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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 70 119
Rank change year-on-year +35 +49 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,802 1,105 838
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.30% 3.40% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.22% 3.76% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,678 656 412
10th Percentile £334 £350 £340
25th Percentile £410 £420 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £594
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 76 171
10th Percentile £17.75 £19.36 £26.88
25th Percentile £28.50 £37.25 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.63 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.12% -3.96% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.44 £65.00 £68.82
90th Percentile £83.88 £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 45,068 29,357 36,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.21% 90.46% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,042 18,505 23,449
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -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 2,667 1,497 2,458
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -2.91%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +37 2,433 £500 -4.76% 846
UK excluding London +28 1,306 £468 -8.33% 621
London +45 1,172 £513 -6.82% 322
Work from Home +51 808 £488 -2.50% 349
North of England +39 319 £450 -5.26% 118
South East +3 305 £505 +1.00% 220
Midlands +35 302 £489 +11.71% 109
West Midlands +30 219 £475 +17.28% 53
North West +22 172 £450 -14.29% 58
Yorkshire +32 135 £461 +10.53% 40
East of England +8 134 £500 +5.26% 77
South West -8 130 £514 -10.65% 73
Scotland +44 90 £423 -9.87% 27
East Midlands +20 78 £525 +15.51% 56
Wales +9 29 £455 +71.70% 9
North East -22 17 £425 -22.73% 20
Northern Ireland +11 10 £380 -35.59% 5

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 (3.18%) Confluence
2 66 (2.36%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.96%) SAS
4 51 (1.82%) SharePoint
5 47 (1.68%) Apache Spark
6 28 (1.00%) Apache
7 13 (0.46%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.32%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.32%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.25%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 184 (6.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 38 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 6 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.071%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.071%) Sketch
10 2 (0.071%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.036%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.036%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.036%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 127 (4.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
3 16 (0.57%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.50%) Workday HCM
5 13 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.43%) iTrent
6 12 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
7 11 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
8 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
9 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.25%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 574 (20.49%) Azure
2 336 (11.99%) AWS
3 282 (10.06%) Power Platform
4 153 (5.46%) Azure DevOps
5 140 (5.00%) GCP
6 117 (4.18%) GitHub
7 93 (3.32%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.50%) Entra ID
8 70 (2.50%) Serverless
9 68 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 64 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 61 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 53 (1.89%) SaaS
13 50 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
14 47 (1.68%) OCI
15 43 (1.53%) dbt
16 41 (1.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 38 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
18 37 (1.32%) SuccessFactors
19 32 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 114 (4.07%) Firewall
2 67 (2.39%) Network Security
3 51 (1.82%) DNS
4 47 (1.68%) VLAN
5 41 (1.46%) VPN
6 40 (1.43%) WAN
7 32 (1.14%) BGP
7 32 (1.14%) TCP/IP
8 24 (0.86%) Wireless
9 23 (0.82%) LAN
9 23 (0.82%) OSPF
9 23 (0.82%) SAN
10 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.68%) Ethernet
11 19 (0.68%) Internet
12 18 (0.64%) DHCP
13 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (0.46%) HTTP
14 13 (0.46%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 264 (9.42%) Power BI
2 148 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 110 (3.93%) Metadata
4 100 (3.57%) SQL Server
5 86 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
6 81 (2.89%) Data Lake
7 77 (2.75%) Tableau
8 74 (2.64%) Relational Database
9 41 (1.46%) Big Data
10 34 (1.21%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.21%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 30 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
11 30 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 28 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.00%) NoSQL
13 27 (0.96%) Delta Lake
13 27 (0.96%) Power Query
14 25 (0.89%) BigQuery
15 24 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
15 24 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 253 (9.03%) JIRA
2 162 (5.78%) Git
3 99 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 74 (2.64%) GitLab
5 61 (2.18%) Selenium
6 53 (1.89%) Postman
7 52 (1.86%) JMeter
8 39 (1.39%) JUnit
9 38 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.11%) WebDriver
11 27 (0.96%) Rational DOORS
12 20 (0.71%) Gatling
13 18 (0.64%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
15 16 (0.57%) Visual Studio
16 14 (0.50%) Oracle Forms
17 13 (0.46%) REST Assured
18 12 (0.43%) MLflow
19 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
20 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 828 (29.55%) Finance
2 821 (29.30%) Social Skills
3 523 (18.67%) Analytical Skills
4 235 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 221 (7.89%) Banking
6 162 (5.78%) Documentation Skills
7 101 (3.60%) Manufacturing
8 76 (2.71%) Aerospace
9 72 (2.57%) Retail
10 62 (2.21%) Pharmaceutical
11 55 (1.96%) Telecoms
12 53 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 52 (1.86%) Organisational Skills
14 46 (1.64%) Legal
15 41 (1.46%) Front Office
15 41 (1.46%) Marketing
16 38 (1.36%) General Ledger
17 37 (1.32%) Law
18 36 (1.28%) Billing
18 36 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 498 (17.77%) Analyst
2 281 (10.03%) Lead
2 281 (10.03%) Senior
3 238 (8.49%) Business Analyst
4 221 (7.89%) Data Engineer
5 207 (7.39%) Consultant
6 164 (5.85%) Architect
7 162 (5.78%) Developer
8 137 (4.89%) Data Analyst
9 91 (3.25%) Test Engineer
10 83 (2.96%) Project Manager
11 75 (2.68%) Tester
12 57 (2.03%) Network Engineer
13 51 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
14 50 (1.78%) Senior Data Engineer
15 49 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 49 (1.75%) Test Manager
16 48 (1.71%) Technical Analyst
17 46 (1.64%) Security Engineer
18 44 (1.57%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (4.85%) REST
2 83 (2.96%) JSON
3 75 (2.68%) Kafka
4 63 (2.25%) PySpark
5 58 (2.07%) XML
6 56 (2.00%) Middleware
7 54 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
8 47 (1.68%) .NET
9 46 (1.64%) Spring
10 44 (1.57%) OAuth
11 41 (1.46%) SOAP
12 40 (1.43%) Playwright
12 40 (1.43%) pytest
13 38 (1.36%) Web Services
14 34 (1.21%) RESTful
15 33 (1.18%) Pandas
16 31 (1.11%) Node.js
17 28 (1.00%) Swagger
18 27 (0.96%) OpenID
19 26 (0.93%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 149 (5.32%) Onboarding
2 142 (5.07%) Data Structures
3 139 (4.96%) Legacy Systems
4 130 (4.64%) Cloud Native
5 119 (4.25%) Product Ownership
6 83 (2.96%) Data Centre
7 71 (2.53%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (1.71%) Life Science
10 43 (1.53%) SCADA
11 39 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
12 37 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 36 (1.28%) AI Agents
14 35 (1.25%) NHS
15 34 (1.21%) Operational Technology
15 34 (1.21%) Virtual Team
16 32 (1.14%) Replication
17 30 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
18 28 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 154 (5.50%) Windows
2 95 (3.39%) Linux
3 45 (1.61%) Windows Server
4 32 (1.14%) Unix
5 19 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.36%) Android
7 9 (0.32%) VMS
8 7 (0.25%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.071%) HPUX
13 2 (0.071%) Solaris
13 2 (0.071%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.071%) zOS
14 1 (0.036%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 757 (27.02%) Migration
2 552 (19.70%) Agile
3 501 (17.88%) Stakeholder Management
4 471 (16.81%) CI/CD
5 468 (16.70%) Data Validation
6 462 (16.49%) Analytics
7 460 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
8 449 (16.02%) User Acceptance Testing
9 444 (15.85%) Data Migration
10 437 (15.60%) Data Modelling
11 353 (12.60%) AI
12 347 (12.38%) Test Automation
13 342 (12.21%) ETL
14 341 (12.17%) Continuous Improvement
14 341 (12.17%) DevOps
15 314 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 306 (10.92%) Business Intelligence
17 274 (9.78%) Data Pipeline
18 271 (9.67%) Data Analysis
18 271 (9.67%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 658 (23.48%) SQL
2 501 (17.88%) Python
3 130 (4.64%) Java
4 73 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.25%) C#
6 52 (1.86%) Bash
7 42 (1.50%) JavaScript
8 41 (1.46%) C++
9 37 (1.32%) TypeScript
10 35 (1.25%) C
10 35 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 31 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.03%) Bicep
13 26 (0.93%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.89%) R
15 23 (0.82%) VBA
16 22 (0.79%) Ada
17 21 (0.75%) Scala
18 19 (0.68%) MATLAB
18 19 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 504 (17.99%) Security Cleared
2 368 (13.13%) SC Cleared
3 192 (6.85%) Degree
4 68 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 60 (2.14%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 32 (1.14%) CCNP
9 27 (0.96%) PMI Certification
10 24 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 24 (0.86%) PMP
11 22 (0.79%) CISSP
12 21 (0.75%) ACCA
12 21 (0.75%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.71%) CIMA
14 18 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
15 17 (0.61%) Master's Degree
16 16 (0.57%) CCNA
17 15 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (17.67%) Data Quality
2 343 (12.24%) QA
3 130 (4.64%) GDPR
4 61 (2.18%) NIST
5 57 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 47 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.39%) GxP
7 39 (1.39%) SLA
8 38 (1.36%) PMO
9 21 (0.75%) GRC
10 20 (0.71%) GMP
10 20 (0.71%) IFRS
11 18 (0.64%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 18 (0.64%) ISO 20022
12 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.57%) HL7
14 13 (0.46%) NCSC
14 13 (0.46%) Solvency II
14 13 (0.46%) WCAG
15 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 112 (4.00%) Docker
2 82 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 75 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.75%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.68%) vSphere
8 17 (0.61%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.57%) Firmware
9 16 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.071%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.071%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.071%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.036%) etcd
Systems Management
1 163 (5.82%) Kubernetes
2 129 (4.60%) Terraform
3 55 (1.96%) Prometheus
4 53 (1.89%) Grafana
5 49 (1.75%) Ansible
6 27 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.82%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.36%) SCCM
9 10 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.21%) Nessus
11 6 (0.21%) vMotion
11 6 (0.21%) VxRail
12 5 (0.18%) Argo
12 5 (0.18%) CASB
12 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.14%) Consul
13 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 388 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 254 (9.06%) SAP
3 243 (8.67%) Oracle
4 136 (4.85%) Databricks
5 93 (3.32%) Salesforce
6 89 (3.18%) VMware
7 78 (2.78%) ServiceNow
8 63 (2.25%) Cisco
9 48 (1.71%) Google
10 45 (1.61%) Workday
11 40 (1.43%) Splunk
12 36 (1.28%) Informatica
13 32 (1.14%) IBM
13 32 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 31 (1.11%) Fortinet
15 27 (0.96%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.86%) Juniper
16 24 (0.86%) Sage
17 21 (0.75%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.71%) IFS