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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 112 133
Rank change year-on-year +61 +21 +2
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,799 739 780
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.35% 2.45% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.03% 2.72% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,097 412 433
10th Percentile £350 £361 £320
25th Percentile £402 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £528 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.11% -1.86% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £632 £623
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £506 £500
% change year-on-year -6.03% +1.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 35 143
10th Percentile £31.53 £25.26 £22.95
25th Percentile £53.60 £44.50 £51.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.88 £75.20
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.15 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +5.69% -5.38% +4.00%

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 35,800 27,183 38,766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.50% 90.06% 86.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,707 16,972 25,287
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £740 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,144 882 2,256
10th Percentile £14.65 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.61 £32.50 £33.03
Median % change year-on-year -15.06% -1.61% -5.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.48 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.00 £34.36
% change year-on-year -21.41% -6.85% -1.84%

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 2 March 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 2 March 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 2 March 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 +49 1,562 £499 -8.53% 1,040
UK excluding London +49 849 £475 -6.03% 885
London +61 733 £513 -6.82% 264
Work from Home +61 560 £481 -8.33% 434
North of England +27 209 £428 -11.17% 165
South East +9 179 £500 - 265
Midlands +26 154 £491 +0.56% 165
North West +19 136 £402 -9.41% 84
South West +9 132 £475 -17.39% 119
West Midlands +23 126 £492 +0.41% 106
East of England +23 105 £478 +12.47% 135
Yorkshire -7 65 £465 +2.48% 61
Scotland +42 49 £405 -10.50% 35
East Midlands -14 26 £463 +26.02% 58
Northern Ireland +17 21 £400 -27.27% 8
Wales - 13 £460 - 22
North East -5 11 £463 -36.21% 21

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 74 (4.11%) Confluence
2 41 (2.28%) Apache Spark
3 31 (1.72%) SAS
4 26 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (1.45%) SharePoint
5 19 (1.06%) Apache
6 18 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.50%) Appian
8 7 (0.39%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 7 (0.39%) Skype for Business
9 6 (0.33%) ArcGIS
9 6 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 5 (0.28%) CMS
10 5 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.17%) GeoServer
12 3 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 82 (4.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (1.67%) MS Visio
4 17 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.50%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 4 (0.22%) Notion
9 3 (0.17%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.11%) Simulink
10 2 (0.11%) Sketch
11 1 (0.056%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.056%) CATIA
11 1 (0.056%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.056%) Stateflow
11 1 (0.056%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 79 (4.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.45%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
4 11 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
4 11 (0.61%) Workday HCM
5 10 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 10 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
5 10 (0.56%) SAP FI
6 9 (0.50%) NetSuite
6 9 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
6 9 (0.50%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.44%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.44%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 8 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
8 7 (0.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 7 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.39%) SAP MM
9 6 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
9 6 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 420 (23.35%) Azure
2 234 (13.01%) AWS
3 145 (8.06%) Power Platform
4 130 (7.23%) Azure DevOps
5 86 (4.78%) GitHub
6 85 (4.72%) GCP
7 58 (3.22%) Entra ID
7 58 (3.22%) Serverless
8 55 (3.06%) GitHub Actions
9 50 (2.78%) Azure Data Factory
10 48 (2.67%) Amazon S3
11 47 (2.61%) SaaS
12 39 (2.17%) OCI
12 39 (2.17%) Snowflake
13 32 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 28 (1.56%) OpenShift
16 27 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
18 21 (1.17%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 55 (3.06%) Firewall
2 34 (1.89%) TCP/IP
3 30 (1.67%) Network Security
4 26 (1.45%) Ethernet
5 20 (1.11%) DNS
6 19 (1.06%) HTTP
7 17 (0.94%) VPN
8 15 (0.83%) VLAN
9 12 (0.67%) WAN
10 11 (0.61%) SAN
10 11 (0.61%) Wireless
11 9 (0.50%) NAS
12 8 (0.44%) BGP
12 8 (0.44%) MPLS
12 8 (0.44%) OSPF
12 8 (0.44%) SSL
13 7 (0.39%) Internet
13 7 (0.39%) LAN
13 7 (0.39%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.39%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.50%) Power BI
2 89 (4.95%) Metadata
3 74 (4.11%) Data Warehouse
4 48 (2.67%) SQL Server
5 43 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
6 42 (2.33%) Data Lake
6 42 (2.33%) Tableau
7 28 (1.56%) NoSQL
8 27 (1.50%) Delta Lake
9 25 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
10 24 (1.33%) Big Data
11 23 (1.28%) Relational Database
12 22 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
12 22 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
13 21 (1.17%) Geospatial Data
14 19 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
14 19 (1.06%) Pinecone
15 18 (1.00%) GIS
15 18 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.94%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 174 (9.67%) JIRA
2 109 (6.06%) Git
3 82 (4.56%) Jenkins
4 60 (3.34%) Selenium
5 54 (3.00%) GitLab
6 53 (2.95%) Postman
7 35 (1.95%) JMeter
8 32 (1.78%) Cucumber
8 32 (1.78%) JUnit
9 31 (1.72%) Oracle APEX
9 31 (1.72%) Rational DOORS
10 22 (1.22%) Visual Studio
11 20 (1.11%) MLflow
12 16 (0.89%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.83%) WebDriver
14 13 (0.72%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.72%) TestRail
15 12 (0.67%) SpecFlow
15 12 (0.67%) Zephyr
16 9 (0.50%) Bitbucket
General
1 663 (36.85%) Social Skills
2 518 (28.79%) Finance
3 367 (20.40%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (9.06%) Public Sector
5 162 (9.01%) Banking
6 87 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.89%) Presentation Skills
8 51 (2.83%) Manufacturing
9 40 (2.22%) Aerospace
10 37 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
11 36 (2.00%) Pharmaceutical
12 33 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
13 31 (1.72%) Electronics
14 30 (1.67%) Front Office
14 30 (1.67%) Marketing
14 30 (1.67%) Military
15 28 (1.56%) Legal
15 28 (1.56%) Telecoms
16 25 (1.39%) Billing
17 24 (1.33%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 344 (19.12%) Analyst
2 189 (10.51%) Senior
3 175 (9.73%) Lead
4 150 (8.34%) Business Analyst
5 134 (7.45%) Consultant
6 129 (7.17%) Developer
7 120 (6.67%) Architect
8 102 (5.67%) Data Engineer
9 88 (4.89%) Data Analyst
10 56 (3.11%) Tester
11 55 (3.06%) Software Engineer
12 52 (2.89%) Project Manager
13 50 (2.78%) Senior Analyst
14 41 (2.28%) Test Analyst
15 37 (2.06%) SAP Consultant
15 37 (2.06%) Test Manager
16 36 (2.00%) Senior Developer
17 35 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
18 34 (1.89%) Test Engineer
19 33 (1.83%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (6.45%) REST
2 88 (4.89%) JSON
3 56 (3.11%) XML
4 54 (3.00%) Oracle Fusion
5 50 (2.78%) OAuth
6 48 (2.67%) Middleware
7 47 (2.61%) Kafka
8 43 (2.39%) PySpark
9 41 (2.28%) Node.js
9 41 (2.28%) SOAP
10 38 (2.11%) .NET
11 36 (2.00%) PyTorch
12 35 (1.95%) RESTful
13 34 (1.89%) Playwright
14 32 (1.78%) TensorFlow
14 32 (1.78%) Web Services
15 30 (1.67%) Swagger
16 29 (1.61%) pytest
17 26 (1.45%) Pandas
18 24 (1.33%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 108 (6.00%) Legacy Systems
2 78 (4.34%) Data Structures
3 72 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 65 (3.61%) Onboarding
5 60 (3.34%) Cloud Native
6 50 (2.78%) Management Information System
7 37 (2.06%) Data Centre
8 30 (1.67%) Algorithms
9 29 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 28 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 27 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 20 (1.11%) Derivative
12 20 (1.11%) Operational Technology
12 20 (1.11%) Replication
13 19 (1.06%) FPGA
13 19 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 19 (1.06%) Security Posture
14 18 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
15 17 (0.94%) Virtual Team
16 16 (0.89%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 96 (5.34%) Windows
2 91 (5.06%) Linux
3 34 (1.89%) Unix
4 9 (0.50%) Android
5 8 (0.44%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.33%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.33%) zOS
7 2 (0.11%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.11%) Debian
7 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.056%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.056%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.056%) pSOS
8 1 (0.056%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.056%) Solaris
8 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 433 (24.07%) Agile
2 410 (22.79%) Migration
3 409 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
4 322 (17.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 313 (17.40%) CI/CD
6 291 (16.18%) Data Validation
7 273 (15.18%) Analytics
7 273 (15.18%) DevOps
8 250 (13.90%) Data Modelling
9 240 (13.34%) Test Automation
10 231 (12.84%) Data Migration
11 221 (12.28%) ETL
12 208 (11.56%) AI
12 208 (11.56%) User Acceptance Testing
13 203 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
14 185 (10.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 176 (9.78%) Data Governance
16 174 (9.67%) Business Intelligence
17 157 (8.73%) Data Pipeline
18 155 (8.62%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 426 (23.68%) SQL
2 368 (20.46%) Python
3 94 (5.23%) JavaScript
4 92 (5.11%) Java
5 73 (4.06%) C#
6 52 (2.89%) C++
7 51 (2.83%) PL/SQL
8 46 (2.56%) PowerShell
9 44 (2.45%) Bash
10 43 (2.39%) C
11 37 (2.06%) TypeScript
12 24 (1.33%) R
13 23 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 22 (1.22%) Bicep
15 19 (1.06%) Ada
16 17 (0.94%) Groovy
17 15 (0.83%) Scala
18 14 (0.78%) T-SQL
19 11 (0.61%) Shell Script
19 11 (0.61%) VBA
Qualifications
1 406 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 299 (16.62%) SC Cleared
3 180 (10.01%) Degree
4 61 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (2.39%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.06%) Master's Degree
8 33 (1.83%) ISTQB
9 26 (1.45%) PMI Certification
10 22 (1.22%) PMP
11 19 (1.06%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.89%) CISSP
13 14 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.72%) CBAP
15 12 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
15 12 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.61%) CCNP
17 10 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 9 (0.50%) Azure Certification
18 9 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 269 (14.95%) Data Quality
2 221 (12.28%) QA
3 99 (5.50%) GDPR
4 75 (4.17%) NIST
5 55 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 21 (1.17%) IFRS
8 18 (1.00%) IFRS 17
8 18 (1.00%) SLA
9 17 (0.94%) Def Stans
10 16 (0.89%) GxP
11 14 (0.78%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.78%) PMO
12 13 (0.72%) COBIT
12 13 (0.72%) GMP
12 13 (0.72%) NCSC
13 12 (0.67%) EU AI Act
13 12 (0.67%) GRC
14 11 (0.61%) MiFID
15 10 (0.56%) HL7
System Software
1 76 (4.22%) Docker
2 43 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 29 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.22%) Firmware
5 11 (0.61%) VMware NSX
6 8 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.28%) NFS
9 4 (0.22%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (0.22%) vSphere
10 3 (0.17%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.11%) Ceph
11 2 (0.11%) KVM
11 2 (0.11%) Lustre
11 2 (0.11%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.11%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.11%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 108 (6.00%) Kubernetes
2 78 (4.34%) Terraform
3 34 (1.89%) Ansible
4 27 (1.50%) Prometheus
5 25 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
6 24 (1.33%) Grafana
7 17 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.78%) Kibana
9 13 (0.72%) Puppet
10 12 (0.67%) SCCM
11 10 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 10 (0.56%) Nessus
12 8 (0.44%) Nmap
13 5 (0.28%) CASB
14 4 (0.22%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.22%) RSA Archer
14 4 (0.22%) SCOM
14 4 (0.22%) vMotion
15 3 (0.17%) CloudHub
15 3 (0.17%) Iperf
Vendors
1 232 (12.90%) Microsoft
2 179 (9.95%) Oracle
3 142 (7.89%) SAP
4 93 (5.17%) Databricks
5 75 (4.17%) ServiceNow
6 47 (2.61%) Splunk
7 43 (2.39%) Google
8 41 (2.28%) Salesforce
9 38 (2.11%) Cisco
10 35 (1.95%) VMware
10 35 (1.95%) Workday
11 28 (1.56%) MuleSoft
12 23 (1.28%) IBM
12 23 (1.28%) Informatica
12 23 (1.28%) Sage
13 20 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 19 (1.06%) Murex
15 16 (0.89%) CyberArk
16 15 (0.83%) OpenAI
17 14 (0.78%) Bloomberg