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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 95 174
Rank change year-on-year +25 +79 +22
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,688 1,562 1,087
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 2.27% 3.18% 1.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.10% 3.58% 1.85%
Number of salaries quoted 1,570 431 401
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,700 £38,734
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.36% -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £71,250 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £86,250 £87,500 £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 86,825 43,614 58,687
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.38% 88.89% 82.21%
Number of salaries quoted 59,360 24,460 31,261
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,000 £43,750
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 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +17.02% -10.48% -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 13 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 13 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 +17 2,462 £57,500 +4.55% 2,384
UK excluding London -6 1,947 £55,000 +4.56% 1,293
Work from Home +136 693 £60,000 -5.88% 942
London +87 637 £65,000 -18.75% 1,284
South East -10 511 £64,500 +17.27% 325
North of England +127 496 £50,500 +5.91% 243
Midlands -13 323 £50,000 -9.09% 162
North West +104 304 £54,750 +9.38% 132
South West +28 252 £55,000 +7.32% 166
East of England -40 219 £56,750 -7.35% 166
West Midlands +49 174 £47,500 -13.64% 106
East Midlands -34 149 £50,000 +17.65% 56
Yorkshire +32 101 £42,500 - 79
Scotland +47 99 £70,000 +16.67% 184
North East 0 91 £55,000 +57.14% 33
Wales -32 50 £60,000 -7.69% 29
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 2
Northern Ireland -72 4 - - 36

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 55 (2.05%) Apache Spark
2 47 (1.75%) Apache
2 47 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
3 38 (1.41%) SharePoint
4 36 (1.34%) Confluence
5 32 (1.19%) CMS
6 22 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 21 (0.78%) Jupyter
8 13 (0.48%) SAS
9 10 (0.37%) WinCC
10 6 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.15%) Artix
12 3 (0.11%) nginx
12 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.074%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.074%) FactoryTalk
14 1 (0.037%) IIS
14 1 (0.037%) WebSphere
Applications
1 163 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (2.64%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (2.12%) Simulink
4 38 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
5 31 (1.15%) Spreadsheet
6 24 (0.89%) AutoCAD
7 19 (0.71%) SOLIDWORKS
8 17 (0.63%) Revit
9 15 (0.56%) MS Visio
10 14 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 12 (0.45%) Navisworks
11 12 (0.45%) Notion
11 12 (0.45%) OrCAD
12 11 (0.41%) EPLAN
13 6 (0.22%) Mathcad
14 5 (0.19%) LaTeX
14 5 (0.19%) Stateflow
15 4 (0.15%) CANalyzer
15 4 (0.15%) Chatbot
16 3 (0.11%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 43 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.37%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.33%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.30%) Elite 3E
5 8 (0.30%) iTrent
5 8 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.26%) Infor M3
6 7 (0.26%) Maximo
6 7 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.22%) Oracle Applications
7 6 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.11%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.11%) Sage 200
10 3 (0.11%) SAP MDG-BP
10 3 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 365 (13.58%) Azure
2 287 (10.68%) AWS
3 200 (7.44%) Power Platform
4 105 (3.91%) GCP
5 89 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
5 89 (3.31%) GitHub
6 84 (3.13%) SaaS
7 72 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
8 62 (2.31%) Serverless
9 53 (1.97%) Entra ID
10 50 (1.86%) Amazon S3
11 42 (1.56%) GitHub Actions
12 36 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (1.34%) Microsoft Copilot
13 33 (1.23%) Microsoft Purview
14 30 (1.12%) Amazon EMR
15 28 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
15 28 (1.04%) Azure Service Bus
15 28 (1.04%) Cloud Computing
16 27 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 77 (2.86%) Firewall
2 74 (2.75%) DNS
3 57 (2.12%) Broadband
4 52 (1.93%) TCP/IP
5 49 (1.82%) VPN
6 48 (1.79%) Wireless
7 42 (1.56%) Ethernet
8 41 (1.53%) Modbus
8 41 (1.53%) VLAN
9 39 (1.45%) WAN
10 36 (1.34%) Network Security
11 34 (1.26%) OSPF
12 32 (1.19%) LAN
13 29 (1.08%) MQTT
14 27 (1.00%) Wireshark
15 24 (0.89%) BGP
15 24 (0.89%) SD-WAN
16 21 (0.78%) DHCP
17 19 (0.71%) 5G
18 18 (0.67%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (6.85%) Power BI
2 79 (2.94%) Metadata
3 68 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (2.12%) SQL Server
5 53 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 46 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
7 42 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
8 40 (1.49%) Tableau
9 38 (1.41%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.12%) MongoDB
11 28 (1.04%) Big Data
11 28 (1.04%) BigQuery
12 27 (1.00%) NoSQL
12 27 (1.00%) Power Query
13 23 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
14 22 (0.82%) DynamoDB
14 22 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
16 19 (0.71%) MySQL
16 19 (0.71%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 142 (5.28%) JIRA
2 135 (5.02%) Git
3 68 (2.53%) GitLab
4 67 (2.49%) Jenkins
5 52 (1.93%) Rational DOORS
6 34 (1.26%) LabVIEW
7 27 (1.00%) Selenium
8 23 (0.86%) Postman
9 20 (0.74%) Cypress.io
10 14 (0.52%) Claude Code
11 13 (0.48%) Burp Suite
12 12 (0.45%) Eclipse
12 12 (0.45%) JMeter
12 12 (0.45%) Snyk
12 12 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.41%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 9 (0.33%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.33%) Zephyr
15 8 (0.30%) Metasploit
General
1 913 (33.97%) Social Skills
2 689 (25.63%) Finance
3 641 (23.85%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (10.45%) Manufacturing
5 270 (10.04%) Aerospace
6 269 (10.01%) Electronics
7 255 (9.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 144 (5.36%) Law
9 123 (4.58%) Marketing
10 120 (4.46%) Public Sector
11 119 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
12 113 (4.20%) Banking
13 105 (3.91%) Telecoms
14 103 (3.83%) Retail
15 86 (3.20%) Automotive
15 86 (3.20%) Pharmaceutical
16 61 (2.27%) Legal
17 52 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
18 50 (1.86%) Military
19 43 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 465 (17.30%) Senior
2 312 (11.61%) Systems Engineer
3 270 (10.04%) Analyst
4 225 (8.37%) Lead
5 138 (5.13%) Data Engineer
6 132 (4.91%) Test Engineer
7 118 (4.39%) Architect
8 109 (4.06%) Developer
9 106 (3.94%) Consultant
10 99 (3.68%) Software Engineer
11 95 (3.53%) Electronics Engineer
12 92 (3.42%) Principal Engineer
13 79 (2.94%) Business Analyst
14 74 (2.75%) Design Engineer
15 67 (2.49%) Data Analyst
16 63 (2.34%) Network Engineer
17 62 (2.31%) Validation Engineer
18 58 (2.16%) Automation Engineer
19 50 (1.86%) Data Scientist
19 50 (1.86%) Principal Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (3.46%) Terraform
2 69 (2.57%) REST
3 64 (2.38%) Kafka
4 63 (2.34%) RESTful
5 57 (2.12%) .NET
6 55 (2.05%) Node.js
7 45 (1.67%) PySpark
8 43 (1.60%) Playwright
9 39 (1.45%) JSON
10 38 (1.41%) FastAPI
11 37 (1.38%) XML
12 33 (1.23%) CSS
12 33 (1.23%) React
13 32 (1.19%) HTML
14 30 (1.12%) Swagger
15 27 (1.00%) RabbitMQ
16 26 (0.97%) OpenAPI
17 25 (0.93%) Middleware
18 23 (0.86%) LDAP
19 22 (0.82%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 175 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 163 (6.06%) Management Information System
2 163 (6.06%) Onboarding
3 87 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 78 (2.90%) Driving Licence
5 76 (2.83%) Embedded Systems
6 73 (2.72%) Data Centre
7 70 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
8 67 (2.49%) Data Structures
9 64 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
10 61 (2.27%) AI Agents
10 61 (2.27%) SCADA
11 54 (2.01%) Algorithms
12 50 (1.86%) Life Science
13 45 (1.67%) Analogue Electronics
14 43 (1.60%) IoT
15 42 (1.56%) Robotics
16 41 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
17 38 (1.41%) Low-Code
18 37 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 138 (5.13%) Linux
2 98 (3.65%) Windows
3 36 (1.34%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.00%) Unix
5 14 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.37%) Android
7 9 (0.33%) macOS
8 8 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
9 4 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.15%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.11%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.11%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.074%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.074%) VMS
12 1 (0.037%) AIX
12 1 (0.037%) CentOS
12 1 (0.037%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.037%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.037%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 707 (26.30%) Problem-Solving
2 620 (23.07%) Continuous Improvement
3 487 (18.12%) Agile
4 486 (18.08%) Verification and Validation
5 482 (17.93%) AI
6 368 (13.69%) CI/CD
7 354 (13.17%) Stakeholder Management
8 349 (12.98%) Test Automation
9 329 (12.24%) Migration
10 293 (10.90%) Analytics
11 291 (10.83%) Mentoring
12 267 (9.93%) Software Engineering
13 264 (9.82%) Decision-Making
14 255 (9.49%) DevOps
15 231 (8.59%) Data Analysis
16 227 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 224 (8.33%) Business Intelligence
18 211 (7.85%) Roadmaps
19 207 (7.70%) Technical Leadership
20 206 (7.66%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 569 (21.17%) Python
2 472 (17.56%) SQL
3 112 (4.17%) Java
4 99 (3.68%) C++
5 96 (3.57%) C
6 85 (3.16%) C#
7 78 (2.90%) JavaScript
8 72 (2.68%) MATLAB
9 46 (1.71%) Go
10 42 (1.56%) PowerShell
11 39 (1.45%) Bash
12 35 (1.30%) TypeScript
13 30 (1.12%) Embedded C
13 30 (1.12%) R
14 26 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 25 (0.93%) Scala
16 18 (0.67%) Embedded C++
17 13 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 13 (0.48%) T-SQL
18 11 (0.41%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 598 (22.25%) Degree
2 582 (21.65%) Security Cleared
3 437 (16.26%) SC Cleared
4 124 (4.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (4.02%) Master's Degree
6 107 (3.98%) DV Cleared
7 54 (2.01%) PhD
8 52 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
9 46 (1.71%) HND
10 40 (1.49%) Chartered Engineer
11 37 (1.38%) HNC
12 35 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 34 (1.26%) Azure Certification
14 31 (1.15%) ACCA
14 31 (1.15%) CISSP
15 29 (1.08%) AWS Certification
16 28 (1.04%) CIMA
17 26 (0.97%) PMP
18 25 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
19 20 (0.74%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 404 (15.03%) Data Quality
2 317 (11.79%) QA
3 95 (3.53%) Accessibility
4 70 (2.60%) GDPR
5 34 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.12%) GxP
7 27 (1.00%) SLA
8 25 (0.93%) GRC
9 22 (0.82%) NIST
10 20 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 19 (0.71%) ISO 9001
12 18 (0.67%) IEC 61508
12 18 (0.67%) ISO 19650
13 16 (0.60%) GMP
14 12 (0.45%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.45%) WCAG
15 11 (0.41%) ISO 26262
15 11 (0.41%) PMO
16 9 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
16 9 (0.33%) JTAG
System Software
1 117 (4.35%) Docker
2 107 (3.98%) Firmware
3 54 (2.01%) Active Directory
4 47 (1.75%) Embedded Firmware
5 17 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.56%) vSphere
7 10 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.11%) KVM
9 3 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.074%) iptables
10 2 (0.074%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.037%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.037%) LXC
Systems Management
1 97 (3.61%) Kubernetes
2 48 (1.79%) Grafana
3 41 (1.53%) Ansible
4 29 (1.08%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
6 17 (0.63%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.48%) Puppet
8 9 (0.33%) BMC PATROL
9 8 (0.30%) Kibana
9 8 (0.30%) Nessus
9 8 (0.30%) Nmap
10 7 (0.26%) Cilium
11 6 (0.22%) Argo
12 5 (0.19%) Autotask
12 5 (0.19%) Rancher
12 5 (0.19%) SCCM
12 5 (0.19%) WMI
12 5 (0.19%) yum
13 4 (0.15%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 366 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 129 (4.80%) SAP
3 103 (3.83%) Salesforce
4 102 (3.79%) Oracle
5 84 (3.13%) EMC
6 73 (2.72%) Databricks
7 58 (2.16%) Cisco
8 56 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 46 (1.71%) Google
10 39 (1.45%) Adobe
11 33 (1.23%) Thales
12 30 (1.12%) Samsung
13 28 (1.04%) TikTok
14 25 (0.93%) IBM
14 25 (0.93%) Sage
15 23 (0.86%) Siemens
15 23 (0.86%) VMware
16 22 (0.82%) CrowdStrike
16 22 (0.82%) Informatica
17 21 (0.78%) Foundry