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 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 88 179
Rank change year-on-year +11 +91 +26
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,487 1,614 1,133
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.13% 3.28% 1.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.91% 3.69% 1.82%
Number of salaries quoted 1,471 462 436
10th Percentile £35,500 £38,750 £38,867
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,438 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,490 £55,000 £58,033
Median % change year-on-year +8.16% -5.23% -10.72%
75th Percentile £71,250 £75,900 £76,250
90th Percentile £86,250 £89,875 £94,375
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 85,482 43,719 62,334
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.07% 88.75% 81.46%
Number of salaries quoted 58,986 24,656 34,489
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 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
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 24 September 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 24 September 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 +11 2,295 £58,000 +5.45% 4,088
UK excluding London -9 1,812 £55,000 +4.56% 2,482
Work from Home +117 653 £60,000 -0.83% 1,541
London +73 582 £70,000 -12.50% 1,937
South East -19 492 £62,500 +13.64% 648
North of England +114 475 £54,750 +15.04% 441
North West +108 293 £55,000 +10.00% 248
Midlands -28 275 £50,000 -9.09% 348
South West +11 243 £55,000 +4.56% 320
East of England -44 195 £55,000 -8.33% 325
West Midlands +40 158 £50,000 -9.09% 242
East Midlands -54 117 £50,000 +17.65% 105
Yorkshire +23 93 £43,000 +1.18% 127
North East +2 89 £55,000 +57.14% 68
Scotland +38 83 £70,000 +20.62% 299
Wales -43 42 £70,000 +21.74% 55
Northern Ireland -82 5 - - 78
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 1

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 48 (1.93%) Apache Spark
2 46 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
3 42 (1.69%) Apache
4 40 (1.61%) Confluence
5 35 (1.41%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 13 (0.52%) SAS
8 9 (0.36%) WinCC
9 6 (0.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.20%) CMS
11 3 (0.12%) Artix
11 3 (0.12%) nginx
11 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.080%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.080%) IIS
12 2 (0.080%) Kinematics
13 1 (0.040%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.040%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 143 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (2.13%) Simulink
4 37 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 25 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.80%) SOLIDWORKS
7 19 (0.76%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.64%) MS Visio
9 12 (0.48%) Revit
10 10 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 7 (0.28%) EPLAN
11 7 (0.28%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.28%) OrCAD
12 5 (0.20%) LaTeX
12 5 (0.20%) Mathcad
13 4 (0.16%) CANalyzer
14 3 (0.12%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.12%) Productboard
14 3 (0.12%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 44 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.44%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.36%) iTrent
4 9 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.36%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.24%) Elite 3E
7 6 (0.24%) Infor M3
8 5 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
8 5 (0.20%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.16%) Maximo
9 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 327 (13.15%) Azure
2 269 (10.82%) AWS
3 181 (7.28%) Power Platform
4 102 (4.10%) GCP
5 87 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 76 (3.06%) GitHub
7 74 (2.98%) SaaS
8 67 (2.69%) Serverless
9 65 (2.61%) Microsoft 365
10 44 (1.77%) Amazon S3
11 40 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
12 39 (1.57%) Entra ID
13 38 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
14 34 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
15 29 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
15 29 (1.17%) Microsoft Purview
16 26 (1.05%) Cloud Computing
17 25 (1.01%) Amazon EMR
17 25 (1.01%) Azure Service Bus
18 24 (0.97%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 69 (2.77%) DNS
2 68 (2.73%) Firewall
3 55 (2.21%) Broadband
4 43 (1.73%) Wireless
5 39 (1.57%) VPN
6 37 (1.49%) Network Security
6 37 (1.49%) TCP/IP
6 37 (1.49%) WAN
7 36 (1.45%) Ethernet
8 32 (1.29%) Modbus
9 29 (1.17%) LAN
9 29 (1.17%) VLAN
10 27 (1.09%) OSPF
11 24 (0.97%) MQTT
12 23 (0.92%) SD-WAN
12 23 (0.92%) Wireshark
13 21 (0.84%) BGP
14 19 (0.76%) 5G
15 17 (0.68%) HTTP
15 17 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (6.63%) Power BI
2 69 (2.77%) Metadata
3 62 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.21%) Data Lake
5 52 (2.09%) SQL Server
6 49 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
7 41 (1.65%) Tableau
8 38 (1.53%) Amazon Athena
8 38 (1.53%) Relational Database
9 31 (1.25%) MongoDB
10 28 (1.13%) Big Data
10 28 (1.13%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.01%) DynamoDB
11 25 (1.01%) NoSQL
12 23 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.84%) Semantic Layer
15 20 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
16 19 (0.76%) Delta Lake
16 19 (0.76%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 144 (5.79%) JIRA
2 126 (5.07%) Git
3 64 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.29%) GitLab
5 44 (1.77%) Rational DOORS
6 33 (1.33%) Selenium
7 29 (1.17%) LabVIEW
8 26 (1.05%) Postman
9 22 (0.88%) Snyk
10 21 (0.84%) Cypress.io
11 14 (0.56%) Burp Suite
11 14 (0.56%) JMeter
12 12 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 11 (0.44%) Claude Code
13 11 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.44%) Eclipse
14 10 (0.40%) TeamCity
15 9 (0.36%) Gatling
15 9 (0.36%) MLflow
15 9 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 836 (33.61%) Social Skills
2 642 (25.81%) Finance
3 588 (23.64%) Analytical Skills
4 239 (9.61%) Aerospace
5 236 (9.49%) Manufacturing
6 232 (9.33%) Electronics
7 205 (8.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 143 (5.75%) Law
9 111 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
10 109 (4.38%) Public Sector
11 107 (4.30%) Banking
12 105 (4.22%) Retail
13 92 (3.70%) Marketing
14 90 (3.62%) Telecoms
15 83 (3.34%) Pharmaceutical
16 78 (3.14%) Automotive
17 62 (2.49%) Legal
18 48 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
19 46 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
20 44 (1.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 444 (17.85%) Senior
2 310 (12.46%) Systems Engineer
3 281 (11.30%) Analyst
4 216 (8.69%) Lead
5 135 (5.43%) Test Engineer
6 124 (4.99%) Architect
6 124 (4.99%) Data Engineer
7 101 (4.06%) Developer
8 97 (3.90%) Consultant
9 90 (3.62%) Business Analyst
10 86 (3.46%) Software Engineer
11 76 (3.06%) Principal Engineer
12 73 (2.94%) Electronics Engineer
13 69 (2.77%) Data Analyst
14 62 (2.49%) Validation Engineer
15 57 (2.29%) Network Engineer
16 51 (2.05%) Embedded Engineer
17 48 (1.93%) Automation Engineer
17 48 (1.93%) Data Scientist
18 47 (1.89%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (3.50%) Terraform
2 59 (2.37%) REST
3 57 (2.29%) RESTful
4 55 (2.21%) Kafka
5 50 (2.01%) Node.js
6 44 (1.77%) Playwright
6 44 (1.77%) PySpark
7 40 (1.61%) .NET
8 36 (1.45%) JSON
8 36 (1.45%) XML
9 31 (1.25%) FastAPI
10 29 (1.17%) CSS
10 29 (1.17%) React
11 27 (1.09%) HTML
12 26 (1.05%) Middleware
13 25 (1.01%) LDAP
13 25 (1.01%) Swagger
14 22 (0.88%) OAuth
15 21 (0.84%) pytest
15 21 (0.84%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 167 (6.71%) Cloud Native
2 139 (5.59%) Management Information System
3 126 (5.07%) Onboarding
4 85 (3.42%) Product Ownership
5 81 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 69 (2.77%) Embedded Systems
7 68 (2.73%) Driving Licence
8 62 (2.49%) Data Structures
9 60 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
9 60 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
10 54 (2.17%) Algorithms
11 50 (2.01%) AI Agents
11 50 (2.01%) SCADA
12 47 (1.89%) Life Science
13 42 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
14 41 (1.65%) IoT
15 39 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
16 38 (1.53%) Low-Code
16 38 (1.53%) Robotics
17 37 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.43%) Linux
2 92 (3.70%) Windows
3 30 (1.21%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.05%) Unix
5 15 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.40%) Android
7 8 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.20%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.16%) Mac OS X
11 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.080%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.080%) VMS
12 2 (0.080%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.040%) AIX
13 1 (0.040%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.040%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 641 (25.77%) Problem-Solving
2 560 (22.52%) Continuous Improvement
3 459 (18.46%) Agile
4 451 (18.13%) Verification and Validation
5 420 (16.89%) AI
6 353 (14.19%) CI/CD
7 336 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
8 313 (12.59%) Test Automation
9 309 (12.42%) Migration
10 266 (10.70%) Analytics
11 263 (10.57%) Mentoring
12 248 (9.97%) Software Engineering
13 238 (9.57%) Decision-Making
13 238 (9.57%) DevOps
14 223 (8.97%) Data Analysis
14 223 (8.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 209 (8.40%) Business Intelligence
16 203 (8.16%) Roadmaps
17 196 (7.88%) Machine Learning
18 193 (7.76%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 512 (20.59%) Python
2 441 (17.73%) SQL
3 107 (4.30%) Java
4 94 (3.78%) C++
5 84 (3.38%) C
6 75 (3.02%) JavaScript
7 70 (2.81%) MATLAB
8 65 (2.61%) C#
9 48 (1.93%) Go
10 37 (1.49%) Bash
11 31 (1.25%) Embedded C
11 31 (1.25%) TypeScript
12 29 (1.17%) PowerShell
13 26 (1.05%) R
14 25 (1.01%) Scala
15 18 (0.72%) Embedded C++
16 14 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 12 (0.48%) Shell Script
18 10 (0.40%) T-SQL
19 9 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 544 (21.87%) Degree
2 542 (21.79%) Security Cleared
3 405 (16.28%) SC Cleared
4 122 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 95 (3.82%) Master's Degree
7 56 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 42 (1.69%) HND
8 42 (1.69%) PhD
9 38 (1.53%) Chartered Engineer
10 36 (1.45%) HNC
10 36 (1.45%) PMI Certification
11 31 (1.25%) CISSP
12 30 (1.21%) Azure Certification
13 28 (1.13%) ACCA
14 26 (1.05%) AWS Certification
15 25 (1.01%) CIMA
16 24 (0.97%) PMP
17 21 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.84%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (14.76%) Data Quality
2 312 (12.55%) QA
3 79 (3.18%) Accessibility
4 60 (2.41%) GDPR
5 37 (1.49%) GRC
6 32 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (1.13%) GxP
8 23 (0.92%) IEC 61508
8 23 (0.92%) SLA
9 22 (0.88%) NIST
10 15 (0.60%) ISO 26262
10 15 (0.60%) ISO 9001
10 15 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 15 (0.60%) PMO
11 14 (0.56%) GMP
12 13 (0.52%) SOC 2
12 13 (0.52%) WCAG
13 12 (0.48%) ISO 19650
14 9 (0.36%) Def Stans
14 9 (0.36%) GAAP
System Software
1 100 (4.02%) Firmware
2 99 (3.98%) Docker
3 45 (1.81%) Active Directory
4 44 (1.77%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.68%) vSphere
7 8 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.20%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.080%) iptables
10 2 (0.080%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.080%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.040%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 86 (3.46%) Kubernetes
2 47 (1.89%) Grafana
3 33 (1.33%) Ansible
3 33 (1.33%) Functional Safety
4 18 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
5 17 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.40%) Puppet
7 9 (0.36%) Cilium
8 8 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (0.32%) Nessus
8 8 (0.32%) Nmap
9 7 (0.28%) BMC PATROL
9 7 (0.28%) Kibana
10 5 (0.20%) Argo
10 5 (0.20%) WMI
11 4 (0.16%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.16%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.16%) Rancher
11 4 (0.16%) yum
Vendors
1 318 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 130 (5.23%) SAP
3 104 (4.18%) Oracle
4 67 (2.69%) Databricks
5 63 (2.53%) Salesforce
6 57 (2.29%) EMC
7 55 (2.21%) ServiceNow
8 54 (2.17%) Cisco
9 42 (1.69%) Google
10 31 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
11 28 (1.13%) Palo Alto
12 24 (0.97%) Sage
13 23 (0.92%) Tenable
13 23 (0.92%) Thales
13 23 (0.92%) VMware
14 22 (0.88%) IBM
15 19 (0.76%) Informatica
15 19 (0.76%) Red Hat
15 19 (0.76%) Siemens
16 18 (0.72%) Autodesk