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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 87 188
Rank change year-on-year 0 +101 +16
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,163 1,662 1,143
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.97% 3.33% 1.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.69% 3.76% 1.74%
Number of salaries quoted 1,294 513 473
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,800 £39,000
25th Percentile £42,501 £41,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% -6.25%
75th Percentile £71,250 £75,000 £76,250
90th Percentile £86,850 £88,750 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -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 80,408 44,155 65,787
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.60% 80.85%
Number of salaries quoted 55,868 25,145 40,215
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £56,075
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.92% -6.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £51,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.86% -6.58%

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 2 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 2 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 -3 2,003 £57,500 +4.55% 3,350
UK excluding London -23 1,566 £55,000 +4.76% 2,114
Work from Home +115 603 £56,000 -6.67% 1,313
London +69 519 £70,000 -11.39% 1,712
South East -20 458 £60,000 +11.63% 520
North of England +105 405 £55,000 +15.79% 346
North West +91 241 £55,000 +15.35% 204
Midlands -40 226 £47,500 -13.64% 268
South West +14 206 £55,000 +4.56% 329
East of England -57 156 £55,000 -0.45% 312
West Midlands +26 127 £47,500 -13.64% 184
East Midlands -59 98 £46,743 +9.98% 84
Yorkshire +4 82 £43,000 +1.18% 86
North East +4 82 £55,000 +57.14% 64
Scotland +31 76 £70,000 +20.62% 262
Wales -43 33 £60,000 +11.63% 49
Isle of Man - 5 £38,500 - 1
Northern Ireland -83 2 - - 64

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 46 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
2 44 (2.03%) Apache Spark
3 42 (1.94%) Apache
4 34 (1.57%) Confluence
5 33 (1.53%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.92%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.60%) SAS
8 11 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.32%) WinCC
10 5 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.23%) CMS
11 3 (0.14%) Artix
11 3 (0.14%) Kinematics
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.092%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.092%) IIS
13 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.046%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.046%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.046%) WebSphere
Applications
1 115 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.94%) Simulink
4 35 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 17 (0.79%) SOLIDWORKS
5 17 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.74%) MS Visio
7 11 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 10 (0.46%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.23%) LaTeX
9 5 (0.23%) Mathcad
10 4 (0.18%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.18%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.18%) OrCAD
10 4 (0.18%) Revit
10 4 (0.18%) Sketch
11 3 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.14%) Productboard
11 3 (0.14%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.092%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 41 (1.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.46%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.42%) iTrent
4 9 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
5 8 (0.37%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.32%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.28%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.23%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.18%) Loan IQ
9 4 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.18%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.14%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.14%) Maximo
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.14%) SystmOne
11 2 (0.092%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 292 (13.50%) Azure
2 254 (11.74%) AWS
3 162 (7.49%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.30%) GCP
5 75 (3.47%) SaaS
6 70 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
7 64 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
8 59 (2.73%) GitHub
9 49 (2.27%) Serverless
10 36 (1.66%) Amazon S3
10 36 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
11 34 (1.57%) Entra ID
12 30 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
13 28 (1.29%) Microsoft Copilot
14 22 (1.02%) Amazon EMR
14 22 (1.02%) Cloud Computing
15 20 (0.92%) Amazon EC2
15 20 (0.92%) Microsoft Purview
15 20 (0.92%) PowerApps
16 19 (0.88%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 65 (3.01%) Broadband
1 65 (3.01%) Firewall
2 64 (2.96%) DNS
3 42 (1.94%) Wireless
4 36 (1.66%) WAN
5 34 (1.57%) Network Security
5 34 (1.57%) VPN
6 32 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 26 (1.20%) Ethernet
7 26 (1.20%) LAN
8 23 (1.06%) SD-WAN
9 21 (0.97%) OSPF
9 21 (0.97%) VLAN
10 20 (0.92%) BGP
11 19 (0.88%) Modbus
11 19 (0.88%) MQTT
12 18 (0.83%) Wireshark
13 17 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
14 15 (0.69%) 5G
14 15 (0.69%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (6.80%) Power BI
2 57 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 52 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 50 (2.31%) Metadata
5 46 (2.13%) Data Lake
6 44 (2.03%) SQL Server
7 42 (1.94%) Tableau
8 35 (1.62%) MongoDB
9 29 (1.34%) Relational Database
10 28 (1.29%) Amazon Athena
11 27 (1.25%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.11%) DynamoDB
13 22 (1.02%) Semantic Layer
14 21 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.92%) Big Data
16 19 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
16 19 (0.88%) MySQL
17 17 (0.79%) NoSQL
18 15 (0.69%) Power Query
19 13 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 128 (5.92%) JIRA
2 108 (4.99%) Git
3 56 (2.59%) Jenkins
4 50 (2.31%) GitLab
5 38 (1.76%) Rational DOORS
6 28 (1.29%) Selenium
7 24 (1.11%) Postman
8 22 (1.02%) Snyk
9 21 (0.97%) Cypress.io
9 21 (0.97%) LabVIEW
10 13 (0.60%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.55%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.55%) JMeter
12 11 (0.51%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.46%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.42%) Gatling
14 9 (0.42%) Zephyr
15 8 (0.37%) Rational Rhapsody
16 7 (0.32%) Hudson
16 7 (0.32%) MLflow
General
1 722 (33.38%) Social Skills
2 568 (26.26%) Finance
3 514 (23.76%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (9.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 203 (9.39%) Aerospace
6 195 (9.02%) Manufacturing
7 186 (8.60%) Electronics
8 126 (5.83%) Law
9 102 (4.72%) Banking
10 88 (4.07%) Public Sector
11 82 (3.79%) Marketing
12 81 (3.74%) Retail
13 76 (3.51%) Pharmaceutical
14 75 (3.47%) Organisational Skills
15 61 (2.82%) Legal
16 60 (2.77%) Automotive
17 57 (2.64%) Telecoms
18 47 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
19 45 (2.08%) Games
20 42 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 390 (18.03%) Senior
2 264 (12.21%) Analyst
3 252 (11.65%) Systems Engineer
4 190 (8.78%) Lead
5 128 (5.92%) Test Engineer
6 118 (5.46%) Architect
7 103 (4.76%) Data Engineer
8 93 (4.30%) Developer
9 82 (3.79%) Consultant
10 79 (3.65%) Business Analyst
11 78 (3.61%) Software Engineer
12 68 (3.14%) Data Analyst
12 68 (3.14%) Principal Engineer
13 65 (3.01%) Validation Engineer
14 51 (2.36%) Embedded Engineer
15 50 (2.31%) Support Engineer
16 49 (2.27%) Network Engineer
17 48 (2.22%) Data Scientist
17 48 (2.22%) Electronics Engineer
18 44 (2.03%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (3.37%) Terraform
2 51 (2.36%) RESTful
3 48 (2.22%) Kafka
4 47 (2.17%) REST
5 42 (1.94%) Node.js
6 33 (1.53%) JSON
6 33 (1.53%) XML
7 32 (1.48%) .NET
7 32 (1.48%) Playwright
8 29 (1.34%) PySpark
9 27 (1.25%) LDAP
10 26 (1.20%) Middleware
11 24 (1.11%) CSS
12 23 (1.06%) HTML
12 23 (1.06%) React
13 21 (0.97%) FastAPI
13 21 (0.97%) ModSecurity
14 20 (0.92%) Swagger
15 19 (0.88%) Regular Expression
15 19 (0.88%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 155 (7.17%) Cloud Native
2 126 (5.83%) Onboarding
3 118 (5.46%) Management Information System
4 84 (3.88%) Product Ownership
5 78 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 63 (2.91%) Embedded Systems
7 61 (2.82%) Data Structures
8 57 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
9 56 (2.59%) Driving Licence
10 55 (2.54%) Algorithms
11 54 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
12 48 (2.22%) Low-Code
13 44 (2.03%) AI Agents
14 42 (1.94%) Life Science
15 40 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
16 39 (1.80%) Robotics
17 38 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
18 36 (1.66%) IoT
18 36 (1.66%) SCADA
19 35 (1.62%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.06%) Linux
2 92 (4.25%) Windows
3 35 (1.62%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.06%) Unix
5 20 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.46%) Android
7 9 (0.42%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.32%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.23%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.18%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.14%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.092%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.092%) ThreadX
13 2 (0.092%) VMS
13 2 (0.092%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.046%) AIX
14 1 (0.046%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 548 (25.34%) Problem-Solving
2 510 (23.58%) Continuous Improvement
3 422 (19.51%) Agile
4 382 (17.66%) AI
5 351 (16.23%) Verification and Validation
6 307 (14.19%) CI/CD
7 280 (12.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 277 (12.81%) Test Automation
9 256 (11.84%) Migration
10 254 (11.74%) Analytics
11 243 (11.23%) Mentoring
12 223 (10.31%) Decision-Making
12 223 (10.31%) Software Engineering
13 203 (9.39%) DevOps
14 191 (8.83%) Machine Learning
15 187 (8.65%) Data Analysis
16 186 (8.60%) Business Intelligence
17 182 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 175 (8.09%) Roadmaps
19 166 (7.67%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 471 (21.78%) Python
2 387 (17.89%) SQL
3 96 (4.44%) Java
4 90 (4.16%) C++
5 83 (3.84%) C
6 64 (2.96%) JavaScript
7 57 (2.64%) MATLAB
8 55 (2.54%) Go
9 54 (2.50%) C#
10 32 (1.48%) Bash
11 29 (1.34%) Embedded C
12 27 (1.25%) PowerShell
13 23 (1.06%) TypeScript
14 22 (1.02%) Scala
15 19 (0.88%) R
16 18 (0.83%) Embedded C++
17 12 (0.55%) T-SQL
18 11 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 9 (0.42%) ABAP
20 8 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 468 (21.64%) Degree
2 439 (20.30%) Security Cleared
3 306 (14.15%) SC Cleared
4 125 (5.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (4.99%) DV Cleared
6 85 (3.93%) Master's Degree
7 49 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.76%) PhD
9 36 (1.66%) Chartered Engineer
9 36 (1.66%) CISSP
10 32 (1.48%) HNC
10 32 (1.48%) PMI Certification
11 30 (1.39%) HND
12 28 (1.29%) CISM
13 24 (1.11%) AWS Certification
14 23 (1.06%) ACCA
14 23 (1.06%) Azure Certification
15 22 (1.02%) CIMA
16 20 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
17 19 (0.88%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (14.56%) Data Quality
2 291 (13.45%) QA
3 77 (3.56%) Accessibility
4 54 (2.50%) GDPR
5 37 (1.71%) GRC
6 28 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 24 (1.11%) GxP
8 23 (1.06%) IEC 61508
8 23 (1.06%) NIST
9 19 (0.88%) SLA
10 17 (0.79%) PMO
11 15 (0.69%) ISO 26262
11 15 (0.69%) ISO 9001
12 14 (0.65%) GMP
12 14 (0.65%) WCAG
13 12 (0.55%) GAAP
13 12 (0.55%) IFRS
14 11 (0.51%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 15288
16 9 (0.42%) Def Stans
System Software
1 85 (3.93%) Firmware
2 77 (3.56%) Docker
3 47 (2.17%) Active Directory
4 37 (1.71%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.97%) vSphere
7 11 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.18%) KVM
9 2 (0.092%) iptables
9 2 (0.092%) ProxySG
9 2 (0.092%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.046%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.046%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 77 (3.56%) Kubernetes
2 41 (1.90%) Grafana
3 30 (1.39%) Ansible
4 27 (1.25%) Functional Safety
5 16 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.46%) Cilium
8 8 (0.37%) Puppet
9 7 (0.32%) Kibana
9 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.32%) Nessus
9 7 (0.32%) Nmap
10 5 (0.23%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 5 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 5 (0.23%) SCCM
10 5 (0.23%) WMI
11 4 (0.18%) BMC PATROL
11 4 (0.18%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.18%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.14%) Argo
Vendors
1 268 (12.39%) Microsoft
2 116 (5.36%) SAP
3 95 (4.39%) Oracle
4 59 (2.73%) Salesforce
5 56 (2.59%) Databricks
6 52 (2.40%) Cisco
7 51 (2.36%) ServiceNow
8 43 (1.99%) Google
9 31 (1.43%) EMC
10 30 (1.39%) VMware
11 29 (1.34%) CrowdStrike
12 28 (1.29%) Palo Alto
13 24 (1.11%) Red Hat
14 22 (1.02%) Tenable
15 18 (0.83%) IBM
16 17 (0.79%) Splunk
17 15 (0.69%) McAfee
18 14 (0.65%) Foundry
18 14 (0.65%) Siemens
18 14 (0.65%) Workday