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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 79 120
Rank change year-on-year +36 +41 +35
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,240 874 809
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 2.98% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.56% 3.28% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,358 513 396
10th Percentile £325 £344 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +0.96% -5.45%
75th Percentile £584 £630 £601
90th Percentile £700 £715 £696
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.41% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 55 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £23.86 £23.72
25th Percentile £33.69 £39.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £63.75 £57.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.87% -4.96% -3.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £74.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £58.88 £63.75
% change year-on-year +10.40% -7.65% +2.00%

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 40,275 26,638 37,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.95% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,293 17,157 24,168
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.56% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,413 1,083 2,449
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.75 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.94 £37.50
% change year-on-year +56.37% -25.49% +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 7 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 7 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 7 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 1,944 £488 -9.30% 788
UK excluding London +28 1,042 £454 -11.41% 605
London +56 941 £500 -9.09% 285
Work from Home +59 674 £484 -3.20% 350
North of England +44 265 £425 -8.11% 116
Midlands +27 228 £481 +1.32% 87
South East -2 223 £490 -2.00% 204
West Midlands +31 168 £475 - 53
North West +26 162 £418 -4.46% 69
East of England +11 118 £475 +5.56% 81
South West -6 110 £475 -17.39% 81
Yorkshire +19 93 £452 +7.56% 38
Scotland +50 73 £409 -10.41% 35
East Midlands +3 56 £525 +4.06% 34
Wales +5 21 £455 +193.55% 15
Northern Ireland +13 15 £400 -32.20% 7
North East -9 13 £450 -28.00% 11

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 91 (4.06%) Confluence
2 46 (2.05%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (1.61%) SAS
5 22 (0.98%) Apache
6 21 (0.94%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.40%) Appian
9 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
10 8 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 5 (0.22%) CMS
12 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.18%) CICS
14 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
15 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 144 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.31%) CATIA
9 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.13%) Notion
10 2 (0.089%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.089%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.089%) Sketch
11 1 (0.045%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.045%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.045%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.045%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.045%) Simulink
11 1 (0.045%) UXPin
11 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 107 (4.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.61%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.54%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
6 10 (0.45%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
9 7 (0.31%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.27%) iTrent
10 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
10 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 457 (20.40%) Azure
2 283 (12.63%) AWS
3 227 (10.13%) Power Platform
4 124 (5.54%) Azure DevOps
5 110 (4.91%) GCP
6 92 (4.11%) GitHub
7 64 (2.86%) Serverless
8 63 (2.81%) Snowflake
9 59 (2.63%) Amazon S3
10 58 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
11 55 (2.46%) Entra ID
11 55 (2.46%) SaaS
12 48 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
12 48 (2.14%) OCI
13 39 (1.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 39 (1.74%) Microsoft 365
14 35 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
15 33 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (1.29%) dbt
17 25 (1.12%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.62%) Firewall
2 57 (2.54%) Network Security
3 40 (1.79%) VLAN
4 36 (1.61%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.29%) DNS
5 29 (1.29%) VPN
6 25 (1.12%) Ethernet
6 25 (1.12%) WAN
7 17 (0.76%) LAN
8 16 (0.71%) SAN
8 16 (0.71%) Wireless
9 15 (0.67%) BGP
9 15 (0.67%) OSPF
10 14 (0.63%) HTTP
10 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
11 12 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
11 12 (0.54%) NAS
12 11 (0.49%) TACACS
12 11 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
13 9 (0.40%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (9.60%) Power BI
2 115 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
3 102 (4.55%) Metadata
4 79 (3.53%) Tableau
5 78 (3.48%) SQL Server
6 62 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
7 57 (2.54%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.14%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.38%) Big Data
9 31 (1.38%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
10 28 (1.25%) Delta Lake
11 27 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.07%) Power Query
12 24 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 22 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (0.98%) Oracle Database
14 21 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
15 20 (0.89%) BigQuery
15 20 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 207 (9.24%) JIRA
2 130 (5.80%) Git
3 83 (3.71%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.54%) GitLab
4 57 (2.54%) Selenium
5 49 (2.19%) Postman
6 40 (1.79%) JMeter
7 32 (1.43%) JUnit
8 28 (1.25%) Cucumber
9 25 (1.12%) WebDriver
10 24 (1.07%) Rational DOORS
11 18 (0.80%) MLflow
12 17 (0.76%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.71%) Eclipse
14 13 (0.58%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.54%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.54%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.49%) Gatling
17 9 (0.40%) Gradle
17 9 (0.40%) SpecFlow
General
1 706 (31.52%) Social Skills
2 673 (30.04%) Finance
3 430 (19.20%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.57%) Banking
5 191 (8.53%) Public Sector
6 123 (5.49%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (3.35%) Manufacturing
8 58 (2.59%) Aerospace
9 51 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 50 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
11 48 (2.14%) Pharmaceutical
12 44 (1.96%) Retail
13 38 (1.70%) Legal
14 37 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
15 36 (1.61%) Marketing
16 33 (1.47%) General Ledger
17 32 (1.43%) Telecoms
18 30 (1.34%) Front Office
18 30 (1.34%) Military
19 28 (1.25%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 421 (18.79%) Analyst
2 231 (10.31%) Lead
3 205 (9.15%) Senior
4 189 (8.44%) Business Analyst
5 176 (7.86%) Data Engineer
6 155 (6.92%) Consultant
7 138 (6.16%) Architect
8 122 (5.45%) Developer
9 113 (5.04%) Data Analyst
10 84 (3.75%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.63%) Tester
12 49 (2.19%) Senior Analyst
13 47 (2.10%) Test Engineer
14 46 (2.05%) Network Engineer
14 46 (2.05%) Software Engineer
15 41 (1.83%) Technical Analyst
15 41 (1.83%) Test Manager
16 40 (1.79%) Systems Engineer
17 39 (1.74%) Security Engineer
18 35 (1.56%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (5.45%) REST
2 82 (3.66%) JSON
3 69 (3.08%) Kafka
4 59 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
5 54 (2.41%) Middleware
6 50 (2.23%) OAuth
7 48 (2.14%) PySpark
8 43 (1.92%) XML
9 39 (1.74%) Node.js
10 38 (1.70%) Swagger
11 36 (1.61%) SOAP
12 34 (1.52%) .NET
13 32 (1.43%) Web Services
14 31 (1.38%) Pandas
14 31 (1.38%) RESTful
15 30 (1.34%) Playwright
15 30 (1.34%) PyTorch
16 26 (1.16%) OpenAPI
16 26 (1.16%) Spring
16 26 (1.16%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.54%) Legacy Systems
2 120 (5.36%) Data Structures
3 113 (5.04%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 76 (3.39%) Cloud Native
6 69 (3.08%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.21%) Replication
12 26 (1.16%) Operational Technology
12 26 (1.16%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.12%) Algorithms
13 25 (1.12%) NHS
13 25 (1.12%) Public Cloud
13 25 (1.12%) Reference Data
14 24 (1.07%) Life Science
14 24 (1.07%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.78%) Windows
2 93 (4.15%) Linux
3 31 (1.38%) Unix
4 16 (0.71%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.49%) Android
6 8 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) zOS
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.089%) Debian
12 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.045%) HPUX
12 1 (0.045%) pSOS
12 1 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.045%) Solaris
12 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 605 (27.01%) Migration
2 461 (20.58%) Agile
3 430 (19.20%) Problem-Solving
4 377 (16.83%) Data Validation
5 376 (16.79%) Stakeholder Management
6 361 (16.12%) Data Migration
7 354 (15.80%) CI/CD
8 347 (15.49%) Data Modelling
9 335 (14.96%) Analytics
10 326 (14.55%) User Acceptance Testing
11 296 (13.21%) ETL
12 279 (12.46%) DevOps
13 267 (11.92%) Test Automation
14 263 (11.74%) Business Intelligence
15 249 (11.12%) AI
16 242 (10.80%) Continuous Improvement
17 233 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 226 (10.09%) Data Governance
19 204 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
20 201 (8.97%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 536 (23.93%) SQL
2 411 (18.35%) Python
3 107 (4.78%) Java
4 63 (2.81%) C#
5 55 (2.46%) C++
6 52 (2.32%) JavaScript
7 47 (2.10%) PowerShell
8 45 (2.01%) C
9 42 (1.88%) Bash
10 34 (1.52%) PL/SQL
11 32 (1.43%) R
12 30 (1.34%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 26 (1.16%) Bicep
15 20 (0.89%) Ada
15 20 (0.89%) Scala
16 16 (0.71%) Apex Code
17 14 (0.63%) MATLAB
18 12 (0.54%) T-SQL
18 12 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 416 (18.57%) Security Cleared
2 306 (13.66%) SC Cleared
3 182 (8.13%) Degree
4 57 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.47%) PMI Certification
7 32 (1.43%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.43%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.25%) PMP
9 23 (1.03%) CCNP
10 21 (0.94%) ISTQB
11 17 (0.76%) CISSP
12 15 (0.67%) CBAP
13 14 (0.63%) ACCA
13 14 (0.63%) AWS Certification
14 13 (0.58%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.54%) CCNA
15 12 (0.54%) CIMA
15 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (17.37%) Data Quality
2 289 (12.90%) QA
3 122 (5.45%) GDPR
4 67 (2.99%) NIST
5 60 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.29%) SLA
8 27 (1.21%) GxP
9 24 (1.07%) IFRS
9 24 (1.07%) PMO
10 20 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.80%) GMP
11 18 (0.80%) GRC
11 18 (0.80%) HL7
12 16 (0.71%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.63%) MiFID
14 13 (0.58%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.54%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.53%) Docker
2 50 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.07%) Firmware
5 17 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.58%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (0.40%) vSphere
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.13%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.089%) Ceph
13 2 (0.089%) Lustre
13 2 (0.089%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.089%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 122 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.24%) Terraform
3 42 (1.88%) Prometheus
4 40 (1.79%) Grafana
5 38 (1.70%) Ansible
6 30 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.58%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 9 (0.40%) Puppet
10 9 (0.40%) SCCM
11 6 (0.27%) Nessus
12 5 (0.22%) CASB
12 5 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.22%) vMotion
13 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
13 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.18%) Istio
13 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 303 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 197 (8.79%) SAP
3 191 (8.53%) Oracle
4 107 (4.78%) Databricks
5 76 (3.39%) ServiceNow
6 65 (2.90%) Salesforce
7 52 (2.32%) VMware
8 51 (2.28%) Cisco
9 47 (2.10%) Google
10 40 (1.79%) Splunk
11 33 (1.47%) Informatica
12 29 (1.29%) Workday
13 28 (1.25%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.25%) Sage
14 27 (1.21%) MuleSoft
15 25 (1.12%) IBM
16 22 (0.98%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.94%) OpenAI
18 17 (0.76%) Fortinet
18 17 (0.76%) IFS