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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 76 121
Rank change year-on-year +33 +45 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,256 902 793
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 3.09% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.57% 3.39% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,359 528 389
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.81% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £701 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -11.92% +2.75% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 60 165
10th Percentile £16.96 £18.05 £25.26
25th Percentile £32.32 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -5.11%
75th Percentile £72.94 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.80% -0.04%

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 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +34 1,966 £492 -8.89% 865
UK excluding London +25 1,045 £452 -11.92% 646
London +58 957 £500 -9.09% 307
Work from Home +59 668 £481 -3.75% 447
North of England +42 270 £430 -4.44% 134
Midlands +26 233 £481 +1.29% 93
South East -11 221 £500 - 193
West Midlands +26 169 £475 - 56
North West +29 163 £420 -4.00% 80
East of England +7 116 £500 +11.11% 91
South West -3 113 £475 -17.39% 100
Yorkshire +19 97 £451 +8.03% 41
Scotland +43 69 £400 -12.33% 29
East Midlands +7 60 £525 +4.06% 37
Wales +9 22 £450 +190.32% 20
North East -14 13 £450 -28.00% 14
Northern Ireland +7 12 £400 -32.20% 8

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 91 (4.03%) Confluence
2 41 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.77%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.68%) SAS
5 20 (0.89%) SharePoint
6 19 (0.84%) Apache
7 10 (0.44%) ArcGIS
7 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.40%) Appian
8 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.22%) 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%) Documentum
12 2 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 149 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.31%) CATIA
8 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.13%) Notion
9 3 (0.13%) Simulink
10 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Sketch
11 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.044%) UXPin
11 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.51%) 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
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) SAP ERP
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
1 433 (19.19%) Azure
2 280 (12.41%) AWS
3 223 (9.88%) Power Platform
4 110 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
5 109 (4.83%) GCP
6 94 (4.17%) GitHub
7 66 (2.93%) Snowflake
8 62 (2.75%) Serverless
9 58 (2.57%) SaaS
10 56 (2.48%) Amazon S3
11 55 (2.44%) Azure Data Factory
11 55 (2.44%) Entra ID
12 51 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
13 47 (2.08%) OCI
14 37 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 35 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
16 34 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
17 31 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (1.37%) dbt
18 25 (1.11%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.90%) Firewall
2 59 (2.62%) Network Security
3 42 (1.86%) VLAN
4 34 (1.51%) DNS
4 34 (1.51%) TCP/IP
5 32 (1.42%) VPN
6 26 (1.15%) WAN
7 22 (0.98%) Ethernet
8 18 (0.80%) LAN
9 16 (0.71%) SAN
9 16 (0.71%) Wireless
10 15 (0.66%) BGP
10 15 (0.66%) OSPF
11 14 (0.62%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.58%) HTTP
13 12 (0.53%) DHCP
13 12 (0.53%) NAS
13 12 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.44%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 211 (9.35%) Power BI
2 117 (5.19%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (4.21%) Metadata
4 79 (3.50%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.37%) Tableau
6 62 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
7 59 (2.62%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.13%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.42%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.24%) Big Data
11 26 (1.15%) Delta Lake
12 25 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
13 24 (1.06%) Oracle Database
13 24 (1.06%) Power Query
14 23 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.93%) BigQuery
15 21 (0.93%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 20 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 203 (9.00%) JIRA
2 126 (5.59%) Git
3 87 (3.86%) Jenkins
4 55 (2.44%) Selenium
5 54 (2.39%) GitLab
6 51 (2.26%) Postman
7 45 (1.99%) JMeter
8 32 (1.42%) JUnit
9 28 (1.24%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.15%) Rational DOORS
11 25 (1.11%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.71%) MLflow
13 15 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 14 (0.62%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.53%) Gatling
15 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.49%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.44%) Gradle
17 10 (0.44%) Maven
General
1 696 (30.85%) Social Skills
2 664 (29.43%) Finance
3 419 (18.57%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (8.47%) Public Sector
5 181 (8.02%) Banking
6 123 (5.45%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (3.46%) Manufacturing
8 61 (2.70%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.13%) Retail
10 47 (2.08%) Organisational Skills
10 47 (2.08%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
12 40 (1.77%) Legal
13 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.51%) Marketing
15 32 (1.42%) Front Office
15 32 (1.42%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.42%) Telecoms
16 31 (1.37%) Military
17 29 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 422 (18.71%) Analyst
2 233 (10.33%) Lead
3 201 (8.91%) Senior
4 188 (8.33%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 160 (7.09%) Consultant
7 138 (6.12%) Architect
8 123 (5.45%) Developer
9 117 (5.19%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.77%) Project Manager
11 56 (2.48%) Tester
12 53 (2.35%) Test Engineer
13 46 (2.04%) Network Engineer
13 46 (2.04%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.04%) Software Engineer
14 42 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
15 41 (1.82%) Test Manager
16 40 (1.77%) Security Engineer
16 40 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
17 37 (1.64%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (5.14%) REST
2 81 (3.59%) JSON
3 68 (3.01%) Kafka
4 55 (2.44%) Middleware
5 53 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
6 50 (2.22%) OAuth
7 47 (2.08%) PySpark
8 45 (1.99%) XML
9 38 (1.68%) Swagger
10 36 (1.60%) .NET
10 36 (1.60%) SOAP
11 35 (1.55%) RESTful
12 31 (1.37%) Pandas
13 30 (1.33%) Node.js
14 29 (1.29%) Playwright
14 29 (1.29%) Web Services
15 28 (1.24%) Spring
16 27 (1.20%) OAuth2
16 27 (1.20%) PyTorch
17 26 (1.15%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 127 (5.63%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (5.27%) Data Structures
3 117 (5.19%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.34%) Product Ownership
5 82 (3.63%) Cloud Native
6 76 (3.37%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.57%) Management Information System
8 40 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
9 35 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 30 (1.33%) Operational Technology
12 29 (1.29%) 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 24 (1.06%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.74%) Windows
2 92 (4.08%) Linux
3 33 (1.46%) Unix
4 18 (0.80%) 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
1 616 (27.30%) Migration
2 442 (19.59%) Agile
3 418 (18.53%) Problem-Solving
4 380 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 376 (16.67%) Data Validation
6 370 (16.40%) Data Migration
7 356 (15.78%) CI/CD
7 356 (15.78%) Data Modelling
8 333 (14.76%) User Acceptance Testing
9 327 (14.49%) Analytics
10 297 (13.16%) ETL
11 266 (11.79%) DevOps
12 264 (11.70%) Test Automation
13 255 (11.30%) Business Intelligence
14 242 (10.73%) Continuous Improvement
15 237 (10.51%) AI
16 236 (10.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 220 (9.75%) Data Governance
18 200 (8.87%) Data Analysis
18 200 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 529 (23.45%) SQL
2 403 (17.86%) Python
3 108 (4.79%) Java
4 58 (2.57%) C#
5 48 (2.13%) C++
5 48 (2.13%) PowerShell
6 45 (1.99%) Bash
6 45 (1.99%) C
7 43 (1.91%) JavaScript
8 31 (1.37%) Bicep
8 31 (1.37%) TypeScript
9 28 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 27 (1.20%) R
11 26 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 22 (0.98%) Apex Code
13 20 (0.89%) Ada
13 20 (0.89%) Scala
14 16 (0.71%) MATLAB
15 12 (0.53%) VBA
16 11 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 417 (18.48%) Security Cleared
2 304 (13.48%) SC Cleared
3 176 (7.80%) Degree
4 56 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 42 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (1.60%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.51%) PMI Certification
8 31 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.24%) PMP
10 27 (1.20%) Master's Degree
11 25 (1.11%) CCNP
12 18 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.75%) CISSP
14 16 (0.71%) ACCA
15 15 (0.66%) CBAP
16 14 (0.62%) CIMA
17 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.58%) Azure Certification
17 13 (0.58%) CCNA
17 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 392 (17.38%) Data Quality
2 287 (12.72%) QA
3 117 (5.19%) GDPR
4 68 (3.01%) NIST
5 59 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.33%) SLA
8 26 (1.15%) 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
14 13 (0.58%) MiFID
14 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 81 (3.59%) Docker
2 54 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 48 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.98%) Firmware
5 21 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
6 20 (0.89%) 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
1 124 (5.50%) Kubernetes
2 98 (4.34%) Terraform
3 45 (1.99%) Prometheus
4 43 (1.91%) Grafana
5 40 (1.77%) Ansible
6 30 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.75%) 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
1 308 (13.65%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.69%) SAP
3 190 (8.42%) Oracle
4 106 (4.70%) Databricks
5 73 (3.24%) Salesforce
6 72 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 59 (2.62%) VMware
8 51 (2.26%) Cisco
9 47 (2.08%) Google
10 42 (1.86%) Splunk
11 30 (1.33%) Informatica
12 28 (1.24%) Palo Alto
12 28 (1.24%) Workday
13 27 (1.20%) MuleSoft
13 27 (1.20%) Sage
14 24 (1.06%) IBM
15 22 (0.98%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.93%) IFS
17 20 (0.89%) OpenAI
18 18 (0.80%) Fortinet