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 28 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 67 119
Rank change year-on-year +35 +52 +32
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,919 1,217 772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.43% 3.72% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.42% 4.11% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,748 712 373
10th Percentile £331 £331 £350
25th Percentile £411 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £588
90th Percentile £702 £688 £667
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -7.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 88 115
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £29.86
25th Percentile £26.52 £41.25 £51.13
Median hourly rate £52.50 £61.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -5.77% -1.49%
75th Percentile £73.25 £65.38 £70.13
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - -1.49%

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 45,469 29,582 33,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.43% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,813 18,412 20,921
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,891 1,754 1,674
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.92 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.80% -46.07% +6.25%

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 28 August 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 28 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 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 28 August 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 +29 2,520 £500 -1.48% 3,021
UK excluding London +24 1,340 £463 -7.50% 1,905
London +35 1,233 £525 +2.44% 1,526
Work from Home +28 812 £500 - 1,218
North of England +42 332 £451 +2.39% 316
South East 0 317 £500 - 484
Midlands +39 298 £473 -2.97% 246
West Midlands +27 208 £451 -9.90% 160
North West +23 170 £450 +5.88% 178
Yorkshire +40 145 £460 +2.22% 86
East of England +1 145 £475 -7.77% 281
South West +11 131 £525 -8.70% 305
Scotland +47 107 £430 -7.03% 225
East Midlands +24 86 £500 - 86
Wales -9 23 £338 -10.00% 47
North East -29 21 £438 -2.78% 59
Northern Ireland +8 8 £380 -37.45% 40
Channel Islands -1 1 - - 1

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 80 (2.74%) Confluence
2 67 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 54 (1.85%) SAS
5 40 (1.37%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.96%) Apache
7 17 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.38%) CMS
9 11 (0.38%) Jupyter
10 9 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 6 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
13 5 (0.17%) IIS
13 5 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.17%) Tuxedo
14 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
14 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 202 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.16%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.45%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.27%) CATIA
8 8 (0.27%) Navisworks
8 8 (0.27%) Revit
9 7 (0.24%) ProjectWise
10 6 (0.21%) Simulink
11 5 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.069%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.069%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.069%) Windchill
13 1 (0.034%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.034%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.034%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.034%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 117 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (0.82%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
5 13 (0.45%) NetSuite
5 13 (0.45%) SAP SD
5 13 (0.45%) Teamcenter
6 11 (0.38%) Aladdin
6 11 (0.38%) iTrent
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.34%) SAP FI
7 10 (0.34%) SAP MDG
7 10 (0.34%) SAP MM
8 9 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.31%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.27%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.27%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 626 (21.45%) Azure
2 333 (11.41%) AWS
3 303 (10.38%) Power Platform
4 179 (6.13%) Azure DevOps
5 139 (4.76%) GCP
6 131 (4.49%) GitHub
7 100 (3.43%) Snowflake
8 81 (2.77%) Entra ID
9 77 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 67 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
10 67 (2.30%) Serverless
11 62 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
12 60 (2.06%) SaaS
13 51 (1.75%) Amazon S3
14 47 (1.61%) dbt
15 45 (1.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 41 (1.40%) SuccessFactors
17 39 (1.34%) OCI
18 35 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (1.20%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 115 (3.94%) Firewall
2 69 (2.36%) DNS
3 68 (2.33%) Network Security
4 65 (2.23%) VLAN
5 52 (1.78%) VPN
6 44 (1.51%) BGP
6 44 (1.51%) WAN
7 41 (1.40%) TCP/IP
8 34 (1.16%) DHCP
9 26 (0.89%) OSPF
10 25 (0.86%) LAN
11 24 (0.82%) VXLAN
12 23 (0.79%) Wireless
13 22 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
13 22 (0.75%) Internet
14 21 (0.72%) SAN
14 21 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
16 19 (0.65%) HTTP
17 17 (0.58%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (9.59%) Power BI
2 172 (5.89%) Data Warehouse
3 129 (4.42%) Metadata
4 106 (3.63%) SQL Server
5 100 (3.43%) Relational Database
6 96 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
7 84 (2.88%) Data Lake
8 74 (2.54%) Tableau
9 40 (1.37%) Delta Lake
10 38 (1.30%) MongoDB
11 35 (1.20%) Big Data
11 35 (1.20%) NoSQL
12 34 (1.16%) Oracle Database
13 32 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
13 32 (1.10%) MySQL
13 32 (1.10%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 30 (1.03%) Redis
15 29 (0.99%) BigQuery
16 28 (0.96%) Power Query
17 27 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 254 (8.70%) JIRA
2 191 (6.54%) Git
3 104 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 89 (3.05%) GitLab
5 68 (2.33%) Selenium
6 46 (1.58%) Postman
7 36 (1.23%) JMeter
8 24 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.82%) WebDriver
9 19 (0.65%) JUnit
10 18 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.51%) Gatling
13 14 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.45%) Oracle Forms
14 13 (0.45%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.41%) Maven
15 12 (0.41%) TestRail
15 12 (0.41%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.38%) Gradle
General
1 825 (28.26%) Social Skills
2 818 (28.02%) Finance
3 576 (19.73%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (8.70%) Public Sector
5 220 (7.54%) Banking
6 152 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
7 107 (3.67%) Manufacturing
8 94 (3.22%) Retail
9 68 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 66 (2.26%) Telecoms
11 60 (2.06%) Pharmaceutical
12 59 (2.02%) Aerospace
13 56 (1.92%) Automotive
14 55 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
15 48 (1.64%) Legal
16 47 (1.61%) Marketing
17 44 (1.51%) Law
18 43 (1.47%) Front Office
19 40 (1.37%) Local Government
20 37 (1.27%) Billing
Job Titles
1 524 (17.95%) Analyst
2 322 (11.03%) Senior
3 266 (9.11%) Lead
4 243 (8.32%) Business Analyst
5 238 (8.15%) Data Engineer
6 234 (8.02%) Consultant
7 177 (6.06%) Developer
8 148 (5.07%) Data Analyst
9 143 (4.90%) Architect
10 112 (3.84%) Test Engineer
11 79 (2.71%) Tester
12 77 (2.64%) Network Engineer
13 69 (2.36%) Project Manager
14 65 (2.23%) Systems Engineer
15 60 (2.06%) Administrator
16 59 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 55 (1.88%) Senior Data Engineer
18 53 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
19 51 (1.75%) Test Manager
20 50 (1.71%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (6.00%) REST
2 152 (5.21%) Terraform
3 98 (3.36%) JSON
4 84 (2.88%) PySpark
5 81 (2.77%) XML
6 75 (2.57%) Kafka
7 67 (2.30%) Middleware
8 52 (1.78%) Playwright
9 51 (1.75%) .NET
10 48 (1.64%) Oracle Fusion
11 46 (1.58%) pytest
12 42 (1.44%) SOAP
13 39 (1.34%) OAuth
14 38 (1.30%) RESTful
14 38 (1.30%) Spring
15 36 (1.23%) Pandas
16 35 (1.20%) Web Services
17 31 (1.06%) Spring Boot
18 26 (0.89%) YAML
19 25 (0.86%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 162 (5.55%) Onboarding
2 158 (5.41%) Data Structures
3 129 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 125 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
5 119 (4.08%) Product Ownership
6 100 (3.43%) Management Information System
7 89 (3.05%) Data Centre
8 53 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
10 47 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 44 (1.51%) AI Agents
11 44 (1.51%) Life Science
12 43 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
13 41 (1.40%) SCADA
14 39 (1.34%) NHS
14 39 (1.34%) Replication
15 32 (1.10%) CMDB
15 32 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
15 32 (1.10%) Operational Technology
16 31 (1.06%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.00%) Windows
2 116 (3.97%) Linux
3 69 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.47%) Unix
5 19 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.48%) Android
7 13 (0.45%) Windows 10
8 11 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.38%) VMS
9 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.24%) Windows 7
11 6 (0.21%) AIX
12 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.069%) HPUX
13 2 (0.069%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.034%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.034%) Solaris
14 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 793 (27.17%) Migration
2 580 (19.87%) Stakeholder Management
3 567 (19.42%) Agile
4 527 (18.05%) CI/CD
5 492 (16.86%) User Acceptance Testing
6 470 (16.10%) Analytics
7 469 (16.07%) Data Migration
8 467 (16.00%) Data Modelling
9 450 (15.42%) Data Validation
9 450 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
10 390 (13.36%) DevOps
11 382 (13.09%) AI
12 365 (12.50%) Test Automation
13 360 (12.33%) Continuous Improvement
14 330 (11.31%) ETL
15 320 (10.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 319 (10.93%) Business Intelligence
17 308 (10.55%) Data Pipeline
18 296 (10.14%) Data Governance
19 291 (9.97%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 743 (25.45%) SQL
2 571 (19.56%) Python
3 142 (4.86%) Java
4 96 (3.29%) PowerShell
5 62 (2.12%) Bash
6 55 (1.88%) C#
7 51 (1.75%) JavaScript
8 35 (1.20%) C++
9 32 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 31 (1.06%) Apex Code
11 30 (1.03%) R
12 29 (0.99%) Bicep
13 28 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 25 (0.86%) C
14 25 (0.86%) PL/SQL
15 24 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.65%) VBA
17 18 (0.62%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.58%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 538 (18.43%) Security Cleared
2 400 (13.70%) SC Cleared
3 192 (6.58%) Degree
4 67 (2.30%) DV Cleared
5 62 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 48 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.37%) CCNP
9 28 (0.96%) ACCA
9 28 (0.96%) CIMA
9 28 (0.96%) ISTQB
10 25 (0.86%) AWS Certification
11 22 (0.75%) Azure Certification
12 20 (0.69%) PMI Certification
13 19 (0.65%) CCNA
14 18 (0.62%) PMP
15 16 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.51%) CISSP
17 14 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 579 (19.84%) Data Quality
2 373 (12.78%) QA
3 115 (3.94%) GDPR
4 49 (1.68%) SLA
5 46 (1.58%) Accessibility
6 45 (1.54%) NIST
7 39 (1.34%) GxP
8 38 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.27%) PMO
10 24 (0.82%) GRC
11 21 (0.72%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 19 (0.65%) ISO 20022
13 16 (0.55%) GMP
14 14 (0.48%) NCSC
14 14 (0.48%) WCAG
15 13 (0.45%) Def Stans
16 12 (0.41%) HL7
17 11 (0.38%) IFRS
17 11 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 10 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 112 (3.84%) Docker
2 99 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 84 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (0.92%) Firmware
7 26 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.75%) vSphere
9 14 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.17%) KVM
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.069%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.069%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.069%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.034%) Ceph
14 1 (0.034%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.034%) etcd
Systems Management
1 142 (4.86%) Kubernetes
2 83 (2.84%) Ansible
3 45 (1.54%) Grafana
4 37 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.82%) FortiGate
7 22 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.51%) SCCM
9 14 (0.48%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.48%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
10 10 (0.34%) VxRail
11 7 (0.24%) Argo
11 7 (0.24%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
13 5 (0.17%) systemd
13 5 (0.17%) vRealize
14 4 (0.14%) Kibana
14 4 (0.14%) Puppet
14 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 448 (15.35%) Microsoft
2 257 (8.80%) SAP
3 244 (8.36%) Oracle
4 160 (5.48%) Databricks
5 97 (3.32%) Salesforce
5 97 (3.32%) VMware
6 86 (2.95%) ServiceNow
7 78 (2.67%) Cisco
8 50 (1.71%) Google
9 47 (1.61%) Workday
10 38 (1.30%) IBM
11 37 (1.27%) Informatica
12 29 (0.99%) Fortinet
12 29 (0.99%) Juniper
13 28 (0.96%) Zscaler
14 27 (0.92%) Palo Alto
15 22 (0.75%) Splunk
16 21 (0.72%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.65%) Ariba
18 18 (0.62%) Sage