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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 75 124
Rank change year-on-year +37 +49 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,422 955 803
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.95% 3.31% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.85% 3.64% 2.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,442 571 398
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £404 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £525 £524
Median % change year-on-year -5.75% +0.24% -4.77%
75th Percentile £589 £628 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £679
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -10.28% +2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 61 169
10th Percentile £17.02 £16.50 £26.34
25th Percentile £27.24 £37.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -4.17% -4.76%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.30 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.51% +0.81% -0.80%

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 41,432 26,234 36,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.66% 91.00% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,858 16,712 23,486
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,493 1,127 2,523
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.71 £27.64 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.50% -24.27% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,101 £500 -4.76% 1,197
UK excluding London +29 1,147 £461 -10.28% 857
London +51 1,007 £513 -6.82% 450
Work from Home +54 719 £481 -3.75% 571
North of England +43 285 £439 -2.50% 170
Midlands +32 260 £500 +11.11% 155
South East -5 239 £500 - 243
West Midlands +24 185 £488 +20.37% 97
North West +32 165 £423 -3.43% 95
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 115
East of England +8 126 £475 +5.56% 113
Yorkshire +16 108 £460 +5.75% 57
Scotland +39 81 £400 -15.79% 40
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +15.51% 58
Wales +6 24 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -18 15 £438 -25.53% 20
Northern Ireland +16 14 £400 -32.20% 23

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 84 (3.47%) Confluence
2 57 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.86%) Apache Spark
3 45 (1.86%) SAS
4 32 (1.32%) SharePoint
5 23 (0.95%) Apache
6 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 10 (0.41%) ArcGIS
7 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.37%) Appian
8 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.21%) CMS
9 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
11 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.083%) IIS
Applications
1 153 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.40%) MS Visio
3 27 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.37%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.083%) Sketch
10 2 (0.083%) Windchill
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.041%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 118 (4.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.36%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.54%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
8 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.33%) SAP SD
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.25%) iTrent
10 6 (0.25%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
10 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 473 (19.53%) Azure
2 307 (12.68%) AWS
3 235 (9.70%) Power Platform
4 123 (5.08%) GCP
5 120 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
6 112 (4.62%) GitHub
7 79 (3.26%) Snowflake
8 65 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.52%) Serverless
10 59 (2.44%) Entra ID
11 58 (2.39%) Amazon S3
11 58 (2.39%) Azure Data Factory
12 57 (2.35%) SaaS
13 41 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
14 40 (1.65%) OCI
15 36 (1.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.45%) dbt
17 33 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
18 30 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 28 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 89 (3.67%) Firewall
2 59 (2.44%) Network Security
3 42 (1.73%) VLAN
4 38 (1.57%) DNS
5 34 (1.40%) VPN
6 32 (1.32%) TCP/IP
7 30 (1.24%) WAN
8 24 (0.99%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.78%) BGP
10 18 (0.74%) LAN
10 18 (0.74%) OSPF
10 18 (0.74%) SAN
11 17 (0.70%) SD-WAN
12 15 (0.62%) Internet
12 15 (0.62%) Wireless
13 14 (0.58%) DHCP
13 14 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.50%) HTTP
14 12 (0.50%) NAS
15 11 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 218 (9.00%) Power BI
2 121 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
3 90 (3.72%) SQL Server
4 83 (3.43%) Metadata
5 72 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
6 69 (2.85%) Tableau
7 66 (2.73%) Data Lake
8 50 (2.06%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.40%) Big Data
10 31 (1.28%) Oracle Database
11 30 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
11 30 (1.24%) NoSQL
11 30 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 26 (1.07%) Power Query
13 25 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
14 24 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
15 23 (0.95%) Delta Lake
16 22 (0.91%) BigQuery
16 22 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 21 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 211 (8.71%) JIRA
2 132 (5.45%) Git
3 94 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 65 (2.68%) GitLab
5 54 (2.23%) Selenium
6 51 (2.11%) Postman
7 47 (1.94%) JMeter
8 37 (1.53%) JUnit
9 34 (1.40%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.24%) WebDriver
11 28 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.66%) Eclipse
13 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.62%) MLflow
15 10 (0.41%) Gatling
15 10 (0.41%) Gradle
15 10 (0.41%) Maven
16 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
General
1 719 (29.69%) Finance
1 719 (29.69%) Social Skills
2 428 (17.67%) Analytical Skills
3 206 (8.51%) Public Sector
4 200 (8.26%) Banking
5 135 (5.57%) Documentation Skills
6 85 (3.51%) Manufacturing
7 68 (2.81%) Aerospace
8 54 (2.23%) Pharmaceutical
9 49 (2.02%) Retail
10 47 (1.94%) Organisational Skills
11 41 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
12 39 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 39 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
12 39 (1.61%) Legal
13 37 (1.53%) General Ledger
13 37 (1.53%) Marketing
14 36 (1.49%) Telecoms
15 35 (1.45%) Front Office
16 30 (1.24%) Law
Job Titles
1 429 (17.71%) Analyst
2 249 (10.28%) Lead
3 225 (9.29%) Senior
4 204 (8.42%) Business Analyst
5 187 (7.72%) Data Engineer
6 172 (7.10%) Consultant
7 148 (6.11%) Architect
8 131 (5.41%) Developer
9 117 (4.83%) Data Analyst
10 83 (3.43%) Project Manager
11 65 (2.68%) Test Engineer
12 62 (2.56%) Tester
13 47 (1.94%) Test Manager
14 46 (1.90%) Senior Analyst
14 46 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 45 (1.86%) Network Engineer
16 44 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
16 44 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
17 41 (1.69%) Security Engineer
18 40 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (5.28%) REST
2 82 (3.39%) JSON
3 69 (2.85%) Kafka
4 50 (2.06%) Oracle Fusion
5 49 (2.02%) Middleware
5 49 (2.02%) OAuth
5 49 (2.02%) XML
6 43 (1.78%) PySpark
7 40 (1.65%) Swagger
8 39 (1.61%) SOAP
9 38 (1.57%) .NET
9 38 (1.57%) RESTful
10 36 (1.49%) pytest
11 33 (1.36%) Pandas
11 33 (1.36%) Spring
12 32 (1.32%) Web Services
13 30 (1.24%) Node.js
14 29 (1.20%) OAuth2
15 27 (1.11%) PyTorch
16 25 (1.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 126 (5.20%) Legacy Systems
2 122 (5.04%) Onboarding
3 117 (4.83%) Data Structures
4 106 (4.38%) Product Ownership
5 95 (3.92%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.18%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.52%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 36 (1.49%) Life Science
12 34 (1.40%) SCADA
13 31 (1.28%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.24%) Replication
15 28 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.16%) NHS
15 28 (1.16%) Reference Data
15 28 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 27 (1.11%) Public Cloud
17 26 (1.07%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 126 (5.20%) Windows
2 94 (3.88%) Linux
3 33 (1.36%) Unix
4 24 (0.99%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Android
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) zOS
11 2 (0.083%) HPUX
11 2 (0.083%) Solaris
11 2 (0.083%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.041%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.041%) Debian
12 1 (0.041%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 642 (26.51%) Migration
2 465 (19.20%) Agile
3 417 (17.22%) Problem-Solving
4 409 (16.89%) Stakeholder Management
5 406 (16.76%) Data Validation
6 400 (16.52%) CI/CD
7 379 (15.65%) Data Migration
8 376 (15.52%) Data Modelling
9 372 (15.36%) User Acceptance Testing
10 362 (14.95%) Analytics
11 301 (12.43%) ETL
12 297 (12.26%) AI
13 294 (12.14%) DevOps
14 288 (11.89%) Test Automation
15 265 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
16 262 (10.82%) Business Intelligence
17 248 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 227 (9.37%) Data Analysis
19 222 (9.17%) Data Governance
20 219 (9.04%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 556 (22.96%) SQL
2 436 (18.00%) Python
3 113 (4.67%) Java
4 60 (2.48%) PowerShell
5 56 (2.31%) C#
6 47 (1.94%) Bash
7 46 (1.90%) C++
8 42 (1.73%) C
9 40 (1.65%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.36%) Bicep
11 30 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (1.16%) TypeScript
13 26 (1.07%) Apex Code
14 25 (1.03%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.95%) R
16 22 (0.91%) Ada
17 20 (0.83%) Scala
18 18 (0.74%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.54%) T-SQL
20 12 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 439 (18.13%) Security Cleared
2 326 (13.46%) SC Cleared
3 184 (7.60%) Degree
4 64 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
6 43 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.16%) PMI Certification
9 24 (0.99%) CCNP
9 24 (0.99%) PMP
10 22 (0.91%) Master's Degree
11 20 (0.83%) ACCA
11 20 (0.83%) ISTQB
12 18 (0.74%) CIMA
13 17 (0.70%) CISSP
14 14 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
15 13 (0.54%) Azure Certification
16 12 (0.50%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.50%) CCNA
16 12 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 417 (17.22%) Data Quality
2 294 (12.14%) QA
3 117 (4.83%) GDPR
4 65 (2.68%) NIST
5 55 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.40%) SLA
8 31 (1.28%) GxP
9 29 (1.20%) PMO
10 27 (1.11%) IFRS
11 18 (0.74%) GMP
11 18 (0.74%) GRC
11 18 (0.74%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.70%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.70%) HL7
13 14 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
System Software
1 96 (3.96%) Docker
2 61 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.91%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.83%) Firmware
7 17 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.58%) vSphere
10 9 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.21%) NFS
12 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.041%) Ceph
15 1 (0.041%) etcd
15 1 (0.041%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 139 (5.74%) Kubernetes
2 109 (4.50%) Terraform
3 53 (2.19%) Prometheus
4 49 (2.02%) Grafana
5 41 (1.69%) Ansible
6 28 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.50%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.37%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) SCCM
10 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.25%) Nessus
11 6 (0.25%) vMotion
12 5 (0.21%) Argo
12 5 (0.21%) Istio
13 4 (0.17%) CASB
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 325 (13.42%) Microsoft
2 219 (9.04%) SAP
3 205 (8.46%) Oracle
4 115 (4.75%) Databricks
5 80 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 72 (2.97%) ServiceNow
7 65 (2.68%) VMware
8 49 (2.02%) Cisco
8 49 (2.02%) Google
9 43 (1.78%) Splunk
10 31 (1.28%) Informatica
10 31 (1.28%) Workday
11 28 (1.16%) MuleSoft
12 27 (1.11%) Palo Alto
12 27 (1.11%) Sage
13 23 (0.95%) IBM
14 21 (0.87%) Fortinet
14 21 (0.87%) IFS
14 21 (0.87%) OpenAI
15 20 (0.83%) CyberArk