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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 82 196
Rank change year-on-year -12 +114 -3
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,004 1,706 1,151
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.88% 3.42% 1.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.57% 3.83% 1.70%
Number of salaries quoted 1,154 533 531
10th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.51%
75th Percentile £73,750 £71,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £88,750 £88,500 £92,500
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 78,105 44,566 67,543
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.45% 89.27% 81.06%
Number of salaries quoted 53,741 25,228 43,541
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,575 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,683 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.35% -4.63% -9.09%

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 August 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 August 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 -14 1,830 £55,000 - 1,715
UK excluding London -28 1,398 £55,000 +4.56% 1,119
Work from Home +123 598 £56,000 -6.67% 588
London +75 503 £72,500 -6.45% 751
South East -29 413 £56,500 +5.12% 329
North of England +92 385 £55,000 +15.79% 192
North West +98 222 £55,000 +15.35% 111
Midlands -54 201 £43,587 -20.75% 179
South West -9 162 £53,000 +0.76% 177
East of England -65 136 £61,250 +7.46% 144
West Midlands +11 110 £44,360 -22.85% 115
East Midlands -66 90 £42,500 - 64
North East +5 83 £55,000 +57.14% 42
Yorkshire +7 80 £43,000 +1.18% 42
Scotland +26 70 £55,000 -5.23% 86
Wales -41 30 £47,500 -11.63% 30
Northern Ireland -66 2 - - 4
Isle of Man - 1 £38,500 - 4

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 62 (3.09%) Apache Airflow
2 60 (2.99%) Apache Spark
3 58 (2.89%) Apache
4 35 (1.75%) Confluence
5 32 (1.60%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.05%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.70%) ArcGIS
8 12 (0.60%) SAS
9 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
10 5 (0.25%) WinCC
11 4 (0.20%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.15%) Artix
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.100%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.100%) IIS
14 1 (0.050%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.050%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.050%) WebSphere
Applications
1 121 (6.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (1.80%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (1.70%) Simulink
5 28 (1.40%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 14 (0.70%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.40%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.25%) LaTeX
10 5 (0.25%) Mathcad
11 4 (0.20%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.20%) CANalyzer
11 4 (0.20%) Sketch
12 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.15%) OrCAD
12 3 (0.15%) Productboard
12 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
13 2 (0.100%) Revit
13 2 (0.100%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 49 (2.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.50%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.45%) iTrent
5 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.40%) Elite 3E
6 8 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.35%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.30%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG-BP
9 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.20%) SAP MM
11 2 (0.100%) Refinitiv Enterprise Platform
11 2 (0.100%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.100%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.100%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 293 (14.62%) Azure
2 271 (13.52%) AWS
3 160 (7.98%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.64%) GCP
5 79 (3.94%) SaaS
6 66 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
7 60 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
8 57 (2.84%) GitHub
9 52 (2.59%) Serverless
10 49 (2.45%) Amazon S3
11 38 (1.90%) Dynamics 365
12 31 (1.55%) Entra ID
13 29 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
14 23 (1.15%) Amazon EMR
15 22 (1.10%) Amazon EC2
15 22 (1.10%) Snowflake
16 20 (1.00%) Cloud Computing
17 19 (0.95%) Microsoft Purview
18 18 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.49%) Broadband
2 56 (2.79%) Firewall
3 51 (2.54%) DNS
4 34 (1.70%) Wireless
5 31 (1.55%) Network Security
5 31 (1.55%) TCP/IP
6 28 (1.40%) WAN
7 27 (1.35%) VPN
8 21 (1.05%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.95%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.85%) LAN
10 17 (0.85%) MQTT
10 17 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
11 15 (0.75%) Internet
11 15 (0.75%) Wireshark
12 14 (0.70%) BGP
13 13 (0.65%) HTTP
14 12 (0.60%) OSPF
15 11 (0.55%) NGN
15 11 (0.55%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (7.24%) Power BI
2 59 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
3 58 (2.89%) Tableau
4 53 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.45%) Metadata
5 49 (2.45%) SQL Server
6 46 (2.30%) Data Lake
7 34 (1.70%) MongoDB
8 30 (1.50%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.35%) Amazon Athena
9 27 (1.35%) BigQuery
10 24 (1.20%) DynamoDB
11 23 (1.15%) Semantic Layer
12 21 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (1.00%) Spark SQL
14 19 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
14 19 (0.95%) MySQL
15 18 (0.90%) Big Data
15 18 (0.90%) QGIS
16 17 (0.85%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 127 (6.34%) JIRA
2 111 (5.54%) Git
3 52 (2.59%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.30%) GitLab
5 38 (1.90%) Rational DOORS
6 26 (1.30%) Selenium
7 22 (1.10%) Postman
7 22 (1.10%) Snyk
8 19 (0.95%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.85%) LabVIEW
10 15 (0.75%) JMeter
11 14 (0.70%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.65%) IBM UrbanCode
13 10 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.45%) Burp Suite
15 8 (0.40%) Rational Rhapsody
15 8 (0.40%) Zephyr
16 7 (0.35%) Gatling
16 7 (0.35%) Hudson
General
1 677 (33.78%) Social Skills
2 564 (28.14%) Finance
3 492 (24.55%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 196 (9.78%) Aerospace
6 184 (9.18%) Manufacturing
7 164 (8.18%) Electronics
8 112 (5.59%) Law
9 111 (5.54%) Banking
10 80 (3.99%) Public Sector
11 79 (3.94%) Retail
12 75 (3.74%) Marketing
13 70 (3.49%) Pharmaceutical
14 69 (3.44%) Organisational Skills
15 57 (2.84%) Legal
16 55 (2.74%) Automotive
17 47 (2.35%) Games
18 46 (2.30%) Telecoms
19 38 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
20 36 (1.80%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 368 (18.36%) Senior
2 273 (13.62%) Analyst
3 181 (9.03%) Lead
4 172 (8.58%) Systems Engineer
5 121 (6.04%) Test Engineer
6 116 (5.79%) Architect
7 102 (5.09%) Data Engineer
8 97 (4.84%) Consultant
9 88 (4.39%) Developer
10 87 (4.34%) Business Analyst
11 73 (3.64%) Software Engineer
12 67 (3.34%) Data Analyst
13 66 (3.29%) Validation Engineer
14 65 (3.24%) Principal Engineer
15 47 (2.35%) Data Scientist
16 46 (2.30%) Embedded Engineer
16 46 (2.30%) Support Engineer
17 44 (2.20%) Electronics Engineer
18 42 (2.10%) IT Manager
19 40 (2.00%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (2.40%) RESTful
2 45 (2.25%) Kafka
3 41 (2.05%) PySpark
4 40 (2.00%) Node.js
5 39 (1.95%) REST
6 31 (1.55%) .NET
6 31 (1.55%) JSON
7 29 (1.45%) Playwright
7 29 (1.45%) XML
8 26 (1.30%) LDAP
9 25 (1.25%) Middleware
9 25 (1.25%) PyTorch
10 23 (1.15%) Pandas
11 22 (1.10%) CSS
12 21 (1.05%) HTML
12 21 (1.05%) React
13 20 (1.00%) ModSecurity
14 19 (0.95%) Regular Expression
14 19 (0.95%) XMPP
15 18 (0.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 149 (7.44%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.59%) Onboarding
3 111 (5.54%) Management Information System
4 74 (3.69%) Product Ownership
5 69 (3.44%) Data Centre
6 65 (3.24%) Algorithms
7 59 (2.94%) Data Structures
8 56 (2.79%) Embedded Systems
9 54 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
10 51 (2.54%) Distributed Systems
10 51 (2.54%) Driving Licence
11 45 (2.25%) Low-Code
12 38 (1.90%) AI Agents
12 38 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
12 38 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
13 37 (1.85%) Life Science
14 34 (1.70%) Video\Live Streaming
15 33 (1.65%) Robotics
16 31 (1.55%) IoT
17 29 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 122 (6.09%) Linux
2 88 (4.39%) Windows
3 34 (1.70%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.95%) Unix
6 8 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
7 7 (0.35%) Android
8 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.20%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.100%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.100%) ThreadX
10 2 (0.100%) VMS
10 2 (0.100%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.050%) AIX
11 1 (0.050%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 522 (26.05%) Problem-Solving
2 492 (24.55%) Continuous Improvement
3 423 (21.11%) Agile
4 386 (19.26%) AI
5 307 (15.32%) CI/CD
6 276 (13.77%) Analytics
7 259 (12.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 257 (12.82%) Test Automation
9 250 (12.48%) Verification and Validation
10 243 (12.13%) Migration
11 237 (11.83%) Mentoring
12 226 (11.28%) Decision-Making
13 211 (10.53%) Software Engineering
14 204 (10.18%) Data Analysis
15 200 (9.98%) Machine Learning
16 191 (9.53%) DevOps
17 179 (8.93%) Business Intelligence
18 178 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 174 (8.68%) Roadmaps
20 172 (8.58%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 488 (24.35%) Python
2 387 (19.31%) SQL
3 94 (4.69%) Java
4 87 (4.34%) C++
5 77 (3.84%) C
6 60 (2.99%) JavaScript
7 55 (2.74%) Go
8 53 (2.64%) C#
9 49 (2.45%) MATLAB
10 29 (1.45%) Bash
11 26 (1.30%) Embedded C
11 26 (1.30%) PowerShell
12 22 (1.10%) Scala
13 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
14 18 (0.90%) Embedded C++
15 15 (0.75%) R
15 15 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 10 (0.50%) ABAP
18 9 (0.45%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 432 (21.56%) Degree
2 333 (16.62%) Security Cleared
3 204 (10.18%) SC Cleared
4 141 (7.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (5.34%) DV Cleared
6 83 (4.14%) Master's Degree
7 44 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.85%) CISSP
9 35 (1.75%) PhD
10 34 (1.70%) Chartered Engineer
11 30 (1.50%) HNC
12 29 (1.45%) CISM
12 29 (1.45%) PMI Certification
13 26 (1.30%) ACCA
13 26 (1.30%) CIMA
14 24 (1.20%) AWS Certification
14 24 (1.20%) HND
15 22 (1.10%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.95%) SANS
17 18 (0.90%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (15.82%) Data Quality
2 275 (13.72%) QA
3 90 (4.49%) Accessibility
4 55 (2.74%) GDPR
5 38 (1.90%) GRC
6 27 (1.35%) IEC 61508
7 26 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 25 (1.25%) NIST
9 21 (1.05%) SLA
10 18 (0.90%) GxP
10 18 (0.90%) PMO
11 16 (0.80%) WCAG
12 15 (0.75%) GAAP
12 15 (0.75%) IFRS
12 15 (0.75%) ISO 26262
13 13 (0.65%) GMP
14 12 (0.60%) ISO 9001
15 11 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 15288
15 11 (0.55%) SOC 2
16 9 (0.45%) COBIT
System Software
1 81 (4.04%) Docker
2 77 (3.84%) Firmware
3 44 (2.20%) Active Directory
4 31 (1.55%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (1.05%) vSphere
7 16 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
8 7 (0.35%) KVM
9 4 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.100%) iptables
10 2 (0.100%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.100%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.050%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.050%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 81 (4.04%) Kubernetes
2 74 (3.69%) Terraform
3 43 (2.15%) Grafana
4 26 (1.30%) Functional Safety
5 25 (1.25%) Ansible
6 16 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.50%) Cilium
8 10 (0.50%) Puppet
9 7 (0.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 7 (0.35%) Kibana
9 7 (0.35%) SCCM
10 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.20%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.20%) Nessus
11 4 (0.20%) Nmap
11 4 (0.20%) WMI
12 3 (0.15%) Argo
12 3 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 273 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 123 (6.14%) SAP
3 107 (5.34%) Oracle
4 58 (2.89%) Salesforce
5 55 (2.74%) Databricks
6 45 (2.25%) Google
6 45 (2.25%) ServiceNow
7 42 (2.10%) Cisco
8 36 (1.80%) Red Hat
9 35 (1.75%) VMware
10 29 (1.45%) CrowdStrike
11 27 (1.35%) EMC
11 27 (1.35%) Palo Alto
12 22 (1.10%) Tenable
13 18 (0.90%) Foundry
14 17 (0.85%) IBM
14 17 (0.85%) Splunk
15 15 (0.75%) McAfee
16 14 (0.70%) Siemens
16 14 (0.70%) Workday