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 1 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 153 165 188
Rank change year-on-year +12 +23 -39
Permanent jobs citing Validation 965 924 1,182
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.51% 1.78% 1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.89% 1.95% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 511 317 688
10th Percentile £36,250 £37,650 £35,000
25th Percentile £43,875 £46,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £77,500 £72,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £91,250 £100,000 £84,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,600 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.56% +0.19% -4.55%

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 51,122 47,498 63,102
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.11% 91.58% 88.88%
Number of salaries quoted 30,201 22,816 49,001
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,628 £41,024
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,751
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +7.62% -10.80%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +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 1 February 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 1 February 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 +15 863 £60,000 +9.09% 848
UK excluding London -1 602 £55,000 +4.56% 667
London +46 297 £75,000 +5.26% 280
Work from Home +89 257 £60,000 +7.14% 386
South East +27 193 £50,000 -13.04% 217
North of England -22 124 £60,000 +25.83% 134
Midlands +2 86 £35,000 -33.01% 114
North West +8 83 £55,000 +15.35% 65
East of England +12 79 £59,500 +8.18% 98
South West +19 71 £60,000 +14.07% 95
West Midlands +12 56 £38,750 -26.19% 75
Scotland -12 38 £42,000 -27.63% 30
Yorkshire -15 32 £63,150 +56.03% 60
East Midlands -2 29 £35,000 -32.69% 38
North East -10 9 £41,000 -1.20% 10
Wales +3 8 £65,000 +32.37% 10
Northern Ireland -23 3 - - 1

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 (2.38%) Confluence
2 17 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
3 12 (1.24%) Appian
4 11 (1.14%) SharePoint
5 10 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.93%) CMS
6 9 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.62%) Apache
8 4 (0.41%) Headless CMS
8 4 (0.41%) SugarCRM
9 3 (0.31%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.31%) SAS
10 2 (0.21%) Kinematics
10 2 (0.21%) WordPress
11 1 (0.10%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.10%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.10%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.10%) FileNet
Applications
1 73 (7.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 64 (6.63%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.35%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.14%) Simulink
5 7 (0.73%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.41%) Fusion 360
6 4 (0.41%) Mathcad
7 3 (0.31%) Revit
8 2 (0.21%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
8 2 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.21%) Adobe Premiere
8 2 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.21%) Elementor
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Smart View
8 2 (0.21%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.21%) Weka
9 1 (0.10%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.10%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 18 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.73%) Workday HCM
4 4 (0.41%) Markit EDM
4 4 (0.41%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.31%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.21%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.21%) Endur
6 2 (0.21%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 2 (0.21%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.21%) Primavera
6 2 (0.21%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.10%) Loan IQ
7 1 (0.10%) Magento
7 1 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.10%) SAP Business ByDesign
7 1 (0.10%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.10%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.10%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 151 (15.65%) Azure
2 84 (8.70%) Power Platform
3 68 (7.05%) AWS
4 45 (4.66%) SaaS
5 41 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (3.11%) GCP
7 26 (2.69%) Snowflake
8 25 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
9 21 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
10 19 (1.97%) Power Automate
11 18 (1.87%) dbt
12 17 (1.76%) Microsoft 365
13 16 (1.66%) Entra ID
13 16 (1.66%) GitHub
14 13 (1.35%) Datadog
15 12 (1.24%) Anthropic Claude
15 12 (1.24%) Azure AI
16 11 (1.14%) Amazon S3
16 11 (1.14%) Figma
17 8 (0.83%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.87%) CHAP
2 14 (1.45%) Firewall
2 14 (1.45%) WAN
3 11 (1.14%) 5G
3 11 (1.14%) LAN
3 11 (1.14%) SD-WAN
4 9 (0.93%) DNS
5 8 (0.83%) HTTP
5 8 (0.83%) MQTT
5 8 (0.83%) Wireless
6 7 (0.73%) Modbus
6 7 (0.73%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.62%) Ethernet VPN
8 5 (0.52%) BGP
8 5 (0.52%) Cisco IOS
8 5 (0.52%) OSPF
8 5 (0.52%) VoIP
8 5 (0.52%) WAAS
9 4 (0.41%) Internet
9 4 (0.41%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (8.29%) Power BI
2 39 (4.04%) SQL Server
3 31 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (2.69%) Metadata
5 22 (2.28%) Relational Database
6 17 (1.76%) Tableau
7 13 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
8 12 (1.24%) Pinecone
9 10 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
9 10 (1.04%) Data Lake
9 10 (1.04%) Spotfire
10 9 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.83%) Big Data
11 8 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 7 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
12 7 (0.73%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.73%) GIS
13 6 (0.62%) Looker
13 6 (0.62%) NoSQL
13 6 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 71 (7.36%) JIRA
2 50 (5.18%) Rational DOORS
3 47 (4.87%) Git
4 24 (2.49%) Postman
5 21 (2.18%) Jenkins
6 15 (1.55%) MLflow
7 14 (1.45%) LabVIEW
8 13 (1.35%) Cucumber
8 13 (1.35%) GitLab
8 13 (1.35%) Selenium
8 13 (1.35%) TestRail
9 12 (1.24%) JMeter
10 10 (1.04%) Eclipse
11 9 (0.93%) SoapUI
12 7 (0.73%) LoadRunner
12 7 (0.73%) Locust
13 6 (0.62%) Zephyr
14 5 (0.52%) Charles Proxy
14 5 (0.52%) Robot Framework
14 5 (0.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 348 (36.06%) Social Skills
2 280 (29.02%) Finance
3 214 (22.18%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (6.94%) Banking
5 59 (6.11%) Electronics
6 49 (5.08%) Marketing
7 48 (4.97%) Financial Institution
8 47 (4.87%) Manufacturing
9 45 (4.66%) Presentation Skills
10 41 (4.25%) Aerospace
11 36 (3.73%) Public Sector
12 33 (3.42%) Law
13 31 (3.21%) Legal
13 31 (3.21%) Telecoms
14 30 (3.11%) Organisational Skills
14 30 (3.11%) Retail
15 26 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 24 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
17 21 (2.18%) Pharmaceutical
18 17 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 154 (15.96%) Analyst
2 139 (14.40%) Senior
3 106 (10.98%) Systems Engineer
4 73 (7.56%) Lead
5 60 (6.22%) Business Analyst
6 57 (5.91%) Architect
7 52 (5.39%) Test Engineer
8 46 (4.77%) Validation Engineer
9 39 (4.04%) Integration Engineer
10 35 (3.63%) Junior
11 34 (3.52%) Developer
12 33 (3.42%) Data Analyst
12 33 (3.42%) Principal Engineer
13 30 (3.11%) Applications Support
13 30 (3.11%) Systems Integration Engineer
14 29 (3.01%) Data Engineer
15 27 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
16 26 (2.69%) Support Engineer
17 25 (2.59%) Applications Engineer
17 25 (2.59%) Verification Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (5.18%) REST
2 30 (3.11%) Middleware
3 29 (3.01%) JSON
4 27 (2.80%) pytest
5 25 (2.59%) Pandas
6 22 (2.28%) PyTorch
6 22 (2.28%) XML
7 21 (2.18%) scikit-learn
7 21 (2.18%) TensorFlow
8 18 (1.87%) NumPy
9 17 (1.76%) OAuth
10 16 (1.66%) FastAPI
10 16 (1.66%) JWT
10 16 (1.66%) Swagger
10 16 (1.66%) Web Services
11 15 (1.55%) Flask
12 14 (1.45%) CSS
13 13 (1.35%) HTML
13 13 (1.35%) React
13 13 (1.35%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 61 (6.32%) Management Information System
2 40 (4.15%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.83%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.32%) Self-Motivation
5 26 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
6 25 (2.59%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.28%) Low-Code
8 21 (2.18%) Life Science
9 18 (1.87%) Algorithms
10 16 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 14 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.45%) Data Centre
11 14 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.35%) Embedded Systems
13 12 (1.24%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 11 (1.14%) Blockchain
14 11 (1.14%) Self-Driving Car
15 10 (1.04%) IoT
15 10 (1.04%) Reinsurance
15 10 (1.04%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 53 (5.49%) Windows
2 41 (4.25%) Linux
3 12 (1.24%) Android
3 12 (1.24%) Unix
3 12 (1.24%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.41%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.41%) CentOS
5 3 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.31%) Robot Operating System
6 2 (0.21%) AIX
6 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.21%) VxWorks
6 2 (0.21%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.10%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.10%) Rocky
7 1 (0.10%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (26.32%) Agile
2 225 (23.32%) Problem-Solving
3 160 (16.58%) Verification and Validation
4 134 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
5 124 (12.85%) Data Validation
6 123 (12.75%) Analytics
7 116 (12.02%) Migration
8 115 (11.92%) Test Automation
9 110 (11.40%) DevOps
9 110 (11.40%) Systems Engineering
10 105 (10.88%) CI/CD
11 100 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
12 93 (9.64%) AI
13 92 (9.53%) ETL
14 90 (9.33%) Mentoring
15 86 (8.91%) Decision-Making
16 85 (8.81%) Software Engineering
17 83 (8.60%) Roadmaps
18 81 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
19 78 (8.08%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 206 (21.35%) SQL
2 179 (18.55%) Python
3 38 (3.94%) C
4 37 (3.83%) C++
5 35 (3.63%) Java
6 32 (3.32%) PowerShell
7 27 (2.80%) MATLAB
8 24 (2.49%) JavaScript
9 19 (1.97%) Bash
10 13 (1.35%) C#
11 12 (1.24%) TypeScript
12 11 (1.14%) R
13 10 (1.04%) T-SQL
14 6 (0.62%) Bicep
14 6 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 6 (0.62%) PL/SQL
15 5 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 5 (0.52%) Go
15 5 (0.52%) PHP
16 4 (0.41%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 269 (27.88%) Degree
2 131 (13.58%) Security Cleared
3 116 (12.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 55 (5.70%) Master's Degree
5 54 (5.60%) SC Cleared
6 41 (4.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (2.18%) CISA
7 21 (2.18%) CISSP
7 21 (2.18%) DV Cleared
8 19 (1.97%) CGEIT
8 19 (1.97%) CISM
8 19 (1.97%) FFIEC
8 19 (1.97%) SANS
9 17 (1.76%) Chartered Engineer
9 17 (1.76%) HNC
10 16 (1.66%) ISTQB
10 16 (1.66%) PMI Certification
10 16 (1.66%) PMP
11 13 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (1.24%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (11.50%) QA
2 105 (10.88%) Data Quality
3 48 (4.97%) ISO/IEC 15288
4 43 (4.46%) GDPR
5 34 (3.52%) Accessibility
6 28 (2.90%) SLA
7 19 (1.97%) COBIT
7 19 (1.97%) NIST
8 17 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 13 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 12 (1.24%) GRC
10 12 (1.24%) ISO 20022
10 12 (1.24%) SEPA
10 12 (1.24%) WCAG
11 10 (1.04%) Good Clinical Practice
12 9 (0.93%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 8 (0.83%) GxP
13 8 (0.83%) ISO 9001
13 8 (0.83%) TARGET2
14 7 (0.73%) IFRS
System Software
1 51 (5.28%) Docker
2 23 (2.38%) Firmware
3 16 (1.66%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.52%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.41%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.31%) vSphere
7 2 (0.21%) Ceph
7 2 (0.21%) Lustre
7 2 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.10%) iptables
8 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.10%) OpenDJ
8 1 (0.10%) OpenIDM
8 1 (0.10%) pfSense
8 1 (0.10%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.10%) vCloud
8 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 43 (4.46%) Kubernetes
2 25 (2.59%) Terraform
3 17 (1.76%) Grafana
4 15 (1.55%) Ansible
5 8 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 8 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.73%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 6 (0.62%) SCCM
8 4 (0.41%) Argo
8 4 (0.41%) Rancher
8 4 (0.41%) yum
9 2 (0.21%) BMC PATROL
9 2 (0.21%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.21%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.21%) Nessus
9 2 (0.21%) Puppet
10 1 (0.10%) Control-M
10 1 (0.10%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.10%) PowerCLI
10 1 (0.10%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 124 (12.85%) Microsoft
2 54 (5.60%) SAP
3 37 (3.83%) Oracle
4 32 (3.32%) Salesforce
5 27 (2.80%) IBM
6 26 (2.69%) Cisco
7 17 (1.76%) Foundry
8 16 (1.66%) OpenAI
9 14 (1.45%) Software AG
10 13 (1.35%) Adobe
10 13 (1.35%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.24%) Automation Anywhere
11 12 (1.24%) UiPath
12 10 (1.04%) F5
13 9 (0.93%) CheckPoint
13 9 (0.93%) Databricks
13 9 (0.93%) Workday
14 8 (0.83%) Intapp
14 8 (0.83%) Splunk
15 7 (0.73%) Guidewire