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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 85 210
Rank change year-on-year -14 +125 -18
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,934 1,690 1,083
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.84% 3.40% 1.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.49% 3.81% 1.61%
Number of salaries quoted 1,111 522 527
10th Percentile £34,500 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £42,215 £42,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £73,750 £70,938 £76,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £89,875 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,500 £52,600 £54,995
% change year-on-year +1.71% -4.35% -0.43%

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 77,565 44,386 67,277
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.71% 89.40% 81.08%
Number of salaries quoted 53,403 25,236 43,866
10th Percentile £30,580 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,170 £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 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.40% -3.00% -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 8 August 2026.

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 8 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 1,762 £55,000 - 1,746
UK excluding London -34 1,333 £53,500 +1.71% 1,125
Work from Home +122 594 £55,500 -7.50% 622
London +80 490 £72,500 -6.45% 746
South East -34 400 £56,000 +4.19% 317
North of England +102 367 £53,625 +12.89% 222
North West +95 211 £55,000 +15.35% 128
Midlands -47 199 £43,587 -20.75% 181
South West -20 148 £52,750 +0.29% 170
East of England -69 127 £62,500 +9.65% 146
West Midlands +11 109 £44,360 -26.07% 115
East Midlands -65 89 £42,500 - 66
Yorkshire +8 78 £43,000 +1.18% 53
North East +8 78 £55,000 +57.14% 44
Scotland +29 64 £55,000 -5.23% 86
Wales -40 28 £47,500 -11.63% 22
Northern Ireland -70 2 - - 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 60 (3.10%) Apache Airflow
2 57 (2.95%) Apache Spark
3 55 (2.84%) Apache
4 34 (1.76%) Confluence
5 32 (1.65%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.09%) ArcGIS
7 20 (1.03%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
8 12 (0.62%) SAS
9 5 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
10 4 (0.21%) Kinematics
10 4 (0.21%) WinCC
11 3 (0.16%) Artix
11 3 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.10%) IIS
13 1 (0.052%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.052%) WebSphere
Applications
1 119 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.52%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.71%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.71%) Simulink
4 27 (1.40%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.67%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.26%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.26%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.21%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.21%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.21%) Sketch
11 3 (0.16%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.16%) OrCAD
11 3 (0.16%) Productboard
11 3 (0.16%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.10%) Revit
12 2 (0.10%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 49 (2.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (2.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.57%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.52%) Elite 3E
4 10 (0.52%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.47%) iTrent
5 9 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.41%) Oracle Applications
6 8 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
7 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.31%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.26%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.26%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.21%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.21%) Workday HCM
10 2 (0.10%) SAP Business One
10 2 (0.10%) SAP CO
10 2 (0.10%) SAP FI/CO
10 2 (0.10%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 290 (14.99%) Azure
2 269 (13.91%) AWS
3 167 (8.63%) Power Platform
4 90 (4.65%) GCP
5 80 (4.14%) SaaS
6 67 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
7 57 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 56 (2.90%) GitHub
9 49 (2.53%) Serverless
10 44 (2.28%) Amazon S3
11 39 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
12 28 (1.45%) Entra ID
12 28 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
13 27 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
14 21 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
14 21 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
14 21 (1.09%) Cloud Computing
15 20 (1.03%) PowerApps
15 20 (1.03%) Snowflake
16 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.62%) Broadband
2 56 (2.90%) Firewall
3 48 (2.48%) DNS
4 33 (1.71%) Wireless
5 31 (1.60%) TCP/IP
6 30 (1.55%) Network Security
7 27 (1.40%) WAN
8 26 (1.34%) VPN
9 19 (0.98%) Ethernet
9 19 (0.98%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.83%) LAN
11 16 (0.83%) MQTT
12 15 (0.78%) Internet
12 15 (0.78%) Wireshark
13 13 (0.67%) HTTP
14 12 (0.62%) BGP
15 11 (0.57%) 5G
15 11 (0.57%) NGN
15 11 (0.57%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 152 (7.86%) Power BI
2 58 (3.00%) Tableau
3 57 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 54 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
5 50 (2.59%) SQL Server
6 48 (2.48%) Metadata
7 41 (2.12%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.76%) MongoDB
9 29 (1.50%) Relational Database
10 27 (1.40%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.29%) QGIS
12 23 (1.19%) Amazon Athena
12 23 (1.19%) GIS
12 23 (1.19%) Semantic Layer
13 22 (1.14%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (1.03%) Power Query
15 20 (1.03%) Spark SQL
15 20 (1.03%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 124 (6.41%) JIRA
2 109 (5.64%) Git
3 51 (2.64%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.38%) GitLab
5 38 (1.96%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (1.24%) Selenium
7 22 (1.14%) Snyk
8 21 (1.09%) Postman
9 17 (0.88%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.88%) LabVIEW
10 14 (0.72%) JMeter
11 13 (0.67%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.67%) IBM UrbanCode
12 10 (0.52%) REST Assured
12 10 (0.52%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.47%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.41%) MLflow
14 8 (0.41%) Rational Rhapsody
15 7 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 6 (0.31%) Hudson
General
1 658 (34.02%) Social Skills
2 546 (28.23%) Finance
3 473 (24.46%) Analytical Skills
4 192 (9.93%) Aerospace
5 188 (9.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 175 (9.05%) Manufacturing
7 157 (8.12%) Electronics
8 107 (5.53%) Law
9 106 (5.48%) Banking
10 76 (3.93%) Public Sector
11 73 (3.77%) Retail
12 68 (3.52%) Organisational Skills
13 66 (3.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 65 (3.36%) Marketing
15 60 (3.10%) Legal
16 54 (2.79%) Automotive
17 46 (2.38%) Games
18 41 (2.12%) Telecoms
19 34 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
19 34 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 350 (18.10%) Senior
2 268 (13.86%) Analyst
3 175 (9.05%) Lead
4 145 (7.50%) Systems Engineer
5 118 (6.10%) Test Engineer
6 112 (5.79%) Architect
7 104 (5.38%) Consultant
8 99 (5.12%) Data Engineer
9 86 (4.45%) Developer
10 84 (4.34%) Business Analyst
11 69 (3.57%) Software Engineer
12 67 (3.46%) Data Analyst
12 67 (3.46%) Validation Engineer
13 62 (3.21%) Principal Engineer
14 46 (2.38%) Embedded Engineer
14 46 (2.38%) Support Engineer
15 44 (2.28%) Data Scientist
16 40 (2.07%) Electronics Engineer
16 40 (2.07%) IT Manager
17 38 (1.96%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (2.43%) RESTful
2 43 (2.22%) Kafka
3 39 (2.02%) Node.js
3 39 (2.02%) PySpark
4 38 (1.96%) REST
5 32 (1.65%) PyTorch
6 31 (1.60%) JSON
7 30 (1.55%) .NET
8 29 (1.50%) XML
9 26 (1.34%) Middleware
9 26 (1.34%) Playwright
10 24 (1.24%) Pandas
11 23 (1.19%) LDAP
12 21 (1.09%) CSS
13 20 (1.03%) HTML
13 20 (1.03%) React
14 19 (0.98%) Regular Expression
14 19 (0.98%) XMPP
15 17 (0.88%) FastAPI
15 17 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.19%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.83%) Onboarding
3 104 (5.38%) Management Information System
4 72 (3.72%) Algorithms
5 71 (3.67%) Product Ownership
6 66 (3.41%) Data Centre
7 62 (3.21%) Data Structures
8 55 (2.84%) Embedded Systems
9 52 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
10 49 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
10 49 (2.53%) Driving Licence
11 45 (2.33%) Low-Code
12 38 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
13 37 (1.91%) AI Agents
14 36 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
15 35 (1.81%) Life Science
16 33 (1.71%) Video\Live Streaming
17 32 (1.65%) Robotics
18 31 (1.60%) IoT
19 29 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 123 (6.36%) Linux
2 88 (4.55%) Windows
3 34 (1.76%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.98%) Unix
6 8 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.31%) Android
7 6 (0.31%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.21%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.21%) Mac OS X
9 2 (0.10%) AIX
9 2 (0.10%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.10%) ThreadX
9 2 (0.10%) VMS
9 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.052%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 507 (26.22%) Problem-Solving
2 480 (24.82%) Continuous Improvement
3 413 (21.35%) Agile
4 372 (19.23%) AI
5 300 (15.51%) CI/CD
6 271 (14.01%) Analytics
7 255 (13.19%) Stakeholder Management
8 246 (12.72%) Test Automation
9 241 (12.46%) Migration
10 231 (11.94%) Mentoring
11 220 (11.38%) Decision-Making
12 219 (11.32%) Verification and Validation
13 204 (10.55%) Data Analysis
14 203 (10.50%) Software Engineering
15 196 (10.13%) Machine Learning
16 191 (9.88%) DevOps
17 182 (9.41%) Business Intelligence
18 176 (9.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 173 (8.95%) ERP
20 170 (8.79%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 485 (25.08%) Python
2 382 (19.75%) SQL
3 89 (4.60%) Java
4 86 (4.45%) C++
5 77 (3.98%) C
6 58 (3.00%) JavaScript
7 57 (2.95%) Go
8 52 (2.69%) C#
9 48 (2.48%) MATLAB
10 29 (1.50%) Bash
10 29 (1.50%) PowerShell
11 25 (1.29%) Embedded C
12 21 (1.09%) Scala
13 20 (1.03%) TypeScript
14 19 (0.98%) T-SQL
15 18 (0.93%) Embedded C++
16 15 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 13 (0.67%) R
18 10 (0.52%) ABAP
18 10 (0.52%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 412 (21.30%) Degree
2 288 (14.89%) Security Cleared
3 163 (8.43%) SC Cleared
4 139 (7.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 102 (5.27%) DV Cleared
6 78 (4.03%) Master's Degree
7 43 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.76%) Chartered Engineer
8 34 (1.76%) CISSP
9 32 (1.65%) PhD
10 28 (1.45%) HNC
10 28 (1.45%) PMI Certification
11 27 (1.40%) CISM
12 26 (1.34%) ACCA
12 26 (1.34%) CIMA
13 23 (1.19%) AWS Certification
14 22 (1.14%) HND
15 20 (1.03%) SANS
16 19 (0.98%) CISA
17 18 (0.93%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (16.13%) Data Quality
2 268 (13.86%) QA
3 91 (4.71%) Accessibility
4 58 (3.00%) GDPR
5 38 (1.96%) GRC
6 26 (1.34%) IEC 61508
6 26 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 24 (1.24%) NIST
8 21 (1.09%) SLA
9 18 (0.93%) PMO
10 16 (0.83%) GxP
11 15 (0.78%) GAAP
11 15 (0.78%) IFRS
11 15 (0.78%) ISO 26262
11 15 (0.78%) WCAG
12 13 (0.67%) GMP
12 13 (0.67%) ISO 9001
13 11 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 11 (0.57%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.52%) COBIT
System Software
1 79 (4.08%) Docker
2 75 (3.88%) Firmware
3 43 (2.22%) Active Directory
4 29 (1.50%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (1.14%) vSphere
7 19 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
8 8 (0.41%) KVM
9 5 (0.26%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.10%) iptables
11 2 (0.10%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.052%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.052%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 81 (4.19%) Kubernetes
2 75 (3.88%) Terraform
3 40 (2.07%) Grafana
4 27 (1.40%) Ansible
5 25 (1.29%) Functional Safety
6 16 (0.83%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.57%) Puppet
7 11 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.52%) Cilium
9 8 (0.41%) SCCM
10 7 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 7 (0.36%) Kibana
11 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.21%) Argo
12 4 (0.21%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.21%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.21%) Nessus
12 4 (0.21%) Nmap
12 4 (0.21%) WMI
13 3 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 270 (13.96%) Microsoft
2 124 (6.41%) SAP
3 106 (5.48%) Oracle
4 59 (3.05%) Salesforce
5 50 (2.59%) Databricks
6 44 (2.28%) ServiceNow
7 42 (2.17%) Google
8 38 (1.96%) Cisco
8 38 (1.96%) VMware
9 35 (1.81%) Red Hat
10 29 (1.50%) CrowdStrike
11 27 (1.40%) Palo Alto
12 25 (1.29%) EMC
13 22 (1.14%) Tenable
14 18 (0.93%) IBM
15 16 (0.83%) Foundry
16 15 (0.78%) McAfee
16 15 (0.78%) Splunk
17 14 (0.72%) Adobe
18 13 (0.67%) Workday