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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 76 123
Rank change year-on-year +36 +47 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,340 916 791
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.82% 3.20% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.71% 3.52% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,398 546 389
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £505 £495
% change year-on-year -10.30% +2.02% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 57 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £25.53
25th Percentile £26.88 £37.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £56.04 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.53% -6.60% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +6.78% -4.00% -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 40,998 26,034 36,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 91.02% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,714 23,582
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,430 1,064 2,485
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £74.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.35 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.32% -32.93% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,040 £500 -4.76% 913
UK excluding London +30 1,098 £453 -10.30% 665
London +49 981 £510 -7.27% 335
Work from Home +61 696 £481 -3.75% 402
North of England +39 275 £430 -4.44% 148
Midlands +32 248 £492 +8.25% 96
South East -8 231 £490 -2.00% 192
West Midlands +26 176 £478 +9.26% 56
North West +30 165 £420 -4.00% 87
East of England +9 126 £475 +5.56% 91
South West +3 124 £475 -17.39% 101
Yorkshire +16 100 £451 +0.11% 41
Scotland +42 68 £388 -15.07% 34
East Midlands +12 68 £525 +14.38% 40
Wales +11 24 £450 +190.32% 14
Northern Ireland +11 13 £400 -32.20% 11
North East -14 13 £425 -27.66% 20

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 (3.76%) Confluence
2 49 (2.09%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.75%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.67%) SAS
5 23 (0.98%) SharePoint
6 19 (0.81%) Apache
7 11 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.43%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.38%) Appian
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.085%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.085%) CICS
13 2 (0.085%) Documentum
Applications
1 155 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.45%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.98%) Spreadsheet
5 22 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.34%) CATIA
8 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.17%) Simulink
10 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 3 (0.13%) Notion
11 2 (0.085%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.085%) Sketch
12 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.043%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.043%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.043%) UXPin
12 1 (0.043%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 107 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.41%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.68%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.51%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.34%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.30%) SAP SD
9 6 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.26%) iTrent
9 6 (0.26%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.26%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 448 (19.15%) Azure
2 286 (12.22%) AWS
3 233 (9.96%) Power Platform
4 117 (5.00%) GCP
5 114 (4.87%) Azure DevOps
6 100 (4.27%) GitHub
7 73 (3.12%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 58 (2.48%) SaaS
9 58 (2.48%) Serverless
10 57 (2.44%) Entra ID
11 55 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 53 (2.26%) Amazon S3
13 43 (1.84%) OCI
14 37 (1.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 35 (1.50%) Microsoft 365
16 32 (1.37%) dbt
17 30 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
18 29 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
19 25 (1.07%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 86 (3.68%) Firewall
2 58 (2.48%) Network Security
3 41 (1.75%) VLAN
4 34 (1.45%) DNS
5 32 (1.37%) TCP/IP
6 31 (1.32%) VPN
7 28 (1.20%) WAN
8 23 (0.98%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.77%) LAN
10 16 (0.68%) BGP
10 16 (0.68%) OSPF
10 16 (0.68%) SAN
10 16 (0.68%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.64%) Wireless
12 14 (0.60%) DHCP
13 13 (0.56%) HTTP
13 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.51%) NAS
15 10 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.43%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (9.36%) Power BI
2 120 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 88 (3.76%) Metadata
4 85 (3.63%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.25%) Tableau
6 66 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (2.74%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.05%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.32%) Big Data
10 30 (1.28%) NoSQL
11 27 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.11%) Power Query
13 25 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
14 24 (1.03%) Delta Lake
14 24 (1.03%) Oracle Database
14 24 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 23 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
15 23 (0.98%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 22 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 20 (0.85%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 205 (8.76%) JIRA
2 125 (5.34%) Git
3 85 (3.63%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.31%) Postman
5 53 (2.26%) Selenium
6 51 (2.18%) GitLab
7 44 (1.88%) JMeter
8 33 (1.41%) JUnit
9 30 (1.28%) Cucumber
9 30 (1.28%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.07%) WebDriver
11 18 (0.77%) Rational Rhapsody
12 15 (0.64%) MLflow
12 15 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.60%) Eclipse
14 11 (0.47%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.47%) Gatling
14 11 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.43%) Gradle
15 10 (0.43%) Maven
General
1 704 (30.09%) Social Skills
2 698 (29.83%) Finance
3 424 (18.12%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 189 (8.08%) Banking
6 125 (5.34%) Documentation Skills
7 81 (3.46%) Manufacturing
8 64 (2.74%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.14%) Pharmaceutical
10 49 (2.09%) Retail
11 47 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
12 40 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
13 39 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
14 37 (1.58%) General Ledger
15 36 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 36 (1.54%) Legal
16 34 (1.45%) Marketing
16 34 (1.45%) Telecoms
17 33 (1.41%) Front Office
18 31 (1.32%) Military
Job Titles
1 427 (18.25%) Analyst
2 243 (10.38%) Lead
3 204 (8.72%) Senior
4 198 (8.46%) Business Analyst
5 184 (7.86%) Data Engineer
6 165 (7.05%) Consultant
7 145 (6.20%) Architect
8 124 (5.30%) Developer
9 118 (5.04%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.72%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.52%) Tester
12 58 (2.48%) Test Engineer
13 49 (2.09%) Software Engineer
14 47 (2.01%) Senior Analyst
15 46 (1.97%) Systems Engineer
16 45 (1.92%) Network Engineer
17 44 (1.88%) Test Manager
18 43 (1.84%) Technical Analyst
19 41 (1.75%) Security Engineer
20 37 (1.58%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (5.21%) REST
2 85 (3.63%) JSON
3 69 (2.95%) Kafka
4 55 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.26%) Middleware
6 51 (2.18%) XML
7 50 (2.14%) OAuth
8 43 (1.84%) PySpark
9 40 (1.71%) Swagger
10 39 (1.67%) RESTful
11 37 (1.58%) .NET
11 37 (1.58%) SOAP
12 32 (1.37%) Pandas
13 30 (1.28%) Node.js
13 30 (1.28%) Spring
14 29 (1.24%) OAuth2
14 29 (1.24%) pytest
14 29 (1.24%) Web Services
15 28 (1.20%) Playwright
16 27 (1.15%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.51%) Legacy Systems
2 122 (5.21%) Onboarding
3 119 (5.09%) Data Structures
4 97 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 89 (3.80%) Cloud Native
6 76 (3.25%) Data Centre
7 60 (2.56%) Management Information System
8 44 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
10 36 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
11 32 (1.37%) Operational Technology
12 31 (1.32%) Life Science
13 30 (1.28%) SCADA
14 28 (1.20%) NHS
14 28 (1.20%) Replication
15 27 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
15 27 (1.15%) Reference Data
15 27 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 26 (1.11%) Public Cloud
17 25 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 117 (5.00%) Windows
2 91 (3.89%) Linux
3 32 (1.37%) Unix
4 21 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.43%) Android
5 10 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.30%) VMS
6 7 (0.30%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
8 4 (0.17%) SUSE
8 4 (0.17%) zOS
9 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.085%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.043%) Debian
11 1 (0.043%) HPUX
11 1 (0.043%) pSOS
11 1 (0.043%) Solaris
11 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (26.79%) Migration
2 454 (19.40%) Agile
3 421 (17.99%) Problem-Solving
4 390 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
5 385 (16.45%) Data Validation
6 377 (16.11%) Data Migration
7 366 (15.64%) CI/CD
8 365 (15.60%) Data Modelling
9 353 (15.09%) User Acceptance Testing
10 344 (14.70%) Analytics
11 300 (12.82%) ETL
12 275 (11.75%) DevOps
12 275 (11.75%) Test Automation
13 261 (11.15%) AI
13 261 (11.15%) Business Intelligence
14 258 (11.03%) Continuous Improvement
15 244 (10.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 216 (9.23%) Data Governance
17 215 (9.19%) Data Analysis
18 209 (8.93%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 547 (23.38%) SQL
2 418 (17.86%) Python
3 111 (4.74%) Java
4 58 (2.48%) C#
5 51 (2.18%) PowerShell
6 46 (1.97%) Bash
7 45 (1.92%) C++
8 44 (1.88%) C
9 41 (1.75%) JavaScript
10 31 (1.32%) Bicep
10 31 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 31 (1.32%) TypeScript
11 26 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 26 (1.11%) R
12 23 (0.98%) Apex Code
13 22 (0.94%) Ada
14 21 (0.90%) Scala
15 18 (0.77%) MATLAB
16 13 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.51%) VBA
Qualifications
1 427 (18.25%) Security Cleared
2 311 (13.29%) SC Cleared
3 181 (7.74%) Degree
4 53 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.75%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.37%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.20%) PMP
10 24 (1.03%) CCNP
11 22 (0.94%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.85%) ACCA
13 18 (0.77%) CIMA
13 18 (0.77%) ISTQB
14 17 (0.73%) CISSP
15 14 (0.60%) CBAP
15 14 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.56%) Azure Certification
16 13 (0.56%) CCNA
17 12 (0.51%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 396 (16.92%) Data Quality
2 288 (12.31%) QA
3 115 (4.91%) GDPR
4 66 (2.82%) NIST
5 56 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.41%) SLA
8 29 (1.24%) PMO
9 28 (1.20%) GxP
10 27 (1.15%) IFRS
11 18 (0.77%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.77%) GMP
11 18 (0.77%) GRC
11 18 (0.77%) HL7
11 18 (0.77%) IFRS 17
12 14 (0.60%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.56%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.51%) MiFID
14 12 (0.51%) NIST 800
System Software
1 85 (3.63%) Docker
2 58 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 51 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.03%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.98%) Firmware
6 22 (0.94%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.68%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.56%) vSphere
9 11 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.085%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.085%) Ceph
13 2 (0.085%) KVM
13 2 (0.085%) Lustre
13 2 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.085%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 134 (5.73%) Kubernetes
2 100 (4.27%) Terraform
3 49 (2.09%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.97%) Grafana
5 42 (1.79%) Ansible
6 28 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.47%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.43%) Kibana
10 9 (0.38%) Puppet
11 8 (0.34%) SCCM
11 8 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.26%) Nessus
12 6 (0.26%) vMotion
13 5 (0.21%) CASB
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) Consul
14 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 316 (13.50%) Microsoft
2 205 (8.76%) SAP
3 198 (8.46%) Oracle
4 115 (4.91%) Databricks
5 74 (3.16%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.91%) ServiceNow
7 62 (2.65%) VMware
8 49 (2.09%) Cisco
9 47 (2.01%) Google
10 41 (1.75%) Splunk
11 31 (1.32%) Informatica
11 31 (1.32%) Workday
12 27 (1.15%) MuleSoft
13 26 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 26 (1.11%) Sage
14 24 (1.03%) IBM
15 21 (0.90%) IFS
15 21 (0.90%) OpenAI
16 20 (0.85%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.81%) Fortinet