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 21 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 69 119
Rank change year-on-year +33 +50 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,769 1,139 804
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.25% 3.50% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.18% 3.87% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,656 671 407
10th Percentile £340 £350 £343
25th Percentile £410 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £700 £673
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £515 £481
% change year-on-year -9.95% +7.07% -3.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 82 142
10th Percentile £17.75 £20.50 £28.00
25th Percentile £28.19 £38.44 £47.87
Median hourly rate £58.99 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.40% -2.08% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.44 £66.13 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.98 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year - - -0.08%

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 44,806 29,445 35,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.36% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,768 18,486 22,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,649 1,571 2,189
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.06
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.88 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.75 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +87.50% -40.00% -1.45%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 21 July 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 +32 2,402 £500 -4.76% 857
UK excluding London +27 1,293 £464 -9.95% 599
London +43 1,160 £513 -2.38% 337
Work from Home +42 790 £488 -2.50% 330
South East +1 311 £504 +0.75% 182
Midlands +44 305 £475 +5.56% 100
North of England +38 304 £450 -5.26% 143
West Midlands +33 224 £475 +11.76% 54
North West +22 167 £450 -14.29% 82
East of England +2 134 £500 - 76
Yorkshire +27 127 £460 +9.52% 34
South West -13 125 £520 -9.57% 70
Scotland +31 90 £425 -10.53% 27
East Midlands +22 76 £509 +13.11% 46
Wales +3 29 £455 +21.33% 12
North East -34 16 £425 -15.00% 27
Northern Ireland +8 10 £380 -35.59% 5

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 (3.03%) Confluence
2 68 (2.46%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (2.09%) SAS
4 50 (1.81%) SharePoint
5 45 (1.63%) Apache Spark
6 31 (1.12%) Apache
7 14 (0.51%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.43%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
10 9 (0.33%) ArcGIS
10 9 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
11 7 (0.25%) CMS
12 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.14%) IIS
13 4 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
14 3 (0.11%) Appian
14 3 (0.11%) JBoss
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 182 (6.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.52%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
5 28 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.18%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) Simulink
10 2 (0.072%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.072%) Sketch
10 2 (0.072%) Windchill
11 1 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.036%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.036%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.036%) Navisworks
11 1 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.036%) Revit
Business Applications
1 124 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.26%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.61%) Workday HCM
4 15 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
6 11 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 11 (0.40%) NetSuite
6 11 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 11 (0.40%) SAP ERP
7 10 (0.36%) iTrent
7 10 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
8 9 (0.33%) SAP MDG
8 9 (0.33%) SAP SD
9 8 (0.29%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP HCM
9 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 580 (20.95%) Azure
2 323 (11.66%) AWS
3 288 (10.40%) Power Platform
4 148 (5.34%) Azure DevOps
5 138 (4.98%) GCP
6 122 (4.41%) GitHub
7 98 (3.54%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.53%) Entra ID
8 70 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
8 70 (2.53%) Serverless
9 67 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
10 62 (2.24%) Amazon S3
11 51 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
11 51 (1.84%) SaaS
12 46 (1.66%) dbt
13 45 (1.63%) OCI
14 43 (1.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 39 (1.41%) SuccessFactors
16 37 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.23%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 119 (4.30%) Firewall
2 70 (2.53%) Network Security
3 56 (2.02%) DNS
4 50 (1.81%) VLAN
5 49 (1.77%) VPN
6 41 (1.48%) WAN
7 39 (1.41%) TCP/IP
8 34 (1.23%) BGP
9 25 (0.90%) DHCP
9 25 (0.90%) OSPF
10 24 (0.87%) LAN
11 23 (0.83%) SAN
11 23 (0.83%) Wireless
12 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.69%) Internet
14 18 (0.65%) Ethernet
15 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
16 13 (0.47%) HTTP
16 13 (0.47%) NAS
17 12 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (9.68%) Power BI
2 159 (5.74%) Data Warehouse
3 114 (4.12%) Metadata
4 98 (3.54%) SQL Server
5 87 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
6 84 (3.03%) Data Lake
7 78 (2.82%) Tableau
8 74 (2.67%) Relational Database
9 42 (1.52%) Big Data
10 33 (1.19%) Oracle Database
10 33 (1.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 32 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
12 30 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 29 (1.05%) Power Query
14 28 (1.01%) NoSQL
15 27 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (0.98%) BigQuery
15 27 (0.98%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
17 24 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 245 (8.85%) JIRA
2 167 (6.03%) Git
3 93 (3.36%) Jenkins
4 70 (2.53%) GitLab
5 60 (2.17%) Selenium
6 48 (1.73%) JMeter
7 46 (1.66%) Postman
8 39 (1.41%) JUnit
9 38 (1.37%) Cucumber
10 31 (1.12%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.94%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.58%) Gatling
15 14 (0.51%) Visual Studio
16 13 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
17 12 (0.43%) REST Assured
18 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
18 11 (0.40%) MLflow
19 9 (0.33%) Maven
General
1 810 (29.25%) Finance
2 797 (28.78%) Social Skills
3 516 (18.63%) Analytical Skills
4 226 (8.16%) Public Sector
5 211 (7.62%) Banking
6 161 (5.81%) Documentation Skills
7 103 (3.72%) Manufacturing
8 82 (2.96%) Retail
9 73 (2.64%) Aerospace
10 61 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
11 56 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 55 (1.99%) Telecoms
13 52 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
14 45 (1.63%) Legal
15 42 (1.52%) Front Office
16 41 (1.48%) Marketing
17 40 (1.44%) Automotive
18 39 (1.41%) Billing
19 37 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
20 36 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 502 (18.13%) Analyst
2 281 (10.15%) Senior
3 279 (10.08%) Lead
4 240 (8.67%) Business Analyst
5 224 (8.09%) Data Engineer
6 203 (7.33%) Consultant
7 163 (5.89%) Developer
8 152 (5.49%) Architect
9 138 (4.98%) Data Analyst
10 92 (3.32%) Test Engineer
11 82 (2.96%) Tester
12 80 (2.89%) Project Manager
13 62 (2.24%) Network Engineer
14 53 (1.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 52 (1.88%) Systems Engineer
16 49 (1.77%) Senior Data Engineer
16 49 (1.77%) Technical Analyst
17 44 (1.59%) Administrator
17 44 (1.59%) Migration Engineer
17 44 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (4.80%) REST
2 83 (3.00%) JSON
3 73 (2.64%) Kafka
4 63 (2.28%) PySpark
5 59 (2.13%) XML
6 54 (1.95%) Middleware
7 52 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
8 46 (1.66%) .NET
9 45 (1.63%) Spring
10 41 (1.48%) SOAP
11 40 (1.44%) OAuth
12 39 (1.41%) pytest
13 37 (1.34%) Web Services
14 34 (1.23%) Playwright
15 31 (1.12%) Pandas
15 31 (1.12%) RESTful
16 28 (1.01%) Node.js
17 27 (0.98%) Swagger
18 25 (0.90%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.90%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 155 (5.60%) Onboarding
2 149 (5.38%) Data Structures
3 133 (4.80%) Legacy Systems
4 126 (4.55%) Cloud Native
5 121 (4.37%) Product Ownership
6 80 (2.89%) Data Centre
7 74 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 54 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.52%) Life Science
11 41 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
12 39 (1.41%) AI Agents
13 38 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
13 38 (1.37%) SCADA
14 36 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
15 35 (1.26%) NHS
15 35 (1.26%) Virtual Team
16 31 (1.12%) Reference Data
17 30 (1.08%) Replication
18 29 (1.05%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 160 (5.78%) Windows
2 104 (3.76%) Linux
3 51 (1.84%) Windows Server
4 36 (1.30%) Unix
5 19 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.36%) Android
7 9 (0.33%) Ubuntu
7 9 (0.33%) VMS
8 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.22%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.14%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.14%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.072%) AIX
12 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.072%) HPUX
12 2 (0.072%) Solaris
12 2 (0.072%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.072%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 754 (27.23%) Migration
2 543 (19.61%) Agile
3 513 (18.53%) Stakeholder Management
4 471 (17.01%) Analytics
5 464 (16.76%) CI/CD
6 457 (16.50%) Data Validation
7 451 (16.29%) User Acceptance Testing
8 448 (16.18%) Data Migration
9 446 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
10 443 (16.00%) Data Modelling
11 348 (12.57%) AI
12 344 (12.42%) ETL
13 340 (12.28%) Test Automation
14 339 (12.24%) Continuous Improvement
15 332 (11.99%) DevOps
16 313 (11.30%) Business Intelligence
17 310 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 280 (10.11%) Data Pipeline
19 279 (10.08%) Data Governance
20 269 (9.71%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 662 (23.91%) SQL
2 500 (18.06%) Python
3 120 (4.33%) Java
4 79 (2.85%) PowerShell
5 61 (2.20%) C#
6 57 (2.06%) Bash
7 40 (1.44%) JavaScript
8 39 (1.41%) C++
9 35 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 33 (1.19%) Bicep
11 32 (1.16%) C
11 32 (1.16%) TypeScript
12 30 (1.08%) Apex Code
13 26 (0.94%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.87%) VBA
15 23 (0.83%) R
16 20 (0.72%) Ada
17 19 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 15 (0.54%) MATLAB
18 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 502 (18.13%) Security Cleared
2 362 (13.07%) SC Cleared
3 187 (6.75%) Degree
4 64 (2.31%) DV Cleared
5 63 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
7 37 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (1.19%) CCNP
9 25 (0.90%) ISTQB
10 23 (0.83%) PMI Certification
11 22 (0.79%) PMP
12 21 (0.76%) ACCA
13 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.72%) CIMA
13 20 (0.72%) CISSP
14 17 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.58%) CCNA
16 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.51%) AWS Certification
18 13 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 510 (18.42%) Data Quality
2 336 (12.13%) QA
3 126 (4.55%) GDPR
4 57 (2.06%) NIST
5 51 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 47 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.41%) PMO
7 39 (1.41%) SLA
8 38 (1.37%) GxP
9 21 (0.76%) GRC
10 18 (0.65%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 18 (0.65%) GMP
11 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.58%) HL7
12 16 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.54%) IFRS
14 14 (0.51%) NCSC
15 13 (0.47%) WCAG
16 12 (0.43%) PCI DSS
16 12 (0.43%) Solvency II
System Software
1 111 (4.01%) Docker
2 88 (3.18%) Active Directory
3 75 (2.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (0.69%) vSphere
8 17 (0.61%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
10 6 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) KVM
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.072%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.072%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.072%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.036%) etcd
14 1 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 159 (5.74%) Kubernetes
2 136 (4.91%) Terraform
3 56 (2.02%) Ansible
4 55 (1.99%) Prometheus
5 54 (1.95%) Grafana
6 25 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
7 24 (0.87%) FortiGate
7 24 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.47%) SCCM
9 12 (0.43%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.36%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.29%) VxRail
12 6 (0.22%) Nessus
12 6 (0.22%) vMotion
13 5 (0.18%) Argo
13 5 (0.18%) CASB
13 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (0.18%) Istio
13 5 (0.18%) vRealize
14 4 (0.14%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 398 (14.37%) Microsoft
2 257 (9.28%) SAP
3 247 (8.92%) Oracle
4 140 (5.06%) Databricks
5 93 (3.36%) Salesforce
6 89 (3.21%) VMware
7 71 (2.56%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.24%) Cisco
9 50 (1.81%) Workday
10 46 (1.66%) Google
11 40 (1.44%) Informatica
12 39 (1.41%) Splunk
13 33 (1.19%) Fortinet
14 31 (1.12%) IBM
14 31 (1.12%) Palo Alto
15 28 (1.01%) Juniper
16 27 (0.98%) MuleSoft
17 26 (0.94%) Sage
18 25 (0.90%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.72%) IFS