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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 86 191
Rank change year-on-year -7 +105 +2
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,061 1,695 1,167
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.92% 3.40% 1.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.62% 3.81% 1.74%
Number of salaries quoted 1,208 518 515
10th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £36,480
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £45,404
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -8.33% -6.25%
75th Percentile £72,500 £71,250 £75,625
90th Percentile £87,500 £90,450 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -4.35%

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 78,808 44,479 67,117
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.30% 89.14% 80.83%
Number of salaries quoted 54,325 25,171 42,850
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -9.09%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 -10 1,892 £56,000 +1.82% 2,339
UK excluding London -25 1,454 £55,000 +4.76% 1,606
Work from Home +134 604 £56,000 -6.67% 900
London +70 514 £71,000 -9.84% 1,041
South East -27 426 £58,000 +7.91% 422
North of England +106 396 £55,000 +15.79% 267
North West +90 231 £55,000 +15.35% 152
Midlands -46 209 £44,720 -18.69% 213
South West -4 174 £55,000 +4.56% 246
East of England -65 140 £60,000 +10.60% 250
West Midlands +14 113 £44,720 -18.69% 140
East Midlands -61 95 £45,675 +7.47% 73
North East +6 84 £55,000 +57.14% 53
Yorkshire +12 81 £43,000 +1.18% 69
Scotland +23 73 £62,500 +7.70% 161
Wales -40 32 £50,000 -6.98% 44
Isle of Man - 3 £38,500 - 5
Northern Ireland -79 2 - - 32

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 59 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
2 56 (2.72%) Apache Spark
3 55 (2.67%) Apache
4 34 (1.65%) Confluence
5 32 (1.55%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.02%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.63%) SAS
8 10 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.34%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.24%) WinCC
11 4 (0.19%) CMS
11 4 (0.19%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.15%) Artix
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.097%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.097%) IIS
14 1 (0.049%) FactoryTalk
14 1 (0.049%) Palantir Foundry
14 1 (0.049%) WebSphere
Applications
1 121 (5.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (3.15%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (1.80%) Simulink
4 36 (1.75%) Microsoft Project
5 27 (1.31%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.63%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.44%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.24%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.24%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.19%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.19%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.19%) OrCAD
10 4 (0.19%) Sketch
11 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.15%) Productboard
11 3 (0.15%) Revit
11 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.097%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 43 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (1.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.44%) iTrent
3 9 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (0.44%) SAP ERP
3 9 (0.44%) SAP MDG
4 8 (0.39%) Elite 3E
4 8 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
5 7 (0.34%) NetSuite
6 6 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 5 (0.24%) Loan IQ
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 5 (0.24%) SAP MDG-BP
8 4 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
8 4 (0.19%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.15%) SystmOne
10 2 (0.097%) Oracle Receivables
10 2 (0.097%) Refinitiv Enterprise Platform
10 2 (0.097%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 291 (14.12%) Azure
2 267 (12.95%) AWS
3 163 (7.91%) Power Platform
4 92 (4.46%) GCP
5 80 (3.88%) SaaS
6 67 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
7 63 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 57 (2.77%) GitHub
9 52 (2.52%) Serverless
10 49 (2.38%) Amazon S3
11 36 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
12 33 (1.60%) Entra ID
13 29 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
13 29 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
14 22 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
14 22 (1.07%) Amazon EMR
15 21 (1.02%) Snowflake
16 20 (0.97%) Cloud Computing
16 20 (0.97%) PowerApps
17 19 (0.92%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 67 (3.25%) Broadband
2 58 (2.81%) Firewall
3 54 (2.62%) DNS
4 36 (1.75%) Wireless
5 34 (1.65%) Network Security
6 32 (1.55%) WAN
7 31 (1.50%) TCP/IP
8 29 (1.41%) VPN
9 22 (1.07%) Ethernet
10 21 (1.02%) LAN
10 21 (1.02%) SD-WAN
11 18 (0.87%) MQTT
12 17 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
13 16 (0.78%) BGP
13 16 (0.78%) Wireshark
14 15 (0.73%) Internet
14 15 (0.73%) OSPF
15 14 (0.68%) VLAN
16 13 (0.63%) HTTP
16 13 (0.63%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (7.23%) Power BI
2 57 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
3 55 (2.67%) Tableau
4 53 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.38%) Metadata
6 47 (2.28%) SQL Server
7 45 (2.18%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.65%) MongoDB
9 29 (1.41%) Relational Database
10 28 (1.36%) Amazon Athena
11 26 (1.26%) BigQuery
11 26 (1.26%) DynamoDB
12 23 (1.12%) Semantic Layer
13 21 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.92%) MySQL
15 19 (0.92%) Spark SQL
16 18 (0.87%) Big Data
17 16 (0.78%) NoSQL
17 16 (0.78%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 126 (6.11%) JIRA
2 111 (5.39%) Git
3 53 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 47 (2.28%) GitLab
5 36 (1.75%) Rational DOORS
6 28 (1.36%) Selenium
7 24 (1.16%) Postman
8 22 (1.07%) Snyk
9 21 (1.02%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.82%) LabVIEW
11 16 (0.78%) JMeter
12 15 (0.73%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.58%) IBM UrbanCode
14 11 (0.53%) Burp Suite
14 11 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.49%) Gatling
15 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
16 8 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
16 8 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 7 (0.34%) Hudson
General
1 696 (33.77%) Social Skills
2 569 (27.61%) Finance
3 503 (24.41%) Analytical Skills
4 200 (9.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 198 (9.61%) Aerospace
6 184 (8.93%) Manufacturing
7 170 (8.25%) Electronics
8 118 (5.73%) Law
9 114 (5.53%) Banking
10 85 (4.12%) Public Sector
11 80 (3.88%) Retail
12 77 (3.74%) Marketing
13 71 (3.44%) Pharmaceutical
14 69 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
15 59 (2.86%) Legal
16 56 (2.72%) Automotive
17 47 (2.28%) Games
17 47 (2.28%) Telecoms
18 42 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
19 37 (1.80%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 377 (18.29%) Senior
2 274 (13.29%) Analyst
3 196 (9.51%) Systems Engineer
4 184 (8.93%) Lead
5 123 (5.97%) Test Engineer
6 117 (5.68%) Architect
7 102 (4.95%) Data Engineer
8 91 (4.42%) Developer
9 89 (4.32%) Business Analyst
9 89 (4.32%) Consultant
10 75 (3.64%) Software Engineer
11 68 (3.30%) Data Analyst
12 65 (3.15%) Validation Engineer
13 64 (3.11%) Principal Engineer
14 51 (2.47%) Embedded Engineer
15 48 (2.33%) Support Engineer
16 47 (2.28%) Data Scientist
17 44 (2.13%) Electronics Engineer
18 42 (2.04%) IT Manager
19 40 (1.94%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (3.54%) Terraform
2 49 (2.38%) RESTful
3 44 (2.13%) Kafka
4 43 (2.09%) REST
5 40 (1.94%) Node.js
5 40 (1.94%) PySpark
6 33 (1.60%) JSON
7 31 (1.50%) Playwright
8 30 (1.46%) .NET
8 30 (1.46%) XML
9 27 (1.31%) LDAP
10 26 (1.26%) Middleware
11 22 (1.07%) CSS
12 21 (1.02%) HTML
12 21 (1.02%) ModSecurity
12 21 (1.02%) Pandas
12 21 (1.02%) React
13 19 (0.92%) FastAPI
13 19 (0.92%) Regular Expression
13 19 (0.92%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 151 (7.33%) Cloud Native
2 129 (6.26%) Onboarding
3 112 (5.43%) Management Information System
4 75 (3.64%) Product Ownership
5 74 (3.59%) Data Centre
6 61 (2.96%) Data Structures
7 58 (2.81%) Algorithms
7 58 (2.81%) Embedded Systems
8 55 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
9 53 (2.57%) Distributed Systems
9 53 (2.57%) Driving Licence
10 47 (2.28%) Low-Code
11 39 (1.89%) AI Agents
11 39 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
12 38 (1.84%) Life Science
13 37 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
14 35 (1.70%) Video\Live Streaming
15 33 (1.60%) Robotics
16 31 (1.50%) IoT
17 28 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 124 (6.02%) Linux
2 90 (4.37%) Windows
3 34 (1.65%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.92%) Unix
6 9 (0.44%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.39%) Android
8 6 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.24%) Kali Linux
9 5 (0.24%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.19%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.097%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.097%) ThreadX
11 2 (0.097%) VMS
11 2 (0.097%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.049%) AIX
12 1 (0.049%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.049%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 528 (25.62%) Problem-Solving
2 496 (24.07%) Continuous Improvement
3 430 (20.86%) Agile
4 383 (18.58%) AI
5 307 (14.90%) CI/CD
6 284 (13.78%) Verification and Validation
7 272 (13.20%) Analytics
8 269 (13.05%) Test Automation
9 268 (13.00%) Stakeholder Management
10 247 (11.98%) Migration
11 240 (11.64%) Mentoring
12 227 (11.01%) Decision-Making
13 218 (10.58%) Software Engineering
14 202 (9.80%) Data Analysis
15 194 (9.41%) DevOps
16 189 (9.17%) Machine Learning
17 186 (9.02%) Business Intelligence
18 181 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 172 (8.35%) Roadmaps
20 168 (8.15%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 481 (23.34%) Python
2 395 (19.17%) SQL
3 95 (4.61%) Java
4 87 (4.22%) C++
5 78 (3.78%) C
6 62 (3.01%) JavaScript
7 55 (2.67%) Go
8 52 (2.52%) C#
8 52 (2.52%) MATLAB
9 29 (1.41%) Bash
10 27 (1.31%) Embedded C
10 27 (1.31%) PowerShell
11 22 (1.07%) Scala
12 20 (0.97%) TypeScript
13 18 (0.87%) Embedded C++
13 18 (0.87%) R
14 14 (0.68%) T-SQL
15 11 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 10 (0.49%) ABAP
17 9 (0.44%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 443 (21.49%) Degree
2 377 (18.29%) Security Cleared
3 243 (11.79%) SC Cleared
4 132 (6.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (5.24%) DV Cleared
6 83 (4.03%) Master's Degree
7 45 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.84%) CISSP
9 36 (1.75%) PhD
10 32 (1.55%) Chartered Engineer
11 30 (1.46%) CISM
11 30 (1.46%) HNC
12 29 (1.41%) PMI Certification
13 26 (1.26%) HND
14 25 (1.21%) ACCA
14 25 (1.21%) CIMA
15 24 (1.16%) AWS Certification
16 23 (1.12%) Azure Certification
17 19 (0.92%) SANS
18 18 (0.87%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 318 (15.43%) Data Quality
2 281 (13.63%) QA
3 83 (4.03%) Accessibility
4 55 (2.67%) GDPR
5 37 (1.80%) GRC
6 26 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 25 (1.21%) IEC 61508
7 25 (1.21%) NIST
8 22 (1.07%) SLA
9 19 (0.92%) GxP
10 18 (0.87%) PMO
11 17 (0.82%) WCAG
12 15 (0.73%) ISO 26262
13 14 (0.68%) GAAP
13 14 (0.68%) IFRS
14 13 (0.63%) GMP
15 12 (0.58%) ISO 9001
16 11 (0.53%) SOC 2
17 9 (0.44%) COBIT
18 8 (0.39%) JTAG
System Software
1 79 (3.83%) Docker
2 78 (3.78%) Firmware
3 46 (2.23%) Active Directory
4 32 (1.55%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (1.02%) vSphere
7 14 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.29%) KVM
9 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.097%) iptables
10 2 (0.097%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.097%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.049%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.049%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 79 (3.83%) Kubernetes
2 45 (2.18%) Grafana
3 26 (1.26%) Functional Safety
4 25 (1.21%) Ansible
5 15 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 15 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (0.49%) Cilium
7 9 (0.44%) Puppet
8 7 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 7 (0.34%) Kibana
8 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (0.29%) SCCM
10 5 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 5 (0.24%) Nessus
10 5 (0.24%) Nmap
10 5 (0.24%) WMI
11 4 (0.19%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.19%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.15%) Argo
13 2 (0.097%) kaniko
Vendors
1 273 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 117 (5.68%) SAP
3 107 (5.19%) Oracle
4 58 (2.81%) Salesforce
5 57 (2.77%) Databricks
6 48 (2.33%) ServiceNow
7 46 (2.23%) Cisco
8 44 (2.13%) Google
9 35 (1.70%) Red Hat
10 33 (1.60%) VMware
11 29 (1.41%) CrowdStrike
12 28 (1.36%) EMC
12 28 (1.36%) Palo Alto
13 22 (1.07%) Tenable
14 17 (0.82%) Splunk
15 16 (0.78%) IBM
16 15 (0.73%) Foundry
16 15 (0.73%) McAfee
16 15 (0.73%) Workday
17 13 (0.63%) Siemens