.80 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +3.96%

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 45,107 29,668 33,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.46% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,893 18,635 21,816
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £736 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,744 1,629 1,969
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.66 £17.35 £17.72
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £40.33
% change year-on-year +83.17% -40.48% +0.81%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 2,427 £500 -4.76% 1,168
UK excluding London +27 1,318 £465 -11.43% 813
London +45 1,163 £523 -0.48% 471
Work from Home +43 804 £496 -0.90% 414
South East +2 320 £518 +3.50% 262
Midlands +33 311 £475 +5.56% 125
North of England +43 305 £450 -9.09% 164
West Midlands +28 227 £472 +7.77% 73
North West +22 162 £450 -21.40% 94
East of England 0 138 £488 -2.50% 108
Yorkshire +33 131 £450 +3.51% 35
South West -11 124 £524 -8.91% 111
Scotland +45 96 £425 -10.53% 47
East Midlands +22 79 £509 +10.89% 52
Wales 0 28 £450 +20.00% 15
North East -36 16 £425 -15.00% 37
Northern Ireland +5 10 £380 -35.59% 3

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 80 (2.85%) Confluence
2 67 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.00%) SAS
4 49 (1.75%) SharePoint
5 40 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 32 (1.14%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.29%) ArcGIS
10 8 (0.29%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
12 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 186 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.21%) Simulink
9 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.11%) Navisworks
10 3 (0.11%) Revit
11 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.071%) ProjectWise
11 2 (0.071%) Sketch
11 2 (0.071%) Windchill
12 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 122 (4.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
3 18 (0.64%) Workday HCM
4 13 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.46%) Teamcenter
5 12 (0.43%) iTrent
6 11 (0.39%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.36%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.32%) Sage X3
8 9 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 601 (21.42%) Azure
2 331 (11.80%) AWS
3 293 (10.44%) Power Platform
4 150 (5.35%) Azure DevOps
5 148 (5.27%) GCP
6 126 (4.49%) GitHub
7 101 (3.60%) Snowflake
8 74 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
9 71 (2.53%) Azure Data Factory
10 70 (2.49%) Entra ID
11 66 (2.35%) Serverless
12 59 (2.10%) Amazon S3
13 52 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (1.85%) SaaS
14 44 (1.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 44 (1.57%) OCI
15 43 (1.53%) dbt
16 41 (1.46%) SuccessFactors
17 33 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 118 (4.21%) Firewall
2 70 (2.49%) Network Security
3 60 (2.14%) DNS
4 54 (1.92%) VLAN
5 53 (1.89%) VPN
6 42 (1.50%) TCP/IP
7 41 (1.46%) WAN
8 36 (1.28%) BGP
9 28 (1.00%) DHCP
10 27 (0.96%) OSPF
11 25 (0.89%) LAN
12 23 (0.82%) Internet
13 22 (0.78%) SD-WAN
13 22 (0.78%) Wireless
14 21 (0.75%) SAN
15 18 (0.64%) Ethernet
16 16 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
17 15 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 13 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
19 12 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (9.69%) Power BI
2 168 (5.99%) Data Warehouse
3 118 (4.21%) Metadata
4 97 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 89 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
6 88 (3.14%) Data Lake
7 81 (2.89%) Relational Database
8 79 (2.82%) Tableau
9 39 (1.39%) Big Data
10 34 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
11 33 (1.18%) Oracle Database
11 33 (1.18%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 32 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 30 (1.07%) BigQuery
14 29 (1.03%) Delta Lake
15 28 (1.00%) NoSQL
15 28 (1.00%) Power Query
16 27 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
17 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
18 23 (0.82%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 247 (8.80%) JIRA
2 171 (6.09%) Git
3 95 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 74 (2.64%) GitLab
5 60 (2.14%) Selenium
6 49 (1.75%) JMeter
7 46 (1.64%) Postman
8 40 (1.43%) JUnit
9 38 (1.35%) Cucumber
10 32 (1.14%) WebDriver
11 22 (0.78%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.57%) Gatling
14 14 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
16 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 11 (0.39%) MLflow
16 11 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 811 (28.90%) Finance
2 805 (28.69%) Social Skills
3 534 (19.03%) Analytical Skills
4 236 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 200 (7.13%) Banking
6 151 (5.38%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (3.78%) Manufacturing
8 90 (3.21%) Retail
9 69 (2.46%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.21%) Pharmaceutical
11 59 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 54 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
12 54 (1.92%) Telecoms
13 44 (1.57%) Automotive
14 43 (1.53%) Legal
15 41 (1.46%) Front Office
15 41 (1.46%) Marketing
16 40 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
17 37 (1.32%) Law
18 36 (1.28%) Billing
Job Titles
1 501 (17.85%) Analyst
2 290 (10.33%) Senior
3 278 (9.91%) Lead
4 237 (8.45%) Business Analyst
5 232 (8.27%) Data Engineer
6 209 (7.45%) Consultant
7 165 (5.88%) Developer
8 149 (5.31%) Architect
9 140 (4.99%) Data Analyst
10 99 (3.53%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.89%) Tester
12 79 (2.82%) Project Manager
13 66 (2.35%) Network Engineer
14 58 (2.07%) Systems Engineer
15 53 (1.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 53 (1.89%) Technical Analyst
16 50 (1.78%) Senior Data Engineer
17 49 (1.75%) Administrator
18 44 (1.57%) Migration Engineer
18 44 (1.57%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (5.10%) REST
2 82 (2.92%) JSON
3 71 (2.53%) Kafka
3 71 (2.53%) PySpark
4 62 (2.21%) XML
5 60 (2.14%) Middleware
6 51 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
7 50 (1.78%) .NET
8 45 (1.60%) Spring
9 44 (1.57%) pytest
10 41 (1.46%) Playwright
10 41 (1.46%) SOAP
11 38 (1.35%) Web Services
12 37 (1.32%) OAuth
13 33 (1.18%) Pandas
14 30 (1.07%) RESTful
15 29 (1.03%) Node.js
16 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
17 25 (0.89%) WireMock
18 24 (0.86%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 154 (5.49%) Data Structures
2 153 (5.45%) Onboarding
3 134 (4.78%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (4.42%) Cloud Native
5 115 (4.10%) Product Ownership
6 82 (2.92%) Data Centre
7 78 (2.78%) Management Information System
8 55 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.50%) AI Agents
10 42 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
10 42 (1.50%) Life Science
11 41 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 40 (1.43%) SCADA
13 38 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
14 34 (1.21%) NHS
15 33 (1.18%) Reference Data
16 32 (1.14%) Operational Technology
16 32 (1.14%) Virtual Team
17 30 (1.07%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 166 (5.92%) Windows
2 107 (3.81%) Linux
3 56 (2.00%) Windows Server
4 41 (1.46%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.39%) Android
6 11 (0.39%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.36%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.32%) VMS
9 6 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.14%) AIX
11 4 (0.14%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.071%) HPUX
13 2 (0.071%) Solaris
13 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.071%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 767 (27.33%) Migration
2 549 (19.57%) Agile
3 529 (18.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 480 (17.11%) CI/CD
5 478 (17.03%) Analytics
6 461 (16.43%) Data Migration
7 458 (16.32%) Data Modelling
7 458 (16.32%) User Acceptance Testing
8 453 (16.14%) Data Validation
9 440 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
10 366 (13.04%) AI
11 353 (12.58%) Continuous Improvement
12 343 (12.22%) DevOps
13 340 (12.12%) Test Automation
14 339 (12.08%) ETL
15 311 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
15 311 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 297 (10.58%) Data Pipeline
17 288 (10.26%) Data Governance
18 273 (9.73%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 685 (24.41%) SQL
2 520 (18.53%) Python
3 124 (4.42%) Java
4 77 (2.74%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.17%) C#
6 58 (2.07%) Bash
7 43 (1.53%) JavaScript
8 34 (1.21%) C++
8 34 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 34 (1.21%) TypeScript
9 30 (1.07%) Apex Code
10 27 (0.96%) Bicep
11 26 (0.93%) PL/SQL
12 25 (0.89%) C
13 23 (0.82%) R
13 23 (0.82%) VBA
14 18 (0.64%) T-SQL
15 16 (0.57%) MATLAB
16 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
17 13 (0.46%) Ada
Qualifications
1 506 (18.03%) Security Cleared
2 368 (13.11%) SC Cleared
3 186 (6.63%) Degree
4 64 (2.28%) DV Cleared
5 61 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 46 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.32%) CCNP
9 24 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 23 (0.82%) PMI Certification
11 22 (0.78%) ACCA
11 22 (0.78%) PMP
12 21 (0.75%) CIMA
13 20 (0.71%) Azure Certification
14 18 (0.64%) CCNA
14 18 (0.64%) CISSP
14 18 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
15 14 (0.50%) AWS Certification
15 14 (0.50%) Master's Degree
16 12 (0.43%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (18.82%) Data Quality
2 350 (12.47%) QA
3 126 (4.49%) GDPR
4 54 (1.92%) NIST
5 49 (1.75%) Accessibility
6 47 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 41 (1.46%) SLA
8 38 (1.35%) GxP
9 37 (1.32%) PMO
10 20 (0.71%) GRC
11 19 (0.68%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 18 (0.64%) GMP
13 15 (0.53%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.53%) NCSC
14 14 (0.50%) HL7
14 14 (0.50%) WCAG
15 13 (0.46%) IFRS
16 12 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.43%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 115 (4.10%) Docker
2 95 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 77 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.71%) Firmware
7 20 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.68%) vSphere
9 14 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.071%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.036%) etcd
13 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 157 (5.60%) Kubernetes
2 134 (4.78%) Terraform
3 60 (2.14%) Ansible
4 54 (1.92%) Grafana
5 53 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.46%) SCCM
10 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.29%) VxRail
13 5 (0.18%) Argo
13 5 (0.18%) CASB
13 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (0.18%) Istio
13 5 (0.18%) systemd
13 5 (0.18%) vRealize
14 4 (0.14%) Kibana
14 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 411 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 255 (9.09%) SAP
3 249 (8.87%) Oracle
4 156 (5.56%) Databricks
5 93 (3.31%) Salesforce
6 91 (3.24%) VMware
7 70 (2.49%) ServiceNow
8 64 (2.28%) Cisco
9 53 (1.89%) Google
10 51 (1.82%) Workday
11 42 (1.50%) Informatica
12 35 (1.25%) Splunk
13 32 (1.14%) Fortinet
13 32 (1.14%) IBM
13 32 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 30 (1.07%) Juniper
14 30 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 28 (1.00%) Zscaler
16 25 (0.89%) Sage
17 20 (0.71%) IFS