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 21 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 172 177 200
Rank change year-on-year +5 +23 -63
Permanent jobs citing Validation 854 1,040 926
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.60% 1.54% 1.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 1.84% 1.90%
Number of salaries quoted 464 390 525
10th Percentile £36,625 £37,725 £37,318
25th Percentile £41,250 £46,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -6.67% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,875 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £91,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,750 £54,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -3.21% -0.91% +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 45,592 56,393 48,809
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 85.45% 83.65% 93.81%
Number of salaries quoted 27,617 29,299 37,445
10th Percentile £28,250 £34,404 £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 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -

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 21 November 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 21 November 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 +12 775 £60,000 +9.09% 1,226
UK excluding London +12 556 £52,750 -3.21% 831
London +23 250 £80,000 +14.29% 504
South East +18 204 £53,000 -15.20% 290
Work from Home +65 195 £62,000 -1.21% 541
North of England -18 111 £52,500 +15.38% 126
Midlands +64 79 £42,500 -15.00% 120
South West +20 67 £50,000 -16.67% 127
North West -8 66 £52,750 +10.63% 81
East of England -18 54 £57,500 +4.55% 144
West Midlands +42 50 £45,000 -10.00% 79
Yorkshire -2 32 £60,000 +50.00% 30
Scotland +3 31 £60,000 +6.18% 50
East Midlands +40 29 £42,500 -5.56% 39
North East +3 13 £35,000 -30.00% 16
Wales +20 10 £61,250 +24.74% 11
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 7

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 24 (2.81%) Confluence
2 18 (2.11%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (1.99%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.17%) Apache
4 10 (1.17%) SugarCRM
5 8 (0.94%) CMS
5 8 (0.94%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.59%) SAS
7 4 (0.47%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.35%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.23%) Appian
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 54 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (5.50%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (2.58%) Simulink
4 19 (2.22%) MS Visio
5 13 (1.52%) Mathcad
6 9 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 7 (0.82%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.59%) Blender
9 4 (0.47%) Revit
10 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.35%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.35%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.23%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.23%) Adobe Captivate
11 2 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.23%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.23%) Elementor
11 2 (0.23%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.23%) Weka
12 1 (0.12%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 28 (3.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle Cash Management
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.59%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.47%) SAP BPC
5 4 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.35%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.35%) SAP CX
6 3 (0.35%) Workday HCM
7 2 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 2 (0.23%) Endur
7 2 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 2 (0.23%) Primavera
7 2 (0.23%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 113 (13.23%) Azure
2 83 (9.72%) Power Platform
3 81 (9.48%) AWS
4 40 (4.68%) SaaS
5 28 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (2.69%) GCP
7 21 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
8 19 (2.22%) Amazon S3
9 17 (1.99%) GitHub
9 17 (1.99%) Serverless
10 16 (1.87%) Snowflake
11 15 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (1.64%) Datadog
13 13 (1.52%) dbt
14 11 (1.29%) Amazon SageMaker
14 11 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 10 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 9 (1.05%) Microsoft 365
17 8 (0.94%) Amazon EKS
17 8 (0.94%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.99%) LAN
2 13 (1.52%) Firewall
3 12 (1.41%) Ethernet
4 11 (1.29%) Modbus
5 10 (1.17%) WAN
6 8 (0.94%) 5G
6 8 (0.94%) Internet
7 7 (0.82%) DNS
7 7 (0.82%) Profibus
7 7 (0.82%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.70%) CHAP
8 6 (0.70%) Ethernet VPN
8 6 (0.70%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.59%) BGP
9 5 (0.59%) Network Security
9 5 (0.59%) NX-OS
9 5 (0.59%) OSPF
10 4 (0.47%) DHCP
10 4 (0.47%) MPLS
10 4 (0.47%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (9.13%) Power BI
2 43 (5.04%) Tableau
3 32 (3.75%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (2.69%) SQL Server
5 22 (2.58%) Metadata
6 19 (2.22%) BigQuery
7 15 (1.76%) Relational Database
8 13 (1.52%) Big Data
9 12 (1.41%) NoSQL
10 11 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
11 10 (1.17%) Data Lake
12 8 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
12 8 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
12 8 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
13 7 (0.82%) MongoDB
14 6 (0.70%) BusinessObjects
14 6 (0.70%) GIS
14 6 (0.70%) MySQL
14 6 (0.70%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.70%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 75 (8.78%) JIRA
2 44 (5.15%) Git
3 38 (4.45%) Rational DOORS
4 27 (3.16%) Jenkins
5 20 (2.34%) Postman
6 15 (1.76%) Selenium
7 12 (1.41%) GitLab
7 12 (1.41%) JMeter
8 11 (1.29%) Cucumber
9 10 (1.17%) SoapUI
10 7 (0.82%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.82%) LoadRunner
10 7 (0.82%) Locust
10 7 (0.82%) MLflow
11 6 (0.70%) TestRail
12 5 (0.59%) TestNG
12 5 (0.59%) Zephyr
13 4 (0.47%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.47%) WebDriver
13 4 (0.47%) webpack
General
1 329 (38.52%) Social Skills
2 253 (29.63%) Finance
3 174 (20.37%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (7.38%) Law
5 57 (6.67%) Manufacturing
6 51 (5.97%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (5.97%) Electronics
7 49 (5.74%) Marketing
8 44 (5.15%) Banking
9 39 (4.57%) Presentation Skills
10 37 (4.33%) Retail
11 35 (4.10%) Aerospace
12 33 (3.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
13 32 (3.75%) Financial Institution
14 28 (3.28%) Telecoms
15 27 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
16 24 (2.81%) Public Sector
17 23 (2.69%) Billing
17 23 (2.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 125 (14.64%) Senior
2 123 (14.40%) Analyst
3 99 (11.59%) Lead
4 68 (7.96%) Systems Engineer
5 42 (4.92%) Data Analyst
6 40 (4.68%) Business Analyst
7 35 (4.10%) Architect
7 35 (4.10%) Data Engineer
8 32 (3.75%) Support Engineer
9 31 (3.63%) Test Engineer
10 28 (3.28%) Applications Engineer
10 28 (3.28%) Developer
11 26 (3.04%) Applications Support
11 26 (3.04%) Principal Engineer
12 25 (2.93%) Administrator
13 23 (2.69%) Data Quality Analyst
13 23 (2.69%) Quality Analyst
13 23 (2.69%) Team Leader
14 22 (2.58%) Applications Support Engineer
15 20 (2.34%) Hardware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.16%) REST
2 23 (2.69%) Middleware
3 21 (2.46%) JSON
3 21 (2.46%) XML
4 18 (2.11%) scikit-learn
5 17 (1.99%) Kafka
5 17 (1.99%) Pandas
6 16 (1.87%) PyTorch
7 15 (1.76%) TensorFlow
8 13 (1.52%) React
9 11 (1.29%) HTML
10 8 (0.94%) CSS
10 8 (0.94%) NumPy
10 8 (0.94%) Playwright
10 8 (0.94%) PySpark
10 8 (0.94%) Web Services
11 7 (0.82%) Gherkin
11 7 (0.82%) pytest
12 6 (0.70%) FastAPI
12 6 (0.70%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.31%) Management Information System
2 40 (4.68%) Life Science
3 39 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 38 (4.45%) Self-Motivation
5 34 (3.98%) Product Ownership
6 29 (3.40%) Algorithms
7 27 (3.16%) Operational Technology
8 19 (2.22%) SCADA
9 16 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 13 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (1.41%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.41%) Data Structures
11 12 (1.41%) FPGA
12 11 (1.29%) Data Centre
12 11 (1.29%) Embedded Systems
12 11 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 10 (1.17%) Low-Code
14 9 (1.05%) IoT
14 9 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 35 (4.10%) Linux
2 33 (3.86%) Windows
3 13 (1.52%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (0.59%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.35%) Unix
7 2 (0.23%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (0.23%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.12%) AIX
8 1 (0.12%) Android
8 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
8 1 (0.12%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (27.05%) Agile
2 225 (26.35%) Problem-Solving
3 127 (14.87%) Verification and Validation
4 121 (14.17%) Data Validation
5 119 (13.93%) Continuous Improvement
6 118 (13.82%) Migration
7 104 (12.18%) Analytics
8 97 (11.36%) Test Automation
9 93 (10.89%) Decision-Making
10 90 (10.54%) Systems Engineering
11 89 (10.42%) Data Analysis
11 89 (10.42%) Mentoring
12 88 (10.30%) Business Intelligence
13 85 (9.95%) DevOps
14 83 (9.72%) CI/CD
14 83 (9.72%) Data Management
14 83 (9.72%) Software Engineering
15 80 (9.37%) ETL
16 78 (9.13%) Stakeholder Management
17 72 (8.43%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 186 (21.78%) Python
2 175 (20.49%) SQL
3 38 (4.45%) Java
4 35 (4.10%) C++
4 35 (4.10%) MATLAB
5 34 (3.98%) C
6 22 (2.58%) JavaScript
7 17 (1.99%) PowerShell
8 14 (1.64%) R
9 11 (1.29%) Bash
9 11 (1.29%) T-SQL
9 11 (1.29%) TypeScript
10 7 (0.82%) Ladder Logic
11 6 (0.70%) C#
12 5 (0.59%) Scala
13 3 (0.35%) Bicep
13 3 (0.35%) Go
13 3 (0.35%) Google Apps Script
13 3 (0.35%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 277 (32.44%) Degree
2 87 (10.19%) BPSS Clearance
3 80 (9.37%) Security Cleared
4 62 (7.26%) Master's Degree
5 49 (5.74%) SC Cleared
6 40 (4.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 26 (3.04%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (2.34%) HNC
9 16 (1.87%) DV Cleared
10 15 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (1.64%) CCNA
11 14 (1.64%) CCNP
11 14 (1.64%) PhD
12 13 (1.52%) ACCA
13 12 (1.41%) CCIE
14 11 (1.29%) ISTQB
14 11 (1.29%) Numerate Degree
15 10 (1.17%) CISA
15 10 (1.17%) Network+ Certification
16 9 (1.05%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (13.00%) Data Quality
2 110 (12.88%) QA
3 40 (4.68%) GxP
4 39 (4.57%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 30 (3.51%) SLA
6 28 (3.28%) Accessibility
7 26 (3.04%) GDPR
8 14 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 11 (1.29%) ISO 20022
9 11 (1.29%) NIST
9 11 (1.29%) SEPA
10 9 (1.05%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 9 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.82%) COBIT
11 7 (0.82%) TARGET2
11 7 (0.82%) WCAG
12 5 (0.59%) ARP4761
12 5 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 4 (0.47%) NCSC
14 3 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 44 (5.15%) Docker
2 30 (3.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (3.16%) Firmware
4 13 (1.52%) Active Directory
5 12 (1.41%) Embedded Firmware
6 6 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.70%) vSphere
7 5 (0.59%) vCloud
8 2 (0.23%) Apache Flume
8 2 (0.23%) Ceph
8 2 (0.23%) HDFS
8 2 (0.23%) Lustre
8 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 2 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.12%) DFS Replication
9 1 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.12%) Postfix
9 1 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 31 (3.63%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.69%) Terraform
3 21 (2.46%) Grafana
4 17 (1.99%) Ansible
5 11 (1.29%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.59%) Docker Swarm
6 5 (0.59%) Kubeflow
6 5 (0.59%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.47%) Rundeck
8 3 (0.35%) Kibana
9 2 (0.23%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.23%) logstash
9 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.23%) Nessus
9 2 (0.23%) Oozie
9 2 (0.23%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.12%) Control-M
10 1 (0.12%) Puppet
10 1 (0.12%) yum
10 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 94 (11.01%) Microsoft
2 59 (6.91%) SAP
3 36 (4.22%) VMware
4 27 (3.16%) Cisco
5 26 (3.04%) Oracle
6 22 (2.58%) Salesforce
7 19 (2.22%) IBM
8 14 (1.64%) Foundry
9 13 (1.52%) CheckPoint
9 13 (1.52%) F5
9 13 (1.52%) MathWorks
9 13 (1.52%) Siemens
10 10 (1.17%) Allen-Bradley
11 9 (1.05%) Software AG
12 8 (0.94%) Databricks
12 8 (0.94%) Intapp
12 8 (0.94%) Splunk
13 7 (0.82%) Informatica
13 7 (0.82%) Rockwell
13 7 (0.82%) Workday