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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 92 168
Rank change year-on-year +20 +76 +39
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,585 1,591 1,137
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.19% 3.21% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.99% 3.60% 1.86%
Number of salaries quoted 1,509 447 425
10th Percentile £35,700 £38,730 £38,734
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,490 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.16% -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £71,250 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £86,250 £89,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £54,500
% change year-on-year +4.56% -3.49% -5.22%

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 86,399 44,171 61,013
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.12% 89.11% 81.89%
Number of salaries quoted 59,417 24,443 33,150
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,700
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -6.30% -2.17%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,250
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 3 October 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 3 October 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 +19 2,381 £57,500 +4.55% 4,911
UK excluding London -3 1,872 £55,000 +4.56% 3,259
Work from Home +138 683 £60,000 -3.23% 2,051
London +71 615 £69,375 -13.28% 2,226
South East -11 496 £62,500 +13.64% 807
North of England +117 482 £51,000 +6.96% 533
Midlands -13 306 £50,000 -9.09% 421
North West +111 300 £55,000 +9.88% 276
South West +22 244 £55,000 +4.56% 405
East of England -42 209 £55,000 -8.33% 418
West Midlands +47 170 £48,750 -11.36% 270
East Midlands -45 136 £50,000 +17.65% 151
Yorkshire +22 94 £42,500 - 167
Scotland +39 90 £70,000 +18.61% 474
North East +6 88 £55,000 +57.14% 94
Wales -37 44 £70,000 +12.00% 126
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 4
Northern Ireland -80 4 - - 113

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 52 (2.01%) Apache Spark
2 48 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (1.74%) Apache
4 39 (1.51%) Confluence
5 37 (1.43%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.77%) Jupyter
7 18 (0.70%) CMS
8 14 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
9 13 (0.50%) SAS
10 10 (0.39%) WinCC
11 6 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 3 (0.12%) Artix
13 3 (0.12%) nginx
13 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.077%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.077%) IIS
15 1 (0.039%) ArcGIS
15 1 (0.039%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 152 (5.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (2.13%) Simulink
4 37 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
5 28 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.81%) AutoCAD
7 20 (0.77%) SOLIDWORKS
8 16 (0.62%) MS Visio
9 14 (0.54%) Revit
10 11 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 10 (0.39%) OrCAD
12 9 (0.35%) Navisworks
13 8 (0.31%) EPLAN
14 6 (0.23%) Notion
15 5 (0.19%) LaTeX
15 5 (0.19%) Mathcad
15 5 (0.19%) Stateflow
16 4 (0.15%) CANalyzer
17 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
17 3 (0.12%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 46 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.43%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 9 (0.35%) iTrent
5 9 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.27%) Infor M3
7 7 (0.27%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 7 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.23%) Elite 3E
9 5 (0.19%) Maximo
9 5 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.19%) SAP MDG-BP
10 4 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.15%) SAP MM
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 343 (13.27%) Azure
2 280 (10.83%) AWS
3 190 (7.35%) Power Platform
4 104 (4.02%) GCP
5 84 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
6 82 (3.17%) GitHub
7 75 (2.90%) SaaS
8 71 (2.75%) Serverless
9 68 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
10 48 (1.86%) Amazon S3
11 44 (1.70%) Entra ID
12 39 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
13 38 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
14 34 (1.32%) Microsoft Copilot
15 31 (1.20%) Microsoft Purview
16 28 (1.08%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 26 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
17 26 (1.01%) Cloud Computing
18 25 (0.97%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.71%) DNS
2 69 (2.67%) Firewall
3 55 (2.13%) Broadband
4 43 (1.66%) Wireless
5 42 (1.62%) VPN
6 41 (1.59%) TCP/IP
7 38 (1.47%) Ethernet
7 38 (1.47%) Network Security
8 36 (1.39%) WAN
9 35 (1.35%) Modbus
10 33 (1.28%) VLAN
11 29 (1.12%) LAN
11 29 (1.12%) OSPF
12 25 (0.97%) MQTT
12 25 (0.97%) Wireshark
13 22 (0.85%) BGP
13 22 (0.85%) SD-WAN
14 19 (0.74%) 5G
15 18 (0.70%) DHCP
16 17 (0.66%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 175 (6.77%) Power BI
2 74 (2.86%) Metadata
3 64 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
4 56 (2.17%) Data Lake
5 54 (2.09%) SQL Server
6 50 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
7 41 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
8 39 (1.51%) Relational Database
8 39 (1.51%) Tableau
9 32 (1.24%) MongoDB
10 29 (1.12%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.08%) BigQuery
12 27 (1.04%) Big Data
13 25 (0.97%) DynamoDB
14 23 (0.89%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 21 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
16 21 (0.81%) Power Query
17 20 (0.77%) Semantic Layer
18 18 (0.70%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 146 (5.65%) JIRA
2 134 (5.18%) Git
3 64 (2.48%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.36%) GitLab
5 47 (1.82%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.20%) LabVIEW
7 28 (1.08%) Selenium
8 24 (0.93%) Postman
9 22 (0.85%) Snyk
10 20 (0.77%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.50%) Burp Suite
11 13 (0.50%) Claude Code
12 11 (0.43%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.43%) JMeter
12 11 (0.43%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.43%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
14 9 (0.35%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.35%) MLflow
15 8 (0.31%) TeamCity
General
1 872 (33.73%) Social Skills
2 673 (26.03%) Finance
3 611 (23.64%) Analytical Skills
4 255 (9.86%) Manufacturing
5 252 (9.75%) Aerospace
6 243 (9.40%) Electronics
7 230 (8.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 141 (5.45%) Law
9 117 (4.53%) Public Sector
10 116 (4.49%) Organisational Skills
11 110 (4.26%) Banking
11 110 (4.26%) Marketing
12 105 (4.06%) Retail
13 97 (3.75%) Telecoms
14 85 (3.29%) Pharmaceutical
15 83 (3.21%) Automotive
16 59 (2.28%) Legal
17 49 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
18 47 (1.82%) Military
19 43 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 465 (17.99%) Senior
2 310 (11.99%) Systems Engineer
3 280 (10.83%) Analyst
4 217 (8.39%) Lead
5 134 (5.18%) Data Engineer
6 127 (4.91%) Test Engineer
7 123 (4.76%) Architect
8 107 (4.14%) Developer
9 96 (3.71%) Consultant
10 93 (3.60%) Software Engineer
11 84 (3.25%) Business Analyst
12 83 (3.21%) Electronics Engineer
13 82 (3.17%) Principal Engineer
14 71 (2.75%) Data Analyst
15 62 (2.40%) Validation Engineer
16 58 (2.24%) Network Engineer
17 52 (2.01%) Design Engineer
18 51 (1.97%) Automation Engineer
19 47 (1.82%) Administrator
19 47 (1.82%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (3.44%) Terraform
2 63 (2.44%) REST
3 61 (2.36%) RESTful
4 60 (2.32%) Kafka
5 54 (2.09%) Node.js
6 51 (1.97%) .NET
7 44 (1.70%) PySpark
8 43 (1.66%) Playwright
9 38 (1.47%) JSON
10 34 (1.32%) FastAPI
10 34 (1.32%) XML
11 33 (1.28%) React
12 32 (1.24%) CSS
13 30 (1.16%) HTML
14 26 (1.01%) Swagger
15 23 (0.89%) LDAP
15 23 (0.89%) RabbitMQ
16 22 (0.85%) Middleware
16 22 (0.85%) OAuth
17 21 (0.81%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 170 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 149 (5.76%) Management Information System
3 143 (5.53%) Onboarding
4 86 (3.33%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.13%) Data Centre
6 71 (2.75%) Driving Licence
6 71 (2.75%) Embedded Systems
7 66 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
8 63 (2.44%) Data Structures
9 60 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
10 57 (2.21%) AI Agents
11 55 (2.13%) Algorithms
11 55 (2.13%) SCADA
12 48 (1.86%) Life Science
13 42 (1.62%) IoT
13 42 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
14 41 (1.59%) Robotics
15 39 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
16 38 (1.47%) Low-Code
17 37 (1.43%) Analogue Electronics
Operating Systems
1 133 (5.15%) Linux
2 94 (3.64%) Windows
3 31 (1.20%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.01%) Unix
5 13 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.39%) Android
7 8 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.31%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.19%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.15%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.15%) Mac OS X
10 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.077%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.077%) VMS
11 2 (0.077%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.039%) AIX
12 1 (0.039%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.039%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (26.23%) Problem-Solving
2 585 (22.63%) Continuous Improvement
3 472 (18.26%) Agile
4 468 (18.10%) Verification and Validation
5 449 (17.37%) AI
6 361 (13.97%) CI/CD
7 349 (13.50%) Stakeholder Management
8 330 (12.77%) Test Automation
9 319 (12.34%) Migration
10 277 (10.72%) Analytics
11 274 (10.60%) Mentoring
12 259 (10.02%) Software Engineering
13 247 (9.56%) Decision-Making
14 239 (9.25%) DevOps
15 228 (8.82%) Data Analysis
16 226 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 216 (8.36%) Business Intelligence
18 207 (8.01%) Roadmaps
19 200 (7.74%) Data Migration
19 200 (7.74%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 531 (20.54%) Python
2 458 (17.72%) SQL
3 107 (4.14%) Java
4 96 (3.71%) C++
5 88 (3.40%) C
6 77 (2.98%) JavaScript
7 76 (2.94%) C#
8 71 (2.75%) MATLAB
9 47 (1.82%) Go
10 36 (1.39%) Bash
11 35 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 34 (1.32%) PowerShell
13 29 (1.12%) Embedded C
13 29 (1.12%) R
14 25 (0.97%) Scala
15 20 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 17 (0.66%) Embedded C++
17 12 (0.46%) Shell Script
18 10 (0.39%) Apex Code
19 9 (0.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 559 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 557 (21.55%) Degree
3 421 (16.29%) SC Cleared
4 126 (4.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (4.10%) DV Cleared
6 96 (3.71%) Master's Degree
7 54 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.74%) HND
9 44 (1.70%) PhD
10 40 (1.55%) Chartered Engineer
11 37 (1.43%) HNC
11 37 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 32 (1.24%) CISSP
13 31 (1.20%) Azure Certification
14 29 (1.12%) ACCA
15 28 (1.08%) AWS Certification
16 26 (1.01%) CIMA
16 26 (1.01%) PMP
17 22 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
18 21 (0.81%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (15.09%) Data Quality
2 316 (12.22%) QA
3 86 (3.33%) Accessibility
4 64 (2.48%) GDPR
5 36 (1.39%) GRC
6 33 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (1.08%) GxP
8 25 (0.97%) SLA
9 23 (0.89%) NIST
10 19 (0.74%) IEC 61508
11 16 (0.62%) ISO 9001
12 15 (0.58%) GMP
12 15 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 14 (0.54%) ISO 19650
14 12 (0.46%) ISO 26262
14 12 (0.46%) PMO
14 12 (0.46%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.46%) WCAG
15 9 (0.35%) GAAP
15 9 (0.35%) JTAG
System Software
1 110 (4.26%) Docker
2 103 (3.98%) Firmware
3 49 (1.90%) Active Directory
4 46 (1.78%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.58%) vSphere
7 8 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.077%) iptables
10 2 (0.077%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.077%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.077%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.039%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 92 (3.56%) Kubernetes
2 46 (1.78%) Grafana
3 35 (1.35%) Ansible
4 30 (1.16%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.66%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.39%) Puppet
9 8 (0.31%) BMC PATROL
9 8 (0.31%) Cilium
9 8 (0.31%) Kibana
9 8 (0.31%) Nessus
9 8 (0.31%) Nmap
10 5 (0.19%) Argo
10 5 (0.19%) WMI
11 4 (0.15%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.15%) Rancher
11 4 (0.15%) SCCM
11 4 (0.15%) yum
Vendors
1 337 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 132 (5.11%) SAP
3 104 (4.02%) Oracle
4 82 (3.17%) Salesforce
5 69 (2.67%) Databricks
5 69 (2.67%) EMC
6 55 (2.13%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.09%) Cisco
8 43 (1.66%) Google
9 32 (1.24%) CrowdStrike
10 29 (1.12%) Thales
11 28 (1.08%) Palo Alto
12 25 (0.97%) Adobe
12 25 (0.97%) Sage
13 23 (0.89%) IBM
13 23 (0.89%) Tenable
14 22 (0.85%) Siemens
15 21 (0.81%) Informatica
15 21 (0.81%) VMware
16 18 (0.70%) Autodesk