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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 84 197
Rank change year-on-year -11 +113 -3
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,994 1,704 1,140
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.88% 3.41% 1.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.55% 3.82% 1.68%
Number of salaries quoted 1,148 532 535
10th Percentile £34,925 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.51%
75th Percentile £73,750 £70,313 £75,625
90th Percentile £89,125 £88,625 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £54,995
% change year-on-year +4.56% -4.35% -4.36%

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 78,044 44,596 67,662
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.46% 89.30% 81.10%
Number of salaries quoted 53,720 25,240 43,624
10th Percentile £30,773 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,237 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,773 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.13% -4.45% -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 13 August 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 13 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 -12 1,819 £55,000 - 2,877
UK excluding London -30 1,388 £55,000 +4.56% 1,779
Work from Home +118 598 £56,000 -6.67% 1,048
London +66 499 £73,000 -5.81% 1,420
South East -26 412 £56,483 +5.08% 435
North of England +102 382 £54,875 +15.53% 304
North West +100 222 £55,000 +15.35% 177
Midlands -56 201 £43,587 -20.75% 240
South West -3 160 £53,000 +0.76% 276
East of England -67 134 £61,250 +7.46% 261
West Midlands +9 110 £44,360 -22.85% 150
East Midlands -66 90 £42,500 - 90
Yorkshire +20 80 £43,000 +1.18% 74
North East +5 80 £55,000 +57.14% 59
Scotland +32 68 £55,000 -5.23% 200
Wales -40 30 £47,500 -11.63% 55
Northern Ireland -70 2 - - 35
Isle of Man - 1 £38,500 - 5

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 (3.01%) Apache Airflow
2 58 (2.91%) Apache Spark
3 56 (2.81%) Apache
4 34 (1.71%) Confluence
5 31 (1.55%) SharePoint
6 20 (1.00%) Jupyter
7 16 (0.80%) ArcGIS
8 12 (0.60%) SAS
9 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
10 5 (0.25%) WinCC
11 4 (0.20%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.15%) Artix
12 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.10%) IIS
14 1 (0.050%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.050%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.050%) WebSphere
Applications
1 119 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.41%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (1.71%) Simulink
5 27 (1.35%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.70%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.40%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.25%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.25%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.20%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.20%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.20%) Sketch
11 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.15%) OrCAD
11 3 (0.15%) Productboard
11 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.10%) Revit
Business Applications
1 49 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.06%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.55%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.50%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.45%) Elite 3E
5 9 (0.45%) iTrent
5 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.35%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.30%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
9 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG-BP
9 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 4 (0.20%) SAP MM
11 2 (0.10%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.10%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.10%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 295 (14.79%) Azure
2 271 (13.59%) AWS
3 161 (8.07%) Power Platform
4 90 (4.51%) GCP
5 78 (3.91%) SaaS
6 67 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
7 59 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
8 57 (2.86%) GitHub
9 52 (2.61%) Serverless
10 47 (2.36%) Amazon S3
11 38 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
12 31 (1.55%) Entra ID
13 29 (1.45%) GitHub Actions
13 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
14 22 (1.10%) Amazon EMR
15 21 (1.05%) Amazon EC2
15 21 (1.05%) Snowflake
16 20 (1.00%) Cloud Computing
17 19 (0.95%) Microsoft Purview
18 18 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.51%) Broadband
2 56 (2.81%) Firewall
3 50 (2.51%) DNS
4 34 (1.71%) Wireless
5 31 (1.55%) TCP/IP
6 30 (1.50%) Network Security
7 28 (1.40%) WAN
8 27 (1.35%) VPN
9 21 (1.05%) Ethernet
10 19 (0.95%) SD-WAN
11 17 (0.85%) LAN
11 17 (0.85%) MQTT
11 17 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
12 15 (0.75%) Internet
12 15 (0.75%) Wireshark
13 14 (0.70%) BGP
14 13 (0.65%) HTTP
15 12 (0.60%) OSPF
16 11 (0.55%) NGN
16 11 (0.55%) RS-232
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (7.32%) Power BI
2 59 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
3 58 (2.91%) Tableau
4 53 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.46%) Metadata
5 49 (2.46%) SQL Server
6 44 (2.21%) Data Lake
7 34 (1.71%) MongoDB
8 30 (1.50%) Relational Database
9 27 (1.35%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
11 23 (1.15%) Semantic Layer
12 22 (1.10%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (1.00%) QGIS
14 20 (1.00%) Spark SQL
15 19 (0.95%) GIS
15 19 (0.95%) MySQL
16 17 (0.85%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 125 (6.27%) JIRA
2 110 (5.52%) Git
3 52 (2.61%) Jenkins
4 45 (2.26%) GitLab
5 38 (1.91%) Rational DOORS
6 25 (1.25%) Selenium
7 22 (1.10%) Snyk
8 21 (1.05%) Postman
9 17 (0.85%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.85%) LabVIEW
10 15 (0.75%) JMeter
11 14 (0.70%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.65%) IBM UrbanCode
13 10 (0.50%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.45%) Burp Suite
15 8 (0.40%) MLflow
15 8 (0.40%) Rational Rhapsody
16 7 (0.35%) Hudson
16 7 (0.35%) Zephyr
General
1 674 (33.80%) Social Skills
2 562 (28.18%) Finance
3 485 (24.32%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (9.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 196 (9.83%) Aerospace
6 182 (9.13%) Manufacturing
7 162 (8.12%) Electronics
8 113 (5.67%) Law
9 111 (5.57%) Banking
10 79 (3.96%) Public Sector
11 78 (3.91%) Retail
12 74 (3.71%) Marketing
13 69 (3.46%) Pharmaceutical
14 68 (3.41%) Organisational Skills
15 60 (3.01%) Legal
16 53 (2.66%) Automotive
17 46 (2.31%) Games
17 46 (2.31%) Telecoms
18 37 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
19 35 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 368 (18.46%) Senior
2 272 (13.64%) Analyst
3 180 (9.03%) Lead
4 170 (8.53%) Systems Engineer
5 119 (5.97%) Test Engineer
6 117 (5.87%) Architect
7 102 (5.12%) Data Engineer
8 100 (5.02%) Consultant
9 88 (4.41%) Business Analyst
9 88 (4.41%) Developer
10 72 (3.61%) Software Engineer
11 66 (3.31%) Data Analyst
11 66 (3.31%) Validation Engineer
12 64 (3.21%) Principal Engineer
13 48 (2.41%) Data Scientist
14 46 (2.31%) Embedded Engineer
14 46 (2.31%) Support Engineer
15 42 (2.11%) Electronics Engineer
15 42 (2.11%) IT Manager
16 40 (2.01%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (2.41%) RESTful
2 44 (2.21%) Kafka
3 39 (1.96%) Node.js
3 39 (1.96%) PySpark
3 39 (1.96%) REST
4 30 (1.50%) .NET
5 29 (1.45%) JSON
5 29 (1.45%) XML
6 27 (1.35%) PyTorch
7 26 (1.30%) LDAP
7 26 (1.30%) Playwright
8 25 (1.25%) Middleware
9 23 (1.15%) Pandas
10 21 (1.05%) CSS
11 20 (1.00%) HTML
11 20 (1.00%) ModSecurity
11 20 (1.00%) React
12 19 (0.95%) Regular Expression
12 19 (0.95%) XMPP
13 18 (0.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 147 (7.37%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.62%) Onboarding
3 109 (5.47%) Management Information System
4 74 (3.71%) Product Ownership
5 69 (3.46%) Data Centre
6 67 (3.36%) Algorithms
7 60 (3.01%) Data Structures
8 55 (2.76%) Embedded Systems
9 54 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
10 51 (2.56%) Driving Licence
11 50 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
12 45 (2.26%) Low-Code
13 38 (1.91%) AI Agents
13 38 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
13 38 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
14 37 (1.86%) Life Science
15 34 (1.71%) Video\Live Streaming
16 33 (1.65%) Robotics
17 31 (1.55%) IoT
18 29 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 122 (6.12%) Linux
2 87 (4.36%) Windows
3 34 (1.71%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.95%) Unix
6 8 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
7 6 (0.30%) Android
7 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
8 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.20%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.20%) Mac OS X
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 (0.050%) AIX
10 1 (0.050%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 518 (25.98%) Problem-Solving
2 488 (24.47%) Continuous Improvement
3 417 (20.91%) Agile
4 381 (19.11%) AI
5 305 (15.30%) CI/CD
6 278 (13.94%) Analytics
7 258 (12.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 251 (12.59%) Test Automation
9 248 (12.44%) Verification and Validation
10 246 (12.34%) Migration
11 240 (12.04%) Mentoring
12 224 (11.23%) Decision-Making
13 207 (10.38%) Software Engineering
14 203 (10.18%) Data Analysis
15 200 (10.03%) Machine Learning
16 191 (9.58%) DevOps
17 180 (9.03%) Business Intelligence
18 178 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 173 (8.68%) Roadmaps
20 172 (8.63%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 488 (24.47%) Python
2 383 (19.21%) SQL
3 92 (4.61%) Java
4 87 (4.36%) C++
5 77 (3.86%) C
6 58 (2.91%) JavaScript
7 55 (2.76%) Go
8 52 (2.61%) C#
9 49 (2.46%) MATLAB
10 28 (1.40%) Bash
11 26 (1.30%) Embedded C
11 26 (1.30%) PowerShell
12 22 (1.10%) Scala
13 20 (1.00%) TypeScript
14 18 (0.90%) Embedded C++
15 15 (0.75%) R
15 15 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 10 (0.50%) ABAP
18 9 (0.45%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 429 (21.51%) Degree
2 327 (16.40%) Security Cleared
3 198 (9.93%) SC Cleared
4 141 (7.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (5.37%) DV Cleared
6 83 (4.16%) Master's Degree
7 44 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.81%) CISSP
9 35 (1.76%) PhD
10 34 (1.71%) Chartered Engineer
11 30 (1.50%) HNC
11 30 (1.50%) PMI Certification
12 29 (1.45%) CISM
13 26 (1.30%) ACCA
13 26 (1.30%) CIMA
14 24 (1.20%) AWS Certification
14 24 (1.20%) HND
15 22 (1.10%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.95%) PMP
16 19 (0.95%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (15.70%) Data Quality
2 269 (13.49%) QA
3 90 (4.51%) Accessibility
4 57 (2.86%) GDPR
5 38 (1.91%) GRC
6 27 (1.35%) IEC 61508
7 25 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (1.20%) NIST
9 21 (1.05%) SLA
10 18 (0.90%) PMO
11 17 (0.85%) GxP
12 15 (0.75%) GAAP
12 15 (0.75%) IFRS
12 15 (0.75%) ISO 26262
12 15 (0.75%) WCAG
13 13 (0.65%) GMP
14 12 (0.60%) ISO 9001
15 11 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 15288
15 11 (0.55%) SOC 2
16 9 (0.45%) COBIT
System Software
1 80 (4.01%) Docker
2 77 (3.86%) Firmware
3 44 (2.21%) Active Directory
4 31 (1.55%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (1.05%) vSphere
7 17 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
8 7 (0.35%) KVM
9 4 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.10%) iptables
10 2 (0.10%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.050%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.050%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 81 (4.06%) Kubernetes
2 73 (3.66%) Terraform
3 40 (2.01%) Grafana
4 26 (1.30%) Functional Safety
5 24 (1.20%) Ansible
6 16 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.50%) Cilium
8 10 (0.50%) Puppet
9 8 (0.40%) SCCM
10 7 (0.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 7 (0.35%) Kibana
11 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.20%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.20%) Nessus
12 4 (0.20%) Nmap
12 4 (0.20%) WMI
13 3 (0.15%) Argo
13 3 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 272 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 122 (6.12%) SAP
3 109 (5.47%) Oracle
4 58 (2.91%) Salesforce
5 55 (2.76%) Databricks
6 45 (2.26%) ServiceNow
7 43 (2.16%) Google
8 41 (2.06%) Cisco
9 36 (1.81%) Red Hat
9 36 (1.81%) VMware
10 29 (1.45%) CrowdStrike
11 27 (1.35%) EMC
11 27 (1.35%) Palo Alto
12 22 (1.10%) Tenable
13 18 (0.90%) Foundry
13 18 (0.90%) IBM
14 16 (0.80%) Splunk
15 15 (0.75%) McAfee
16 14 (0.70%) Adobe
16 14 (0.70%) Siemens