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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 93 133
Rank change year-on-year +49 +40 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,150 814 757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.69% 2.78% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.51% 3.06% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,309 469 381
10th Percentile £350 £357 £319
25th Percentile £400 £421 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.37% +2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £611
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -7.32% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 49 148
10th Percentile £22.25 £26.05 £21.11
25th Percentile £36.00 £47.50 £50.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.05 £89.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.00
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.06% -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 39,015 26,568 37,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.69% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,668 17,198 24,355
10th Percentile £316 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,323 1,023 2,389
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.92 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.45 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.20 £29.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +28.28% -12.12% -8.65%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 +42 1,866 £490 -9.26% 865
UK excluding London +35 1,014 £475 -7.32% 667
London +71 876 £500 -9.09% 275
Work from Home +70 647 £488 -4.88% 355
North of England +35 247 £433 -6.49% 122
South East -4 219 £500 - 218
Midlands +38 212 £492 +2.23% 121
West Midlands +26 161 £492 +2.23% 78
North West +24 147 £413 -7.04% 60
South West +4 127 £475 -17.39% 94
East of England +13 123 £492 +9.38% 94
Yorkshire +17 89 £461 +10.53% 47
Scotland +44 56 £404 -12.76% 23
East Midlands +1 48 £500 -0.89% 43
Northern Ireland +18 21 £425 -22.73% 3
Wales +9 20 £460 - 6
North East -10 14 £450 -37.93% 17

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 (3.91%) Confluence
2 46 (2.14%) SAS
3 43 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (0.98%) Apache
5 21 (0.98%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 9 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) CICS
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 2 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 119 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.02%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
7 12 (0.56%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.093%) Sketch
12 1 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.047%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.047%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.047%) UXPin
12 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 102 (4.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (1.77%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.60%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.47%) SAP FI
9 9 (0.42%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
10 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 6 (0.28%) Sage X3
12 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 488 (22.70%) Azure
2 273 (12.70%) AWS
3 198 (9.21%) Power Platform
4 143 (6.65%) Azure DevOps
5 105 (4.88%) GitHub
6 98 (4.56%) GCP
7 66 (3.07%) Serverless
8 62 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.84%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.56%) Entra ID
11 52 (2.42%) OCI
12 51 (2.37%) SaaS
13 47 (2.19%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 26 (1.21%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 82 (3.81%) Firewall
2 56 (2.60%) Network Security
3 37 (1.72%) TCP/IP
4 31 (1.44%) VLAN
5 28 (1.30%) DNS
6 27 (1.26%) VPN
7 24 (1.12%) Ethernet
8 23 (1.07%) WAN
9 22 (1.02%) HTTP
10 15 (0.70%) SAN
11 14 (0.65%) LAN
12 13 (0.60%) BGP
12 13 (0.60%) NAS
12 13 (0.60%) OSPF
12 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.60%) Wireless
13 11 (0.51%) SSL
14 10 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
15 9 (0.42%) Internet
15 9 (0.42%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (8.65%) Power BI
2 110 (5.12%) Metadata
3 107 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 75 (3.49%) SQL Server
5 67 (3.12%) Tableau
6 59 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
7 47 (2.19%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.58%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 31 (1.44%) Relational Database
10 29 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
10 29 (1.35%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 28 (1.30%) Big Data
12 27 (1.26%) NoSQL
13 26 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
13 26 (1.21%) Oracle Database
14 23 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 22 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
16 21 (0.98%) Power Query
17 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 198 (9.21%) JIRA
2 128 (5.95%) Git
3 91 (4.23%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.16%) Selenium
5 60 (2.79%) GitLab
6 53 (2.47%) Postman
7 39 (1.81%) JUnit
8 36 (1.67%) Cucumber
9 33 (1.53%) JMeter
10 29 (1.35%) Rational DOORS
11 28 (1.30%) Oracle APEX
12 22 (1.02%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.84%) MLflow
13 18 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.70%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
16 13 (0.60%) TestRail
17 12 (0.56%) Cypress.io
17 12 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
17 12 (0.56%) Zephyr
General
1 716 (33.30%) Social Skills
2 622 (28.93%) Finance
3 416 (19.35%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.21%) Public Sector
5 176 (8.19%) Banking
6 123 (5.72%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.16%) Manufacturing
8 60 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
12 36 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
12 36 (1.67%) Legal
12 36 (1.67%) Retail
13 32 (1.49%) Marketing
14 31 (1.44%) Electronics
15 30 (1.40%) Billing
15 30 (1.40%) Financial Institution
15 30 (1.40%) Telecoms
16 29 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 395 (18.37%) Analyst
2 216 (10.05%) Lead
3 213 (9.91%) Senior
4 187 (8.70%) Business Analyst
5 153 (7.12%) Data Engineer
6 152 (7.07%) Consultant
7 144 (6.70%) Developer
8 138 (6.42%) Architect
9 102 (4.74%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.67%) Project Manager
11 62 (2.88%) Tester
12 49 (2.28%) Senior Analyst
13 46 (2.14%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.00%) SAP Consultant
14 43 (2.00%) Senior Developer
14 43 (2.00%) Systems Engineer
15 42 (1.95%) Test Engineer
16 41 (1.91%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.86%) Test Analyst
18 38 (1.77%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (6.60%) REST
2 103 (4.79%) JSON
3 64 (2.98%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.84%) Kafka
5 57 (2.65%) Middleware
6 55 (2.56%) XML
7 53 (2.47%) OAuth
8 52 (2.42%) PySpark
9 47 (2.19%) Node.js
10 42 (1.95%) SOAP
11 39 (1.81%) .NET
12 36 (1.67%) Playwright
13 33 (1.53%) RESTful
13 33 (1.53%) Swagger
14 31 (1.44%) pytest
14 31 (1.44%) Web Services
15 29 (1.35%) PyTorch
16 28 (1.30%) Pandas
17 27 (1.26%) SAML
18 26 (1.21%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.81%) Legacy Systems
2 112 (5.21%) Data Structures
3 99 (4.60%) Onboarding
4 89 (4.14%) Product Ownership
5 67 (3.12%) Cloud Native
6 54 (2.51%) Data Centre
6 54 (2.51%) Management Information System
7 37 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
8 32 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
9 31 (1.44%) Replication
10 27 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.16%) Life Science
12 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
13 24 (1.12%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.12%) Reference Data
14 23 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
14 23 (1.07%) NHS
15 22 (1.02%) Operational Technology
15 22 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 111 (5.16%) Windows
2 89 (4.14%) Linux
3 29 (1.35%) Unix
4 16 (0.74%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
6 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.28%) VMS
6 6 (0.28%) zOS
7 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.093%) Debian
11 1 (0.047%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.047%) pSOS
11 1 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.047%) Solaris
11 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 546 (25.40%) Migration
2 475 (22.09%) Agile
3 428 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
4 373 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 365 (16.98%) CI/CD
6 364 (16.93%) Data Validation
7 337 (15.67%) Analytics
8 323 (15.02%) Data Migration
9 317 (14.74%) Data Modelling
10 300 (13.95%) DevOps
11 289 (13.44%) User Acceptance Testing
12 285 (13.26%) ETL
13 268 (12.47%) Test Automation
14 244 (11.35%) Continuous Improvement
15 236 (10.98%) Business Intelligence
16 229 (10.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 228 (10.60%) AI
18 217 (10.09%) Data Governance
19 195 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
20 180 (8.37%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 530 (24.65%) SQL
2 398 (18.51%) Python
3 106 (4.93%) Java
4 86 (4.00%) JavaScript
5 73 (3.40%) C#
6 54 (2.51%) PL/SQL
7 51 (2.37%) C++
8 50 (2.33%) PowerShell
9 42 (1.95%) C
10 38 (1.77%) Bash
10 38 (1.77%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.21%) Bicep
13 25 (1.16%) R
14 22 (1.02%) Ada
15 20 (0.93%) Scala
16 14 (0.65%) T-SQL
17 13 (0.60%) VBA
18 12 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 12 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 454 (21.12%) Security Cleared
2 329 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 191 (8.88%) Degree
4 64 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 40 (1.86%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.35%) ISTQB
8 29 (1.35%) PMI Certification
9 27 (1.26%) PMP
10 22 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.88%) CCNP
12 15 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
13 14 (0.65%) CISSP
14 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.60%) CBAP
15 10 (0.47%) CCNA
15 10 (0.47%) CTC Cleared
15 10 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (16.98%) Data Quality
2 274 (12.74%) QA
3 122 (5.67%) GDPR
4 77 (3.58%) NIST
5 66 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.49%) SLA
8 27 (1.26%) GxP
9 22 (1.02%) IFRS
9 22 (1.02%) PMO
10 19 (0.88%) HL7
10 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.84%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) GMP
13 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.65%) NIST 800
14 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
16 12 (0.56%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.67%) Docker
2 49 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.12%) Firmware
5 14 (0.65%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (0.23%) NFS
8 5 (0.23%) vSphere
9 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.093%) Ceph
11 2 (0.093%) KVM
11 2 (0.093%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.093%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 117 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.42%) Terraform
3 31 (1.44%) Ansible
3 31 (1.44%) Prometheus
3 31 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.40%) Grafana
5 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
6 9 (0.42%) FortiGate
6 9 (0.42%) Kibana
6 9 (0.42%) Puppet
7 8 (0.37%) SCCM
8 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (0.28%) Nessus
10 5 (0.23%) CASB
10 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
11 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (0.19%) Istio
11 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
11 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 279 (12.98%) Microsoft
2 225 (10.47%) Oracle
3 188 (8.74%) SAP
4 110 (5.12%) Databricks
5 85 (3.95%) ServiceNow
6 57 (2.65%) Salesforce
7 47 (2.19%) Google
7 47 (2.19%) VMware
8 44 (2.05%) Cisco
8 44 (2.05%) Splunk
9 35 (1.63%) Workday
10 31 (1.44%) MuleSoft
11 30 (1.40%) Informatica
12 29 (1.35%) Sage
13 25 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 21 (0.98%) CyberArk
14 21 (0.98%) OpenAI
15 19 (0.88%) IBM
16 15 (0.70%) Dell
16 15 (0.70%) IFS