Validation Job Trends

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 8 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 181 182 189
Rank change year-on-year +1 +7 -46
Permanent jobs citing Validation 820 1,021 978
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.60% 1.51% 1.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.85% 1.83% 1.95%
Number of salaries quoted 450 392 557
10th Percentile £38,000 £36,963 £37,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £46,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,017 £56,509 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.67% -5.82% -
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £90,125 £94,875 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,800 £54,500 £55,043
% change year-on-year -3.12% -0.99% +11.25%

All Process and 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 44,303 55,889 50,206
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 86.67% 82.62% 93.88%
Number of salaries quoted 26,710 29,381 38,581
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,875 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,500 £45,000 £43,800
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,750 £54,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.43% +2.86% -

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 8 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 17 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 8 November 2025. 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 +12 742 £57,500 +4.55% 1,914
UK excluding London -2 538 £52,800 -3.12% 1,561
London +49 235 £78,250 +11.79% 755
South East +8 186 £52,500 -19.23% 763
Work from Home +32 184 £61,500 -5.38% 812
North of England -33 118 £50,000 +9.89% 196
Midlands +72 76 £55,000 +10.00% 148
North West -24 73 £52,500 +10.10% 135
South West +19 70 £50,000 -16.67% 161
West Midlands +41 50 £55,000 +10.00% 79
East of England -21 46 £60,000 +9.09% 210
Scotland -4 35 £60,000 +6.18% 63
Yorkshire -7 31 £54,117 +35.29% 41
East Midlands +32 26 £42,500 -10.53% 64
North East +7 14 £35,000 -26.70% 20
Wales +23 10 £62,500 +41.04% 30
Northern Ireland -8 2 - - 26

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 24 (2.93%) Confluence
2 16 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
2 16 (1.95%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.22%) SugarCRM
4 9 (1.10%) Apache
5 8 (0.98%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.73%) CMS
7 5 (0.61%) SAS
8 3 (0.37%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.24%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.24%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.12%) FileNet
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
Applications
1 52 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (4.88%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (3.90%) Simulink
4 18 (2.20%) MS Visio
5 14 (1.71%) Mathcad
6 9 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 8 (0.98%) AutoCAD
8 6 (0.73%) Blender
9 4 (0.49%) Revit
9 4 (0.49%) SOLIDWORKS
10 3 (0.37%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.37%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.24%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.24%) Adobe Captivate
11 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.24%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.24%) Elementor
11 2 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.24%) Weka
12 1 (0.12%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 27 (3.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle Assets
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle Cash Management
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.49%) SAP BPC
5 4 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.37%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.24%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.24%) Endur
7 2 (0.24%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 2 (0.24%) Primavera
7 2 (0.24%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 108 (13.17%) Azure
2 87 (10.61%) Power Platform
3 85 (10.37%) AWS
4 38 (4.63%) SaaS
5 27 (3.29%) GCP
6 24 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
7 22 (2.68%) Snowflake
8 21 (2.56%) Amazon S3
9 19 (2.32%) GitHub
10 18 (2.20%) Serverless
11 17 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
12 16 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (1.71%) Datadog
13 14 (1.71%) dbt
14 12 (1.46%) Amazon SageMaker
14 12 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
15 11 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
16 10 (1.22%) Microsoft Purview
17 8 (0.98%) Amazon EKS
18 7 (0.85%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.95%) LAN
2 14 (1.71%) Ethernet
3 13 (1.59%) Firewall
4 11 (1.34%) WAN
5 10 (1.22%) Modbus
6 9 (1.10%) Profibus
7 8 (0.98%) 5G
7 8 (0.98%) Internet
7 8 (0.98%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.73%) Ethernet VPN
9 5 (0.61%) BGP
9 5 (0.61%) DNS
9 5 (0.61%) Network Security
9 5 (0.61%) NX-OS
9 5 (0.61%) OSPF
10 4 (0.49%) 3GPP
10 4 (0.49%) DHCP
10 4 (0.49%) MPLS
10 4 (0.49%) TCP/IP
10 4 (0.49%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (10.00%) Power BI
2 48 (5.85%) Tableau
3 38 (4.63%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (2.80%) SQL Server
5 22 (2.68%) Metadata
6 19 (2.32%) BigQuery
7 15 (1.83%) Big Data
8 13 (1.59%) Data Lake
9 12 (1.46%) NoSQL
9 12 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
10 11 (1.34%) Relational Database
11 9 (1.10%) Amazon Athena
12 8 (0.98%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
13 7 (0.85%) BusinessObjects
13 7 (0.85%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.85%) MySQL
14 6 (0.73%) GIS
14 6 (0.73%) QGIS
14 6 (0.73%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 66 (8.05%) JIRA
2 45 (5.49%) Git
3 32 (3.90%) Rational DOORS
4 26 (3.17%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.95%) Postman
6 12 (1.46%) Selenium
7 10 (1.22%) Cucumber
7 10 (1.22%) GitLab
7 10 (1.22%) JMeter
8 8 (0.98%) SoapUI
9 7 (0.85%) Locust
10 6 (0.73%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.73%) MLflow
11 5 (0.61%) LoadRunner
11 5 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.61%) TestNG
11 5 (0.61%) Zephyr
12 4 (0.49%) Spinnaker
12 4 (0.49%) TestRail
12 4 (0.49%) webpack
General
1 306 (37.32%) Social Skills
2 235 (28.66%) Finance
3 163 (19.88%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (8.17%) Law
5 52 (6.34%) Electronics
5 52 (6.34%) Manufacturing
6 47 (5.73%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (5.49%) Marketing
8 37 (4.51%) Presentation Skills
9 36 (4.39%) Retail
10 35 (4.27%) Banking
11 33 (4.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 33 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
12 29 (3.54%) Aerospace
13 28 (3.41%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (3.05%) Billing
14 25 (3.05%) Telecoms
15 23 (2.80%) Financial Institution
15 23 (2.80%) Pharmaceutical
15 23 (2.80%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 123 (15.00%) Analyst
2 111 (13.54%) Senior
3 100 (12.20%) Lead
4 69 (8.41%) Systems Engineer
5 44 (5.37%) Data Analyst
6 38 (4.63%) Business Analyst
7 36 (4.39%) Data Engineer
8 35 (4.27%) Support Engineer
9 34 (4.15%) Architect
10 30 (3.66%) Test Engineer
11 28 (3.41%) Applications Engineer
12 26 (3.17%) Applications Support
13 25 (3.05%) Administrator
14 24 (2.93%) Data Quality Analyst
14 24 (2.93%) Developer
14 24 (2.93%) Quality Analyst
15 23 (2.80%) Principal Engineer
15 23 (2.80%) Team Leader
16 22 (2.68%) Applications Support Engineer
17 19 (2.32%) Hardware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (2.56%) REST
2 19 (2.32%) Middleware
3 18 (2.20%) Kafka
4 17 (2.07%) JSON
5 16 (1.95%) XML
6 15 (1.83%) scikit-learn
7 13 (1.59%) Pandas
7 13 (1.59%) PyTorch
8 12 (1.46%) TensorFlow
9 10 (1.22%) HTML
9 10 (1.22%) React
10 9 (1.10%) PySpark
11 7 (0.85%) CSS
11 7 (0.85%) Gherkin
11 7 (0.85%) NumPy
11 7 (0.85%) Playwright
12 6 (0.73%) SOAP
12 6 (0.73%) Spring
12 6 (0.73%) Web Services
12 6 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 66 (8.05%) Management Information System
2 39 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
3 35 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 35 (4.27%) Product Ownership
4 33 (4.02%) Life Science
5 31 (3.78%) Algorithms
6 27 (3.29%) Operational Technology
7 17 (2.07%) SCADA
8 16 (1.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 12 (1.46%) Credit Risk
9 12 (1.46%) Data Structures
9 12 (1.46%) FPGA
10 11 (1.34%) Data Centre
10 11 (1.34%) Embedded Systems
10 11 (1.34%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 10 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
12 9 (1.10%) Biopharmaceutical
12 9 (1.10%) Driving Licence
13 8 (0.98%) Cloud Native
13 8 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 30 (3.66%) Windows
2 29 (3.54%) Linux
3 14 (1.71%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (0.61%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.49%) Unix
7 2 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (0.24%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.24%) VMS
8 1 (0.12%) AIX
8 1 (0.12%) Android
8 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.12%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (26.83%) Problem-Solving
2 211 (25.73%) Agile
3 123 (15.00%) Data Validation
4 122 (14.88%) Verification and Validation
5 114 (13.90%) Migration
6 108 (13.17%) Continuous Improvement
7 97 (11.83%) Analytics
8 95 (11.59%) Data Analysis
9 92 (11.22%) Business Intelligence
10 89 (10.85%) Data Management
10 89 (10.85%) Systems Engineering
11 88 (10.73%) Decision-Making
11 88 (10.73%) Test Automation
12 86 (10.49%) Software Engineering
13 83 (10.12%) Mentoring
14 81 (9.88%) ETL
15 80 (9.76%) DevOps
16 79 (9.63%) Stakeholder Management
17 78 (9.51%) CI/CD
17 78 (9.51%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 185 (22.56%) Python
2 164 (20.00%) SQL
3 45 (5.49%) MATLAB
4 40 (4.88%) Java
5 31 (3.78%) C
6 30 (3.66%) C++
7 19 (2.32%) JavaScript
8 16 (1.95%) PowerShell
9 15 (1.83%) R
10 12 (1.46%) Bash
11 11 (1.34%) T-SQL
12 9 (1.10%) Ladder Logic
13 8 (0.98%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.73%) C#
15 5 (0.61%) Go
15 5 (0.61%) Scala
16 3 (0.37%) Google Apps Script
16 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
16 3 (0.37%) PROC SQL
16 3 (0.37%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 281 (34.27%) Degree
2 75 (9.15%) BPSS Clearance
3 70 (8.54%) Security Cleared
4 62 (7.56%) Master's Degree
5 44 (5.37%) SC Cleared
6 39 (4.76%) Computer Science Degree
7 30 (3.66%) HNC
8 25 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
9 16 (1.95%) HND
9 16 (1.95%) PhD
10 15 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (1.71%) CCNA
12 13 (1.59%) ACCA
12 13 (1.59%) CCNP
12 13 (1.59%) DV Cleared
13 11 (1.34%) CCIE
14 10 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
14 10 (1.22%) Numerate Degree
15 9 (1.10%) CIMA
16 8 (0.98%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (13.78%) Data Quality
2 107 (13.05%) QA
3 40 (4.88%) GxP
4 35 (4.27%) Accessibility
5 33 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 30 (3.66%) SLA
7 19 (2.32%) GDPR
8 13 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 11 (1.34%) ISO 20022
9 11 (1.34%) SEPA
10 9 (1.10%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 9 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.85%) TARGET2
11 7 (0.85%) WCAG
12 6 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 5 (0.61%) ARP4761
13 5 (0.61%) NIST
14 4 (0.49%) NCSC
15 3 (0.37%) AUTOSAR
15 3 (0.37%) JTAG
System Software
1 40 (4.88%) Docker
2 30 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (3.17%) Firmware
4 15 (1.83%) Active Directory
5 12 (1.46%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.73%) vSphere
7 5 (0.61%) vCloud
7 5 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.37%) Apache Flume
8 3 (0.37%) HDFS
9 2 (0.24%) Ceph
9 2 (0.24%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.24%) Lustre
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.24%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.12%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.12%) Postfix
10 1 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 30 (3.66%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.80%) Terraform
3 22 (2.68%) Grafana
4 16 (1.95%) Ansible
5 11 (1.34%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.61%) Docker Swarm
6 5 (0.61%) Kubeflow
6 5 (0.61%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.49%) Kibana
7 4 (0.49%) Rundeck
8 3 (0.37%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.37%) logstash
8 3 (0.37%) Oozie
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.12%) Argo
10 1 (0.12%) Control-M
10 1 (0.12%) Nessus
10 1 (0.12%) Rancher
10 1 (0.12%) yum
Vendors
1 89 (10.85%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.95%) SAP
3 35 (4.27%) VMware
4 26 (3.17%) Cisco
4 26 (3.17%) Oracle
5 24 (2.93%) Salesforce
6 16 (1.95%) IBM
7 14 (1.71%) MathWorks
8 12 (1.46%) CheckPoint
8 12 (1.46%) F5
9 10 (1.22%) Allen-Bradley
9 10 (1.22%) ServiceNow
9 10 (1.22%) Siemens
10 9 (1.10%) Rockwell
11 8 (0.98%) Databricks
11 8 (0.98%) Foundry
11 8 (0.98%) Informatica
11 8 (0.98%) Intapp
11 8 (0.98%) Software AG
11 8 (0.98%) Splunk