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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 85 207
Rank change year-on-year -11 +122 -13
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,948 1,705 1,097
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.85% 3.42% 1.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.51% 3.83% 1.63%
Number of salaries quoted 1,116 534 538
10th Percentile £34,875 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £42,215 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -4.76%
75th Percentile £73,750 £70,938 £75,938
90th Percentile £90,000 £88,375 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,500 £52,600 £54,748
% change year-on-year +1.71% -3.92% -3.03%

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 77,641 44,566 67,247
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.69% 89.32% 81.09%
Number of salaries quoted 53,461 25,406 43,850
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,000 £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 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,073 £50,000
% change year-on-year +14.41% -3.85% -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 9 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 9 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 -15 1,775 £55,000 - 1,771
UK excluding London -34 1,345 £53,500 +1.71% 1,127
Work from Home +125 594 £56,000 -6.67% 606
London +72 493 £72,500 -6.45% 770
South East -35 402 £56,000 +9.80% 318
North of England +102 370 £53,625 +12.89% 209
North West +91 212 £55,000 +15.35% 119
Midlands -51 202 £44,000 -20.00% 190
South West -12 149 £52,750 +0.29% 170
East of England -70 128 £61,250 +7.46% 148
West Midlands +9 112 £44,360 -26.07% 118
East Midlands -71 89 £42,500 - 72
North East +11 79 £55,000 +57.14% 44
Yorkshire +7 79 £43,000 +1.18% 49
Scotland +21 65 £55,000 -5.23% 88
Wales -45 28 £47,500 -11.63% 22
Northern Ireland -70 2 - - 4
Isle of Man - 1 £38,500 - 3

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 60 (3.08%) Apache Airflow
2 57 (2.93%) Apache Spark
3 55 (2.82%) Apache
4 34 (1.75%) Confluence
5 32 (1.64%) SharePoint
6 20 (1.03%) ArcGIS
6 20 (1.03%) Jupyter
7 12 (0.62%) SAS
8 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
10 4 (0.21%) Kinematics
10 4 (0.21%) WinCC
11 3 (0.15%) Artix
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.10%) IIS
13 1 (0.051%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.051%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.051%) WebSphere
Applications
1 118 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (1.75%) Simulink
4 33 (1.69%) Microsoft Project
5 27 (1.39%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 13 (0.67%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.26%) LaTeX
10 5 (0.26%) Mathcad
11 4 (0.21%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.21%) CANalyzer
11 4 (0.21%) Sketch
12 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.15%) OrCAD
12 3 (0.15%) Productboard
12 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
13 2 (0.10%) Revit
13 2 (0.10%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 49 (2.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (2.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.51%) Elite 3E
4 10 (0.51%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.46%) iTrent
5 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.41%) Oracle Applications
6 8 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
7 7 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.31%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.26%) SAP MDG-BP
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.21%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.21%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.10%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.10%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.10%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 291 (14.94%) Azure
2 269 (13.81%) AWS
3 166 (8.52%) Power Platform
4 90 (4.62%) GCP
5 79 (4.06%) SaaS
6 67 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
7 57 (2.93%) GitHub
7 57 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 50 (2.57%) Serverless
9 45 (2.31%) Amazon S3
10 39 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
11 29 (1.49%) Entra ID
11 29 (1.49%) Microsoft Copilot
12 28 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
13 22 (1.13%) Amazon EMR
14 21 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
14 21 (1.08%) Cloud Computing
14 21 (1.08%) Snowflake
15 20 (1.03%) PowerApps
16 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.59%) Broadband
2 56 (2.87%) Firewall
3 48 (2.46%) DNS
4 33 (1.69%) Wireless
5 32 (1.64%) TCP/IP
6 30 (1.54%) Network Security
7 27 (1.39%) VPN
7 27 (1.39%) WAN
8 20 (1.03%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.98%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.82%) LAN
11 16 (0.82%) MQTT
11 16 (0.82%) Wireshark
12 15 (0.77%) Internet
13 13 (0.67%) HTTP
14 12 (0.62%) BGP
15 11 (0.56%) 5G
15 11 (0.56%) NGN
15 11 (0.56%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 151 (7.75%) Power BI
2 58 (2.98%) Tableau
3 57 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.52%) Metadata
5 49 (2.52%) SQL Server
6 41 (2.10%) Data Lake
7 34 (1.75%) MongoDB
8 29 (1.49%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.39%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.23%) QGIS
11 23 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
11 23 (1.18%) GIS
11 23 (1.18%) Semantic Layer
12 22 (1.13%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (1.03%) MySQL
14 20 (1.03%) Spark SQL
15 19 (0.98%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 124 (6.37%) JIRA
2 109 (5.60%) Git
3 51 (2.62%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.36%) GitLab
5 38 (1.95%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (1.23%) Selenium
7 22 (1.13%) Snyk
8 21 (1.08%) Postman
9 18 (0.92%) LabVIEW
10 17 (0.87%) Cypress.io
11 14 (0.72%) JMeter
12 13 (0.67%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.67%) IBM UrbanCode
13 10 (0.51%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.51%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.46%) Burp Suite
15 8 (0.41%) MLflow
15 8 (0.41%) Rational Rhapsody
16 7 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 6 (0.31%) Hudson
General
1 662 (33.98%) Social Skills
2 553 (28.39%) Finance
3 477 (24.49%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (9.96%) Aerospace
5 193 (9.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 176 (9.03%) Manufacturing
7 162 (8.32%) Electronics
8 109 (5.60%) Law
9 106 (5.44%) Banking
10 76 (3.90%) Public Sector
11 74 (3.80%) Retail
12 68 (3.49%) Organisational Skills
13 67 (3.44%) Marketing
14 66 (3.39%) Pharmaceutical
15 61 (3.13%) Legal
16 54 (2.77%) Automotive
17 46 (2.36%) Games
18 43 (2.21%) Telecoms
19 35 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
20 34 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 354 (18.17%) Senior
2 268 (13.76%) Analyst
3 179 (9.19%) Lead
4 147 (7.55%) Systems Engineer
5 119 (6.11%) Test Engineer
6 114 (5.85%) Architect
7 103 (5.29%) Consultant
8 99 (5.08%) Data Engineer
9 87 (4.47%) Developer
10 84 (4.31%) Business Analyst
11 69 (3.54%) Software Engineer
12 66 (3.39%) Validation Engineer
13 65 (3.34%) Data Analyst
14 63 (3.23%) Principal Engineer
15 46 (2.36%) Embedded Engineer
15 46 (2.36%) Support Engineer
16 44 (2.26%) Data Scientist
17 40 (2.05%) Electronics Engineer
17 40 (2.05%) IT Manager
18 38 (1.95%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (2.41%) RESTful
2 43 (2.21%) Kafka
3 39 (2.00%) Node.js
3 39 (2.00%) PySpark
4 38 (1.95%) REST
5 31 (1.59%) .NET
5 31 (1.59%) PyTorch
6 30 (1.54%) JSON
6 30 (1.54%) XML
7 26 (1.33%) Middleware
7 26 (1.33%) Playwright
8 24 (1.23%) LDAP
8 24 (1.23%) Pandas
9 21 (1.08%) CSS
10 20 (1.03%) HTML
10 20 (1.03%) React
11 19 (0.98%) Regular Expression
11 19 (0.98%) XMPP
12 17 (0.87%) FastAPI
12 17 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.19%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.78%) Onboarding
3 106 (5.44%) Management Information System
4 71 (3.64%) Algorithms
4 71 (3.64%) Product Ownership
5 66 (3.39%) Data Centre
6 61 (3.13%) Data Structures
7 55 (2.82%) Embedded Systems
8 53 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
9 50 (2.57%) Driving Licence
10 49 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
11 45 (2.31%) Low-Code
12 38 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
13 37 (1.90%) AI Agents
14 36 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
15 35 (1.80%) Life Science
16 33 (1.69%) Video\Live Streaming
17 32 (1.64%) Robotics
18 31 (1.59%) IoT
19 30 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 123 (6.31%) Linux
2 88 (4.52%) Windows
3 34 (1.75%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.98%) Unix
6 8 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.31%) Android
7 6 (0.31%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.21%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS X
9 2 (0.10%) AIX
9 2 (0.10%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.10%) ThreadX
9 2 (0.10%) VMS
9 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.051%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 509 (26.13%) Problem-Solving
2 482 (24.74%) Continuous Improvement
3 416 (21.36%) Agile
4 375 (19.25%) AI
5 302 (15.50%) CI/CD
6 274 (14.07%) Analytics
7 257 (13.19%) Stakeholder Management
8 248 (12.73%) Test Automation
9 243 (12.47%) Migration
10 232 (11.91%) Mentoring
11 224 (11.50%) Verification and Validation
12 223 (11.45%) Decision-Making
13 203 (10.42%) Data Analysis
13 203 (10.42%) Software Engineering
14 195 (10.01%) Machine Learning
15 192 (9.86%) DevOps
16 181 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
17 177 (9.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 172 (8.83%) ERP
19 170 (8.73%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 483 (24.79%) Python
2 381 (19.56%) SQL
3 90 (4.62%) Java
4 86 (4.41%) C++
5 78 (4.00%) C
6 58 (2.98%) JavaScript
7 57 (2.93%) Go
8 52 (2.67%) C#
9 49 (2.52%) MATLAB
10 29 (1.49%) Bash
11 28 (1.44%) PowerShell
12 26 (1.33%) Embedded C
13 21 (1.08%) Scala
14 20 (1.03%) TypeScript
15 18 (0.92%) Embedded C++
15 18 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 15 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 13 (0.67%) R
18 10 (0.51%) ABAP
18 10 (0.51%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 418 (21.46%) Degree
2 294 (15.09%) Security Cleared
3 167 (8.57%) SC Cleared
4 141 (7.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (5.34%) DV Cleared
6 80 (4.11%) Master's Degree
7 43 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (1.80%) CISSP
9 34 (1.75%) Chartered Engineer
10 32 (1.64%) PhD
11 28 (1.44%) CISM
11 28 (1.44%) HNC
11 28 (1.44%) PMI Certification
12 26 (1.33%) ACCA
12 26 (1.33%) CIMA
13 23 (1.18%) AWS Certification
14 22 (1.13%) HND
15 20 (1.03%) SANS
16 19 (0.98%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.98%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (16.07%) Data Quality
2 269 (13.81%) QA
3 92 (4.72%) Accessibility
4 57 (2.93%) GDPR
5 38 (1.95%) GRC
6 27 (1.39%) IEC 61508
7 25 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (1.23%) NIST
9 21 (1.08%) SLA
10 18 (0.92%) PMO
11 16 (0.82%) GxP
12 15 (0.77%) GAAP
12 15 (0.77%) IFRS
12 15 (0.77%) ISO 26262
12 15 (0.77%) WCAG
13 13 (0.67%) GMP
13 13 (0.67%) ISO 9001
14 11 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 11 (0.56%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.51%) COBIT
System Software
1 79 (4.06%) Docker
2 76 (3.90%) Firmware
3 43 (2.21%) Active Directory
4 30 (1.54%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (1.13%) vSphere
7 19 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
8 8 (0.41%) KVM
9 5 (0.26%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.10%) iptables
11 2 (0.10%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.051%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.051%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 81 (4.16%) Kubernetes
2 75 (3.85%) Terraform
3 40 (2.05%) Grafana
4 27 (1.39%) Ansible
5 26 (1.33%) Functional Safety
6 16 (0.82%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.56%) Puppet
9 10 (0.51%) Cilium
10 8 (0.41%) SCCM
11 7 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 7 (0.36%) Kibana
12 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (0.21%) Argo
13 4 (0.21%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.21%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.21%) Nessus
13 4 (0.21%) Nmap
13 4 (0.21%) WMI
14 3 (0.15%) Rancher
Vendors
1 271 (13.91%) Microsoft
2 124 (6.37%) SAP
3 108 (5.54%) Oracle
4 60 (3.08%) Salesforce
5 51 (2.62%) Databricks
6 44 (2.26%) ServiceNow
7 42 (2.16%) Google
8 38 (1.95%) Cisco
8 38 (1.95%) VMware
9 36 (1.85%) Red Hat
10 29 (1.49%) CrowdStrike
11 27 (1.39%) Palo Alto
12 25 (1.28%) EMC
13 22 (1.13%) Tenable
14 18 (0.92%) IBM
15 17 (0.87%) Foundry
16 15 (0.77%) McAfee
16 15 (0.77%) Splunk
17 14 (0.72%) Adobe
18 13 (0.67%) Workday