Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Validation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 89 180
Rank change year-on-year +10 +91 +20
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,455 1,613 1,141
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.11% 3.28% 1.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.90% 3.70% 1.81%
Number of salaries quoted 1,454 463 443
10th Percentile £35,575 £38,750 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,625 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,490 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.16% -8.33% -6.98%
75th Percentile £70,000 £75,900 £76,250
90th Percentile £86,250 £88,750 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.56% -4.36% -1.27%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 84,797 43,558 63,026
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.01% 88.68% 81.33%
Number of salaries quoted 58,554 24,566 35,554
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,781 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Validation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Validation job vacancy trend in the UK

Validation
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Validation

Validation
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Validation over the 6 months to 21 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the UK over the 6 months to 21 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +13 2,266 £57,500 +4.55% 4,813
UK excluding London -10 1,795 £55,000 +4.56% 2,830
Work from Home +117 639 £60,000 - 1,779
London +75 572 £70,000 -12.50% 2,449
South East -11 495 £62,500 +16.28% 703
North of England +107 468 £52,500 +10.31% 458
North West +101 288 £55,000 +10.00% 273
Midlands -30 273 £50,000 -9.09% 383
South West +21 238 £56,250 +7.14% 388
East of England -46 189 £55,000 -8.33% 409
West Midlands +33 156 £50,000 -9.09% 256
East Midlands -51 117 £48,372 +13.82% 126
Yorkshire +24 92 £42,500 - 125
North East +8 88 £55,000 +57.14% 69
Scotland +47 83 £70,000 +20.62% 381
Wales -37 42 £70,000 +27.27% 61
Northern Ireland -77 5 - - 76
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 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 48 (1.96%) Apache Spark
2 45 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (1.67%) Apache
4 39 (1.59%) Confluence
5 35 (1.43%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.81%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.53%) SAS
8 10 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.37%) WinCC
10 5 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) CMS
12 3 (0.12%) Artix
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.081%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.081%) IIS
13 2 (0.081%) Kinematics
13 2 (0.081%) nginx
14 1 (0.041%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.041%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 141 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (2.16%) Simulink
4 37 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 22 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.81%) SOLIDWORKS
7 18 (0.73%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.65%) MS Visio
9 11 (0.45%) Revit
10 10 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 7 (0.29%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.29%) OrCAD
12 6 (0.24%) EPLAN
13 5 (0.20%) CANalyzer
13 5 (0.20%) LaTeX
13 5 (0.20%) Mathcad
14 3 (0.12%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.12%) Productboard
14 3 (0.12%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 44 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.45%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.37%) iTrent
4 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.37%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.33%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.29%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.29%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.24%) Elite 3E
7 6 (0.24%) Infor M3
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
8 5 (0.20%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.16%) Maximo
9 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 316 (12.87%) Azure
2 266 (10.84%) AWS
3 179 (7.29%) Power Platform
4 97 (3.95%) GCP
5 80 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
6 71 (2.89%) SaaS
7 69 (2.81%) GitHub
8 65 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 64 (2.61%) Serverless
10 44 (1.79%) Amazon S3
11 40 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
12 35 (1.43%) Entra ID
12 35 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (1.38%) Microsoft Copilot
14 29 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
15 28 (1.14%) Microsoft Purview
16 26 (1.06%) Cloud Computing
17 25 (1.02%) Amazon EMR
18 24 (0.98%) PowerApps
19 23 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.85%) DNS
2 68 (2.77%) Firewall
3 56 (2.28%) Broadband
4 41 (1.67%) Wireless
5 38 (1.55%) TCP/IP
5 38 (1.55%) VPN
6 37 (1.51%) Network Security
6 37 (1.51%) WAN
7 34 (1.38%) Ethernet
8 30 (1.22%) Modbus
9 29 (1.18%) LAN
10 28 (1.14%) VLAN
11 26 (1.06%) OSPF
12 23 (0.94%) SD-WAN
12 23 (0.94%) Wireshark
13 22 (0.90%) BGP
13 22 (0.90%) MQTT
14 19 (0.77%) 5G
15 17 (0.69%) HTTP
15 17 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 164 (6.68%) Power BI
2 64 (2.61%) Metadata
3 60 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.24%) Data Lake
5 50 (2.04%) SQL Server
6 46 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
7 42 (1.71%) Tableau
8 38 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
9 35 (1.43%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.22%) MongoDB
11 28 (1.14%) Big Data
12 27 (1.10%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.02%) DynamoDB
14 24 (0.98%) NoSQL
15 22 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
16 21 (0.86%) Semantic Layer
16 21 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 20 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
18 19 (0.77%) Delta Lake
18 19 (0.77%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 142 (5.78%) JIRA
2 126 (5.13%) Git
3 63 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 54 (2.20%) GitLab
5 44 (1.79%) Rational DOORS
6 33 (1.34%) Selenium
7 29 (1.18%) LabVIEW
8 26 (1.06%) Postman
9 22 (0.90%) Snyk
10 21 (0.86%) Cypress.io
11 14 (0.57%) Burp Suite
11 14 (0.57%) JMeter
12 12 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 11 (0.45%) Claude Code
13 11 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.45%) Eclipse
14 10 (0.41%) TeamCity
15 9 (0.37%) Gatling
15 9 (0.37%) MLflow
15 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 822 (33.48%) Social Skills
2 628 (25.58%) Finance
3 585 (23.83%) Analytical Skills
4 239 (9.74%) Aerospace
5 234 (9.53%) Manufacturing
6 224 (9.12%) Electronics
7 203 (8.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 142 (5.78%) Law
9 110 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
10 106 (4.32%) Banking
11 104 (4.24%) Retail
12 102 (4.15%) Public Sector
13 91 (3.71%) Marketing
14 89 (3.63%) Telecoms
15 85 (3.46%) Pharmaceutical
16 77 (3.14%) Automotive
17 61 (2.48%) Legal
18 48 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
19 45 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
20 44 (1.79%) Military
Job Titles
1 428 (17.43%) Senior
2 312 (12.71%) Systems Engineer
3 277 (11.28%) Analyst
4 214 (8.72%) Lead
5 134 (5.46%) Test Engineer
6 121 (4.93%) Architect
6 121 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 99 (4.03%) Developer
8 97 (3.95%) Consultant
9 88 (3.58%) Business Analyst
10 83 (3.38%) Software Engineer
11 75 (3.05%) Principal Engineer
12 72 (2.93%) Electronics Engineer
13 70 (2.85%) Data Analyst
14 64 (2.61%) Validation Engineer
15 57 (2.32%) Network Engineer
16 50 (2.04%) Embedded Engineer
17 48 (1.96%) Data Scientist
18 47 (1.91%) Support Engineer
19 46 (1.87%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (3.34%) Terraform
2 55 (2.24%) RESTful
3 54 (2.20%) Kafka
4 50 (2.04%) REST
5 49 (2.00%) Node.js
6 43 (1.75%) Playwright
6 43 (1.75%) PySpark
7 38 (1.55%) .NET
8 35 (1.43%) JSON
8 35 (1.43%) XML
9 29 (1.18%) CSS
10 28 (1.14%) FastAPI
10 28 (1.14%) React
11 27 (1.10%) HTML
12 25 (1.02%) LDAP
12 25 (1.02%) Middleware
13 22 (0.90%) Swagger
14 21 (0.86%) ModSecurity
15 19 (0.77%) pytest
16 18 (0.73%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 163 (6.64%) Cloud Native
2 133 (5.42%) Management Information System
3 123 (5.01%) Onboarding
4 86 (3.50%) Product Ownership
5 82 (3.34%) Data Centre
6 70 (2.85%) Embedded Systems
7 65 (2.65%) Driving Licence
8 60 (2.44%) Data Structures
9 58 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
10 57 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
11 54 (2.20%) Algorithms
12 50 (2.04%) AI Agents
13 48 (1.96%) Life Science
13 48 (1.96%) SCADA
14 42 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
15 40 (1.63%) IoT
16 39 (1.59%) Low-Code
17 37 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
17 37 (1.51%) Robotics
18 34 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 134 (5.46%) Linux
2 93 (3.79%) Windows
3 31 (1.26%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.02%) Unix
5 16 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.41%) Android
7 8 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.20%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.16%) Mac OS X
11 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.081%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.081%) VMS
12 2 (0.081%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.041%) AIX
13 1 (0.041%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (25.74%) Problem-Solving
2 551 (22.44%) Continuous Improvement
3 454 (18.49%) Agile
4 447 (18.21%) Verification and Validation
5 414 (16.86%) AI
6 340 (13.85%) CI/CD
7 326 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
8 303 (12.34%) Migration
8 303 (12.34%) Test Automation
9 260 (10.59%) Analytics
10 256 (10.43%) Mentoring
11 237 (9.65%) Decision-Making
11 237 (9.65%) Software Engineering
12 227 (9.25%) DevOps
13 223 (9.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 222 (9.04%) Data Analysis
15 206 (8.39%) Business Intelligence
16 196 (7.98%) Machine Learning
17 195 (7.94%) Roadmaps
18 193 (7.86%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 501 (20.41%) Python
2 434 (17.68%) SQL
3 106 (4.32%) Java
4 94 (3.83%) C++
5 84 (3.42%) C
6 74 (3.01%) JavaScript
7 69 (2.81%) MATLAB
8 63 (2.57%) C#
9 49 (2.00%) Go
10 36 (1.47%) Bash
11 32 (1.30%) Embedded C
12 29 (1.18%) PowerShell
12 29 (1.18%) TypeScript
13 25 (1.02%) R
13 25 (1.02%) Scala
14 18 (0.73%) Embedded C++
15 14 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 11 (0.45%) Shell Script
17 10 (0.41%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 536 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 534 (21.75%) Degree
3 401 (16.33%) SC Cleared
4 122 (4.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.36%) DV Cleared
6 95 (3.87%) Master's Degree
7 54 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 43 (1.75%) HND
9 42 (1.71%) PhD
10 37 (1.51%) Chartered Engineer
10 37 (1.51%) HNC
11 36 (1.47%) PMI Certification
12 31 (1.26%) CISSP
13 28 (1.14%) ACCA
14 27 (1.10%) Azure Certification
15 26 (1.06%) AWS Certification
16 25 (1.02%) CIMA
17 23 (0.94%) PMP
18 21 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
18 21 (0.86%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (14.70%) Data Quality
2 307 (12.51%) QA
3 80 (3.26%) Accessibility
4 59 (2.40%) GDPR
5 37 (1.51%) GRC
6 32 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (1.14%) GxP
8 23 (0.94%) IEC 61508
8 23 (0.94%) SLA
9 22 (0.90%) NIST
10 15 (0.61%) GMP
10 15 (0.61%) ISO 26262
10 15 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 15 (0.61%) PMO
11 14 (0.57%) ISO 9001
12 13 (0.53%) SOC 2
12 13 (0.53%) WCAG
13 11 (0.45%) ISO 19650
14 9 (0.37%) GAAP
14 9 (0.37%) JTAG
System Software
1 97 (3.95%) Firmware
2 91 (3.71%) Docker
3 45 (1.83%) Active Directory
4 44 (1.79%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.73%) vSphere
7 8 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.20%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.081%) iptables
10 2 (0.081%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.081%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.041%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 83 (3.38%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.71%) Grafana
3 33 (1.34%) Ansible
3 33 (1.34%) Functional Safety
4 18 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 15 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (0.41%) Cilium
7 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.33%) Nessus
7 8 (0.33%) Nmap
7 8 (0.33%) Puppet
8 7 (0.29%) BMC PATROL
8 7 (0.29%) Kibana
9 5 (0.20%) WMI
10 4 (0.16%) Argo
10 4 (0.16%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.16%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
10 4 (0.16%) SCCM
11 3 (0.12%) Rancher
Vendors
1 311 (12.67%) Microsoft
2 131 (5.34%) SAP
3 103 (4.20%) Oracle
4 67 (2.73%) Databricks
5 61 (2.48%) Salesforce
6 55 (2.24%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.20%) Cisco
7 54 (2.20%) EMC
8 41 (1.67%) Google
9 31 (1.26%) CrowdStrike
10 28 (1.14%) Palo Alto
11 24 (0.98%) Sage
11 24 (0.98%) VMware
12 23 (0.94%) Tenable
12 23 (0.94%) Thales
13 22 (0.90%) IBM
14 20 (0.81%) Red Hat
15 19 (0.77%) Siemens
16 18 (0.73%) Informatica
16 18 (0.73%) Splunk