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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 86 122
Rank change year-on-year +44 +36 +25
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,199 851 802
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.65% 2.91% 1.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 3.20% 2.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,339 499 397
10th Percentile £325 £350 £319
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £578 £630 £605
90th Percentile £700 £705 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -10.24% +2.50% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 51 160
10th Percentile £17.23 £25.15 £23.21
25th Percentile £33.93 £47.21 £52.19
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.96% -3.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £75.16
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £78.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £58.88 £63.75
% change year-on-year +10.40% -7.65% +2.41%

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 39,989 26,597 37,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.89% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,206 17,155 24,229
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,068 2,445
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.65 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
% change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%

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 May 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 May 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 1 May 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 1,914 £481 -10.47% 808
UK excluding London +33 1,032 £460 -10.24% 616
London +68 917 £500 -9.09% 298
Work from Home +62 659 £481 -3.90% 357
North of England +38 257 £430 -9.47% 117
Midlands +27 225 £475 - 93
South East +2 223 £490 -2.00% 204
West Midlands +30 165 £475 - 58
North West +25 157 £416 -4.91% 68
East of England +17 118 £475 +5.56% 79
South West -4 115 £475 -17.39% 85
Yorkshire +19 90 £453 +1.91% 37
Scotland +43 70 £404 -11.56% 34
East Midlands +4 56 £525 +14.38% 35
Wales +10 20 £460 +196.77% 15
Northern Ireland +16 15 £400 -31.91% 11
North East -11 13 £450 -37.93% 14

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 (3.96%) Confluence
2 48 (2.18%) Apache Spark
3 39 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (1.68%) SAS
5 21 (0.95%) Apache
5 21 (0.95%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.50%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.41%) Appian
8 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.18%) CICS
11 4 (0.18%) CMS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.091%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.091%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.091%) Documentum
Applications
1 138 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.32%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.091%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.091%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.091%) Sketch
11 1 (0.045%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.045%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.045%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.045%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.045%) UXPin
11 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 101 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.64%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.55%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.45%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
10 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.27%) Aladdin
11 6 (0.27%) iTrent
11 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.27%) SAP FI
11 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 466 (21.19%) Azure
2 281 (12.78%) AWS
3 224 (10.19%) Power Platform
4 130 (5.91%) Azure DevOps
5 110 (5.00%) GCP
6 89 (4.05%) GitHub
7 63 (2.86%) Serverless
8 59 (2.68%) Amazon S3
8 59 (2.68%) Snowflake
9 58 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.50%) Entra ID
11 52 (2.36%) SaaS
12 48 (2.18%) OCI
13 47 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (1.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (1.73%) Microsoft 365
16 35 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.18%) dbt
18 26 (1.18%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.68%) Firewall
2 57 (2.59%) Network Security
3 40 (1.82%) VLAN
4 36 (1.64%) TCP/IP
5 29 (1.32%) VPN
6 28 (1.27%) DNS
7 25 (1.14%) WAN
8 24 (1.09%) Ethernet
9 17 (0.77%) LAN
10 16 (0.73%) SAN
10 16 (0.73%) Wireless
11 15 (0.68%) BGP
11 15 (0.68%) OSPF
12 14 (0.64%) HTTP
12 14 (0.64%) SD-WAN
13 12 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.55%) NAS
14 11 (0.50%) TACACS
14 11 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 212 (9.64%) Power BI
2 116 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (4.73%) Metadata
4 78 (3.55%) Tableau
5 77 (3.50%) SQL Server
6 59 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
7 54 (2.46%) Data Lake
8 42 (1.91%) Relational Database
9 33 (1.50%) Big Data
10 30 (1.36%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (1.27%) Delta Lake
11 28 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
12 24 (1.09%) Power Query
13 23 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (1.00%) Oracle Database
15 21 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
15 21 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
16 20 (0.91%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 19 (0.86%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 200 (9.10%) JIRA
2 133 (6.05%) Git
3 79 (3.59%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.73%) Selenium
5 55 (2.50%) GitLab
6 49 (2.23%) Postman
7 37 (1.68%) JMeter
8 33 (1.50%) JUnit
9 31 (1.41%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.18%) WebDriver
11 24 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.82%) MLflow
13 17 (0.77%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.73%) Oracle APEX
15 14 (0.64%) Bitbucket
15 14 (0.64%) Eclipse
16 13 (0.59%) REST Assured
17 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
18 10 (0.45%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.45%) Gatling
General
1 708 (32.20%) Social Skills
2 661 (30.06%) Finance
3 433 (19.69%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (8.73%) Banking
5 185 (8.41%) Public Sector
6 121 (5.50%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (3.32%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.59%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
9 49 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
10 48 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.96%) Retail
12 38 (1.73%) Influencing Skills
12 38 (1.73%) Legal
13 36 (1.64%) Marketing
14 32 (1.46%) General Ledger
15 31 (1.41%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.36%) Front Office
16 30 (1.36%) Military
17 29 (1.32%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 422 (19.19%) Analyst
2 214 (9.73%) Lead
3 212 (9.64%) Senior
4 191 (8.69%) Business Analyst
5 167 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 153 (6.96%) Consultant
7 137 (6.23%) Architect
8 128 (5.82%) Developer
9 115 (5.23%) Data Analyst
10 81 (3.68%) Project Manager
11 56 (2.55%) Tester
12 53 (2.41%) Senior Analyst
13 47 (2.14%) Test Engineer
14 44 (2.00%) Network Engineer
14 44 (2.00%) Software Engineer
15 42 (1.91%) Technical Analyst
16 41 (1.86%) Test Manager
17 40 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
18 39 (1.77%) Security Engineer
19 37 (1.68%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (5.64%) REST
2 82 (3.73%) JSON
3 67 (3.05%) Kafka
4 59 (2.68%) Oracle Fusion
5 55 (2.50%) Middleware
6 48 (2.18%) OAuth
6 48 (2.18%) PySpark
7 43 (1.96%) XML
8 40 (1.82%) Node.js
9 38 (1.73%) Swagger
10 35 (1.59%) .NET
10 35 (1.59%) SOAP
11 32 (1.46%) RESTful
12 31 (1.41%) Pandas
13 30 (1.36%) PyTorch
13 30 (1.36%) Web Services
14 29 (1.32%) Playwright
15 28 (1.27%) OpenAPI
16 26 (1.18%) TensorFlow
17 25 (1.14%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 122 (5.55%) Legacy Systems
2 117 (5.32%) Data Structures
3 109 (4.96%) Onboarding
4 95 (4.32%) Product Ownership
5 72 (3.27%) Cloud Native
6 67 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 37 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.23%) Replication
12 26 (1.18%) Operational Technology
12 26 (1.18%) Reference Data
12 26 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 25 (1.14%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.09%) Life Science
15 23 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
15 23 (1.05%) Public Cloud
16 22 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.87%) Windows
2 95 (4.32%) Linux
3 34 (1.55%) Unix
4 16 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 8 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
7 6 (0.27%) 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 (0.091%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.045%) HPUX
11 1 (0.045%) pSOS
11 1 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.045%) Solaris
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (26.51%) Migration
2 464 (21.10%) Agile
3 428 (19.46%) Problem-Solving
4 375 (17.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 370 (16.83%) Data Validation
6 346 (15.73%) CI/CD
6 346 (15.73%) Data Migration
7 339 (15.42%) Data Modelling
8 333 (15.14%) Analytics
9 316 (14.37%) User Acceptance Testing
10 295 (13.42%) ETL
11 283 (12.87%) DevOps
12 265 (12.05%) Test Automation
13 260 (11.82%) Business Intelligence
14 239 (10.87%) AI
15 237 (10.78%) Continuous Improvement
16 230 (10.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 226 (10.28%) Data Governance
18 202 (9.19%) Data Pipeline
19 197 (8.96%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 540 (24.56%) SQL
2 409 (18.60%) Python
3 107 (4.87%) Java
4 65 (2.96%) C#
5 62 (2.82%) JavaScript
6 55 (2.50%) C++
7 47 (2.14%) C
8 45 (2.05%) PowerShell
9 42 (1.91%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.77%) Bash
11 31 (1.41%) R
12 30 (1.36%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 25 (1.14%) Bicep
15 20 (0.91%) Ada
15 20 (0.91%) Scala
16 13 (0.59%) Apex Code
16 13 (0.59%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.55%) VBA
18 11 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 418 (19.01%) Security Cleared
2 306 (13.92%) SC Cleared
3 183 (8.32%) Degree
4 60 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 33 (1.50%) DV Cleared
7 32 (1.46%) Master's Degree
7 32 (1.46%) PMI Certification
8 28 (1.27%) PMP
9 26 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (1.09%) ISTQB
11 22 (1.00%) CCNP
12 16 (0.73%) CISSP
13 14 (0.64%) AWS Certification
13 14 (0.64%) CBAP
14 12 (0.55%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (0.50%) ACCA
15 11 (0.50%) CCNA
16 9 (0.41%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (17.19%) Data Quality
2 291 (13.23%) QA
3 121 (5.50%) GDPR
4 67 (3.05%) NIST
5 60 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 32 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.36%) SLA
8 28 (1.27%) GxP
9 23 (1.05%) IFRS
10 22 (1.00%) PMO
11 19 (0.86%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.82%) GMP
12 18 (0.82%) GRC
13 17 (0.77%) HL7
14 16 (0.73%) Def Stans
15 13 (0.59%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.59%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.55%) MiFID
16 12 (0.55%) NCSC
16 12 (0.55%) NIST 800
System Software
1 78 (3.55%) Docker
2 49 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.18%) Firmware
5 17 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 17 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.55%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.36%) vSphere
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.091%) Ceph
13 2 (0.091%) Lustre
13 2 (0.091%) OpenDJ
13 2 (0.091%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 119 (5.41%) Kubernetes
2 93 (4.23%) Terraform
3 38 (1.73%) Prometheus
4 36 (1.64%) Ansible
4 36 (1.64%) Grafana
5 31 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (0.59%) FortiGate
8 10 (0.45%) Kibana
9 9 (0.41%) Puppet
9 9 (0.41%) SCCM
10 6 (0.27%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.23%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
12 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 296 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 199 (9.05%) Oracle
3 188 (8.55%) SAP
4 106 (4.82%) Databricks
5 80 (3.64%) ServiceNow
6 61 (2.77%) Salesforce
7 51 (2.32%) VMware
8 49 (2.23%) Cisco
8 49 (2.23%) Google
9 39 (1.77%) Splunk
10 31 (1.41%) Informatica
11 30 (1.36%) Workday
12 29 (1.32%) Sage
13 28 (1.27%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.23%) MuleSoft
15 25 (1.14%) IBM
16 21 (0.95%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.95%) OpenAI
17 17 (0.77%) CheckPoint
17 17 (0.77%) Fortinet