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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 74 124
Rank change year-on-year +33 +50 +25
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,276 907 794
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.73% 3.11% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.61% 3.42% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,371 534 389
10th Percentile £325 £345 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £629 £600
90th Percentile £700 £702 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -11.81% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 60 166
10th Percentile £17.02 £18.05 £25.53
25th Percentile £33.00 £37.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -8.33% -5.11%
75th Percentile £72.50 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £62.50
% change year-on-year +12.80% -7.80% -

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 40,582 26,548 36,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 91.02% 86.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,477 17,040 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,106 2,443
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.17 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.90% -21.86% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +7.14%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +32 1,985 £492 -7.39% 807
UK excluding London +32 1,053 £452 -11.81% 660
London +57 970 £500 -9.09% 263
Work from Home +51 670 £481 -3.75% 366
North of England +42 270 £430 -3.10% 118
Midlands +29 235 £481 +3.05% 88
South East -12 223 £490 -2.00% 200
West Midlands +32 171 £475 - 57
North West +32 163 £420 -4.00% 72
East of England +10 117 £488 +8.33% 108
South West -8 114 £475 -17.39% 104
Yorkshire +19 97 £451 +8.03% 31
Scotland +40 70 £400 -12.33% 37
East Midlands +6 60 £525 +15.51% 31
Wales +10 23 £455 +193.55% 20
North East -16 13 £450 -28.00% 16
Northern Ireland +6 12 £400 -32.20% 7

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 (3.95%) Confluence
2 41 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
2 41 (1.80%) Apache Spark
3 38 (1.67%) SAS
4 20 (0.88%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.83%) Apache
6 10 (0.44%) ArcGIS
6 10 (0.44%) Jupyter
6 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.40%) Appian
7 9 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 5 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.18%) CMS
10 3 (0.13%) CICS
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
10 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.088%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.088%) Apache Pulsar
11 2 (0.088%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 149 (6.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.97%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.31%) CATIA
7 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Simulink
9 2 (0.088%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.088%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.088%) Sketch
10 1 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.044%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.044%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.044%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.044%) UXPin
10 1 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (4.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (1.49%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.66%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
5 13 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.53%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 9 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.35%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
9 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 8 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 8 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
10 6 (0.26%) iTrent
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.26%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.26%) SAP Business One
11 5 (0.22%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 435 (19.11%) Azure
2 284 (12.48%) AWS
3 225 (9.89%) Power Platform
4 110 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
4 110 (4.83%) GCP
5 94 (4.13%) GitHub
6 66 (2.90%) Snowflake
7 62 (2.72%) Serverless
8 58 (2.55%) SaaS
9 56 (2.46%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 55 (2.42%) Azure Data Factory
11 51 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
12 47 (2.07%) OCI
13 37 (1.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 35 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
15 34 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
16 31 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (1.36%) dbt
17 25 (1.10%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.87%) Firewall
2 59 (2.59%) Network Security
3 42 (1.85%) VLAN
4 34 (1.49%) DNS
5 33 (1.45%) TCP/IP
6 32 (1.41%) VPN
7 27 (1.19%) WAN
8 22 (0.97%) Ethernet
9 18 (0.79%) LAN
10 16 (0.70%) SAN
10 16 (0.70%) Wireless
11 15 (0.66%) BGP
11 15 (0.66%) OSPF
11 15 (0.66%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.57%) HTTP
12 13 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.53%) DHCP
13 12 (0.53%) NAS
14 11 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
15 10 (0.44%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (9.36%) Power BI
2 118 (5.18%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (4.17%) Metadata
4 80 (3.51%) SQL Server
5 77 (3.38%) Tableau
6 63 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
7 60 (2.64%) Data Lake
8 49 (2.15%) Relational Database
9 32 (1.41%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.27%) Big Data
11 28 (1.23%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.14%) Delta Lake
13 25 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
14 24 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 24 (1.05%) Power Query
15 23 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 21 (0.92%) BigQuery
16 21 (0.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 20 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
17 20 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 202 (8.88%) JIRA
2 126 (5.54%) Git
3 87 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 55 (2.42%) Selenium
5 54 (2.37%) GitLab
6 52 (2.28%) Postman
7 45 (1.98%) JMeter
8 32 (1.41%) JUnit
9 28 (1.23%) Cucumber
10 26 (1.14%) Rational DOORS
11 25 (1.10%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.70%) MLflow
13 15 (0.66%) Rational Rhapsody
14 14 (0.62%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.53%) Gatling
15 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.44%) Gradle
17 10 (0.44%) Maven
General
1 699 (30.71%) Social Skills
2 672 (29.53%) Finance
3 422 (18.54%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 184 (8.08%) Banking
6 123 (5.40%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (3.43%) Manufacturing
8 61 (2.68%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.20%) Retail
10 47 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
10 47 (2.07%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
12 40 (1.76%) Legal
13 37 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
14 34 (1.49%) Marketing
15 32 (1.41%) General Ledger
15 32 (1.41%) Telecoms
16 31 (1.36%) Front Office
17 30 (1.32%) Military
18 29 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 425 (18.67%) Analyst
2 236 (10.37%) Lead
3 203 (8.92%) Senior
4 190 (8.35%) Business Analyst
5 177 (7.78%) Data Engineer
6 161 (7.07%) Consultant
7 140 (6.15%) Architect
8 124 (5.45%) Developer
9 119 (5.23%) Data Analyst
10 84 (3.69%) Project Manager
11 57 (2.50%) Tester
12 55 (2.42%) Test Engineer
13 47 (2.07%) Network Engineer
14 46 (2.02%) Senior Analyst
14 46 (2.02%) Software Engineer
15 43 (1.89%) Systems Engineer
16 42 (1.85%) Test Manager
17 41 (1.80%) Security Engineer
17 41 (1.80%) Technical Analyst
18 37 (1.63%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (5.14%) REST
2 83 (3.65%) JSON
3 70 (3.08%) Kafka
4 55 (2.42%) Middleware
5 54 (2.37%) Oracle Fusion
6 50 (2.20%) OAuth
7 47 (2.07%) PySpark
8 46 (2.02%) XML
9 38 (1.67%) Swagger
10 36 (1.58%) .NET
10 36 (1.58%) RESTful
10 36 (1.58%) SOAP
11 31 (1.36%) Pandas
12 30 (1.32%) Node.js
13 29 (1.27%) Playwright
13 29 (1.27%) Web Services
14 28 (1.23%) Spring
15 27 (1.19%) OAuth2
15 27 (1.19%) pytest
15 27 (1.19%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 130 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
2 119 (5.23%) Data Structures
3 117 (5.14%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.31%) Product Ownership
5 82 (3.60%) Cloud Native
6 77 (3.38%) Data Centre
7 59 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 40 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
9 36 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
10 34 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 30 (1.32%) Operational Technology
12 29 (1.27%) Replication
13 28 (1.23%) SCADA
14 27 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
14 27 (1.19%) Life Science
14 27 (1.19%) NHS
14 27 (1.19%) Reference Data
14 27 (1.19%) Virtual Team
15 25 (1.10%) Public Cloud
16 23 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 109 (4.79%) Windows
2 91 (4.00%) Linux
3 33 (1.45%) Unix
4 18 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.44%) Android
6 9 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.31%) VMS
8 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.22%) zOS
10 4 (0.18%) SUSE
11 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.088%) Debian
13 1 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.044%) HPUX
13 1 (0.044%) pSOS
13 1 (0.044%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 620 (27.24%) Migration
2 446 (19.60%) Agile
3 419 (18.41%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 380 (16.70%) Data Validation
6 374 (16.43%) Data Migration
7 358 (15.73%) CI/CD
8 357 (15.69%) Data Modelling
9 337 (14.81%) User Acceptance Testing
10 329 (14.46%) Analytics
11 298 (13.09%) ETL
12 268 (11.78%) DevOps
13 266 (11.69%) Test Automation
14 257 (11.29%) Business Intelligence
15 248 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
16 241 (10.59%) AI
17 239 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 219 (9.62%) Data Governance
19 201 (8.83%) Data Analysis
19 201 (8.83%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 534 (23.46%) SQL
2 404 (17.75%) Python
3 108 (4.75%) Java
4 58 (2.55%) C#
5 50 (2.20%) PowerShell
6 46 (2.02%) C++
7 45 (1.98%) Bash
7 45 (1.98%) C
8 42 (1.85%) JavaScript
9 31 (1.36%) Bicep
9 31 (1.36%) TypeScript
10 29 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 27 (1.19%) PL/SQL
12 26 (1.14%) R
13 22 (0.97%) Apex Code
14 20 (0.88%) Ada
14 20 (0.88%) Scala
15 16 (0.70%) MATLAB
16 12 (0.53%) VBA
17 11 (0.48%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 419 (18.41%) Security Cleared
2 305 (13.40%) SC Cleared
3 177 (7.78%) Degree
4 56 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 42 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 38 (1.67%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.49%) PMI Certification
8 31 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.23%) PMP
10 26 (1.14%) Master's Degree
11 25 (1.10%) CCNP
12 18 (0.79%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.75%) CISSP
14 16 (0.70%) ACCA
15 15 (0.66%) CBAP
16 14 (0.62%) CIMA
17 13 (0.57%) AWS Certification
17 13 (0.57%) Azure Certification
17 13 (0.57%) CCNA
17 13 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (17.31%) Data Quality
2 287 (12.61%) QA
3 117 (5.14%) GDPR
4 68 (2.99%) NIST
5 58 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 33 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.32%) SLA
8 26 (1.14%) GxP
9 25 (1.10%) IFRS
9 25 (1.10%) PMO
10 20 (0.88%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.79%) GMP
11 18 (0.79%) GRC
11 18 (0.79%) HL7
12 17 (0.75%) Def Stans
13 14 (0.62%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.57%) MiFID
14 13 (0.57%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.53%) NIST 800
15 12 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 83 (3.65%) Docker
2 56 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 49 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.97%) Firmware
5 21 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
6 20 (0.88%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.70%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.57%) vSphere
9 11 (0.48%) 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 (0.088%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.088%) Ceph
13 2 (0.088%) KVM
13 2 (0.088%) OpenAM
13 2 (0.088%) OpenIDM
13 2 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 127 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 98 (4.31%) Terraform
3 45 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 43 (1.89%) Grafana
5 41 (1.80%) Ansible
6 30 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.53%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.48%) Kibana
10 10 (0.44%) Puppet
11 8 (0.35%) SCCM
11 8 (0.35%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.26%) Nessus
12 6 (0.26%) vMotion
13 5 (0.22%) CASB
14 4 (0.18%) Argo
14 4 (0.18%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.18%) Istio
14 4 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 309 (13.58%) Microsoft
2 196 (8.61%) SAP
3 193 (8.48%) Oracle
4 105 (4.61%) Databricks
5 73 (3.21%) Salesforce
6 72 (3.16%) ServiceNow
7 60 (2.64%) VMware
8 53 (2.33%) Cisco
9 47 (2.07%) Google
10 42 (1.85%) Splunk
11 31 (1.36%) Informatica
12 29 (1.27%) Workday
13 28 (1.23%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.19%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.19%) Sage
15 24 (1.05%) IBM
16 22 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 21 (0.92%) IFS
18 20 (0.88%) OpenAI
19 18 (0.79%) Fortinet