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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 74 122
Rank change year-on-year +39 +48 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,570 1,004 821
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.12% 3.39% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.04% 3.72% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,526 606 401
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £405 £419 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.43% +5.00% -11.31%
75th Percentile £594 £630 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -11.14% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 63 178
10th Percentile £17.02 £16.84 £26.88
25th Percentile £26.88 £40.35 £48.81
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.85 £77.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +0.51% +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 42,574 26,968 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.80% 91.03% 85.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,549 17,103 23,600
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,556 1,231 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.01
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +36 2,231 £500 -6.93% 1,075
UK excluding London +26 1,218 £467 -11.14% 816
London +48 1,062 £513 -6.82% 391
Work from Home +53 763 £481 -3.80% 416
North of England +45 307 £444 -1.44% 159
Midlands +31 269 £492 +9.39% 133
South East +1 262 £500 -0.50% 248
West Midlands +23 197 £488 +20.37% 73
North West +32 177 £425 -4.23% 78
South West +3 137 £500 -13.04% 128
East of England +9 131 £500 +5.26% 92
Yorkshire +22 114 £458 +5.17% 55
Scotland +42 85 £419 -11.84% 49
East Midlands +15 67 £525 +15.51% 60
Wales +8 25 £455 +193.55% 15
North East -18 19 £425 -22.73% 29
Northern Ireland +11 13 £400 -32.20% 13

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 85 (3.31%) Confluence
2 60 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.95%) SAS
4 45 (1.75%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.48%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.89%) Apache
7 14 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.35%) Appian
9 9 (0.35%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
11 5 (0.19%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.16%) IIS
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 160 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.36%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.31%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.16%) Simulink
11 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.078%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.078%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.078%) Sketch
12 2 (0.078%) Windchill
13 1 (0.039%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.039%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.039%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.039%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.039%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 122 (4.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.36%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.62%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.47%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
7 10 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.35%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
9 7 (0.27%) iTrent
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
9 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
9 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
9 7 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 7 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
10 6 (0.23%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 514 (20.00%) Azure
2 327 (12.72%) AWS
3 245 (9.53%) Power Platform
4 131 (5.10%) Azure DevOps
5 128 (4.98%) GCP
6 119 (4.63%) GitHub
7 86 (3.35%) Snowflake
8 68 (2.65%) Serverless
9 67 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
10 65 (2.53%) Entra ID
11 60 (2.33%) Amazon S3
11 60 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
12 56 (2.18%) SaaS
13 47 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
14 43 (1.67%) OCI
15 37 (1.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 37 (1.44%) dbt
16 35 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
17 31 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.17%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 101 (3.93%) Firewall
2 67 (2.61%) Network Security
3 45 (1.75%) VLAN
4 42 (1.63%) DNS
5 40 (1.56%) WAN
6 36 (1.40%) VPN
7 35 (1.36%) TCP/IP
8 27 (1.05%) BGP
9 23 (0.89%) LAN
10 22 (0.86%) Ethernet
10 22 (0.86%) SD-WAN
11 21 (0.82%) Wireless
12 20 (0.78%) OSPF
12 20 (0.78%) SAN
13 17 (0.66%) DHCP
14 16 (0.62%) Internet
15 15 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
16 13 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
17 12 (0.47%) NAS
17 12 (0.47%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (8.91%) Power BI
2 129 (5.02%) Data Warehouse
3 96 (3.74%) Metadata
4 95 (3.70%) SQL Server
5 82 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
6 73 (2.84%) Tableau
7 67 (2.61%) Data Lake
8 61 (2.37%) Relational Database
9 35 (1.36%) Big Data
10 32 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.21%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (1.13%) NoSQL
13 26 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 26 (1.01%) Power Query
14 25 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 24 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
16 23 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 22 (0.86%) Delta Lake
18 20 (0.78%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 228 (8.87%) JIRA
2 147 (5.72%) Git
3 99 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 70 (2.72%) GitLab
5 56 (2.18%) Selenium
6 51 (1.98%) Postman
7 47 (1.83%) JMeter
8 38 (1.48%) JUnit
9 36 (1.40%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.17%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.01%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.70%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.62%) Gatling
14 16 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.58%) MLflow
16 12 (0.47%) REST Assured
17 10 (0.39%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.39%) Gradle
17 10 (0.39%) Maven
General
1 755 (29.38%) Finance
2 752 (29.26%) Social Skills
3 460 (17.90%) Analytical Skills
4 220 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 202 (7.86%) Banking
6 144 (5.60%) Documentation Skills
7 81 (3.15%) Manufacturing
8 74 (2.88%) Aerospace
9 57 (2.22%) Retail
10 52 (2.02%) Pharmaceutical
11 47 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
12 44 (1.71%) Legal
13 43 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 42 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
14 42 (1.63%) Telecoms
15 39 (1.52%) Marketing
16 37 (1.44%) General Ledger
17 35 (1.36%) Front Office
17 35 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
18 34 (1.32%) Law
Job Titles
1 448 (17.43%) Analyst
2 261 (10.16%) Senior
3 259 (10.08%) Lead
4 216 (8.40%) Business Analyst
5 197 (7.67%) Data Engineer
6 186 (7.24%) Consultant
7 157 (6.11%) Architect
8 146 (5.68%) Developer
9 126 (4.90%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.39%) Project Manager
11 78 (3.04%) Test Engineer
12 65 (2.53%) Tester
13 53 (2.06%) Network Engineer
14 51 (1.98%) Systems Engineer
14 51 (1.98%) Test Manager
15 48 (1.87%) Senior Analyst
16 47 (1.83%) Technical Analyst
17 45 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 42 (1.63%) SAP Consultant
18 42 (1.63%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (5.41%) REST
2 79 (3.07%) JSON
3 71 (2.76%) Kafka
4 56 (2.18%) Oracle Fusion
5 52 (2.02%) OAuth
6 51 (1.98%) XML
7 50 (1.95%) Middleware
8 48 (1.87%) PySpark
9 41 (1.60%) SOAP
10 39 (1.52%) Spring
11 38 (1.48%) .NET
11 38 (1.48%) pytest
11 38 (1.48%) RESTful
11 38 (1.48%) Swagger
12 35 (1.36%) Web Services
13 33 (1.28%) Pandas
13 33 (1.28%) Playwright
14 30 (1.17%) Node.js
15 29 (1.13%) OAuth2
16 27 (1.05%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 138 (5.37%) Legacy Systems
2 128 (4.98%) Onboarding
3 122 (4.75%) Data Structures
4 112 (4.36%) Product Ownership
5 106 (4.12%) Cloud Native
6 80 (3.11%) Data Centre
7 63 (2.45%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
9 44 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
10 38 (1.48%) Life Science
11 34 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.32%) SCADA
12 32 (1.25%) Replication
13 31 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
13 31 (1.21%) NHS
13 31 (1.21%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 29 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 29 (1.13%) Distributed Architecture
15 29 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.25%) Windows
2 96 (3.74%) Linux
3 34 (1.32%) Unix
4 29 (1.13%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.51%) Android
7 9 (0.35%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.16%) SUSE
10 4 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.078%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.078%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.078%) HPUX
12 2 (0.078%) Solaris
12 2 (0.078%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.078%) zOS
13 1 (0.039%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 691 (26.89%) Migration
2 493 (19.18%) Agile
3 445 (17.32%) Stakeholder Management
4 434 (16.89%) Data Validation
5 433 (16.85%) Problem-Solving
6 424 (16.50%) CI/CD
7 408 (15.88%) User Acceptance Testing
8 407 (15.84%) Data Migration
9 402 (15.64%) Data Modelling
10 387 (15.06%) Analytics
11 321 (12.49%) AI
12 318 (12.37%) ETL
13 310 (12.06%) Test Automation
14 308 (11.98%) DevOps
15 282 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
16 275 (10.70%) Business Intelligence
17 267 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 238 (9.26%) Data Analysis
18 238 (9.26%) Data Governance
19 234 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 604 (23.50%) SQL
2 458 (17.82%) Python
3 118 (4.59%) Java
4 67 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 53 (2.06%) C#
6 48 (1.87%) Bash
7 43 (1.67%) C
8 41 (1.60%) C++
9 38 (1.48%) JavaScript
10 32 (1.25%) Bicep
10 32 (1.25%) TypeScript
11 31 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 29 (1.13%) Apex Code
13 23 (0.89%) PL/SQL
13 23 (0.89%) R
14 21 (0.82%) Ada
15 20 (0.78%) Scala
16 18 (0.70%) MATLAB
17 17 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 14 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 464 (18.05%) Security Cleared
2 343 (13.35%) SC Cleared
3 180 (7.00%) Degree
4 65 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (1.87%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 34 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.21%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.09%) CCNP
10 26 (1.01%) PMP
11 21 (0.82%) ISTQB
12 20 (0.78%) ACCA
12 20 (0.78%) Master's Degree
13 18 (0.70%) CIMA
14 17 (0.66%) CISSP
15 16 (0.62%) Azure Certification
15 16 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.58%) CCNA
17 13 (0.51%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (17.28%) Data Quality
2 304 (11.83%) QA
3 122 (4.75%) GDPR
4 59 (2.30%) NIST
5 54 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.40%) SLA
8 32 (1.25%) PMO
9 28 (1.09%) GxP
10 27 (1.05%) IFRS
11 18 (0.70%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.66%) HL7
13 16 (0.62%) Def Stans
14 15 (0.58%) GMP
14 15 (0.58%) GRC
15 14 (0.54%) ISO 20022
16 13 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 13 (0.51%) Solvency II
17 12 (0.47%) NIST 800
System Software
1 106 (4.12%) Docker
2 68 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 60 (2.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.86%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 18 (0.70%) Firmware
8 17 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.54%) vSphere
10 10 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.16%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.078%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.078%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.078%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.039%) etcd
Systems Management
1 151 (5.88%) Kubernetes
2 121 (4.71%) Terraform
3 54 (2.10%) Prometheus
4 48 (1.87%) Ansible
4 48 (1.87%) Grafana
5 28 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (0.82%) FortiGate
6 21 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (0.39%) vCenter Server
8 8 (0.31%) Kibana
9 7 (0.27%) Puppet
9 7 (0.27%) SCCM
10 6 (0.23%) Nessus
10 6 (0.23%) vMotion
10 6 (0.23%) VxRail
11 5 (0.19%) Argo
11 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.16%) Consul
12 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 346 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 227 (8.83%) SAP
3 217 (8.44%) Oracle
4 121 (4.71%) Databricks
5 86 (3.35%) Salesforce
6 74 (2.88%) ServiceNow
7 72 (2.80%) VMware
8 57 (2.22%) Cisco
9 49 (1.91%) Google
10 41 (1.60%) Splunk
11 33 (1.28%) Workday
12 32 (1.25%) Informatica
13 30 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.09%) Sage
15 27 (1.05%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.97%) Fortinet
17 23 (0.89%) IBM
18 21 (0.82%) IFS
18 21 (0.82%) OpenAI
19 20 (0.78%) CyberArk