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 14 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 86 134
Rank change year-on-year +43 +48 +5
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,140 815 756
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.68% 2.78% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.50% 3.07% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,304 472 381
10th Percentile £350 £361 £319
25th Percentile £400 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £543 £525
Median % change year-on-year -11.31% +3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £611
90th Percentile £700 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -7.32% +2.50% +1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 49 147
10th Percentile £22.25 £26.05 £20.52
25th Percentile £34.50 £47.50 £49.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -4.08%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.55 £75.05 £89.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £61.50
% change year-on-year +12.80% -6.30% -1.60%

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 38,904 26,533 37,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.62% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,602 17,197 24,340
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,022 2,384
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £18.86 £15.88
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.79 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.16% -6.87% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.13 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.00 £33.03
% change year-on-year +27.59% -12.21% -8.24%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 +43 1,856 £489 -10.32% 887
UK excluding London +34 1,009 £475 -7.32% 675
London +63 871 £500 -9.09% 291
Work from Home +61 645 £488 -4.88% 381
North of England +33 247 £433 -3.89% 127
South East -4 216 £500 - 215
Midlands +37 210 £492 +0.92% 127
West Midlands +27 160 £492 +2.23% 85
North West +26 147 £413 -7.04% 62
South West +3 128 £475 -17.39% 88
East of England +13 123 £492 +9.38% 99
Yorkshire +9 89 £461 +9.75% 46
Scotland +42 55 £404 -12.76% 25
East Midlands -2 47 £500 -9.09% 42
Northern Ireland +18 21 £425 -22.73% 4
Wales +7 20 £460 - 7
North East -9 14 £450 -37.93% 20

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 84 (3.93%) Confluence
2 45 (2.10%) SAS
3 43 (2.01%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (0.98%) Apache
5 21 (0.98%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
8 9 (0.42%) Appian
8 9 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
11 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.14%) CICS
13 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 2 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 119 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.50%) MS Visio
3 28 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.03%) Spreadsheet
5 18 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
7 12 (0.56%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.28%) CATIA
9 4 (0.19%) Notion
10 3 (0.14%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.093%) Sketch
12 1 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
12 1 (0.047%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.047%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.047%) OrCAD
12 1 (0.047%) UXPin
12 1 (0.047%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 102 (4.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.73%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.61%) Workday HCM
6 12 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 11 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.47%) SAP FI
9 9 (0.42%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
10 8 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.37%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.37%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
12 6 (0.28%) iTrent
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 487 (22.76%) Azure
2 274 (12.80%) AWS
3 197 (9.21%) Power Platform
4 143 (6.68%) Azure DevOps
5 104 (4.86%) GitHub
6 97 (4.53%) GCP
7 66 (3.08%) Serverless
8 62 (2.90%) Amazon S3
9 61 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
10 56 (2.62%) Entra ID
11 55 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
12 51 (2.38%) OCI
12 51 (2.38%) SaaS
13 47 (2.20%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
17 28 (1.31%) OpenShift
18 25 (1.17%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.79%) Firewall
2 55 (2.57%) Network Security
3 37 (1.73%) TCP/IP
4 29 (1.36%) VLAN
5 28 (1.31%) DNS
6 27 (1.26%) VPN
7 24 (1.12%) Ethernet
8 23 (1.07%) WAN
9 22 (1.03%) HTTP
10 15 (0.70%) SAN
11 14 (0.65%) LAN
12 13 (0.61%) BGP
12 13 (0.61%) NAS
12 13 (0.61%) OSPF
12 13 (0.61%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.61%) Wireless
13 11 (0.51%) SSL
14 9 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
14 9 (0.42%) Internet
15 8 (0.37%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (8.64%) Power BI
2 111 (5.19%) Metadata
3 106 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 74 (3.46%) SQL Server
5 65 (3.04%) Tableau
6 59 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
7 47 (2.20%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.59%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 31 (1.45%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
11 29 (1.36%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 28 (1.31%) Big Data
13 27 (1.26%) NoSQL
14 26 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (1.21%) Oracle Database
15 23 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
16 22 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 21 (0.98%) Power Query
18 19 (0.89%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 198 (9.25%) JIRA
2 128 (5.98%) Git
3 91 (4.25%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.18%) Selenium
5 59 (2.76%) GitLab
6 53 (2.48%) Postman
7 39 (1.82%) JUnit
8 36 (1.68%) Cucumber
9 34 (1.59%) JMeter
10 28 (1.31%) Oracle APEX
10 28 (1.31%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (1.03%) WebDriver
12 18 (0.84%) MLflow
12 18 (0.84%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.70%) REST Assured
14 14 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.61%) TestRail
16 12 (0.56%) Cypress.io
16 12 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.56%) Zephyr
General
1 715 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 618 (28.88%) Finance
3 415 (19.39%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 176 (8.22%) Banking
6 122 (5.70%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (3.18%) Manufacturing
8 60 (2.80%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.20%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
12 36 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
12 36 (1.68%) Legal
13 34 (1.59%) Retail
14 32 (1.50%) Marketing
15 31 (1.45%) Electronics
15 31 (1.45%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.40%) Billing
16 30 (1.40%) Financial Institution
17 29 (1.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 395 (18.46%) Analyst
2 214 (10.00%) Lead
2 214 (10.00%) Senior
3 187 (8.74%) Business Analyst
4 152 (7.10%) Data Engineer
5 149 (6.96%) Consultant
6 143 (6.68%) Developer
7 137 (6.40%) Architect
8 102 (4.77%) Data Analyst
9 80 (3.74%) Project Manager
10 63 (2.94%) Tester
11 50 (2.34%) Senior Analyst
12 46 (2.15%) Software Engineer
13 43 (2.01%) SAP Consultant
13 43 (2.01%) Senior Developer
14 42 (1.96%) Test Engineer
15 41 (1.92%) Systems Engineer
15 41 (1.92%) Test Manager
16 40 (1.87%) Test Analyst
17 37 (1.73%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (6.64%) REST
2 103 (4.81%) JSON
3 63 (2.94%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.85%) Kafka
5 57 (2.66%) Middleware
6 55 (2.57%) XML
7 53 (2.48%) OAuth
8 52 (2.43%) PySpark
9 47 (2.20%) Node.js
10 42 (1.96%) SOAP
11 39 (1.82%) .NET
12 36 (1.68%) Playwright
13 33 (1.54%) RESTful
13 33 (1.54%) Swagger
14 32 (1.50%) pytest
15 31 (1.45%) Web Services
16 29 (1.36%) Pandas
16 29 (1.36%) PyTorch
17 27 (1.26%) SAML
18 26 (1.21%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 127 (5.93%) Legacy Systems
2 112 (5.23%) Data Structures
3 98 (4.58%) Onboarding
4 89 (4.16%) Product Ownership
5 67 (3.13%) Cloud Native
6 55 (2.57%) Management Information System
7 54 (2.52%) Data Centre
8 37 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
9 33 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
10 30 (1.40%) Replication
11 27 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
13 25 (1.17%) Life Science
13 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.12%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.12%) Reference Data
15 23 (1.07%) NHS
16 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 22 (1.03%) Operational Technology
16 22 (1.03%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.09%) Windows
2 88 (4.11%) Linux
3 29 (1.36%) Unix
4 14 (0.65%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) Android
6 6 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.28%) zOS
7 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.23%) VMS
8 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.19%) SUSE
9 3 (0.14%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.093%) Debian
11 1 (0.047%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.047%) pSOS
11 1 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.047%) Solaris
11 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (25.28%) Migration
2 475 (22.20%) Agile
3 426 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
4 374 (17.48%) Stakeholder Management
5 364 (17.01%) CI/CD
6 363 (16.96%) Data Validation
7 335 (15.65%) Analytics
8 322 (15.05%) Data Migration
9 316 (14.77%) Data Modelling
10 299 (13.97%) DevOps
11 287 (13.41%) User Acceptance Testing
12 284 (13.27%) ETL
13 269 (12.57%) Test Automation
14 245 (11.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 235 (10.98%) Business Intelligence
16 228 (10.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 227 (10.61%) AI
18 217 (10.14%) Data Governance
19 194 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
20 178 (8.32%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 527 (24.63%) SQL
2 399 (18.64%) Python
3 106 (4.95%) Java
4 86 (4.02%) JavaScript
5 73 (3.41%) C#
6 53 (2.48%) PL/SQL
7 51 (2.38%) C++
8 50 (2.34%) PowerShell
9 42 (1.96%) C
10 38 (1.78%) Bash
10 38 (1.78%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.21%) Bicep
13 25 (1.17%) R
14 22 (1.03%) Ada
15 20 (0.93%) Scala
16 14 (0.65%) T-SQL
17 13 (0.61%) VBA
18 12 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 12 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 453 (21.17%) Security Cleared
2 328 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 191 (8.93%) Degree
4 64 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 40 (1.87%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.59%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.36%) ISTQB
8 29 (1.36%) PMI Certification
9 27 (1.26%) PMP
10 22 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
11 19 (0.89%) CCNP
12 15 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
13 14 (0.65%) CISSP
14 13 (0.61%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.61%) CBAP
15 10 (0.47%) CCNA
15 10 (0.47%) CTC Cleared
15 10 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (17.06%) Data Quality
2 274 (12.80%) QA
3 121 (5.65%) GDPR
4 77 (3.60%) NIST
5 66 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.54%) SLA
8 27 (1.26%) GxP
9 22 (1.03%) IFRS
9 22 (1.03%) PMO
10 19 (0.89%) HL7
10 19 (0.89%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.84%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) GMP
13 16 (0.75%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.65%) NIST 800
14 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.61%) COBIT
16 12 (0.56%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 79 (3.69%) Docker
2 48 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.12%) Firmware
5 13 (0.61%) Hyper-V
5 13 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.23%) NFS
9 5 (0.23%) vSphere
10 4 (0.19%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.14%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.093%) Ceph
12 2 (0.093%) KVM
12 2 (0.093%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.093%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 117 (5.47%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.44%) Terraform
3 32 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
4 31 (1.45%) Prometheus
5 30 (1.40%) Ansible
5 30 (1.40%) Grafana
6 17 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.42%) Kibana
7 9 (0.42%) Puppet
8 8 (0.37%) FortiGate
8 8 (0.37%) SCCM
9 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.28%) Nessus
11 5 (0.23%) CASB
11 5 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.19%) EMC VPLEX
12 4 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 279 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 224 (10.47%) Oracle
3 188 (8.79%) SAP
4 110 (5.14%) Databricks
5 84 (3.93%) ServiceNow
6 56 (2.62%) Salesforce
7 48 (2.24%) Google
8 46 (2.15%) VMware
9 44 (2.06%) Splunk
10 43 (2.01%) Cisco
11 35 (1.64%) Workday
12 31 (1.45%) MuleSoft
13 30 (1.40%) Informatica
14 29 (1.36%) Sage
15 24 (1.12%) Palo Alto
16 21 (0.98%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.98%) OpenAI
17 19 (0.89%) IBM
18 15 (0.70%) Dell
19 14 (0.65%) Avaloq