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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 90 188
Rank change year-on-year +9 +98 +16
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,300 1,637 1,135
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.04% 3.30% 1.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.80% 3.73% 1.79%
Number of salaries quoted 1,388 488 452
10th Percentile £36,175 £38,750 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -5.23% -9.32%
75th Percentile £71,000 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,500 £89,125 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.56% -4.36% -0.42%

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 82,210 43,908 63,272
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.10% 88.55% 80.74%
Number of salaries quoted 57,176 24,796 36,704
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,875
25th Percentile £41,500 £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 9 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 9 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 2,125 £57,500 +4.55% 3,298
UK excluding London -12 1,680 £55,000 +4.56% 2,064
Work from Home +123 629 £56,500 -5.83% 1,272
London +62 538 £70,000 -12.50% 1,695
South East -15 478 £61,250 +13.95% 493
North of England +107 438 £55,000 +15.79% 311
North West +101 269 £55,000 +12.61% 178
Midlands -33 245 £47,500 -13.64% 277
South West +23 222 £55,000 +4.56% 319
East of England -57 171 £55,000 -8.33% 315
West Midlands +33 140 £47,500 -13.64% 193
East Midlands -63 104 £44,424 +4.53% 84
Yorkshire +7 85 £43,000 +1.18% 86
North East +2 84 £55,000 +57.14% 55
Scotland +39 81 £70,000 +20.62% 273
Wales -39 38 £70,000 +30.23% 52
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 1
Northern Ireland -76 3 - - 62

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 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
1 45 (1.96%) Apache Spark
2 41 (1.78%) Apache
3 35 (1.52%) Confluence
4 34 (1.48%) SharePoint
5 20 (0.87%) Jupyter
6 13 (0.57%) SAS
7 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
8 7 (0.30%) WinCC
9 5 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.22%) CMS
10 3 (0.13%) Artix
10 3 (0.13%) Kinematics
10 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.087%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.087%) IIS
12 1 (0.043%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.043%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.043%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 122 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (2.04%) Simulink
4 36 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 18 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
6 17 (0.74%) SOLIDWORKS
7 16 (0.70%) MS Visio
8 13 (0.57%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.26%) CANalyzer
10 6 (0.26%) Revit
11 5 (0.22%) LaTeX
11 5 (0.22%) Mathcad
12 4 (0.17%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.17%) Navisworks
12 4 (0.17%) OrCAD
12 4 (0.17%) Sketch
13 3 (0.13%) EPLAN
13 3 (0.13%) Productboard
13 3 (0.13%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 42 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.48%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.39%) iTrent
4 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.30%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.30%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 6 (0.26%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.22%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
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 (0.087%) Refinitiv Enterprise Platform
Cloud Services
1 301 (13.09%) Azure
2 254 (11.04%) AWS
3 173 (7.52%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.04%) GCP
5 76 (3.30%) SaaS
6 73 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
7 65 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
8 62 (2.70%) GitHub
9 52 (2.26%) Serverless
10 39 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
11 38 (1.65%) Amazon S3
12 35 (1.52%) Entra ID
13 31 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
14 30 (1.30%) Microsoft Copilot
15 24 (1.04%) Cloud Computing
16 23 (1.00%) Azure Data Factory
16 23 (1.00%) PowerApps
17 22 (0.96%) Amazon EMR
17 22 (0.96%) Microsoft Purview
18 20 (0.87%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.04%) DNS
2 69 (3.00%) Firewall
3 64 (2.78%) Broadband
4 42 (1.83%) Wireless
5 38 (1.65%) TCP/IP
5 38 (1.65%) WAN
6 36 (1.57%) VPN
7 35 (1.52%) Network Security
8 28 (1.22%) LAN
9 27 (1.17%) Ethernet
10 24 (1.04%) OSPF
10 24 (1.04%) VLAN
11 23 (1.00%) SD-WAN
12 22 (0.96%) BGP
12 22 (0.96%) Modbus
12 22 (0.96%) Wireshark
13 20 (0.87%) MQTT
14 17 (0.74%) 5G
14 17 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
15 16 (0.70%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 158 (6.87%) Power BI
2 57 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
3 54 (2.35%) Metadata
4 53 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
5 50 (2.17%) Data Lake
6 47 (2.04%) SQL Server
7 44 (1.91%) Tableau
8 36 (1.57%) MongoDB
9 32 (1.39%) Relational Database
10 31 (1.35%) Amazon Athena
11 27 (1.17%) BigQuery
12 25 (1.09%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.96%) Big Data
13 22 (0.96%) Semantic Layer
13 22 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.87%) NoSQL
16 19 (0.83%) MySQL
17 17 (0.74%) Power Query
18 15 (0.65%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 130 (5.65%) JIRA
2 116 (5.04%) Git
3 59 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 52 (2.26%) GitLab
5 40 (1.74%) Rational DOORS
6 30 (1.30%) Selenium
7 24 (1.04%) LabVIEW
7 24 (1.04%) Postman
8 22 (0.96%) Snyk
9 21 (0.91%) Cypress.io
10 14 (0.61%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.52%) JMeter
12 11 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.43%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.39%) Gatling
14 9 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
14 9 (0.39%) Zephyr
15 8 (0.35%) Claude Code
15 8 (0.35%) MLflow
General
1 775 (33.70%) Social Skills
2 597 (25.96%) Finance
3 543 (23.61%) Analytical Skills
4 215 (9.35%) Aerospace
5 208 (9.04%) Manufacturing
6 207 (9.00%) Electronics
7 206 (8.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 139 (6.04%) Law
9 103 (4.48%) Banking
10 91 (3.96%) Public Sector
11 89 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
12 87 (3.78%) Retail
13 86 (3.74%) Marketing
14 80 (3.48%) Pharmaceutical
15 77 (3.35%) Telecoms
16 66 (2.87%) Automotive
17 63 (2.74%) Legal
18 47 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
19 44 (1.91%) Games
20 42 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 408 (17.74%) Senior
2 285 (12.39%) Systems Engineer
3 266 (11.57%) Analyst
4 201 (8.74%) Lead
5 130 (5.65%) Test Engineer
6 121 (5.26%) Architect
7 108 (4.70%) Data Engineer
8 98 (4.26%) Developer
9 91 (3.96%) Consultant
10 80 (3.48%) Business Analyst
11 79 (3.43%) Software Engineer
12 70 (3.04%) Data Analyst
13 69 (3.00%) Principal Engineer
14 67 (2.91%) Validation Engineer
15 60 (2.61%) Electronics Engineer
16 52 (2.26%) Network Engineer
17 51 (2.22%) Embedded Engineer
18 50 (2.17%) Support Engineer
19 48 (2.09%) Data Scientist
20 44 (1.91%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (3.35%) Terraform
2 54 (2.35%) RESTful
3 52 (2.26%) Kafka
4 51 (2.22%) REST
5 44 (1.91%) Node.js
6 36 (1.57%) Playwright
7 34 (1.48%) JSON
7 34 (1.48%) XML
8 33 (1.43%) PySpark
9 32 (1.39%) .NET
10 27 (1.17%) LDAP
11 26 (1.13%) CSS
12 25 (1.09%) FastAPI
12 25 (1.09%) HTML
12 25 (1.09%) Middleware
13 24 (1.04%) React
14 21 (0.91%) ModSecurity
14 21 (0.91%) Swagger
15 20 (0.87%) XMPP
16 19 (0.83%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 158 (6.87%) Cloud Native
2 124 (5.39%) Onboarding
3 123 (5.35%) Management Information System
4 85 (3.70%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.52%) Data Centre
6 67 (2.91%) Embedded Systems
7 63 (2.74%) Data Structures
8 61 (2.65%) Driving Licence
9 59 (2.57%) Enterprise Software
10 56 (2.43%) Algorithms
11 54 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
12 46 (2.00%) Low-Code
13 45 (1.96%) AI Agents
14 44 (1.91%) Life Science
15 42 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
16 41 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
16 41 (1.78%) SCADA
17 40 (1.74%) Robotics
18 37 (1.61%) IoT
19 34 (1.48%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 138 (6.00%) Linux
2 94 (4.09%) Windows
3 35 (1.52%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.04%) Unix
5 20 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.43%) Android
7 9 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
8 8 (0.35%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.087%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.087%) ThreadX
13 2 (0.087%) VMS
13 2 (0.087%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.043%) AIX
14 1 (0.043%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 587 (25.52%) Problem-Solving
2 528 (22.96%) Continuous Improvement
3 430 (18.70%) Agile
4 398 (17.30%) Verification and Validation
5 393 (17.09%) AI
6 314 (13.65%) CI/CD
7 297 (12.91%) Stakeholder Management
8 289 (12.57%) Test Automation
9 280 (12.17%) Migration
10 259 (11.26%) Analytics
11 246 (10.70%) Mentoring
12 230 (10.00%) Decision-Making
12 230 (10.00%) Software Engineering
13 211 (9.17%) DevOps
14 206 (8.96%) Data Analysis
15 202 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 200 (8.70%) Business Intelligence
17 192 (8.35%) Machine Learning
18 185 (8.04%) Roadmaps
19 180 (7.83%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 486 (21.13%) Python
2 403 (17.52%) SQL
3 101 (4.39%) Java
4 92 (4.00%) C++
5 88 (3.83%) C
6 67 (2.91%) JavaScript
7 62 (2.70%) MATLAB
8 55 (2.39%) C#
9 54 (2.35%) Go
10 34 (1.48%) Bash
10 34 (1.48%) Embedded C
11 28 (1.22%) PowerShell
12 23 (1.00%) Scala
12 23 (1.00%) TypeScript
13 20 (0.87%) R
14 18 (0.78%) Embedded C++
15 13 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 12 (0.52%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.39%) ABAP
17 9 (0.39%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 495 (21.52%) Degree
2 487 (21.17%) Security Cleared
3 352 (15.30%) SC Cleared
4 125 (5.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (4.70%) DV Cleared
6 88 (3.83%) Master's Degree
7 52 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 41 (1.78%) PhD
9 36 (1.57%) CISSP
10 35 (1.52%) Chartered Engineer
10 35 (1.52%) HND
11 34 (1.48%) HNC
11 34 (1.48%) PMI Certification
12 27 (1.17%) CISM
13 24 (1.04%) ACCA
13 24 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 24 (1.04%) Azure Certification
14 22 (0.96%) CIMA
15 21 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
15 21 (0.91%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (14.52%) Data Quality
2 297 (12.91%) QA
3 79 (3.43%) Accessibility
4 56 (2.43%) GDPR
5 37 (1.61%) GRC
6 30 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 26 (1.13%) GxP
8 24 (1.04%) NIST
9 22 (0.96%) IEC 61508
10 21 (0.91%) SLA
11 17 (0.74%) PMO
12 15 (0.65%) GMP
12 15 (0.65%) ISO 26262
12 15 (0.65%) ISO 9001
13 14 (0.61%) WCAG
14 12 (0.52%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.48%) GAAP
15 11 (0.48%) IFRS
16 10 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 15288
17 9 (0.39%) Def Stans
System Software
1 92 (4.00%) Firmware
2 83 (3.61%) Docker
3 48 (2.09%) Active Directory
4 40 (1.74%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.91%) vSphere
7 11 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.17%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.17%) KVM
9 2 (0.087%) iptables
9 2 (0.087%) ProxySG
9 2 (0.087%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.043%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.043%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 80 (3.48%) Kubernetes
2 43 (1.87%) Grafana
3 33 (1.43%) Ansible
4 28 (1.22%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.43%) Cilium
8 8 (0.35%) Nessus
8 8 (0.35%) Nmap
8 8 (0.35%) Puppet
9 7 (0.30%) Kibana
9 7 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.22%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 5 (0.22%) FortiGate
10 5 (0.22%) SCCM
10 5 (0.22%) WMI
11 4 (0.17%) BMC PATROL
11 4 (0.17%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.13%) Argo
Vendors
1 289 (12.57%) Microsoft
2 122 (5.30%) SAP
3 98 (4.26%) Oracle
4 60 (2.61%) Salesforce
5 58 (2.52%) Databricks
6 56 (2.43%) Cisco
7 52 (2.26%) ServiceNow
8 43 (1.87%) Google
9 37 (1.61%) EMC
10 30 (1.30%) CrowdStrike
10 30 (1.30%) VMware
11 28 (1.22%) Palo Alto
12 23 (1.00%) Red Hat
12 23 (1.00%) Tenable
13 19 (0.83%) IBM
14 18 (0.78%) Splunk
15 16 (0.70%) Sage
15 16 (0.70%) Siemens
16 15 (0.65%) McAfee
17 14 (0.61%) Foundry