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 20 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 72 120
Rank change year-on-year +37 +48 +39
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,605 1,017 830
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.14% 3.41% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.06% 3.74% 2.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,555 611 404
10th Percentile £332 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £420 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -11.31%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £589
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -10.62% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 65 181
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.19 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.56 £43.20 £48.00
Median hourly rate £61.25 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.06% -3.75% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.81 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.78 £76.50 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +2.51% +0.81% -0.84%

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 42,996 27,186 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.90% 91.05% 84.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,808 17,251 23,716
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.19% -4.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,575 1,262 2,618
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.73
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.82 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.39% -32.00% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 2,268 £500 -6.89% 825
UK excluding London +29 1,234 £469 -10.62% 704
London +47 1,075 £513 -6.82% 260
Work from Home +52 769 £481 -3.80% 324
North of England +39 311 £444 -1.44% 136
Midlands +29 274 £492 +9.36% 104
South East -2 271 £501 -0.25% 253
West Midlands +24 199 £481 +15.96% 59
North West +26 176 £425 -4.23% 67
South West +4 139 £500 -13.04% 106
East of England +8 130 £500 - 73
Yorkshire +21 120 £460 +5.85% 44
Scotland +42 83 £419 -11.84% 35
East Midlands +21 70 £525 +15.51% 45
Wales +9 25 £455 +193.55% 10
North East -20 18 £425 -22.73% 27
Northern Ireland +9 12 £400 -32.20% 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 88 (3.38%) Confluence
2 63 (2.42%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.92%) SAS
4 47 (1.80%) Apache Spark
5 43 (1.65%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.96%) Apache
7 15 (0.58%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.35%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.31%) Appian
11 7 (0.27%) CMS
12 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 167 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.38%) MS Visio
3 33 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 28 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.31%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.077%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.077%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.077%) Sketch
12 2 (0.077%) Windchill
13 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 123 (4.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.34%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.61%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.27%) iTrent
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.27%) SAP SD
11 6 (0.23%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 524 (20.12%) Azure
2 334 (12.82%) AWS
3 251 (9.64%) Power Platform
4 136 (5.22%) Azure DevOps
5 131 (5.03%) GCP
6 119 (4.57%) GitHub
7 88 (3.38%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.65%) Serverless
9 67 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 66 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 60 (2.30%) Amazon S3
12 59 (2.26%) Azure Data Factory
13 54 (2.07%) SaaS
14 46 (1.77%) Microsoft 365
15 41 (1.57%) OCI
16 38 (1.46%) dbt
17 36 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
17 36 (1.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 33 (1.27%) SuccessFactors
19 31 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 105 (4.03%) Firewall
2 67 (2.57%) Network Security
3 47 (1.80%) VLAN
4 42 (1.61%) DNS
4 42 (1.61%) WAN
5 39 (1.50%) VPN
6 35 (1.34%) TCP/IP
7 32 (1.23%) BGP
8 23 (0.88%) LAN
8 23 (0.88%) OSPF
8 23 (0.88%) Wireless
9 22 (0.84%) Ethernet
9 22 (0.84%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.81%) SAN
11 17 (0.65%) DHCP
12 16 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
13 15 (0.58%) Internet
14 14 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (0.46%) NAS
15 12 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (9.06%) Power BI
2 132 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
3 101 (3.88%) Metadata
4 97 (3.72%) SQL Server
5 83 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
6 75 (2.88%) Tableau
7 69 (2.65%) Data Lake
8 63 (2.42%) Relational Database
9 37 (1.42%) Big Data
10 32 (1.23%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.19%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.11%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (1.11%) NoSQL
13 27 (1.04%) Power Query
14 26 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
15 25 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 24 (0.92%) BigQuery
17 23 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
18 22 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
19 21 (0.81%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 239 (9.17%) JIRA
2 151 (5.80%) Git
3 99 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.73%) GitLab
5 57 (2.19%) Selenium
6 50 (1.92%) Postman
7 47 (1.80%) JMeter
8 38 (1.46%) JUnit
9 36 (1.38%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.15%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.69%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.65%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.61%) Gatling
14 16 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.54%) MLflow
16 12 (0.46%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.38%) Gradle
18 10 (0.38%) Maven
General
1 770 (29.56%) Finance
2 762 (29.25%) Social Skills
3 467 (17.93%) Analytical Skills
4 223 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 201 (7.72%) Banking
6 149 (5.72%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (3.15%) Manufacturing
8 75 (2.88%) Aerospace
9 61 (2.34%) Retail
10 53 (2.03%) Pharmaceutical
11 49 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
12 46 (1.77%) Telecoms
13 43 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 43 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
14 42 (1.61%) Legal
15 40 (1.54%) General Ledger
16 39 (1.50%) Marketing
17 38 (1.46%) Front Office
18 34 (1.31%) Military
18 34 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 451 (17.31%) Analyst
2 270 (10.36%) Senior
3 254 (9.75%) Lead
4 214 (8.21%) Business Analyst
5 199 (7.64%) Consultant
6 191 (7.33%) Data Engineer
7 156 (5.99%) Architect
8 152 (5.83%) Developer
9 127 (4.88%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.30%) Project Manager
11 78 (2.99%) Test Engineer
12 66 (2.53%) Tester
13 56 (2.15%) Network Engineer
14 53 (2.03%) Test Manager
15 50 (1.92%) Systems Engineer
16 49 (1.88%) Senior Analyst
17 47 (1.80%) Technical Analyst
18 45 (1.73%) Software Engineer
19 44 (1.69%) Security Engineer
20 43 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (5.22%) REST
2 80 (3.07%) JSON
3 73 (2.80%) Kafka
4 54 (2.07%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (1.92%) Middleware
5 50 (1.92%) XML
6 49 (1.88%) OAuth
6 49 (1.88%) PySpark
7 42 (1.61%) Spring
8 39 (1.50%) .NET
8 39 (1.50%) SOAP
9 38 (1.46%) RESTful
10 37 (1.42%) pytest
10 37 (1.42%) Swagger
11 34 (1.31%) Playwright
11 34 (1.31%) Web Services
12 33 (1.27%) Pandas
13 30 (1.15%) Node.js
14 27 (1.04%) OAuth2
15 26 (1.00%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 136 (5.22%) Legacy Systems
2 127 (4.88%) Onboarding
3 125 (4.80%) Data Structures
4 110 (4.22%) Product Ownership
5 107 (4.11%) Cloud Native
6 83 (3.19%) Data Centre
7 64 (2.46%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 39 (1.50%) SCADA
11 38 (1.46%) Life Science
12 34 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
14 32 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
15 31 (1.19%) AI Agents
15 31 (1.19%) Operational Technology
15 31 (1.19%) Replication
16 30 (1.15%) Virtual Team
17 29 (1.11%) NHS
17 29 (1.11%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 138 (5.30%) Windows
2 99 (3.80%) Linux
3 33 (1.27%) Unix
4 30 (1.15%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.50%) Android
7 9 (0.35%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.19%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.077%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.077%) HPUX
12 2 (0.077%) Solaris
12 2 (0.077%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.077%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 701 (26.91%) Migration
2 508 (19.50%) Agile
3 452 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
4 438 (16.81%) Data Validation
5 436 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
6 434 (16.66%) CI/CD
7 414 (15.89%) User Acceptance Testing
8 408 (15.66%) Data Modelling
9 407 (15.62%) Data Migration
10 399 (15.32%) Analytics
11 332 (12.74%) AI
12 316 (12.13%) ETL
13 312 (11.98%) DevOps
13 312 (11.98%) Test Automation
14 294 (11.29%) Continuous Improvement
15 277 (10.63%) Business Intelligence
16 275 (10.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 241 (9.25%) Data Governance
18 240 (9.21%) Data Analysis
19 233 (8.94%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 610 (23.42%) SQL
2 466 (17.89%) Python
3 122 (4.68%) Java
4 66 (2.53%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.07%) C#
6 48 (1.84%) Bash
7 43 (1.65%) C
8 42 (1.61%) C++
9 40 (1.54%) JavaScript
10 32 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 32 (1.23%) TypeScript
11 29 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 28 (1.07%) Bicep
13 25 (0.96%) PL/SQL
14 23 (0.88%) R
15 21 (0.81%) Ada
15 21 (0.81%) Scala
16 19 (0.73%) MATLAB
17 17 (0.65%) T-SQL
18 16 (0.61%) VBA
Qualifications
1 476 (18.27%) Security Cleared
2 350 (13.44%) SC Cleared
3 186 (7.14%) Degree
4 62 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 52 (2.00%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.19%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.15%) CCNP
10 26 (1.00%) PMP
11 24 (0.92%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.81%) CISSP
13 20 (0.77%) ACCA
14 19 (0.73%) Azure Certification
14 19 (0.73%) Master's Degree
15 18 (0.69%) CIMA
16 16 (0.61%) CCNA
17 14 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 14 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 13 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (17.20%) Data Quality
2 307 (11.79%) QA
3 118 (4.53%) GDPR
4 63 (2.42%) NIST
5 55 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.38%) SLA
8 32 (1.23%) PMO
9 29 (1.11%) GxP
10 27 (1.04%) IFRS
11 18 (0.69%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.65%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.61%) GRC
13 16 (0.61%) HL7
14 15 (0.58%) GMP
15 14 (0.54%) ISO 20022
16 13 (0.50%) Solvency II
17 12 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.46%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 108 (4.15%) Docker
2 72 (2.76%) Active Directory
3 65 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 22 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
7 18 (0.69%) Firmware
8 17 (0.65%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.61%) vSphere
10 11 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.23%) KVM
11 6 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.077%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.077%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.077%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.038%) etcd
Systems Management
1 153 (5.87%) Kubernetes
2 123 (4.72%) Terraform
3 54 (2.07%) Prometheus
4 50 (1.92%) Ansible
5 48 (1.84%) Grafana
6 28 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.88%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.27%) Kibana
10 7 (0.27%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) Puppet
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
13 4 (0.15%) Consul
13 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 345 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 236 (9.06%) SAP
3 223 (8.56%) Oracle
4 117 (4.49%) Databricks
5 88 (3.38%) Salesforce
6 78 (2.99%) ServiceNow
6 78 (2.99%) VMware
7 60 (2.30%) Cisco
8 48 (1.84%) Google
9 41 (1.57%) Splunk
10 36 (1.38%) Workday
11 33 (1.27%) Informatica
12 32 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.07%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.04%) Fortinet
14 27 (1.04%) Sage
15 23 (0.88%) IBM
16 21 (0.81%) IFS
17 20 (0.77%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.77%) Zscaler