Validation Job Trends in England

Validation
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England requiring Validation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 87 171
Rank change year-on-year +19 +84 +33
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,414 1,492 1,027
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.33% 3.44% 1.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.16% 3.86% 1.91%
Number of salaries quoted 1,431 404 381
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,715 £37,750
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £72,500 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £59,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +7.27% -4.35% -11.54%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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 in England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 76,345 38,619 53,704
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.62% 89.01% 82.66%
Number of salaries quoted 53,555 21,921 28,813
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,681 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.64%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,250 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Validation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

Validation job vacancy trend in England

Validation
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Validation

Validation
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Validation in England over the 6 months to 9 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Validation in England

Validation
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the England region over the 6 months to 9 October 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
London +80 623 £68,375 -14.53% 2,123
South East -9 501 £62,500 +16.28% 629
North of England +121 490 £51,000 +6.96% 423
Midlands -11 314 £50,000 -9.09% 387
North West +118 302 £55,000 +9.94% 225
South West +24 246 £55,000 +4.56% 320
East of England -39 215 £55,000 -10.20% 367
West Midlands +54 174 £47,500 -13.64% 252
East Midlands -44 140 £50,000 +17.65% 133
Yorkshire +27 96 £42,500 - 136
North East +5 92 £55,000 +57.14% 63
Validation
UK

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 52 (2.15%) Apache Spark
2 44 (1.82%) Apache
3 43 (1.78%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (1.41%) SharePoint
5 32 (1.33%) CMS
5 32 (1.33%) Confluence
6 19 (0.79%) Jupyter
7 15 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.54%) SAS
9 10 (0.41%) WinCC
10 6 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.17%) Artix
12 3 (0.12%) nginx
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.083%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.083%) IIS
14 1 (0.041%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.041%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 153 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (2.24%) Simulink
4 38 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 27 (1.12%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.87%) AutoCAD
7 19 (0.79%) SOLIDWORKS
8 14 (0.58%) MS Visio
8 14 (0.58%) Revit
9 12 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 12 (0.50%) OrCAD
10 10 (0.41%) EPLAN
11 9 (0.37%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.25%) Mathcad
13 5 (0.21%) Notion
13 5 (0.21%) Stateflow
14 4 (0.17%) CANalyzer
15 3 (0.12%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
15 3 (0.12%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 39 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.41%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.37%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.33%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.29%) Infor M3
6 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
7 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.21%) Elite 3E
8 5 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.17%) iTrent
9 4 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.12%) Maximo
10 3 (0.12%) Sage 200
10 3 (0.12%) SAP MDG-BP
10 3 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 327 (13.55%) Azure
2 258 (10.69%) AWS
3 182 (7.54%) Power Platform
4 98 (4.06%) GCP
5 83 (3.44%) GitHub
6 77 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
7 71 (2.94%) SaaS
8 66 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
9 54 (2.24%) Serverless
10 46 (1.91%) Amazon S3
11 44 (1.82%) Entra ID
12 40 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
13 34 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
14 31 (1.28%) Microsoft Purview
15 28 (1.16%) Amazon EMR
15 28 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
16 26 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 24 (0.99%) Azure Service Bus
18 23 (0.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.90%) DNS
2 64 (2.65%) Firewall
3 55 (2.28%) Broadband
4 45 (1.86%) VPN
5 44 (1.82%) TCP/IP
6 39 (1.62%) Modbus
7 38 (1.57%) Wireless
8 36 (1.49%) Ethernet
8 36 (1.49%) Network Security
9 35 (1.45%) VLAN
9 35 (1.45%) WAN
10 30 (1.24%) LAN
10 30 (1.24%) OSPF
11 28 (1.16%) MQTT
12 25 (1.04%) Wireshark
13 23 (0.95%) SD-WAN
14 21 (0.87%) BGP
15 18 (0.75%) 5G
15 18 (0.75%) DHCP
15 18 (0.75%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (7.04%) Power BI
2 67 (2.78%) Metadata
3 60 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 48 (1.99%) Data Lake
6 47 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
7 38 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
8 36 (1.49%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.41%) Tableau
10 30 (1.24%) MongoDB
11 27 (1.12%) Big Data
11 27 (1.12%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.99%) BigQuery
13 23 (0.95%) DynamoDB
14 22 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
15 20 (0.83%) Power Query
16 19 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
16 19 (0.79%) MySQL
17 18 (0.75%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 135 (5.59%) JIRA
2 127 (5.26%) Git
3 62 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.53%) GitLab
5 44 (1.82%) Rational DOORS
6 31 (1.28%) LabVIEW
7 20 (0.83%) Selenium
8 17 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.70%) Postman
9 15 (0.62%) Snyk
10 13 (0.54%) Claude Code
11 11 (0.46%) Burp Suite
11 11 (0.46%) Eclipse
11 11 (0.46%) Rational Rhapsody
12 9 (0.37%) Cucumber
12 9 (0.37%) JMeter
12 9 (0.37%) MLflow
12 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
13 8 (0.33%) Gatling
13 8 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 816 (33.80%) Social Skills
2 615 (25.48%) Finance
3 569 (23.57%) Analytical Skills
4 246 (10.19%) Manufacturing
5 242 (10.02%) Electronics
6 230 (9.53%) Aerospace
7 220 (9.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 122 (5.05%) Law
9 116 (4.81%) Marketing
10 111 (4.60%) Public Sector
11 107 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
12 103 (4.27%) Banking
13 99 (4.10%) Retail
14 89 (3.69%) Telecoms
15 82 (3.40%) Automotive
15 82 (3.40%) Pharmaceutical
16 50 (2.07%) Legal
17 45 (1.86%) Military
18 42 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
19 39 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 430 (17.81%) Senior
2 262 (10.85%) Systems Engineer
3 247 (10.23%) Analyst
4 190 (7.87%) Lead
5 122 (5.05%) Data Engineer
6 119 (4.93%) Test Engineer
7 109 (4.52%) Architect
8 101 (4.18%) Developer
9 91 (3.77%) Software Engineer
10 87 (3.60%) Consultant
11 84 (3.48%) Principal Engineer
12 80 (3.31%) Electronics Engineer
13 73 (3.02%) Business Analyst
14 60 (2.49%) Data Analyst
15 58 (2.40%) Network Engineer
16 56 (2.32%) Automation Engineer
17 55 (2.28%) Validation Engineer
18 51 (2.11%) Design Engineer
19 49 (2.03%) Data Scientist
20 48 (1.99%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (3.65%) Terraform
2 67 (2.78%) REST
3 60 (2.49%) RESTful
4 59 (2.44%) Kafka
5 52 (2.15%) .NET
6 50 (2.07%) Node.js
7 38 (1.57%) PySpark
8 37 (1.53%) FastAPI
8 37 (1.53%) JSON
9 36 (1.49%) Playwright
10 32 (1.33%) CSS
11 31 (1.28%) HTML
11 31 (1.28%) XML
12 30 (1.24%) React
13 28 (1.16%) Swagger
14 25 (1.04%) RabbitMQ
15 24 (0.99%) OpenAPI
16 23 (0.95%) LDAP
16 23 (0.95%) Middleware
16 23 (0.95%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 160 (6.63%) Cloud Native
2 156 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 144 (5.97%) Management Information System
4 78 (3.23%) Product Ownership
5 72 (2.98%) Data Centre
5 72 (2.98%) Driving Licence
6 68 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (2.73%) Embedded Systems
8 65 (2.69%) Data Structures
9 62 (2.57%) Enterprise Software
10 55 (2.28%) SCADA
11 52 (2.15%) AI Agents
12 48 (1.99%) Life Science
13 47 (1.95%) Algorithms
14 41 (1.70%) Robotics
15 39 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
16 38 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
17 37 (1.53%) Low-Code
18 33 (1.37%) Analogue Electronics
19 32 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 133 (5.51%) Linux
2 90 (3.73%) Windows
3 32 (1.33%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.12%) Unix
5 13 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.41%) Android
7 8 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.29%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.17%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.083%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.083%) VMS
11 2 (0.083%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.041%) AIX
12 1 (0.041%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 623 (25.81%) Problem-Solving
2 547 (22.66%) Continuous Improvement
3 438 (18.14%) Agile
4 436 (18.06%) AI
5 407 (16.86%) Verification and Validation
6 348 (14.42%) CI/CD
7 328 (13.59%) Stakeholder Management
8 315 (13.05%) Test Automation
9 300 (12.43%) Migration
10 260 (10.77%) Analytics
11 258 (10.69%) Mentoring
12 249 (10.31%) Software Engineering
13 237 (9.82%) Decision-Making
14 230 (9.53%) DevOps
15 209 (8.66%) Business Intelligence
16 208 (8.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 205 (8.49%) Data Analysis
18 202 (8.37%) Roadmaps
19 192 (7.95%) Data Migration
20 189 (7.83%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 510 (21.13%) Python
2 429 (17.77%) SQL
3 97 (4.02%) Java
4 96 (3.98%) C++
5 93 (3.85%) C
6 74 (3.07%) C#
7 70 (2.90%) JavaScript
8 67 (2.78%) MATLAB
9 47 (1.95%) Go
10 37 (1.53%) Bash
11 36 (1.49%) PowerShell
12 31 (1.28%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.20%) Embedded C
14 25 (1.04%) Scala
15 22 (0.91%) R
16 20 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 17 (0.70%) Embedded C++
18 13 (0.54%) Shell Script
19 11 (0.46%) Apex Code
20 10 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 534 (22.12%) Degree
2 501 (20.75%) Security Cleared
3 365 (15.12%) SC Cleared
4 110 (4.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 105 (4.35%) Master's Degree
6 97 (4.02%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.86%) PhD
9 43 (1.78%) HND
10 36 (1.49%) Chartered Engineer
11 35 (1.45%) HNC
12 34 (1.41%) PMI Certification
13 32 (1.33%) Azure Certification
14 31 (1.28%) CISSP
15 30 (1.24%) ACCA
16 27 (1.12%) AWS Certification
16 27 (1.12%) CIMA
17 26 (1.08%) PMP
18 22 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
19 20 (0.83%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (15.16%) Data Quality
2 293 (12.14%) QA
3 76 (3.15%) Accessibility
4 59 (2.44%) GDPR
5 33 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.24%) GRC
7 27 (1.12%) GxP
8 22 (0.91%) SLA
9 19 (0.79%) IEC 61508
10 18 (0.75%) NIST
11 17 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 16 (0.66%) ISO 9001
13 15 (0.62%) ISO 19650
14 13 (0.54%) GMP
15 12 (0.50%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.46%) ISO 26262
16 11 (0.46%) PMO
17 9 (0.37%) WCAG
18 8 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
18 8 (0.33%) GAAP
System Software
1 114 (4.72%) Docker
2 95 (3.94%) Firmware
3 49 (2.03%) Active Directory
4 44 (1.82%) Embedded Firmware
5 21 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.62%) vSphere
7 8 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.083%) iptables
10 2 (0.083%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.083%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.041%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 94 (3.89%) Kubernetes
2 43 (1.78%) Grafana
3 35 (1.45%) Ansible
4 28 (1.16%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.66%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (0.50%) Puppet
9 8 (0.33%) BMC PATROL
9 8 (0.33%) Cilium
9 8 (0.33%) Kibana
9 8 (0.33%) Nessus
9 8 (0.33%) Nmap
10 5 (0.21%) Argo
10 5 (0.21%) Rancher
10 5 (0.21%) WMI
10 5 (0.21%) yum
11 4 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.17%) SCCM
Vendors
1 334 (13.84%) Microsoft
2 123 (5.10%) SAP
3 100 (4.14%) Salesforce
4 99 (4.10%) Oracle
5 70 (2.90%) EMC
6 61 (2.53%) Databricks
7 55 (2.28%) ServiceNow
8 53 (2.20%) Cisco
9 39 (1.62%) Adobe
10 37 (1.53%) Google
11 30 (1.24%) Samsung
12 28 (1.16%) TikTok
13 25 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
13 25 (1.04%) Sage
14 22 (0.91%) Thales
15 21 (0.87%) IBM
15 21 (0.87%) Informatica
15 21 (0.87%) VMware
16 20 (0.83%) Siemens
17 19 (0.79%) Autodesk