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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 74 119
Rank change year-on-year +38 +45 +33
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,639 1,029 833
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.19% 3.40% 1.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.10% 3.74% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,575 614 405
10th Percentile £337 £350 £325
25th Percentile £408 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £594 £626 £594
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -9.42% +3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 68 181
10th Percentile £17.12 £17.70 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.24 £41.78 £47.83
Median hourly rate £62.50 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.16% -1.88% -7.69%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £71.50
90th Percentile £83.80 £75.75 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% +1.63% -1.68%

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 43,249 27,546 37,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 91.07% 85.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,953 17,432 23,598
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -4.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,594 1,315 2,564
10th Percentile £14.81 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.71 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.48% -35.31% +17.65%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 +36 2,294 £500 -4.76% 823
UK excluding London +30 1,236 £467 -9.42% 654
London +51 1,097 £517 -6.05% 304
Work from Home +53 782 £484 -3.20% 326
North of England +42 305 £450 - 122
Midlands +34 283 £492 +9.33% 107
South East +1 271 £501 +0.25% 248
West Midlands +33 205 £481 +19.29% 53
North West +24 171 £440 -2.22% 59
East of England +11 134 £500 - 70
South West 0 133 £504 -12.39% 90
Yorkshire +27 120 £460 +10.42% 37
Scotland +39 84 £407 -14.26% 29
East Midlands +28 73 £525 +15.51% 54
Wales +7 25 £455 +71.70% 10
North East -17 17 £425 -22.73% 27
Northern Ireland +11 12 £388 -34.32% 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 88 (3.33%) Confluence
2 63 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (1.93%) SAS
4 46 (1.74%) SharePoint
5 45 (1.71%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.99%) Apache
7 14 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.27%) Appian
10 7 (0.27%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.15%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 173 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.59%) MS Visio
3 33 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 26 (0.99%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 2 (0.076%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.076%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.076%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.076%) Sketch
11 2 (0.076%) Windchill
12 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 126 (4.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.61%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.34%) iTrent
9 8 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.23%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 538 (20.39%) Azure
2 332 (12.58%) AWS
3 260 (9.85%) Power Platform
4 141 (5.34%) Azure DevOps
5 132 (5.00%) GCP
6 120 (4.55%) GitHub
7 89 (3.37%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.61%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 67 (2.54%) Serverless
10 62 (2.35%) Azure Data Factory
11 58 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 52 (1.97%) SaaS
13 48 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
14 39 (1.48%) dbt
15 38 (1.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (1.44%) OCI
16 35 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.25%) SuccessFactors
18 32 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.09%) Firewall
2 67 (2.54%) Network Security
3 47 (1.78%) VLAN
4 42 (1.59%) DNS
5 41 (1.55%) WAN
6 40 (1.52%) VPN
7 33 (1.25%) TCP/IP
8 32 (1.21%) BGP
9 23 (0.87%) OSPF
9 23 (0.87%) SAN
9 23 (0.87%) Wireless
10 22 (0.83%) LAN
10 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
11 20 (0.76%) Ethernet
12 17 (0.64%) DHCP
12 17 (0.64%) Internet
13 16 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.45%) NAS
15 12 (0.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (9.21%) Power BI
2 136 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
3 101 (3.83%) Metadata
4 99 (3.75%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
6 75 (2.84%) Tableau
7 70 (2.65%) Data Lake
8 68 (2.58%) Relational Database
9 36 (1.36%) Big Data
10 33 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 32 (1.21%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.10%) NoSQL
13 28 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.02%) Power Query
14 27 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 25 (0.95%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
17 23 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
18 22 (0.83%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 248 (9.40%) JIRA
2 155 (5.87%) Git
3 99 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.69%) GitLab
5 59 (2.24%) Selenium
6 51 (1.93%) Postman
7 48 (1.82%) JMeter
8 39 (1.48%) JUnit
9 36 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.17%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.64%) Gatling
13 17 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.49%) MLflow
15 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.38%) Maven
17 10 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
General
1 783 (29.67%) Finance
2 779 (29.52%) Social Skills
3 489 (18.53%) Analytical Skills
4 225 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 206 (7.81%) Banking
6 150 (5.68%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (3.41%) Manufacturing
8 74 (2.80%) Aerospace
9 66 (2.50%) Retail
10 57 (2.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 50 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
12 47 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 47 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 45 (1.71%) Legal
14 41 (1.55%) Front Office
15 40 (1.52%) General Ledger
16 39 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
17 38 (1.44%) Marketing
18 35 (1.33%) Billing
18 35 (1.33%) Law
Job Titles
1 468 (17.73%) Analyst
2 272 (10.31%) Senior
3 258 (9.78%) Lead
4 227 (8.60%) Business Analyst
5 200 (7.58%) Consultant
6 196 (7.43%) Data Engineer
7 159 (6.03%) Architect
8 153 (5.80%) Developer
9 130 (4.93%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.22%) Project Manager
11 79 (2.99%) Test Engineer
12 66 (2.50%) Tester
13 55 (2.08%) Network Engineer
14 51 (1.93%) Test Manager
15 49 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
16 48 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
17 47 (1.78%) Senior Analyst
18 45 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 44 (1.67%) Security Engineer
19 44 (1.67%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (5.00%) REST
2 81 (3.07%) JSON
3 71 (2.69%) Kafka
4 53 (2.01%) PySpark
5 52 (1.97%) XML
6 51 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
7 50 (1.89%) Middleware
8 49 (1.86%) OAuth
9 42 (1.59%) Spring
10 40 (1.52%) SOAP
11 39 (1.48%) .NET
12 38 (1.44%) pytest
13 37 (1.40%) RESTful
14 35 (1.33%) Playwright
15 34 (1.29%) Swagger
15 34 (1.29%) Web Services
16 31 (1.17%) Pandas
17 30 (1.14%) Node.js
18 26 (0.99%) OAuth2
18 26 (0.99%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 133 (5.04%) Legacy Systems
2 130 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 128 (4.85%) Data Structures
4 113 (4.28%) Cloud Native
4 113 (4.28%) Product Ownership
5 86 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 66 (2.50%) Management Information System
7 56 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
9 41 (1.55%) Life Science
10 40 (1.52%) SCADA
11 35 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 33 (1.25%) AI Agents
12 33 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
13 32 (1.21%) NHS
13 32 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 31 (1.17%) Operational Technology
14 31 (1.17%) Replication
15 28 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 139 (5.27%) Windows
2 98 (3.71%) Linux
3 31 (1.17%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.14%) Unix
5 17 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.42%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.076%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.076%) HPUX
12 2 (0.076%) Solaris
12 2 (0.076%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.076%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 711 (26.94%) Migration
2 527 (19.97%) Agile
3 471 (17.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 446 (16.90%) Problem-Solving
5 444 (16.82%) CI/CD
5 444 (16.82%) Data Validation
6 416 (15.76%) User Acceptance Testing
7 413 (15.65%) Data Migration
8 410 (15.54%) Data Modelling
9 407 (15.42%) Analytics
10 335 (12.69%) AI
11 321 (12.16%) Test Automation
12 320 (12.13%) DevOps
12 320 (12.13%) ETL
13 305 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
14 284 (10.76%) Business Intelligence
15 279 (10.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 250 (9.47%) Data Analysis
17 243 (9.21%) Data Governance
18 237 (8.98%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 622 (23.57%) SQL
2 467 (17.70%) Python
3 122 (4.62%) Java
4 68 (2.58%) PowerShell
5 55 (2.08%) C#
6 47 (1.78%) Bash
7 42 (1.59%) C++
8 40 (1.52%) JavaScript
9 39 (1.48%) C
10 33 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 33 (1.25%) TypeScript
11 29 (1.10%) Apex Code
12 27 (1.02%) Bicep
13 26 (0.99%) PL/SQL
14 23 (0.87%) R
15 21 (0.80%) Ada
15 21 (0.80%) Scala
16 18 (0.68%) MATLAB
16 18 (0.68%) VBA
17 17 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 474 (17.96%) Security Cleared
2 350 (13.26%) SC Cleared
3 189 (7.16%) Degree
4 66 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (1.93%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.17%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.14%) CCNP
10 26 (0.99%) PMP
11 23 (0.87%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.83%) CISSP
13 20 (0.76%) ACCA
14 19 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 18 (0.68%) CIMA
15 18 (0.68%) Master's Degree
16 16 (0.61%) CCNA
17 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
18 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
19 13 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (17.24%) Data Quality
2 318 (12.05%) QA
3 122 (4.62%) GDPR
4 62 (2.35%) NIST
5 56 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.40%) SLA
8 34 (1.29%) PMO
9 32 (1.21%) GxP
10 24 (0.91%) IFRS
11 17 (0.64%) Def Stans
11 17 (0.64%) GRC
12 16 (0.61%) GMP
12 16 (0.61%) HL7
12 16 (0.61%) IFRS 17
12 16 (0.61%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.49%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
14 12 (0.45%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (4.17%) Docker
2 75 (2.84%) Active Directory
3 68 (2.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.64%) Firmware
7 17 (0.64%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.61%) vSphere
9 11 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.23%) KVM
10 6 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.076%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.076%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.076%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.038%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 154 (5.84%) Kubernetes
2 124 (4.70%) Terraform
3 55 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 52 (1.97%) Ansible
5 50 (1.89%) Grafana
6 28 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.87%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.30%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) Kibana
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) Puppet
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) HP ALM
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 354 (13.41%) Microsoft
2 244 (9.25%) SAP
3 224 (8.49%) Oracle
4 118 (4.47%) Databricks
5 90 (3.41%) Salesforce
6 81 (3.07%) ServiceNow
6 81 (3.07%) VMware
7 60 (2.27%) Cisco
8 46 (1.74%) Google
9 41 (1.55%) Splunk
10 39 (1.48%) Workday
11 34 (1.29%) Informatica
12 32 (1.21%) Palo Alto
13 29 (1.10%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.02%) Fortinet
14 27 (1.02%) Sage
15 24 (0.91%) IBM
16 21 (0.80%) Juniper
16 21 (0.80%) Zscaler
17 20 (0.76%) IFS