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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 71 119
Rank change year-on-year +35 +48 +38
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,780 1,118 840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.28% 3.45% 1.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.21% 3.81% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,665 655 414
10th Percentile £332 £350 £340
25th Percentile £410 £417 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -9.49% +2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 82 170
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £26.88
25th Percentile £28.50 £38.44 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £68.44
90th Percentile £83.95 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%

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 44,765 29,340 36,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.42% 85.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,476 23,295
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 2,647 1,521 2,449
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.70 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.25 £24.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +83.64% -35.36% -0.99%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 +31 2,409 £500 -4.76% 1,324
UK excluding London +25 1,297 £465 -9.49% 1,208
London +47 1,160 £513 -2.38% 398
Work from Home +48 797 £492 -1.60% 917
North of England +39 311 £450 -5.26% 238
South East +4 306 £505 +1.00% 322
Midlands +41 302 £481 +9.94% 174
West Midlands +30 218 £475 +17.28% 76
North West +18 170 £450 -14.29% 126
East of England 0 136 £510 +2.00% 147
Yorkshire +28 130 £460 +10.31% 82
South West -4 126 £520 -9.57% 133
Scotland +40 90 £423 -11.05% 119
East Midlands +25 79 £525 +15.51% 97
Wales +9 29 £455 +21.33% 60
North East -29 17 £425 -22.73% 30
Northern Ireland +8 10 £380 -35.59% 38

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 (3.20%) Confluence
2 66 (2.37%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (2.01%) SAS
4 51 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 45 (1.62%) Apache Spark
6 29 (1.04%) Apache
7 14 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.43%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.32%) ArcGIS
10 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.25%) CMS
12 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.14%) Appian
13 4 (0.14%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 181 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 37 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
5 28 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.072%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.072%) Sketch
10 2 (0.072%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.036%) Revit
11 1 (0.036%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 125 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.29%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
3 15 (0.54%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.50%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.43%) iTrent
5 12 (0.43%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
6 11 (0.40%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.32%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 567 (20.40%) Azure
2 326 (11.73%) AWS
3 279 (10.04%) Power Platform
4 148 (5.32%) Azure DevOps
5 135 (4.86%) GCP
6 121 (4.35%) GitHub
7 91 (3.27%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
8 69 (2.48%) Serverless
9 66 (2.37%) Entra ID
10 64 (2.30%) Azure Data Factory
11 63 (2.27%) Amazon S3
12 53 (1.91%) SaaS
13 50 (1.80%) Microsoft 365
14 46 (1.65%) OCI
15 44 (1.58%) dbt
16 42 (1.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 38 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
18 37 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
19 33 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 114 (4.10%) Firewall
2 68 (2.45%) Network Security
3 51 (1.83%) DNS
4 49 (1.76%) VLAN
5 44 (1.58%) VPN
6 40 (1.44%) WAN
7 34 (1.22%) BGP
8 33 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 25 (0.90%) OSPF
9 25 (0.90%) Wireless
10 23 (0.83%) LAN
10 23 (0.83%) SAN
11 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 20 (0.72%) Internet
13 19 (0.68%) DHCP
14 18 (0.65%) Ethernet
15 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
16 13 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
16 13 (0.47%) HTTP
16 13 (0.47%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (9.42%) Power BI
2 152 (5.47%) Data Warehouse
3 112 (4.03%) Metadata
4 98 (3.53%) SQL Server
5 87 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
6 83 (2.99%) Data Lake
7 74 (2.66%) Relational Database
7 74 (2.66%) Tableau
8 40 (1.44%) Big Data
9 33 (1.19%) Oracle Database
9 33 (1.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 31 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 29 (1.04%) Power Query
13 28 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (0.97%) BigQuery
15 26 (0.94%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.90%) NoSQL
17 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
17 24 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 249 (8.96%) JIRA
2 164 (5.90%) Git
3 95 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 70 (2.52%) GitLab
5 60 (2.16%) Selenium
6 48 (1.73%) JMeter
6 48 (1.73%) Postman
7 39 (1.40%) JUnit
8 38 (1.37%) Cucumber
9 31 (1.12%) WebDriver
10 26 (0.94%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.65%) Eclipse
12 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.58%) Gatling
14 15 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.50%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.47%) REST Assured
17 12 (0.43%) MLflow
18 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
19 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 814 (29.28%) Finance
2 810 (29.14%) Social Skills
3 521 (18.74%) Analytical Skills
4 232 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 218 (7.84%) Banking
6 162 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.60%) Manufacturing
8 78 (2.81%) Retail
9 74 (2.66%) Aerospace
10 62 (2.23%) Pharmaceutical
11 55 (1.98%) Telecoms
12 54 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 51 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (1.65%) Legal
15 43 (1.55%) Marketing
16 40 (1.44%) Front Office
17 37 (1.33%) Automotive
17 37 (1.33%) General Ledger
18 36 (1.29%) Billing
18 36 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 495 (17.81%) Analyst
2 283 (10.18%) Lead
3 278 (10.00%) Senior
4 238 (8.56%) Business Analyst
5 222 (7.99%) Data Engineer
6 205 (7.37%) Consultant
7 161 (5.79%) Developer
8 160 (5.76%) Architect
9 136 (4.89%) Data Analyst
10 92 (3.31%) Test Engineer
11 81 (2.91%) Project Manager
12 78 (2.81%) Tester
13 62 (2.23%) Network Engineer
14 52 (1.87%) Systems Engineer
15 49 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 49 (1.76%) Technical Analyst
16 48 (1.73%) Senior Data Engineer
17 46 (1.65%) Test Manager
18 45 (1.62%) Security Engineer
19 44 (1.58%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (4.78%) REST
2 82 (2.95%) JSON
3 71 (2.55%) Kafka
4 61 (2.19%) PySpark
5 56 (2.01%) Middleware
5 56 (2.01%) XML
6 53 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
7 46 (1.65%) .NET
8 45 (1.62%) Spring
9 42 (1.51%) OAuth
10 41 (1.47%) SOAP
11 40 (1.44%) pytest
12 37 (1.33%) Web Services
13 36 (1.29%) Playwright
14 33 (1.19%) Pandas
15 32 (1.15%) RESTful
16 29 (1.04%) Node.js
17 28 (1.01%) Swagger
18 25 (0.90%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.90%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 150 (5.40%) Onboarding
2 144 (5.18%) Data Structures
3 135 (4.86%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (4.57%) Cloud Native
5 118 (4.24%) Product Ownership
6 84 (3.02%) Data Centre
7 69 (2.48%) Management Information System
8 54 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 45 (1.62%) Life Science
11 40 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
11 40 (1.44%) SCADA
12 36 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 35 (1.26%) NHS
13 35 (1.26%) Virtual Team
14 32 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
15 31 (1.12%) Operational Technology
16 30 (1.08%) Replication
17 29 (1.04%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 155 (5.58%) Windows
2 97 (3.49%) Linux
3 45 (1.62%) Windows Server
4 35 (1.26%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.36%) Android
7 9 (0.32%) VMS
8 8 (0.29%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.22%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.14%) SUSE
13 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.072%) AIX
14 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.072%) HPUX
14 2 (0.072%) Solaris
14 2 (0.072%) VxWorks
14 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.072%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 756 (27.19%) Migration
2 547 (19.68%) Agile
3 506 (18.20%) Stakeholder Management
4 465 (16.73%) Analytics
5 461 (16.58%) CI/CD
6 458 (16.47%) Data Validation
7 449 (16.15%) Problem-Solving
8 448 (16.12%) Data Migration
8 448 (16.12%) User Acceptance Testing
9 440 (15.83%) Data Modelling
10 345 (12.41%) AI
11 341 (12.27%) Continuous Improvement
11 341 (12.27%) ETL
11 341 (12.27%) Test Automation
12 333 (11.98%) DevOps
13 308 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 306 (11.01%) Business Intelligence
15 276 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
16 271 (9.75%) Data Governance
17 267 (9.60%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 654 (23.53%) SQL
2 496 (17.84%) Python
3 123 (4.42%) Java
4 72 (2.59%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.19%) C#
6 52 (1.87%) Bash
7 40 (1.44%) C++
7 40 (1.44%) JavaScript
8 34 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 33 (1.19%) C
10 32 (1.15%) TypeScript
11 31 (1.12%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.04%) Bicep
13 26 (0.94%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.86%) R
15 23 (0.83%) VBA
16 21 (0.76%) Ada
17 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.61%) MATLAB
19 15 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 500 (17.99%) Security Cleared
2 363 (13.06%) SC Cleared
3 185 (6.65%) Degree
4 66 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 61 (2.19%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (1.19%) CCNP
9 25 (0.90%) PMI Certification
10 23 (0.83%) PMP
11 22 (0.79%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.76%) ACCA
12 21 (0.76%) CISSP
13 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.72%) CIMA
14 17 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.58%) CCNA
16 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
16 15 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 14 (0.50%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 499 (17.95%) Data Quality
2 336 (12.09%) QA
3 130 (4.68%) GDPR
4 59 (2.12%) NIST
5 54 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 47 (1.69%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.40%) GxP
7 39 (1.40%) SLA
8 38 (1.37%) PMO
9 22 (0.79%) GRC
10 19 (0.68%) GMP
10 19 (0.68%) ISO 20022
11 18 (0.65%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.58%) HL7
13 16 (0.58%) IFRS
14 14 (0.50%) NCSC
15 13 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.47%) WCAG
16 12 (0.43%) Solvency II
System Software
1 111 (3.99%) Docker
2 82 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 74 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.68%) vSphere
8 17 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
9 16 (0.58%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.072%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.072%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.072%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.036%) etcd
14 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 162 (5.83%) Kubernetes
2 132 (4.75%) Terraform
3 55 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 54 (1.94%) Grafana
5 52 (1.87%) Ansible
6 26 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.90%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (0.40%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.36%) SCCM
11 8 (0.29%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.25%) VxRail
13 6 (0.22%) Nessus
13 6 (0.22%) vMotion
14 5 (0.18%) Argo
14 5 (0.18%) CASB
14 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
14 5 (0.18%) Istio
15 4 (0.14%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 385 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 253 (9.10%) SAP
3 243 (8.74%) Oracle
4 136 (4.89%) Databricks
5 94 (3.38%) Salesforce
6 88 (3.17%) VMware
7 72 (2.59%) ServiceNow
8 65 (2.34%) Cisco
9 46 (1.65%) Google
9 46 (1.65%) Workday
10 41 (1.47%) Splunk
11 38 (1.37%) Informatica
12 34 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 33 (1.19%) Fortinet
14 32 (1.15%) IBM
15 27 (0.97%) Juniper
15 27 (0.97%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.90%) Sage
17 24 (0.86%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.72%) IFS