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 23 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 89 133
Rank change year-on-year +47 +44 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,169 832 775
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 2.82% 1.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.51% 3.10% 2.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 485 389
10th Percentile £329 £346 £318
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £710 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -7.98% +1.50% +3.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 48 155
10th Percentile £17.75 £25.95 £23.02
25th Percentile £34.32 £47.50 £51.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% +0.40%

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 39,369 26,799 37,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.74% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,829 17,326 24,410
10th Percentile £318 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,054 2,423
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £29.90 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.11% -14.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.18 £35.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -19.49% -6.17%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 +42 1,885 £485 -7.62% 787
UK excluding London +34 1,015 £467 -7.98% 656
London +68 902 £500 -9.05% 257
Work from Home +68 644 £485 -3.00% 395
North of England +44 251 £437 -8.00% 110
South East +2 220 £500 - 220
Midlands +33 212 £475 - 100
West Midlands +32 157 £475 -1.30% 61
North West +30 148 £418 -5.80% 59
South West +3 127 £475 -17.39% 86
East of England +14 117 £489 +8.63% 99
Yorkshire +20 92 £455 +8.33% 35
Scotland +45 62 £388 -15.07% 36
East Midlands 0 52 £525 +14.38% 39
Wales +9 20 £460 +196.77% 11
Northern Ireland +17 17 £400 -27.27% 10
North East -10 14 £450 -37.93% 17

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 84 (3.87%) Confluence
2 44 (2.03%) Apache Spark
3 40 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.57%) SAS
5 21 (0.97%) Apache
5 21 (0.97%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.41%) Appian
8 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.18%) CICS
11 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 130 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.092%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.092%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.092%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.65%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.51%) SAP FI
6 11 (0.51%) Teamcenter
7 10 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) NetSuite
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
10 6 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 476 (21.95%) Azure
2 277 (12.77%) AWS
3 212 (9.77%) Power Platform
4 141 (6.50%) Azure DevOps
5 104 (4.79%) GCP
6 94 (4.33%) GitHub
7 64 (2.95%) Serverless
8 59 (2.72%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.54%) Entra ID
11 52 (2.40%) Snowflake
12 51 (2.35%) OCI
12 51 (2.35%) SaaS
13 50 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
14 38 (1.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.66%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (1.24%) dbt
19 26 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.73%) Firewall
2 56 (2.58%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 36 (1.66%) VLAN
5 28 (1.29%) VPN
6 26 (1.20%) DNS
7 24 (1.11%) Ethernet
7 24 (1.11%) WAN
8 18 (0.83%) HTTP
9 15 (0.69%) BGP
9 15 (0.69%) LAN
9 15 (0.69%) OSPF
9 15 (0.69%) SAN
10 14 (0.65%) Wireless
11 13 (0.60%) NAS
11 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (0.46%) SSL
13 10 (0.46%) TACACS
13 10 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 200 (9.22%) Power BI
2 111 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
3 110 (5.07%) Metadata
4 74 (3.41%) Tableau
5 72 (3.32%) SQL Server
6 58 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (2.26%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.57%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.43%) Big Data
10 29 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
11 28 (1.29%) Delta Lake
11 28 (1.29%) NoSQL
12 27 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
13 22 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
13 22 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.97%) Oracle Database
14 21 (0.97%) Power Query
15 20 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 204 (9.41%) JIRA
2 126 (5.81%) Git
3 83 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.81%) Selenium
5 54 (2.49%) GitLab
6 52 (2.40%) Postman
7 36 (1.66%) Cucumber
7 36 (1.66%) JMeter
8 33 (1.52%) JUnit
9 28 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
10 25 (1.15%) WebDriver
11 24 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.83%) MLflow
12 18 (0.83%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.65%) REST Assured
13 14 (0.65%) SpecFlow
13 14 (0.65%) TestRail
14 13 (0.60%) Bitbucket
15 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 711 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 648 (29.88%) Finance
3 432 (19.92%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 182 (8.39%) Banking
6 121 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.63%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
10 48 (2.21%) Organisational Skills
11 47 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 42 (1.94%) Retail
13 37 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
14 35 (1.61%) Marketing
15 34 (1.57%) Legal
16 32 (1.48%) Telecoms
17 31 (1.43%) General Ledger
18 30 (1.38%) Front Office
19 29 (1.34%) Financial Institution
19 29 (1.34%) Military
Job Titles
1 417 (19.23%) Analyst
2 219 (10.10%) Senior
3 218 (10.05%) Lead
4 191 (8.81%) Business Analyst
5 157 (7.24%) Data Engineer
6 156 (7.19%) Consultant
7 139 (6.41%) Architect
8 133 (6.13%) Developer
9 111 (5.12%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.64%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.72%) Tester
12 51 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
13 45 (2.07%) Senior Developer
14 44 (2.03%) Test Engineer
15 43 (1.98%) Test Manager
16 42 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
16 42 (1.94%) Software Engineer
16 42 (1.94%) Technical Analyst
17 41 (1.89%) Network Engineer
18 40 (1.84%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (6.04%) REST
2 87 (4.01%) JSON
3 64 (2.95%) Oracle Fusion
4 62 (2.86%) Kafka
5 57 (2.63%) Middleware
6 52 (2.40%) XML
7 48 (2.21%) OAuth
8 46 (2.12%) PySpark
9 40 (1.84%) Node.js
10 36 (1.66%) .NET
11 35 (1.61%) Playwright
11 35 (1.61%) Swagger
12 33 (1.52%) SOAP
13 31 (1.43%) RESTful
14 30 (1.38%) Pandas
14 30 (1.38%) Web Services
15 29 (1.34%) PyTorch
16 26 (1.20%) TensorFlow
17 25 (1.15%) OpenAPI
18 24 (1.11%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 125 (5.76%) Legacy Systems
2 115 (5.30%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.66%) Onboarding
4 94 (4.33%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.04%) Cloud Native
6 61 (2.81%) Data Centre
7 58 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 39 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
9 32 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
10 31 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.34%) Replication
12 27 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
13 26 (1.20%) Virtual Team
14 25 (1.15%) Operational Technology
14 25 (1.15%) Reference Data
15 24 (1.11%) Algorithms
15 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
16 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
16 23 (1.06%) Life Science
16 23 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.03%) Windows
2 93 (4.29%) Linux
3 30 (1.38%) Unix
4 15 (0.69%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 8 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.28%) VMS
7 6 (0.28%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.092%) Debian
11 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.046%) pSOS
11 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.046%) Solaris
11 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 572 (26.37%) Migration
2 472 (21.76%) Agile
3 424 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
4 380 (17.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 370 (17.06%) Data Validation
6 346 (15.95%) Data Migration
7 337 (15.54%) CI/CD
8 335 (15.44%) Analytics
9 322 (14.85%) Data Modelling
10 308 (14.20%) User Acceptance Testing
11 290 (13.37%) DevOps
12 285 (13.14%) ETL
13 265 (12.22%) Test Automation
14 250 (11.53%) Business Intelligence
15 238 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
16 231 (10.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 229 (10.56%) AI
18 221 (10.19%) Data Governance
19 193 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
20 188 (8.67%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 538 (24.80%) SQL
2 403 (18.58%) Python
3 111 (5.12%) Java
4 78 (3.60%) JavaScript
5 71 (3.27%) C#
6 54 (2.49%) PL/SQL
7 53 (2.44%) C++
8 48 (2.21%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.03%) C
10 40 (1.84%) Bash
11 31 (1.43%) R
11 31 (1.43%) TypeScript
12 28 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.20%) Bicep
14 20 (0.92%) Scala
15 19 (0.88%) Ada
16 13 (0.60%) VBA
17 12 (0.55%) MATLAB
18 11 (0.51%) Apex Code
19 10 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 425 (19.59%) Security Cleared
2 313 (14.43%) SC Cleared
3 184 (8.48%) Degree
4 64 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.57%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.34%) ISTQB
8 29 (1.34%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.20%) PMP
10 24 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
11 21 (0.97%) CCNP
12 14 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 14 (0.65%) CISSP
13 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
13 13 (0.60%) CBAP
13 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
14 11 (0.51%) ACCA
14 11 (0.51%) CCNA
15 10 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (17.01%) Data Quality
2 282 (13.00%) QA
3 124 (5.72%) GDPR
4 70 (3.23%) NIST
5 62 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.38%) SLA
8 27 (1.24%) GxP
9 23 (1.06%) PMO
10 22 (1.01%) IFRS
11 19 (0.88%) HL7
11 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.83%) GRC
13 17 (0.78%) GMP
14 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
15 13 (0.60%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.55%) NCSC
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 73 (3.37%) Docker
2 49 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.15%) Firmware
5 17 (0.78%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
7 13 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.55%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.32%) vSphere
11 5 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.092%) Ceph
14 2 (0.092%) Lustre
14 2 (0.092%) OpenDJ
14 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 112 (5.16%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.38%) Terraform
3 35 (1.61%) Prometheus
4 33 (1.52%) Grafana
5 32 (1.48%) Ansible
6 29 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.51%) FortiGate
9 10 (0.46%) Kibana
10 9 (0.41%) Puppet
11 8 (0.37%) SCCM
12 6 (0.28%) Nessus
13 5 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.23%) CASB
13 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
14 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.18%) Istio
14 4 (0.18%) vMotion
14 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 290 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 212 (9.77%) Oracle
3 192 (8.85%) SAP
4 106 (4.89%) Databricks
5 84 (3.87%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.67%) Salesforce
7 49 (2.26%) VMware
8 47 (2.17%) Cisco
8 47 (2.17%) Google
9 40 (1.84%) Splunk
10 36 (1.66%) Workday
11 30 (1.38%) Informatica
11 30 (1.38%) MuleSoft
12 29 (1.34%) Sage
13 27 (1.24%) Palo Alto
14 22 (1.01%) IBM
15 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
15 21 (0.97%) OpenAI
16 16 (0.74%) Fortinet
16 16 (0.74%) IFS