Validation Job Trends

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 30 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 159 167 200
Rank change year-on-year +8 +33 -68
Permanent jobs citing Validation 847 1,062 889
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.57% 1.62% 1.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.86% 1.90% 1.86%
Number of salaries quoted 464 411 506
10th Percentile £36,250 £36,250 £36,875
25th Percentile £41,250 £46,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £74,943 £79,313
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.19% -4.36% +10.00%

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 45,531 55,918 47,797
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 84.16% 85.44% 93.76%
Number of salaries quoted 27,749 29,151 36,831
10th Percentile £28,250 £34,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £99,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -0.94%

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 30 November 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 30 November 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 +8 770 £60,000 +9.09% 644
UK excluding London -4 557 £52,500 -0.19% 600
London +24 240 £80,000 +18.52% 178
Work from Home +64 194 £61,250 +6.52% 285
South East +15 194 £52,500 -10.64% 272
North of England -8 116 £52,500 +15.38% 62
Midlands +55 83 £42,500 -15.00% 74
South West +29 71 £50,000 -16.67% 85
North West -4 71 £52,750 +14.15% 30
East of England -4 56 £57,500 +4.55% 118
West Midlands +46 53 £42,500 -15.00% 49
Yorkshire +1 33 £60,000 +50.00% 24
East Midlands +36 30 £42,500 -10.53% 24
Scotland -11 26 £72,989 +29.17% 27
North East +2 12 £35,000 -26.70% 9
Wales +15 10 £61,250 +24.74% 11
Northern Ireland -10 2 - - 3

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 24 (2.83%) Confluence
2 19 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (2.01%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.18%) Apache
4 10 (1.18%) SugarCRM
5 8 (0.94%) CMS
5 8 (0.94%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.59%) SAS
7 4 (0.47%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.35%) Appian
8 3 (0.35%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.24%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.12%) FileNet
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
Applications
1 55 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (5.79%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (2.13%) Simulink
4 17 (2.01%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.94%) Mathcad
5 8 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 6 (0.71%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.47%) Revit
8 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.35%) Blender
8 3 (0.35%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.35%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.24%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.24%) Adobe Captivate
9 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.24%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.24%) Elementor
9 2 (0.24%) SOLIDWORKS
9 2 (0.24%) Weka
10 1 (0.12%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 27 (3.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.83%) Workday HCM
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.47%) SAP BPC
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.35%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.24%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.24%) Endur
7 2 (0.24%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.24%) Primavera
7 2 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 114 (13.46%) Azure
2 82 (9.68%) Power Platform
3 77 (9.09%) AWS
4 40 (4.72%) SaaS
5 29 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (2.83%) GCP
7 20 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
8 18 (2.13%) Snowflake
9 15 (1.77%) Amazon S3
9 15 (1.77%) dbt
9 15 (1.77%) GitHub
10 13 (1.53%) Serverless
11 12 (1.42%) Datadog
12 11 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
12 11 (1.30%) Power Automate
13 10 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
14 8 (0.94%) Amazon SageMaker
14 8 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (0.94%) AWS Step Functions
14 8 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.01%) LAN
2 13 (1.53%) Firewall
3 10 (1.18%) Ethernet
3 10 (1.18%) Modbus
4 9 (1.06%) DNS
5 8 (0.94%) Internet
5 8 (0.94%) WAN
6 7 (0.83%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.71%) 5G
7 6 (0.71%) CHAP
7 6 (0.71%) Ethernet VPN
7 6 (0.71%) Profibus
8 5 (0.59%) BGP
8 5 (0.59%) DHCP
8 5 (0.59%) Network Security
8 5 (0.59%) NX-OS
8 5 (0.59%) OSPF
8 5 (0.59%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.47%) 3GPP
9 4 (0.47%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (8.97%) Power BI
2 41 (4.84%) Tableau
3 34 (4.01%) Data Warehouse
4 25 (2.95%) Metadata
5 24 (2.83%) SQL Server
6 20 (2.36%) BigQuery
7 17 (2.01%) Relational Database
8 13 (1.53%) Big Data
9 11 (1.30%) Data Lake
9 11 (1.30%) NoSQL
10 10 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
12 7 (0.83%) Looker
12 7 (0.83%) MongoDB
13 6 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
13 6 (0.71%) Amazon Aurora
13 6 (0.71%) BusinessObjects
13 6 (0.71%) GIS
13 6 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.71%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 78 (9.21%) JIRA
2 48 (5.67%) Git
3 42 (4.96%) Rational DOORS
4 24 (2.83%) Jenkins
5 20 (2.36%) Postman
6 16 (1.89%) Selenium
7 12 (1.42%) GitLab
7 12 (1.42%) JMeter
8 11 (1.30%) Cucumber
9 10 (1.18%) SoapUI
10 8 (0.94%) MLflow
10 8 (0.94%) TestRail
11 7 (0.83%) LoadRunner
11 7 (0.83%) Locust
12 5 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 5 (0.59%) TestNG
12 5 (0.59%) Zephyr
13 4 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
13 4 (0.47%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.47%) WebDriver
General
1 317 (37.43%) Social Skills
2 240 (28.34%) Finance
3 169 (19.95%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (6.49%) Law
4 55 (6.49%) Manufacturing
5 50 (5.90%) Electronics
6 48 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (5.55%) Marketing
8 42 (4.96%) Banking
9 40 (4.72%) Presentation Skills
10 39 (4.60%) Aerospace
11 32 (3.78%) Organisational Skills
11 32 (3.78%) Retail
12 31 (3.66%) Financial Institution
13 28 (3.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 27 (3.19%) Telecoms
15 25 (2.95%) Influencing Skills
15 25 (2.95%) Public Sector
16 23 (2.72%) Pharmaceutical
17 20 (2.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 120 (14.17%) Analyst
1 120 (14.17%) Senior
2 100 (11.81%) Lead
3 66 (7.79%) Systems Engineer
4 43 (5.08%) Data Analyst
5 38 (4.49%) Architect
5 38 (4.49%) Business Analyst
6 34 (4.01%) Test Engineer
7 32 (3.78%) Support Engineer
8 31 (3.66%) Data Engineer
9 29 (3.42%) Applications Engineer
10 27 (3.19%) Applications Support
11 26 (3.07%) Administrator
11 26 (3.07%) Developer
11 26 (3.07%) Principal Engineer
12 23 (2.72%) Applications Support Engineer
12 23 (2.72%) Team Leader
13 22 (2.60%) Data Quality Analyst
13 22 (2.60%) Quality Analyst
14 20 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.31%) REST
2 23 (2.72%) Middleware
3 21 (2.48%) JSON
4 20 (2.36%) XML
5 18 (2.13%) scikit-learn
6 17 (2.01%) Pandas
7 16 (1.89%) PyTorch
7 16 (1.89%) TensorFlow
8 15 (1.77%) Kafka
9 14 (1.65%) React
10 10 (1.18%) HTML
11 8 (0.94%) NumPy
11 8 (0.94%) PySpark
11 8 (0.94%) pytest
12 7 (0.83%) CSS
12 7 (0.83%) FastAPI
12 7 (0.83%) Gherkin
12 7 (0.83%) Hugging Face
12 7 (0.83%) Playwright
12 7 (0.83%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.38%) Management Information System
2 39 (4.60%) Onboarding
3 38 (4.49%) Life Science
4 35 (4.13%) Self-Motivation
5 32 (3.78%) Product Ownership
6 27 (3.19%) Algorithms
6 27 (3.19%) Operational Technology
7 18 (2.13%) SCADA
8 16 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 13 (1.53%) Data Structures
9 13 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
10 12 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
10 12 (1.42%) Data Centre
10 12 (1.42%) FPGA
11 11 (1.30%) Credit Risk
11 11 (1.30%) Embedded Systems
11 11 (1.30%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 9 (1.06%) Low-Code
12 9 (1.06%) Virtual Team
13 8 (0.94%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 38 (4.49%) Linux
2 36 (4.25%) Windows
3 13 (1.53%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (0.59%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.35%) Unix
7 2 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (0.24%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.12%) AIX
8 1 (0.12%) Android
8 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.12%) CentOS
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
8 1 (0.12%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (27.27%) Agile
2 206 (24.32%) Problem-Solving
3 126 (14.88%) Verification and Validation
4 122 (14.40%) Continuous Improvement
5 120 (14.17%) Data Validation
6 118 (13.93%) Migration
7 102 (12.04%) Analytics
8 95 (11.22%) Test Automation
9 90 (10.63%) Decision-Making
9 90 (10.63%) Systems Engineering
10 85 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
11 84 (9.92%) Data Analysis
12 83 (9.80%) DevOps
12 83 (9.80%) Software Engineering
13 82 (9.68%) CI/CD
13 82 (9.68%) Mentoring
14 80 (9.45%) ETL
15 79 (9.33%) Data Management
16 75 (8.85%) Stakeholder Management
17 74 (8.74%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 173 (20.43%) SQL
2 172 (20.31%) Python
3 38 (4.49%) Java
4 36 (4.25%) C
4 36 (4.25%) C++
5 29 (3.42%) MATLAB
6 19 (2.24%) JavaScript
6 19 (2.24%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.53%) Bash
7 13 (1.53%) R
8 10 (1.18%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.18%) TypeScript
9 6 (0.71%) C#
9 6 (0.71%) Ladder Logic
10 3 (0.35%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.35%) Bicep
10 3 (0.35%) GLSL
10 3 (0.35%) Go
10 3 (0.35%) Google Apps Script
10 3 (0.35%) Scala
Qualifications
1 272 (32.11%) Degree
2 91 (10.74%) BPSS Clearance
3 89 (10.51%) Security Cleared
4 57 (6.73%) Master's Degree
5 50 (5.90%) SC Cleared
6 39 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 26 (3.07%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (2.36%) HNC
9 18 (2.13%) DV Cleared
10 15 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (1.65%) CCNA
11 14 (1.65%) CCNP
12 12 (1.42%) CCIE
12 12 (1.42%) ISTQB
12 12 (1.42%) Numerate Degree
13 11 (1.30%) ACCA
14 10 (1.18%) Network+ Certification
15 9 (1.06%) Chartered Engineer
15 9 (1.06%) CISA
15 9 (1.06%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (13.34%) Data Quality
2 110 (12.99%) QA
3 38 (4.49%) GxP
4 35 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 30 (3.54%) SLA
6 28 (3.31%) GDPR
7 25 (2.95%) Accessibility
8 16 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 11 (1.30%) ISO 20022
9 11 (1.30%) NIST
9 11 (1.30%) SEPA
10 9 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.83%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 7 (0.83%) COBIT
11 7 (0.83%) TARGET2
11 7 (0.83%) WCAG
12 5 (0.59%) ARP4761
13 4 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 4 (0.47%) NCSC
14 3 (0.35%) AUTOSAR
System Software
1 41 (4.84%) Docker
2 31 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (2.95%) Firmware
4 14 (1.65%) Active Directory
5 11 (1.30%) Embedded Firmware
6 7 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.83%) vSphere
7 6 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.59%) vCloud
9 2 (0.24%) Apache Flume
9 2 (0.24%) Ceph
9 2 (0.24%) HDFS
9 2 (0.24%) Lustre
9 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.24%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.12%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.12%) iptables
10 1 (0.12%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 31 (3.66%) Kubernetes
2 20 (2.36%) Grafana
2 20 (2.36%) Terraform
3 17 (2.01%) Ansible
4 10 (1.18%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.59%) Docker Swarm
5 5 (0.59%) Kubeflow
5 5 (0.59%) vCenter Server
6 4 (0.47%) Rundeck
7 3 (0.35%) Kibana
8 2 (0.24%) Argo
8 2 (0.24%) Functional Safety
8 2 (0.24%) logstash
8 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.24%) Nessus
8 2 (0.24%) Oozie
8 2 (0.24%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.24%) Rancher
8 2 (0.24%) yum
9 1 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 92 (10.86%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.73%) SAP
3 37 (4.37%) VMware
4 27 (3.19%) Cisco
5 24 (2.83%) Salesforce
6 23 (2.72%) Oracle
7 22 (2.60%) IBM
8 15 (1.77%) Foundry
9 13 (1.53%) CheckPoint
9 13 (1.53%) F5
10 12 (1.42%) Siemens
11 10 (1.18%) Workday
12 9 (1.06%) Allen-Bradley
12 9 (1.06%) Databricks
12 9 (1.06%) Software AG
13 8 (0.94%) Intapp
13 8 (0.94%) MathWorks
14 7 (0.83%) Splunk
15 6 (0.71%) EMC
15 6 (0.71%) Informatica