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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 73 120
Rank change year-on-year +37 +47 +36
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,623 1,015 829
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.17% 3.39% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.08% 3.72% 2.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,564 607 403
10th Percentile £331 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £421 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -10.31%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £596
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 171 67 184
10th Percentile £17.23 £17.53 £27.21
25th Percentile £26.88 £40.35 £47.96
Median hourly rate £60.00 £57.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -7.69%
75th Percentile £74.63 £65.00 £71.75
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £62.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +2.51% +0.81% -0.88%

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 43,108 27,270 37,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.89% 91.01% 84.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,889 17,271 23,587
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -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 2,584 1,289 2,614
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +35 2,286 £500 -6.28% 783
UK excluding London +26 1,237 £469 -10.76% 650
London +48 1,087 £513 -6.82% 264
Work from Home +53 771 £481 -3.80% 297
North of England +43 311 £440 -2.22% 126
Midlands +38 276 £492 +9.36% 100
South East +2 272 £500 - 240
West Midlands +28 201 £481 +18.83% 52
North West +30 175 £425 -5.56% 61
South West 0 138 £500 -13.04% 91
East of England +13 132 £500 - 69
Yorkshire +29 121 £460 +5.85% 43
Scotland +35 83 £413 -13.16% 32
East Midlands +20 70 £525 +15.51% 48
Wales +8 25 £455 +193.55% 9
North East -20 18 £425 -22.73% 23
Northern Ireland +7 11 £394 -33.26% 9

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 (3.35%) Confluence
2 63 (2.40%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (1.94%) SAS
4 46 (1.75%) Apache Spark
5 45 (1.72%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.95%) Apache
7 15 (0.57%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.34%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
10 8 (0.30%) Appian
11 7 (0.27%) CMS
12 5 (0.19%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.15%) IIS
14 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 170 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (1.41%) MS Visio
3 35 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.30%) CATIA
8 6 (0.23%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.15%) Simulink
11 3 (0.11%) LaTeX
12 2 (0.076%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.076%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.076%) Sketch
12 2 (0.076%) Windchill
13 1 (0.038%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
13 1 (0.038%) CANalyzer
13 1 (0.038%) OrCAD
13 1 (0.038%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 125 (4.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.61%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 12 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
6 12 (0.46%) Workday HCM
7 10 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 9 (0.34%) Aladdin
9 8 (0.30%) iTrent
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
9 8 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.27%) NetSuite
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.27%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.23%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 530 (20.21%) Azure
2 330 (12.58%) AWS
3 258 (9.84%) Power Platform
4 137 (5.22%) Azure DevOps
5 129 (4.92%) GCP
6 120 (4.57%) GitHub
7 88 (3.35%) Snowflake
8 70 (2.67%) Entra ID
9 67 (2.55%) Serverless
10 66 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
11 61 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
12 57 (2.17%) Amazon S3
13 54 (2.06%) SaaS
14 46 (1.75%) Microsoft 365
15 41 (1.56%) OCI
16 39 (1.49%) dbt
17 38 (1.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 34 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
19 33 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
20 31 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.12%) Firewall
2 68 (2.59%) Network Security
3 47 (1.79%) VLAN
4 42 (1.60%) DNS
4 42 (1.60%) WAN
5 40 (1.52%) VPN
6 35 (1.33%) TCP/IP
7 32 (1.22%) BGP
8 23 (0.88%) LAN
8 23 (0.88%) OSPF
8 23 (0.88%) SAN
8 23 (0.88%) Wireless
9 22 (0.84%) Ethernet
9 22 (0.84%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.65%) DHCP
11 16 (0.61%) Internet
11 16 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
12 14 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (0.46%) NAS
13 12 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (9.23%) Power BI
2 133 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
3 100 (3.81%) Metadata
4 99 (3.77%) SQL Server
5 84 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
6 75 (2.86%) Tableau
7 70 (2.67%) Data Lake
8 67 (2.55%) Relational Database
9 36 (1.37%) Big Data
10 33 (1.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 31 (1.18%) Oracle Database
12 29 (1.11%) NoSQL
13 27 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (1.03%) Power Query
14 26 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
14 26 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 24 (0.91%) BigQuery
16 23 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
17 22 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
18 21 (0.80%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 242 (9.23%) JIRA
2 152 (5.79%) Git
3 99 (3.77%) Jenkins
4 71 (2.71%) GitLab
5 57 (2.17%) Selenium
6 49 (1.87%) Postman
7 47 (1.79%) JMeter
8 38 (1.45%) JUnit
9 36 (1.37%) Cucumber
10 30 (1.14%) WebDriver
11 26 (0.99%) Rational DOORS
12 18 (0.69%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.65%) Rational Rhapsody
14 16 (0.61%) Gatling
14 16 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.53%) MLflow
16 12 (0.46%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.42%) Cypress.io
18 10 (0.38%) Gradle
18 10 (0.38%) Maven
General
1 776 (29.58%) Finance
2 771 (29.39%) Social Skills
3 472 (17.99%) Analytical Skills
4 226 (8.62%) Public Sector
5 205 (7.82%) Banking
6 149 (5.68%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (3.20%) Manufacturing
8 75 (2.86%) Aerospace
9 65 (2.48%) Retail
10 53 (2.02%) Pharmaceutical
11 49 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
12 46 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 45 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 44 (1.68%) Legal
15 42 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
16 40 (1.52%) General Ledger
17 39 (1.49%) Front Office
17 39 (1.49%) Marketing
18 35 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
19 34 (1.30%) Military
Job Titles
1 456 (17.38%) Analyst
2 271 (10.33%) Senior
3 257 (9.80%) Lead
4 216 (8.23%) Business Analyst
5 199 (7.59%) Consultant
6 194 (7.40%) Data Engineer
7 159 (6.06%) Architect
8 154 (5.87%) Developer
9 127 (4.84%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.28%) Project Manager
11 78 (2.97%) Test Engineer
12 65 (2.48%) Tester
13 56 (2.13%) Network Engineer
14 53 (2.02%) Test Manager
15 50 (1.91%) Systems Engineer
16 48 (1.83%) Senior Analyst
17 47 (1.79%) Technical Analyst
18 46 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 44 (1.68%) Security Engineer
19 44 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (5.22%) REST
2 79 (3.01%) JSON
3 73 (2.78%) Kafka
4 55 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
5 51 (1.94%) Middleware
5 51 (1.94%) OAuth
5 51 (1.94%) PySpark
5 51 (1.94%) XML
6 42 (1.60%) Spring
7 40 (1.52%) SOAP
8 39 (1.49%) .NET
9 38 (1.45%) RESTful
10 37 (1.41%) pytest
10 37 (1.41%) Swagger
11 35 (1.33%) Web Services
12 34 (1.30%) Playwright
13 31 (1.18%) Pandas
14 30 (1.14%) Node.js
15 28 (1.07%) JWT
16 27 (1.03%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 136 (5.18%) Legacy Systems
2 128 (4.88%) Onboarding
3 127 (4.84%) Data Structures
4 111 (4.23%) Cloud Native
5 110 (4.19%) Product Ownership
6 85 (3.24%) Data Centre
7 64 (2.44%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
10 40 (1.52%) SCADA
11 38 (1.45%) Life Science
12 34 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
14 32 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
15 31 (1.18%) AI Agents
15 31 (1.18%) NHS
15 31 (1.18%) Operational Technology
15 31 (1.18%) Replication
16 30 (1.14%) Virtual Team
17 29 (1.11%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 139 (5.30%) Windows
2 101 (3.85%) Linux
3 33 (1.26%) Unix
4 31 (1.18%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.50%) Android
7 9 (0.34%) VMS
8 7 (0.27%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.19%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.15%) SUSE
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.076%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.076%) HPUX
12 2 (0.076%) Solaris
12 2 (0.076%) VxWorks
12 2 (0.076%) zOS
13 1 (0.038%) pSOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 706 (26.92%) Migration
2 514 (19.60%) Agile
3 463 (17.65%) Stakeholder Management
4 441 (16.81%) CI/CD
5 440 (16.77%) Data Validation
6 439 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
7 416 (15.86%) User Acceptance Testing
8 411 (15.67%) Data Migration
8 411 (15.67%) Data Modelling
9 407 (15.52%) Analytics
10 332 (12.66%) AI
11 319 (12.16%) ETL
12 315 (12.01%) DevOps
12 315 (12.01%) Test Automation
13 295 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
14 283 (10.79%) Business Intelligence
15 278 (10.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 243 (9.26%) Data Analysis
17 242 (9.23%) Data Governance
18 236 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 614 (23.41%) SQL
2 464 (17.69%) Python
3 122 (4.65%) Java
4 68 (2.59%) PowerShell
5 54 (2.06%) C#
6 48 (1.83%) Bash
7 42 (1.60%) C
7 42 (1.60%) C++
8 40 (1.52%) JavaScript
9 33 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 32 (1.22%) TypeScript
11 29 (1.11%) Apex Code
12 28 (1.07%) Bicep
13 25 (0.95%) PL/SQL
14 22 (0.84%) R
15 21 (0.80%) Ada
15 21 (0.80%) Scala
16 19 (0.72%) MATLAB
17 18 (0.69%) VBA
18 17 (0.65%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 476 (18.15%) Security Cleared
2 350 (13.34%) SC Cleared
3 188 (7.17%) Degree
4 65 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.02%) DV Cleared
6 43 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.18%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.14%) CCNP
10 26 (0.99%) PMP
11 24 (0.91%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.80%) CISSP
13 20 (0.76%) ACCA
13 20 (0.76%) Azure Certification
14 19 (0.72%) Master's Degree
15 18 (0.69%) CIMA
16 16 (0.61%) CCNA
17 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
18 14 (0.53%) AWS Certification
19 13 (0.50%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 451 (17.19%) Data Quality
2 309 (11.78%) QA
3 121 (4.61%) GDPR
4 62 (2.36%) NIST
5 54 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (1.56%) Accessibility
7 38 (1.45%) SLA
8 33 (1.26%) PMO
9 29 (1.11%) GxP
10 27 (1.03%) IFRS
11 18 (0.69%) IFRS 17
12 17 (0.65%) Def Stans
13 16 (0.61%) GRC
13 16 (0.61%) HL7
14 15 (0.57%) GMP
14 15 (0.57%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.50%) Solvency II
16 12 (0.46%) NCSC
16 12 (0.46%) NIST 800
16 12 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (4.19%) Docker
2 74 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 68 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (0.88%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.69%) Firmware
8 17 (0.65%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.61%) vSphere
10 11 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.23%) KVM
11 6 (0.23%) NFS
12 4 (0.15%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.076%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.076%) OpenSSH
14 2 (0.076%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
15 1 (0.038%) etcd
Systems Management
1 155 (5.91%) Kubernetes
2 125 (4.77%) Terraform
3 54 (2.06%) Prometheus
4 52 (1.98%) Ansible
5 48 (1.83%) Grafana
6 29 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.88%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.27%) Kibana
10 7 (0.27%) SCCM
11 6 (0.23%) Nessus
11 6 (0.23%) Puppet
11 6 (0.23%) vMotion
11 6 (0.23%) VxRail
12 5 (0.19%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) CASB
12 5 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.19%) Istio
13 4 (0.15%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 350 (13.34%) Microsoft
2 238 (9.07%) SAP
3 224 (8.54%) Oracle
4 117 (4.46%) Databricks
5 88 (3.35%) Salesforce
6 81 (3.09%) VMware
7 78 (2.97%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.29%) Cisco
9 47 (1.79%) Google
10 41 (1.56%) Splunk
11 36 (1.37%) Workday
12 33 (1.26%) Informatica
13 32 (1.22%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 27 (1.03%) Fortinet
15 27 (1.03%) Sage
16 23 (0.88%) IBM
17 21 (0.80%) Juniper
17 21 (0.80%) Zscaler
18 20 (0.76%) IFS