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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 92 171
Rank change year-on-year +22 +79 +40
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,614 1,592 1,122
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.21% 3.21% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.02% 3.60% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 1,526 444 419
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,651 £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 £77,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £86,250 £89,625 £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 86,487 44,218 59,966
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.18% 89.02% 81.93%
Number of salaries quoted 59,402 24,461 32,381
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,325 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
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 7 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 7 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 +21 2,405 £57,500 +4.55% 4,590
UK excluding London -3 1,887 £55,000 +4.56% 2,894
Work from Home +139 685 £60,000 -7.69% 1,683
London +75 628 £68,000 -15.00% 2,039
South East -14 499 £62,500 +19.05% 756
North of England +125 489 £51,000 +6.96% 501
Midlands -12 308 £50,000 -9.09% 407
North West +110 301 £55,000 +9.94% 260
South West +21 245 £55,000 +4.56% 343
East of England -40 211 £55,000 -10.20% 401
West Midlands +47 173 £47,500 -13.64% 259
East Midlands -38 135 £50,000 +17.65% 147
Yorkshire +32 97 £42,500 - 165
Scotland +44 94 £70,000 +18.61% 368
North East +3 91 £55,000 +57.14% 76
Wales -30 44 £70,000 +12.00% 71
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 4
Northern Ireland -79 4 - - 80

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 54 (2.07%) Apache Spark
2 47 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (1.76%) Apache
4 38 (1.45%) Confluence
5 37 (1.42%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.96%) CMS
7 21 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 15 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
9 13 (0.50%) SAS
10 10 (0.38%) WinCC
11 6 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 6 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
12 3 (0.11%) Artix
12 3 (0.11%) nginx
12 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.077%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.077%) IIS
14 1 (0.038%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.038%) FactoryTalk
Applications
1 155 (5.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (2.10%) Simulink
4 38 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (1.11%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.80%) AutoCAD
7 19 (0.73%) SOLIDWORKS
8 16 (0.61%) MS Visio
9 15 (0.57%) Revit
10 11 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 11 (0.42%) OrCAD
11 10 (0.38%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.31%) EPLAN
13 6 (0.23%) Notion
14 5 (0.19%) LaTeX
14 5 (0.19%) Mathcad
14 5 (0.19%) Stateflow
15 4 (0.15%) CANalyzer
16 3 (0.11%) Chatbot
16 3 (0.11%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 46 (1.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.38%) SAP MDG
3 10 (0.38%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.34%) iTrent
5 8 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.27%) Infor M3
6 7 (0.27%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.23%) Elite 3E
8 5 (0.19%) Maximo
8 5 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.15%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.11%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.11%) Sage 200
10 3 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 350 (13.39%) Azure
2 284 (10.86%) AWS
3 189 (7.23%) Power Platform
4 105 (4.02%) GCP
5 86 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
6 83 (3.18%) GitHub
7 79 (3.02%) SaaS
8 68 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
9 66 (2.52%) Serverless
10 49 (1.87%) Amazon S3
11 46 (1.76%) Entra ID
12 39 (1.49%) GitHub Actions
13 36 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
14 35 (1.34%) Microsoft Copilot
15 31 (1.19%) Microsoft Purview
16 29 (1.11%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
18 27 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 27 (1.03%) Azure Service Bus
18 27 (1.03%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.68%) DNS
2 69 (2.64%) Firewall
3 56 (2.14%) Broadband
4 45 (1.72%) Wireless
5 44 (1.68%) VPN
6 42 (1.61%) TCP/IP
7 40 (1.53%) Ethernet
8 39 (1.49%) Modbus
9 38 (1.45%) Network Security
10 37 (1.42%) WAN
11 35 (1.34%) VLAN
12 32 (1.22%) OSPF
13 30 (1.15%) LAN
14 27 (1.03%) MQTT
15 26 (0.99%) Wireshark
16 23 (0.88%) BGP
16 23 (0.88%) SD-WAN
17 19 (0.73%) 5G
18 18 (0.69%) DHCP
18 18 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 174 (6.66%) Power BI
2 77 (2.95%) Metadata
3 63 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.10%) Data Lake
4 55 (2.10%) SQL Server
5 48 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 42 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
7 39 (1.49%) Tableau
8 38 (1.45%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.19%) MongoDB
10 28 (1.07%) Big Data
10 28 (1.07%) BigQuery
10 28 (1.07%) NoSQL
11 24 (0.92%) DynamoDB
12 22 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
12 22 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (0.80%) Power Query
14 20 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (0.73%) MySQL
15 19 (0.73%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 145 (5.55%) JIRA
2 132 (5.05%) Git
3 64 (2.45%) Jenkins
4 63 (2.41%) GitLab
5 46 (1.76%) Rational DOORS
6 32 (1.22%) LabVIEW
7 28 (1.07%) Selenium
8 24 (0.92%) Postman
9 20 (0.77%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.65%) Snyk
11 14 (0.54%) Claude Code
12 13 (0.50%) Burp Suite
13 11 (0.42%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.42%) JMeter
13 11 (0.42%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.42%) REST Assured
13 11 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
14 9 (0.34%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.34%) MLflow
15 8 (0.31%) Zephyr
General
1 886 (33.89%) Social Skills
2 679 (25.98%) Finance
3 618 (23.64%) Analytical Skills
4 263 (10.06%) Manufacturing
5 253 (9.68%) Aerospace
6 250 (9.56%) Electronics
7 235 (8.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 142 (5.43%) Law
9 120 (4.59%) Public Sector
10 118 (4.51%) Organisational Skills
11 116 (4.44%) Marketing
12 110 (4.21%) Banking
13 102 (3.90%) Retail
14 99 (3.79%) Telecoms
15 85 (3.25%) Automotive
15 85 (3.25%) Pharmaceutical
16 59 (2.26%) Legal
17 50 (1.91%) Documentation Skills
18 47 (1.80%) Military
19 42 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 465 (17.79%) Senior
2 307 (11.74%) Systems Engineer
3 273 (10.44%) Analyst
4 216 (8.26%) Lead
5 136 (5.20%) Data Engineer
6 127 (4.86%) Test Engineer
7 118 (4.51%) Architect
8 108 (4.13%) Developer
9 98 (3.75%) Consultant
10 95 (3.63%) Software Engineer
11 87 (3.33%) Electronics Engineer
12 84 (3.21%) Principal Engineer
13 80 (3.06%) Business Analyst
14 68 (2.60%) Data Analyst
15 60 (2.30%) Network Engineer
15 60 (2.30%) Validation Engineer
16 56 (2.14%) Design Engineer
17 55 (2.10%) Automation Engineer
18 48 (1.84%) Administrator
19 47 (1.80%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (3.44%) Terraform
2 65 (2.49%) REST
3 63 (2.41%) RESTful
4 61 (2.33%) Kafka
5 55 (2.10%) Node.js
6 52 (1.99%) .NET
7 45 (1.72%) PySpark
8 44 (1.68%) Playwright
9 39 (1.49%) JSON
10 36 (1.38%) FastAPI
11 35 (1.34%) XML
12 34 (1.30%) React
13 33 (1.26%) CSS
14 31 (1.19%) HTML
15 29 (1.11%) Swagger
16 25 (0.96%) RabbitMQ
17 24 (0.92%) OpenAPI
18 23 (0.88%) LDAP
18 23 (0.88%) Middleware
18 23 (0.88%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 174 (6.66%) Cloud Native
2 154 (5.89%) Management Information System
2 154 (5.89%) Onboarding
3 87 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 76 (2.91%) Data Centre
5 73 (2.79%) Driving Licence
5 73 (2.79%) Embedded Systems
6 65 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
7 64 (2.45%) Data Structures
8 62 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
9 59 (2.26%) AI Agents
10 58 (2.22%) SCADA
11 56 (2.14%) Algorithms
12 48 (1.84%) Life Science
13 41 (1.57%) IoT
13 41 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.53%) Robotics
15 39 (1.49%) Analogue Electronics
15 39 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
16 37 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 132 (5.05%) Linux
2 93 (3.56%) Windows
3 31 (1.19%) Windows Server
4 26 (0.99%) Unix
5 13 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.38%) 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 (0.11%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.077%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.077%) VMS
11 2 (0.077%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.038%) AIX
12 1 (0.038%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.038%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 686 (26.24%) Problem-Solving
2 592 (22.65%) Continuous Improvement
3 473 (18.09%) Agile
4 470 (17.98%) Verification and Validation
5 457 (17.48%) AI
6 360 (13.77%) CI/CD
7 352 (13.47%) Stakeholder Management
8 334 (12.78%) Test Automation
9 326 (12.47%) Migration
10 282 (10.79%) Analytics
11 277 (10.60%) Mentoring
12 261 (9.98%) Software Engineering
13 251 (9.60%) Decision-Making
14 245 (9.37%) DevOps
15 230 (8.80%) Data Analysis
16 228 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 213 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
18 212 (8.11%) Roadmaps
19 204 (7.80%) Data Migration
20 203 (7.77%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 543 (20.77%) Python
2 461 (17.64%) SQL
3 108 (4.13%) Java
4 96 (3.67%) C++
5 91 (3.48%) C
6 78 (2.98%) C#
6 78 (2.98%) JavaScript
7 71 (2.72%) MATLAB
8 47 (1.80%) Go
9 36 (1.38%) Bash
9 36 (1.38%) PowerShell
9 36 (1.38%) TypeScript
10 30 (1.15%) Embedded C
11 29 (1.11%) R
12 25 (0.96%) Scala
13 20 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 18 (0.69%) Embedded C++
15 12 (0.46%) Shell Script
16 11 (0.42%) Apex Code
17 9 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 568 (21.73%) Security Cleared
2 564 (21.58%) Degree
3 429 (16.41%) SC Cleared
4 125 (4.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (4.06%) DV Cleared
6 101 (3.86%) Master's Degree
7 54 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 47 (1.80%) PhD
9 44 (1.68%) HND
10 38 (1.45%) Chartered Engineer
11 36 (1.38%) PMI Certification
12 35 (1.34%) HNC
13 33 (1.26%) Azure Certification
14 32 (1.22%) CISSP
15 30 (1.15%) ACCA
16 29 (1.11%) AWS Certification
17 27 (1.03%) CIMA
18 26 (0.99%) PMP
19 23 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
20 21 (0.80%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (14.92%) Data Quality
2 315 (12.05%) QA
3 88 (3.37%) Accessibility
4 65 (2.49%) GDPR
5 34 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.15%) GRC
7 28 (1.07%) GxP
8 25 (0.96%) SLA
9 23 (0.88%) NIST
10 19 (0.73%) IEC 61508
11 18 (0.69%) ISO 9001
12 16 (0.61%) GMP
13 15 (0.57%) ISO 19650
13 15 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 13 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.46%) ISO 26262
15 12 (0.46%) WCAG
16 11 (0.42%) PMO
17 9 (0.34%) GAAP
17 9 (0.34%) JTAG
System Software
1 112 (4.28%) Docker
2 105 (4.02%) Firmware
3 49 (1.87%) Active Directory
4 47 (1.80%) Embedded Firmware
5 22 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.57%) vSphere
7 8 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.11%) 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 (0.038%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 93 (3.56%) Kubernetes
2 45 (1.72%) Grafana
3 36 (1.38%) Ansible
4 30 (1.15%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.61%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.38%) 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
1 347 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 133 (5.09%) SAP
3 104 (3.98%) Oracle
4 91 (3.48%) Salesforce
5 73 (2.79%) EMC
6 67 (2.56%) Databricks
7 56 (2.14%) Cisco
7 56 (2.14%) ServiceNow
8 45 (1.72%) Google
9 32 (1.22%) Adobe
10 30 (1.15%) Thales
11 26 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
12 25 (0.96%) Sage
13 23 (0.88%) IBM
13 23 (0.88%) Samsung
14 22 (0.84%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.80%) Informatica
15 21 (0.80%) Siemens
15 21 (0.80%) TikTok
15 21 (0.80%) VMware