Validation Job Trends

Validation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Validation skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 87 178 207
Rank change year-on-year +91 +29 -40
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,632 1,160 1,028
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 3.30% 1.49% 1.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.72% 1.83% 1.81%
Number of salaries quoted 464 446 616
10th Percentile £38,750 £39,000 £37,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £47,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £58,033 £64,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.23% -9.32% +11.30%
75th Percentile £75,900 £75,938 £77,715
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,750 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,600 £55,000 £56,250
% change year-on-year -4.36% -2.22% +17.19%

All Process and 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 43,869 63,416 56,859
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 88.70% 81.19% 94.35%
Number of salaries quoted 24,728 36,039 42,828
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,000 £32,750
25th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £54,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% -2.78% +2.86%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Validation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Validation 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 18 September 2025.

Salary histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 17 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 18 September 2025. 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 +87 1,541 £55,000 -4.35% 1,050
UK excluding London +94 1,318 £52,600 -4.36% 894
South East +70 446 £53,750 -2.27% 259
East of England +74 363 £60,000 +9.09% 117
Midlands +113 261 £55,000 +10.00% 150
London +67 256 £80,000 +14.29% 311
Work from Home +40 221 £60,000 -5.51% 533
East Midlands +112 208 £42,500 -5.56% 47
North of England -33 115 £47,500 -0.38% 153
South West +21 84 £51,250 -14.58% 162
North West -37 71 £50,000 +4.86% 102
West Midlands +19 53 £55,000 +10.00% 98
Scotland +49 46 £58,033 +2.70% 42
Yorkshire +9 31 £42,500 -5.56% 38
North East +15 13 £35,000 -30.00% 13
Wales +24 7 £53,750 +21.29% 24
Northern Ireland +6 1 - - 10

Validation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 20 (1.23%) Confluence
2 19 (1.16%) Apache Spark
3 14 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.61%) SugarCRM
5 7 (0.43%) Apache
6 6 (0.37%) CMS
6 6 (0.37%) SAS
7 3 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.12%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.12%) TPMS
9 1 (0.061%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.061%) FileNet
9 1 (0.061%) Luigi
9 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.061%) MTS
9 1 (0.061%) Mule
Applications
1 62 (3.80%) Simulink
2 44 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
4 22 (1.35%) Mathcad
5 21 (1.29%) MS Visio
6 9 (0.55%) AutoCAD
6 9 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 8 (0.49%) Blender
8 5 (0.31%) SOLIDWORKS
9 4 (0.25%) Revit
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
11 2 (0.12%) LaTeX
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.061%) CANalyzer
12 1 (0.061%) Doxygen
12 1 (0.061%) GNU Octave
12 1 (0.061%) Navisworks
12 1 (0.061%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 23 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 22 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.37%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
4 5 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
4 5 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
4 5 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.061%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.061%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.061%) Remedy ITSM
8 1 (0.061%) SAP Business One
8 1 (0.061%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.061%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 112 (6.86%) Azure
2 103 (6.31%) AWS
3 81 (4.96%) Power Platform
4 51 (3.13%) GCP
5 41 (2.51%) Snowflake
6 21 (1.29%) Amazon S3
7 20 (1.23%) SaaS
8 19 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (1.10%) Serverless
10 15 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (0.92%) Microsoft 365
11 14 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
11 14 (0.86%) GitHub
12 13 (0.80%) Dynamics 365
13 12 (0.74%) Amazon SageMaker
14 11 (0.67%) Azure Data Factory
14 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Purview
15 9 (0.55%) dbt
16 8 (0.49%) Amazon EKS
16 8 (0.49%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 747 (45.77%) 5G
2 732 (44.85%) Wi-Fi
2 732 (44.85%) Wireless
3 730 (44.73%) Bluetooth
3 730 (44.73%) GSM
3 730 (44.73%) LTE
3 730 (44.73%) UMTS
4 21 (1.29%) WAN
5 17 (1.04%) Ethernet
5 17 (1.04%) LAN
6 14 (0.86%) SD-WAN
7 13 (0.80%) Firewall
7 13 (0.80%) Modbus
8 12 (0.74%) Profibus
9 8 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
9 8 (0.49%) Network Security
10 7 (0.43%) DNS
10 7 (0.43%) Internet
11 6 (0.37%) DHCP
12 5 (0.31%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (4.72%) Power BI
2 55 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
3 49 (3.00%) Tableau
4 35 (2.14%) Metadata
5 32 (1.96%) Data Lake
6 25 (1.53%) SQL Server
7 24 (1.47%) Oracle ODI
8 22 (1.35%) Big Data
9 19 (1.16%) BigQuery
10 14 (0.86%) NoSQL
11 11 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
11 11 (0.67%) Relational Database
12 10 (0.61%) MySQL
13 9 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
13 9 (0.55%) MongoDB
14 8 (0.49%) Amazon Aurora
14 8 (0.49%) QGIS
15 6 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
15 6 (0.37%) Delta Lake
15 6 (0.37%) Looker
Development Applications
1 54 (3.31%) JIRA
2 53 (3.25%) Git
3 26 (1.59%) Rational DOORS
4 24 (1.47%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.86%) Postman
5 14 (0.86%) Selenium
6 9 (0.55%) GitLab
7 6 (0.37%) Cypress.io
7 6 (0.37%) JMeter
7 6 (0.37%) MLflow
7 6 (0.37%) Rational Rhapsody
7 6 (0.37%) SoapUI
8 5 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.25%) Locust
9 4 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.25%) Spinnaker
9 4 (0.25%) TestNG
9 4 (0.25%) webpack
10 3 (0.18%) Vagrant
10 3 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 793 (48.59%) Electronics
2 289 (17.71%) Social Skills
3 223 (13.66%) Finance
4 161 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 88 (5.39%) Law
6 66 (4.04%) Manufacturing
7 44 (2.70%) Marketing
8 41 (2.51%) Pharmaceutical
9 40 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
10 38 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
11 34 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (2.02%) Banking
13 32 (1.96%) Aerospace
13 32 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
14 31 (1.90%) Retail
15 28 (1.72%) Public Sector
16 27 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
16 27 (1.65%) Legal
17 24 (1.47%) Telecoms
18 19 (1.16%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 766 (46.94%) Test Engineer
2 740 (45.34%) Electronics Engineer
3 731 (44.79%) Electronics Test Engineer
4 138 (8.46%) Senior
5 114 (6.99%) Analyst
6 105 (6.43%) Lead
7 87 (5.33%) Systems Engineer
8 43 (2.63%) Data Engineer
9 41 (2.51%) Data Analyst
10 36 (2.21%) Business Analyst
11 34 (2.08%) Support Engineer
12 30 (1.84%) Administrator
12 30 (1.84%) Software Engineer
13 29 (1.78%) Consultant
14 27 (1.65%) Developer
15 24 (1.47%) Applications Support
15 24 (1.47%) Data Quality Analyst
15 24 (1.47%) Quality Analyst
16 23 (1.41%) Applications Engineer
16 23 (1.41%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (1.53%) Oracle Fusion
2 19 (1.16%) Kafka
3 14 (0.86%) JSON
3 14 (0.86%) scikit-learn
3 14 (0.86%) XML
4 12 (0.74%) Pandas
5 11 (0.67%) PySpark
5 11 (0.67%) PyTorch
5 11 (0.67%) TensorFlow
6 10 (0.61%) HTML
6 10 (0.61%) Middleware
6 10 (0.61%) REST
7 9 (0.55%) CSS
7 9 (0.55%) React
8 8 (0.49%) Loki
9 7 (0.43%) NumPy
9 7 (0.43%) pytest
9 7 (0.43%) Qt
9 7 (0.43%) YAML
10 6 (0.37%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 738 (45.22%) Driving Licence
2 60 (3.68%) Management Information System
3 46 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
4 38 (2.33%) Algorithms
5 35 (2.14%) Data Structures
6 32 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
6 32 (1.96%) Life Science
6 32 (1.96%) Operational Technology
7 27 (1.65%) Product Ownership
8 23 (1.41%) Onboarding
9 22 (1.35%) SCADA
10 17 (1.04%) Biopharmaceutical
11 14 (0.86%) Credit Risk
11 14 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
12 13 (0.80%) FPGA
13 12 (0.74%) Self-Driving Car
14 10 (0.61%) e-Learning
15 9 (0.55%) GNSS
16 8 (0.49%) Cloud Native
16 8 (0.49%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 32 (1.96%) Windows
2 27 (1.65%) Linux
3 15 (0.92%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (0.31%) Unix
5 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.18%) VMS
7 2 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.061%) AIX
8 1 (0.061%) Android
8 1 (0.061%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.061%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.061%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 866 (53.06%) Verification and Validation
2 816 (50.00%) Mentoring
3 749 (45.89%) Customer Requirements
3 749 (45.89%) Test Strategy
4 744 (45.59%) Coaching
5 244 (14.95%) Problem-Solving
6 197 (12.07%) Agile
7 141 (8.64%) Analytics
8 134 (8.21%) Data Validation
9 122 (7.48%) Migration
10 121 (7.41%) ETL
11 110 (6.74%) Stakeholder Management
12 106 (6.50%) Continuous Improvement
13 103 (6.31%) Systems Engineering
14 100 (6.13%) Mathematics
14 100 (6.13%) Software Engineering
15 96 (5.88%) Data Management
16 94 (5.76%) Test Automation
17 88 (5.39%) Business Intelligence
18 87 (5.33%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 229 (14.03%) Python
2 185 (11.34%) SQL
3 77 (4.72%) MATLAB
4 41 (2.51%) C
5 40 (2.45%) C++
6 28 (1.72%) PL/SQL
7 26 (1.59%) Java
8 20 (1.23%) R
9 14 (0.86%) Bash
9 14 (0.86%) JavaScript
10 12 (0.74%) Ladder Logic
10 12 (0.74%) PowerShell
11 11 (0.67%) C#
12 10 (0.61%) TypeScript
13 8 (0.49%) Go
13 8 (0.49%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.49%) T-SQL
14 6 (0.37%) Scala
14 6 (0.37%) SPARQL
15 4 (0.25%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 1,055 (64.64%) Degree
2 757 (46.38%) HND
3 69 (4.23%) Security Cleared
4 68 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 62 (3.80%) Master's Degree
6 48 (2.94%) SC Cleared
7 38 (2.33%) HNC
8 34 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
9 29 (1.78%) PhD
10 26 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (0.86%) CCNA
11 14 (0.86%) CCNP
11 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (0.67%) ACCA
13 10 (0.61%) Network+ Certification
14 9 (0.55%) CCIE
14 9 (0.55%) DV Cleared
15 8 (0.49%) ISTQB
15 8 (0.49%) Numerate Degree
16 7 (0.43%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (8.46%) Data Quality
2 108 (6.62%) QA
3 53 (3.25%) GxP
4 46 (2.82%) Accessibility
5 34 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 27 (1.65%) SLA
7 22 (1.35%) GDPR
8 14 (0.86%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 10 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 9 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.55%) NIST
11 7 (0.43%) GMP
11 7 (0.43%) Good Clinical Practice
12 6 (0.37%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.37%) IFRS
12 6 (0.37%) IFRS 9
12 6 (0.37%) ISO 20022
12 6 (0.37%) PMO
12 6 (0.37%) SEPA
13 5 (0.31%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 30 (1.84%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (1.72%) Docker
3 23 (1.41%) Firmware
4 16 (0.98%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
6 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.31%) vSphere
7 4 (0.25%) vCloud
8 3 (0.18%) Apache Flume
8 3 (0.18%) HDFS
9 2 (0.12%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.061%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.061%) Postfix
10 1 (0.061%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 30 (1.84%) Kubernetes
2 21 (1.29%) Terraform
3 18 (1.10%) Grafana
4 15 (0.92%) Ansible
5 10 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.31%) Functional Safety
6 5 (0.31%) Kubeflow
6 5 (0.31%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.25%) Docker Swarm
7 4 (0.25%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.25%) Rundeck
8 3 (0.18%) Kibana
8 3 (0.18%) logstash
8 3 (0.18%) Oozie
9 2 (0.12%) Argo
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.12%) Puppet
9 2 (0.12%) SCOM
10 1 (0.061%) Nessus
Vendors
1 83 (5.09%) Microsoft
2 50 (3.06%) Oracle
3 39 (2.39%) SAP
4 34 (2.08%) VMware
5 29 (1.78%) Salesforce
6 26 (1.59%) Cisco
7 22 (1.35%) MathWorks
8 19 (1.16%) IBM
9 16 (0.98%) Databricks
10 15 (0.92%) ServiceNow
11 13 (0.80%) Allen-Bradley
11 13 (0.80%) CheckPoint
11 13 (0.80%) F5
11 13 (0.80%) Siemens
12 12 (0.74%) Rockwell
13 10 (0.61%) Informatica
13 10 (0.61%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.55%) Splunk
14 9 (0.55%) Talend
15 8 (0.49%) Hitachi