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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 73 116
Rank change year-on-year +37 +43 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,661 1,049 839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.18% 3.41% 1.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.09% 3.75% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,584 624 410
10th Percentile £340 £350 £325
25th Percentile £409 £418 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £596 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -8.53% +2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 70 181
10th Percentile £17.23 £18.05 £26.88
25th Percentile £26.71 £41.74 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.04%

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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +36 2,315 £500 -4.76% 1,149
UK excluding London +30 1,239 £467 -8.53% 846
London +45 1,113 £513 -6.82% 432
Work from Home +46 774 £488 -2.50% 482
North of England +41 307 £450 - 168
Midlands +35 286 £490 +8.89% 131
South East 0 273 £504 +0.75% 283
West Midlands +35 207 £475 +17.77% 65
North West +26 168 £444 -1.44% 90
East of England +13 133 £500 - 93
South West +3 131 £508 -11.74% 112
Yorkshire +29 125 £461 +10.53% 50
Scotland +41 84 £407 -13.12% 43
East Midlands +24 74 £525 +15.51% 66
Wales +8 26 £455 +71.70% 26
North East -18 17 £425 -22.73% 28
Northern Ireland +9 11 £384 -34.96% 10

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 90 (3.38%) Confluence
2 63 (2.37%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (1.95%) SAS
4 51 (1.92%) SharePoint
5 44 (1.65%) Apache Spark
6 25 (0.94%) Apache
7 13 (0.49%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
9 10 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
10 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.26%) Appian
11 7 (0.26%) CMS
12 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 176 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.58%) MS Visio
3 37 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 2 (0.075%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.075%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.075%) Sketch
11 2 (0.075%) Windchill
12 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.038%) LaTeX
12 1 (0.038%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 122 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.60%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.41%) Oracle General Ledger
8 10 (0.38%) iTrent
8 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 9 (0.34%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
11 7 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
11 7 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
11 7 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.26%) SAP HCM
11 7 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 544 (20.44%) Azure
2 328 (12.33%) AWS
3 262 (9.85%) Power Platform
4 144 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
5 133 (5.00%) GCP
6 118 (4.43%) GitHub
7 90 (3.38%) Snowflake
8 68 (2.56%) Serverless
9 67 (2.52%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
10 62 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
11 59 (2.22%) Amazon S3
12 51 (1.92%) SaaS
13 49 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
14 40 (1.50%) dbt
14 40 (1.50%) OCI
15 39 (1.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 36 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
18 32 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.06%) Firewall
2 65 (2.44%) Network Security
3 46 (1.73%) VLAN
4 43 (1.62%) DNS
5 41 (1.54%) WAN
6 40 (1.50%) VPN
7 33 (1.24%) TCP/IP
8 32 (1.20%) BGP
9 23 (0.86%) LAN
9 23 (0.86%) OSPF
9 23 (0.86%) SAN
9 23 (0.86%) Wireless
10 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
11 19 (0.71%) Ethernet
12 18 (0.68%) DHCP
12 18 (0.68%) Internet
13 17 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.45%) NAS
15 12 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 245 (9.21%) Power BI
2 137 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (3.91%) Metadata
4 99 (3.72%) SQL Server
5 85 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
6 75 (2.82%) Tableau
7 74 (2.78%) Data Lake
8 68 (2.56%) Relational Database
9 35 (1.32%) Big Data
10 34 (1.28%) Oracle Database
11 33 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 29 (1.09%) NoSQL
13 28 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (1.01%) Power Query
14 27 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 25 (0.94%) BigQuery
15 25 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
16 23 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
16 23 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
16 23 (0.86%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 248 (9.32%) JIRA
2 157 (5.90%) Git
3 99 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.67%) GitLab
5 60 (2.25%) Selenium
6 51 (1.92%) Postman
7 49 (1.84%) JMeter
8 39 (1.47%) JUnit
9 37 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.16%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.98%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.64%) Gatling
13 17 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.45%) MLflow
17 11 (0.41%) Cypress.io
17 11 (0.41%) Oracle Forms
18 10 (0.38%) Maven
General
1 787 (29.58%) Finance
2 786 (29.54%) Social Skills
3 493 (18.53%) Analytical Skills
4 226 (8.49%) Public Sector
5 207 (7.78%) Banking
6 151 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (3.46%) Manufacturing
8 74 (2.78%) Aerospace
9 68 (2.56%) Retail
10 58 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
11 51 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
12 49 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 49 (1.84%) Telecoms
13 43 (1.62%) Legal
14 42 (1.58%) Front Office
15 39 (1.47%) General Ledger
15 39 (1.47%) Marketing
16 38 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
17 35 (1.32%) Billing
17 35 (1.32%) Law
Job Titles
1 472 (17.74%) Analyst
2 272 (10.22%) Senior
3 264 (9.92%) Lead
4 225 (8.46%) Business Analyst
5 204 (7.67%) Data Engineer
6 203 (7.63%) Consultant
7 163 (6.13%) Architect
8 152 (5.71%) Developer
9 130 (4.89%) Data Analyst
10 81 (3.04%) Project Manager
11 80 (3.01%) Test Engineer
12 68 (2.56%) Tester
13 55 (2.07%) Network Engineer
14 49 (1.84%) Test Manager
15 48 (1.80%) Systems Engineer
16 47 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
17 46 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 44 (1.65%) Migration Engineer
18 44 (1.65%) Security Engineer
18 44 (1.65%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.85%) REST
2 79 (2.97%) JSON
3 74 (2.78%) Kafka
4 55 (2.07%) PySpark
5 52 (1.95%) Middleware
5 52 (1.95%) XML
6 50 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 47 (1.77%) OAuth
8 44 (1.65%) Spring
9 41 (1.54%) .NET
10 39 (1.47%) pytest
11 38 (1.43%) SOAP
12 36 (1.35%) Playwright
12 36 (1.35%) RESTful
13 35 (1.32%) Web Services
14 32 (1.20%) Pandas
14 32 (1.20%) Swagger
15 31 (1.16%) Node.js
16 26 (0.98%) OAuth2
16 26 (0.98%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 134 (5.04%) Onboarding
2 132 (4.96%) Data Structures
3 128 (4.81%) Legacy Systems
4 116 (4.36%) Cloud Native
5 114 (4.28%) Product Ownership
6 85 (3.19%) Data Centre
7 66 (2.48%) Management Information System
8 55 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
9 50 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.58%) Life Science
11 40 (1.50%) SCADA
12 35 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 34 (1.28%) AI Agents
14 32 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
14 32 (1.20%) NHS
15 31 (1.16%) Operational Technology
15 31 (1.16%) Replication
15 31 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 30 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
17 29 (1.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 142 (5.34%) Windows
2 94 (3.53%) Linux
3 33 (1.24%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.09%) Unix
5 17 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (0.41%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.26%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.075%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.075%) HPUX
12 2 (0.075%) Solaris
12 2 (0.075%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.075%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) pSOS
13 1 (0.038%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 719 (27.02%) Migration
2 528 (19.84%) Agile
3 473 (17.78%) Stakeholder Management
4 450 (16.91%) Data Validation
5 448 (16.84%) CI/CD
6 447 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
7 424 (15.93%) User Acceptance Testing
8 421 (15.82%) Analytics
9 417 (15.67%) Data Migration
10 412 (15.48%) Data Modelling
11 339 (12.74%) AI
12 328 (12.33%) DevOps
13 324 (12.18%) ETL
14 323 (12.14%) Test Automation
15 310 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
16 288 (10.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 286 (10.75%) Business Intelligence
18 254 (9.55%) Data Analysis
19 250 (9.39%) Data Governance
20 244 (9.17%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 623 (23.41%) SQL
2 468 (17.59%) Python
3 124 (4.66%) Java
4 68 (2.56%) PowerShell
5 57 (2.14%) C#
6 48 (1.80%) Bash
7 42 (1.58%) JavaScript
8 40 (1.50%) C++
9 36 (1.35%) C
10 34 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 34 (1.28%) TypeScript
11 30 (1.13%) Apex Code
12 27 (1.01%) Bicep
13 25 (0.94%) PL/SQL
14 22 (0.83%) R
15 21 (0.79%) Ada
15 21 (0.79%) Scala
16 19 (0.71%) VBA
17 17 (0.64%) MATLAB
17 17 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 477 (17.93%) Security Cleared
2 354 (13.30%) SC Cleared
3 189 (7.10%) Degree
4 63 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (1.92%) DV Cleared
6 42 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 30 (1.13%) CCNP
9 29 (1.09%) PMI Certification
10 25 (0.94%) PMP
11 23 (0.86%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.83%) CISSP
13 20 (0.75%) ACCA
14 19 (0.71%) Azure Certification
15 18 (0.68%) CIMA
16 17 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 16 (0.60%) CCNA
18 15 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
19 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
20 13 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (17.29%) Data Quality
2 317 (11.91%) QA
3 124 (4.66%) GDPR
4 61 (2.29%) NIST
5 55 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 42 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.35%) SLA
8 34 (1.28%) GxP
9 33 (1.24%) PMO
10 22 (0.83%) IFRS
11 19 (0.71%) GRC
12 17 (0.64%) Def Stans
12 17 (0.64%) GMP
13 16 (0.60%) HL7
13 16 (0.60%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.53%) IFRS 17
15 13 (0.49%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.45%) NCSC
16 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.45%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 111 (4.17%) Docker
2 77 (2.89%) Active Directory
3 69 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.64%) VMware NSX
7 17 (0.64%) vSphere
8 16 (0.60%) Firmware
9 13 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.23%) NFS
11 5 (0.19%) KVM
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.075%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.075%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.075%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.038%) etcd
Systems Management
1 158 (5.94%) Kubernetes
2 123 (4.62%) Terraform
3 55 (2.07%) Prometheus
4 50 (1.88%) Ansible
4 50 (1.88%) Grafana
5 27 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
6 23 (0.86%) FortiGate
7 21 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 8 (0.30%) SCCM
10 6 (0.23%) HP ALM
10 6 (0.23%) Nessus
10 6 (0.23%) vMotion
10 6 (0.23%) VxRail
11 5 (0.19%) Argo
11 5 (0.19%) CASB
11 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (0.19%) Istio
11 5 (0.19%) Kibana
11 5 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 364 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 241 (9.06%) SAP
3 228 (8.57%) Oracle
4 119 (4.47%) Databricks
5 91 (3.42%) Salesforce
6 83 (3.12%) VMware
7 78 (2.93%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.22%) Cisco
9 47 (1.77%) Google
10 40 (1.50%) Splunk
11 39 (1.47%) Workday
12 35 (1.32%) Informatica
13 32 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.01%) Fortinet
14 27 (1.01%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.98%) IBM
15 26 (0.98%) Sage
16 22 (0.83%) Juniper
17 21 (0.79%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.75%) IFS