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 18 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 75 118
Rank change year-on-year +39 +43 +37
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,592 1,011 831
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.14% 3.40% 1.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.06% 3.73% 2.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,548 610 404
10th Percentile £330 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £422 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -10.71%
75th Percentile £596 £630 £589
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -10.76% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 64 179
10th Percentile £17.07 £17.02 £26.88
25th Percentile £27.06 £41.78 £47.92
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.63 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.12% -3.96% -5.11%
75th Percentile £74.44 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.83 £76.75 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £62.50 £61.50
% change year-on-year +1.02% +1.63% -1.68%

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 42,754 27,087 37,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,630 17,192 23,755
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,570 1,249 2,608
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.87 £16.02
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +37 2,252 £500 -6.98% 960
UK excluding London +31 1,229 £469 -10.76% 771
London +49 1,066 £513 -6.82% 342
Work from Home +53 766 £481 -3.90% 379
North of England +44 312 £449 -0.33% 144
Midlands +34 272 £492 +9.39% 111
South East +1 267 £500 -0.50% 249
West Midlands +31 198 £481 +15.96% 63
North West +32 178 £440 -0.85% 70
South West +8 138 £500 -13.04% 122
East of England +12 131 £500 - 89
Yorkshire +21 118 £460 +5.75% 49
Scotland +39 83 £419 -11.84% 39
East Midlands +17 69 £525 +15.51% 48
Wales +8 25 £455 +193.55% 13
North East -20 19 £425 -22.73% 27
Northern Ireland +9 12 £400 -32.20% 27

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 88 (3.40%) Confluence
2 62 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.93%) SAS
4 46 (1.77%) Apache Spark
5 41 (1.58%) SharePoint
6 24 (0.93%) Apache
7 15 (0.58%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.35%) Appian
9 9 (0.35%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
10 6 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.15%) IIS
13 3 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 164 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 33 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 27 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.31%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.077%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.077%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.077%) Sketch
12 2 (0.077%) Windchill
13 1 (0.039%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.039%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.039%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.039%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.039%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 122 (4.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.62%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
10 7 (0.27%) iTrent
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
10 7 (0.27%) SAP SD
10 7 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 520 (20.06%) Azure
2 331 (12.77%) AWS
3 245 (9.45%) Power Platform
4 133 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
5 132 (5.09%) GCP
6 117 (4.51%) GitHub
7 87 (3.36%) Snowflake
8 67 (2.58%) Entra ID
8 67 (2.58%) Serverless
9 66 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
10 59 (2.28%) Amazon S3
10 59 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 54 (2.08%) SaaS
12 46 (1.77%) Microsoft 365
13 41 (1.58%) OCI
14 37 (1.43%) dbt
15 35 (1.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 34 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
17 32 (1.23%) SuccessFactors
18 31 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 101 (3.90%) Firewall
2 67 (2.58%) Network Security
3 46 (1.77%) VLAN
4 42 (1.62%) DNS
5 41 (1.58%) WAN
6 38 (1.47%) VPN
7 35 (1.35%) TCP/IP
8 30 (1.16%) BGP
9 23 (0.89%) LAN
10 22 (0.85%) Ethernet
10 22 (0.85%) OSPF
10 22 (0.85%) SD-WAN
10 22 (0.85%) Wireless
11 20 (0.77%) SAN
12 18 (0.69%) Internet
13 17 (0.66%) DHCP
14 16 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.46%) NAS
16 12 (0.46%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (8.87%) Power BI
2 129 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
3 98 (3.78%) Metadata
4 97 (3.74%) SQL Server
5 85 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
6 73 (2.82%) Tableau
7 67 (2.58%) Data Lake
8 62 (2.39%) Relational Database
9 37 (1.43%) Big Data
10 32 (1.23%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.20%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (1.08%) NoSQL
14 27 (1.04%) Power Query
15 26 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 24 (0.93%) BigQuery
18 23 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
19 20 (0.77%) Delta Lake
19 20 (0.77%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 233 (8.99%) JIRA
2 150 (5.79%) Git
3 99 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.74%) GitLab
5 57 (2.20%) Selenium
6 50 (1.93%) Postman
7 47 (1.81%) JMeter
8 38 (1.47%) JUnit
9 36 (1.39%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.16%) WebDriver
11 26 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.69%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.62%) Gatling
14 16 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.58%) MLflow
16 12 (0.46%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.39%) Gradle
18 10 (0.39%) Maven
General
1 765 (29.51%) Finance
2 754 (29.09%) Social Skills
3 460 (17.75%) Analytical Skills
4 222 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 202 (7.79%) Banking
6 148 (5.71%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (3.16%) Manufacturing
8 74 (2.85%) Aerospace
9 58 (2.24%) Retail
10 52 (2.01%) Pharmaceutical
11 49 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
12 45 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 44 (1.70%) Legal
14 43 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 43 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
15 39 (1.50%) General Ledger
15 39 (1.50%) Marketing
16 38 (1.47%) Front Office
17 34 (1.31%) Law
17 34 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 447 (17.25%) Analyst
2 267 (10.30%) Senior
3 255 (9.84%) Lead
4 213 (8.22%) Business Analyst
5 196 (7.56%) Consultant
6 194 (7.48%) Data Engineer
7 154 (5.94%) Architect
8 151 (5.83%) Developer
9 126 (4.86%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.36%) Project Manager
11 77 (2.97%) Test Engineer
12 65 (2.51%) Tester
13 54 (2.08%) Network Engineer
14 53 (2.04%) Test Manager
15 51 (1.97%) Systems Engineer
16 49 (1.89%) Senior Analyst
17 47 (1.81%) Technical Analyst
18 45 (1.74%) Software Engineer
19 44 (1.70%) SAP Consultant
20 43 (1.66%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (5.32%) REST
2 79 (3.05%) JSON
3 71 (2.74%) Kafka
4 54 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
5 51 (1.97%) Middleware
6 50 (1.93%) OAuth
6 50 (1.93%) XML
7 49 (1.89%) PySpark
8 39 (1.50%) .NET
8 39 (1.50%) RESTful
8 39 (1.50%) SOAP
8 39 (1.50%) Spring
9 38 (1.47%) pytest
9 38 (1.47%) Swagger
10 35 (1.35%) Web Services
11 33 (1.27%) Pandas
11 33 (1.27%) Playwright
12 30 (1.16%) Node.js
13 27 (1.04%) JWT
13 27 (1.04%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 137 (5.29%) Legacy Systems
2 127 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 124 (4.78%) Data Structures
4 110 (4.24%) Product Ownership
5 107 (4.13%) Cloud Native
6 81 (3.13%) Data Centre
7 63 (2.43%) Management Information System
8 58 (2.24%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
10 38 (1.47%) Life Science
11 37 (1.43%) SCADA
12 34 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
13 32 (1.23%) Replication
14 31 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
14 31 (1.20%) Operational Technology
15 30 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 30 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 29 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
16 29 (1.12%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 136 (5.25%) Windows
2 97 (3.74%) Linux
3 33 (1.27%) Unix
4 29 (1.12%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.50%) Android
7 9 (0.35%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
10 4 (0.15%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.077%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.077%) HPUX
12 2 (0.077%) Solaris
12 2 (0.077%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.077%) zOS
13 1 (0.039%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 699 (26.97%) Migration
2 501 (19.33%) Agile
3 449 (17.32%) Stakeholder Management
4 439 (16.94%) Data Validation
5 434 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
6 429 (16.55%) CI/CD
7 418 (16.13%) User Acceptance Testing
8 408 (15.74%) Data Migration
9 404 (15.59%) Data Modelling
10 391 (15.08%) Analytics
11 329 (12.69%) AI
12 316 (12.19%) ETL
13 312 (12.04%) Test Automation
14 308 (11.88%) DevOps
15 289 (11.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 272 (10.49%) Business Intelligence
17 269 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 239 (9.22%) Data Analysis
19 238 (9.18%) Data Governance
20 234 (9.03%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 609 (23.50%) SQL
2 463 (17.86%) Python
3 118 (4.55%) Java
4 67 (2.58%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.08%) C#
6 48 (1.85%) Bash
7 43 (1.66%) C
8 41 (1.58%) C++
9 40 (1.54%) JavaScript
10 32 (1.23%) TypeScript
11 31 (1.20%) Bicep
11 31 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 29 (1.12%) Apex Code
13 25 (0.96%) PL/SQL
14 23 (0.89%) R
15 21 (0.81%) Ada
16 20 (0.77%) Scala
17 18 (0.69%) MATLAB
18 17 (0.66%) T-SQL
19 16 (0.62%) VBA
Qualifications
1 471 (18.17%) Security Cleared
2 347 (13.39%) SC Cleared
3 182 (7.02%) Degree
4 63 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 49 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 36 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.20%) PMI Certification
9 29 (1.12%) CCNP
10 26 (1.00%) PMP
11 24 (0.93%) ISTQB
12 20 (0.77%) ACCA
13 19 (0.73%) Azure Certification
13 19 (0.73%) CISSP
13 19 (0.73%) Master's Degree
14 18 (0.69%) CIMA
15 16 (0.62%) CCNA
16 15 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
17 14 (0.54%) AWS Certification
18 13 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (17.21%) Data Quality
2 305 (11.77%) QA
3 120 (4.63%) GDPR
4 60 (2.31%) NIST
5 53 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 36 (1.39%) SLA
8 32 (1.23%) PMO
9 28 (1.08%) GxP
10 27 (1.04%) IFRS
11 18 (0.69%) IFRS 17
12 16 (0.62%) Def Stans
12 16 (0.62%) HL7
13 15 (0.58%) GMP
13 15 (0.58%) GRC
14 14 (0.54%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.50%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.46%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 108 (4.17%) Docker
2 71 (2.74%) Active Directory
3 62 (2.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.89%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 18 (0.69%) Firmware
8 17 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.54%) vSphere
10 10 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.23%) NFS
12 5 (0.19%) KVM
13 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.077%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.077%) OpenSSH
15 2 (0.077%) VirtualBox
15 2 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
16 1 (0.039%) etcd
Systems Management
1 152 (5.86%) Kubernetes
2 121 (4.67%) Terraform
3 54 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 49 (1.89%) Ansible
5 48 (1.85%) Grafana
6 28 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (0.81%) FortiGate
7 21 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.39%) vCenter Server
9 7 (0.27%) Kibana
9 7 (0.27%) SCCM
10 6 (0.23%) Nessus
10 6 (0.23%) Puppet
10 6 (0.23%) vMotion
10 6 (0.23%) VxRail
11 5 (0.19%) Argo
11 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.15%) Consul
12 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 341 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 234 (9.03%) SAP
3 222 (8.56%) Oracle
4 119 (4.59%) Databricks
5 87 (3.36%) Salesforce
6 77 (2.97%) ServiceNow
7 75 (2.89%) VMware
8 58 (2.24%) Cisco
9 50 (1.93%) Google
10 41 (1.58%) Splunk
11 36 (1.39%) Workday
12 32 (1.23%) Informatica
13 31 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 28 (1.08%) Sage
15 26 (1.00%) Fortinet
16 23 (0.89%) IBM
17 21 (0.81%) IFS
17 21 (0.81%) OpenAI
18 20 (0.77%) CyberArk