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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 81 121
Rank change year-on-year +38 +40 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,215 860 803
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.66% 2.94% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.52% 3.23% 2.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,345 505 395
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £603
90th Percentile £700 £721 £697
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £511 £500
% change year-on-year -11.00% +2.25% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 54 163
10th Percentile £17.23 £23.65 £23.44
25th Percentile £33.93 £38.50 £51.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.77 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.50% -5.38% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.08
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.55% -7.60% -

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 40,158 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,255 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,399 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +33 1,926 £486 -8.60% 869
UK excluding London +30 1,034 £455 -11.00% 662
London +66 930 £500 -9.09% 331
Work from Home +58 663 £481 -3.80% 405
North of England +44 261 £425 -8.11% 119
Midlands +33 226 £481 +1.26% 91
South East -6 222 £490 -2.00% 229
West Midlands +30 166 £475 - 56
North West +29 160 £420 -4.00% 71
East of England +7 118 £475 +5.56% 90
South West -8 111 £475 -17.39% 97
Yorkshire +20 91 £452 +7.56% 38
Scotland +42 72 £405 -11.23% 32
East Midlands +2 56 £525 +14.38% 35
Wales +6 20 £460 +196.77% 15
Northern Ireland +11 15 £400 -31.91% 11
North East -11 13 £450 -28.00% 12

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 90 (4.06%) Confluence
2 47 (2.12%) Apache Spark
3 40 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (1.67%) SAS
5 22 (0.99%) Apache
6 20 (0.90%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.50%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.41%) Appian
9 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.18%) CICS
13 4 (0.18%) CMS
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
15 2 (0.090%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2013
15 2 (0.090%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 143 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.53%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.32%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.090%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.090%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.090%) Sketch
11 1 (0.045%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.045%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.045%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.045%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.045%) UXPin
11 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (4.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.63%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.68%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.54%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.45%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 457 (20.63%) Azure
2 280 (12.64%) AWS
3 224 (10.11%) Power Platform
4 124 (5.60%) Azure DevOps
5 108 (4.88%) GCP
6 91 (4.11%) GitHub
7 64 (2.89%) Serverless
8 59 (2.66%) Amazon S3
8 59 (2.66%) Snowflake
9 58 (2.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 56 (2.53%) Entra ID
11 53 (2.39%) SaaS
12 48 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
12 48 (2.17%) OCI
13 40 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 38 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
15 35 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (1.22%) dbt
18 25 (1.13%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.66%) Firewall
2 57 (2.57%) Network Security
3 40 (1.81%) VLAN
4 36 (1.63%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.31%) VPN
6 28 (1.26%) DNS
7 25 (1.13%) Ethernet
7 25 (1.13%) WAN
8 17 (0.77%) LAN
9 16 (0.72%) SAN
9 16 (0.72%) Wireless
10 15 (0.68%) BGP
10 15 (0.68%) OSPF
11 14 (0.63%) HTTP
11 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
12 12 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
12 12 (0.54%) NAS
13 11 (0.50%) TACACS
13 11 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
14 9 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 212 (9.57%) Power BI
2 115 (5.19%) Data Warehouse
3 103 (4.65%) Metadata
4 79 (3.57%) SQL Server
4 79 (3.57%) Tableau
5 61 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
6 55 (2.48%) Data Lake
7 45 (2.03%) Relational Database
8 32 (1.44%) Big Data
9 31 (1.40%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.26%) Delta Lake
11 27 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.08%) Power Query
13 23 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
14 22 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.90%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.86%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 204 (9.21%) JIRA
2 130 (5.87%) Git
3 81 (3.66%) Jenkins
4 58 (2.62%) Selenium
5 55 (2.48%) GitLab
6 48 (2.17%) Postman
7 38 (1.72%) JMeter
8 33 (1.49%) JUnit
9 29 (1.31%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.17%) WebDriver
11 24 (1.08%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.81%) MLflow
13 17 (0.77%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.72%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.63%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.54%) Bitbucket
16 12 (0.54%) Rational Rhapsody
17 11 (0.50%) Gatling
18 10 (0.45%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
General
1 701 (31.65%) Social Skills
2 666 (30.07%) Finance
3 432 (19.50%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.67%) Banking
5 186 (8.40%) Public Sector
6 120 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (3.34%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.57%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
9 50 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
10 48 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.94%) Retail
12 38 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
12 38 (1.72%) Legal
13 36 (1.63%) Marketing
14 32 (1.44%) Front Office
14 32 (1.44%) General Ledger
14 32 (1.44%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.40%) Military
16 29 (1.31%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 424 (19.14%) Analyst
2 222 (10.02%) Lead
3 206 (9.30%) Senior
4 190 (8.58%) Business Analyst
5 170 (7.67%) Data Engineer
6 154 (6.95%) Consultant
7 136 (6.14%) Architect
8 122 (5.51%) Developer
9 115 (5.19%) Data Analyst
10 84 (3.79%) Project Manager
11 56 (2.53%) Tester
12 52 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
13 47 (2.12%) Test Engineer
14 46 (2.08%) Software Engineer
15 45 (2.03%) Network Engineer
16 41 (1.85%) Technical Analyst
17 40 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
17 40 (1.81%) Test Manager
18 39 (1.76%) Security Engineer
19 37 (1.67%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (5.55%) REST
2 83 (3.75%) JSON
3 68 (3.07%) Kafka
4 59 (2.66%) Oracle Fusion
5 54 (2.44%) Middleware
6 49 (2.21%) OAuth
7 48 (2.17%) PySpark
8 44 (1.99%) XML
9 40 (1.81%) Node.js
10 37 (1.67%) SOAP
10 37 (1.67%) Swagger
11 34 (1.53%) .NET
12 32 (1.44%) Web Services
13 31 (1.40%) Pandas
13 31 (1.40%) RESTful
14 30 (1.35%) Playwright
14 30 (1.35%) PyTorch
15 27 (1.22%) OpenAPI
16 26 (1.17%) TensorFlow
17 25 (1.13%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 122 (5.51%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (5.37%) Data Structures
3 110 (4.97%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.20%) Product Ownership
5 73 (3.30%) Cloud Native
6 68 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.57%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
9 37 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.22%) Replication
12 26 (1.17%) Operational Technology
12 26 (1.17%) Reference Data
12 26 (1.17%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.08%) Life Science
15 23 (1.04%) Derivative
15 23 (1.04%) NHS
15 23 (1.04%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.83%) Windows
2 93 (4.20%) Linux
3 32 (1.44%) Unix
4 16 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.50%) Android
6 8 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.090%) Debian
12 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.045%) HPUX
12 1 (0.045%) pSOS
12 1 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.045%) Solaris
12 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 597 (26.95%) Migration
2 457 (20.63%) Agile
3 426 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
4 374 (16.88%) Data Validation
5 373 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 355 (16.03%) Data Migration
7 348 (15.71%) CI/CD
8 341 (15.40%) Data Modelling
9 333 (15.03%) Analytics
10 321 (14.49%) User Acceptance Testing
11 292 (13.18%) ETL
12 275 (12.42%) DevOps
13 265 (11.96%) Test Automation
14 261 (11.78%) Business Intelligence
15 242 (10.93%) AI
16 240 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
17 230 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 225 (10.16%) Data Governance
19 201 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
20 199 (8.98%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 532 (24.02%) SQL
2 407 (18.37%) Python
3 106 (4.79%) Java
4 64 (2.89%) C#
5 55 (2.48%) C++
5 55 (2.48%) JavaScript
6 46 (2.08%) C
7 45 (2.03%) PowerShell
8 39 (1.76%) Bash
9 36 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 32 (1.44%) R
11 30 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 29 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.17%) Bicep
14 20 (0.90%) Ada
14 20 (0.90%) Scala
15 16 (0.72%) Apex Code
16 13 (0.59%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.54%) VBA
18 11 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 413 (18.65%) Security Cleared
2 302 (13.63%) SC Cleared
3 182 (8.22%) Degree
4 58 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 52 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.49%) DV Cleared
6 33 (1.49%) PMI Certification
7 32 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.26%) PMP
9 27 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (1.04%) CCNP
10 23 (1.04%) ISTQB
11 16 (0.72%) CISSP
12 15 (0.68%) CBAP
13 14 (0.63%) AWS Certification
14 12 (0.54%) ACCA
14 12 (0.54%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.54%) CCNA
14 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.45%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (17.29%) Data Quality
2 290 (13.09%) QA
3 120 (5.42%) GDPR
4 67 (3.02%) NIST
5 60 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.35%) SLA
8 28 (1.26%) GxP
9 24 (1.08%) IFRS
10 22 (0.99%) PMO
11 20 (0.90%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.81%) GMP
12 18 (0.81%) GRC
12 18 (0.81%) HL7
13 16 (0.72%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.63%) MiFID
15 13 (0.59%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.59%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.54%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (3.52%) Docker
2 49 (2.21%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.13%) Firmware
5 17 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.36%) vSphere
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.090%) Ceph
13 2 (0.090%) KVM
13 2 (0.090%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 119 (5.37%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.20%) Terraform
3 38 (1.72%) Prometheus
4 36 (1.63%) Ansible
4 36 (1.63%) Grafana
5 31 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (0.59%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.45%) Kibana
9 9 (0.41%) Puppet
9 9 (0.41%) SCCM
10 6 (0.27%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.23%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
12 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 298 (13.45%) Microsoft
2 193 (8.71%) Oracle
3 192 (8.67%) SAP
4 106 (4.79%) Databricks
5 77 (3.48%) ServiceNow
6 65 (2.93%) Salesforce
7 51 (2.30%) Cisco
7 51 (2.30%) VMware
8 47 (2.12%) Google
9 40 (1.81%) Splunk
10 32 (1.44%) Informatica
11 29 (1.31%) Workday
12 28 (1.26%) Palo Alto
12 28 (1.26%) Sage
13 27 (1.22%) MuleSoft
14 25 (1.13%) IBM
15 22 (0.99%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.95%) OpenAI
17 17 (0.77%) CheckPoint
17 17 (0.77%) Fortinet