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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 77 114
Rank change year-on-year +37 +37 +43
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,373 923 812
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.86% 3.22% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.75% 3.54% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,422 552 403
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £402 £413 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £507
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +3.55% -7.82%
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 57 168
10th Percentile £17.23 £16.50 £26.07
25th Percentile £27.56 £37.50 £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 41,286 26,078 36,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.54% 91.02% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,818 16,706 23,627
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -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 2,472 1,084 2,486
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.08 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.19 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +7.14%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +34 2,066 £500 -7.19% 833
UK excluding London +31 1,119 £460 -10.34% 635
London +53 991 £508 -7.59% 294
Work from Home +54 699 £481 -3.75% 360
North of England +38 280 £437 -2.83% 137
Midlands +29 252 £490 +8.89% 93
South East -4 236 £500 - 190
West Midlands +27 178 £475 +14.92% 59
North West +32 163 £420 -4.00% 79
East of England +9 128 £475 +5.56% 87
South West +6 125 £488 -15.22% 94
Yorkshire +18 107 £453 +0.67% 39
Scotland +42 72 £388 -18.42% 30
East Midlands +19 70 £525 +14.38% 34
Wales +7 24 £450 +190.32% 14
Northern Ireland +12 13 £400 -32.20% 11
North East -20 13 £450 -23.40% 20

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 86 (3.62%) Confluence
2 49 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (1.81%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.64%) SAS
5 28 (1.18%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.84%) Apache
7 11 (0.46%) 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%) 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%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 158 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 27 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.97%) Spreadsheet
5 22 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.34%) CATIA
8 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.17%) Simulink
10 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 3 (0.13%) Notion
11 2 (0.084%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.084%) Sketch
12 1 (0.042%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.042%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.042%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.042%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.042%) UXPin
12 1 (0.042%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 111 (4.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.39%) 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 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
5 12 (0.51%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
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
1 458 (19.30%) Azure
2 293 (12.35%) AWS
3 237 (9.99%) Power Platform
4 121 (5.10%) Azure DevOps
5 117 (4.93%) GCP
6 104 (4.38%) GitHub
7 76 (3.20%) Snowflake
8 60 (2.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 59 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
10 58 (2.44%) Serverless
11 57 (2.40%) SaaS
12 56 (2.36%) Entra ID
13 54 (2.28%) Amazon S3
14 42 (1.77%) OCI
15 37 (1.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 36 (1.52%) Microsoft 365
17 32 (1.35%) dbt
18 30 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
19 29 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
20 26 (1.10%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 87 (3.67%) Firewall
2 58 (2.44%) Network Security
3 41 (1.73%) VLAN
4 34 (1.43%) DNS
5 32 (1.35%) TCP/IP
5 32 (1.35%) VPN
6 28 (1.18%) WAN
7 24 (1.01%) Ethernet
8 18 (0.76%) LAN
9 17 (0.72%) SAN
10 16 (0.67%) BGP
10 16 (0.67%) OSPF
10 16 (0.67%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.63%) Wireless
12 14 (0.59%) DHCP
13 13 (0.55%) HTTP
13 13 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.51%) Internet
14 12 (0.51%) NAS
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (9.36%) Power BI
2 121 (5.10%) Data Warehouse
3 87 (3.67%) Metadata
4 85 (3.58%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.20%) Tableau
6 67 (2.82%) Data Lake
6 67 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (2.06%) Relational Database
8 33 (1.39%) Big Data
9 30 (1.26%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
11 26 (1.10%) Power Query
12 25 (1.05%) Oracle Database
12 25 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
12 25 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 24 (1.01%) BigQuery
13 24 (1.01%) Delta Lake
14 23 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
14 23 (0.97%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 21 (0.88%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 206 (8.68%) JIRA
2 126 (5.31%) Git
3 88 (3.71%) Jenkins
4 56 (2.36%) GitLab
5 54 (2.28%) Postman
5 54 (2.28%) Selenium
6 44 (1.85%) JMeter
7 33 (1.39%) JUnit
8 32 (1.35%) Cucumber
9 30 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
10 26 (1.10%) WebDriver
11 18 (0.76%) Rational Rhapsody
12 16 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.63%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.63%) MLflow
14 11 (0.46%) Gatling
14 11 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.42%) Gradle
15 10 (0.42%) Maven
General
1 713 (30.05%) Social Skills
2 707 (29.79%) Finance
3 423 (17.83%) Analytical Skills
4 196 (8.26%) Public Sector
5 191 (8.05%) Banking
6 129 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (3.54%) Manufacturing
8 65 (2.74%) Aerospace
9 51 (2.15%) Pharmaceutical
10 49 (2.06%) Retail
11 47 (1.98%) Organisational Skills
12 41 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
13 38 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
14 37 (1.56%) General Ledger
14 37 (1.56%) Legal
15 36 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 36 (1.52%) Marketing
16 34 (1.43%) Telecoms
17 33 (1.39%) Front Office
18 31 (1.31%) Military
Job Titles
1 429 (18.08%) Analyst
2 247 (10.41%) Lead
3 217 (9.14%) Senior
4 201 (8.47%) Business Analyst
5 185 (7.80%) Data Engineer
6 166 (7.00%) Consultant
7 148 (6.24%) Architect
8 127 (5.35%) Developer
9 118 (4.97%) Data Analyst
10 88 (3.71%) Project Manager
11 60 (2.53%) Test Engineer
12 59 (2.49%) Tester
13 49 (2.06%) Senior Analyst
14 48 (2.02%) Software Engineer
15 46 (1.94%) Systems Engineer
16 45 (1.90%) Test Manager
17 44 (1.85%) Network Engineer
18 42 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
19 41 (1.73%) Security Engineer
20 38 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (5.35%) REST
2 84 (3.54%) JSON
3 68 (2.87%) Kafka
4 54 (2.28%) Oracle Fusion
5 53 (2.23%) Middleware
6 51 (2.15%) XML
7 49 (2.06%) OAuth
8 41 (1.73%) PySpark
9 40 (1.69%) Swagger
10 39 (1.64%) RESTful
11 38 (1.60%) .NET
11 38 (1.60%) SOAP
12 33 (1.39%) Pandas
13 32 (1.35%) pytest
14 31 (1.31%) Node.js
15 30 (1.26%) Spring
15 30 (1.26%) Web Services
16 29 (1.22%) OAuth2
17 27 (1.14%) Playwright
17 27 (1.14%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 130 (5.48%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (5.01%) Onboarding
3 117 (4.93%) Data Structures
4 100 (4.21%) Product Ownership
5 88 (3.71%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.24%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.57%) Management Information System
8 46 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
9 40 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
11 33 (1.39%) Life Science
11 33 (1.39%) SCADA
12 32 (1.35%) Operational Technology
13 28 (1.18%) NHS
13 28 (1.18%) Reference Data
13 28 (1.18%) Replication
14 27 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.14%) Virtual Team
15 26 (1.10%) Public Cloud
16 25 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 118 (4.97%) Windows
2 93 (3.92%) Linux
3 33 (1.39%) Unix
4 21 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.46%) Android
6 10 (0.42%) 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%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
9 4 (0.17%) zOS
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.084%) HPUX
11 2 (0.084%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.042%) Debian
12 1 (0.042%) pSOS
12 1 (0.042%) Solaris
12 1 (0.042%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 631 (26.59%) Migration
2 460 (19.38%) Agile
3 417 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
4 395 (16.65%) Stakeholder Management
5 392 (16.52%) Data Validation
6 377 (15.89%) Data Migration
7 372 (15.68%) CI/CD
8 369 (15.55%) Data Modelling
9 357 (15.04%) User Acceptance Testing
10 348 (14.66%) Analytics
11 303 (12.77%) ETL
12 283 (11.93%) DevOps
13 278 (11.72%) AI
13 278 (11.72%) Test Automation
14 264 (11.13%) Business Intelligence
15 263 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
16 250 (10.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 220 (9.27%) Data Analysis
17 220 (9.27%) Data Governance
18 214 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 552 (23.26%) SQL
2 424 (17.87%) Python
3 115 (4.85%) Java
4 60 (2.53%) C#
5 53 (2.23%) PowerShell
6 47 (1.98%) Bash
7 46 (1.94%) C++
8 43 (1.81%) C
9 42 (1.77%) JavaScript
10 31 (1.31%) Bicep
10 31 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 30 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 26 (1.10%) PL/SQL
13 25 (1.05%) Apex Code
13 25 (1.05%) R
14 22 (0.93%) Ada
15 20 (0.84%) Scala
16 18 (0.76%) MATLAB
17 14 (0.59%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.51%) VBA
Qualifications
1 426 (17.95%) Security Cleared
2 310 (13.06%) SC Cleared
3 184 (7.75%) Degree
4 57 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.77%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.35%) PMI Certification
8 30 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.18%) PMP
10 24 (1.01%) CCNP
11 22 (0.93%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.84%) ACCA
13 19 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 18 (0.76%) CIMA
15 17 (0.72%) CISSP
16 14 (0.59%) CBAP
16 14 (0.59%) Microsoft Certification
17 13 (0.55%) CCNA
18 12 (0.51%) Azure Certification
18 12 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 400 (16.86%) Data Quality
2 291 (12.26%) QA
3 117 (4.93%) GDPR
4 65 (2.74%) NIST
5 56 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 36 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.39%) SLA
8 30 (1.26%) GxP
9 29 (1.22%) PMO
10 27 (1.14%) 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 (0.51%) MiFID
14 12 (0.51%) NIST 800
System Software
1 88 (3.71%) Docker
2 58 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.97%) Firmware
6 22 (0.93%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.67%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.55%) vSphere
10 11 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.21%) NFS
12 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.13%) KVM
13 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.084%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.084%) Ceph
14 2 (0.084%) Lustre
14 2 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.084%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 137 (5.77%) Kubernetes
2 101 (4.26%) Terraform
3 49 (2.06%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.94%) Grafana
5 43 (1.81%) Ansible
6 29 (1.22%) 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
1 321 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 211 (8.89%) SAP
3 200 (8.43%) Oracle
4 115 (4.85%) Databricks
5 76 (3.20%) Salesforce
6 69 (2.91%) ServiceNow
7 64 (2.70%) VMware
8 48 (2.02%) Cisco
8 48 (2.02%) Google
9 40 (1.69%) Splunk
10 32 (1.35%) Informatica
11 31 (1.31%) Workday
12 27 (1.14%) MuleSoft
13 26 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 26 (1.10%) Sage
14 24 (1.01%) IBM
15 21 (0.88%) IFS
15 21 (0.88%) OpenAI
16 20 (0.84%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.80%) Fortinet