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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 73 119
Rank change year-on-year +34 +46 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,416 953 812
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.95% 3.31% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.84% 3.64% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,439 569 402
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £404 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £589 £630 £600
90th Percentile £700 £701 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -10.28% +2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 61 172
10th Percentile £17.12 £16.50 £26.88
25th Percentile £26.88 £37.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -4.17% -4.76%
75th Percentile £74.25 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.15 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +0.51% - -

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 41,363 26,184 36,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 91.01% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,810 16,717 23,641
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,496 1,118 2,535
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.19 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.14 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 2,097 £500 -6.98% 1,115
UK excluding London +32 1,146 £461 -10.28% 807
London +51 1,002 £513 -6.82% 415
Work from Home +53 718 £481 -3.75% 498
North of England +39 285 £437 -2.83% 179
Midlands +33 259 £500 +11.11% 125
South East -6 240 £500 - 227
West Midlands +23 184 £484 +19.60% 80
North West +33 165 £423 -3.43% 105
South West 0 128 £500 -13.04% 108
East of England +10 127 £475 +5.56% 113
Yorkshire +17 108 £455 +4.60% 52
Scotland +47 80 £400 -15.79% 36
East Midlands +17 70 £525 +15.51% 45
Wales +9 24 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -20 15 £438 -25.53% 24
Northern Ireland +13 13 £400 -32.20% 24

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 (3.52%) Confluence
2 55 (2.28%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.86%) Apache Spark
4 43 (1.78%) SAS
5 31 (1.28%) SharePoint
6 23 (0.95%) Apache
7 13 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.41%) ArcGIS
8 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.37%) Appian
9 9 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.21%) CMS
10 5 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 3 (0.12%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.083%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 155 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.41%) MS Visio
3 27 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 11 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.33%) CATIA
7 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.17%) Simulink
9 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.083%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.083%) Sketch
11 1 (0.041%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.041%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.041%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.041%) Notion
11 1 (0.041%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.041%) UXPin
11 1 (0.041%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 118 (4.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 13 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.50%) Workday HCM
7 11 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.37%) Aladdin
8 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
9 8 (0.33%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.29%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.29%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.29%) SAP SD
11 6 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
11 6 (0.25%) SAP Business One
11 6 (0.25%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 474 (19.62%) Azure
2 304 (12.58%) AWS
3 237 (9.81%) Power Platform
4 123 (5.09%) GCP
5 121 (5.01%) Azure DevOps
6 111 (4.59%) GitHub
7 79 (3.27%) Snowflake
8 65 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
9 62 (2.57%) Serverless
10 59 (2.44%) Azure Data Factory
10 59 (2.44%) Entra ID
11 58 (2.40%) Amazon S3
12 56 (2.32%) SaaS
13 41 (1.70%) OCI
14 39 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
15 36 (1.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 35 (1.45%) dbt
17 33 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
18 30 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 28 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.64%) Firewall
2 58 (2.40%) Network Security
3 41 (1.70%) VLAN
4 38 (1.57%) DNS
5 34 (1.41%) VPN
6 32 (1.32%) TCP/IP
7 30 (1.24%) WAN
8 24 (0.99%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.79%) BGP
10 18 (0.75%) LAN
10 18 (0.75%) OSPF
10 18 (0.75%) SAN
11 17 (0.70%) SD-WAN
12 15 (0.62%) Internet
12 15 (0.62%) Wireless
13 14 (0.58%) DHCP
13 14 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.50%) HTTP
14 12 (0.50%) NAS
15 10 (0.41%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 220 (9.11%) Power BI
2 121 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
3 90 (3.73%) SQL Server
4 83 (3.44%) Metadata
5 72 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
6 70 (2.90%) Tableau
7 67 (2.77%) Data Lake
8 50 (2.07%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.41%) Big Data
10 30 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
10 30 (1.24%) NoSQL
11 29 (1.20%) Oracle Database
12 28 (1.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 26 (1.08%) Power Query
14 25 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
15 24 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
15 24 (0.99%) Delta Lake
16 23 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 22 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 21 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 214 (8.86%) JIRA
2 132 (5.46%) Git
3 93 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 64 (2.65%) GitLab
5 55 (2.28%) Selenium
6 52 (2.15%) Postman
7 47 (1.95%) JMeter
8 37 (1.53%) JUnit
9 35 (1.45%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.24%) WebDriver
11 28 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
12 17 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.62%) Eclipse
14 15 (0.62%) MLflow
15 10 (0.41%) Gatling
15 10 (0.41%) Gradle
15 10 (0.41%) Maven
16 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.37%) REST Assured
General
1 719 (29.76%) Social Skills
2 718 (29.72%) Finance
3 429 (17.76%) Analytical Skills
4 204 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 198 (8.20%) Banking
6 134 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.52%) Manufacturing
8 67 (2.77%) Aerospace
9 53 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
10 49 (2.03%) Retail
11 47 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
12 41 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
13 39 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 39 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
13 39 (1.61%) Legal
14 37 (1.53%) General Ledger
14 37 (1.53%) Marketing
15 36 (1.49%) Telecoms
16 35 (1.45%) Front Office
17 30 (1.24%) Military
Job Titles
1 428 (17.72%) Analyst
2 251 (10.39%) Lead
3 225 (9.31%) Senior
4 204 (8.44%) Business Analyst
5 188 (7.78%) Data Engineer
6 171 (7.08%) Consultant
7 148 (6.13%) Architect
8 131 (5.42%) Developer
9 118 (4.88%) Data Analyst
10 84 (3.48%) Project Manager
11 65 (2.69%) Test Engineer
12 62 (2.57%) Tester
13 47 (1.95%) Software Engineer
13 47 (1.95%) Test Manager
14 46 (1.90%) Senior Analyst
15 44 (1.82%) Network Engineer
15 44 (1.82%) Systems Engineer
15 44 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.66%) Migration Engineer
16 40 (1.66%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (5.26%) REST
2 83 (3.44%) JSON
3 68 (2.81%) Kafka
4 51 (2.11%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.07%) Middleware
5 50 (2.07%) XML
6 49 (2.03%) OAuth
7 44 (1.82%) PySpark
8 40 (1.66%) Swagger
9 39 (1.61%) RESTful
10 38 (1.57%) .NET
10 38 (1.57%) SOAP
11 36 (1.49%) pytest
12 33 (1.37%) Pandas
12 33 (1.37%) Spring
13 31 (1.28%) Web Services
14 30 (1.24%) Node.js
15 29 (1.20%) OAuth2
16 27 (1.12%) PyTorch
17 26 (1.08%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 128 (5.30%) Legacy Systems
2 122 (5.05%) Onboarding
3 118 (4.88%) Data Structures
4 104 (4.30%) Product Ownership
5 95 (3.93%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.19%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.52%) Management Information System
8 48 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
10 37 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 35 (1.45%) Life Science
12 34 (1.41%) SCADA
13 31 (1.28%) Operational Technology
14 30 (1.24%) Replication
15 28 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.16%) NHS
15 28 (1.16%) Reference Data
15 28 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 27 (1.12%) Public Cloud
17 26 (1.08%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 125 (5.17%) Windows
2 93 (3.85%) Linux
3 33 (1.37%) Unix
4 24 (0.99%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Android
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.12%) zOS
11 2 (0.083%) HPUX
11 2 (0.083%) Solaris
11 2 (0.083%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.083%) VxWorks
12 1 (0.041%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.041%) Debian
12 1 (0.041%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 640 (26.49%) Migration
2 463 (19.16%) Agile
3 418 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
4 406 (16.80%) Data Validation
4 406 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
5 398 (16.47%) CI/CD
6 380 (15.73%) Data Migration
7 376 (15.56%) Data Modelling
8 368 (15.23%) User Acceptance Testing
9 359 (14.86%) Analytics
10 302 (12.50%) ETL
11 296 (12.25%) AI
12 294 (12.17%) DevOps
13 290 (12.00%) Test Automation
14 265 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
15 263 (10.89%) Business Intelligence
16 249 (10.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 227 (9.40%) Data Analysis
18 221 (9.15%) Data Governance
19 219 (9.06%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 558 (23.10%) SQL
2 438 (18.13%) Python
3 114 (4.72%) Java
4 60 (2.48%) PowerShell
5 57 (2.36%) C#
6 47 (1.95%) Bash
7 46 (1.90%) C++
8 43 (1.78%) C
9 40 (1.66%) JavaScript
10 33 (1.37%) Bicep
11 30 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 29 (1.20%) TypeScript
13 26 (1.08%) PL/SQL
14 25 (1.03%) Apex Code
15 23 (0.95%) R
16 22 (0.91%) Ada
17 20 (0.83%) Scala
18 18 (0.75%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.54%) T-SQL
20 12 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 438 (18.13%) Security Cleared
2 326 (13.49%) SC Cleared
3 184 (7.62%) Degree
4 64 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 42 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 30 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.20%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.03%) PMP
10 24 (0.99%) CCNP
11 22 (0.91%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.83%) ACCA
12 20 (0.83%) ISTQB
13 18 (0.75%) CIMA
14 17 (0.70%) CISSP
15 14 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (0.54%) Azure Certification
17 12 (0.50%) AWS Certification
17 12 (0.50%) CCNA
17 12 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (17.14%) Data Quality
2 294 (12.17%) QA
3 118 (4.88%) GDPR
4 65 (2.69%) NIST
5 55 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 34 (1.41%) SLA
8 31 (1.28%) GxP
9 29 (1.20%) PMO
10 27 (1.12%) IFRS
11 18 (0.75%) Def Stans
11 18 (0.75%) GMP
11 18 (0.75%) GRC
11 18 (0.75%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.70%) HL7
13 14 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.50%) NIST 800
System Software
1 96 (3.97%) Docker
2 61 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 53 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.91%) Hyper-V
6 21 (0.87%) Firmware
7 17 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.58%) vSphere
10 9 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.21%) NFS
12 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.12%) KVM
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.083%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.041%) Embedded Firmware
15 1 (0.041%) etcd
15 1 (0.041%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 139 (5.75%) Kubernetes
2 108 (4.47%) Terraform
3 53 (2.19%) Prometheus
4 49 (2.03%) Grafana
5 41 (1.70%) Ansible
6 28 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.37%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Puppet
10 8 (0.33%) SCCM
10 8 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.25%) Nessus
11 6 (0.25%) vMotion
12 5 (0.21%) Argo
12 5 (0.21%) Istio
13 4 (0.17%) CASB
13 4 (0.17%) Consul
13 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 326 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 218 (9.02%) SAP
3 203 (8.40%) Oracle
4 116 (4.80%) Databricks
5 78 (3.23%) Salesforce
6 71 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 65 (2.69%) VMware
8 49 (2.03%) Google
9 48 (1.99%) Cisco
10 43 (1.78%) Splunk
11 31 (1.28%) Informatica
11 31 (1.28%) Workday
12 28 (1.16%) MuleSoft
13 27 (1.12%) Sage
14 26 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 23 (0.95%) IBM
16 21 (0.87%) IFS
16 21 (0.87%) OpenAI
17 20 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 20 (0.83%) Fortinet