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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 90 138
Rank change year-on-year +47 +48 0
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,163 825 760
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.70% 2.81% 1.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.53% 3.10% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 479 382
10th Percentile £350 £349 £319
25th Percentile £401 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £609
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -6.86% +2.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 49 151
10th Percentile £22.25 £26.05 £22.87
25th Percentile £34.88 £47.50 £49.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £72.25 £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% -0.80%

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 39,116 26,622 37,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.70% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,735 17,238 24,535
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,315 1,028 2,411
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.43 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +23.25% -7.98% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £33.07
% change year-on-year +39.13% -13.05% -7.64%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +42 1,874 £488 -9.72% 829
UK excluding London +32 1,018 £475 -6.86% 639
London +65 883 £501 -9.00% 268
Work from Home +70 654 £492 -4.00% 390
North of England +34 249 £436 -8.21% 118
South East -4 219 £500 - 207
Midlands +30 218 £492 +2.23% 116
West Midlands +33 166 £491 +2.03% 81
North West +32 147 £416 -6.25% 58
South West +5 127 £475 -17.39% 81
East of England +13 117 £486 +7.89% 87
Yorkshire +15 91 £455 +8.33% 46
Scotland +44 58 £404 -11.56% 34
East Midlands 0 49 £513 +1.59% 35
Northern Ireland +21 21 £425 -22.73% 1
Wales +9 20 £460 +196.77% 10
North East -9 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 84 (3.88%) Confluence
2 46 (2.13%) SAS
3 43 (1.99%) 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 (0.42%) Appian
8 9 (0.42%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.42%) 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%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 125 (5.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.02%) 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%) Sketch
11 1 (0.046%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.046%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.046%) EPLAN
11 1 (0.046%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.046%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.046%) UXPin
11 1 (0.046%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 104 (4.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.71%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.60%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.46%) SAP FI
8 10 (0.46%) Teamcenter
9 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.32%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.28%) iTrent
11 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 489 (22.61%) Azure
2 277 (12.81%) AWS
3 202 (9.34%) Power Platform
4 141 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
5 105 (4.85%) GitHub
6 101 (4.67%) GCP
7 65 (3.01%) Serverless
8 62 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.82%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.54%) Entra ID
11 52 (2.40%) OCI
12 51 (2.36%) SaaS
13 48 (2.22%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.29%) OpenShift
18 26 (1.20%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.74%) Firewall
2 56 (2.59%) Network Security
3 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
4 33 (1.53%) 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 (0.42%) DHCP
13 9 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (8.78%) Power BI
2 112 (5.18%) Metadata
3 106 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 75 (3.47%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.24%) Tableau
6 60 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
7 48 (2.22%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.57%) Delta Lake
9 33 (1.53%) Relational Database
10 31 (1.43%) Azure SQL Database
11 29 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
11 29 (1.34%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 28 (1.29%) Big Data
13 27 (1.25%) NoSQL
13 27 (1.25%) Oracle Database
14 26 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
15 22 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 21 (0.97%) Power Query
17 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 198 (9.15%) JIRA
2 129 (5.96%) Git
3 91 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.14%) Selenium
5 59 (2.73%) GitLab
6 53 (2.45%) Postman
7 39 (1.80%) JUnit
8 36 (1.66%) Cucumber
9 33 (1.53%) JMeter
10 28 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
11 25 (1.16%) 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%) Zephyr
General
1 715 (33.06%) Social Skills
2 632 (29.22%) Finance
3 415 (19.19%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.15%) Public Sector
5 178 (8.23%) Banking
6 122 (5.64%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.14%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.64%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (2.08%) Organisational Skills
12 38 (1.76%) Retail
13 37 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.57%) Legal
15 33 (1.53%) Marketing
16 30 (1.39%) Billing
16 30 (1.39%) Financial Institution
16 30 (1.39%) Front Office
16 30 (1.39%) General Ledger
16 30 (1.39%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 401 (18.54%) Analyst
2 216 (9.99%) Lead
3 215 (9.94%) Senior
4 188 (8.69%) Business Analyst
5 155 (7.17%) Consultant
6 153 (7.07%) Data Engineer
7 144 (6.66%) Developer
8 137 (6.33%) Architect
9 105 (4.85%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.65%) Project Manager
11 63 (2.91%) Tester
12 49 (2.27%) Senior Analyst
13 44 (2.03%) Test Engineer
14 43 (1.99%) Senior Developer
14 43 (1.99%) Software Engineer
15 42 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
15 42 (1.94%) Test Manager
16 41 (1.90%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.90%) Test Analyst
17 39 (1.80%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (6.56%) REST
2 102 (4.72%) JSON
3 64 (2.96%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.82%) Kafka
5 57 (2.64%) Middleware
6 54 (2.50%) XML
7 53 (2.45%) OAuth
7 53 (2.45%) PySpark
8 47 (2.17%) Node.js
9 40 (1.85%) SOAP
10 37 (1.71%) .NET
10 37 (1.71%) Playwright
11 33 (1.53%) Swagger
12 32 (1.48%) RESTful
13 31 (1.43%) pytest
13 31 (1.43%) Web Services
14 29 (1.34%) Pandas
14 29 (1.34%) PyTorch
15 27 (1.25%) SAML
16 26 (1.20%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.73%) Legacy Systems
2 113 (5.22%) Data Structures
3 101 (4.67%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.30%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 57 (2.64%) Data Centre
7 53 (2.45%) Management Information System
8 37 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
9 30 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
9 30 (1.39%) Replication
10 29 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.16%) Life Science
12 25 (1.16%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
13 24 (1.11%) Algorithms
13 24 (1.11%) Reference Data
14 23 (1.06%) NHS
15 22 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.02%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 110 (5.09%) Windows
2 90 (4.16%) Linux
3 30 (1.39%) Unix
4 17 (0.79%) 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
1 555 (25.66%) Migration
2 478 (22.10%) Agile
3 432 (19.97%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (17.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 367 (16.97%) Data Validation
6 366 (16.92%) CI/CD
7 343 (15.86%) Analytics
8 329 (15.21%) Data Migration
9 319 (14.75%) Data Modelling
10 299 (13.82%) DevOps
10 299 (13.82%) User Acceptance Testing
11 283 (13.08%) ETL
12 269 (12.44%) Test Automation
13 245 (11.33%) Continuous Improvement
14 240 (11.10%) Business Intelligence
15 231 (10.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 229 (10.59%) AI
17 220 (10.17%) Data Governance
18 198 (9.15%) Data Pipeline
19 186 (8.60%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 535 (24.73%) SQL
2 405 (18.72%) Python
3 110 (5.09%) Java
4 87 (4.02%) JavaScript
5 73 (3.37%) C#
6 54 (2.50%) PL/SQL
7 51 (2.36%) C++
8 50 (2.31%) PowerShell
9 42 (1.94%) C
10 39 (1.80%) Bash
10 39 (1.80%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 28 (1.29%) R
12 26 (1.20%) Bicep
13 20 (0.92%) Scala
14 18 (0.83%) Ada
15 13 (0.60%) Apex Code
15 13 (0.60%) T-SQL
15 13 (0.60%) VBA
16 12 (0.55%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 453 (20.94%) Security Cleared
2 330 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 188 (8.69%) Degree
4 64 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 54 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 38 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.39%) 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
1 366 (16.92%) Data Quality
2 280 (12.94%) QA
3 121 (5.59%) GDPR
4 74 (3.42%) NIST
5 64 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.48%) SLA
8 27 (1.25%) GxP
9 22 (1.02%) IFRS
9 22 (1.02%) PMO
10 19 (0.88%) HL7
10 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.83%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) 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%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.65%) Docker
2 50 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.16%) 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 (0.42%) 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%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 117 (5.41%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.39%) Terraform
3 31 (1.43%) Prometheus
3 31 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.39%) Grafana
5 29 (1.34%) Ansible
6 16 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.42%) FortiGate
7 9 (0.42%) Kibana
7 9 (0.42%) 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 (12.99%) Microsoft
2 224 (10.36%) Oracle
3 188 (8.69%) SAP
4 112 (5.18%) Databricks
5 86 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 60 (2.77%) Salesforce
7 48 (2.22%) VMware
8 47 (2.17%) Google
9 44 (2.03%) Cisco
9 44 (2.03%) Splunk
10 35 (1.62%) Workday
11 31 (1.43%) MuleSoft
12 30 (1.39%) 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