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 15 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 78 120
Rank change year-on-year +35 +42 +35
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,229 898 801
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 3.09% 1.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.54% 3.40% 2.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,345 528 391
10th Percentile £325 £348 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £528 £507
Median % change year-on-year -8.06% +4.04% -7.82%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £600
90th Percentile £700 £703 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £514 £500
% change year-on-year -11.63% +2.75% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 58 165
10th Percentile £17.23 £21.57 £25.26
25th Percentile £33.23 £38.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £55.52 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.57% -8.98% -4.86%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £74.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £76.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £63.75
% change year-on-year +12.80% -9.61% +1.92%

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 40,228 26,443 36,791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.98% 86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,265 17,000 23,677
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,081 2,436
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +30 1,944 £492 -8.68% 857
UK excluding London +22 1,033 £454 -11.63% 630
London +55 945 £501 -9.00% 309
Work from Home +58 661 £485 -3.00% 385
North of England +38 270 £425 -5.56% 133
Midlands +27 232 £481 +1.32% 92
South East -9 220 £500 - 188
West Midlands +22 168 £475 - 51
North West +30 163 £416 -4.91% 83
East of England +5 116 £500 +11.11% 81
South West -6 106 £488 -15.22% 97
Yorkshire +17 97 £451 +8.03% 38
Scotland +44 67 £400 -12.33% 31
East Midlands +8 60 £525 +4.06% 41
Wales +12 21 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -12 13 £450 -28.00% 13
Northern Ireland +7 12 £400 -32.20% 8

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 90 (4.04%) Confluence
2 41 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
2 41 (1.84%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.70%) SAS
4 20 (0.90%) Apache
4 20 (0.90%) SharePoint
5 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.49%) ArcGIS
7 9 (0.40%) Appian
7 9 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 9 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.18%) CMS
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.090%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.090%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 145 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 21 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
4 20 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.31%) CATIA
6 7 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
7 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 2 (0.090%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.090%) EPLAN
8 2 (0.090%) Simulink
8 2 (0.090%) Sketch
9 1 (0.045%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.045%) CANalyzer
9 1 (0.045%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.045%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.045%) UXPin
9 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.62%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.67%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.54%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.36%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.31%) Aladdin
10 7 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
11 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
11 6 (0.27%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.27%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
12 5 (0.22%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 435 (19.52%) Azure
2 282 (12.65%) AWS
3 225 (10.09%) Power Platform
4 111 (4.98%) GCP
5 110 (4.93%) Azure DevOps
6 92 (4.13%) GitHub
7 66 (2.96%) Snowflake
8 64 (2.87%) Serverless
9 57 (2.56%) Amazon S3
9 57 (2.56%) SaaS
10 56 (2.51%) Entra ID
11 55 (2.47%) Azure Data Factory
12 49 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
12 49 (2.20%) OCI
13 39 (1.75%) Microsoft 365
14 37 (1.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 35 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
16 31 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (1.35%) dbt
18 25 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 86 (3.86%) Firewall
2 58 (2.60%) Network Security
3 40 (1.79%) VLAN
4 34 (1.53%) TCP/IP
5 31 (1.39%) DNS
5 31 (1.39%) VPN
6 26 (1.17%) WAN
7 23 (1.03%) Ethernet
8 18 (0.81%) LAN
9 16 (0.72%) SAN
9 16 (0.72%) Wireless
10 14 (0.63%) BGP
10 14 (0.63%) OSPF
10 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
11 13 (0.58%) HTTP
12 12 (0.54%) NAS
12 12 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
13 11 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
14 10 (0.45%) Internet
14 10 (0.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (9.56%) Power BI
2 114 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (4.40%) Metadata
4 79 (3.54%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.41%) Tableau
6 62 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
7 59 (2.65%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.15%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.35%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.30%) Big Data
11 28 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
12 25 (1.12%) Delta Lake
12 25 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 23 (1.03%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.03%) Power Query
13 23 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (0.99%) BigQuery
15 21 (0.94%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 20 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
16 20 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 202 (9.06%) JIRA
2 126 (5.65%) Git
3 84 (3.77%) Jenkins
4 55 (2.47%) Selenium
5 53 (2.38%) GitLab
6 47 (2.11%) Postman
7 42 (1.88%) JMeter
8 32 (1.44%) JUnit
9 26 (1.17%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.12%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.12%) WebDriver
11 16 (0.72%) MLflow
12 15 (0.67%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
14 12 (0.54%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 11 (0.49%) Gatling
16 10 (0.45%) Gradle
16 10 (0.45%) Maven
General
1 689 (30.91%) Social Skills
2 661 (29.65%) Finance
3 417 (18.71%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (8.43%) Public Sector
5 182 (8.17%) Banking
6 120 (5.38%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (3.41%) Manufacturing
8 60 (2.69%) Aerospace
9 48 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (2.15%) Pharmaceutical
10 47 (2.11%) Retail
11 44 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
12 39 (1.75%) Legal
13 36 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
14 33 (1.48%) Marketing
15 32 (1.44%) Front Office
15 32 (1.44%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.44%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.35%) Military
17 28 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 422 (18.93%) Analyst
2 230 (10.32%) Lead
3 196 (8.79%) Senior
4 188 (8.43%) Business Analyst
5 175 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 158 (7.09%) Consultant
7 138 (6.19%) Architect
8 122 (5.47%) Developer
9 116 (5.20%) Data Analyst
10 85 (3.81%) Project Manager
11 57 (2.56%) Tester
12 48 (2.15%) Test Engineer
13 47 (2.11%) Senior Analyst
13 47 (2.11%) Software Engineer
14 45 (2.02%) Network Engineer
15 41 (1.84%) Technical Analyst
16 40 (1.79%) Systems Engineer
16 40 (1.79%) Test Manager
17 39 (1.75%) Security Engineer
18 37 (1.66%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (5.29%) REST
2 78 (3.50%) JSON
3 70 (3.14%) Kafka
4 55 (2.47%) Oracle Fusion
5 54 (2.42%) Middleware
6 51 (2.29%) OAuth
7 46 (2.06%) PySpark
8 41 (1.84%) XML
9 38 (1.70%) Swagger
10 37 (1.66%) SOAP
11 35 (1.57%) .NET
12 33 (1.48%) RESTful
13 32 (1.44%) Node.js
14 30 (1.35%) Pandas
14 30 (1.35%) Web Services
15 29 (1.30%) Playwright
16 28 (1.26%) PyTorch
16 28 (1.26%) Spring
17 26 (1.17%) OAuth2
18 25 (1.12%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
2 118 (5.29%) Data Structures
3 114 (5.11%) Onboarding
4 97 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 82 (3.68%) Cloud Native
6 75 (3.36%) Data Centre
7 57 (2.56%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.30%) Operational Technology
11 29 (1.30%) Replication
12 28 (1.26%) SCADA
13 27 (1.21%) NHS
14 26 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
14 26 (1.17%) Reference Data
14 26 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 25 (1.12%) Life Science
16 24 (1.08%) Public Cloud
17 23 (1.03%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 107 (4.80%) Windows
2 92 (4.13%) Linux
3 31 (1.39%) Unix
4 16 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.49%) Android
6 10 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.27%) VMS
8 5 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.22%) zOS
9 4 (0.18%) SUSE
9 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.045%) Debian
11 1 (0.045%) HPUX
11 1 (0.045%) pSOS
11 1 (0.045%) Solaris
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.045%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 612 (27.46%) Migration
2 444 (19.92%) Agile
3 418 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
4 378 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 377 (16.91%) Data Validation
6 365 (16.38%) Data Migration
7 351 (15.75%) CI/CD
8 346 (15.52%) Data Modelling
9 330 (14.80%) Analytics
10 326 (14.63%) User Acceptance Testing
11 296 (13.28%) ETL
12 265 (11.89%) DevOps
13 261 (11.71%) Test Automation
14 258 (11.57%) Business Intelligence
15 240 (10.77%) AI
16 237 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
17 228 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 218 (9.78%) Data Governance
19 198 (8.88%) Data Analysis
19 198 (8.88%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 529 (23.73%) SQL
2 400 (17.95%) Python
3 105 (4.71%) Java
4 60 (2.69%) C#
5 50 (2.24%) C++
6 47 (2.11%) PowerShell
7 46 (2.06%) C
8 44 (1.97%) Bash
9 42 (1.88%) JavaScript
10 31 (1.39%) TypeScript
11 29 (1.30%) Bicep
12 27 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 27 (1.21%) R
13 25 (1.12%) PL/SQL
14 20 (0.90%) Ada
14 20 (0.90%) Scala
15 19 (0.85%) Apex Code
16 15 (0.67%) MATLAB
17 12 (0.54%) VBA
18 11 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 406 (18.21%) Security Cleared
2 296 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 177 (7.94%) Degree
4 55 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 47 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (1.53%) DV Cleared
6 34 (1.53%) PMI Certification
7 30 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
8 28 (1.26%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.26%) PMP
9 24 (1.08%) CCNP
10 18 (0.81%) CISSP
10 18 (0.81%) ISTQB
11 15 (0.67%) ACCA
11 15 (0.67%) CBAP
12 13 (0.58%) AWS Certification
12 13 (0.58%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.58%) CIMA
12 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
13 12 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (17.45%) Data Quality
2 285 (12.79%) QA
3 117 (5.25%) GDPR
4 69 (3.10%) NIST
5 61 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 29 (1.30%) SLA
8 27 (1.21%) GxP
9 25 (1.12%) IFRS
10 24 (1.08%) PMO
11 20 (0.90%) IFRS 17
12 18 (0.81%) GMP
12 18 (0.81%) GRC
12 18 (0.81%) HL7
13 16 (0.72%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.63%) MiFID
15 13 (0.58%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.58%) NIST 800
15 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 81 (3.63%) Docker
2 52 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 45 (2.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (1.03%) Firmware
5 20 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.54%) vSphere
9 10 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.090%) Ceph
13 2 (0.090%) Embedded Firmware
13 2 (0.090%) KVM
13 2 (0.090%) Lustre
13 2 (0.090%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.090%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 123 (5.52%) Kubernetes
2 97 (4.35%) Terraform
3 44 (1.97%) Prometheus
4 42 (1.88%) Grafana
5 38 (1.70%) Ansible
6 30 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.54%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.49%) Kibana
10 10 (0.45%) Puppet
11 9 (0.40%) SCCM
12 7 (0.31%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.27%) Nessus
13 6 (0.27%) vMotion
14 5 (0.22%) CASB
15 4 (0.18%) Argo
15 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
15 4 (0.18%) Istio
15 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 305 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 194 (8.70%) SAP
3 188 (8.43%) Oracle
4 105 (4.71%) Databricks
5 72 (3.23%) ServiceNow
6 70 (3.14%) Salesforce
7 55 (2.47%) VMware
8 50 (2.24%) Cisco
9 48 (2.15%) Google
10 42 (1.88%) Splunk
11 32 (1.44%) Informatica
12 27 (1.21%) MuleSoft
12 27 (1.21%) Palo Alto
12 27 (1.21%) Sage
13 25 (1.12%) IBM
13 25 (1.12%) Workday
14 22 (0.99%) CyberArk
15 20 (0.90%) IFS
15 20 (0.90%) OpenAI
16 18 (0.81%) Fortinet