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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 90 130
Rank change year-on-year +46 +40 +9
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,146 818 767
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 2.79% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.49% 3.08% 2.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,313 477 387
10th Percentile £350 £354 £320
25th Percentile £400 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £530 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.20% +0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £611
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 48 150
10th Percentile £22.25 £25.95 £22.28
25th Percentile £34.88 £47.50 £51.56
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 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.08 £88.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -7.26% -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 39,056 26,574 37,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.05% 90.71% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,707 17,203 24,522
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,310 1,024 2,401
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.93 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +31.90% -12.29% -8.47%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,861 £490 -9.26% 816
UK excluding London +32 1,009 £475 -6.86% 639
London +74 877 £500 -9.09% 257
Work from Home +70 651 £490 -4.44% 357
North of England +37 246 £435 -8.42% 116
South East -2 219 £500 - 208
Midlands +36 215 £492 +2.23% 118
West Midlands +31 164 £492 +2.23% 78
North West +27 146 £414 -6.65% 61
South West +4 125 £475 -17.39% 88
East of England +6 118 £486 +7.89% 86
Yorkshire +12 89 £461 +9.75% 43
Scotland +44 56 £404 -12.76% 24
East Midlands -2 48 £500 -0.89% 39
Northern Ireland +18 21 £425 -22.73% 2
Wales +4 20 £460 +196.77% 9
North East -8 14 £450 -37.93% 14

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 83 (3.87%) Confluence
2 46 (2.14%) SAS
3 43 (2.00%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (0.98%) Apache
5 21 (0.98%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 9 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.19%) CICS
12 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 2 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 122 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.51%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 2 (0.093%) Sketch
11 1 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.047%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.047%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.047%) UXPin
11 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 105 (4.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.72%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.61%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.47%) SAP FI
9 9 (0.42%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
10 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
12 6 (0.28%) iTrent
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 488 (22.74%) Azure
2 275 (12.81%) AWS
3 198 (9.23%) Power Platform
4 142 (6.62%) Azure DevOps
5 105 (4.89%) GitHub
6 98 (4.57%) GCP
7 65 (3.03%) Serverless
8 62 (2.89%) GitHub Actions
9 61 (2.84%) Amazon S3
10 55 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
10 55 (2.56%) Entra ID
11 52 (2.42%) OCI
12 50 (2.33%) SaaS
13 46 (2.14%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 26 (1.21%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.77%) Firewall
2 56 (2.61%) Network Security
3 37 (1.72%) TCP/IP
4 32 (1.49%) VLAN
5 28 (1.30%) DNS
6 26 (1.21%) VPN
7 24 (1.12%) Ethernet
8 23 (1.07%) WAN
9 22 (1.03%) HTTP
10 15 (0.70%) SAN
11 14 (0.65%) LAN
12 13 (0.61%) NAS
12 13 (0.61%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.61%) Wireless
13 12 (0.56%) BGP
13 12 (0.56%) OSPF
14 11 (0.51%) SSL
15 10 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
16 9 (0.42%) DHCP
16 9 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (8.67%) Power BI
2 111 (5.17%) Metadata
3 106 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 74 (3.45%) SQL Server
5 67 (3.12%) Tableau
6 59 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
7 47 (2.19%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.58%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 31 (1.44%) Relational Database
10 29 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
10 29 (1.35%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 28 (1.30%) Big Data
12 27 (1.26%) NoSQL
12 27 (1.26%) Oracle Database
13 26 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
14 22 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.98%) Power Query
16 19 (0.89%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 197 (9.18%) JIRA
2 128 (5.96%) Git
3 91 (4.24%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.12%) Selenium
5 59 (2.75%) GitLab
6 53 (2.47%) Postman
7 39 (1.82%) JUnit
8 36 (1.68%) Cucumber
9 32 (1.49%) JMeter
10 28 (1.30%) Oracle APEX
11 25 (1.16%) Rational DOORS
12 22 (1.03%) WebDriver
13 18 (0.84%) MLflow
13 18 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.70%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.65%) TestRail
16 12 (0.56%) Cypress.io
16 12 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.56%) SpecFlow
General
1 712 (33.18%) Social Skills
2 626 (29.17%) Finance
3 409 (19.06%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (9.18%) Public Sector
5 176 (8.20%) Banking
6 122 (5.68%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.17%) Manufacturing
8 57 (2.66%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
12 37 (1.72%) Retail
13 36 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.58%) Legal
15 33 (1.54%) Marketing
16 30 (1.40%) Billing
16 30 (1.40%) Financial Institution
16 30 (1.40%) Telecoms
17 29 (1.35%) General Ledger
17 29 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 396 (18.45%) Analyst
2 216 (10.07%) Lead
3 213 (9.93%) Senior
4 185 (8.62%) Business Analyst
5 154 (7.18%) Consultant
6 152 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 144 (6.71%) Developer
8 137 (6.38%) Architect
9 103 (4.80%) Data Analyst
10 79 (3.68%) Project Manager
11 62 (2.89%) Tester
12 49 (2.28%) Senior Analyst
13 43 (2.00%) SAP Consultant
13 43 (2.00%) Senior Developer
13 43 (2.00%) Software Engineer
14 42 (1.96%) Test Manager
15 41 (1.91%) Systems Engineer
15 41 (1.91%) Test Analyst
15 41 (1.91%) Test Engineer
16 37 (1.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (6.57%) REST
2 102 (4.75%) JSON
3 64 (2.98%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.84%) Kafka
5 57 (2.66%) Middleware
6 54 (2.52%) XML
7 53 (2.47%) OAuth
8 52 (2.42%) PySpark
9 47 (2.19%) Node.js
10 40 (1.86%) SOAP
11 38 (1.77%) .NET
12 36 (1.68%) Playwright
13 33 (1.54%) Swagger
14 32 (1.49%) RESTful
15 31 (1.44%) pytest
15 31 (1.44%) Web Services
16 29 (1.35%) PyTorch
17 28 (1.30%) Pandas
18 27 (1.26%) SAML
19 26 (1.21%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.78%) Legacy Systems
2 112 (5.22%) Data Structures
3 100 (4.66%) Onboarding
4 90 (4.19%) Product Ownership
5 67 (3.12%) Cloud Native
6 54 (2.52%) Data Centre
6 54 (2.52%) Management Information System
7 37 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
8 30 (1.40%) Replication
9 27 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
11 25 (1.16%) Life Science
11 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
12 24 (1.12%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.12%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.12%) Reference Data
13 23 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.07%) NHS
14 21 (0.98%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.08%) Windows
2 88 (4.10%) Linux
3 29 (1.35%) Unix
4 16 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
6 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.28%) VMS
6 6 (0.28%) zOS
7 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.093%) Debian
11 1 (0.047%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.047%) pSOS
11 1 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.047%) Solaris
11 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 551 (25.68%) Migration
2 473 (22.04%) Agile
3 425 (19.80%) Problem-Solving
4 376 (17.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 366 (17.05%) Data Validation
6 364 (16.96%) CI/CD
7 338 (15.75%) Analytics
8 327 (15.24%) Data Migration
9 316 (14.73%) Data Modelling
10 299 (13.93%) DevOps
11 293 (13.65%) User Acceptance Testing
12 283 (13.19%) ETL
13 266 (12.40%) Test Automation
14 242 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
15 236 (11.00%) Business Intelligence
16 229 (10.67%) AI
16 229 (10.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 219 (10.21%) Data Governance
18 195 (9.09%) Data Pipeline
19 184 (8.57%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 531 (24.74%) SQL
2 397 (18.50%) Python
3 106 (4.94%) Java
4 86 (4.01%) JavaScript
5 72 (3.36%) C#
6 54 (2.52%) PL/SQL
7 51 (2.38%) C++
8 50 (2.33%) PowerShell
9 42 (1.96%) C
10 39 (1.82%) Bash
11 38 (1.77%) TypeScript
12 28 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 26 (1.21%) Bicep
14 25 (1.16%) R
15 20 (0.93%) Scala
16 18 (0.84%) Ada
17 13 (0.61%) T-SQL
17 13 (0.61%) VBA
18 12 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 12 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 451 (21.02%) Security Cleared
2 328 (15.28%) SC Cleared
3 186 (8.67%) Degree
4 64 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 39 (1.82%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.40%) ISTQB
9 28 (1.30%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.21%) PMP
11 22 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
12 19 (0.89%) CCNP
13 15 (0.70%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.65%) CISSP
15 13 (0.61%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.61%) CBAP
16 10 (0.47%) CCNA
16 10 (0.47%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 364 (16.96%) Data Quality
2 277 (12.91%) QA
3 121 (5.64%) GDPR
4 75 (3.49%) NIST
5 64 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.49%) SLA
8 27 (1.26%) GxP
9 22 (1.03%) IFRS
9 22 (1.03%) PMO
10 19 (0.89%) HL7
10 19 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.84%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) GMP
13 16 (0.75%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.61%) COBIT
16 12 (0.56%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.56%) NCSC
16 12 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.68%) Docker
2 49 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.16%) Firmware
5 14 (0.65%) Hyper-V
5 14 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (0.23%) NFS
8 5 (0.23%) vSphere
9 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.093%) Ceph
11 2 (0.093%) KVM
11 2 (0.093%) OpenDJ
11 2 (0.093%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 117 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 94 (4.38%) Terraform
3 31 (1.44%) Prometheus
3 31 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
4 30 (1.40%) Grafana
5 29 (1.35%) Ansible
6 16 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.42%) FortiGate
7 9 (0.42%) Kibana
7 9 (0.42%) Puppet
8 8 (0.37%) SCCM
9 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.28%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 280 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 223 (10.39%) Oracle
3 189 (8.81%) SAP
4 111 (5.17%) Databricks
5 85 (3.96%) ServiceNow
6 59 (2.75%) Salesforce
7 47 (2.19%) Google
7 47 (2.19%) VMware
8 44 (2.05%) Splunk
9 43 (2.00%) Cisco
10 35 (1.63%) Workday
11 31 (1.44%) MuleSoft
12 30 (1.40%) Informatica
13 29 (1.35%) Sage
14 24 (1.12%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.98%) CyberArk
15 21 (0.98%) OpenAI
16 19 (0.89%) IBM
17 15 (0.70%) Dell
17 15 (0.70%) IFS