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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 78 198
Rank change year-on-year -16 +120 -5
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,777 1,607 1,003
As % of all permanent jobs in England 1.89% 3.67% 1.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.57% 4.10% 1.71%
Number of salaries quoted 1,058 496 493
10th Percentile £34,500 £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% -7.69%
75th Percentile £73,750 £71,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £90,750 £92,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - -8.33% -5.51%

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 69,222 39,170 58,822
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.76% 89.42% 81.39%
Number of salaries quoted 48,821 22,704 38,917
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,519 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 10 August 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 10 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
London +63 489 £72,500 -6.45% 854
South East -31 405 £56,000 +9.80% 336
North of England +104 373 £52,500 +10.53% 220
North West +92 215 £55,000 +15.35% 128
Midlands -50 200 £43,587 -20.75% 192
South West -16 151 £53,000 +0.76% 174
East of England -73 128 £61,250 +7.46% 161
West Midlands +13 110 £44,720 -25.47% 118
East Midlands -69 89 £42,500 - 74
North East +7 79 £55,000 +57.14% 44
Yorkshire +4 79 £43,000 +1.18% 51
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 59 (3.32%) Apache Airflow
2 57 (3.21%) Apache Spark
3 55 (3.10%) Apache
4 31 (1.74%) SharePoint
5 30 (1.69%) Confluence
6 18 (1.01%) Jupyter
7 12 (0.68%) SAS
8 10 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.28%) CMS
10 4 (0.23%) Kinematics
10 4 (0.23%) WinCC
11 3 (0.17%) Artix
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.11%) IIS
13 1 (0.056%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.056%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.056%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.056%) WebSphere
Applications
1 114 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (3.55%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (1.86%) Microsoft Project
4 30 (1.69%) Simulink
5 26 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 13 (0.73%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.45%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.28%) Mathcad
11 4 (0.23%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.23%) Sketch
12 3 (0.17%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.17%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.17%) OrCAD
12 3 (0.17%) Productboard
12 3 (0.17%) Stateflow
13 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
13 2 (0.11%) Revit
13 2 (0.11%) Solid Edge
Business Applications
1 41 (2.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (2.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.62%) SAP MDG
4 10 (0.56%) SAP ERP
5 9 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.45%) Oracle Applications
7 7 (0.39%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.28%) Elite 3E
8 5 (0.28%) iTrent
8 5 (0.28%) Loan IQ
8 5 (0.28%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.23%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.23%) Workday HCM
10 3 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.17%) Teamcenter
11 2 (0.11%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.11%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 245 (13.79%) Azure
2 232 (13.06%) AWS
3 157 (8.84%) Power Platform
4 84 (4.73%) GCP
5 66 (3.71%) SaaS
6 58 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
7 57 (3.21%) Microsoft 365
8 50 (2.81%) GitHub
9 45 (2.53%) Amazon S3
10 44 (2.48%) Serverless
11 34 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
12 29 (1.63%) Microsoft Copilot
13 28 (1.58%) Entra ID
14 25 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
15 22 (1.24%) Amazon EMR
16 21 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
16 21 (1.18%) Snowflake
17 20 (1.13%) Cloud Computing
18 19 (1.07%) Microsoft Purview
19 18 (1.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 66 (3.71%) Broadband
2 52 (2.93%) Firewall
3 49 (2.76%) DNS
4 29 (1.63%) Network Security
5 27 (1.52%) TCP/IP
5 27 (1.52%) Wireless
6 26 (1.46%) VPN
7 24 (1.35%) WAN
8 20 (1.13%) Ethernet
9 18 (1.01%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.90%) MQTT
12 15 (0.84%) LAN
13 13 (0.73%) HTTP
13 13 (0.73%) Internet
14 11 (0.62%) BGP
14 11 (0.62%) NGN
14 11 (0.62%) RS-232
14 11 (0.62%) Wireshark
15 10 (0.56%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (8.27%) Power BI
2 56 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
3 53 (2.98%) Tableau
4 49 (2.76%) SQL Server
5 44 (2.48%) Metadata
6 39 (2.19%) Data Lake
7 33 (1.86%) MongoDB
8 29 (1.63%) Relational Database
9 25 (1.41%) BigQuery
10 23 (1.29%) Amazon Athena
11 22 (1.24%) DynamoDB
11 22 (1.24%) Semantic Layer
12 21 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
13 20 (1.13%) MySQL
13 20 (1.13%) Spark SQL
14 17 (0.96%) Oracle Database
14 17 (0.96%) Power Query
15 16 (0.90%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 112 (6.30%) JIRA
2 103 (5.80%) Git
3 47 (2.64%) Jenkins
4 42 (2.36%) GitLab
5 34 (1.91%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (1.24%) Snyk
7 18 (1.01%) Selenium
8 17 (0.96%) LabVIEW
9 15 (0.84%) Postman
10 14 (0.79%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.73%) IBM UrbanCode
12 12 (0.68%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.62%) JMeter
14 10 (0.56%) TeamCity
15 8 (0.45%) MLflow
15 8 (0.45%) Rational Rhapsody
16 7 (0.39%) Burp Suite
16 7 (0.39%) REST Assured
17 6 (0.34%) GDB
17 6 (0.34%) Hudson
General
1 581 (32.70%) Social Skills
2 489 (27.52%) Finance
3 448 (25.21%) Analytical Skills
4 171 (9.62%) Aerospace
5 163 (9.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 158 (8.89%) Manufacturing
7 154 (8.67%) Electronics
8 100 (5.63%) Banking
9 97 (5.46%) Law
10 71 (4.00%) Retail
11 67 (3.77%) Public Sector
12 63 (3.55%) Pharmaceutical
13 61 (3.43%) Marketing
13 61 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
14 52 (2.93%) Legal
15 47 (2.64%) Automotive
16 46 (2.59%) Games
17 36 (2.03%) Telecoms
18 30 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
19 29 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 323 (18.18%) Senior
2 250 (14.07%) Analyst
3 146 (8.22%) Lead
4 137 (7.71%) Systems Engineer
5 113 (6.36%) Test Engineer
6 105 (5.91%) Architect
7 95 (5.35%) Data Engineer
8 81 (4.56%) Business Analyst
9 80 (4.50%) Developer
10 68 (3.83%) Consultant
11 65 (3.66%) Software Engineer
11 65 (3.66%) Validation Engineer
12 62 (3.49%) Principal Engineer
13 59 (3.32%) Data Analyst
14 46 (2.59%) Support Engineer
15 44 (2.48%) Data Scientist
16 43 (2.42%) Embedded Engineer
17 39 (2.19%) IT Manager
18 38 (2.14%) Project Manager
19 37 (2.08%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (2.53%) RESTful
2 43 (2.42%) Kafka
3 37 (2.08%) PySpark
4 35 (1.97%) Node.js
5 33 (1.86%) REST
6 29 (1.63%) XML
7 27 (1.52%) .NET
8 26 (1.46%) JSON
9 24 (1.35%) LDAP
9 24 (1.35%) Middleware
9 24 (1.35%) Pandas
10 21 (1.18%) CSS
11 20 (1.13%) HTML
11 20 (1.13%) Playwright
12 19 (1.07%) Regular Expression
12 19 (1.07%) XMPP
13 17 (0.96%) FastAPI
13 17 (0.96%) ModSecurity
13 17 (0.96%) React
14 15 (0.84%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 129 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 128 (7.20%) Onboarding
3 98 (5.51%) Management Information System
4 64 (3.60%) Data Centre
4 64 (3.60%) Product Ownership
5 54 (3.04%) Data Structures
6 53 (2.98%) Enterprise Software
7 50 (2.81%) Driving Licence
7 50 (2.81%) Embedded Systems
8 49 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (2.53%) Algorithms
9 45 (2.53%) Low-Code
10 37 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
11 36 (2.03%) Life Science
12 33 (1.86%) Video\Live Streaming
13 32 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
14 31 (1.74%) AI Agents
14 31 (1.74%) Robotics
15 29 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
16 26 (1.46%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 117 (6.58%) Linux
2 86 (4.84%) Windows
3 34 (1.91%) Windows Server
4 19 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (1.07%) Unix
5 8 (0.45%) Embedded Linux
6 6 (0.34%) Android
6 6 (0.34%) FreeRTOS
7 4 (0.23%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.23%) Mac OS X
8 3 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.11%) AIX
9 2 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.11%) ThreadX
9 2 (0.11%) VMS
9 2 (0.11%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.056%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 471 (26.51%) Problem-Solving
2 413 (23.24%) Continuous Improvement
3 370 (20.82%) Agile
4 330 (18.57%) AI
5 288 (16.21%) CI/CD
6 233 (13.11%) Analytics
7 228 (12.83%) Migration
8 224 (12.61%) Test Automation
9 219 (12.32%) Stakeholder Management
10 209 (11.76%) Verification and Validation
11 206 (11.59%) Mentoring
12 202 (11.37%) Decision-Making
13 189 (10.64%) Software Engineering
14 177 (9.96%) DevOps
15 173 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
16 165 (9.29%) Data Analysis
17 164 (9.23%) Machine Learning
17 164 (9.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 162 (9.12%) Roadmaps
19 158 (8.89%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 420 (23.64%) Python
2 355 (19.98%) SQL
3 82 (4.61%) C++
4 78 (4.39%) Java
5 74 (4.16%) C
6 57 (3.21%) Go
7 55 (3.10%) JavaScript
8 44 (2.48%) C#
9 43 (2.42%) MATLAB
10 27 (1.52%) Bash
10 27 (1.52%) PowerShell
11 23 (1.29%) Embedded C
12 21 (1.18%) Scala
13 18 (1.01%) Embedded C++
14 17 (0.96%) T-SQL
14 17 (0.96%) TypeScript
15 14 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 9 (0.51%) R
17 8 (0.45%) ABAP
17 8 (0.45%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 374 (21.05%) Degree
2 268 (15.08%) Security Cleared
3 151 (8.50%) SC Cleared
4 122 (6.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 94 (5.29%) DV Cleared
6 80 (4.50%) Master's Degree
7 41 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (1.91%) CISSP
9 31 (1.74%) Chartered Engineer
10 27 (1.52%) CISM
10 27 (1.52%) PMI Certification
11 26 (1.46%) HNC
11 26 (1.46%) PhD
12 23 (1.29%) ACCA
12 23 (1.29%) AWS Certification
12 23 (1.29%) CIMA
13 20 (1.13%) HND
13 20 (1.13%) SANS
14 19 (1.07%) Azure Certification
15 18 (1.01%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (16.71%) Data Quality
2 233 (13.11%) QA
3 60 (3.38%) Accessibility
4 56 (3.15%) GDPR
5 38 (2.14%) GRC
6 24 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.29%) IEC 61508
8 20 (1.13%) NIST
9 18 (1.01%) PMO
10 17 (0.96%) GxP
11 16 (0.90%) SLA
12 15 (0.84%) GAAP
12 15 (0.84%) IFRS
12 15 (0.84%) ISO 26262
13 12 (0.68%) ISO 9001
14 11 (0.62%) GMP
14 11 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 11 (0.62%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.62%) WCAG
15 10 (0.56%) COBIT
System Software
1 73 (4.11%) Docker
2 67 (3.77%) Firmware
3 44 (2.48%) Active Directory
4 29 (1.63%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
6 22 (1.24%) vSphere
7 14 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.28%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.17%) KVM
9 3 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.11%) iptables
10 2 (0.11%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.056%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.056%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 75 (4.22%) Kubernetes
2 71 (4.00%) Terraform
3 35 (1.97%) Grafana
4 26 (1.46%) Functional Safety
5 20 (1.13%) Ansible
6 15 (0.84%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.56%) Cilium
9 8 (0.45%) SCCM
10 7 (0.39%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 7 (0.39%) Kibana
11 6 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.34%) Puppet
12 4 (0.23%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.23%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.23%) Nessus
12 4 (0.23%) Nmap
12 4 (0.23%) WMI
13 3 (0.17%) Argo
13 3 (0.17%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 260 (14.63%) Microsoft
2 113 (6.36%) SAP
3 102 (5.74%) Oracle
4 56 (3.15%) Salesforce
5 48 (2.70%) Databricks
6 43 (2.42%) ServiceNow
7 36 (2.03%) Google
7 36 (2.03%) Red Hat
8 35 (1.97%) Cisco
9 33 (1.86%) VMware
10 29 (1.63%) CrowdStrike
11 25 (1.41%) Palo Alto
12 22 (1.24%) Tenable
13 21 (1.18%) EMC
14 15 (0.84%) McAfee
15 14 (0.79%) Adobe
15 14 (0.79%) Foundry
15 14 (0.79%) IBM
16 13 (0.73%) Splunk
16 13 (0.73%) Workday