Validation Job Trends

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 3 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 163 171 191
Rank change year-on-year +8 +20 -57
Permanent jobs citing Validation 857 1,054 886
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.57% 1.66% 1.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 1.93% 1.88%
Number of salaries quoted 466 408 506
10th Percentile £36,250 £36,250 £37,069
25th Percentile £41,250 £46,250 £47,769
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,600 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.19% -4.36% +10.00%

All Process and 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 45,786 54,654 47,090
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 83.83% 86.14% 93.75%
Number of salaries quoted 27,991 28,426 36,268
10th Percentile £28,250 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £99,700
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £54,793 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.31% +4.37% -0.94%

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 3 December 2025.

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 3 December 2025. 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 +15 778 £60,000 +9.09% 838
UK excluding London -1 559 £52,500 -0.19% 820
London +26 246 £80,000 +18.52% 184
Work from Home +57 202 £60,000 +5.73% 439
South East +15 192 £49,000 -18.33% 315
North of England -24 119 £52,500 +15.38% 143
Midlands +54 80 £42,500 -15.00% 106
South West +26 73 £50,000 -16.67% 112
North West -4 73 £52,750 +14.15% 88
East of England +2 58 £59,000 +7.27% 131
West Midlands +33 49 £42,500 -15.00% 69
Yorkshire -7 33 £60,000 +50.00% 41
East Midlands +30 31 £42,500 -10.53% 35
Scotland -3 26 £70,079 +24.01% 45
North East +7 13 £35,000 -26.70% 15
Wales +14 10 £61,250 +24.74% 14
Northern Ireland -11 2 - - 6

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 23 (2.68%) Confluence
2 21 (2.45%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.98%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.17%) Apache
4 10 (1.17%) SugarCRM
5 8 (0.93%) CMS
5 8 (0.93%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.58%) SAS
7 4 (0.47%) Appian
7 4 (0.47%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.35%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.23%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.12%) FileNet
10 1 (0.12%) Luigi
Applications
1 55 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (5.83%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (2.22%) Simulink
4 17 (1.98%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 7 (0.82%) Mathcad
7 5 (0.58%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.47%) Oracle Smart View
8 4 (0.47%) Revit
9 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.35%) Blender
9 3 (0.35%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.23%) Adobe After Effects
10 2 (0.23%) Adobe Captivate
10 2 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.23%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.23%) Elementor
10 2 (0.23%) Weka
11 1 (0.12%) Civil 3D
11 1 (0.12%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 27 (3.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.82%) Workday HCM
4 5 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.47%) SAP BPC
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.35%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.23%) Endur
7 2 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 2 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.23%) Primavera
7 2 (0.23%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.23%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 118 (13.77%) Azure
2 82 (9.57%) Power Platform
3 79 (9.22%) AWS
4 41 (4.78%) SaaS
5 30 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 25 (2.92%) GCP
7 20 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
8 19 (2.22%) Snowflake
9 16 (1.87%) GitHub
10 15 (1.75%) Amazon S3
10 15 (1.75%) dbt
11 13 (1.52%) Datadog
11 13 (1.52%) Serverless
12 12 (1.40%) Power Automate
13 11 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
14 8 (0.93%) Amazon SageMaker
14 8 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (0.93%) AWS Step Functions
14 8 (0.93%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.98%) LAN
2 12 (1.40%) Firewall
3 10 (1.17%) DNS
4 9 (1.05%) Ethernet
4 9 (1.05%) Modbus
4 9 (1.05%) WAN
5 8 (0.93%) TCP/IP
6 7 (0.82%) 5G
7 6 (0.70%) CHAP
7 6 (0.70%) Ethernet VPN
7 6 (0.70%) HTTP
7 6 (0.70%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.58%) BGP
8 5 (0.58%) DHCP
8 5 (0.58%) Network Security
8 5 (0.58%) NX-OS
8 5 (0.58%) OSPF
8 5 (0.58%) Profibus
8 5 (0.58%) SMTP
9 4 (0.47%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (8.87%) Power BI
2 41 (4.78%) Tableau
3 35 (4.08%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (3.15%) SQL Server
5 25 (2.92%) Metadata
6 21 (2.45%) BigQuery
7 18 (2.10%) Relational Database
8 13 (1.52%) Big Data
9 12 (1.40%) Data Lake
10 11 (1.28%) NoSQL
11 10 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
12 8 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
13 7 (0.82%) Looker
13 7 (0.82%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
14 6 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
14 6 (0.70%) Amazon Aurora
14 6 (0.70%) BusinessObjects
14 6 (0.70%) GIS
14 6 (0.70%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 78 (9.10%) JIRA
2 52 (6.07%) Git
3 43 (5.02%) Rational DOORS
4 23 (2.68%) Jenkins
5 20 (2.33%) Postman
6 16 (1.87%) Selenium
7 12 (1.40%) Cucumber
7 12 (1.40%) GitLab
7 12 (1.40%) JMeter
8 10 (1.17%) SoapUI
9 9 (1.05%) MLflow
9 9 (1.05%) TestRail
10 7 (0.82%) LoadRunner
10 7 (0.82%) Locust
11 5 (0.58%) Cypress.io
11 5 (0.58%) TestNG
11 5 (0.58%) Zephyr
12 4 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
12 4 (0.47%) SonarQube
12 4 (0.47%) WebDriver
General
1 321 (37.46%) Social Skills
2 247 (28.82%) Finance
3 173 (20.19%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (6.42%) Law
5 53 (6.18%) Manufacturing
6 50 (5.83%) Electronics
7 48 (5.60%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (5.60%) Marketing
8 44 (5.13%) Banking
9 40 (4.67%) Presentation Skills
10 38 (4.43%) Aerospace
11 32 (3.73%) Organisational Skills
11 32 (3.73%) Retail
12 31 (3.62%) Financial Institution
13 29 (3.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 28 (3.27%) Telecoms
15 26 (3.03%) Public Sector
16 25 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
17 23 (2.68%) Pharmaceutical
18 20 (2.33%) Billing
Job Titles
1 121 (14.12%) Analyst
2 120 (14.00%) Senior
3 100 (11.67%) Lead
4 68 (7.93%) Systems Engineer
5 43 (5.02%) Data Analyst
6 38 (4.43%) Architect
6 38 (4.43%) Business Analyst
7 36 (4.20%) Test Engineer
8 33 (3.85%) Data Engineer
9 30 (3.50%) Support Engineer
10 29 (3.38%) Applications Engineer
11 28 (3.27%) Applications Support
12 27 (3.15%) Developer
12 27 (3.15%) Principal Engineer
13 26 (3.03%) Administrator
14 23 (2.68%) Applications Support Engineer
14 23 (2.68%) Team Leader
15 22 (2.57%) Data Quality Analyst
15 22 (2.57%) Quality Analyst
16 20 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.62%) REST
2 23 (2.68%) Middleware
3 21 (2.45%) JSON
4 20 (2.33%) XML
5 19 (2.22%) scikit-learn
6 18 (2.10%) Pandas
7 17 (1.98%) PyTorch
7 17 (1.98%) TensorFlow
8 15 (1.75%) Kafka
8 15 (1.75%) React
9 11 (1.28%) HTML
10 10 (1.17%) pytest
11 9 (1.05%) NumPy
11 9 (1.05%) Playwright
11 9 (1.05%) Web Services
12 8 (0.93%) CSS
12 8 (0.93%) FastAPI
12 8 (0.93%) Hugging Face
12 8 (0.93%) PySpark
13 7 (0.82%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (8.17%) Management Information System
2 39 (4.55%) Onboarding
3 38 (4.43%) Life Science
4 36 (4.20%) Self-Motivation
5 32 (3.73%) Product Ownership
6 27 (3.15%) Algorithms
7 26 (3.03%) Operational Technology
8 17 (1.98%) SCADA
9 16 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 15 (1.75%) Data Structures
11 14 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
13 12 (1.40%) Data Centre
13 12 (1.40%) FPGA
14 11 (1.28%) Credit Risk
14 11 (1.28%) Embedded Systems
14 11 (1.28%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 10 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 9 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 8 (0.93%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 38 (4.43%) Linux
1 38 (4.43%) Windows
2 14 (1.63%) Windows Server
3 7 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
4 5 (0.58%) Windows 10
4 5 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (0.47%) Unix
6 2 (0.23%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (0.23%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.12%) AIX
7 1 (0.12%) Android
7 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.12%) CentOS
7 1 (0.12%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 230 (26.84%) Agile
2 211 (24.62%) Problem-Solving
3 127 (14.82%) Verification and Validation
4 125 (14.59%) Data Validation
5 120 (14.00%) Migration
6 119 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
7 105 (12.25%) Analytics
8 100 (11.67%) Test Automation
9 90 (10.50%) Systems Engineering
10 89 (10.39%) Decision-Making
11 86 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
11 86 (10.04%) Software Engineering
12 85 (9.92%) CI/CD
12 85 (9.92%) Data Analysis
13 84 (9.80%) ETL
14 83 (9.68%) Mentoring
15 82 (9.57%) DevOps
16 81 (9.45%) Data Management
17 78 (9.10%) Stakeholder Management
18 74 (8.63%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 179 (20.89%) SQL
2 174 (20.30%) Python
3 37 (4.32%) C++
3 37 (4.32%) Java
4 36 (4.20%) C
5 31 (3.62%) MATLAB
6 20 (2.33%) JavaScript
7 19 (2.22%) PowerShell
8 13 (1.52%) Bash
8 13 (1.52%) R
9 12 (1.40%) TypeScript
10 10 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 7 (0.82%) C#
12 5 (0.58%) Ladder Logic
13 4 (0.47%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.35%) Apex Code
14 3 (0.35%) GLSL
14 3 (0.35%) Go
14 3 (0.35%) Google Apps Script
14 3 (0.35%) Scala
Qualifications
1 274 (31.97%) Degree
2 93 (10.85%) BPSS Clearance
3 91 (10.62%) Security Cleared
4 56 (6.53%) Master's Degree
5 49 (5.72%) SC Cleared
6 39 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 26 (3.03%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (2.33%) HNC
9 17 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 15 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (1.63%) CCNA
11 14 (1.63%) CCNP
11 14 (1.63%) ISTQB
12 12 (1.40%) CCIE
12 12 (1.40%) Numerate Degree
13 11 (1.28%) ACCA
14 10 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
15 9 (1.05%) Chartered Engineer
15 9 (1.05%) CISA
15 9 (1.05%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (13.54%) Data Quality
2 113 (13.19%) QA
3 38 (4.43%) GxP
4 34 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 31 (3.62%) SLA
6 27 (3.15%) GDPR
7 25 (2.92%) Accessibility
8 16 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 11 (1.28%) ISO 20022
9 11 (1.28%) NIST
9 11 (1.28%) SEPA
10 9 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 7 (0.82%) COBIT
11 7 (0.82%) TARGET2
11 7 (0.82%) WCAG
12 5 (0.58%) ARP4761
13 4 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 4 (0.47%) NCSC
14 3 (0.35%) AUTOSAR
System Software
1 43 (5.02%) Docker
2 31 (3.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.80%) Firmware
4 13 (1.52%) Active Directory
5 11 (1.28%) Embedded Firmware
6 7 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.82%) vSphere
7 6 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.58%) vCloud
9 2 (0.23%) Apache Flume
9 2 (0.23%) Ceph
9 2 (0.23%) HDFS
9 2 (0.23%) Lustre
9 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.12%) iptables
10 1 (0.12%) Postfix
10 1 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 32 (3.73%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.22%) Grafana
2 19 (2.22%) Terraform
3 16 (1.87%) Ansible
4 9 (1.05%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.58%) Docker Swarm
5 5 (0.58%) Kubeflow
5 5 (0.58%) vCenter Server
6 4 (0.47%) Rundeck
7 3 (0.35%) Kibana
8 2 (0.23%) Argo
8 2 (0.23%) Functional Safety
8 2 (0.23%) logstash
8 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.23%) Nessus
8 2 (0.23%) Oozie
8 2 (0.23%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.23%) Rancher
8 2 (0.23%) yum
9 1 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 94 (10.97%) Microsoft
2 57 (6.65%) SAP
3 37 (4.32%) VMware
4 28 (3.27%) Cisco
5 25 (2.92%) Oracle
5 25 (2.92%) Salesforce
6 22 (2.57%) IBM
7 15 (1.75%) Foundry
8 13 (1.52%) CheckPoint
8 13 (1.52%) F5
9 11 (1.28%) Siemens
10 10 (1.17%) Workday
11 9 (1.05%) Databricks
11 9 (1.05%) Software AG
12 8 (0.93%) Allen-Bradley
12 8 (0.93%) Intapp
13 7 (0.82%) MathWorks
13 7 (0.82%) Splunk
14 6 (0.70%) EMC
14 6 (0.70%) Informatica