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 1 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 67 119
Rank change year-on-year +36 +52 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,932 1,213 776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.46% 3.70% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.46% 4.10% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,749 706 376
10th Percentile £333 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £588
90th Percentile £700 £688 £669
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 88 114
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £29.84
25th Percentile £26.71 £41.25 £51.06
Median hourly rate £53.50 £61.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.65% -5.77% -2.61%
75th Percentile £73.25 £65.38 £70.81
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - -3.70%

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 45,369 29,617 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.56% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,730 18,446 20,728
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 2,902 1,758 1,607
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.78 £17.30 £18.82
Median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.88 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 2,529 £500 -1.48% 3,279
UK excluding London +26 1,349 £463 -7.50% 2,094
London +40 1,236 £525 +1.94% 1,652
Work from Home +34 811 £500 - 1,289
North of England +45 331 £455 +6.94% 356
South East -2 327 £500 - 520
Midlands +36 298 £463 -2.58% 273
West Midlands +27 212 £453 -4.58% 188
North West +17 167 £450 +5.88% 213
Yorkshire +44 146 £462 +2.60% 87
East of England -1 142 £475 -6.40% 300
South West +7 132 £525 -8.70% 320
Scotland +40 110 £430 -9.47% 249
East Midlands +25 82 £495 -1.00% 85
Wales -4 24 £363 -3.33% 49
North East -33 23 £438 -2.78% 64
Northern Ireland +7 7 £380 -37.45% 66
Channel Islands -2 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 (2.73%) Confluence
2 66 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (1.98%) SharePoint
4 54 (1.84%) SAS
5 40 (1.36%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.95%) Apache
7 18 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (0.48%) 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 (0.20%) 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%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 199 (6.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.16%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.44%) 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 (0.20%) Simulink
11 5 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.068%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.068%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.068%) 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
1 113 (3.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.44%) SAP SD
4 13 (0.44%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.44%) Workday HCM
5 11 (0.38%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.38%) iTrent
5 11 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
5 11 (0.38%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 10 (0.34%) SAP FI
6 10 (0.34%) SAP MM
7 9 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.31%) SAP HCM
8 8 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.27%) SAP PS
9 7 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 629 (21.45%) Azure
2 341 (11.63%) AWS
3 302 (10.30%) Power Platform
4 180 (6.14%) Azure DevOps
5 141 (4.81%) GCP
6 134 (4.57%) GitHub
7 102 (3.48%) Snowflake
8 82 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 76 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 69 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
10 69 (2.35%) Serverless
11 62 (2.11%) SaaS
12 61 (2.08%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (1.77%) Amazon S3
14 48 (1.64%) dbt
15 45 (1.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
17 36 (1.23%) OCI
18 35 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (1.19%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 116 (3.96%) Firewall
2 72 (2.46%) DNS
3 71 (2.42%) VLAN
4 66 (2.25%) Network Security
5 55 (1.88%) VPN
6 47 (1.60%) BGP
7 46 (1.57%) WAN
8 43 (1.47%) TCP/IP
9 37 (1.26%) DHCP
10 29 (0.99%) OSPF
11 26 (0.89%) VXLAN
12 25 (0.85%) LAN
13 24 (0.82%) Wireless
14 23 (0.78%) Internet
14 23 (0.78%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
16 21 (0.72%) HTTP
16 21 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
17 19 (0.65%) SAN
18 17 (0.58%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (9.52%) Power BI
2 174 (5.93%) Data Warehouse
3 129 (4.40%) Metadata
4 110 (3.75%) Relational Database
5 107 (3.65%) SQL Server
6 98 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
7 84 (2.86%) Data Lake
8 73 (2.49%) Tableau
9 42 (1.43%) Delta Lake
10 38 (1.30%) MongoDB
11 36 (1.23%) NoSQL
11 36 (1.23%) Oracle Database
12 35 (1.19%) Big Data
13 31 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
13 31 (1.06%) MySQL
13 31 (1.06%) Redis
13 31 (1.06%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 30 (1.02%) BigQuery
15 28 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
16 27 (0.92%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 255 (8.70%) JIRA
2 200 (6.82%) Git
3 106 (3.62%) Jenkins
4 91 (3.10%) GitLab
5 73 (2.49%) Selenium
6 46 (1.57%) Postman
7 36 (1.23%) JMeter
8 24 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.82%) WebDriver
9 19 (0.65%) JUnit
10 18 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.51%) Gatling
12 15 (0.51%) Oracle Forms
13 14 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.44%) 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 (28.14%) Social Skills
2 816 (27.83%) Finance
3 581 (19.82%) Analytical Skills
4 251 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 224 (7.64%) Banking
6 152 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (3.68%) Manufacturing
8 95 (3.24%) Retail
9 67 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 66 (2.25%) Telecoms
11 60 (2.05%) Pharmaceutical
12 58 (1.98%) Aerospace
13 57 (1.94%) Automotive
14 54 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
15 47 (1.60%) Legal
15 47 (1.60%) Marketing
16 44 (1.50%) Law
17 43 (1.47%) Front Office
18 41 (1.40%) Local Government
19 38 (1.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 525 (17.91%) Analyst
2 328 (11.19%) Senior
3 267 (9.11%) Lead
4 242 (8.25%) Business Analyst
5 236 (8.05%) Data Engineer
6 227 (7.74%) Consultant
7 181 (6.17%) Developer
8 152 (5.18%) Data Analyst
9 147 (5.01%) Architect
10 113 (3.85%) Test Engineer
11 79 (2.69%) Tester
12 78 (2.66%) Network Engineer
13 66 (2.25%) Project Manager
14 65 (2.22%) Systems Engineer
15 60 (2.05%) Administrator
16 58 (1.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 57 (1.94%) Senior Data Engineer
18 53 (1.81%) Technical Analyst
19 51 (1.74%) Test Manager
20 50 (1.71%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (6.28%) REST
2 156 (5.32%) Terraform
3 99 (3.38%) JSON
4 87 (2.97%) PySpark
5 83 (2.83%) XML
6 77 (2.63%) Kafka
7 69 (2.35%) Middleware
8 55 (1.88%) Playwright
9 54 (1.84%) .NET
10 49 (1.67%) Oracle Fusion
11 46 (1.57%) pytest
12 44 (1.50%) SOAP
13 42 (1.43%) OAuth
14 39 (1.33%) RESTful
14 39 (1.33%) Spring
15 37 (1.26%) Web Services
16 35 (1.19%) Pandas
17 32 (1.09%) Spring Boot
18 28 (0.95%) OpenID
19 27 (0.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 162 (5.53%) Data Structures
2 161 (5.49%) Onboarding
3 130 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 127 (4.33%) Legacy Systems
5 118 (4.02%) Product Ownership
6 101 (3.44%) Management Information System
7 89 (3.04%) Data Centre
8 54 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
10 47 (1.60%) AI Agents
11 46 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
12 44 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 44 (1.50%) Life Science
13 41 (1.40%) SCADA
14 39 (1.33%) NHS
15 38 (1.30%) Replication
16 33 (1.13%) CMDB
16 33 (1.13%) Operational Technology
17 32 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
18 31 (1.06%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 174 (5.93%) Windows
2 117 (3.99%) Linux
3 72 (2.46%) Windows Server
4 45 (1.53%) Unix
5 19 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.48%) Android
7 13 (0.44%) 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 (0.20%) AIX
12 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.068%) HPUX
13 2 (0.068%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.034%) Debian
14 1 (0.034%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.034%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 792 (27.01%) Migration
2 584 (19.92%) Stakeholder Management
3 574 (19.58%) Agile
4 540 (18.42%) CI/CD
5 489 (16.68%) User Acceptance Testing
6 471 (16.06%) Data Modelling
7 467 (15.93%) Analytics
7 467 (15.93%) Data Migration
8 457 (15.59%) Data Validation
9 452 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
10 391 (13.34%) DevOps
11 389 (13.27%) AI
12 374 (12.76%) Test Automation
13 363 (12.38%) Continuous Improvement
14 329 (11.22%) ETL
15 318 (10.85%) Business Intelligence
15 318 (10.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 307 (10.47%) Data Pipeline
17 296 (10.10%) Data Governance
18 293 (9.99%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 756 (25.78%) SQL
2 586 (19.99%) Python
3 142 (4.84%) Java
4 100 (3.41%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.15%) Bash
6 59 (2.01%) C#
7 54 (1.84%) JavaScript
8 35 (1.19%) TypeScript
9 34 (1.16%) C++
10 31 (1.06%) Apex Code
11 30 (1.02%) R
12 29 (0.99%) Bicep
13 27 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 27 (0.92%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.85%) C
15 24 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.61%) T-SQL
17 17 (0.58%) VBA
18 16 (0.55%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 552 (18.83%) Security Cleared
2 407 (13.88%) SC Cleared
3 189 (6.45%) Degree
4 73 (2.49%) DV Cleared
5 63 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 41 (1.40%) CCNP
9 28 (0.95%) ACCA
9 28 (0.95%) CIMA
9 28 (0.95%) ISTQB
10 25 (0.85%) AWS Certification
11 22 (0.75%) Azure Certification
12 20 (0.68%) CCNA
12 20 (0.68%) PMI Certification
13 18 (0.61%) PMP
14 16 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
15 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.51%) CISSP
16 14 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 582 (19.85%) Data Quality
2 373 (12.72%) QA
3 114 (3.89%) GDPR
4 49 (1.67%) Accessibility
5 48 (1.64%) SLA
6 45 (1.53%) NIST
7 42 (1.43%) GxP
8 38 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (1.23%) PMO
10 24 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 22 (0.75%) GRC
12 19 (0.65%) GMP
12 19 (0.65%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.58%) WCAG
14 14 (0.48%) NCSC
15 13 (0.44%) Def Stans
16 11 (0.38%) HL7
16 11 (0.38%) IFRS
16 11 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.34%) Solvency II
System Software
1 112 (3.82%) Docker
2 95 (3.24%) Active Directory
3 83 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (0.99%) Firmware
7 26 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.78%) vSphere
9 22 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.48%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.17%) KVM
11 5 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.068%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.068%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.068%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.034%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.034%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.034%) NFS
Systems Management
1 146 (4.98%) Kubernetes
2 89 (3.04%) Ansible
3 45 (1.53%) Grafana
4 37 (1.26%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.89%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.55%) SCCM
9 15 (0.51%) vCenter Server
10 14 (0.48%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
11 10 (0.34%) VxRail
12 7 (0.24%) Argo
12 7 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.20%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vMotion
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Consul
15 4 (0.14%) Kibana
Vendors
1 446 (15.21%) Microsoft
2 255 (8.70%) SAP
3 243 (8.29%) Oracle
4 163 (5.56%) Databricks
5 100 (3.41%) Salesforce
6 95 (3.24%) VMware
7 85 (2.90%) ServiceNow
8 83 (2.83%) Cisco
9 50 (1.71%) Google
10 46 (1.57%) Workday
11 38 (1.30%) IBM
12 37 (1.26%) Informatica
13 32 (1.09%) Fortinet
14 30 (1.02%) Juniper
15 29 (0.99%) Zscaler
16 27 (0.92%) Palo Alto
17 22 (0.75%) Splunk
18 21 (0.72%) MuleSoft
19 18 (0.61%) Ariba
20 17 (0.58%) Sage