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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 86 206
Rank change year-on-year -25 +120 -13
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,734 1,675 1,193
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.72% 3.41% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.33% 3.80% 1.63%
Number of salaries quoted 1,036 505 608
10th Percentile £35,000 £39,000 £35,675
25th Percentile £42,500 £45,750 £42,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -12.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £71,250 £72,063
90th Percentile £90,000 £92,500 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,000 £53,750 £52,500
% change year-on-year -1.40% +2.38% -4.62%

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 74,263 44,137 73,415
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.70% 89.84% 81.67%
Number of salaries quoted 51,228 24,998 49,763
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 25 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Validation in the UK

Validation
Top 17 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 25 July 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 -22 1,570 £55,000 - 983
UK excluding London -40 1,172 £53,000 -1.40% 682
Work from Home +113 555 £55,000 -8.33% 370
London +71 446 £75,000 -4.76% 404
South East -39 346 £55,000 - 222
North of England +107 328 £55,000 +15.57% 145
North West +77 198 £55,000 +15.35% 81
Midlands -54 190 £42,500 -22.73% 109
South West -38 119 £50,000 -4.94% 88
East of England -73 109 £62,500 +9.65% 85
West Midlands +5 103 £44,000 -29.60% 64
East Midlands -73 85 £42,500 -5.56% 45
Yorkshire +1 67 £44,000 +3.53% 35
North East +2 63 £55,000 +41.94% 30
Scotland +18 51 £50,000 -13.84% 32
Wales -35 29 £45,750 -14.88% 11
Northern Ireland -66 2 - - 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 58 (3.34%) Apache Airflow
2 55 (3.17%) Apache Spark
3 52 (3.00%) Apache
4 29 (1.67%) Confluence
4 29 (1.67%) SharePoint
5 21 (1.21%) ArcGIS
6 19 (1.10%) Jupyter
7 14 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
8 12 (0.69%) SAS
9 5 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.29%) CMS
10 4 (0.23%) Kinematics
11 3 (0.17%) Artix
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.12%) IIS
13 1 (0.058%) Appian
13 1 (0.058%) Cloud Foundry
13 1 (0.058%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.058%) Palantir Foundry
13 1 (0.058%) WebSphere
Applications
1 95 (5.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (1.38%) MS Visio
5 23 (1.33%) Simulink
6 13 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 11 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.46%) SOLIDWORKS
9 5 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.29%) LaTeX
10 4 (0.23%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.23%) CANalyzer
10 4 (0.23%) Sketch
11 3 (0.17%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.17%) Productboard
11 3 (0.17%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.12%) Mathcad
12 2 (0.12%) Solid Edge
13 1 (0.058%) Chatbot
13 1 (0.058%) Trello
Business Applications
1 47 (2.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.63%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.58%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.52%) iTrent
5 9 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
6 8 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
7 6 (0.35%) Elite 3E
8 5 (0.29%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.29%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.23%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.23%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.17%) Teamcenter
11 2 (0.12%) FastStats
11 2 (0.12%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.12%) SAP FSCM
11 2 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 2 (0.12%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 263 (15.17%) Azure
2 241 (13.90%) AWS
3 164 (9.46%) Power Platform
4 83 (4.79%) GCP
5 82 (4.73%) SaaS
6 66 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
7 50 (2.88%) Serverless
8 48 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 46 (2.65%) GitHub
10 42 (2.42%) Amazon S3
11 36 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
12 24 (1.38%) Entra ID
12 24 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
13 22 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
13 22 (1.27%) Snowflake
14 21 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
14 21 (1.21%) Cloud Computing
15 20 (1.15%) Amazon EMR
15 20 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
16 19 (1.10%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 71 (4.09%) Broadband
2 51 (2.94%) Firewall
3 41 (2.36%) DNS
4 29 (1.67%) TCP/IP
4 29 (1.67%) Wireless
5 22 (1.27%) Network Security
5 22 (1.27%) VPN
5 22 (1.27%) WAN
6 16 (0.92%) Ethernet
7 15 (0.87%) Internet
7 15 (0.87%) Wireshark
8 14 (0.81%) MQTT
8 14 (0.81%) SD-WAN
8 14 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (0.69%) CHAP
9 12 (0.69%) HTTP
9 12 (0.69%) LAN
10 10 (0.58%) 5G
10 10 (0.58%) BGP
10 10 (0.58%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (8.54%) Power BI
2 59 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
3 57 (3.29%) Tableau
4 54 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
5 50 (2.88%) SQL Server
6 45 (2.60%) Metadata
7 35 (2.02%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.96%) MongoDB
9 29 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 27 (1.56%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.44%) QGIS
11 25 (1.44%) Semantic Layer
12 23 (1.33%) GIS
13 22 (1.27%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (1.27%) DynamoDB
13 22 (1.27%) MySQL
14 21 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
15 20 (1.15%) Spark SQL
15 20 (1.15%) Spatial Data
16 18 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 106 (6.11%) JIRA
2 93 (5.36%) Git
3 52 (3.00%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.65%) GitLab
5 33 (1.90%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (1.27%) Selenium
6 22 (1.27%) Snyk
7 19 (1.10%) Postman
8 15 (0.87%) Cypress.io
8 15 (0.87%) LabVIEW
9 14 (0.81%) JMeter
10 13 (0.75%) IBM UrbanCode
11 12 (0.69%) Cucumber
12 10 (0.58%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.52%) Burp Suite
13 9 (0.52%) REST Assured
14 7 (0.40%) MLflow
14 7 (0.40%) Rational Rhapsody
15 6 (0.35%) GDB
15 6 (0.35%) Zephyr
General
1 574 (33.10%) Social Skills
2 479 (27.62%) Finance
3 407 (23.47%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (8.07%) Manufacturing
5 137 (7.90%) Aerospace
6 136 (7.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 124 (7.15%) Electronics
8 99 (5.71%) Banking
9 72 (4.15%) Law
10 71 (4.09%) Public Sector
10 71 (4.09%) Retail
11 57 (3.29%) Pharmaceutical
12 56 (3.23%) Organisational Skills
13 55 (3.17%) Legal
14 49 (2.83%) Marketing
15 45 (2.60%) Games
16 43 (2.48%) Automotive
17 31 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
17 31 (1.79%) Telecoms
18 29 (1.67%) Billing
Job Titles
1 318 (18.34%) Senior
2 260 (14.99%) Analyst
3 151 (8.71%) Lead
4 123 (7.09%) Systems Engineer
5 106 (6.11%) Architect
6 105 (6.06%) Test Engineer
7 95 (5.48%) Consultant
8 93 (5.36%) Data Engineer
9 81 (4.67%) Business Analyst
10 80 (4.61%) Developer
11 74 (4.27%) Data Analyst
12 72 (4.15%) Validation Engineer
13 49 (2.83%) Software Engineer
14 47 (2.71%) Principal Engineer
15 45 (2.60%) Embedded Engineer
16 43 (2.48%) Support Engineer
17 40 (2.31%) IT Manager
18 39 (2.25%) Senior Systems Engineer
19 37 (2.13%) Data Scientist
20 36 (2.08%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (2.71%) RESTful
2 38 (2.19%) Node.js
2 38 (2.19%) PySpark
3 37 (2.13%) Kafka
4 33 (1.90%) PyTorch
5 31 (1.79%) JSON
5 31 (1.79%) XML
6 30 (1.73%) REST
7 25 (1.44%) Pandas
8 23 (1.33%) .NET
8 23 (1.33%) Playwright
9 22 (1.27%) Middleware
10 20 (1.15%) CSS
11 19 (1.10%) HTML
11 19 (1.10%) Regular Expression
11 19 (1.10%) XMPP
12 17 (0.98%) LDAP
12 17 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
12 17 (0.98%) React
13 16 (0.92%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.75%) Cloud Native
2 112 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 78 (4.50%) Management Information System
4 70 (4.04%) Data Structures
5 68 (3.92%) Algorithms
6 61 (3.52%) Product Ownership
7 52 (3.00%) Data Centre
8 49 (2.83%) Embedded Systems
9 46 (2.65%) Distributed Systems
10 45 (2.60%) Driving Licence
10 45 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
11 44 (2.54%) Low-Code
12 37 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
13 32 (1.85%) Video\Live Streaming
14 31 (1.79%) Life Science
15 29 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
16 28 (1.61%) AI Agents
16 28 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
17 26 (1.50%) IoT
18 25 (1.44%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 118 (6.81%) Linux
2 86 (4.96%) Windows
3 33 (1.90%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.10%) Unix
6 6 (0.35%) Android
6 6 (0.35%) FreeRTOS
7 5 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
8 4 (0.23%) Kali Linux
8 4 (0.23%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.23%) Mac OS X
9 3 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.12%) AIX
10 2 (0.12%) ThreadX
10 2 (0.12%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.058%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.058%) CentOS
11 1 (0.058%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.058%) VMS
11 1 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 414 (23.88%) Problem-Solving
2 412 (23.76%) Continuous Improvement
3 373 (21.51%) Agile
4 332 (19.15%) AI
5 280 (16.15%) CI/CD
6 248 (14.30%) Analytics
7 230 (13.26%) Test Automation
8 225 (12.98%) Migration
9 213 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 200 (11.53%) Mentoring
11 187 (10.78%) Decision-Making
12 178 (10.27%) DevOps
13 176 (10.15%) Business Intelligence
13 176 (10.15%) Data Analysis
14 174 (10.03%) Verification and Validation
15 169 (9.75%) Software Engineering
16 168 (9.69%) Data Validation
16 168 (9.69%) Machine Learning
17 164 (9.46%) Data Modelling
18 160 (9.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 453 (26.12%) Python
2 369 (21.28%) SQL
3 79 (4.56%) C++
4 76 (4.38%) Java
5 71 (4.09%) C
6 53 (3.06%) Go
7 46 (2.65%) C#
7 46 (2.65%) JavaScript
8 36 (2.08%) MATLAB
9 28 (1.61%) Bash
9 28 (1.61%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.27%) T-SQL
11 21 (1.21%) Embedded C
12 18 (1.04%) Embedded C++
12 18 (1.04%) Scala
13 17 (0.98%) TypeScript
14 15 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.69%) R
16 10 (0.58%) ABAP
16 10 (0.58%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 339 (19.55%) Degree
2 216 (12.46%) Security Cleared
3 116 (6.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 114 (6.57%) SC Cleared
5 75 (4.33%) Master's Degree
6 64 (3.69%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.73%) Chartered Engineer
9 29 (1.67%) HNC
10 27 (1.56%) CISSP
10 27 (1.56%) PhD
11 23 (1.33%) CISA
12 22 (1.27%) SANS
13 21 (1.21%) ACCA
13 21 (1.21%) AWS Certification
13 21 (1.21%) CIMA
13 21 (1.21%) CISM
14 19 (1.10%) HND
14 19 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 17 (0.98%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (17.07%) Data Quality
2 235 (13.55%) QA
3 73 (4.21%) Accessibility
4 55 (3.17%) GDPR
5 38 (2.19%) GRC
6 26 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.33%) IEC 61508
8 21 (1.21%) NIST
9 17 (0.98%) PMO
9 17 (0.98%) SLA
10 15 (0.87%) IFRS
10 15 (0.87%) ISO 9001
11 13 (0.75%) GAAP
11 13 (0.75%) GxP
11 13 (0.75%) ISO 26262
11 13 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 13 (0.75%) WCAG
12 12 (0.69%) COBIT
13 11 (0.63%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.52%) MISRA
System Software
1 75 (4.33%) Docker
2 62 (3.58%) Firmware
3 41 (2.36%) Active Directory
4 27 (1.56%) Embedded Firmware
4 27 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (1.27%) vSphere
6 17 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
7 7 (0.40%) KVM
8 5 (0.29%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.12%) Terminal Services
11 1 (0.058%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.058%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 75 (4.33%) Terraform
2 74 (4.27%) Kubernetes
3 40 (2.31%) Grafana
4 27 (1.56%) Ansible
5 24 (1.38%) Functional Safety
6 17 (0.98%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.69%) Puppet
8 10 (0.58%) Cilium
9 7 (0.40%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 7 (0.40%) Kibana
9 7 (0.40%) SCCM
10 5 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (0.23%) Argo
11 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.23%) Nessus
11 4 (0.23%) Nmap
12 3 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.17%) HP Fortify
12 3 (0.17%) WMI
12 3 (0.17%) yum
Vendors
1 237 (13.67%) Microsoft
2 106 (6.11%) SAP
3 97 (5.59%) Oracle
4 55 (3.17%) Salesforce
5 48 (2.77%) Databricks
6 36 (2.08%) ServiceNow
6 36 (2.08%) VMware
7 35 (2.02%) Red Hat
8 33 (1.90%) Cisco
9 30 (1.73%) Google
10 29 (1.67%) CrowdStrike
11 24 (1.38%) Palo Alto
12 22 (1.27%) Tenable
13 17 (0.98%) IBM
14 15 (0.87%) McAfee
15 14 (0.81%) Adobe
15 14 (0.81%) Foundry
16 13 (0.75%) Citrix
16 13 (0.75%) EMC
16 13 (0.75%) Splunk