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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 89 189
Rank change year-on-year +6 +100 +21
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,209 1,639 1,117
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.99% 3.32% 1.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.72% 3.76% 1.76%
Number of salaries quoted 1,327 493 459
10th Percentile £36,150 £38,750 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,625 £41,250 £47,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -5.23% -9.32%
75th Percentile £71,250 £75,000 £75,625
90th Percentile £86,500 £89,750 £94,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.56% -4.36% -4.35%

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 81,075 43,637 63,564
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.98% 88.47% 80.58%
Number of salaries quoted 56,400 24,673 38,159
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,500 £36,250 £41,500
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 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,700 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -8.65% -4.74%

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 5 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 5 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 0 2,044 £57,500 +4.55% 3,353
UK excluding London -19 1,606 £55,000 +4.56% 2,124
Work from Home +116 610 £56,000 -6.67% 1,278
London +65 524 £70,000 -12.50% 1,719
South East -15 466 £60,000 +11.63% 519
North of England +100 411 £55,000 +15.79% 312
North West +96 245 £55,000 +15.35% 186
Midlands -38 235 £47,500 -13.64% 275
South West +18 211 £55,000 +4.56% 329
East of England -57 164 £56,250 -6.25% 328
West Midlands +28 134 £47,500 -13.64% 188
East Midlands -60 100 £46,209 +8.73% 87
Yorkshire +3 83 £43,000 +1.18% 77
North East -1 83 £55,000 +57.14% 57
Scotland +34 78 £70,000 +20.62% 278
Wales -38 35 £60,000 +11.63% 54
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 -
Northern Ireland -80 2 - - 68

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 45 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
2 44 (1.99%) Apache Spark
3 41 (1.86%) Apache
4 34 (1.54%) Confluence
5 33 (1.49%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.91%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.59%) SAS
8 11 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.32%) WinCC
10 5 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 3 (0.14%) Artix
11 3 (0.14%) Kinematics
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.091%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.091%) IIS
13 1 (0.045%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.045%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.045%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.045%) WebSphere
Applications
1 117 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (2.04%) Simulink
4 36 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 18 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
6 17 (0.77%) SOLIDWORKS
7 15 (0.68%) MS Visio
8 11 (0.50%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 5 (0.23%) CANalyzer
9 5 (0.23%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.23%) Mathcad
9 5 (0.23%) Revit
10 4 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.18%) OrCAD
10 4 (0.18%) Sketch
11 3 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.14%) Navisworks
11 3 (0.14%) Productboard
11 3 (0.14%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 42 (1.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.45%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.41%) iTrent
4 9 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.32%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.32%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.32%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.32%) Workday HCM
7 6 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.18%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.14%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Loan IQ
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.14%) SystmOne
11 2 (0.091%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 296 (13.40%) Azure
2 251 (11.36%) AWS
3 168 (7.61%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.21%) GCP
5 77 (3.49%) SaaS
6 72 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
7 64 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
8 61 (2.76%) GitHub
9 49 (2.22%) Serverless
10 38 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
11 36 (1.63%) Amazon S3
12 35 (1.58%) Entra ID
13 31 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
15 24 (1.09%) Cloud Computing
16 22 (1.00%) Amazon EMR
16 22 (1.00%) Microsoft Purview
17 21 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
17 21 (0.95%) PowerApps
18 20 (0.91%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 66 (2.99%) DNS
1 66 (2.99%) Firewall
2 64 (2.90%) Broadband
3 42 (1.90%) Wireless
4 36 (1.63%) VPN
4 36 (1.63%) WAN
5 35 (1.58%) Network Security
6 34 (1.54%) TCP/IP
7 27 (1.22%) Ethernet
8 26 (1.18%) LAN
9 23 (1.04%) SD-WAN
10 22 (1.00%) OSPF
10 22 (1.00%) VLAN
11 21 (0.95%) Modbus
12 20 (0.91%) BGP
12 20 (0.91%) MQTT
13 19 (0.86%) Wireshark
14 17 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
15 15 (0.68%) 5G
15 15 (0.68%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (6.93%) Power BI
2 57 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (2.40%) Metadata
4 51 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
5 47 (2.13%) Data Lake
6 45 (2.04%) SQL Server
7 43 (1.95%) Tableau
8 34 (1.54%) MongoDB
9 31 (1.40%) Relational Database
10 29 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
11 27 (1.22%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.13%) DynamoDB
13 22 (1.00%) Big Data
13 22 (1.00%) Semantic Layer
14 21 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
16 18 (0.81%) NoSQL
17 17 (0.77%) MySQL
18 16 (0.72%) Power Query
19 14 (0.63%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 128 (5.79%) JIRA
2 109 (4.93%) Git
3 57 (2.58%) Jenkins
4 50 (2.26%) GitLab
5 37 (1.67%) Rational DOORS
6 28 (1.27%) Selenium
7 24 (1.09%) Postman
8 23 (1.04%) LabVIEW
9 22 (1.00%) Snyk
10 21 (0.95%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.59%) Burp Suite
12 12 (0.54%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.54%) JMeter
13 11 (0.50%) REST Assured
14 10 (0.45%) TeamCity
15 9 (0.41%) Gatling
15 9 (0.41%) Zephyr
16 8 (0.36%) Rational Rhapsody
17 7 (0.32%) Hudson
17 7 (0.32%) MLflow
General
1 738 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 578 (26.17%) Finance
3 524 (23.72%) Analytical Skills
4 206 (9.33%) Aerospace
4 206 (9.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 197 (8.92%) Manufacturing
6 193 (8.74%) Electronics
7 128 (5.79%) Law
8 100 (4.53%) Banking
9 89 (4.03%) Public Sector
10 82 (3.71%) Marketing
11 80 (3.62%) Retail
12 79 (3.58%) Organisational Skills
13 78 (3.53%) Pharmaceutical
14 63 (2.85%) Automotive
14 63 (2.85%) Legal
15 58 (2.63%) Telecoms
16 47 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
17 44 (1.99%) Games
18 41 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 397 (17.97%) Senior
2 263 (11.91%) Analyst
2 263 (11.91%) Systems Engineer
3 196 (8.87%) Lead
4 130 (5.89%) Test Engineer
5 120 (5.43%) Architect
6 104 (4.71%) Data Engineer
7 95 (4.30%) Developer
8 85 (3.85%) Consultant
9 79 (3.58%) Business Analyst
9 79 (3.58%) Software Engineer
10 68 (3.08%) Data Analyst
10 68 (3.08%) Principal Engineer
11 66 (2.99%) Validation Engineer
12 51 (2.31%) Embedded Engineer
13 50 (2.26%) Electronics Engineer
13 50 (2.26%) Network Engineer
14 49 (2.22%) Support Engineer
15 48 (2.17%) Data Scientist
16 43 (1.95%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (3.40%) Terraform
2 52 (2.35%) RESTful
3 50 (2.26%) Kafka
4 48 (2.17%) REST
5 44 (1.99%) Node.js
6 34 (1.54%) XML
7 33 (1.49%) JSON
7 33 (1.49%) Playwright
8 32 (1.45%) .NET
9 30 (1.36%) PySpark
10 27 (1.22%) LDAP
11 25 (1.13%) Middleware
12 24 (1.09%) CSS
12 24 (1.09%) React
13 23 (1.04%) HTML
14 22 (1.00%) FastAPI
15 21 (0.95%) ModSecurity
15 21 (0.95%) Swagger
16 20 (0.91%) XMPP
17 19 (0.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 156 (7.06%) Cloud Native
2 125 (5.66%) Onboarding
3 121 (5.48%) Management Information System
4 84 (3.80%) Product Ownership
5 79 (3.58%) Data Centre
6 65 (2.94%) Embedded Systems
7 61 (2.76%) Data Structures
8 59 (2.67%) Driving Licence
8 59 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
9 55 (2.49%) Algorithms
10 54 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
11 48 (2.17%) Low-Code
12 45 (2.04%) Life Science
13 44 (1.99%) AI Agents
14 41 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
15 40 (1.81%) Robotics
16 39 (1.77%) SCADA
17 35 (1.58%) IoT
18 34 (1.54%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 133 (6.02%) Linux
2 93 (4.21%) Windows
3 35 (1.58%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.09%) Unix
5 20 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.45%) Android
7 9 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.32%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.23%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.18%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.091%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.091%) ThreadX
13 2 (0.091%) VMS
13 2 (0.091%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.045%) AIX
14 1 (0.045%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 558 (25.26%) Problem-Solving
2 516 (23.36%) Continuous Improvement
3 422 (19.10%) Agile
4 389 (17.61%) AI
5 368 (16.66%) Verification and Validation
6 308 (13.94%) CI/CD
7 288 (13.04%) Stakeholder Management
8 280 (12.68%) Test Automation
9 260 (11.77%) Migration
10 255 (11.54%) Analytics
11 242 (10.96%) Mentoring
12 227 (10.28%) Decision-Making
13 224 (10.14%) Software Engineering
14 205 (9.28%) DevOps
15 193 (8.74%) Business Intelligence
16 191 (8.65%) Machine Learning
17 190 (8.60%) Data Analysis
18 189 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 181 (8.19%) Roadmaps
20 168 (7.61%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 476 (21.55%) Python
2 396 (17.93%) SQL
3 98 (4.44%) Java
4 91 (4.12%) C++
5 85 (3.85%) C
6 65 (2.94%) JavaScript
7 60 (2.72%) MATLAB
8 55 (2.49%) C#
9 54 (2.44%) Go
10 32 (1.45%) Bash
11 31 (1.40%) Embedded C
12 27 (1.22%) PowerShell
13 23 (1.04%) Scala
13 23 (1.04%) TypeScript
14 20 (0.91%) R
15 18 (0.81%) Embedded C++
16 12 (0.54%) T-SQL
17 11 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 9 (0.41%) ABAP
19 8 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 477 (21.59%) Degree
2 457 (20.69%) Security Cleared
3 324 (14.67%) SC Cleared
4 123 (5.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (4.89%) DV Cleared
6 88 (3.98%) Master's Degree
7 51 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.81%) PhD
9 36 (1.63%) CISSP
10 34 (1.54%) Chartered Engineer
11 33 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 32 (1.45%) HNC
13 31 (1.40%) HND
14 27 (1.22%) CISM
15 24 (1.09%) ACCA
15 24 (1.09%) AWS Certification
15 24 (1.09%) Azure Certification
16 22 (1.00%) CIMA
17 21 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
18 20 (0.91%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 325 (14.71%) Data Quality
2 289 (13.08%) QA
3 78 (3.53%) Accessibility
4 56 (2.54%) GDPR
5 37 (1.67%) GRC
6 29 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 26 (1.18%) GxP
8 24 (1.09%) NIST
9 22 (1.00%) IEC 61508
10 20 (0.91%) SLA
11 17 (0.77%) PMO
12 15 (0.68%) ISO 26262
13 14 (0.63%) GMP
13 14 (0.63%) ISO 9001
13 14 (0.63%) WCAG
14 11 (0.50%) GAAP
14 11 (0.50%) IFRS
14 11 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 15288
16 9 (0.41%) Def Stans
System Software
1 86 (3.89%) Firmware
2 81 (3.67%) Docker
3 48 (2.17%) Active Directory
4 38 (1.72%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.95%) vSphere
7 11 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.18%) KVM
9 2 (0.091%) iptables
9 2 (0.091%) ProxySG
9 2 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.045%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.045%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 80 (3.62%) Kubernetes
2 41 (1.86%) Grafana
3 31 (1.40%) Ansible
4 27 (1.22%) Functional Safety
5 16 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.45%) Cilium
8 8 (0.36%) Puppet
9 7 (0.32%) Kibana
9 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.32%) Nessus
9 7 (0.32%) Nmap
10 5 (0.23%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 5 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 5 (0.23%) SCCM
10 5 (0.23%) WMI
11 4 (0.18%) BMC PATROL
11 4 (0.18%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.18%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.14%) Argo
Vendors
1 279 (12.63%) Microsoft
2 120 (5.43%) SAP
3 98 (4.44%) Oracle
4 60 (2.72%) Salesforce
5 57 (2.58%) Databricks
6 54 (2.44%) Cisco
7 52 (2.35%) ServiceNow
8 42 (1.90%) Google
9 31 (1.40%) EMC
10 30 (1.36%) CrowdStrike
10 30 (1.36%) VMware
11 28 (1.27%) Palo Alto
12 23 (1.04%) Red Hat
12 23 (1.04%) Tenable
13 18 (0.81%) IBM
13 18 (0.81%) Splunk
14 15 (0.68%) McAfee
14 15 (0.68%) Siemens
15 14 (0.63%) Foundry
15 14 (0.63%) Workday