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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 87 186
Rank change year-on-year +8 +99 +24
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,339 1,631 1,134
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.06% 3.30% 1.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.83% 3.72% 1.80%
Number of salaries quoted 1,398 473 445
10th Percentile £35,350 £38,750 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £47,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% -5.23% -9.32%
75th Percentile £70,000 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -0.76%

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 82,630 43,847 63,101
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.77% 88.67% 80.95%
Number of salaries quoted 57,445 24,695 36,468
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 +6 2,156 £57,500 +4.55% 3,856
UK excluding London -11 1,719 £55,000 +4.76% 2,311
Work from Home +120 624 £56,500 -5.83% 2,433
London +68 535 £69,375 -13.28% 1,991
South East -14 486 £62,500 +16.28% 564
North of England +110 448 £55,000 +22.22% 366
North West +113 277 £55,000 +15.35% 221
Midlands -36 253 £48,750 -11.36% 295
South West +16 228 £60,000 +14.18% 339
East of England -53 173 £55,000 -8.33% 348
West Midlands +41 143 £50,000 -9.09% 210
East Midlands -55 110 £46,209 +8.73% 84
Yorkshire +25 86 £43,000 +1.18% 93
North East +5 85 £55,000 +57.14% 62
Scotland +39 83 £70,000 +20.62% 317
Wales -39 40 £70,000 +30.23% 54
Northern Ireland -77 5 - - 64
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 1

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 (2.01%) Apache Spark
2 44 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.71%) Apache
4 35 (1.50%) Confluence
5 34 (1.45%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.86%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.56%) SAS
8 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.34%) WinCC
10 5 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.17%) CMS
12 3 (0.13%) Artix
12 3 (0.13%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.086%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.086%) IIS
14 1 (0.043%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.043%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.043%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 123 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (2.09%) Simulink
4 36 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 18 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
6 17 (0.73%) SOLIDWORKS
7 16 (0.68%) MS Visio
8 14 (0.60%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 8 (0.34%) Revit
11 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
12 5 (0.21%) CANalyzer
12 5 (0.21%) LaTeX
12 5 (0.21%) Mathcad
13 4 (0.17%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.17%) EPLAN
13 4 (0.17%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.17%) Sketch
14 3 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.13%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 42 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (1.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.47%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.38%) iTrent
4 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
5 8 (0.34%) Workday HCM
6 7 (0.30%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.21%) Infor M3
8 5 (0.21%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.13%) Loan IQ
10 3 (0.13%) Maximo
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.13%) SystmOne
11 2 (0.086%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 307 (13.13%) Azure
2 261 (11.16%) AWS
3 173 (7.40%) Power Platform
4 93 (3.98%) GCP
5 75 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
6 73 (3.12%) SaaS
7 64 (2.74%) GitHub
7 64 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
8 61 (2.61%) Serverless
9 44 (1.88%) Amazon S3
10 37 (1.58%) Dynamics 365
11 35 (1.50%) Entra ID
12 33 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
14 27 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
15 25 (1.07%) Microsoft Purview
16 24 (1.03%) Amazon EMR
16 24 (1.03%) Cloud Computing
17 23 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
17 23 (0.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.99%) DNS
2 67 (2.86%) Firewall
3 62 (2.65%) Broadband
4 40 (1.71%) Wireless
5 37 (1.58%) TCP/IP
5 37 (1.58%) WAN
6 36 (1.54%) VPN
7 35 (1.50%) Network Security
8 28 (1.20%) Ethernet
8 28 (1.20%) LAN
9 26 (1.11%) Modbus
9 26 (1.11%) VLAN
10 25 (1.07%) OSPF
11 23 (0.98%) SD-WAN
12 22 (0.94%) BGP
13 21 (0.90%) MQTT
13 21 (0.90%) Wireshark
14 18 (0.77%) 5G
15 16 (0.68%) HTTP
15 16 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 158 (6.76%) Power BI
2 59 (2.52%) Metadata
3 58 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.35%) Data Lake
5 49 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
6 47 (2.01%) SQL Server
7 43 (1.84%) Tableau
8 37 (1.58%) Amazon Athena
9 34 (1.45%) MongoDB
10 31 (1.33%) Relational Database
11 27 (1.15%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.07%) Big Data
12 25 (1.07%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.94%) NoSQL
13 22 (0.94%) Semantic Layer
13 22 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 17 (0.73%) Delta Lake
16 17 (0.73%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 132 (5.64%) JIRA
2 121 (5.17%) Git
3 61 (2.61%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.22%) GitLab
5 42 (1.80%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.33%) Selenium
7 26 (1.11%) LabVIEW
8 25 (1.07%) Postman
9 22 (0.94%) Cypress.io
9 22 (0.94%) Snyk
10 14 (0.60%) Burp Suite
11 13 (0.56%) JMeter
12 11 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.47%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.43%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.38%) Claude Code
14 9 (0.38%) Eclipse
14 9 (0.38%) Gatling
14 9 (0.38%) MLflow
14 9 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 777 (33.22%) Social Skills
2 598 (25.57%) Finance
3 559 (23.90%) Analytical Skills
4 231 (9.88%) Aerospace
5 212 (9.06%) Manufacturing
6 209 (8.94%) Electronics
7 203 (8.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 138 (5.90%) Law
9 99 (4.23%) Banking
10 98 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
11 96 (4.10%) Retail
12 95 (4.06%) Public Sector
13 86 (3.68%) Marketing
14 82 (3.51%) Pharmaceutical
15 80 (3.42%) Telecoms
16 68 (2.91%) Automotive
17 61 (2.61%) Legal
18 45 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
19 43 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
20 41 (1.75%) Games
Job Titles
1 414 (17.70%) Senior
2 307 (13.13%) Systems Engineer
3 265 (11.33%) Analyst
4 205 (8.76%) Lead
5 131 (5.60%) Test Engineer
6 121 (5.17%) Architect
7 115 (4.92%) Data Engineer
8 94 (4.02%) Developer
9 91 (3.89%) Consultant
10 79 (3.38%) Business Analyst
10 79 (3.38%) Software Engineer
11 72 (3.08%) Principal Engineer
12 68 (2.91%) Data Analyst
13 65 (2.78%) Validation Engineer
14 62 (2.65%) Electronics Engineer
15 54 (2.31%) Network Engineer
16 50 (2.14%) Embedded Engineer
17 49 (2.09%) Support Engineer
18 48 (2.05%) Data Scientist
19 43 (1.84%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (3.38%) Terraform
2 54 (2.31%) RESTful
3 52 (2.22%) Kafka
4 49 (2.09%) REST
5 44 (1.88%) Node.js
6 40 (1.71%) PySpark
7 37 (1.58%) Playwright
8 35 (1.50%) JSON
9 34 (1.45%) XML
10 33 (1.41%) .NET
11 27 (1.15%) FastAPI
12 26 (1.11%) CSS
12 26 (1.11%) LDAP
13 25 (1.07%) HTML
13 25 (1.07%) React
14 23 (0.98%) Middleware
15 21 (0.90%) ModSecurity
16 20 (0.86%) Swagger
17 18 (0.77%) OpenID
17 18 (0.77%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 162 (6.93%) Cloud Native
2 123 (5.26%) Management Information System
3 121 (5.17%) Onboarding
4 84 (3.59%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.46%) Data Centre
6 65 (2.78%) Embedded Systems
7 63 (2.69%) Driving Licence
8 59 (2.52%) Data Structures
9 58 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
10 55 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
11 54 (2.31%) Algorithms
12 47 (2.01%) AI Agents
13 45 (1.92%) Life Science
13 45 (1.92%) SCADA
14 44 (1.88%) Low-Code
15 41 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
16 40 (1.71%) Robotics
17 39 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
18 37 (1.58%) IoT
19 32 (1.37%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.77%) Linux
2 91 (3.89%) Windows
3 32 (1.37%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.03%) Unix
5 17 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.43%) Android
7 8 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.21%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
11 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.086%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.086%) VMS
12 2 (0.086%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.043%) AIX
13 1 (0.043%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.043%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 596 (25.48%) Problem-Solving
2 529 (22.62%) Continuous Improvement
3 436 (18.64%) Agile
4 429 (18.34%) Verification and Validation
5 401 (17.14%) AI
6 320 (13.68%) CI/CD
7 303 (12.95%) Stakeholder Management
8 293 (12.53%) Test Automation
9 280 (11.97%) Migration
10 261 (11.16%) Analytics
11 251 (10.73%) Mentoring
12 236 (10.09%) Software Engineering
13 226 (9.66%) Decision-Making
14 215 (9.19%) DevOps
15 208 (8.89%) Data Analysis
16 206 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 201 (8.59%) Business Intelligence
18 197 (8.42%) Machine Learning
19 187 (7.99%) Roadmaps
20 178 (7.61%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 489 (20.91%) Python
2 415 (17.74%) SQL
3 104 (4.45%) Java
4 90 (3.85%) C++
5 84 (3.59%) C
6 70 (2.99%) JavaScript
7 65 (2.78%) MATLAB
8 57 (2.44%) C#
9 52 (2.22%) Go
10 35 (1.50%) Bash
11 32 (1.37%) Embedded C
12 27 (1.15%) PowerShell
13 26 (1.11%) TypeScript
14 24 (1.03%) Scala
15 22 (0.94%) R
16 18 (0.77%) Embedded C++
17 13 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 11 (0.47%) T-SQL
19 10 (0.43%) Shell Script
20 8 (0.34%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 525 (22.45%) Security Cleared
2 507 (21.68%) Degree
3 389 (16.63%) SC Cleared
4 125 (5.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.57%) DV Cleared
6 92 (3.93%) Master's Degree
7 53 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 41 (1.75%) PhD
9 39 (1.67%) Chartered Engineer
10 35 (1.50%) HND
10 35 (1.50%) PMI Certification
11 33 (1.41%) CISSP
12 32 (1.37%) HNC
13 25 (1.07%) Azure Certification
14 24 (1.03%) ACCA
14 24 (1.03%) AWS Certification
14 24 (1.03%) CISM
15 22 (0.94%) PMP
16 21 (0.90%) CIMA
16 21 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (14.79%) Data Quality
2 296 (12.65%) QA
3 84 (3.59%) Accessibility
4 54 (2.31%) GDPR
5 37 (1.58%) GRC
6 30 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (1.20%) GxP
8 22 (0.94%) IEC 61508
8 22 (0.94%) NIST
9 21 (0.90%) SLA
10 16 (0.68%) PMO
11 15 (0.64%) GMP
11 15 (0.64%) ISO 26262
12 14 (0.60%) ISO 9001
13 13 (0.56%) WCAG
14 12 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 12 (0.51%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.43%) ISO 19650
16 9 (0.38%) Def Stans
16 9 (0.38%) JTAG
System Software
1 90 (3.85%) Firmware
2 83 (3.55%) Docker
3 46 (1.97%) Active Directory
4 41 (1.75%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
6 19 (0.81%) vSphere
7 8 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) KVM
10 2 (0.086%) iptables
10 2 (0.086%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.086%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.043%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 79 (3.38%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.80%) Grafana
3 33 (1.41%) Ansible
4 28 (1.20%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.43%) Cilium
8 8 (0.34%) Nessus
8 8 (0.34%) Nmap
8 8 (0.34%) Puppet
9 7 (0.30%) Kibana
9 7 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (0.26%) BMC PATROL
11 5 (0.21%) WMI
12 4 (0.17%) Argo
12 4 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.17%) HP Fortify
12 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.17%) SCCM
13 3 (0.13%) Rancher
Vendors
1 289 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 123 (5.26%) SAP
3 99 (4.23%) Oracle
4 60 (2.57%) Databricks
5 55 (2.35%) Salesforce
6 54 (2.31%) Cisco
7 53 (2.27%) ServiceNow
8 43 (1.84%) Google
9 42 (1.80%) EMC
10 30 (1.28%) CrowdStrike
11 28 (1.20%) Palo Alto
12 25 (1.07%) VMware
13 23 (0.98%) Tenable
14 21 (0.90%) Red Hat
15 20 (0.86%) IBM
16 19 (0.81%) Thales
17 18 (0.77%) Siemens
17 18 (0.77%) Splunk
18 17 (0.73%) Sage
19 15 (0.64%) Autodesk