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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 75 122
Rank change year-on-year +35 +47 +31
Contract jobs citing Validation 2,324 909 785
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.78% 3.18% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.67% 3.49% 2.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,392 541 383
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.57% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £510 £490
% change year-on-year -11.28% +4.08% -1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 58 166
10th Percentile £17.23 £17.70 £25.53
25th Percentile £26.52 £38.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £61.25 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -8.33% -5.11%
75th Percentile £70.38 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £57.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +8.77% -7.60% -

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 41,015 26,042 36,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 91.03% 86.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,698 16,721 23,544
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.59% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,419 1,056 2,449
10th Percentile £14.79 £14.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -22.42% -2.58%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.70 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -33.82% +8.57%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 2,032 £498 -5.24% 1,001
UK excluding London +26 1,086 £452 -11.28% 742
London +50 984 £503 -8.64% 368
Work from Home +57 687 £483 -3.48% 451
North of England +35 274 £430 -4.44% 161
Midlands +28 248 £495 +8.86% 105
South East -12 227 £495 -1.00% 213
West Midlands +27 177 £478 +9.26% 64
North West +30 164 £420 -4.00% 93
East of England +11 123 £475 +5.56% 99
South West +4 120 £475 -17.39% 109
Yorkshire +16 99 £451 +0.67% 46
Scotland +41 68 £388 -15.07% 37
East Midlands +13 67 £525 +14.38% 40
Wales +11 24 £450 +190.32% 18
North East -17 14 £438 -25.53% 24
Northern Ireland +10 13 £400 -32.20% 21

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 (3.87%) Confluence
2 48 (2.07%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.72%) Apache Spark
3 40 (1.72%) SAS
4 22 (0.95%) SharePoint
5 19 (0.82%) Apache
6 11 (0.47%) Jupyter
7 10 (0.43%) ArcGIS
7 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.39%) Appian
8 9 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 5 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.17%) CMS
11 3 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle Self-Service HR
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.086%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.086%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.086%) Documentum
Applications
1 152 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 30 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
5 15 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.34%) CATIA
7 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
8 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Simulink
9 2 (0.086%) EPLAN
9 2 (0.086%) Sketch
10 1 (0.043%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.043%) CANalyzer
10 1 (0.043%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.043%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.043%) UXPin
10 1 (0.043%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 108 (4.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (1.51%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.69%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 12 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.43%) NetSuite
6 10 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
7 9 (0.39%) Aladdin
7 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
7 9 (0.39%) SAP ERP
8 8 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
8 8 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.30%) Oracle Financials
10 6 (0.26%) iTrent
10 6 (0.26%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.26%) SAP Business One
10 6 (0.26%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 447 (19.23%) Azure
2 286 (12.31%) AWS
3 233 (10.03%) Power Platform
4 114 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
4 114 (4.91%) GCP
5 101 (4.35%) GitHub
6 71 (3.06%) Snowflake
7 60 (2.58%) Serverless
8 59 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
8 59 (2.54%) SaaS
9 56 (2.41%) Amazon S3
9 56 (2.41%) Entra ID
9 56 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
10 46 (1.98%) OCI
11 38 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 36 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
13 32 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
13 32 (1.38%) dbt
14 30 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 88 (3.79%) Firewall
2 60 (2.58%) Network Security
3 42 (1.81%) VLAN
4 36 (1.55%) DNS
5 33 (1.42%) TCP/IP
5 33 (1.42%) VPN
6 28 (1.20%) WAN
7 23 (0.99%) Ethernet
8 18 (0.77%) LAN
9 16 (0.69%) BGP
9 16 (0.69%) OSPF
9 16 (0.69%) SAN
9 16 (0.69%) SD-WAN
9 16 (0.69%) Wireless
10 14 (0.60%) DHCP
11 13 (0.56%) HTTP
11 13 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (0.52%) NAS
13 11 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
14 10 (0.43%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (9.42%) Power BI
2 120 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (3.92%) Metadata
4 86 (3.70%) SQL Server
5 76 (3.27%) Tableau
6 65 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (2.75%) Data Lake
8 48 (2.07%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.29%) Big Data
9 30 (1.29%) NoSQL
10 28 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
11 25 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
11 25 (1.08%) Power Query
12 24 (1.03%) Delta Lake
12 24 (1.03%) Oracle Database
12 24 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 23 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
13 23 (0.99%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 22 (0.95%) BigQuery
15 20 (0.86%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 207 (8.91%) JIRA
2 127 (5.46%) Git
3 89 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 55 (2.37%) GitLab
4 55 (2.37%) Postman
5 54 (2.32%) Selenium
6 45 (1.94%) JMeter
7 34 (1.46%) JUnit
8 30 (1.29%) Cucumber
9 26 (1.12%) Rational DOORS
10 25 (1.08%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.65%) MLflow
11 15 (0.65%) Rational Rhapsody
12 14 (0.60%) Eclipse
12 14 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.52%) Gatling
13 12 (0.52%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.47%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.43%) Gradle
15 10 (0.43%) Maven
General
1 706 (30.38%) Social Skills
2 687 (29.56%) Finance
3 432 (18.59%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 191 (8.22%) Banking
6 127 (5.46%) Documentation Skills
7 81 (3.49%) Manufacturing
8 62 (2.67%) Aerospace
9 49 (2.11%) Retail
10 48 (2.07%) Pharmaceutical
11 47 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
12 43 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
13 39 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
14 37 (1.59%) Legal
15 35 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 34 (1.46%) General Ledger
16 34 (1.46%) Marketing
16 34 (1.46%) Telecoms
17 32 (1.38%) Front Office
18 30 (1.29%) Military
Job Titles
1 431 (18.55%) Analyst
2 238 (10.24%) Lead
3 208 (8.95%) Senior
4 195 (8.39%) Business Analyst
5 184 (7.92%) Data Engineer
6 163 (7.01%) Consultant
7 143 (6.15%) Architect
8 124 (5.34%) Developer
9 120 (5.16%) Data Analyst
10 86 (3.70%) Project Manager
11 59 (2.54%) Tester
12 58 (2.50%) Test Engineer
13 49 (2.11%) Senior Analyst
14 47 (2.02%) Network Engineer
15 46 (1.98%) Software Engineer
16 44 (1.89%) Test Manager
17 43 (1.85%) Systems Engineer
18 42 (1.81%) Security Engineer
18 42 (1.81%) Technical Analyst
19 37 (1.59%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (5.16%) REST
2 85 (3.66%) JSON
3 69 (2.97%) Kafka
4 56 (2.41%) Oracle Fusion
5 55 (2.37%) Middleware
6 50 (2.15%) OAuth
6 50 (2.15%) XML
7 45 (1.94%) PySpark
8 40 (1.72%) Swagger
9 38 (1.64%) RESTful
10 36 (1.55%) .NET
10 36 (1.55%) SOAP
11 33 (1.42%) Pandas
12 30 (1.29%) Node.js
12 30 (1.29%) Spring
13 29 (1.25%) OAuth2
13 29 (1.25%) Playwright
13 29 (1.25%) pytest
13 29 (1.25%) Web Services
14 27 (1.16%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 129 (5.55%) Legacy Systems
2 123 (5.29%) Data Structures
3 120 (5.16%) Onboarding
4 96 (4.13%) Product Ownership
5 86 (3.70%) Cloud Native
6 78 (3.36%) Data Centre
7 61 (2.62%) Management Information System
8 41 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
10 35 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 31 (1.33%) Operational Technology
12 30 (1.29%) SCADA
13 29 (1.25%) Life Science
13 29 (1.25%) Replication
14 28 (1.20%) NHS
15 27 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
15 27 (1.16%) Reference Data
15 27 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 26 (1.12%) Public Cloud
17 25 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 115 (4.95%) Windows
2 92 (3.96%) Linux
3 33 (1.42%) Unix
4 21 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.43%) Android
5 10 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.30%) VMS
7 6 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 5 (0.22%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.22%) zOS
9 4 (0.17%) SUSE
10 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.086%) Debian
12 1 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.043%) HPUX
12 1 (0.043%) pSOS
12 1 (0.043%) Solaris
12 1 (0.043%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.043%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (26.98%) Migration
2 453 (19.49%) Agile
3 425 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
4 391 (16.82%) Data Validation
5 389 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
6 374 (16.09%) Data Migration
7 368 (15.83%) CI/CD
8 365 (15.71%) Data Modelling
9 347 (14.93%) User Acceptance Testing
10 337 (14.50%) Analytics
11 307 (13.21%) ETL
12 278 (11.96%) DevOps
13 274 (11.79%) Test Automation
14 260 (11.19%) Business Intelligence
15 256 (11.02%) AI
15 256 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
16 245 (10.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 218 (9.38%) Data Governance
18 213 (9.17%) Data Analysis
19 207 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 551 (23.71%) SQL
2 415 (17.86%) Python
3 109 (4.69%) Java
4 58 (2.50%) C#
5 51 (2.19%) PowerShell
6 46 (1.98%) Bash
6 46 (1.98%) C++
7 45 (1.94%) C
8 41 (1.76%) JavaScript
9 31 (1.33%) Bicep
9 31 (1.33%) TypeScript
10 30 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 28 (1.20%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.08%) R
13 22 (0.95%) Apex Code
14 20 (0.86%) Ada
14 20 (0.86%) Scala
15 16 (0.69%) MATLAB
16 13 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 422 (18.16%) Security Cleared
2 308 (13.25%) SC Cleared
3 185 (7.96%) Degree
4 54 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 38 (1.64%) DV Cleared
7 33 (1.42%) PMI Certification
8 31 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
9 27 (1.16%) PMP
10 26 (1.12%) Master's Degree
11 25 (1.08%) CCNP
12 18 (0.77%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.73%) ACCA
13 17 (0.73%) CISSP
14 15 (0.65%) CBAP
14 15 (0.65%) CIMA
15 13 (0.56%) CCNA
15 13 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 12 (0.52%) AWS Certification
16 12 (0.52%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 398 (17.13%) Data Quality
2 293 (12.61%) QA
3 117 (5.03%) GDPR
4 68 (2.93%) NIST
5 58 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.29%) SLA
8 26 (1.12%) GxP
8 26 (1.12%) IFRS
8 26 (1.12%) PMO
9 20 (0.86%) IFRS 17
10 18 (0.77%) GMP
10 18 (0.77%) GRC
10 18 (0.77%) HL7
11 17 (0.73%) Def Stans
12 14 (0.60%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.56%) MiFID
13 13 (0.56%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.52%) NIST 800
System Software
1 86 (3.70%) Docker
2 57 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 51 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (0.95%) Firmware
5 22 (0.95%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.69%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.56%) vSphere
8 11 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.22%) NFS
10 4 (0.17%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.086%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.086%) Ceph
12 2 (0.086%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (0.086%) Lustre
12 2 (0.086%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.086%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 132 (5.68%) Kubernetes
2 100 (4.30%) Terraform
3 48 (2.07%) Prometheus
4 46 (1.98%) Grafana
5 43 (1.85%) Ansible
6 28 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.47%) Kibana
10 10 (0.43%) Puppet
11 8 (0.34%) SCCM
11 8 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.26%) Nessus
12 6 (0.26%) vMotion
13 5 (0.22%) CASB
14 4 (0.17%) Argo
14 4 (0.17%) EMC VPLEX
14 4 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.17%) Istio
14 4 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 315 (13.55%) Microsoft
2 203 (8.73%) SAP
3 197 (8.48%) Oracle
4 112 (4.82%) Databricks
5 74 (3.18%) Salesforce
6 71 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 62 (2.67%) VMware
8 53 (2.28%) Cisco
9 48 (2.07%) Google
10 41 (1.76%) Splunk
11 31 (1.33%) Informatica
12 29 (1.25%) Workday
13 28 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.16%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.16%) Sage
15 24 (1.03%) IBM
16 21 (0.90%) CyberArk
16 21 (0.90%) IFS
16 21 (0.90%) OpenAI
17 18 (0.77%) Fortinet