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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 69 118
Rank change year-on-year +33 +49 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,638 1,025 830
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.18% 3.40% 1.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.10% 3.74% 2.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,576 612 404
10th Percentile £334 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £594 £626 £595
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -9.56% +3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 68 182
10th Percentile £17.12 £17.70 £26.99
25th Percentile £27.24 £41.78 £47.87
Median hourly rate £62.50 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.16% -1.88% -7.69%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £71.29
90th Percentile £83.80 £75.75 £76.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +0.81% -0.88%

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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -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 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,293 £500 -4.76% 715
UK excluding London +28 1,239 £466 -9.56% 630
London +46 1,096 £515 -6.36% 222
Work from Home +51 780 £481 -3.75% 286
North of England +41 308 £440 -2.22% 112
Midlands +36 279 £492 +9.33% 112
South East -1 273 £505 +0.90% 238
West Midlands +32 202 £481 +19.29% 58
North West +28 174 £425 -5.56% 52
East of England +12 134 £500 - 65
South West -6 133 £504 -12.39% 86
Yorkshire +22 119 £460 +10.42% 35
Scotland +40 85 £407 -14.26% 29
East Midlands +22 72 £525 +15.51% 54
Wales +10 25 £455 +71.70% 10
North East -20 18 £425 -22.73% 26
Northern Ireland +10 13 £394 -33.26% 3

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 87 (3.30%) Confluence
2 63 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (1.93%) SAS
4 46 (1.74%) Apache Spark
4 46 (1.74%) SharePoint
5 26 (0.99%) Apache
6 14 (0.53%) Jupyter
7 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
9 8 (0.30%) Appian
10 7 (0.27%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.15%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 172 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 26 (0.99%) 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 (0.076%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.076%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.076%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.076%) Sketch
11 2 (0.076%) Windchill
12 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 125 (4.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.61%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.45%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.30%) iTrent
9 8 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.23%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 535 (20.28%) Azure
2 331 (12.55%) AWS
3 260 (9.86%) Power Platform
4 139 (5.27%) Azure DevOps
5 129 (4.89%) GCP
6 120 (4.55%) GitHub
7 88 (3.34%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.62%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 67 (2.54%) Serverless
10 60 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
11 58 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 52 (1.97%) SaaS
13 48 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
14 39 (1.48%) dbt
14 39 (1.48%) OCI
15 37 (1.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
17 32 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 32 (1.21%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.09%) Firewall
2 67 (2.54%) Network Security
3 47 (1.78%) VLAN
4 42 (1.59%) DNS
4 42 (1.59%) WAN
5 40 (1.52%) VPN
6 33 (1.25%) TCP/IP
7 32 (1.21%) BGP
8 23 (0.87%) LAN
8 23 (0.87%) OSPF
8 23 (0.87%) SAN
8 23 (0.87%) Wireless
9 22 (0.83%) SD-WAN
10 20 (0.76%) Ethernet
11 17 (0.64%) DHCP
11 17 (0.64%) Internet
12 16 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
13 14 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
14 12 (0.45%) NAS
14 12 (0.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (9.21%) Power BI
2 136 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
3 100 (3.79%) Metadata
3 100 (3.79%) SQL Server
4 84 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
5 76 (2.88%) Tableau
6 70 (2.65%) Data Lake
7 68 (2.58%) Relational Database
8 36 (1.36%) Big Data
9 33 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 32 (1.21%) Oracle Database
11 29 (1.10%) NoSQL
12 28 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (1.02%) Power Query
13 27 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 25 (0.95%) BigQuery
15 24 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
16 23 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
17 22 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
18 21 (0.80%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 246 (9.33%) JIRA
2 153 (5.80%) Git
3 99 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 70 (2.65%) GitLab
5 59 (2.24%) Selenium
6 50 (1.90%) Postman
7 47 (1.78%) JMeter
8 39 (1.48%) JUnit
9 36 (1.36%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.18%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.68%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.61%) Gatling
14 16 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.53%) MLflow
16 13 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.38%) Maven
18 10 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
General
1 785 (29.76%) Finance
2 779 (29.53%) Social Skills
3 484 (18.35%) Analytical Skills
4 226 (8.57%) Public Sector
5 207 (7.85%) Banking
6 151 (5.72%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (3.37%) Manufacturing
8 75 (2.84%) Aerospace
9 65 (2.46%) Retail
10 57 (2.16%) Pharmaceutical
11 50 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
12 47 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 47 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 44 (1.67%) Legal
14 41 (1.55%) Front Office
14 41 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
15 40 (1.52%) General Ledger
16 38 (1.44%) Marketing
17 35 (1.33%) Law
18 33 (1.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 467 (17.70%) Analyst
2 271 (10.27%) Senior
3 258 (9.78%) Lead
4 223 (8.45%) Business Analyst
5 199 (7.54%) Consultant
6 196 (7.43%) Data Engineer
7 158 (5.99%) Architect
8 153 (5.80%) Developer
9 130 (4.93%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.22%) Project Manager
11 79 (2.99%) Test Engineer
12 67 (2.54%) Tester
13 55 (2.08%) Network Engineer
14 53 (2.01%) Test Manager
15 49 (1.86%) Systems Engineer
16 48 (1.82%) Senior Analyst
16 48 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
17 45 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 44 (1.67%) Security Engineer
19 43 (1.63%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (5.00%) REST
2 79 (2.99%) JSON
3 71 (2.69%) Kafka
4 52 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
4 52 (1.97%) PySpark
4 52 (1.97%) XML
5 50 (1.90%) Middleware
5 50 (1.90%) OAuth
6 42 (1.59%) Spring
7 40 (1.52%) SOAP
8 39 (1.48%) .NET
9 38 (1.44%) pytest
9 38 (1.44%) RESTful
10 35 (1.33%) Swagger
10 35 (1.33%) Web Services
11 34 (1.29%) Playwright
12 31 (1.18%) Pandas
13 30 (1.14%) Node.js
14 27 (1.02%) JWT
15 26 (0.99%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 134 (5.08%) Legacy Systems
2 130 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 128 (4.85%) Data Structures
4 114 (4.32%) Product Ownership
5 111 (4.21%) Cloud Native
6 86 (3.26%) Data Centre
7 64 (2.43%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
10 41 (1.55%) Life Science
11 40 (1.52%) SCADA
12 35 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
13 34 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
14 32 (1.21%) AI Agents
14 32 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
14 32 (1.21%) NHS
14 32 (1.21%) Virtual Team
15 31 (1.18%) Operational Technology
15 31 (1.18%) Replication
16 28 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 139 (5.27%) Windows
2 98 (3.71%) Linux
3 31 (1.18%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.14%) Unix
5 17 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (0.45%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.27%) 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 (0.076%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.076%) HPUX
12 2 (0.076%) Solaris
12 2 (0.076%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.076%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 709 (26.88%) Migration
2 524 (19.86%) Agile
3 470 (17.82%) Stakeholder Management
4 445 (16.87%) CI/CD
4 445 (16.87%) Data Validation
5 443 (16.79%) Problem-Solving
6 417 (15.81%) User Acceptance Testing
7 410 (15.54%) Data Migration
7 410 (15.54%) Data Modelling
8 406 (15.39%) Analytics
9 336 (12.74%) AI
10 322 (12.21%) ETL
11 321 (12.17%) Test Automation
12 319 (12.09%) DevOps
13 305 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
14 284 (10.77%) Business Intelligence
15 278 (10.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 248 (9.40%) Data Analysis
17 244 (9.25%) Data Governance
18 238 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 620 (23.50%) SQL
2 465 (17.63%) Python
3 121 (4.59%) Java
4 68 (2.58%) PowerShell
5 55 (2.08%) C#
6 47 (1.78%) Bash
7 41 (1.55%) C++
8 40 (1.52%) JavaScript
9 39 (1.48%) C
10 33 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 32 (1.21%) TypeScript
12 29 (1.10%) Apex Code
13 27 (1.02%) Bicep
14 26 (0.99%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.87%) R
16 21 (0.80%) Ada
16 21 (0.80%) Scala
17 18 (0.68%) MATLAB
17 18 (0.68%) VBA
18 17 (0.64%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 480 (18.20%) Security Cleared
2 355 (13.46%) SC Cleared
3 188 (7.13%) Degree
4 66 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (1.93%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.18%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.14%) CCNP
10 26 (0.99%) PMP
11 23 (0.87%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.80%) CISSP
13 20 (0.76%) ACCA
14 19 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 18 (0.68%) CIMA
15 18 (0.68%) Master's Degree
16 16 (0.61%) CCNA
17 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
18 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
19 13 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (17.25%) Data Quality
2 317 (12.02%) QA
3 120 (4.55%) GDPR
4 61 (2.31%) NIST
5 54 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 40 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 37 (1.40%) SLA
8 34 (1.29%) PMO
9 32 (1.21%) GxP
10 27 (1.02%) IFRS
11 18 (0.68%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.64%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.61%) GMP
13 16 (0.61%) GRC
13 16 (0.61%) HL7
13 16 (0.61%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.49%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.45%) NCSC
15 12 (0.45%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (4.17%) Docker
2 75 (2.84%) Active Directory
3 68 (2.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.64%) Firmware
7 17 (0.64%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.61%) vSphere
9 11 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.23%) KVM
10 6 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.076%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.076%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.076%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.038%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 154 (5.84%) Kubernetes
2 124 (4.70%) Terraform
3 54 (2.05%) Prometheus
4 51 (1.93%) Ansible
5 48 (1.82%) Grafana
6 28 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.87%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 8 (0.30%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) Kibana
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 5 (0.19%) Puppet
13 4 (0.15%) Consul
Vendors
1 356 (13.50%) Microsoft
2 241 (9.14%) SAP
3 224 (8.49%) Oracle
4 118 (4.47%) Databricks
5 91 (3.45%) Salesforce
6 81 (3.07%) VMware
7 80 (3.03%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.27%) Cisco
9 47 (1.78%) Google
10 40 (1.52%) Splunk
11 37 (1.40%) Workday
12 33 (1.25%) Informatica
13 32 (1.21%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 27 (1.02%) Fortinet
15 27 (1.02%) Sage
16 24 (0.91%) IBM
17 21 (0.80%) Juniper
17 21 (0.80%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.76%) OpenAI