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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 89 133
Rank change year-on-year +46 +44 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,169 828 762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 2.81% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.54% 3.10% 2.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,321 483 386
10th Percentile £340 £344 £317
25th Percentile £400 £413 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £611
90th Percentile £700 £703 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £508 £500
% change year-on-year -6.40% +1.50% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 49 151
10th Percentile £21.50 £26.05 £22.87
25th Percentile £34.50 £47.50 £49.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.04%
75th Percentile £71.75 £65.00 £75.20
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.05 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.00
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.06% -0.40%

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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 +40 1,880 £488 -7.14% 813
UK excluding London +31 1,022 £475 -6.40% 626
London +69 885 £501 -9.00% 260
Work from Home +69 657 £492 -4.00% 378
North of England +36 254 £433 -8.95% 124
South East +3 219 £500 - 202
Midlands +34 217 £492 +2.23% 112
West Midlands +30 164 £487 +1.12% 78
North West +27 148 £416 -6.25% 60
South West +5 127 £475 -17.39% 80
East of England +10 117 £486 +7.89% 82
Yorkshire +16 95 £453 +7.86% 50
Scotland +41 58 £404 -11.56% 31
East Midlands 0 50 £525 +4.06% 34
Northern Ireland +22 21 £425 -22.73% 1
Wales +11 20 £460 +196.77% 9
North East -4 14 £450 -37.93% 16

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 (3.92%) Confluence
2 44 (2.03%) SAS
3 43 (1.98%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (0.97%) Apache
5 21 (0.97%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.41%) Appian
8 9 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
10 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
10 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.18%) CICS
11 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 2 (0.092%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 128 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.092%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.092%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.092%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 105 (4.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.65%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.51%) SAP FI
6 11 (0.51%) Teamcenter
7 10 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
8 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
9 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.28%) iTrent
10 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 489 (22.54%) Azure
2 277 (12.77%) AWS
3 204 (9.41%) Power Platform
4 141 (6.50%) Azure DevOps
5 106 (4.89%) GitHub
6 102 (4.70%) GCP
7 65 (3.00%) Serverless
8 63 (2.90%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.81%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.54%) Entra ID
11 51 (2.35%) OCI
11 51 (2.35%) SaaS
12 48 (2.21%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 36 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
15 33 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 33 (1.52%) Microsoft 365
16 26 (1.20%) OpenShift
16 26 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.73%) Firewall
2 56 (2.58%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 33 (1.52%) VLAN
5 28 (1.29%) DNS
6 26 (1.20%) VPN
7 24 (1.11%) Ethernet
7 24 (1.11%) WAN
8 23 (1.06%) HTTP
9 15 (0.69%) LAN
9 15 (0.69%) SAN
10 13 (0.60%) BGP
10 13 (0.60%) NAS
10 13 (0.60%) OSPF
10 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
10 13 (0.60%) Wireless
11 11 (0.51%) SSL
12 10 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
13 9 (0.41%) DHCP
13 9 (0.41%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (8.85%) Power BI
2 111 (5.12%) Metadata
3 106 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 75 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 72 (3.32%) Tableau
6 60 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
7 48 (2.21%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.57%) Delta Lake
8 34 (1.57%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
10 29 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
10 29 (1.34%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 28 (1.29%) Big Data
12 27 (1.24%) NoSQL
12 27 (1.24%) Oracle Database
13 26 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
14 22 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.97%) Power Query
16 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 199 (9.17%) JIRA
2 129 (5.95%) Git
3 90 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 66 (3.04%) Selenium
5 58 (2.67%) GitLab
6 53 (2.44%) Postman
7 37 (1.71%) JUnit
8 36 (1.66%) Cucumber
9 33 (1.52%) JMeter
10 28 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
11 24 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
12 23 (1.06%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.83%) MLflow
13 18 (0.83%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.69%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.65%) TestRail
16 13 (0.60%) SpecFlow
17 12 (0.55%) Bitbucket
17 12 (0.55%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 713 (32.87%) Social Skills
2 634 (29.23%) Finance
3 418 (19.27%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 178 (8.21%) Banking
6 122 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.63%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
11 46 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
12 39 (1.80%) Retail
13 37 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.57%) Legal
14 34 (1.57%) Marketing
15 30 (1.38%) Billing
15 30 (1.38%) Financial Institution
15 30 (1.38%) Front Office
15 30 (1.38%) General Ledger
15 30 (1.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 403 (18.58%) Analyst
2 216 (9.96%) Lead
2 216 (9.96%) Senior
3 187 (8.62%) Business Analyst
4 157 (7.24%) Consultant
5 153 (7.05%) Data Engineer
6 146 (6.73%) Developer
7 137 (6.32%) Architect
8 106 (4.89%) Data Analyst
9 79 (3.64%) Project Manager
10 63 (2.90%) Tester
11 49 (2.26%) Senior Analyst
12 44 (2.03%) Senior Developer
12 44 (2.03%) Software Engineer
12 44 (2.03%) Test Engineer
13 42 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
13 42 (1.94%) Test Manager
14 40 (1.84%) Systems Engineer
14 40 (1.84%) Technical Analyst
14 40 (1.84%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (6.45%) REST
2 102 (4.70%) JSON
3 64 (2.95%) Oracle Fusion
4 62 (2.86%) Kafka
5 57 (2.63%) Middleware
6 55 (2.54%) XML
7 54 (2.49%) OAuth
8 53 (2.44%) PySpark
9 47 (2.17%) Node.js
10 39 (1.80%) SOAP
11 37 (1.71%) .NET
12 36 (1.66%) Playwright
13 33 (1.52%) Swagger
14 32 (1.48%) RESTful
15 30 (1.38%) Web Services
16 29 (1.34%) Pandas
16 29 (1.34%) pytest
16 29 (1.34%) PyTorch
17 27 (1.24%) SAML
18 26 (1.20%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.72%) Legacy Systems
2 113 (5.21%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.66%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.29%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.04%) Cloud Native
6 59 (2.72%) Data Centre
7 54 (2.49%) Management Information System
8 37 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
9 30 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
9 30 (1.38%) Replication
10 29 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.15%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.15%) Virtual Team
13 24 (1.11%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.11%) Life Science
13 24 (1.11%) Reference Data
14 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
14 23 (1.06%) NHS
15 22 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 110 (5.07%) Windows
2 91 (4.20%) Linux
3 30 (1.38%) Unix
4 17 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.55%) Android
6 7 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.28%) VMS
7 6 (0.28%) zOS
8 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
10 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.092%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.046%) pSOS
12 1 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.046%) Solaris
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (25.68%) Migration
2 476 (21.95%) Agile
3 434 (20.01%) Problem-Solving
4 380 (17.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 365 (16.83%) CI/CD
5 365 (16.83%) Data Validation
6 339 (15.63%) Analytics
7 332 (15.31%) Data Migration
8 318 (14.66%) Data Modelling
9 302 (13.92%) User Acceptance Testing
10 298 (13.74%) DevOps
11 283 (13.05%) ETL
12 266 (12.26%) Test Automation
13 247 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
14 242 (11.16%) Business Intelligence
15 230 (10.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 229 (10.56%) AI
17 219 (10.10%) Data Governance
18 196 (9.04%) Data Pipeline
19 186 (8.58%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 537 (24.76%) SQL
2 408 (18.81%) Python
3 111 (5.12%) Java
4 87 (4.01%) JavaScript
5 73 (3.37%) C#
6 54 (2.49%) PL/SQL
7 52 (2.40%) C++
8 50 (2.31%) PowerShell
9 43 (1.98%) C
10 39 (1.80%) Bash
11 38 (1.75%) TypeScript
12 30 (1.38%) R
13 28 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 26 (1.20%) Bicep
15 20 (0.92%) Scala
16 19 (0.88%) Ada
17 13 (0.60%) Apex Code
17 13 (0.60%) T-SQL
17 13 (0.60%) VBA
18 12 (0.55%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 451 (20.79%) Security Cleared
2 330 (15.21%) SC Cleared
3 188 (8.67%) Degree
4 64 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 54 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (1.71%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.38%) ISTQB
9 28 (1.29%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.20%) PMP
11 23 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 20 (0.92%) CCNP
13 15 (0.69%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.65%) CISSP
15 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.60%) CBAP
16 11 (0.51%) ACCA
17 10 (0.46%) CCNA
17 10 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (16.83%) Data Quality
2 281 (12.96%) QA
3 122 (5.62%) GDPR
4 74 (3.41%) NIST
5 64 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.48%) SLA
8 27 (1.24%) GxP
9 22 (1.01%) IFRS
9 22 (1.01%) PMO
10 19 (0.88%) HL7
10 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.83%) GRC
12 17 (0.78%) GMP
13 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
16 12 (0.55%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.55%) NCSC
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.64%) Docker
2 50 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.11%) Firmware
5 16 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.23%) NFS
10 5 (0.23%) vSphere
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 (0.092%) Ceph
13 2 (0.092%) KVM
13 2 (0.092%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.092%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 116 (5.35%) Kubernetes
2 96 (4.43%) Terraform
3 32 (1.48%) Prometheus
4 31 (1.43%) Grafana
4 31 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
5 29 (1.34%) Ansible
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.41%) FortiGate
7 9 (0.41%) Kibana
7 9 (0.41%) Puppet
8 8 (0.37%) SCCM
9 7 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.28%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.18%) Istio
12 4 (0.18%) vMotion
12 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 281 (12.96%) Microsoft
2 223 (10.28%) Oracle
3 190 (8.76%) SAP
4 112 (5.16%) Databricks
5 85 (3.92%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.67%) Salesforce
7 48 (2.21%) VMware
8 47 (2.17%) Google
9 44 (2.03%) Cisco
9 44 (2.03%) Splunk
10 36 (1.66%) Workday
11 31 (1.43%) MuleSoft
12 30 (1.38%) Informatica
13 29 (1.34%) Sage
14 24 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
15 21 (0.97%) OpenAI
16 19 (0.88%) IBM
17 15 (0.69%) Dell
17 15 (0.69%) IFS