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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 85 202
Rank change year-on-year -9 +117 -13
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,966 1,702 1,114
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.85% 3.42% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.52% 3.83% 1.64%
Number of salaries quoted 1,137 532 538
10th Percentile £34,900 £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% -5.51%
75th Percentile £73,750 £70,313 £75,000
90th Percentile £89,250 £88,625 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,238 £52,600 £54,748
% change year-on-year +3.11% -3.92% -4.79%

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 78,019 44,452 67,790
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.52% 89.29% 81.16%
Number of salaries quoted 53,759 25,267 43,796
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% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -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 11 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 11 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 -13 1,794 £55,000 - 1,900
UK excluding London -33 1,366 £54,238 +3.11% 1,216
Work from Home +112 593 £56,000 -6.67% 659
London +78 494 £73,000 -5.81% 821
South East -33 404 £56,000 +8.21% 342
North of England +101 377 £53,625 +12.89% 224
North West +88 219 £55,000 +15.35% 131
Midlands -55 203 £44,000 -20.00% 193
South West -18 155 £53,000 +0.76% 195
East of England -74 130 £61,250 +7.46% 160
West Midlands +5 111 £44,720 -22.23% 118
East Midlands -68 91 £42,500 - 75
Yorkshire +12 79 £43,000 +1.18% 50
North East +3 79 £55,000 +57.14% 46
Scotland +25 66 £55,000 -5.23% 93
Wales -38 30 £47,500 -11.63% 27
Northern Ireland -70 2 - - 5
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 (3.05%) Apache Airflow
2 59 (3.00%) Apache Spark
3 56 (2.85%) Apache
4 34 (1.73%) Confluence
5 31 (1.58%) SharePoint
6 20 (1.02%) Jupyter
7 18 (0.92%) ArcGIS
8 12 (0.61%) SAS
9 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
10 5 (0.25%) WinCC
11 4 (0.20%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.15%) Artix
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.10%) IIS
14 1 (0.051%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.051%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.051%) WebSphere
Applications
1 118 (6.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.46%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (1.73%) Microsoft Project
3 34 (1.73%) Simulink
4 27 (1.37%) MS Visio
5 17 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 14 (0.71%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.25%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.25%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.20%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.20%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.20%) Sketch
11 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.15%) OrCAD
11 3 (0.15%) Productboard
11 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.10%) Revit
12 2 (0.10%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 49 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.09%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.56%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.51%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.46%) Elite 3E
5 9 (0.46%) iTrent
5 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.41%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.31%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG-BP
9 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.20%) SAP MM
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 (14.80%) Azure
2 269 (13.68%) AWS
3 163 (8.29%) Power Platform
4 89 (4.53%) GCP
5 79 (4.02%) SaaS
6 67 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
7 58 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 57 (2.90%) GitHub
9 50 (2.54%) Serverless
10 45 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 38 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
12 30 (1.53%) Entra ID
13 29 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
14 28 (1.42%) GitHub Actions
15 22 (1.12%) Amazon EMR
16 21 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
16 21 (1.07%) Snowflake
17 20 (1.02%) Cloud Computing
18 19 (0.97%) Microsoft Purview
19 18 (0.92%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.56%) Broadband
2 56 (2.85%) Firewall
3 50 (2.54%) DNS
4 33 (1.68%) Wireless
5 31 (1.58%) Network Security
5 31 (1.58%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.42%) WAN
7 27 (1.37%) VPN
8 21 (1.07%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.97%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.86%) LAN
10 17 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.81%) MQTT
12 15 (0.76%) Internet
12 15 (0.76%) Wireshark
13 14 (0.71%) BGP
14 13 (0.66%) HTTP
15 12 (0.61%) OSPF
16 11 (0.56%) NGN
16 11 (0.56%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (7.53%) Power BI
2 58 (2.95%) Tableau
3 57 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.49%) Metadata
5 49 (2.49%) SQL Server
6 43 (2.19%) Data Lake
7 34 (1.73%) MongoDB
8 29 (1.48%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.37%) BigQuery
10 23 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
10 23 (1.17%) Semantic Layer
11 22 (1.12%) DynamoDB
11 22 (1.12%) QGIS
12 21 (1.07%) GIS
12 21 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
13 20 (1.02%) MySQL
13 20 (1.02%) Spark SQL
14 17 (0.86%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 124 (6.31%) JIRA
2 109 (5.54%) Git
3 51 (2.59%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.34%) GitLab
5 38 (1.93%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (1.22%) Selenium
7 22 (1.12%) Snyk
8 21 (1.07%) Postman
9 17 (0.86%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.86%) LabVIEW
10 14 (0.71%) JMeter
11 13 (0.66%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.66%) IBM UrbanCode
12 10 (0.51%) REST Assured
12 10 (0.51%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.46%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.41%) MLflow
14 8 (0.41%) Rational Rhapsody
15 7 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 6 (0.31%) Hudson
General
1 666 (33.88%) Social Skills
2 555 (28.23%) Finance
3 478 (24.31%) Analytical Skills
4 194 (9.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 191 (9.72%) Aerospace
6 177 (9.00%) Manufacturing
7 161 (8.19%) Electronics
8 110 (5.60%) Law
9 107 (5.44%) Banking
10 76 (3.87%) Public Sector
11 75 (3.81%) Retail
12 70 (3.56%) Marketing
13 68 (3.46%) Organisational Skills
13 68 (3.46%) Pharmaceutical
14 60 (3.05%) Legal
15 52 (2.64%) Automotive
16 46 (2.34%) Games
17 44 (2.24%) Telecoms
18 36 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
19 35 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 359 (18.26%) Senior
2 266 (13.53%) Analyst
3 182 (9.26%) Lead
4 159 (8.09%) Systems Engineer
5 118 (6.00%) Test Engineer
6 114 (5.80%) Architect
7 100 (5.09%) Consultant
7 100 (5.09%) Data Engineer
8 87 (4.43%) Developer
9 85 (4.32%) Business Analyst
10 70 (3.56%) Software Engineer
11 66 (3.36%) Validation Engineer
12 64 (3.26%) Data Analyst
12 64 (3.26%) Principal Engineer
13 46 (2.34%) Embedded Engineer
13 46 (2.34%) Support Engineer
14 45 (2.29%) Data Scientist
15 41 (2.09%) Electronics Engineer
16 40 (2.03%) IT Manager
17 38 (1.93%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (2.39%) RESTful
2 43 (2.19%) Kafka
3 39 (1.98%) Node.js
3 39 (1.98%) PySpark
4 38 (1.93%) REST
5 30 (1.53%) .NET
5 30 (1.53%) JSON
5 30 (1.53%) XML
6 29 (1.48%) PyTorch
7 26 (1.32%) Middleware
7 26 (1.32%) Playwright
8 25 (1.27%) Pandas
9 24 (1.22%) LDAP
10 21 (1.07%) CSS
11 20 (1.02%) HTML
11 20 (1.02%) React
12 19 (0.97%) Regular Expression
12 19 (0.97%) XMPP
13 17 (0.86%) FastAPI
13 17 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 143 (7.27%) Cloud Native
2 133 (6.77%) Onboarding
3 107 (5.44%) Management Information System
4 74 (3.76%) Product Ownership
5 69 (3.51%) Algorithms
5 69 (3.51%) Data Centre
6 60 (3.05%) Data Structures
7 55 (2.80%) Embedded Systems
8 53 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
9 51 (2.59%) Driving Licence
10 49 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
11 45 (2.29%) Low-Code
12 37 (1.88%) AI Agents
12 37 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
12 37 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.83%) Life Science
14 34 (1.73%) Video\Live Streaming
15 33 (1.68%) Robotics
16 31 (1.58%) IoT
17 30 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 122 (6.21%) Linux
2 88 (4.48%) Windows
3 34 (1.73%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.02%) Unix
6 8 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.31%) Android
7 6 (0.31%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.20%) 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
1 511 (25.99%) Problem-Solving
2 483 (24.57%) Continuous Improvement
3 413 (21.01%) Agile
4 376 (19.13%) AI
5 304 (15.46%) CI/CD
6 274 (13.94%) Analytics
7 255 (12.97%) Stakeholder Management
8 249 (12.67%) Test Automation
9 245 (12.46%) Migration
10 237 (12.05%) Verification and Validation
11 234 (11.90%) Mentoring
12 222 (11.29%) Decision-Making
13 206 (10.48%) Software Engineering
14 203 (10.33%) Data Analysis
15 197 (10.02%) Machine Learning
16 191 (9.72%) DevOps
17 180 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
18 176 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 173 (8.80%) ERP
19 173 (8.80%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 483 (24.57%) Python
2 383 (19.48%) SQL
3 91 (4.63%) Java
4 85 (4.32%) C++
5 77 (3.92%) C
6 58 (2.95%) JavaScript
7 56 (2.85%) Go
8 51 (2.59%) C#
9 49 (2.49%) MATLAB
10 27 (1.37%) Bash
10 27 (1.37%) PowerShell
11 26 (1.32%) Embedded C
12 22 (1.12%) Scala
13 20 (1.02%) TypeScript
14 18 (0.92%) Embedded C++
15 17 (0.86%) T-SQL
16 13 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 13 (0.66%) R
17 10 (0.51%) ABAP
17 10 (0.51%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 424 (21.57%) Degree
2 309 (15.72%) Security Cleared
3 183 (9.31%) SC Cleared
4 141 (7.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (5.29%) DV Cleared
6 80 (4.07%) Master's Degree
7 44 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.73%) Chartered Engineer
8 34 (1.73%) CISSP
9 33 (1.68%) PhD
10 30 (1.53%) HNC
11 29 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 27 (1.37%) CISM
13 26 (1.32%) ACCA
13 26 (1.32%) CIMA
14 24 (1.22%) HND
15 23 (1.17%) AWS Certification
16 20 (1.02%) Azure Certification
16 20 (1.02%) SANS
17 18 (0.92%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 310 (15.77%) Data Quality
2 268 (13.63%) QA
3 91 (4.63%) Accessibility
4 57 (2.90%) GDPR
5 38 (1.93%) GRC
6 27 (1.37%) IEC 61508
7 25 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (1.22%) NIST
9 21 (1.07%) SLA
10 18 (0.92%) PMO
11 17 (0.86%) GxP
12 15 (0.76%) GAAP
12 15 (0.76%) IFRS
12 15 (0.76%) ISO 26262
12 15 (0.76%) WCAG
13 13 (0.66%) GMP
14 12 (0.61%) ISO 9001
15 11 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 15288
15 11 (0.56%) SOC 2
16 10 (0.51%) COBIT
System Software
1 79 (4.02%) Docker
2 77 (3.92%) Firmware
3 44 (2.24%) Active Directory
4 31 (1.58%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (1.12%) vSphere
7 18 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
8 7 (0.36%) KVM
9 5 (0.25%) 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 80 (4.07%) Kubernetes
2 74 (3.76%) Terraform
3 40 (2.03%) Grafana
4 26 (1.32%) Ansible
4 26 (1.32%) Functional Safety
5 16 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.51%) Cilium
7 10 (0.51%) Puppet
8 8 (0.41%) SCCM
9 7 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 7 (0.36%) Kibana
10 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.20%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.20%) Nessus
11 4 (0.20%) Nmap
11 4 (0.20%) WMI
12 3 (0.15%) Argo
12 3 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 270 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 124 (6.31%) SAP
3 109 (5.54%) Oracle
4 58 (2.95%) Salesforce
5 53 (2.70%) Databricks
6 45 (2.29%) ServiceNow
7 42 (2.14%) Google
8 40 (2.03%) Cisco
9 37 (1.88%) VMware
10 36 (1.83%) Red Hat
11 29 (1.48%) CrowdStrike
12 27 (1.37%) Palo Alto
13 26 (1.32%) EMC
14 22 (1.12%) Tenable
15 18 (0.92%) IBM
16 17 (0.86%) Foundry
17 15 (0.76%) McAfee
17 15 (0.76%) Splunk
18 14 (0.71%) Adobe
18 14 (0.71%) Siemens