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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 75 118
Rank change year-on-year +35 +43 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,383 934 811
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.87% 3.25% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.76% 3.57% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,427 558 401
10th Percentile £325 £348 £325
25th Percentile £402 £413 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -10.34% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 59 168
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £26.07
25th Percentile £27.56 £36.99 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £56.04 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.53% -6.60% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +5.23% -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 41,377 26,173 36,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 91.02% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,864 16,755 23,656
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,474 1,096 2,500
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.65 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.76 £74.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 2,075 £500 -6.98% 846
UK excluding London +30 1,130 £460 -10.34% 645
London +51 991 £513 -6.82% 299
Work from Home +54 703 £481 -3.75% 353
North of England +42 284 £436 -3.11% 142
Midlands +31 251 £490 +8.89% 93
South East -1 240 £500 - 195
West Midlands +28 177 £475 +18.27% 59
North West +34 165 £420 -4.00% 79
East of England +10 128 £475 +5.56% 86
South West +1 127 £500 -13.04% 94
Yorkshire +25 108 £452 +0.39% 43
Scotland +42 74 £400 -15.79% 28
East Midlands +15 70 £525 +14.38% 34
Wales +9 24 £450 +190.32% 16
North East -18 14 £450 -23.40% 21
Northern Ireland +12 13 £400 -32.20% 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 85 (3.57%) Confluence
2 50 (2.10%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (1.85%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.64%) SAS
5 29 (1.22%) SharePoint
6 21 (0.88%) Apache
7 12 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.42%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.38%) Appian
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.13%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.084%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 157 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.97%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.34%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.13%) Notion
10 2 (0.084%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.084%) Sketch
11 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.042%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.042%) UXPin
11 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 114 (4.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.50%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 8 (0.34%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
7 8 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.34%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
9 6 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
9 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 460 (19.30%) Azure
2 291 (12.21%) AWS
3 235 (9.86%) Power Platform
4 121 (5.08%) Azure DevOps
5 117 (4.91%) GCP
6 105 (4.41%) GitHub
7 76 (3.19%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
9 58 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
9 58 (2.43%) Entra ID
9 58 (2.43%) Serverless
10 55 (2.31%) SaaS
11 54 (2.27%) Amazon S3
12 41 (1.72%) OCI
13 37 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
14 35 (1.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 32 (1.34%) dbt
16 30 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
17 29 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.09%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.69%) Firewall
2 58 (2.43%) Network Security
3 41 (1.72%) VLAN
4 36 (1.51%) DNS
5 33 (1.38%) VPN
6 32 (1.34%) TCP/IP
7 29 (1.22%) WAN
8 24 (1.01%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.76%) LAN
10 17 (0.71%) BGP
10 17 (0.71%) OSPF
10 17 (0.71%) SAN
11 16 (0.67%) SD-WAN
12 15 (0.63%) Wireless
13 14 (0.59%) DHCP
13 14 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.55%) HTTP
14 13 (0.55%) Internet
15 12 (0.50%) NAS
16 10 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (9.19%) Power BI
2 118 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (3.57%) SQL Server
4 84 (3.52%) Metadata
5 73 (3.06%) Tableau
6 67 (2.81%) Data Lake
6 67 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (2.06%) Relational Database
8 34 (1.43%) Big Data
9 30 (1.26%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.09%) Power Query
12 25 (1.05%) Oracle Database
13 24 (1.01%) BigQuery
13 24 (1.01%) Delta Lake
13 24 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 24 (1.01%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 23 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
14 23 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.88%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 207 (8.69%) JIRA
2 127 (5.33%) Git
3 88 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.39%) GitLab
5 53 (2.22%) Postman
5 53 (2.22%) Selenium
6 43 (1.80%) JMeter
7 33 (1.38%) JUnit
8 32 (1.34%) Cucumber
9 30 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
10 26 (1.09%) WebDriver
11 18 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.63%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.63%) MLflow
14 10 (0.42%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.42%) Gatling
14 10 (0.42%) Gradle
14 10 (0.42%) Maven
14 10 (0.42%) REST Assured
General
1 715 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 710 (29.79%) Finance
3 424 (17.79%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (8.14%) Banking
4 194 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 132 (5.54%) Documentation Skills
6 85 (3.57%) Manufacturing
7 66 (2.77%) Aerospace
8 52 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
9 48 (2.01%) Retail
10 45 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
11 41 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
12 38 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
13 37 (1.55%) General Ledger
13 37 (1.55%) Legal
14 36 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 36 (1.51%) Marketing
15 34 (1.43%) Telecoms
16 33 (1.38%) Front Office
17 30 (1.26%) Military
Job Titles
1 429 (18.00%) Analyst
2 249 (10.45%) Lead
3 218 (9.15%) Senior
4 204 (8.56%) Business Analyst
5 183 (7.68%) Data Engineer
6 168 (7.05%) Consultant
7 149 (6.25%) Architect
8 130 (5.46%) Developer
9 117 (4.91%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.65%) Project Manager
11 61 (2.56%) Test Engineer
12 59 (2.48%) Tester
13 49 (2.06%) Software Engineer
14 47 (1.97%) Senior Analyst
15 46 (1.93%) Systems Engineer
15 46 (1.93%) Test Manager
16 45 (1.89%) Network Engineer
17 43 (1.80%) Technical Analyst
18 40 (1.68%) Security Engineer
19 39 (1.64%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (5.33%) REST
2 84 (3.52%) JSON
3 68 (2.85%) Kafka
4 54 (2.27%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.22%) Middleware
6 51 (2.14%) XML
7 49 (2.06%) OAuth
8 41 (1.72%) PySpark
9 40 (1.68%) Swagger
10 39 (1.64%) RESTful
11 38 (1.59%) .NET
11 38 (1.59%) SOAP
12 33 (1.38%) Pandas
13 32 (1.34%) pytest
14 31 (1.30%) Node.js
15 30 (1.26%) Spring
15 30 (1.26%) Web Services
16 29 (1.22%) OAuth2
17 27 (1.13%) Playwright
17 27 (1.13%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.41%) Legacy Systems
2 117 (4.91%) Data Structures
2 117 (4.91%) Onboarding
3 102 (4.28%) Product Ownership
4 89 (3.73%) Cloud Native
5 77 (3.23%) Data Centre
6 61 (2.56%) Management Information System
7 47 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
8 40 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
9 37 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
10 34 (1.43%) Life Science
11 33 (1.38%) SCADA
12 31 (1.30%) Operational Technology
13 29 (1.22%) Replication
14 28 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
14 28 (1.17%) NHS
14 28 (1.17%) Reference Data
15 27 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 26 (1.09%) Public Cloud
17 24 (1.01%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 120 (5.04%) Windows
2 93 (3.90%) Linux
3 33 (1.38%) Unix
4 22 (0.92%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Android
6 11 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.29%) 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
9 4 (0.17%) zOS
10 2 (0.084%) HPUX
10 2 (0.084%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.084%) VxWorks
11 1 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.042%) Debian
11 1 (0.042%) pSOS
11 1 (0.042%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (26.52%) Migration
2 464 (19.47%) Agile
3 421 (17.67%) Problem-Solving
4 396 (16.62%) Stakeholder Management
5 391 (16.41%) Data Validation
6 378 (15.86%) Data Migration
7 374 (15.69%) CI/CD
8 371 (15.57%) Data Modelling
9 358 (15.02%) User Acceptance Testing
10 347 (14.56%) Analytics
11 301 (12.63%) ETL
12 284 (11.92%) DevOps
13 282 (11.83%) AI
14 280 (11.75%) Test Automation
15 262 (10.99%) Continuous Improvement
16 261 (10.95%) Business Intelligence
17 250 (10.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 221 (9.27%) Data Analysis
19 218 (9.15%) Data Governance
20 212 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 549 (23.04%) SQL
2 423 (17.75%) Python
3 115 (4.83%) Java
4 60 (2.52%) C#
5 54 (2.27%) PowerShell
6 47 (1.97%) Bash
7 46 (1.93%) C++
8 43 (1.80%) C
9 41 (1.72%) JavaScript
10 32 (1.34%) Bicep
11 30 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 30 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.09%) PL/SQL
13 25 (1.05%) Apex Code
14 24 (1.01%) R
15 23 (0.97%) Ada
16 20 (0.84%) Scala
17 18 (0.76%) MATLAB
18 13 (0.55%) T-SQL
19 12 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 426 (17.88%) Security Cleared
2 312 (13.09%) SC Cleared
3 186 (7.81%) Degree
4 59 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.34%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.17%) PMP
10 24 (1.01%) CCNP
11 22 (0.92%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.84%) ACCA
13 19 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 18 (0.76%) CIMA
15 17 (0.71%) CISSP
16 14 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
17 13 (0.55%) CBAP
18 12 (0.50%) Azure Certification
18 12 (0.50%) CCNA
18 12 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 400 (16.79%) Data Quality
2 293 (12.30%) QA
3 117 (4.91%) GDPR
4 64 (2.69%) NIST
5 54 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 38 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.38%) SLA
8 31 (1.30%) GxP
9 29 (1.22%) PMO
10 27 (1.13%) IFRS
11 18 (0.76%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.76%) GMP
11 18 (0.76%) GRC
11 18 (0.76%) HL7
11 18 (0.76%) IFRS 17
12 14 (0.59%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 13 (0.55%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
System Software
1 90 (3.78%) Docker
2 59 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.92%) Firmware
5 22 (0.92%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.55%) vSphere
9 11 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.21%) NFS
11 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) KVM
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.084%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.084%) Ceph
13 2 (0.084%) Lustre
13 2 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.084%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 137 (5.75%) Kubernetes
2 104 (4.36%) Terraform
3 49 (2.06%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.93%) Grafana
5 45 (1.89%) Ansible
6 28 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.42%) Kibana
10 9 (0.38%) Puppet
11 8 (0.34%) SCCM
11 8 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.25%) Nessus
12 6 (0.25%) vMotion
13 4 (0.17%) Argo
13 4 (0.17%) CASB
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 325 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 213 (8.94%) SAP
3 199 (8.35%) Oracle
4 113 (4.74%) Databricks
5 74 (3.11%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.90%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.69%) VMware
8 49 (2.06%) Google
9 48 (2.01%) Cisco
10 43 (1.80%) Splunk
11 31 (1.30%) Workday
12 30 (1.26%) Informatica
13 28 (1.17%) MuleSoft
14 26 (1.09%) Palo Alto
14 26 (1.09%) Sage
15 24 (1.01%) IBM
16 21 (0.88%) IFS
16 21 (0.88%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.84%) CyberArk
17 20 (0.84%) Fortinet