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

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 88 194
Rank change year-on-year +1 +106 +14
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,152 1,672 1,135
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.96% 3.34% 1.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.68% 3.76% 1.73%
Number of salaries quoted 1,288 521 473
10th Percentile £35,000 £39,000 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £47,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% -6.25%
75th Percentile £71,250 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £87,000 £90,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,550 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.66% -4.45% -0.42%

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 80,399 44,438 65,626
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.12% 88.74% 80.77%
Number of salaries quoted 55,793 25,365 40,468
10th Percentile £31,055 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,465
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -0.84% -7.56%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,803
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.50% -6.94%

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 30 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 30 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 -4 1,992 £57,500 +4.55% 1,914
UK excluding London -21 1,549 £55,000 +4.66% 1,300
Work from Home +114 607 £56,000 -6.67% 766
London +69 523 £70,000 -12.50% 886
South East -19 453 £59,490 +8.16% 376
North of England +96 405 £55,000 +15.79% 230
North West +91 240 £55,000 +15.35% 127
Midlands -43 226 £47,500 -13.64% 183
South West +8 199 £55,000 +4.56% 212
East of England -62 153 £57,500 +4.07% 178
West Midlands +28 127 £47,500 -13.64% 121
East Midlands -60 98 £48,372 +13.82% 62
North East +4 83 £55,000 +57.14% 49
Yorkshire +14 82 £43,000 +1.18% 56
Scotland +28 75 £70,000 +20.62% 113
Wales -42 33 £60,000 +11.63% 28
Isle of Man - 4 £38,500 - 3
Northern Ireland -81 2 - - 16

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 47 (2.18%) Apache Airflow
2 44 (2.04%) Apache Spark
3 43 (2.00%) Apache
4 35 (1.63%) Confluence
5 32 (1.49%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.93%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.60%) SAS
8 10 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.28%) WinCC
10 5 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 4 (0.19%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.14%) Artix
12 3 (0.14%) IIS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.093%) Cloud Foundry
14 1 (0.046%) FactoryTalk
14 1 (0.046%) OpenStack
14 1 (0.046%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.046%) WebSphere
Applications
1 117 (5.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (1.91%) Simulink
4 35 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 17 (0.79%) SOLIDWORKS
5 17 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.74%) MS Visio
7 11 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 10 (0.46%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.23%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.23%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.19%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.19%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.19%) OrCAD
10 4 (0.19%) Revit
10 4 (0.19%) Sketch
11 3 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.14%) Productboard
11 3 (0.14%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.093%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 41 (1.91%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.46%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.42%) iTrent
4 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
5 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.33%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.33%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.19%) Loan IQ
9 4 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.19%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.14%) SystmOne
11 2 (0.093%) Oracle Payables
11 2 (0.093%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 290 (13.48%) Azure
2 253 (11.76%) AWS
3 161 (7.48%) Power Platform
4 92 (4.28%) GCP
5 77 (3.58%) SaaS
6 69 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
7 63 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 60 (2.79%) GitHub
9 50 (2.32%) Serverless
10 37 (1.72%) Amazon S3
11 36 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
12 33 (1.53%) Entra ID
13 30 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (1.30%) Microsoft Copilot
15 22 (1.02%) Amazon EMR
16 21 (0.98%) Amazon EC2
16 21 (0.98%) Cloud Computing
17 20 (0.93%) Snowflake
18 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Purview
18 19 (0.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 66 (3.07%) Broadband
2 64 (2.97%) Firewall
3 62 (2.88%) DNS
4 41 (1.91%) Wireless
5 35 (1.63%) WAN
6 34 (1.58%) Network Security
6 34 (1.58%) TCP/IP
7 33 (1.53%) VPN
8 25 (1.16%) Ethernet
8 25 (1.16%) LAN
9 22 (1.02%) SD-WAN
10 21 (0.98%) VLAN
11 20 (0.93%) OSPF
12 19 (0.88%) BGP
12 19 (0.88%) Modbus
12 19 (0.88%) MQTT
13 18 (0.84%) Wireshark
14 17 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
15 15 (0.70%) 5G
15 15 (0.70%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (6.83%) Power BI
2 57 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
4 50 (2.32%) Metadata
5 46 (2.14%) Data Lake
6 45 (2.09%) SQL Server
7 42 (1.95%) Tableau
8 35 (1.63%) MongoDB
9 29 (1.35%) Relational Database
10 28 (1.30%) Amazon Athena
11 27 (1.25%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.16%) DynamoDB
13 23 (1.07%) Semantic Layer
14 21 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.88%) Big Data
15 19 (0.88%) MySQL
16 17 (0.79%) NoSQL
17 14 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 14 (0.65%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 130 (6.04%) JIRA
2 109 (5.07%) Git
3 55 (2.56%) Jenkins
4 49 (2.28%) GitLab
5 38 (1.77%) Rational DOORS
6 29 (1.35%) Selenium
7 24 (1.12%) Postman
8 22 (1.02%) Snyk
9 21 (0.98%) Cypress.io
9 21 (0.98%) LabVIEW
10 13 (0.60%) JMeter
11 12 (0.56%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.56%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.51%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.46%) Gatling
13 10 (0.46%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.42%) Zephyr
15 8 (0.37%) Rational Rhapsody
16 7 (0.33%) Hudson
16 7 (0.33%) MLflow
General
1 725 (33.69%) Social Skills
2 567 (26.35%) Finance
3 514 (23.88%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (9.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 202 (9.39%) Aerospace
6 193 (8.97%) Manufacturing
7 186 (8.64%) Electronics
8 125 (5.81%) Law
9 102 (4.74%) Banking
10 88 (4.09%) Public Sector
11 82 (3.81%) Retail
12 81 (3.76%) Marketing
13 74 (3.44%) Pharmaceutical
14 73 (3.39%) Organisational Skills
15 61 (2.83%) Automotive
16 59 (2.74%) Legal
17 57 (2.65%) Telecoms
18 46 (2.14%) Games
19 45 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
20 42 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 389 (18.08%) Senior
2 265 (12.31%) Analyst
3 239 (11.11%) Systems Engineer
4 191 (8.88%) Lead
5 129 (5.99%) Test Engineer
6 117 (5.44%) Architect
7 104 (4.83%) Data Engineer
8 95 (4.41%) Developer
9 82 (3.81%) Consultant
10 80 (3.72%) Business Analyst
11 78 (3.62%) Software Engineer
12 69 (3.21%) Principal Engineer
13 68 (3.16%) Data Analyst
14 63 (2.93%) Validation Engineer
15 50 (2.32%) Embedded Engineer
15 50 (2.32%) Support Engineer
16 48 (2.23%) Electronics Engineer
17 47 (2.18%) Data Scientist
17 47 (2.18%) Network Engineer
18 44 (2.04%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (3.35%) Terraform
2 51 (2.37%) RESTful
3 48 (2.23%) Kafka
3 48 (2.23%) REST
4 41 (1.91%) Node.js
5 33 (1.53%) JSON
6 32 (1.49%) .NET
6 32 (1.49%) Playwright
6 32 (1.49%) XML
7 29 (1.35%) PySpark
8 27 (1.25%) LDAP
8 27 (1.25%) Middleware
9 23 (1.07%) CSS
9 23 (1.07%) React
10 22 (1.02%) HTML
11 21 (0.98%) FastAPI
11 21 (0.98%) ModSecurity
12 20 (0.93%) Swagger
13 19 (0.88%) Regular Expression
13 19 (0.88%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 155 (7.20%) Cloud Native
2 127 (5.90%) Onboarding
3 117 (5.44%) Management Information System
4 83 (3.86%) Product Ownership
5 77 (3.58%) Data Centre
6 62 (2.88%) Embedded Systems
7 59 (2.74%) Data Structures
8 58 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
9 56 (2.60%) Driving Licence
10 55 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
11 53 (2.46%) Algorithms
12 48 (2.23%) Low-Code
13 43 (2.00%) AI Agents
14 42 (1.95%) Life Science
15 40 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
16 39 (1.81%) Robotics
17 38 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
18 36 (1.67%) IoT
19 35 (1.63%) SCADA
19 35 (1.63%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 129 (5.99%) Linux
2 92 (4.28%) Windows
3 35 (1.63%) Windows Server
4 21 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 21 (0.98%) Unix
5 10 (0.46%) Android
6 9 (0.42%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
7 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.23%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.19%) Mac OS X
10 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.093%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.093%) ThreadX
11 2 (0.093%) VMS
11 2 (0.093%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.046%) AIX
12 1 (0.046%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 547 (25.42%) Problem-Solving
2 514 (23.88%) Continuous Improvement
3 425 (19.75%) Agile
4 379 (17.61%) AI
5 342 (15.89%) Verification and Validation
6 304 (14.13%) CI/CD
7 280 (13.01%) Test Automation
8 274 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
9 254 (11.80%) Migration
10 253 (11.76%) Analytics
11 244 (11.34%) Mentoring
12 226 (10.50%) Decision-Making
13 222 (10.32%) Software Engineering
14 203 (9.43%) DevOps
15 188 (8.74%) Machine Learning
16 187 (8.69%) Data Analysis
17 186 (8.64%) Business Intelligence
18 185 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 175 (8.13%) Roadmaps
20 165 (7.67%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 470 (21.84%) Python
2 387 (17.98%) SQL
3 96 (4.46%) Java
4 90 (4.18%) C++
5 82 (3.81%) C
6 64 (2.97%) JavaScript
7 56 (2.60%) MATLAB
8 55 (2.56%) Go
9 54 (2.51%) C#
10 31 (1.44%) Bash
11 29 (1.35%) Embedded C
11 29 (1.35%) PowerShell
12 23 (1.07%) TypeScript
13 22 (1.02%) Scala
14 19 (0.88%) R
15 18 (0.84%) Embedded C++
16 12 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 11 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 9 (0.42%) ABAP
18 9 (0.42%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 469 (21.79%) Degree
2 429 (19.93%) Security Cleared
3 295 (13.71%) SC Cleared
4 129 (5.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (5.02%) DV Cleared
6 87 (4.04%) Master's Degree
7 48 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.77%) PhD
9 36 (1.67%) Chartered Engineer
9 36 (1.67%) CISSP
10 31 (1.44%) HNC
10 31 (1.44%) PMI Certification
11 29 (1.35%) HND
12 28 (1.30%) CISM
13 25 (1.16%) ACCA
14 24 (1.12%) AWS Certification
14 24 (1.12%) CIMA
15 23 (1.07%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
16 19 (0.88%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (14.50%) Data Quality
2 288 (13.38%) QA
3 77 (3.58%) Accessibility
4 51 (2.37%) GDPR
5 37 (1.72%) GRC
6 27 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.07%) IEC 61508
7 23 (1.07%) NIST
8 22 (1.02%) GxP
9 21 (0.98%) SLA
10 18 (0.84%) PMO
11 15 (0.70%) ISO 26262
12 14 (0.65%) GMP
12 14 (0.65%) ISO 9001
12 14 (0.65%) WCAG
13 13 (0.60%) GAAP
13 13 (0.60%) IFRS
14 11 (0.51%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 15288
16 9 (0.42%) Def Stans
System Software
1 84 (3.90%) Firmware
2 77 (3.58%) Docker
3 47 (2.18%) Active Directory
4 37 (1.72%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.98%) vSphere
7 12 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.23%) KVM
9 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.093%) iptables
10 2 (0.093%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.093%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.046%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.046%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 77 (3.58%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.95%) Grafana
3 29 (1.35%) Ansible
4 27 (1.25%) Functional Safety
5 15 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 15 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (0.46%) Cilium
7 8 (0.37%) Puppet
8 7 (0.33%) Kibana
8 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (0.28%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.28%) Nessus
9 6 (0.28%) Nmap
10 5 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 5 (0.23%) SCCM
10 5 (0.23%) WMI
11 4 (0.19%) BMC PATROL
11 4 (0.19%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.19%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.14%) Argo
Vendors
1 273 (12.69%) Microsoft
2 117 (5.44%) SAP
3 95 (4.41%) Oracle
4 60 (2.79%) Salesforce
5 56 (2.60%) Databricks
6 51 (2.37%) Cisco
7 50 (2.32%) ServiceNow
8 43 (2.00%) Google
9 31 (1.44%) EMC
9 31 (1.44%) VMware
10 29 (1.35%) CrowdStrike
11 28 (1.30%) Palo Alto
12 24 (1.12%) Red Hat
13 22 (1.02%) Tenable
14 18 (0.84%) IBM
15 17 (0.79%) Splunk
16 15 (0.70%) McAfee
17 14 (0.65%) Foundry
17 14 (0.65%) Workday
18 13 (0.60%) Siemens