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 25 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 97 173 197
Rank change year-on-year +76 +24 -47
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,510 1,045 991
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 3.06% 1.52% 1.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 1.85% 1.90%
Number of salaries quoted 448 395 593
10th Percentile £38,441 £37,225 £37,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £46,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,349 £56,509 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.05% -13.06% +8.33%
75th Percentile £76,563 £75,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,750 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,600 £52,600 £57,500
% change year-on-year - -8.52% +19.79%

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 43,524 56,579 52,198
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 88.17% 82.42% 94.03%
Number of salaries quoted 24,968 30,074 40,068
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,750 £45,000 £44,744
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 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,000 £54,000 £52,700
% change year-on-year -14.81% +2.47% +0.38%

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 25 October 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 25 October 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 +90 1,415 £55,000 - 1,141
UK excluding London +83 1,211 £52,600 - 979
South East +61 392 £42,500 -26.09% 355
East of England +77 332 £59,500 +8.18% 144
London +57 244 £79,500 +13.57% 374
Midlands +130 242 £55,000 +10.00% 110
East Midlands +109 191 £42,500 -10.53% 38
Work from Home +14 190 £65,000 - 537
North of England -27 119 £47,683 +2.34% 158
North West -34 75 £52,500 +10.10% 110
South West +22 73 £52,600 -12.33% 154
West Midlands +44 51 £55,000 +10.00% 71
Scotland +4 46 £60,000 +6.18% 27
Yorkshire -2 30 £42,500 +6.25% 33
North East +8 14 £35,000 -26.70% 16
Wales +26 10 £62,500 +41.04% 36
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 22

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 (1.59%) Confluence
2 15 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
2 15 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 10 (0.66%) SugarCRM
4 8 (0.53%) Apache
5 6 (0.40%) CMS
5 6 (0.40%) SAS
5 6 (0.40%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.20%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.066%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.066%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.066%) FileNet
8 1 (0.066%) Luigi
8 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.066%) WordPress
Applications
1 48 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (2.32%) Simulink
4 19 (1.26%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.93%) Mathcad
6 9 (0.60%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.53%) Blender
7 8 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 5 (0.33%) SOLIDWORKS
9 4 (0.26%) Revit
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.13%) LaTeX
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.13%) Weka
11 1 (0.066%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.066%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.066%) GNU Octave
11 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 27 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
4 5 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
4 5 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
4 5 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.26%) SAP BPC
5 4 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.13%) Endur
7 2 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 2 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.13%) Primavera
7 2 (0.13%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.13%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 115 (7.62%) Azure
2 94 (6.23%) AWS
3 83 (5.50%) Power Platform
4 40 (2.65%) SaaS
5 34 (2.25%) GCP
6 30 (1.99%) Snowflake
7 23 (1.52%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (1.46%) Amazon S3
9 18 (1.19%) GitHub
10 17 (1.13%) Serverless
11 15 (0.99%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (0.99%) dbt
11 15 (0.99%) Dynamics 365
12 14 (0.93%) Datadog
12 14 (0.93%) Microsoft 365
13 12 (0.79%) Amazon SageMaker
14 11 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
15 10 (0.66%) Microsoft Purview
16 8 (0.53%) Amazon EKS
17 7 (0.46%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 684 (45.30%) 5G
2 676 (44.77%) Wi-Fi
2 676 (44.77%) Wireless
3 674 (44.64%) Bluetooth
3 674 (44.64%) GSM
3 674 (44.64%) LTE
3 674 (44.64%) UMTS
4 16 (1.06%) Ethernet
4 16 (1.06%) LAN
5 14 (0.93%) Firewall
6 13 (0.86%) WAN
7 12 (0.79%) Modbus
8 11 (0.73%) Profibus
9 10 (0.66%) SD-WAN
10 8 (0.53%) Internet
11 7 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
12 6 (0.40%) Network Security
13 5 (0.33%) BGP
13 5 (0.33%) NX-OS
13 5 (0.33%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (5.17%) Power BI
2 47 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
2 47 (3.11%) Tableau
3 26 (1.72%) Metadata
4 25 (1.66%) SQL Server
5 20 (1.32%) Data Lake
6 19 (1.26%) BigQuery
7 16 (1.06%) Big Data
8 12 (0.79%) NoSQL
8 12 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
9 9 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
9 9 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
9 9 (0.60%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.53%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.53%) QGIS
11 7 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
11 7 (0.46%) BusinessObjects
11 7 (0.46%) MySQL
12 6 (0.40%) GIS
12 6 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 66 (4.37%) JIRA
2 44 (2.91%) Git
3 31 (2.05%) Rational DOORS
4 27 (1.79%) Jenkins
5 16 (1.06%) Postman
6 12 (0.79%) Selenium
7 11 (0.73%) GitLab
8 10 (0.66%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.66%) JMeter
9 8 (0.53%) SoapUI
10 7 (0.46%) Locust
11 6 (0.40%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.40%) MLflow
12 5 (0.33%) LoadRunner
12 5 (0.33%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.33%) TestNG
12 5 (0.33%) Zephyr
13 4 (0.26%) Spinnaker
13 4 (0.26%) TestRail
13 4 (0.26%) webpack
General
1 728 (48.21%) Electronics
2 298 (19.74%) Social Skills
3 236 (15.63%) Finance
4 160 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
5 71 (4.70%) Law
6 58 (3.84%) Manufacturing
7 47 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
8 44 (2.91%) Marketing
9 38 (2.52%) Banking
10 37 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
11 34 (2.25%) Retail
12 33 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
13 28 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
14 27 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
15 26 (1.72%) Financial Institution
16 25 (1.66%) Legal
17 24 (1.59%) Billing
17 24 (1.59%) Telecoms
18 23 (1.52%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 702 (46.49%) Test Engineer
2 680 (45.03%) Electronics Engineer
3 675 (44.70%) Electronics Test Engineer
4 116 (7.68%) Analyst
5 110 (7.28%) Senior
6 104 (6.89%) Lead
7 68 (4.50%) Systems Engineer
8 42 (2.78%) Data Analyst
9 38 (2.52%) Data Engineer
10 37 (2.45%) Business Analyst
10 37 (2.45%) Support Engineer
11 31 (2.05%) Architect
12 28 (1.85%) Developer
13 27 (1.79%) Administrator
13 27 (1.79%) Applications Engineer
14 25 (1.66%) Applications Support
15 24 (1.59%) Data Quality Analyst
15 24 (1.59%) Quality Analyst
16 23 (1.52%) Team Leader
17 21 (1.39%) Hardware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (1.26%) Kafka
2 18 (1.19%) Middleware
3 16 (1.06%) REST
4 15 (0.99%) JSON
5 14 (0.93%) scikit-learn
5 14 (0.93%) XML
6 13 (0.86%) Pandas
7 11 (0.73%) PyTorch
7 11 (0.73%) TensorFlow
8 10 (0.66%) Oracle Fusion
8 10 (0.66%) PySpark
9 8 (0.53%) HTML
9 8 (0.53%) NumPy
9 8 (0.53%) React
10 7 (0.46%) Gherkin
10 7 (0.46%) Playwright
11 6 (0.40%) Apache NiFi
11 6 (0.40%) CSS
11 6 (0.40%) Spring Boot
11 6 (0.40%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 682 (45.17%) Driving Licence
2 64 (4.24%) Management Information System
3 44 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
4 38 (2.52%) Product Ownership
5 33 (2.19%) Life Science
6 32 (2.12%) Algorithms
7 30 (1.99%) Onboarding
8 27 (1.79%) Operational Technology
9 19 (1.26%) SCADA
10 18 (1.19%) Data Structures
11 17 (1.13%) Legacy Systems
12 16 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 14 (0.93%) Credit Risk
14 13 (0.86%) FPGA
15 12 (0.79%) Biopharmaceutical
16 11 (0.73%) Embedded Systems
16 11 (0.73%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 10 (0.66%) Data Centre
18 9 (0.60%) GNSS
18 9 (0.60%) Self-Driving Car
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.05%) Windows
2 28 (1.85%) Linux
3 14 (0.93%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (0.33%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.26%) Unix
7 3 (0.20%) VMS
8 2 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
8 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.066%) AIX
9 1 (0.066%) Android
9 1 (0.066%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.066%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 791 (52.38%) Verification and Validation
2 747 (49.47%) Mentoring
3 713 (47.22%) Test Strategy
4 697 (46.16%) Coaching
5 686 (45.43%) Customer Requirements
6 231 (15.30%) Problem-Solving
7 208 (13.77%) Agile
8 126 (8.34%) Data Validation
9 121 (8.01%) Migration
10 112 (7.42%) Analytics
11 108 (7.15%) Continuous Improvement
12 97 (6.42%) Data Analysis
13 95 (6.29%) ETL
14 94 (6.23%) Data Management
15 91 (6.03%) Test Automation
16 90 (5.96%) Business Intelligence
17 88 (5.83%) Mathematics
18 87 (5.76%) Software Engineering
18 87 (5.76%) Systems Engineering
19 85 (5.63%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 199 (13.18%) Python
2 161 (10.66%) SQL
3 50 (3.31%) MATLAB
4 37 (2.45%) Java
5 33 (2.19%) C
5 33 (2.19%) C++
6 16 (1.06%) PowerShell
7 15 (0.99%) R
8 14 (0.93%) JavaScript
9 11 (0.73%) Bash
9 11 (0.73%) Ladder Logic
9 11 (0.73%) T-SQL
10 10 (0.66%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.40%) C#
11 6 (0.40%) TypeScript
12 5 (0.33%) Scala
13 4 (0.26%) Go
14 3 (0.20%) Bicep
14 3 (0.20%) Google Apps Script
14 3 (0.20%) PROC SQL
Qualifications
1 973 (64.44%) Degree
2 692 (45.83%) HND
3 71 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
4 67 (4.44%) Master's Degree
5 63 (4.17%) Security Cleared
6 44 (2.91%) SC Cleared
7 37 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (2.19%) HNC
9 25 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
10 20 (1.32%) PhD
11 15 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
12 14 (0.93%) CCNA
13 13 (0.86%) ACCA
13 13 (0.86%) CCNP
14 11 (0.73%) DV Cleared
15 10 (0.66%) CCIE
15 10 (0.66%) Network+ Certification
16 9 (0.60%) CIMA
16 9 (0.60%) Numerate Degree
17 8 (0.53%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (7.95%) Data Quality
2 112 (7.42%) QA
3 41 (2.72%) GxP
4 40 (2.65%) Accessibility
5 33 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 30 (1.99%) SLA
7 18 (1.19%) GDPR
8 13 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 11 (0.73%) ISO 20022
9 11 (0.73%) SEPA
10 10 (0.66%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.46%) TARGET2
12 7 (0.46%) WCAG
13 6 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 6 (0.40%) NIST
14 5 (0.33%) ARP4761
15 4 (0.26%) NCSC
16 3 (0.20%) AUTOSAR
16 3 (0.20%) JTAG
System Software
1 37 (2.45%) Docker
2 30 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.72%) Firmware
4 16 (1.06%) Active Directory
5 12 (0.79%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.40%) vSphere
7 5 (0.33%) vCloud
7 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.20%) Apache Flume
8 3 (0.20%) HDFS
9 2 (0.13%) Ceph
9 2 (0.13%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.13%) Lustre
9 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.066%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.066%) Postfix
10 1 (0.066%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 30 (1.99%) Kubernetes
2 24 (1.59%) Terraform
3 23 (1.52%) Grafana
4 17 (1.13%) Ansible
5 12 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
6 5 (0.33%) Kubeflow
6 5 (0.33%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.26%) Rundeck
8 3 (0.20%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.20%) Kibana
8 3 (0.20%) logstash
8 3 (0.20%) Oozie
9 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.13%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.066%) Argo
10 1 (0.066%) Nessus
Vendors
1 89 (5.89%) Microsoft
2 56 (3.71%) SAP
3 35 (2.32%) VMware
4 33 (2.19%) Oracle
5 25 (1.66%) Cisco
6 23 (1.52%) IBM
6 23 (1.52%) Salesforce
7 14 (0.93%) MathWorks
8 12 (0.79%) Allen-Bradley
8 12 (0.79%) CheckPoint
8 12 (0.79%) F5
8 12 (0.79%) ServiceNow
8 12 (0.79%) Siemens
9 11 (0.73%) Rockwell
10 9 (0.60%) Databricks
11 8 (0.53%) Foundry
11 8 (0.53%) Informatica
11 8 (0.53%) Red Hat
11 8 (0.53%) Splunk
12 7 (0.46%) EMC