Validation Contracts

Validation
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Validation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Validation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 115 150 183
Rank change year-on-year +35 +33 -14
Contract jobs citing Validation 800 1,036 1,341
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.87% 1.78% 1.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.16% 1.99% 1.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 389 588 765
10th Percentile £320 £370 £350
25th Percentile £413 £458 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% +4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £613
90th Percentile £700 £950 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £498 £475
% change year-on-year +0.50% +4.74% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 169 79
10th Percentile £24.21 £42.50 £26.10
25th Percentile £52.50 £51.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.55 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.08% +13.73% +33.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £68.75 £64.50
90th Percentile £77.00 £77.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £53.00
% change year-on-year - +17.92% +24.71%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Validation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 36,956 52,182 79,685
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.29% 89.83% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,793 36,175 55,967
10th Percentile £300 £325 £341
25th Percentile £413 £438 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,422 1,727 1,890
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +44.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Validation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Validation.

Daily rate trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Validation.

Hourly rate trend for Validation in the UK

Validation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 7 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 Contract 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 7 May 2024. 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 +27 715 £500 -9.09% 873
UK excluding London +35 441 £500 +0.50% 715
Work from Home +58 278 £530 -3.64% 279
London +7 277 £550 -12.87% 200
South East +6 104 £500 - 188
South West +2 95 £431 -23.13% 95
East of England +1 87 £488 -1.52% 123
North of England +67 83 £445 -14.83% 115
Midlands +21 52 £475 +18.75% 161
North West +37 42 £500 -3.85% 74
West Midlands +19 36 £475 +5.56% 109
Yorkshire +47 33 £425 -43.33% 33
East Midlands +17 18 £458 +14.38% 51
Northern Ireland +16 11 £600 - 6
Scotland +6 11 £575 +16.16% 43
North East +15 8 £460 -23.33% 11
Isle of Man - 2 - - 1
Wales +15 1 - - 16

Validation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 30 (3.75%) Confluence
2 22 (2.75%) SAS
3 20 (2.50%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.75%) Apache Spark
5 11 (1.38%) CMS
6 6 (0.75%) Sitecore CMS
7 4 (0.50%) Apache
7 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.38%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 50 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (4.63%) Simulink
3 35 (4.38%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (3.75%) Stateflow
5 18 (2.25%) AutoCAD
5 18 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 8 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (1.00%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.63%) TargetLink
9 3 (0.38%) Sketch
10 1 (0.13%) InVision
10 1 (0.13%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 33 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.75%) Magento
3 5 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.63%) SAP CO
3 5 (0.63%) SAP FI
3 5 (0.63%) SAP FI/CO
4 4 (0.50%) SAP SD
5 3 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.38%) SAP Hybris
5 3 (0.38%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.38%) Teamcenter
6 2 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.25%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.25%) SAP Business One
6 2 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.25%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.25%) SAP Retail
6 2 (0.25%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 81 (10.13%) Azure
2 53 (6.63%) Power Platform
3 36 (4.50%) AWS
4 23 (2.88%) GCP
5 14 (1.75%) dbt
6 13 (1.63%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 12 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
8 11 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (1.38%) Serverless
9 9 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 9 (1.13%) OCI
9 9 (1.13%) SaaS
10 8 (1.00%) Amazon S3
10 8 (1.00%) Azure Functions
11 7 (0.88%) Veeva
12 6 (0.75%) Miro
13 5 (0.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 5 (0.63%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.50%) SNMP
2 17 (2.13%) TCP/IP
3 16 (2.00%) Software-Defined Radio
4 14 (1.75%) Ethernet
4 14 (1.75%) Internet
5 13 (1.63%) WAN
6 11 (1.38%) Firewall
6 11 (1.38%) LAN
7 10 (1.25%) DNS
8 9 (1.13%) SSL
9 8 (1.00%) MPLS
9 8 (1.00%) VPN
10 7 (0.88%) DHCP
11 6 (0.75%) VSAN
11 6 (0.75%) Wireless
12 5 (0.63%) SD-WAN
12 5 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (0.63%) WLAN
13 4 (0.50%) SDH
13 4 (0.50%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (5.63%) Data Warehouse
2 40 (5.00%) Power BI
3 19 (2.38%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.63%) Relational Database
5 12 (1.50%) Data Lake
6 10 (1.25%) Electronic Patient Records
7 9 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 8 (1.00%) Big Data
8 8 (1.00%) Couchbase
8 8 (1.00%) Oracle Database
9 7 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
9 7 (0.88%) SAP HANA
9 7 (0.88%) Tableau
10 6 (0.75%) Hadoop
10 6 (0.75%) NoSQL
11 5 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
12 4 (0.50%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.38%) Apache Hive
13 3 (0.38%) Data Mining
13 3 (0.38%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 62 (7.75%) JIRA
2 41 (5.13%) Git
3 33 (4.13%) Rational DOORS
4 28 (3.50%) Eclipse
5 20 (2.50%) Bitbucket
6 15 (1.88%) GoogleTest
6 15 (1.88%) Robot Framework
7 13 (1.63%) Visual Studio
8 12 (1.50%) Subversion
9 11 (1.38%) JMeter
10 10 (1.25%) Rational Rhapsody
10 10 (1.25%) Selenium
11 8 (1.00%) Jenkins
12 6 (0.75%) Postman
13 4 (0.50%) Appium
13 4 (0.50%) CppUnit
13 4 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 4 (0.50%) GitLab
13 4 (0.50%) LSMW
13 4 (0.50%) PVCS
General
1 194 (24.25%) Social Skills
2 175 (21.88%) Finance
3 108 (13.50%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 41 (5.13%) Automotive
5 41 (5.13%) Manufacturing
6 38 (4.75%) Aerospace
6 38 (4.75%) Legal
7 34 (4.25%) Banking
7 34 (4.25%) Marketing
7 34 (4.25%) Presentation Skills
8 29 (3.63%) Electronics
8 29 (3.63%) Military
9 26 (3.25%) Telecoms
10 21 (2.63%) Retail
11 20 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
13 14 (1.75%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
14 13 (1.63%) Law
Job Titles
1 139 (17.38%) Analyst
2 90 (11.25%) Software Engineer
3 67 (8.38%) Architect
4 56 (7.00%) Lead
5 51 (6.38%) Senior
6 50 (6.25%) Business Analyst
7 48 (6.00%) Developer
8 45 (5.63%) Systems Engineer
9 43 (5.38%) Consultant
10 36 (4.50%) Embedded Engineer
11 34 (4.25%) Data Analyst
12 33 (4.13%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 29 (3.63%) Project Manager
14 23 (2.88%) Data Engineer
15 22 (2.75%) C++ Software Engineer
15 22 (2.75%) Principal Engineer
16 21 (2.63%) Test Engineer
17 20 (2.50%) Principal Systems Engineer
18 19 (2.38%) Integration Engineer
19 18 (2.25%) Validation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (2.75%) CSS
1 22 (2.75%) HTML
2 16 (2.00%) Node.js
3 15 (1.88%) Web Services
4 12 (1.50%) Kafka
4 12 (1.50%) PySpark
5 11 (1.38%) REST
6 10 (1.25%) ADO
7 9 (1.13%) JSON
7 9 (1.13%) Pandas
8 6 (0.75%) Middleware
9 5 (0.63%) Flash
9 5 (0.63%) React
10 4 (0.50%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.50%) Lightning Web Components
10 4 (0.50%) Swagger
10 4 (0.50%) WebdriverIO
11 3 (0.38%) Playwright
11 3 (0.38%) Spring Boot
11 3 (0.38%) Twitter Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.50%) Algorithms
2 33 (4.13%) Management Information System
3 26 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 21 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
5 12 (1.50%) NHS
6 11 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (1.25%) Data Centre
7 10 (1.25%) Life Science
8 9 (1.13%) Data Structures
8 9 (1.13%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (1.13%) Operational Technology
9 8 (1.00%) LIMS
10 7 (0.88%) CMDB
10 7 (0.88%) Credit Risk
10 7 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (0.88%) Embedded Systems
10 7 (0.88%) Mobile App
10 7 (0.88%) Multi-touch
10 7 (0.88%) Onboarding
11 6 (0.75%) DataPower
Operating Systems
1 46 (5.75%) Linux
2 43 (5.38%) Windows
3 16 (2.00%) Unix
4 6 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
4 6 (0.75%) Solaris
4 6 (0.75%) VMS
5 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
6 4 (0.50%) Android
6 4 (0.50%) SafeRTOS
7 3 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.38%) Windows 7
7 3 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
7 3 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.13%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (18.25%) Verification and Validation
2 138 (17.25%) Agile
3 124 (15.50%) Software Engineering
4 122 (15.25%) Problem-Solving
5 121 (15.13%) Migration
6 85 (10.63%) Computer Science
7 79 (9.88%) Data Migration
8 78 (9.75%) Project Management
9 74 (9.25%) User Acceptance Testing
10 65 (8.13%) Data Validation
11 63 (7.88%) Data Modelling
11 63 (7.88%) Test Automation
12 57 (7.13%) Data Management
12 57 (7.13%) ETL
12 57 (7.13%) Scrum
13 51 (6.38%) Business Intelligence
13 51 (6.38%) Systems Engineering
14 49 (6.13%) Use Case
15 48 (6.00%) Continuous Improvement
16 47 (5.88%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 100 (12.50%) SQL
2 74 (9.25%) C++
3 71 (8.88%) Python
4 60 (7.50%) C
5 45 (5.63%) JavaScript
6 41 (5.13%) MATLAB
7 33 (4.13%) Java
8 31 (3.88%) C#
9 15 (1.88%) Embedded C
9 15 (1.88%) R
10 14 (1.75%) Ada
11 13 (1.63%) PowerShell
12 12 (1.50%) Bash
13 11 (1.38%) Embedded C++
14 8 (1.00%) Assembly Language
15 7 (0.88%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.88%) T-SQL
15 7 (0.88%) VB
16 5 (0.63%) Perl
16 5 (0.63%) VBA
Qualifications
1 145 (18.13%) Degree
2 111 (13.88%) Security Cleared
3 78 (9.75%) SC Cleared
4 44 (5.50%) Master's Degree
5 30 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 26 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (1.63%) PhD
8 12 (1.50%) ISTQB
9 11 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
10 10 (1.25%) CCNA
11 9 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
11 9 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 8 (1.00%) Chartered Engineer
12 8 (1.00%) PMI Certification
12 8 (1.00%) PMP
13 4 (0.50%) CCNP
13 4 (0.50%) SAP Certification
14 3 (0.38%) CCA
14 3 (0.38%) Citrix Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (12.00%) QA
2 71 (8.88%) Data Quality
3 29 (3.63%) NIST
4 18 (2.25%) GxP
5 13 (1.63%) GDPR
5 13 (1.63%) PMO
6 11 (1.38%) AUTOSAR
6 11 (1.38%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.00%) CDISC
7 8 (1.00%) HL7
7 8 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.75%) GAMP
8 6 (0.75%) ISO 26262
9 5 (0.63%) Accessibility
9 5 (0.63%) DO-178B
9 5 (0.63%) IEC 61508
9 5 (0.63%) IFRS
9 5 (0.63%) IFRS 9
9 5 (0.63%) MISRA
9 5 (0.63%) MISRA C
System Software
1 28 (3.50%) Firmware
2 23 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (1.13%) Active Directory
5 9 (1.13%) KVM
6 7 (0.88%) VMware NSX
7 6 (0.75%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.38%) Docker
8 3 (0.38%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.25%) vSphere
10 1 (0.13%) HDFS
10 1 (0.13%) NFS
10 1 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 9 (1.13%) vCenter Server
2 6 (0.75%) Ansible
3 4 (0.50%) FortiGate
3 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.38%) HP Quality Center
4 3 (0.38%) Kubernetes
4 3 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.25%) Functional Safety
5 2 (0.25%) Nmap
5 2 (0.25%) OpenNMS
6 1 (0.13%) Kibana
6 1 (0.13%) QRadar
6 1 (0.13%) SCCM
6 1 (0.13%) Trend Micro Deep Security
Vendors
1 95 (11.88%) Microsoft
2 87 (10.88%) SAP
3 40 (5.00%) Oracle
4 28 (3.50%) Google
5 26 (3.25%) VMware
6 22 (2.75%) Atlassian
7 18 (2.25%) Salesforce
8 16 (2.00%) EMC
9 15 (1.88%) Databricks
9 15 (1.88%) IBM
10 14 (1.75%) Cisco
11 7 (0.88%) Workday
12 6 (0.75%) ServiceNow
12 6 (0.75%) Sitecore
13 5 (0.63%) Adobe
13 5 (0.63%) Cadence
13 5 (0.63%) MathWorks
14 4 (0.50%) Aruba
14 4 (0.50%) Barracuda Networks
14 4 (0.50%) Remedy