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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 62 119
Rank change year-on-year +30 +57 +30
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,938 1,211 776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.48% 3.72% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.48% 4.12% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,761 704 376
10th Percentile £333 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £600 £607 £588
90th Percentile £701 £688 £669
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 89 114
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.50 £29.84
25th Percentile £26.52 £41.25 £51.06
Median hourly rate £53.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.20% -3.85% -2.61%
75th Percentile £73.25 £66.50 £70.81
90th Percentile £82.80 £75.00 £76.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% - -3.70%

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 45,329 29,411 32,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.42% 85.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,714 18,306 20,733
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.54%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,913 1,754 1,602
10th Percentile £14.07 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.30 £18.79
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 2 September 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 2 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 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 2 September 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 +30 2,533 £500 -1.48% 3,342
UK excluding London +25 1,342 £463 -7.50% 2,102
London +39 1,245 £525 +1.94% 1,719
Work from Home +33 816 £500 - 1,309
North of England +41 331 £455 +6.94% 348
South East -2 324 £500 - 516
Midlands +33 297 £463 -2.46% 267
West Midlands +30 211 £458 -3.68% 184
North West +18 167 £450 +5.88% 206
Yorkshire +42 146 £462 +2.60% 86
East of England +1 144 £475 -6.40% 304
South West +3 130 £525 -8.70% 326
Scotland +37 109 £430 -9.47% 265
East Midlands +24 82 £495 -1.00% 83
Wales -6 24 £363 -3.33% 50
North East -33 23 £438 -2.78% 64
Northern Ireland +4 5 £381 -37.24% 63
Channel Islands -2 1 - - 1

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 80 (2.72%) Confluence
2 66 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (1.97%) SharePoint
4 54 (1.84%) SAS
5 40 (1.36%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.95%) Apache
7 18 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
8 14 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.37%) CMS
10 10 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 9 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
12 7 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
13 6 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
14 5 (0.17%) IIS
14 5 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.17%) Tuxedo
15 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
15 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
16 3 (0.10%) JBoss
Applications
1 199 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.33%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.19%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.48%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
8 9 (0.31%) Navisworks
8 9 (0.31%) Revit
9 8 (0.27%) CATIA
9 8 (0.27%) ProjectWise
10 6 (0.20%) Simulink
11 5 (0.17%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.068%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.068%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.068%) Windchill
13 1 (0.034%) Gliffy
13 1 (0.034%) LaTeX
13 1 (0.034%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.034%) Trello
Business Applications
1 113 (3.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
3 14 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
4 13 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.44%) SAP SD
4 13 (0.44%) Teamcenter
4 13 (0.44%) Workday HCM
5 11 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.37%) iTrent
5 11 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
5 11 (0.37%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.34%) SAP FI
6 10 (0.34%) SAP MM
7 9 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 9 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 9 (0.31%) SAP HCM
8 8 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.27%) SAP PS
9 7 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 629 (21.41%) Azure
2 339 (11.54%) AWS
3 303 (10.31%) Power Platform
4 182 (6.19%) Azure DevOps
5 142 (4.83%) GCP
6 133 (4.53%) GitHub
7 102 (3.47%) Snowflake
8 83 (2.83%) Entra ID
9 76 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 69 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
10 69 (2.35%) Serverless
11 62 (2.11%) SaaS
12 60 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (1.77%) Amazon S3
14 48 (1.63%) dbt
15 44 (1.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 37 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
17 36 (1.23%) OCI
18 35 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 35 (1.19%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 116 (3.95%) Firewall
2 72 (2.45%) DNS
3 70 (2.38%) VLAN
4 65 (2.21%) Network Security
5 55 (1.87%) VPN
6 46 (1.57%) BGP
7 45 (1.53%) WAN
8 42 (1.43%) TCP/IP
9 37 (1.26%) DHCP
10 28 (0.95%) OSPF
11 26 (0.88%) VXLAN
12 24 (0.82%) LAN
12 24 (0.82%) Wireless
13 23 (0.78%) Internet
13 23 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 22 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
15 21 (0.71%) HTTP
15 21 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.68%) SAN
17 18 (0.61%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (9.53%) Power BI
2 175 (5.96%) Data Warehouse
3 129 (4.39%) Metadata
4 112 (3.81%) Relational Database
5 108 (3.68%) SQL Server
6 99 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
7 85 (2.89%) Data Lake
8 74 (2.52%) Tableau
9 41 (1.40%) Delta Lake
10 39 (1.33%) Oracle Database
11 38 (1.29%) MongoDB
12 36 (1.23%) NoSQL
13 35 (1.19%) Big Data
14 31 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
14 31 (1.06%) MySQL
14 31 (1.06%) Redis
14 31 (1.06%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 30 (1.02%) BigQuery
16 28 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
16 28 (0.95%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 260 (8.85%) JIRA
2 204 (6.94%) Git
3 106 (3.61%) Jenkins
4 92 (3.13%) GitLab
5 74 (2.52%) Selenium
6 45 (1.53%) Postman
7 37 (1.26%) JMeter
8 24 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.82%) WebDriver
9 19 (0.65%) JUnit
10 18 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
11 16 (0.54%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.51%) Gatling
12 15 (0.51%) Oracle Forms
13 14 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.44%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.44%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.41%) Maven
15 12 (0.41%) TestRail
16 11 (0.37%) Gradle
General
1 827 (28.15%) Social Skills
2 818 (27.84%) Finance
3 583 (19.84%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (8.61%) Public Sector
5 228 (7.76%) Banking
6 152 (5.17%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (3.57%) Manufacturing
8 94 (3.20%) Retail
9 68 (2.31%) Telecoms
10 67 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 58 (1.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 57 (1.94%) Automotive
13 55 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
14 54 (1.84%) Aerospace
15 47 (1.60%) Legal
16 46 (1.57%) Marketing
17 44 (1.50%) Law
18 43 (1.46%) Front Office
19 42 (1.43%) Local Government
20 36 (1.23%) Billing
Job Titles
1 524 (17.84%) Analyst
2 332 (11.30%) Senior
3 267 (9.09%) Lead
4 239 (8.13%) Data Engineer
5 238 (8.10%) Business Analyst
6 229 (7.79%) Consultant
7 183 (6.23%) Developer
8 155 (5.28%) Data Analyst
9 146 (4.97%) Architect
10 114 (3.88%) Test Engineer
11 78 (2.65%) Tester
12 77 (2.62%) Network Engineer
13 65 (2.21%) Project Manager
13 65 (2.21%) Systems Engineer
14 61 (2.08%) Administrator
15 57 (1.94%) Senior Data Engineer
16 56 (1.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 51 (1.74%) Senior Analyst
17 51 (1.74%) Technical Analyst
17 51 (1.74%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (6.23%) REST
2 156 (5.31%) Terraform
3 100 (3.40%) JSON
4 87 (2.96%) PySpark
5 83 (2.83%) XML
6 77 (2.62%) Kafka
7 70 (2.38%) Middleware
8 55 (1.87%) .NET
8 55 (1.87%) Playwright
9 48 (1.63%) Oracle Fusion
10 46 (1.57%) pytest
11 44 (1.50%) SOAP
12 42 (1.43%) OAuth
13 39 (1.33%) RESTful
13 39 (1.33%) Spring
14 37 (1.26%) Web Services
15 36 (1.23%) Pandas
16 32 (1.09%) Spring Boot
17 28 (0.95%) OpenID
18 27 (0.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 167 (5.68%) Data Structures
2 162 (5.51%) Onboarding
3 130 (4.42%) Cloud Native
4 127 (4.32%) Legacy Systems
5 116 (3.95%) Product Ownership
6 102 (3.47%) Management Information System
7 87 (2.96%) Data Centre
8 54 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
10 46 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
11 45 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 45 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
12 44 (1.50%) Life Science
13 41 (1.40%) SCADA
14 40 (1.36%) NHS
15 38 (1.29%) Replication
16 33 (1.12%) Operational Technology
17 32 (1.09%) Algorithms
17 32 (1.09%) CMDB
18 30 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 179 (6.09%) Windows
2 119 (4.05%) Linux
3 74 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 49 (1.67%) Unix
5 20 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.48%) Android
7 13 (0.44%) Windows 10
8 11 (0.37%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.37%) VMS
9 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.24%) AIX
10 7 (0.24%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.14%) SUSE
11 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.068%) HPUX
13 2 (0.068%) VxWorks
14 1 (0.034%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.034%) Solaris
14 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 793 (26.99%) Migration
2 587 (19.98%) Stakeholder Management
3 573 (19.50%) Agile
4 546 (18.58%) CI/CD
5 487 (16.58%) User Acceptance Testing
6 478 (16.27%) Data Modelling
7 471 (16.03%) Data Migration
8 469 (15.96%) Analytics
9 462 (15.72%) Data Validation
10 449 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
11 393 (13.38%) DevOps
12 391 (13.31%) AI
13 375 (12.76%) Test Automation
14 361 (12.29%) Continuous Improvement
15 333 (11.33%) ETL
16 320 (10.89%) Business Intelligence
17 317 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 311 (10.59%) Data Pipeline
19 302 (10.28%) Data Governance
20 297 (10.11%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 762 (25.94%) SQL
2 590 (20.08%) Python
3 143 (4.87%) Java
4 101 (3.44%) PowerShell
5 63 (2.14%) Bash
6 60 (2.04%) C#
7 55 (1.87%) JavaScript
8 36 (1.23%) TypeScript
9 34 (1.16%) C++
10 30 (1.02%) Apex Code
11 29 (0.99%) Bicep
11 29 (0.99%) R
12 28 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 28 (0.95%) PL/SQL
13 25 (0.85%) C
13 25 (0.85%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.65%) T-SQL
15 17 (0.58%) VBA
16 16 (0.54%) MATLAB
17 13 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 555 (18.89%) Security Cleared
2 410 (13.96%) SC Cleared
3 190 (6.47%) Degree
4 74 (2.52%) DV Cleared
5 63 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 50 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 41 (1.40%) CCNP
9 28 (0.95%) ACCA
9 28 (0.95%) CIMA
9 28 (0.95%) ISTQB
10 25 (0.85%) AWS Certification
11 22 (0.75%) Azure Certification
12 20 (0.68%) PMI Certification
13 19 (0.65%) CCNA
14 18 (0.61%) PMP
15 16 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
16 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.51%) CISSP
16 15 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 592 (20.15%) Data Quality
2 374 (12.73%) QA
3 114 (3.88%) GDPR
4 50 (1.70%) Accessibility
5 47 (1.60%) SLA
6 43 (1.46%) NIST
7 41 (1.40%) GxP
8 36 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (1.19%) PMO
10 24 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 22 (0.75%) GRC
12 19 (0.65%) ISO 20022
13 18 (0.61%) GMP
14 17 (0.58%) WCAG
15 14 (0.48%) NCSC
16 13 (0.44%) Def Stans
17 11 (0.37%) HL7
17 11 (0.37%) IFRS
17 11 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 10 (0.34%) MiFID
System Software
1 112 (3.81%) Docker
2 96 (3.27%) Active Directory
3 84 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (0.99%) Firmware
7 26 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.78%) vSphere
9 14 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.17%) KVM
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.10%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.068%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.068%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.068%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.034%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.034%) etcd
14 1 (0.034%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 144 (4.90%) Kubernetes
2 89 (3.03%) Ansible
3 44 (1.50%) Grafana
4 37 (1.26%) Prometheus
5 27 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.88%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.54%) SCCM
9 15 (0.51%) vCenter Server
10 14 (0.48%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
11 10 (0.34%) VxRail
12 7 (0.24%) Argo
12 7 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.20%) Microsoft Clustering
14 5 (0.17%) systemd
14 5 (0.17%) vMotion
14 5 (0.17%) vRealize
15 4 (0.14%) Istio
15 4 (0.14%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 446 (15.18%) Microsoft
2 255 (8.68%) SAP
3 246 (8.37%) Oracle
4 163 (5.55%) Databricks
5 99 (3.37%) Salesforce
6 96 (3.27%) VMware
7 82 (2.79%) Cisco
8 81 (2.76%) ServiceNow
9 49 (1.67%) Google
10 46 (1.57%) Workday
11 38 (1.29%) IBM
12 37 (1.26%) Informatica
13 32 (1.09%) Fortinet
14 29 (0.99%) Juniper
14 29 (0.99%) Zscaler
15 27 (0.92%) Palo Alto
16 22 (0.75%) Splunk
17 21 (0.71%) MuleSoft
18 18 (0.61%) Ariba
19 17 (0.58%) Sage