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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 69 120
Rank change year-on-year +37 +51 +26
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,910 1,210 772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.43% 3.70% 1.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.41% 4.09% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,753 706 375
10th Percentile £333 £331 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £591
90th Percentile £704 £688 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 88 117
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £29.06
25th Percentile £26.32 £40.06 £48.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £61.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -5.77% -0.76%
75th Percentile £73.25 £65.38 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £75.74
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - -1.49%

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 45,367 29,590 33,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.44% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,794 18,422 20,982
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 2,879 1,766 1,695
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.97 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.26% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +34 2,510 £500 -2.44% 1,162
UK excluding London +26 1,349 £463 -7.50% 907
London +39 1,223 £525 +2.44% 413
Work from Home +31 811 £500 - 467
North of England +41 330 £452 -4.89% 170
South East -3 317 £501 +0.25% 227
Midlands +34 304 £475 -2.56% 131
West Midlands +22 212 £453 -9.35% 89
North West +20 169 £450 -14.29% 93
Yorkshire +47 144 £460 +2.22% 43
East of England 0 144 £475 -7.77% 129
South West 0 132 £525 -8.70% 183
Scotland +46 108 £430 -7.03% 82
East Midlands +26 88 £500 - 42
Wales -5 25 £394 +5.00% 19
North East -32 21 £438 -12.50% 36
Northern Ireland +7 10 £380 -37.45% 2
Channel Islands -1 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 82 (2.82%) Confluence
2 67 (2.30%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.89%) SharePoint
4 54 (1.86%) SAS
5 41 (1.41%) Apache Spark
6 29 (1.00%) Apache
7 18 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.45%) 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 (0.21%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 202 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.44%) MS Visio
4 34 (1.17%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.45%) 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 (0.21%) Simulink
11 5 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.069%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.069%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.069%) 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
1 115 (3.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
5 12 (0.41%) NetSuite
5 12 (0.41%) Teamcenter
6 11 (0.38%) iTrent
6 11 (0.38%) SAP SD
7 10 (0.34%) Aladdin
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 10 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.34%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.31%) SAP MDG
9 8 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.27%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.27%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.27%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 626 (21.51%) Azure
2 333 (11.44%) AWS
3 305 (10.48%) Power Platform
4 175 (6.01%) Azure DevOps
5 144 (4.95%) GCP
6 131 (4.50%) GitHub
7 101 (3.47%) Snowflake
8 78 (2.68%) Entra ID
9 74 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 69 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 66 (2.27%) Serverless
12 61 (2.10%) Microsoft 365
13 59 (2.03%) SaaS
14 53 (1.82%) Amazon S3
15 46 (1.58%) dbt
16 45 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 42 (1.44%) SuccessFactors
18 40 (1.37%) OCI
19 37 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 34 (1.17%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 114 (3.92%) Firewall
2 69 (2.37%) DNS
3 67 (2.30%) Network Security
4 64 (2.20%) VLAN
5 51 (1.75%) VPN
6 44 (1.51%) BGP
6 44 (1.51%) WAN
7 41 (1.41%) TCP/IP
8 34 (1.17%) DHCP
9 26 (0.89%) OSPF
10 25 (0.86%) LAN
11 24 (0.82%) VXLAN
12 23 (0.79%) Wireless
13 22 (0.76%) Ethernet VPN
13 22 (0.76%) Internet
13 22 (0.76%) SAN
14 21 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
16 18 (0.62%) HTTP
17 17 (0.58%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (9.69%) Power BI
2 172 (5.91%) Data Warehouse
3 130 (4.47%) Metadata
4 109 (3.75%) SQL Server
5 101 (3.47%) Relational Database
6 99 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (2.85%) Data Lake
8 75 (2.58%) Tableau
9 39 (1.34%) MongoDB
10 37 (1.27%) Big Data
10 37 (1.27%) Delta Lake
11 36 (1.24%) NoSQL
12 34 (1.17%) Oracle Database
13 33 (1.13%) MySQL
14 32 (1.10%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 31 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
16 30 (1.03%) Redis
17 29 (1.00%) BigQuery
18 27 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 256 (8.80%) JIRA
2 191 (6.56%) Git
3 107 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.02%) GitLab
5 72 (2.47%) Selenium
6 47 (1.62%) Postman
7 40 (1.37%) JMeter
8 28 (0.96%) Cucumber
8 28 (0.96%) WebDriver
9 23 (0.79%) JUnit
10 18 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.55%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.52%) Gatling
13 14 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.45%) Oracle Forms
15 12 (0.41%) Maven
15 12 (0.41%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.38%) Gradle
16 11 (0.38%) TestRail
General
1 829 (28.49%) Social Skills
2 814 (27.97%) Finance
3 579 (19.90%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 217 (7.46%) Banking
6 152 (5.22%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (3.57%) Manufacturing
8 95 (3.26%) Retail
9 66 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 66 (2.27%) Telecoms
10 60 (2.06%) Aerospace
11 58 (1.99%) Pharmaceutical
12 57 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
13 53 (1.82%) Automotive
14 49 (1.68%) Legal
15 47 (1.62%) Marketing
16 43 (1.48%) Front Office
17 41 (1.41%) Law
17 41 (1.41%) Local Government
18 37 (1.27%) Billing
Job Titles
1 521 (17.90%) Analyst
2 324 (11.13%) Senior
3 274 (9.42%) Lead
4 240 (8.25%) Business Analyst
5 235 (8.08%) Data Engineer
6 231 (7.94%) Consultant
7 173 (5.95%) Developer
8 146 (5.02%) Data Analyst
9 142 (4.88%) Architect
10 111 (3.81%) Test Engineer
11 80 (2.75%) Tester
12 77 (2.65%) Network Engineer
13 72 (2.47%) Project Manager
14 63 (2.16%) Systems Engineer
15 60 (2.06%) Administrator
16 58 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 54 (1.86%) Senior Data Engineer
18 53 (1.82%) Technical Analyst
19 50 (1.72%) Senior Analyst
19 50 (1.72%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (6.05%) REST
2 151 (5.19%) Terraform
3 95 (3.26%) JSON
4 82 (2.82%) PySpark
5 78 (2.68%) XML
6 76 (2.61%) Kafka
7 67 (2.30%) Middleware
8 52 (1.79%) Playwright
9 51 (1.75%) .NET
10 50 (1.72%) Oracle Fusion
11 45 (1.55%) pytest
12 42 (1.44%) SOAP
13 41 (1.41%) Spring
14 38 (1.31%) OAuth
15 36 (1.24%) Pandas
15 36 (1.24%) RESTful
16 34 (1.17%) Web Services
17 31 (1.07%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.86%) Lightning Web Components
18 25 (0.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 165 (5.67%) Onboarding
2 154 (5.29%) Data Structures
3 129 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 125 (4.30%) Legacy Systems
5 121 (4.16%) Product Ownership
6 98 (3.37%) Management Information System
7 91 (3.13%) Data Centre
8 55 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
10 46 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
11 43 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
12 42 (1.44%) AI Agents
12 42 (1.44%) Life Science
13 41 (1.41%) SCADA
14 39 (1.34%) NHS
14 39 (1.34%) Replication
15 32 (1.10%) CMDB
15 32 (1.10%) Operational Technology
16 31 (1.07%) Algorithms
16 31 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.01%) Windows
2 117 (4.02%) Linux
3 68 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 43 (1.48%) Unix
5 19 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.48%) Android
7 13 (0.45%) 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 (0.21%) AIX
12 4 (0.14%) SUSE
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.069%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.069%) HPUX
13 2 (0.069%) VxWorks
13 2 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.034%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.034%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 791 (27.18%) Migration
2 575 (19.76%) Stakeholder Management
3 565 (19.42%) Agile
4 523 (17.97%) CI/CD
5 493 (16.94%) User Acceptance Testing
6 475 (16.32%) Analytics
7 469 (16.12%) Data Modelling
8 467 (16.05%) Data Migration
9 455 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
10 452 (15.53%) Data Validation
11 386 (13.26%) DevOps
12 379 (13.02%) AI
13 367 (12.61%) Test Automation
14 363 (12.47%) Continuous Improvement
15 328 (11.27%) ETL
16 320 (11.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 319 (10.96%) Business Intelligence
18 313 (10.76%) Data Pipeline
19 295 (10.14%) Data Governance
20 285 (9.79%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 743 (25.53%) SQL
2 566 (19.45%) Python
3 142 (4.88%) Java
4 93 (3.20%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.16%) Bash
6 56 (1.92%) C#
7 49 (1.68%) JavaScript
8 35 (1.20%) C++
9 32 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 31 (1.07%) Apex Code
11 28 (0.96%) Bicep
11 28 (0.96%) R
12 27 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (0.89%) C
14 25 (0.86%) PL/SQL
15 24 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.65%) VBA
17 18 (0.62%) T-SQL
18 17 (0.58%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.45%) Scala
Qualifications
1 536 (18.42%) Security Cleared
2 395 (13.57%) SC Cleared
3 191 (6.56%) Degree
4 68 (2.34%) DV Cleared
5 60 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 47 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 45 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.37%) CCNP
9 28 (0.96%) ACCA
9 28 (0.96%) CIMA
10 26 (0.89%) ISTQB
11 24 (0.82%) AWS Certification
12 22 (0.76%) Azure Certification
13 21 (0.72%) PMI Certification
14 19 (0.65%) CCNA
14 19 (0.65%) PMP
15 17 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.52%) CISSP
17 14 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 579 (19.90%) Data Quality
2 373 (12.82%) QA
3 115 (3.95%) GDPR
4 52 (1.79%) SLA
5 46 (1.58%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.58%) NIST
6 39 (1.34%) GxP
6 39 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 39 (1.34%) PMO
7 26 (0.89%) GRC
8 21 (0.72%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 19 (0.65%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.52%) GMP
11 14 (0.48%) NCSC
11 14 (0.48%) WCAG
12 12 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
12 12 (0.41%) Def Stans
12 12 (0.41%) HL7
13 11 (0.38%) IFRS
13 11 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 114 (3.92%) Docker
2 100 (3.44%) Active Directory
3 84 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (0.93%) Firmware
7 25 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.76%) vSphere
9 14 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.069%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.069%) NFS
13 2 (0.069%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.069%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.034%) Ceph
14 1 (0.034%) etcd
Systems Management
1 144 (4.95%) Kubernetes
2 82 (2.82%) Ansible
3 48 (1.65%) Grafana
4 40 (1.37%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (0.82%) FortiGate
7 23 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.48%) SCCM
8 14 (0.48%) vCenter Server
9 11 (0.38%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.34%) VxRail
11 9 (0.31%) Failover Clustering
12 7 (0.24%) Argo
12 7 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Control-M
15 4 (0.14%) Puppet
15 4 (0.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 439 (15.09%) Microsoft
2 254 (8.73%) SAP
3 249 (8.56%) Oracle
4 163 (5.60%) Databricks
5 97 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 97 (3.33%) VMware
6 89 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 77 (2.65%) Cisco
8 52 (1.79%) Google
9 47 (1.62%) Workday
10 38 (1.31%) Informatica
11 35 (1.20%) IBM
12 29 (1.00%) Fortinet
12 29 (1.00%) Juniper
13 28 (0.96%) Zscaler
14 26 (0.89%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.72%) MuleSoft
15 21 (0.72%) Splunk
16 20 (0.69%) Ariba
17 18 (0.62%) Sage