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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 113 131
Rank change year-on-year +60 +18 +4
Contract jobs citing Validation 1,640 724 841
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.19% 2.32% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.81% 2.60% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,000 381 459
10th Percentile £350 £350 £318
25th Percentile £400 £409 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.39% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £621
90th Percentile £689 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% +3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 37 154
10th Percentile £31.52 £27.90 £23.55
25th Percentile £42.78 £47.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.54 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.96% -11.48% +3.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £75.25
90th Percentile £73.50 £66.60 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.40 £65.98
% change year-on-year +13.25% -13.01% +4.35%

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 34,128 27,815 38,732
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.17% 89.32% 87.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,612 16,932 25,487
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -3.52% -0.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,064 868 2,102
10th Percentile £14.51 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.26
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +9.38%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £61.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.04 £31.50 £35.25
% change year-on-year -20.52% -10.64% +18.61%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 +57 1,419 £493 -6.19% 856
UK excluding London +38 755 £475 -5.00% 660
London +69 667 £513 -2.84% 278
Work from Home +70 511 £500 -4.76% 402
North of England +23 190 £420 - 131
South East +12 174 £500 - 211
North West +24 126 £400 +1.27% 78
Midlands +20 124 £500 +2.15% 121
South West +15 120 £475 -17.39% 86
West Midlands +17 104 £500 +2.04% 81
East of England +14 91 £477 +19.13% 100
Yorkshire -11 54 £487 -0.10% 45
Scotland +33 41 £433 -4.95% 31
East Midlands -10 20 £475 +58.33% 39
Northern Ireland +14 19 £425 - 1
North East -6 12 £450 -37.93% 8
Wales +5 5 £475 - 7

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 63 (3.84%) Confluence
2 39 (2.38%) Apache Spark
3 33 (2.01%) SharePoint
4 32 (1.95%) SAS
5 24 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
7 14 (0.85%) Apache
7 14 (0.85%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.55%) Exchange Server 2013
9 8 (0.49%) Appian
9 8 (0.49%) CMS
10 7 (0.43%) Mattermost
11 6 (0.37%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.30%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.30%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 4 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.24%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.24%) Jupyter
14 3 (0.18%) GeoServer
14 3 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 84 (5.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.71%) MS Visio
4 16 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.55%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.37%) Sketch
9 4 (0.24%) Notion
10 3 (0.18%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.12%) Simulink
12 1 (0.061%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.061%) CATIA
12 1 (0.061%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.061%) Stateflow
12 1 (0.061%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 82 (5.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (1.22%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.79%) Oracle Payables
4 12 (0.73%) SAP EHS
5 11 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
6 10 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
6 10 (0.61%) SAP FI
6 10 (0.61%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.55%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.55%) NetSuite
7 9 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
8 8 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 8 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 8 (0.49%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.43%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 7 (0.43%) SAP MM
10 6 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 379 (23.11%) Azure
2 204 (12.44%) AWS
3 136 (8.29%) Azure DevOps
4 126 (7.68%) Power Platform
5 75 (4.57%) GitHub
6 67 (4.09%) GCP
7 56 (3.41%) Entra ID
8 49 (2.99%) Serverless
9 48 (2.93%) SaaS
10 47 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
11 45 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
12 39 (2.38%) Amazon S3
13 35 (2.13%) Snowflake
14 33 (2.01%) OCI
15 31 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
16 25 (1.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 24 (1.46%) OpenShift
18 23 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
19 20 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
20 18 (1.10%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 49 (2.99%) Firewall
2 25 (1.52%) TCP/IP
3 21 (1.28%) Network Security
4 20 (1.22%) Ethernet
5 17 (1.04%) HTTP
5 17 (1.04%) VPN
6 16 (0.98%) WAN
7 15 (0.91%) DNS
7 15 (0.91%) VLAN
8 14 (0.85%) Skype
8 14 (0.85%) Wireless
9 13 (0.79%) BGP
10 12 (0.73%) MPLS
10 12 (0.73%) OSPF
11 11 (0.67%) LAN
12 10 (0.61%) TACACS
13 7 (0.43%) Internet
13 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
14 6 (0.37%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.37%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (7.26%) Power BI
2 73 (4.45%) Metadata
3 58 (3.54%) Data Warehouse
4 43 (2.62%) SQL Server
5 41 (2.50%) Tableau
6 34 (2.07%) Data Lake
7 30 (1.83%) NoSQL
8 27 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
9 23 (1.40%) Delta Lake
10 22 (1.34%) Relational Database
10 22 (1.34%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 21 (1.28%) Azure SQL Database
11 21 (1.28%) Oracle Database
12 19 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
12 19 (1.16%) Big Data
13 18 (1.10%) Pinecone
14 15 (0.91%) Geospatial Data
14 15 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
14 15 (0.91%) Parquet
15 14 (0.85%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 159 (9.70%) JIRA
2 81 (4.94%) Git
3 72 (4.39%) Jenkins
4 50 (3.05%) Postman
5 49 (2.99%) GitLab
6 42 (2.56%) Selenium
7 32 (1.95%) Oracle APEX
8 24 (1.46%) Rational DOORS
9 20 (1.22%) JMeter
10 17 (1.04%) TestRail
10 17 (1.04%) Visual Studio
11 16 (0.98%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.98%) MLflow
12 13 (0.79%) Zephyr
13 11 (0.67%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.67%) JUnit
13 11 (0.67%) REST Assured
13 11 (0.67%) SpecFlow
14 10 (0.61%) Cypress.io
15 9 (0.55%) Bitbucket
General
1 611 (37.26%) Social Skills
2 458 (27.93%) Finance
3 334 (20.37%) Analytical Skills
4 151 (9.21%) Public Sector
5 142 (8.66%) Banking
6 85 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.87%) Presentation Skills
8 44 (2.68%) Manufacturing
9 37 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
10 35 (2.13%) Pharmaceutical
11 32 (1.95%) Telecoms
12 31 (1.89%) Marketing
13 29 (1.77%) Aerospace
13 29 (1.77%) Electronics
13 29 (1.77%) Front Office
14 27 (1.65%) Legal
14 27 (1.65%) Military
15 25 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
16 22 (1.34%) Billing
16 22 (1.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 324 (19.76%) Analyst
2 166 (10.12%) Senior
3 146 (8.90%) Business Analyst
4 138 (8.41%) Lead
5 137 (8.35%) Consultant
6 124 (7.56%) Developer
7 97 (5.91%) Architect
8 80 (4.88%) Data Analyst
9 71 (4.33%) Data Engineer
10 52 (3.17%) Software Engineer
10 52 (3.17%) Tester
11 48 (2.93%) Senior Analyst
12 47 (2.87%) Project Manager
13 43 (2.62%) SAP Consultant
14 40 (2.44%) Test Analyst
15 37 (2.26%) Test Manager
16 35 (2.13%) Senior Developer
17 32 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
18 30 (1.83%) Embedded Engineer
19 29 (1.77%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (6.46%) REST
2 85 (5.18%) JSON
3 57 (3.48%) XML
4 50 (3.05%) Oracle Fusion
5 48 (2.93%) OAuth
6 42 (2.56%) SOAP
7 41 (2.50%) Middleware
8 38 (2.32%) PySpark
8 38 (2.32%) RESTful
9 36 (2.20%) Node.js
10 34 (2.07%) .NET
11 33 (2.01%) Kafka
12 30 (1.83%) PyTorch
13 29 (1.77%) Playwright
14 28 (1.71%) Swagger
15 27 (1.65%) TensorFlow
15 27 (1.65%) Web Services
16 26 (1.59%) pytest
17 25 (1.52%) JWT
18 24 (1.46%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 98 (5.98%) Legacy Systems
2 67 (4.09%) Data Structures
3 66 (4.02%) Onboarding
4 60 (3.66%) Product Ownership
5 50 (3.05%) Management Information System
6 47 (2.87%) Cloud Native
7 33 (2.01%) Data Centre
8 28 (1.71%) Algorithms
9 27 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
10 24 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 22 (1.34%) FPGA
12 20 (1.22%) Derivative
12 20 (1.22%) Life Science
13 18 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
13 18 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.04%) Replication
15 16 (0.98%) Operational Technology
16 15 (0.91%) Security Posture
17 14 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
17 14 (0.85%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 93 (5.67%) Linux
2 87 (5.30%) Windows
3 30 (1.83%) Unix
4 11 (0.67%) Android
5 6 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
5 6 (0.37%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.37%) zOS
6 5 (0.30%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.24%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
8 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
8 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.061%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.061%) pSOS
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 419 (25.55%) Agile
2 382 (23.29%) Migration
3 380 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
4 276 (16.83%) DevOps
4 276 (16.83%) Stakeholder Management
5 268 (16.34%) CI/CD
6 266 (16.22%) Data Validation
7 236 (14.39%) Analytics
8 209 (12.74%) Test Automation
9 204 (12.44%) Data Migration
10 202 (12.32%) User Acceptance Testing
11 200 (12.20%) Data Modelling
12 179 (10.91%) AI
12 179 (10.91%) ETL
13 172 (10.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 155 (9.45%) Data Governance
15 154 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
16 153 (9.33%) Business Intelligence
17 144 (8.78%) Data Analysis
18 135 (8.23%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 406 (24.76%) SQL
2 348 (21.22%) Python
3 98 (5.98%) JavaScript
4 87 (5.30%) Java
5 66 (4.02%) C#
6 54 (3.29%) PowerShell
7 53 (3.23%) PL/SQL
8 48 (2.93%) Bash
8 48 (2.93%) C++
9 42 (2.56%) C
10 34 (2.07%) TypeScript
11 24 (1.46%) R
12 19 (1.16%) Bicep
13 17 (1.04%) Groovy
14 16 (0.98%) Ada
14 16 (0.98%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 15 (0.91%) Scala
16 12 (0.73%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.55%) XPath
Qualifications
1 361 (22.01%) Security Cleared
2 265 (16.16%) SC Cleared
3 169 (10.30%) Degree
4 60 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (3.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 39 (2.38%) DV Cleared
7 38 (2.32%) Master's Degree
8 32 (1.95%) ISTQB
9 28 (1.71%) PMI Certification
10 23 (1.40%) AWS Certification
11 20 (1.22%) PMP
12 17 (1.04%) CBAP
13 15 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.85%) Oracle Certification
15 12 (0.73%) Azure Certification
16 10 (0.61%) CCIE
16 10 (0.61%) CCNP
16 10 (0.61%) CISSP
16 10 (0.61%) OCA
17 9 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (13.72%) Data Quality
2 203 (12.38%) QA
3 92 (5.61%) GDPR
4 67 (4.09%) NIST
5 47 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 37 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 19 (1.16%) GxP
8 18 (1.10%) IFRS
9 16 (0.98%) IFRS 17
10 15 (0.91%) Def Stans
10 15 (0.91%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.79%) EU AI Act
11 13 (0.79%) SLA
12 12 (0.73%) NCSC
12 12 (0.73%) PMO
13 11 (0.67%) COBIT
13 11 (0.67%) GMP
14 10 (0.61%) GRC
14 10 (0.61%) MiFID
14 10 (0.61%) MISRA
System Software
1 59 (3.60%) Docker
2 46 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 32 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.34%) Firmware
5 13 (0.79%) VMware NSX
6 12 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.24%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (0.24%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.24%) vSphere
10 3 (0.18%) KVM
10 3 (0.18%) QEMU
11 2 (0.12%) Ceph
11 2 (0.12%) Lustre
11 2 (0.12%) NFS
11 2 (0.12%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.12%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.12%) OpenIDM
11 2 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 82 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 70 (4.27%) Terraform
3 42 (2.56%) Ansible
4 21 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
5 18 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (0.91%) Kibana
6 15 (0.91%) SCCM
7 14 (0.85%) Puppet
8 13 (0.79%) Grafana
9 11 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 10 (0.61%) Prometheus
11 9 (0.55%) Nmap
12 8 (0.49%) SCOM
13 7 (0.43%) HP SiteScope
14 6 (0.37%) Nessus
15 5 (0.30%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.24%) Iperf
16 4 (0.24%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
17 3 (0.18%) FortiGate
17 3 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
Vendors
1 216 (13.17%) Microsoft
2 166 (10.12%) Oracle
3 139 (8.48%) SAP
4 74 (4.51%) Databricks
5 65 (3.96%) ServiceNow
6 43 (2.62%) Cisco
7 41 (2.50%) Google
7 41 (2.50%) Splunk
8 40 (2.44%) Salesforce
9 38 (2.32%) VMware
10 29 (1.77%) Workday
11 19 (1.16%) IBM
11 19 (1.16%) MuleSoft
11 19 (1.16%) Murex
11 19 (1.16%) Palo Alto
12 15 (0.91%) Informatica
12 15 (0.91%) OpenAI
13 14 (0.85%) Sage
14 13 (0.79%) Bloomberg
14 13 (0.79%) CheckPoint