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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 89 134
Rank change year-on-year +45 +45 +6
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,150 804 763
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.69% 2.75% 1.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.49% 3.04% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 466 385
10th Percentile £350 £361 £319
25th Percentile £400 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.88% +2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £636 £613
90th Percentile £698 £715 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -7.32% +2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 46 148
10th Percentile £22.25 £25.75 £21.11
25th Percentile £35.25 £47.50 £50.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.80% -3.96% -4.08%
75th Percentile £72.00 £65.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £82.70 £75.13 £89.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £61.00
% change year-on-year +12.80% -5.53% -2.40%

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 39,137 26,475 37,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.32% 90.62% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,793 17,183 24,611
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,000 2,387
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.28 £70.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £29.23 £33.07
% change year-on-year +25.59% -11.60% -7.64%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +40 1,866 £490 -9.26% 872
UK excluding London +37 1,019 £475 -7.32% 714
London +72 872 £500 -9.09% 268
Work from Home +59 648 £488 -4.88% 341
North of England +39 255 £450 - 152
South East -5 217 £500 - 215
Midlands +37 210 £492 +0.92% 118
West Midlands +25 161 £492 +2.23% 77
North West +37 154 £418 -5.80% 74
South West +8 131 £475 -17.39% 89
East of England +13 123 £496 +10.24% 96
Yorkshire +18 90 £461 +9.75% 51
Scotland +49 55 £404 -11.56% 42
East Midlands -1 46 £500 -9.09% 41
Northern Ireland +18 22 £413 -25.00% 5
Wales +7 20 £460 - 16
North East -8 14 £450 -37.93% 27

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 (3.91%) Confluence
2 45 (2.09%) SAS
3 44 (2.05%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (1.02%) Apache
6 21 (0.98%) SharePoint
7 12 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
8 11 (0.51%) ArcGIS
9 9 (0.42%) Appian
9 9 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
10 8 (0.37%) Jupyter
11 7 (0.33%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
12 5 (0.23%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.23%) CMS
12 5 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.19%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.14%) CICS
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 2 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
15 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 118 (5.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.02%) 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 (4.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.72%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
5 13 (0.60%) 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%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 6 (0.28%) Sage X3
12 6 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 489 (22.74%) Azure
2 277 (12.88%) AWS
3 198 (9.21%) Power Platform
4 143 (6.65%) Azure DevOps
5 104 (4.84%) GitHub
6 98 (4.56%) GCP
7 66 (3.07%) Serverless
8 63 (2.93%) Amazon S3
9 61 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
10 56 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 56 (2.60%) Entra ID
11 53 (2.47%) SaaS
12 51 (2.37%) OCI
13 47 (2.19%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 36 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
16 33 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
17 32 (1.49%) Microsoft 365
18 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
19 26 (1.21%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 81 (3.77%) Firewall
2 55 (2.56%) Network Security
3 37 (1.72%) TCP/IP
4 29 (1.35%) VLAN
5 28 (1.30%) DNS
6 27 (1.26%) VPN
7 24 (1.12%) Ethernet
8 23 (1.07%) WAN
9 22 (1.02%) HTTP
10 15 (0.70%) SAN
11 14 (0.65%) LAN
12 13 (0.60%) BGP
12 13 (0.60%) NAS
12 13 (0.60%) OSPF
12 13 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 13 (0.60%) Wireless
13 11 (0.51%) SSL
14 9 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
14 9 (0.42%) Internet
15 8 (0.37%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (8.65%) Power BI
2 112 (5.21%) Metadata
3 106 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 74 (3.44%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.07%) Tableau
6 60 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
7 47 (2.19%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.58%) Delta Lake
9 31 (1.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 31 (1.44%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
11 29 (1.35%) Big Data
11 29 (1.35%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 26 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
12 26 (1.21%) NoSQL
12 26 (1.21%) Oracle Database
13 23 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
14 22 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.98%) Power Query
16 19 (0.88%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 197 (9.16%) JIRA
2 128 (5.95%) Git
3 91 (4.23%) Jenkins
4 68 (3.16%) Selenium
5 59 (2.74%) GitLab
6 54 (2.51%) Postman
7 39 (1.81%) JUnit
8 36 (1.67%) Cucumber
9 34 (1.58%) JMeter
10 28 (1.30%) Oracle APEX
10 28 (1.30%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (1.02%) 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 (0.60%) TestRail
16 12 (0.56%) Cypress.io
16 12 (0.56%) Rational Rhapsody
16 12 (0.56%) Zephyr
General
1 714 (33.21%) Social Skills
2 621 (28.88%) Finance
3 418 (19.44%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 177 (8.23%) Banking
6 122 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (3.12%) Manufacturing
8 60 (2.79%) Aerospace
9 50 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
10 47 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
12 36 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
12 36 (1.67%) Legal
13 34 (1.58%) Retail
14 32 (1.49%) Marketing
14 32 (1.49%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.44%) Electronics
16 30 (1.40%) Billing
16 30 (1.40%) Financial Institution
17 29 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 399 (18.56%) Analyst
2 216 (10.05%) Senior
3 214 (9.95%) Lead
4 187 (8.70%) Business Analyst
5 154 (7.16%) Data Engineer
6 149 (6.93%) Consultant
7 145 (6.74%) Developer
8 137 (6.37%) Architect
9 101 (4.70%) Data Analyst
10 81 (3.77%) Project Manager
11 63 (2.93%) Tester
12 51 (2.37%) Senior Analyst
13 45 (2.09%) Software Engineer
14 43 (2.00%) SAP Consultant
14 43 (2.00%) Senior Developer
15 42 (1.95%) Test Engineer
16 41 (1.91%) Systems Engineer
16 41 (1.91%) Test Analyst
16 41 (1.91%) Test Manager
17 38 (1.77%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (6.74%) REST
2 107 (4.98%) JSON
3 63 (2.93%) Oracle Fusion
4 61 (2.84%) Kafka
5 57 (2.65%) Middleware
5 57 (2.65%) XML
6 53 (2.47%) OAuth
6 53 (2.47%) PySpark
7 46 (2.14%) Node.js
8 45 (2.09%) SOAP
9 40 (1.86%) .NET
10 36 (1.67%) Playwright
11 33 (1.53%) Swagger
12 32 (1.49%) pytest
12 32 (1.49%) RESTful
13 30 (1.40%) Web Services
14 29 (1.35%) Pandas
14 29 (1.35%) PyTorch
15 27 (1.26%) SAML
16 26 (1.21%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 127 (5.91%) Legacy Systems
2 112 (5.21%) Data Structures
3 96 (4.47%) Onboarding
4 88 (4.09%) Product Ownership
5 68 (3.16%) Cloud Native
6 55 (2.56%) Management Information System
7 54 (2.51%) Data Centre
8 36 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
9 34 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
10 30 (1.40%) Replication
11 27 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
13 25 (1.16%) Life Science
13 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.12%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.12%) Reference Data
15 23 (1.07%) NHS
16 22 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
16 22 (1.02%) Operational Technology
16 22 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 109 (5.07%) Windows
2 87 (4.05%) Linux
3 29 (1.35%) 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
1 542 (25.21%) Migration
2 478 (22.23%) Agile
3 430 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
4 375 (17.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 367 (17.07%) CI/CD
6 366 (17.02%) Data Validation
7 341 (15.86%) Analytics
8 323 (15.02%) Data Migration
9 315 (14.65%) Data Modelling
10 301 (14.00%) DevOps
11 287 (13.35%) User Acceptance Testing
12 285 (13.26%) ETL
13 270 (12.56%) Test Automation
14 248 (11.53%) Continuous Improvement
15 236 (10.98%) Business Intelligence
16 230 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 226 (10.51%) AI
18 218 (10.14%) Data Governance
19 195 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
20 178 (8.28%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 529 (24.60%) SQL
2 399 (18.56%) Python
3 108 (5.02%) Java
4 89 (4.14%) JavaScript
5 76 (3.53%) C#
6 53 (2.47%) PL/SQL
7 51 (2.37%) PowerShell
8 50 (2.33%) C++
9 41 (1.91%) C
10 38 (1.77%) Bash
10 38 (1.77%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 26 (1.21%) Bicep
13 25 (1.16%) R
14 21 (0.98%) Ada
15 20 (0.93%) Scala
16 17 (0.79%) T-SQL
17 15 (0.70%) Groovy
18 13 (0.60%) VBA
19 12 (0.56%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 454 (21.12%) Security Cleared
2 328 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 192 (8.93%) Degree
4 65 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 53 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 41 (1.91%) DV Cleared
7 34 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.40%) PMI Certification
9 29 (1.35%) ISTQB
10 28 (1.30%) PMP
11 22 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
12 19 (0.88%) CCNP
13 15 (0.70%) AWS Certification
13 15 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (0.65%) CISSP
15 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.60%) CBAP
16 10 (0.47%) CCNA
16 10 (0.47%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (17.02%) Data Quality
2 274 (12.74%) QA
3 122 (5.67%) GDPR
4 79 (3.67%) NIST
5 66 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 35 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 33 (1.53%) SLA
8 27 (1.26%) GxP
9 22 (1.02%) IFRS
9 22 (1.02%) PMO
10 19 (0.88%) HL7
10 19 (0.88%) IFRS 17
11 18 (0.84%) GRC
12 17 (0.79%) GMP
13 16 (0.74%) Def Stans
14 14 (0.65%) NIST 800
14 14 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 13 (0.60%) COBIT
15 13 (0.60%) NCSC
16 12 (0.56%) MiFID
System Software
1 79 (3.67%) Docker
2 48 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.12%) Firmware
5 13 (0.60%) Hyper-V
5 13 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.51%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.28%) vSphere
9 5 (0.23%) NFS
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%) Lustre
12 2 (0.093%) OpenDJ
12 2 (0.093%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 117 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 95 (4.42%) Terraform
3 32 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
4 31 (1.44%) 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 NetWorker
12 4 (0.19%) Istio
12 4 (0.19%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.19%) vMotion
12 4 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 280 (13.02%) Microsoft
2 224 (10.42%) Oracle
3 187 (8.70%) SAP
4 111 (5.16%) Databricks
5 86 (4.00%) ServiceNow
6 56 (2.60%) Salesforce
7 49 (2.28%) Google
8 47 (2.19%) VMware
9 44 (2.05%) Splunk
10 43 (2.00%) Cisco
11 34 (1.58%) Workday
12 31 (1.44%) MuleSoft
13 30 (1.40%) Informatica
14 29 (1.35%) Sage
15 24 (1.12%) Palo Alto
16 21 (0.98%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.98%) OpenAI
17 19 (0.88%) IBM
18 15 (0.70%) Dell
19 14 (0.65%) Avaloq