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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 83 192
Rank change year-on-year -9 +109 -1
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,027 1,709 1,162
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.89% 3.41% 1.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.58% 3.82% 1.73%
Number of salaries quoted 1,173 535 522
10th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.88%
75th Percentile £73,750 £71,250 £75,938
90th Percentile £88,550 £90,000 £93,750
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 78,635 44,750 66,977
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.41% 89.19% 80.88%
Number of salaries quoted 54,192 25,377 43,044
10th Percentile £30,780 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 17 August 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 17 August 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 -10 1,857 £56,000 +1.82% 1,086
UK excluding London -28 1,424 £55,000 +4.56% 896
Work from Home +111 599 £56,000 -6.67% 401
London +69 508 £71,750 -7.42% 331
South East -26 421 £56,500 +7.62% 275
North of England +99 390 £55,000 +15.79% 165
North West +87 225 £55,000 +15.35% 92
Midlands -55 205 £44,720 -18.69% 161
South West -11 167 £53,500 +1.71% 137
East of England -66 135 £60,000 +5.26% 111
West Midlands +21 112 £44,720 -22.23% 102
East Midlands -65 92 £44,424 +4.53% 59
North East +3 84 £55,000 +57.14% 37
Yorkshire +16 81 £43,000 +1.18% 39
Scotland +24 71 £55,000 -5.23% 46
Wales -42 31 £47,500 -11.63% 21
Isle of Man - 3 £38,500 - 3
Northern Ireland -73 2 - - 2

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 62 (3.06%) Apache Airflow
2 59 (2.91%) Apache Spark
3 57 (2.81%) Apache
4 34 (1.68%) Confluence
5 32 (1.58%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.04%) Jupyter
7 12 (0.59%) SAS
8 10 (0.49%) ArcGIS
8 10 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.25%) CMS
9 5 (0.25%) WinCC
10 4 (0.20%) Kinematics
11 3 (0.15%) Artix
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.099%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.099%) IIS
13 1 (0.049%) FactoryTalk
13 1 (0.049%) Palantir Foundry
13 1 (0.049%) WebSphere
Applications
1 120 (5.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (1.78%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (1.78%) Simulink
4 28 (1.38%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.69%) SOLIDWORKS
7 8 (0.39%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.25%) LaTeX
8 5 (0.25%) Mathcad
9 4 (0.20%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.20%) CANalyzer
9 4 (0.20%) Sketch
10 3 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
10 3 (0.15%) OrCAD
10 3 (0.15%) Productboard
10 3 (0.15%) Stateflow
11 2 (0.099%) EPLAN
11 2 (0.099%) Revit
Business Applications
1 45 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.49%) SAP ERP
4 9 (0.44%) iTrent
4 9 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.44%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.39%) Elite 3E
5 8 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.30%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.25%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
8 5 (0.25%) SAP MDG-BP
8 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.20%) SAP MM
10 2 (0.099%) Oracle Receivables
10 2 (0.099%) Refinitiv Enterprise Platform
10 2 (0.099%) SAP CO
10 2 (0.099%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 292 (14.41%) Azure
2 266 (13.12%) AWS
3 156 (7.70%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.59%) GCP
5 79 (3.90%) SaaS
6 67 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
7 62 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 57 (2.81%) GitHub
9 51 (2.52%) Serverless
10 48 (2.37%) Amazon S3
11 37 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
12 33 (1.63%) Entra ID
13 30 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
14 29 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
15 22 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
15 22 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
15 22 (1.09%) Snowflake
16 20 (0.99%) Cloud Computing
17 19 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
17 19 (0.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.45%) Broadband
2 57 (2.81%) Firewall
3 52 (2.57%) DNS
4 35 (1.73%) Wireless
5 33 (1.63%) Network Security
6 31 (1.53%) TCP/IP
6 31 (1.53%) WAN
7 28 (1.38%) VPN
8 22 (1.09%) Ethernet
9 20 (0.99%) LAN
9 20 (0.99%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.84%) MQTT
10 17 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
10 17 (0.84%) Wireshark
11 16 (0.79%) BGP
12 15 (0.74%) Internet
12 15 (0.74%) OSPF
13 13 (0.64%) HTTP
13 13 (0.64%) Modbus
13 13 (0.64%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.01%) Power BI
2 58 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
3 57 (2.81%) Tableau
4 53 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
5 49 (2.42%) SQL Server
6 48 (2.37%) Metadata
7 46 (2.27%) Data Lake
8 34 (1.68%) MongoDB
9 30 (1.48%) Relational Database
10 26 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
10 26 (1.28%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.18%) DynamoDB
12 23 (1.13%) Semantic Layer
13 21 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (0.99%) Spark SQL
15 19 (0.94%) MySQL
16 18 (0.89%) Big Data
17 17 (0.84%) Oracle Database
18 16 (0.79%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 127 (6.27%) JIRA
2 111 (5.48%) Git
3 52 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 46 (2.27%) GitLab
5 38 (1.87%) Rational DOORS
6 26 (1.28%) Selenium
7 22 (1.09%) Postman
7 22 (1.09%) Snyk
8 19 (0.94%) Cypress.io
9 18 (0.89%) LabVIEW
10 15 (0.74%) JMeter
11 14 (0.69%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.64%) IBM UrbanCode
13 10 (0.49%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
14 8 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
14 8 (0.39%) Zephyr
15 7 (0.35%) Gatling
15 7 (0.35%) MLflow
General
1 689 (33.99%) Social Skills
2 563 (27.78%) Finance
3 497 (24.52%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (9.82%) Aerospace
4 199 (9.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 182 (8.98%) Manufacturing
6 168 (8.29%) Electronics
7 115 (5.67%) Law
8 113 (5.57%) Banking
9 83 (4.09%) Public Sector
10 80 (3.95%) Retail
11 76 (3.75%) Marketing
12 71 (3.50%) Organisational Skills
12 71 (3.50%) Pharmaceutical
13 58 (2.86%) Legal
14 56 (2.76%) Automotive
15 47 (2.32%) Games
15 47 (2.32%) Telecoms
16 38 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
17 36 (1.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 375 (18.50%) Senior
2 273 (13.47%) Analyst
3 182 (8.98%) Systems Engineer
4 180 (8.88%) Lead
5 121 (5.97%) Test Engineer
6 116 (5.72%) Architect
7 103 (5.08%) Data Engineer
8 94 (4.64%) Consultant
9 88 (4.34%) Developer
10 87 (4.29%) Business Analyst
11 73 (3.60%) Software Engineer
12 66 (3.26%) Data Analyst
12 66 (3.26%) Principal Engineer
12 66 (3.26%) Validation Engineer
13 49 (2.42%) Embedded Engineer
14 47 (2.32%) Data Scientist
14 47 (2.32%) Support Engineer
15 43 (2.12%) Electronics Engineer
16 42 (2.07%) IT Manager
17 40 (1.97%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (2.37%) RESTful
2 44 (2.17%) Kafka
3 41 (2.02%) PySpark
4 40 (1.97%) Node.js
5 39 (1.92%) REST
6 31 (1.53%) .NET
6 31 (1.53%) JSON
7 30 (1.48%) XML
8 29 (1.43%) Playwright
9 27 (1.33%) LDAP
10 25 (1.23%) Middleware
11 23 (1.13%) Pandas
12 22 (1.09%) CSS
13 21 (1.04%) HTML
13 21 (1.04%) ModSecurity
13 21 (1.04%) PyTorch
13 21 (1.04%) React
14 19 (0.94%) OAuth
14 19 (0.94%) Regular Expression
14 19 (0.94%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 150 (7.40%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.51%) Onboarding
3 110 (5.43%) Management Information System
4 74 (3.65%) Product Ownership
5 72 (3.55%) Data Centre
6 61 (3.01%) Algorithms
7 60 (2.96%) Data Structures
8 57 (2.81%) Embedded Systems
9 55 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
10 52 (2.57%) Driving Licence
11 51 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
12 45 (2.22%) Low-Code
13 38 (1.87%) AI Agents
13 38 (1.87%) Analytical Mindset
13 38 (1.87%) Life Science
14 37 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
15 34 (1.68%) Robotics
15 34 (1.68%) Video\Live Streaming
16 31 (1.53%) IoT
17 30 (1.48%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 123 (6.07%) Linux
2 89 (4.39%) Windows
3 34 (1.68%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.94%) Unix
6 8 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
7 7 (0.35%) Android
8 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
9 5 (0.25%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.20%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.20%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.099%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.099%) ThreadX
11 2 (0.099%) VMS
11 2 (0.099%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.049%) AIX
12 1 (0.049%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 527 (26.00%) Problem-Solving
2 491 (24.22%) Continuous Improvement
3 422 (20.82%) Agile
4 382 (18.85%) AI
5 306 (15.10%) CI/CD
6 274 (13.52%) Analytics
7 261 (12.88%) Verification and Validation
8 259 (12.78%) Stakeholder Management
8 259 (12.78%) Test Automation
9 245 (12.09%) Migration
10 240 (11.84%) Mentoring
11 228 (11.25%) Decision-Making
12 215 (10.61%) Software Engineering
13 199 (9.82%) Data Analysis
14 196 (9.67%) Machine Learning
15 191 (9.42%) DevOps
16 179 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
17 178 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 175 (8.63%) Roadmaps
19 169 (8.34%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 489 (24.12%) Python
2 391 (19.29%) SQL
3 95 (4.69%) Java
4 87 (4.29%) C++
5 78 (3.85%) C
6 62 (3.06%) JavaScript
7 55 (2.71%) Go
8 53 (2.61%) C#
9 51 (2.52%) MATLAB
10 29 (1.43%) Bash
11 27 (1.33%) Embedded C
11 27 (1.33%) PowerShell
12 22 (1.09%) Scala
13 21 (1.04%) TypeScript
14 18 (0.89%) Embedded C++
15 15 (0.74%) R
15 15 (0.74%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 10 (0.49%) ABAP
18 9 (0.44%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 441 (21.76%) Degree
2 349 (17.22%) Security Cleared
3 216 (10.66%) SC Cleared
4 138 (6.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (5.33%) DV Cleared
6 84 (4.14%) Master's Degree
7 44 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.87%) CISSP
9 36 (1.78%) PhD
10 34 (1.68%) Chartered Engineer
11 30 (1.48%) CISM
11 30 (1.48%) HNC
12 28 (1.38%) PMI Certification
13 25 (1.23%) ACCA
13 25 (1.23%) CIMA
13 25 (1.23%) HND
14 24 (1.18%) AWS Certification
15 23 (1.13%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.94%) SANS
17 18 (0.89%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (15.59%) Data Quality
2 275 (13.57%) QA
3 85 (4.19%) Accessibility
4 54 (2.66%) GDPR
5 38 (1.87%) GRC
6 27 (1.33%) IEC 61508
7 26 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 25 (1.23%) NIST
9 22 (1.09%) SLA
10 19 (0.94%) GxP
11 18 (0.89%) PMO
12 16 (0.79%) WCAG
13 15 (0.74%) GAAP
13 15 (0.74%) IFRS
13 15 (0.74%) ISO 26262
14 13 (0.64%) GMP
15 12 (0.59%) ISO 9001
16 11 (0.54%) SOC 2
17 9 (0.44%) COBIT
18 8 (0.39%) JTAG
System Software
1 81 (4.00%) Docker
2 77 (3.80%) Firmware
3 46 (2.27%) Active Directory
4 32 (1.58%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (1.04%) vSphere
7 16 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
8 7 (0.35%) KVM
9 4 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.099%) iptables
10 2 (0.099%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.099%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.049%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.049%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 81 (4.00%) Kubernetes
2 73 (3.60%) Terraform
3 43 (2.12%) Grafana
4 26 (1.28%) Functional Safety
5 25 (1.23%) Ansible
6 16 (0.79%) Prometheus
7 15 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.49%) Cilium
8 10 (0.49%) Puppet
9 7 (0.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 7 (0.35%) Kibana
9 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.35%) SCCM
10 5 (0.25%) Nessus
10 5 (0.25%) Nmap
10 5 (0.25%) WMI
11 4 (0.20%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.20%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.15%) Argo
12 3 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 276 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 119 (5.87%) SAP
3 107 (5.28%) Oracle
4 58 (2.86%) Salesforce
5 57 (2.81%) Databricks
6 46 (2.27%) ServiceNow
7 45 (2.22%) Cisco
7 45 (2.22%) Google
8 36 (1.78%) Red Hat
9 35 (1.73%) VMware
10 29 (1.43%) CrowdStrike
11 27 (1.33%) Palo Alto
12 26 (1.28%) EMC
13 22 (1.09%) Tenable
14 18 (0.89%) Foundry
15 17 (0.84%) IBM
15 17 (0.84%) Splunk
16 15 (0.74%) McAfee
17 14 (0.69%) Siemens
17 14 (0.69%) Workday