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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 79 122
Rank change year-on-year +37 +43 +28
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,259 906 796
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.69% 3.08% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.57% 3.39% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,360 533 390
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £530 £503
Median % change year-on-year -8.49% +5.42% -8.59%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.71% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 57 165
10th Percentile £16.96 £21.09 £25.26
25th Percentile £32.32 £37.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -0.08%

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 40,590 26,723 36,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.97% 86.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,485 17,182 23,610
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,403 1,090 2,438
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.39 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.21 £15.96
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.30 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +49.50% -21.50% +1.11%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.43 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.96% -32.19% +7.14%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 1,973 £492 -8.89% 857
UK excluding London +26 1,046 £452 -11.71% 640
London +58 961 £500 -9.05% 305
Work from Home +54 670 £484 -3.20% 745
North of England +41 273 £425 -5.56% 139
Midlands +25 234 £481 +1.29% 89
South East -9 224 £500 - 187
West Midlands +24 169 £475 - 52
North West +34 166 £418 -4.46% 88
East of England +9 116 £500 +11.11% 86
South West -6 110 £475 -17.39% 103
Yorkshire +17 97 £451 +8.03% 38
Scotland +44 67 £400 -12.33% 28
East Midlands +10 61 £525 +4.06% 37
Wales +7 21 £455 +193.55% 19
North East -13 13 £450 -28.00% 14
Northern Ireland +10 12 £400 -32.20% 10

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 89 (3.94%) Confluence
2 41 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
2 41 (1.81%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.68%) SAS
4 20 (0.89%) Apache
4 20 (0.89%) SharePoint
5 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
7 9 (0.40%) Appian
7 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.18%) CMS
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 150 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.31%) CATIA
6 7 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.089%) Simulink
8 2 (0.089%) Sketch
9 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.044%) UXPin
9 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 107 (4.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.59%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.44%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.22%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 440 (19.48%) Azure
2 284 (12.57%) AWS
3 227 (10.05%) Power Platform
4 112 (4.96%) Azure DevOps
5 111 (4.91%) GCP
6 96 (4.25%) GitHub
7 66 (2.92%) Snowflake
8 64 (2.83%) Serverless
9 57 (2.52%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 56 (2.48%) Azure Data Factory
10 56 (2.48%) SaaS
11 52 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
12 49 (2.17%) OCI
13 38 (1.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 38 (1.68%) Microsoft 365
14 35 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
15 31 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 31 (1.37%) dbt
16 25 (1.11%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 87 (3.85%) Firewall
2 58 (2.57%) Network Security
3 41 (1.81%) VLAN
4 35 (1.55%) TCP/IP
5 33 (1.46%) DNS
6 31 (1.37%) VPN
7 26 (1.15%) WAN
8 23 (1.02%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.80%) LAN
10 16 (0.71%) SAN
10 16 (0.71%) Wireless
11 14 (0.62%) BGP
11 14 (0.62%) OSPF
11 14 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.58%) HTTP
13 12 (0.53%) NAS
13 12 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
14 11 (0.49%) DHCP
15 10 (0.44%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (9.52%) Power BI
2 117 (5.18%) Data Warehouse
3 97 (4.29%) Metadata
4 80 (3.54%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.36%) Tableau
6 62 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
7 60 (2.66%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.12%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.42%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.28%) Big Data
11 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.15%) Delta Lake
13 25 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
14 24 (1.06%) Power Query
15 23 (1.02%) Oracle Database
15 23 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 22 (0.97%) BigQuery
17 21 (0.93%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 20 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
18 20 (0.89%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 202 (8.94%) JIRA
2 126 (5.58%) Git
3 87 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.52%) Selenium
5 54 (2.39%) GitLab
6 50 (2.21%) Postman
7 44 (1.95%) JMeter
8 32 (1.42%) JUnit
9 28 (1.24%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.11%) WebDriver
11 16 (0.71%) MLflow
12 15 (0.66%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.66%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.62%) Rational Rhapsody
14 12 (0.53%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.53%) Gatling
14 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.44%) Gradle
15 10 (0.44%) Maven
General
1 698 (30.90%) Social Skills
2 668 (29.57%) Finance
3 421 (18.64%) Analytical Skills
4 190 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 185 (8.19%) Banking
6 122 (5.40%) Documentation Skills
7 77 (3.41%) Manufacturing
8 60 (2.66%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (2.12%) Pharmaceutical
9 48 (2.12%) Retail
10 44 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
11 39 (1.73%) Legal
12 36 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
13 34 (1.51%) Marketing
14 32 (1.42%) Front Office
14 32 (1.42%) General Ledger
14 32 (1.42%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.37%) Military
16 29 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 424 (18.77%) Analyst
2 234 (10.36%) Lead
3 201 (8.90%) Senior
4 188 (8.32%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.84%) Data Engineer
6 161 (7.13%) Consultant
7 137 (6.06%) Architect
8 122 (5.40%) Developer
9 117 (5.18%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.76%) Project Manager
11 57 (2.52%) Tester
12 53 (2.35%) Test Engineer
13 49 (2.17%) Software Engineer
14 47 (2.08%) Senior Analyst
15 45 (1.99%) Network Engineer
16 41 (1.81%) Technical Analyst
16 41 (1.81%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.77%) Security Engineer
17 40 (1.77%) Systems Engineer
18 37 (1.64%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.27%) REST
2 79 (3.50%) JSON
3 70 (3.10%) Kafka
4 55 (2.43%) Oracle Fusion
5 54 (2.39%) Middleware
6 52 (2.30%) OAuth
7 47 (2.08%) PySpark
8 43 (1.90%) XML
9 39 (1.73%) Swagger
10 38 (1.68%) SOAP
11 36 (1.59%) .NET
12 35 (1.55%) RESTful
13 33 (1.46%) Node.js
14 31 (1.37%) Pandas
14 31 (1.37%) Web Services
15 30 (1.33%) Playwright
16 28 (1.24%) PyTorch
16 28 (1.24%) Spring
17 27 (1.20%) OAuth2
18 26 (1.15%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 126 (5.58%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.31%) Data Structures
3 117 (5.18%) Onboarding
4 96 (4.25%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.59%) Cloud Native
6 75 (3.32%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.52%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 30 (1.33%) Operational Technology
12 29 (1.28%) Replication
13 28 (1.24%) SCADA
14 27 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.20%) NHS
14 27 (1.20%) Reference Data
15 26 (1.15%) Life Science
15 26 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 25 (1.11%) Public Cloud
17 23 (1.02%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 108 (4.78%) Windows
2 93 (4.12%) Linux
3 33 (1.46%) Unix
4 17 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.49%) Android
6 9 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.31%) VMS
8 5 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.22%) zOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.044%) Debian
11 1 (0.044%) HPUX
11 1 (0.044%) pSOS
11 1 (0.044%) Solaris
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 622 (27.53%) Migration
2 448 (19.83%) Agile
3 422 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
4 383 (16.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 381 (16.87%) Data Validation
6 373 (16.51%) Data Migration
7 358 (15.85%) CI/CD
8 352 (15.58%) Data Modelling
9 332 (14.70%) Analytics
10 331 (14.65%) User Acceptance Testing
11 299 (13.24%) ETL
12 269 (11.91%) DevOps
13 267 (11.82%) Test Automation
14 260 (11.51%) Business Intelligence
15 243 (10.76%) Continuous Improvement
16 241 (10.67%) AI
17 232 (10.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 223 (9.87%) Data Governance
19 201 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
20 200 (8.85%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 537 (23.77%) SQL
2 405 (17.93%) Python
3 109 (4.83%) Java
4 61 (2.70%) C#
5 50 (2.21%) C++
6 48 (2.12%) PowerShell
7 46 (2.04%) C
8 44 (1.95%) Bash
8 44 (1.95%) JavaScript
9 32 (1.42%) TypeScript
10 31 (1.37%) Bicep
11 28 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 27 (1.20%) R
13 26 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 20 (0.89%) Ada
14 20 (0.89%) Apex Code
14 20 (0.89%) Scala
15 15 (0.66%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.53%) VBA
17 11 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 414 (18.33%) Security Cleared
2 300 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 179 (7.92%) Degree
4 55 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (1.59%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.51%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.24%) Master's Degree
9 28 (1.24%) PMP
10 24 (1.06%) CCNP
11 18 (0.80%) ISTQB
12 17 (0.75%) CISSP
13 16 (0.71%) ACCA
14 15 (0.66%) CBAP
15 14 (0.62%) CIMA
16 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
16 13 (0.58%) Azure Certification
16 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
17 12 (0.53%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 395 (17.49%) Data Quality
2 290 (12.84%) QA
3 117 (5.18%) GDPR
4 69 (3.05%) NIST
5 60 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.33%) SLA
8 27 (1.20%) GxP
9 25 (1.11%) IFRS
9 25 (1.11%) PMO
10 20 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.80%) GMP
11 18 (0.80%) GRC
11 18 (0.80%) HL7
12 17 (0.75%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.62%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.62%) MiFID
14 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 82 (3.63%) Docker
2 53 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 47 (2.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.02%) Firmware
5 20 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.66%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.53%) vSphere
9 11 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.089%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.089%) Ceph
13 2 (0.089%) KVM
13 2 (0.089%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.089%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 123 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 99 (4.38%) Terraform
3 44 (1.95%) Prometheus
4 42 (1.86%) Grafana
5 39 (1.73%) Ansible
6 30 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.53%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 10 (0.44%) Puppet
11 9 (0.40%) SCCM
12 7 (0.31%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.27%) Nessus
13 6 (0.27%) vMotion
14 5 (0.22%) CASB
15 4 (0.18%) Argo
15 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
15 4 (0.18%) Istio
15 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 311 (13.77%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.68%) SAP
3 192 (8.50%) Oracle
4 107 (4.74%) Databricks
5 72 (3.19%) ServiceNow
6 71 (3.14%) Salesforce
7 57 (2.52%) VMware
8 50 (2.21%) Cisco
9 48 (2.12%) Google
10 42 (1.86%) Splunk
11 32 (1.42%) Informatica
12 27 (1.20%) MuleSoft
12 27 (1.20%) Palo Alto
12 27 (1.20%) Sage
13 26 (1.15%) Workday
14 25 (1.11%) IBM
15 22 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.93%) IFS
17 20 (0.89%) OpenAI
18 18 (0.80%) Fortinet