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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 94 135
Rank change year-on-year +50 +41 -1
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,074 775 759
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.64% 2.67% 1.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.42% 2.95% 1.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,276 459 388
10th Percentile £350 £363 £324
25th Percentile £400 £419 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% -1.18% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £623
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -6.86% +2.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 45 144
10th Percentile £22.25 £25.65 £18.76
25th Percentile £42.78 £47.50 £47.96
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% +0.83% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.15 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +7.44% - -3.20%

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 38,255 26,278 38,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.49% 86.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,265 17,064 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 966 2,352
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +47 1,800 £490 -9.26% 872
UK excluding London +43 981 £475 -6.86% 714
London +65 842 £500 -9.09% 268
Work from Home +61 630 £492 -4.00% 341
North of England +35 242 £433 -6.49% 152
South East +1 204 £500 - 215
Midlands +36 198 £490 +3.16% 118
West Midlands +30 155 £490 +0.51% 77
North West +26 153 £416 -6.25% 74
South West +7 134 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +20 125 £489 +8.63% 96
Yorkshire +8 80 £455 +8.33% 51
Scotland +43 52 £404 -10.83% 42
East Midlands -1 40 £513 +39.27% 41
Northern Ireland +20 23 £400 -27.27% 5
Wales +7 18 £460 - 16
North East -5 12 £450 -37.93% 27

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 82 (3.95%) Confluence
2 42 (2.03%) SAS
3 41 (1.98%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (1.01%) Apache
6 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
7 14 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.43%) Appian
8 9 (0.43%) ArcGIS
9 8 (0.39%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 7 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.24%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.24%) CMS
12 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) CICS
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.096%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.096%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 118 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.06%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.24%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.096%) Sketch
12 1 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.048%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.048%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.048%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.048%) Simulink
12 1 (0.048%) UXPin
12 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 94 (4.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.74%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
3 14 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 13 (0.63%) Workday HCM
5 11 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
5 11 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
6 10 (0.48%) SAP FI
7 9 (0.43%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.39%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 8 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.39%) SAP MM
9 7 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.34%) iTrent
9 7 (0.34%) SAP ERP
9 7 (0.34%) Teamcenter
10 6 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 488 (23.53%) Azure
2 283 (13.65%) AWS
3 180 (8.68%) Power Platform
4 150 (7.23%) Azure DevOps
5 101 (4.87%) GitHub
6 95 (4.58%) GCP
7 63 (3.04%) Amazon S3
7 63 (3.04%) Serverless
8 62 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
9 59 (2.84%) Entra ID
10 58 (2.80%) Azure Data Factory
11 55 (2.65%) SaaS
12 48 (2.31%) OCI
13 46 (2.22%) Snowflake
14 39 (1.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
18 28 (1.35%) OpenShift
19 27 (1.30%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 78 (3.76%) Firewall
2 52 (2.51%) Network Security
3 36 (1.74%) TCP/IP
4 28 (1.35%) DNS
5 26 (1.25%) VLAN
6 24 (1.16%) Ethernet
6 24 (1.16%) VPN
7 21 (1.01%) HTTP
8 19 (0.92%) WAN
9 15 (0.72%) SAN
10 13 (0.63%) NAS
11 11 (0.53%) BGP
11 11 (0.53%) LAN
11 11 (0.53%) OSPF
11 11 (0.53%) Wireless
12 10 (0.48%) SD-WAN
13 9 (0.43%) Internet
13 9 (0.43%) SSL
14 8 (0.39%) Cisco ISE
14 8 (0.39%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 168 (8.10%) Power BI
2 108 (5.21%) Metadata
3 101 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 70 (3.38%) SQL Server
5 59 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (2.84%) Tableau
6 47 (2.27%) Data Lake
7 35 (1.69%) Delta Lake
8 31 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
9 30 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 30 (1.45%) Relational Database
10 29 (1.40%) Big Data
11 28 (1.35%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 27 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (1.21%) NoSQL
13 25 (1.21%) Oracle Database
14 23 (1.11%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.96%) Power Query
16 19 (0.92%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 192 (9.26%) JIRA
2 127 (6.12%) Git
3 92 (4.44%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.23%) Selenium
5 56 (2.70%) Postman
6 55 (2.65%) GitLab
7 37 (1.78%) JUnit
8 36 (1.74%) Cucumber
9 35 (1.69%) JMeter
10 30 (1.45%) Rational DOORS
11 28 (1.35%) Oracle APEX
12 22 (1.06%) WebDriver
13 20 (0.96%) MLflow
14 19 (0.92%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.68%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.68%) REST Assured
16 13 (0.63%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.63%) SpecFlow
16 13 (0.63%) TestRail
17 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 700 (33.75%) Social Skills
2 601 (28.98%) Finance
3 402 (19.38%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 172 (8.29%) Banking
6 114 (5.50%) Documentation Skills
7 64 (3.09%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.75%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
11 40 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
12 34 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
13 33 (1.59%) Electronics
13 33 (1.59%) Marketing
14 32 (1.54%) Retail
14 32 (1.54%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.49%) Legal
16 30 (1.45%) Billing
17 28 (1.35%) Military
18 27 (1.30%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 386 (18.61%) Analyst
2 211 (10.17%) Senior
3 207 (9.98%) Lead
4 177 (8.53%) Business Analyst
5 145 (6.99%) Data Engineer
6 144 (6.94%) Consultant
7 139 (6.70%) Developer
8 131 (6.32%) Architect
9 94 (4.53%) Data Analyst
10 78 (3.76%) Project Manager
11 63 (3.04%) Tester
12 50 (2.41%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.22%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.07%) Test Engineer
15 42 (2.03%) SAP Consultant
15 42 (2.03%) Test Analyst
16 41 (1.98%) Senior Developer
17 39 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
17 39 (1.88%) Test Manager
18 35 (1.69%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (6.61%) REST
2 105 (5.06%) JSON
3 61 (2.94%) Oracle Fusion
3 61 (2.94%) XML
4 58 (2.80%) Kafka
5 54 (2.60%) Middleware
6 53 (2.56%) OAuth
7 50 (2.41%) PySpark
8 44 (2.12%) SOAP
9 42 (2.03%) Node.js
10 39 (1.88%) .NET
11 35 (1.69%) Playwright
12 32 (1.54%) pytest
12 32 (1.54%) Swagger
13 31 (1.49%) RESTful
14 30 (1.45%) PyTorch
14 30 (1.45%) Web Services
15 27 (1.30%) SAML
16 26 (1.25%) TensorFlow
17 25 (1.21%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 119 (5.74%) Legacy Systems
2 106 (5.11%) Data Structures
3 89 (4.29%) Onboarding
4 85 (4.10%) Product Ownership
5 63 (3.04%) Cloud Native
6 57 (2.75%) Management Information System
7 50 (2.41%) Data Centre
8 35 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
9 34 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
10 28 (1.35%) Replication
11 25 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 24 (1.16%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.16%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.11%) Life Science
14 22 (1.06%) Operational Technology
14 22 (1.06%) Reference Data
15 21 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
15 21 (1.01%) NHS
16 20 (0.96%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 104 (5.01%) Windows
2 88 (4.24%) Linux
3 31 (1.49%) Unix
4 12 (0.58%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.53%) Android
6 6 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.29%) zOS
7 5 (0.24%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.14%) VMS
10 2 (0.096%) Debian
10 2 (0.096%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.048%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.048%) pSOS
11 1 (0.048%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.048%) Solaris
11 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 509 (24.54%) Migration
2 460 (22.18%) Agile
3 423 (20.40%) Problem-Solving
4 363 (17.50%) CI/CD
5 358 (17.26%) Stakeholder Management
6 352 (16.97%) Data Validation
7 322 (15.53%) Analytics
8 305 (14.71%) DevOps
9 298 (14.37%) Data Migration
10 294 (14.18%) Data Modelling
11 274 (13.21%) ETL
12 264 (12.73%) User Acceptance Testing
13 262 (12.63%) Test Automation
14 237 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
15 226 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 213 (10.27%) AI
16 213 (10.27%) Business Intelligence
17 210 (10.13%) Data Governance
18 184 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
19 170 (8.20%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 512 (24.69%) SQL
2 387 (18.66%) Python
3 102 (4.92%) Java
4 91 (4.39%) JavaScript
5 76 (3.66%) C#
6 53 (2.56%) PL/SQL
7 52 (2.51%) PowerShell
8 50 (2.41%) C++
9 42 (2.03%) C
10 38 (1.83%) Bash
11 36 (1.74%) TypeScript
12 27 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.25%) Bicep
13 26 (1.25%) R
14 21 (1.01%) Ada
15 19 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 17 (0.82%) Scala
17 16 (0.77%) Groovy
18 13 (0.63%) VBA
19 11 (0.53%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 438 (21.12%) Security Cleared
2 316 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 191 (9.21%) Degree
4 65 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 55 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (2.03%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.59%) Master's Degree
8 31 (1.49%) ISTQB
9 29 (1.40%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.30%) PMP
11 18 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (0.77%) CISSP
13 15 (0.72%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.72%) CCNP
13 15 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (0.63%) CBAP
15 12 (0.58%) Azure Certification
16 10 (0.48%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
17 9 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (16.73%) Data Quality
2 269 (12.97%) QA
3 117 (5.64%) GDPR
4 79 (3.81%) NIST
5 69 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.54%) Accessibility
7 31 (1.49%) SLA
8 24 (1.16%) GxP
9 22 (1.06%) IFRS
10 19 (0.92%) IFRS 17
10 19 (0.92%) PMO
11 18 (0.87%) GRC
12 17 (0.82%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.77%) HL7
14 15 (0.72%) GMP
15 14 (0.68%) NCSC
15 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
16 13 (0.63%) COBIT
16 13 (0.63%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 80 (3.86%) Docker
2 46 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.21%) Firmware
5 11 (0.53%) Hyper-V
5 11 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (0.53%) VMware NSX
6 9 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.34%) vSphere
9 5 (0.24%) NFS
10 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.096%) Ceph
12 2 (0.096%) KVM
12 2 (0.096%) Lustre
12 2 (0.096%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.096%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.096%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.096%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 118 (5.69%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.48%) Terraform
3 32 (1.54%) Grafana
4 31 (1.49%) Prometheus
4 31 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
5 30 (1.45%) Ansible
6 15 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (0.53%) Kibana
7 11 (0.53%) Puppet
8 8 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.34%) SCCM
10 6 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.29%) Nessus
11 5 (0.24%) CASB
11 5 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 270 (13.02%) Microsoft
2 213 (10.27%) Oracle
3 174 (8.39%) SAP
4 109 (5.26%) Databricks
5 87 (4.19%) ServiceNow
6 51 (2.46%) Salesforce
7 50 (2.41%) Google
8 45 (2.17%) VMware
9 44 (2.12%) Splunk
10 38 (1.83%) Cisco
11 34 (1.64%) Workday
12 32 (1.54%) MuleSoft
13 31 (1.49%) Informatica
14 28 (1.35%) Sage
15 22 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.01%) CyberArk
17 20 (0.96%) OpenAI
18 19 (0.92%) IBM
19 14 (0.68%) Dell
20 13 (0.63%) Bloomberg