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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 91 180
Rank change year-on-year +17 +89 +24
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,565 1,591 1,132
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.17% 3.22% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.97% 3.61% 1.85%
Number of salaries quoted 1,509 447 429
10th Percentile £35,700 £38,730 £38,734
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £47,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.23% -10.72%
75th Percentile £71,250 £76,875 £77,500
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.56% -4.36% -4.35%

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 86,281 44,107 61,151
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.16% 89.14% 81.78%
Number of salaries quoted 59,444 24,402 33,284
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,274
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.62% -2.88%
75th Percentile £79,091 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £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 1 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 1 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 +18 2,362 £58,000 +5.45% 4,573
UK excluding London -3 1,853 £55,000 +4.56% 2,789
Work from Home +135 683 £60,000 -3.23% 1,635
London +77 613 £70,000 -12.50% 2,187
South East -16 500 £62,500 +16.28% 734
North of England +110 474 £52,951 +11.05% 467
North West +110 295 £55,000 +9.88% 251
Midlands -18 294 £50,000 -9.09% 376
South West +22 249 £55,000 +4.56% 373
East of England -43 203 £55,000 -8.33% 373
West Midlands +43 168 £50,000 -9.09% 256
East Midlands -48 126 £50,000 +17.65% 120
Yorkshire +26 92 £42,500 - 144
Scotland +49 89 £70,000 +18.61% 360
North East +3 87 £55,000 +57.14% 74
Wales -36 43 £70,000 +16.67% 68
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 2
Northern Ireland -82 4 - - 67

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 51 (1.99%) Apache Spark
2 46 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (1.68%) Apache
4 39 (1.52%) Confluence
5 37 (1.44%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 15 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.51%) SAS
9 10 (0.39%) WinCC
10 6 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) CMS
11 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 3 (0.12%) Artix
12 3 (0.12%) nginx
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.078%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.078%) IIS
14 1 (0.039%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.039%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 151 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (2.14%) Simulink
4 37 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 28 (1.09%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.78%) AutoCAD
6 20 (0.78%) SOLIDWORKS
7 16 (0.62%) MS Visio
8 13 (0.51%) Revit
9 10 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 9 (0.35%) OrCAD
11 8 (0.31%) EPLAN
11 8 (0.31%) Navisworks
12 5 (0.19%) LaTeX
12 5 (0.19%) Mathcad
13 4 (0.16%) CANalyzer
13 4 (0.16%) Notion
13 4 (0.16%) Stateflow
14 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.12%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 44 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.43%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 9 (0.35%) iTrent
5 9 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.31%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.27%) Infor M3
7 7 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 7 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.23%) Elite 3E
9 5 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 5 (0.19%) SAP MDG-BP
10 4 (0.16%) Maximo
10 4 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
11 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.12%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 341 (13.29%) Azure
2 277 (10.80%) AWS
3 191 (7.45%) Power Platform
4 105 (4.09%) GCP
5 86 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
6 81 (3.16%) GitHub
7 75 (2.92%) SaaS
8 70 (2.73%) Serverless
9 68 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
10 47 (1.83%) Amazon S3
11 43 (1.68%) Entra ID
12 41 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
13 40 (1.56%) GitHub Actions
14 36 (1.40%) Microsoft Copilot
15 30 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
15 30 (1.17%) Microsoft Purview
16 27 (1.05%) Amazon EMR
17 26 (1.01%) Azure Service Bus
17 26 (1.01%) Cloud Computing
18 25 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 69 (2.69%) DNS
2 68 (2.65%) Firewall
3 55 (2.14%) Broadband
4 43 (1.68%) Wireless
5 42 (1.64%) VPN
6 39 (1.52%) Ethernet
6 39 (1.52%) Network Security
6 39 (1.52%) TCP/IP
7 37 (1.44%) WAN
8 35 (1.36%) Modbus
9 32 (1.25%) VLAN
10 30 (1.17%) LAN
11 28 (1.09%) OSPF
12 25 (0.97%) MQTT
13 24 (0.94%) Wireshark
14 23 (0.90%) SD-WAN
15 21 (0.82%) BGP
16 19 (0.74%) 5G
17 17 (0.66%) DHCP
17 17 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 175 (6.82%) Power BI
2 74 (2.88%) Metadata
3 64 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (2.22%) Data Lake
5 53 (2.07%) SQL Server
6 50 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
7 40 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
7 40 (1.56%) Relational Database
8 39 (1.52%) Tableau
9 32 (1.25%) MongoDB
10 28 (1.09%) BigQuery
11 27 (1.05%) Big Data
11 27 (1.05%) NoSQL
12 25 (0.97%) DynamoDB
13 24 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
15 22 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 20 (0.78%) Power Query
16 20 (0.78%) Semantic Layer
17 19 (0.74%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 146 (5.69%) JIRA
2 130 (5.07%) Git
3 63 (2.46%) Jenkins
4 59 (2.30%) GitLab
5 48 (1.87%) Rational DOORS
6 30 (1.17%) LabVIEW
6 30 (1.17%) Selenium
7 25 (0.97%) Postman
8 22 (0.86%) Snyk
9 20 (0.78%) Cypress.io
10 13 (0.51%) Burp Suite
10 13 (0.51%) Claude Code
11 12 (0.47%) JMeter
12 11 (0.43%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.43%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.43%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.39%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.35%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.35%) MLflow
14 9 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 862 (33.61%) Social Skills
2 661 (25.77%) Finance
3 615 (23.98%) Analytical Skills
4 254 (9.90%) Manufacturing
5 246 (9.59%) Aerospace
6 240 (9.36%) Electronics
7 214 (8.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 141 (5.50%) Law
9 116 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
9 116 (4.52%) Public Sector
10 111 (4.33%) Banking
11 107 (4.17%) Retail
12 96 (3.74%) Marketing
12 96 (3.74%) Telecoms
13 85 (3.31%) Pharmaceutical
14 82 (3.20%) Automotive
15 59 (2.30%) Legal
16 48 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
17 47 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
17 47 (1.83%) Military
Job Titles
1 460 (17.93%) Senior
2 313 (12.20%) Systems Engineer
3 282 (10.99%) Analyst
4 216 (8.42%) Lead
5 134 (5.22%) Data Engineer
6 130 (5.07%) Test Engineer
7 123 (4.80%) Architect
8 106 (4.13%) Developer
9 97 (3.78%) Consultant
10 92 (3.59%) Software Engineer
11 88 (3.43%) Business Analyst
12 85 (3.31%) Principal Engineer
13 80 (3.12%) Electronics Engineer
14 70 (2.73%) Data Analyst
15 63 (2.46%) Validation Engineer
16 58 (2.26%) Network Engineer
17 51 (1.99%) Automation Engineer
18 50 (1.95%) Design Engineer
19 48 (1.87%) Embedded Engineer
20 47 (1.83%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (3.47%) Terraform
2 65 (2.53%) REST
3 60 (2.34%) RESTful
4 59 (2.30%) Kafka
5 53 (2.07%) Node.js
6 48 (1.87%) .NET
7 45 (1.75%) PySpark
8 43 (1.68%) Playwright
9 37 (1.44%) JSON
10 34 (1.33%) FastAPI
10 34 (1.33%) XML
11 32 (1.25%) React
12 31 (1.21%) CSS
13 29 (1.13%) HTML
14 26 (1.01%) Swagger
15 25 (0.97%) Middleware
16 23 (0.90%) LDAP
17 22 (0.86%) OAuth
17 22 (0.86%) RabbitMQ
18 21 (0.82%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 168 (6.55%) Cloud Native
2 149 (5.81%) Management Information System
3 129 (5.03%) Onboarding
4 87 (3.39%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.16%) Data Centre
6 70 (2.73%) Driving Licence
6 70 (2.73%) Embedded Systems
7 64 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
8 63 (2.46%) Data Structures
9 60 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
10 55 (2.14%) AI Agents
10 55 (2.14%) Algorithms
10 55 (2.14%) SCADA
11 48 (1.87%) Life Science
12 43 (1.68%) IoT
13 41 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
14 40 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
15 38 (1.48%) Low-Code
15 38 (1.48%) Robotics
16 37 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 133 (5.19%) Linux
2 93 (3.63%) Windows
3 30 (1.17%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.01%) Unix
5 13 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.39%) Android
7 8 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.31%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.19%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.16%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.16%) Mac OS X
10 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.078%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.078%) VMS
11 2 (0.078%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.039%) AIX
12 1 (0.039%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.039%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 670 (26.12%) Problem-Solving
2 579 (22.57%) Continuous Improvement
3 471 (18.36%) Agile
4 466 (18.17%) Verification and Validation
5 434 (16.92%) AI
6 359 (14.00%) CI/CD
7 349 (13.61%) Stakeholder Management
8 327 (12.75%) Test Automation
9 322 (12.55%) Migration
10 278 (10.84%) Mentoring
11 275 (10.72%) Analytics
12 257 (10.02%) Software Engineering
13 247 (9.63%) Decision-Making
14 239 (9.32%) DevOps
15 229 (8.93%) Data Analysis
16 228 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 216 (8.42%) Business Intelligence
18 207 (8.07%) Roadmaps
19 200 (7.80%) Data Migration
19 200 (7.80%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 529 (20.62%) Python
2 457 (17.82%) SQL
3 106 (4.13%) Java
4 94 (3.66%) C++
5 85 (3.31%) C
6 76 (2.96%) JavaScript
7 73 (2.85%) C#
8 71 (2.77%) MATLAB
9 48 (1.87%) Go
10 36 (1.40%) Bash
11 34 (1.33%) TypeScript
12 33 (1.29%) PowerShell
13 29 (1.13%) Embedded C
13 29 (1.13%) R
14 25 (0.97%) Scala
15 18 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 18 (0.70%) Embedded C++
16 12 (0.47%) Shell Script
17 10 (0.39%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 557 (21.72%) Degree
2 556 (21.68%) Security Cleared
3 416 (16.22%) SC Cleared
4 125 (4.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 96 (3.74%) Master's Degree
7 55 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 44 (1.72%) HND
8 44 (1.72%) PhD
9 40 (1.56%) Chartered Engineer
10 37 (1.44%) HNC
10 37 (1.44%) PMI Certification
11 32 (1.25%) CISSP
12 30 (1.17%) ACCA
12 30 (1.17%) Azure Certification
13 28 (1.09%) AWS Certification
14 27 (1.05%) CIMA
15 26 (1.01%) PMP
16 21 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
16 21 (0.82%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (15.09%) Data Quality
2 314 (12.24%) QA
3 82 (3.20%) Accessibility
4 66 (2.57%) GDPR
5 37 (1.44%) GRC
6 33 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (1.09%) GxP
8 25 (0.97%) SLA
9 23 (0.90%) NIST
10 19 (0.74%) IEC 61508
11 16 (0.62%) ISO 9001
11 16 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 15 (0.58%) GMP
12 15 (0.58%) PMO
13 13 (0.51%) ISO 19650
13 13 (0.51%) ISO 26262
13 13 (0.51%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.47%) WCAG
15 10 (0.39%) GAAP
16 9 (0.35%) JTAG
System Software
1 106 (4.13%) Docker
2 101 (3.94%) Firmware
3 47 (1.83%) Active Directory
4 44 (1.72%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.58%) vSphere
7 8 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.078%) iptables
10 2 (0.078%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.078%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.039%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 90 (3.51%) Kubernetes
2 47 (1.83%) Grafana
3 34 (1.33%) Ansible
4 31 (1.21%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.66%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.39%) Puppet
9 9 (0.35%) Cilium
10 8 (0.31%) BMC PATROL
10 8 (0.31%) Kibana
10 8 (0.31%) Nessus
10 8 (0.31%) Nmap
11 5 (0.19%) Argo
11 5 (0.19%) WMI
12 4 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.16%) Rancher
12 4 (0.16%) SCCM
12 4 (0.16%) yum
Vendors
1 339 (13.22%) Microsoft
2 130 (5.07%) SAP
3 103 (4.02%) Oracle
4 68 (2.65%) Databricks
4 68 (2.65%) Salesforce
5 66 (2.57%) EMC
6 55 (2.14%) ServiceNow
7 54 (2.11%) Cisco
8 43 (1.68%) Google
9 32 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
10 28 (1.09%) Palo Alto
11 27 (1.05%) Thales
12 25 (0.97%) Sage
13 23 (0.90%) IBM
13 23 (0.90%) Tenable
14 22 (0.86%) Siemens
15 21 (0.82%) Informatica
15 21 (0.82%) VMware
16 18 (0.70%) Autodesk
16 18 (0.70%) Workday