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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 72 120
Rank change year-on-year +37 +48 +34
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,769 1,101 843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.28% 3.41% 1.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.20% 3.76% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,656 654 415
10th Percentile £336 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.91%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £594
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £505 £500
% change year-on-year -6.93% +1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 74 174
10th Percentile £17.75 £18.90 £26.88
25th Percentile £28.50 £41.25 £47.83
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.88 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -6.42%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.90 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year - +4.17% -4.00%

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 44,694 29,246 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.15% 90.54% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,812 18,436 23,663
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,657 1,477 2,496
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +35 2,408 £500 -4.76% 1,052
UK excluding London +28 1,289 £470 -6.93% 744
London +44 1,159 £517 -6.05% 444
Work from Home +51 802 £488 -2.50% 404
North of England +36 311 £450 - 144
Midlands +35 300 £488 +11.43% 120
South East +5 300 £515 +3.00% 232
West Midlands +30 219 £475 +17.28% 59
North West +26 168 £450 -4.10% 76
East of England +9 134 £500 +5.26% 82
South West -8 131 £514 -10.65% 110
Yorkshire +33 130 £461 +10.53% 48
Scotland +39 86 £423 -9.87% 51
East Midlands +25 76 £525 +15.51% 61
Wales +8 29 £455 +71.70% 8
North East -22 16 £425 -22.73% 20
Northern Ireland +12 10 £380 -35.59% 13

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 (3.25%) Confluence
2 65 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (1.99%) SAS
4 51 (1.84%) SharePoint
5 43 (1.55%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.98%) Apache
7 13 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.33%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.33%) SharePoint 2013
10 7 (0.25%) CMS
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.14%) IIS
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
13 3 (0.11%) JBoss
13 3 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 183 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.59%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.98%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.29%) CATIA
8 6 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.18%) AutoCAD
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%) CANalyzer
11 1 (0.036%) LaTeX
11 1 (0.036%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.036%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 127 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 16 (0.58%) Teamcenter
5 14 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 13 (0.47%) Oracle General Ledger
6 13 (0.47%) Workday HCM
7 12 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.40%) iTrent
8 11 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 10 (0.36%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.36%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
10 9 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
11 8 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.29%) SAP MDG
11 8 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
11 8 (0.29%) SAP SD
12 7 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 565 (20.40%) Azure
2 329 (11.88%) AWS
3 279 (10.08%) Power Platform
4 153 (5.53%) Azure DevOps
5 135 (4.88%) GCP
6 117 (4.23%) GitHub
7 92 (3.32%) Snowflake
8 69 (2.49%) Serverless
9 68 (2.46%) Entra ID
9 68 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
10 63 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 60 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 52 (1.88%) SaaS
13 50 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
14 44 (1.59%) OCI
15 42 (1.52%) dbt
16 41 (1.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 37 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
18 36 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
19 32 (1.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 113 (4.08%) Firewall
2 68 (2.46%) Network Security
3 51 (1.84%) DNS
4 47 (1.70%) VLAN
5 41 (1.48%) VPN
6 40 (1.44%) WAN
7 33 (1.19%) TCP/IP
8 32 (1.16%) BGP
9 24 (0.87%) Wireless
10 23 (0.83%) LAN
10 23 (0.83%) OSPF
11 22 (0.79%) SAN
11 22 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.69%) Internet
13 18 (0.65%) DHCP
13 18 (0.65%) Ethernet
14 17 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
16 12 (0.43%) HTTP
16 12 (0.43%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (9.43%) Power BI
2 143 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
3 109 (3.94%) Metadata
4 99 (3.58%) SQL Server
5 85 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
6 79 (2.85%) Data Lake
7 77 (2.78%) Tableau
8 71 (2.56%) Relational Database
9 38 (1.37%) Big Data
10 34 (1.23%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.23%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 29 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 28 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
12 28 (1.01%) NoSQL
12 28 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 27 (0.98%) Power Query
14 26 (0.94%) Delta Lake
15 25 (0.90%) BigQuery
16 24 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
16 24 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 253 (9.14%) JIRA
2 161 (5.81%) Git
3 98 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 72 (2.60%) GitLab
5 61 (2.20%) Selenium
6 52 (1.88%) JMeter
6 52 (1.88%) Postman
7 39 (1.41%) JUnit
8 38 (1.37%) Cucumber
9 31 (1.12%) WebDriver
10 27 (0.98%) Rational DOORS
11 20 (0.72%) Gatling
12 18 (0.65%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.61%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.58%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.43%) MLflow
17 11 (0.40%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 813 (29.36%) Finance
2 812 (29.32%) Social Skills
3 512 (18.49%) Analytical Skills
4 232 (8.38%) Public Sector
5 217 (7.84%) Banking
6 160 (5.78%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.61%) Manufacturing
8 76 (2.74%) Aerospace
9 71 (2.56%) Retail
10 62 (2.24%) Pharmaceutical
11 54 (1.95%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 52 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
13 46 (1.66%) Legal
14 43 (1.55%) Front Office
15 40 (1.44%) Marketing
16 39 (1.41%) General Ledger
17 37 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
18 36 (1.30%) Billing
18 36 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 493 (17.80%) Analyst
2 277 (10.00%) Lead
2 277 (10.00%) Senior
3 238 (8.60%) Business Analyst
4 220 (7.95%) Data Engineer
5 206 (7.44%) Consultant
6 162 (5.85%) Architect
7 158 (5.71%) Developer
8 135 (4.88%) Data Analyst
9 90 (3.25%) Test Engineer
10 82 (2.96%) Project Manager
11 71 (2.56%) Tester
12 57 (2.06%) Network Engineer
13 50 (1.81%) Senior Data Engineer
13 50 (1.81%) Systems Engineer
13 50 (1.81%) Test Manager
14 48 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 48 (1.73%) Technical Analyst
15 46 (1.66%) Security Engineer
16 44 (1.59%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (4.73%) REST
2 81 (2.93%) JSON
3 75 (2.71%) Kafka
4 59 (2.13%) PySpark
5 57 (2.06%) XML
6 55 (1.99%) Middleware
7 53 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
8 45 (1.63%) .NET
8 45 (1.63%) Spring
9 44 (1.59%) OAuth
10 40 (1.44%) pytest
10 40 (1.44%) SOAP
11 38 (1.37%) Playwright
12 37 (1.34%) Web Services
13 34 (1.23%) RESTful
14 33 (1.19%) Pandas
15 31 (1.12%) Node.js
16 28 (1.01%) Swagger
17 27 (0.98%) OpenID
18 25 (0.90%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 146 (5.27%) Onboarding
2 139 (5.02%) Data Structures
3 136 (4.91%) Legacy Systems
4 126 (4.55%) Cloud Native
5 118 (4.26%) Product Ownership
6 83 (3.00%) Data Centre
7 67 (2.42%) Management Information System
8 53 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (1.73%) Life Science
10 43 (1.55%) SCADA
11 38 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
12 37 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
13 35 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 35 (1.26%) NHS
14 34 (1.23%) Operational Technology
14 34 (1.23%) Virtual Team
15 32 (1.16%) Replication
16 29 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
17 28 (1.01%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 152 (5.49%) Windows
2 96 (3.47%) Linux
3 43 (1.55%) Windows Server
4 32 (1.16%) Unix
5 18 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.33%) Android
6 9 (0.33%) VMS
7 7 (0.25%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.14%) SUSE
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.072%) HPUX
11 2 (0.072%) Solaris
11 2 (0.072%) VxWorks
11 2 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.072%) zOS
12 1 (0.036%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (27.01%) Migration
2 542 (19.57%) Agile
3 497 (17.95%) Stakeholder Management
4 464 (16.76%) CI/CD
5 463 (16.72%) Data Validation
6 456 (16.47%) Analytics
7 451 (16.29%) Problem-Solving
8 443 (16.00%) User Acceptance Testing
9 439 (15.85%) Data Migration
10 432 (15.60%) Data Modelling
11 349 (12.60%) AI
12 340 (12.28%) Test Automation
13 338 (12.21%) DevOps
14 337 (12.17%) ETL
15 333 (12.03%) Continuous Improvement
16 308 (11.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 305 (11.01%) Business Intelligence
18 267 (9.64%) Data Analysis
19 265 (9.57%) Data Governance
19 265 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 646 (23.33%) SQL
2 500 (18.06%) Python
3 129 (4.66%) Java
4 72 (2.60%) PowerShell
5 62 (2.24%) C#
6 53 (1.91%) Bash
7 42 (1.52%) C++
7 42 (1.52%) JavaScript
8 37 (1.34%) TypeScript
9 36 (1.30%) C
10 35 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 31 (1.12%) Apex Code
12 29 (1.05%) Bicep
13 26 (0.94%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.90%) R
15 23 (0.83%) VBA
16 22 (0.79%) Ada
17 21 (0.76%) Scala
18 19 (0.69%) MATLAB
18 19 (0.69%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 499 (18.02%) Security Cleared
2 367 (13.25%) SC Cleared
3 192 (6.93%) Degree
4 66 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 59 (2.13%) DV Cleared
6 40 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
6 40 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (1.12%) CCNP
8 27 (0.98%) PMI Certification
9 24 (0.87%) PMP
10 23 (0.83%) ISTQB
11 22 (0.79%) CISSP
12 21 (0.76%) ACCA
13 20 (0.72%) Azure Certification
14 19 (0.69%) CIMA
15 17 (0.61%) Master's Degree
15 17 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
16 16 (0.58%) CCNA
17 15 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 485 (17.52%) Data Quality
2 333 (12.03%) QA
3 128 (4.62%) GDPR
4 61 (2.20%) NIST
5 57 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 38 (1.37%) GxP
7 38 (1.37%) PMO
7 38 (1.37%) SLA
8 21 (0.76%) GRC
9 20 (0.72%) IFRS
10 19 (0.69%) GMP
11 17 (0.61%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 17 (0.61%) Def Stans
11 17 (0.61%) ISO 20022
12 16 (0.58%) HL7
13 13 (0.47%) NCSC
13 13 (0.47%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.43%) IFRS 17
14 12 (0.43%) NIST 800
System Software
1 111 (4.01%) Docker
2 80 (2.89%) Active Directory
3 74 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.69%) vSphere
8 17 (0.61%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.58%) Firmware
9 16 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.22%) NFS
11 4 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
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%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 160 (5.78%) Kubernetes
2 128 (4.62%) Terraform
3 55 (1.99%) Prometheus
4 53 (1.91%) Grafana
5 50 (1.81%) Ansible
6 27 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.83%) FortiGate
8 22 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.36%) SCCM
9 10 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 6 (0.22%) Nessus
11 6 (0.22%) vMotion
11 6 (0.22%) VxRail
12 5 (0.18%) Argo
12 5 (0.18%) CASB
12 5 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.18%) Istio
12 5 (0.18%) Kibana
12 5 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 381 (13.76%) Microsoft
2 251 (9.06%) SAP
3 238 (8.60%) Oracle
4 130 (4.69%) Databricks
5 93 (3.36%) Salesforce
6 88 (3.18%) VMware
7 78 (2.82%) ServiceNow
8 62 (2.24%) Cisco
9 46 (1.66%) Google
10 43 (1.55%) Workday
11 40 (1.44%) Splunk
12 36 (1.30%) Informatica
13 32 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 31 (1.12%) IBM
15 30 (1.08%) Fortinet
16 27 (0.98%) MuleSoft
17 24 (0.87%) Juniper
17 24 (0.87%) Sage
18 21 (0.76%) Zscaler
19 20 (0.72%) IFS