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 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 165 188
Rank change year-on-year +16 +23 -43
Permanent jobs citing Validation 853 851 1,000
As % of all permanent jobs in England 1.53% 1.80% 1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.91% 1.97% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 465 308 604
10th Percentile £36,250 £37,500 £35,367
25th Percentile £44,972 £46,250 £46,188
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -15.20%
75th Percentile £77,500 £72,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £93,500 £100,375 £85,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -15.38%

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 44,707 43,296 53,424
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 80.31% 91.66% 88.61%
Number of salaries quoted 27,023 21,021 42,133
10th Percentile £28,928 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £38,500 £46,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £61,110 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +6.28% -8.00%
75th Percentile £77,354 £81,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £96,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,444
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.45% -8.09%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 +45 295 £75,000 +7.14% 211
South East +16 187 £51,250 -14.58% 279
North of England -12 122 £59,000 +27.96% 164
Midlands -3 86 £35,000 -33.01% 139
North West +1 80 £55,000 +15.35% 79
East of England +11 78 £59,500 +8.18% 130
South West +20 72 £57,500 +4.55% 130
West Midlands +10 56 £38,750 -26.19% 77
Yorkshire -16 33 £62,825 +55.23% 69
East Midlands -7 29 £35,000 -32.69% 58
North East -11 9 £41,000 -1.20% 17
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 19 (2.23%) Confluence
2 17 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
3 11 (1.29%) Appian
4 10 (1.17%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.06%) CMS
5 9 (1.06%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.70%) Apache
8 4 (0.47%) Headless CMS
8 4 (0.47%) SugarCRM
9 3 (0.35%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.35%) SAS
10 2 (0.23%) Kinematics
10 2 (0.23%) WordPress
11 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.12%) FileNet
Applications
1 63 (7.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (6.68%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.41%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.94%) Simulink
6 7 (0.82%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 4 (0.47%) Fusion 360
8 2 (0.23%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.23%) Adobe Captivate
8 2 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.23%) Adobe Premiere
8 2 (0.23%) Elementor
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle Smart View
8 2 (0.23%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.23%) Weka
9 1 (0.12%) CATIA
9 1 (0.12%) Doxygen
9 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.12%) Revit
9 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 19 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.47%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.35%) SAP CX
4 3 (0.35%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.23%) Aladdin
5 2 (0.23%) Endur
5 2 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 2 (0.23%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.23%) Primavera
5 2 (0.23%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.12%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.12%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.12%) SAP Business One
6 1 (0.12%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 133 (15.59%) Azure
2 73 (8.56%) Power Platform
3 56 (6.57%) AWS
4 41 (4.81%) SaaS
5 35 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (3.28%) GCP
7 21 (2.46%) Azure Data Factory
8 18 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
8 18 (2.11%) Power Automate
8 18 (2.11%) Snowflake
9 16 (1.88%) GitHub
10 15 (1.76%) Microsoft 365
11 14 (1.64%) Entra ID
12 11 (1.29%) Anthropic Claude
12 11 (1.29%) Azure AI
12 11 (1.29%) dbt
12 11 (1.29%) Figma
13 10 (1.17%) Amazon S3
13 10 (1.17%) Datadog
14 8 (0.94%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 18 (2.11%) CHAP
2 13 (1.52%) WAN
3 12 (1.41%) Firewall
3 12 (1.41%) LAN
4 11 (1.29%) SD-WAN
5 10 (1.17%) 5G
6 9 (1.06%) DNS
7 8 (0.94%) HTTP
7 8 (0.94%) MQTT
8 7 (0.82%) TCP/IP
9 6 (0.70%) Modbus
10 5 (0.59%) Cisco IOS
10 5 (0.59%) Ethernet VPN
10 5 (0.59%) VoIP
10 5 (0.59%) WAAS
10 5 (0.59%) Wireless
11 4 (0.47%) BGP
11 4 (0.47%) OSPF
11 4 (0.47%) SMTP
12 3 (0.35%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (8.32%) Power BI
2 36 (4.22%) SQL Server
3 24 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (2.70%) Metadata
5 21 (2.46%) Relational Database
6 14 (1.64%) Tableau
7 13 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
8 11 (1.29%) Pinecone
9 10 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
9 10 (1.17%) Data Lake
9 10 (1.17%) Spotfire
10 8 (0.94%) Big Data
10 8 (0.94%) BigQuery
10 8 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
11 7 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
11 7 (0.82%) Looker
11 7 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 6 (0.70%) GIS
12 6 (0.70%) NoSQL
12 6 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 59 (6.92%) JIRA
2 41 (4.81%) Git
3 39 (4.57%) Rational DOORS
4 23 (2.70%) Postman
5 16 (1.88%) Jenkins
6 14 (1.64%) MLflow
7 13 (1.52%) Selenium
8 12 (1.41%) GitLab
8 12 (1.41%) LabVIEW
9 10 (1.17%) Cucumber
9 10 (1.17%) TestRail
10 9 (1.06%) Eclipse
10 9 (1.06%) JMeter
10 9 (1.06%) SoapUI
11 7 (0.82%) LoadRunner
12 6 (0.70%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.59%) Fiddler
13 5 (0.59%) SpecFlow
13 5 (0.59%) Subversion
13 5 (0.59%) TestNG
General
1 309 (36.23%) Social Skills
2 238 (27.90%) Finance
3 189 (22.16%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (7.74%) Banking
5 53 (6.21%) Electronics
6 48 (5.63%) Financial Institution
6 48 (5.63%) Marketing
7 42 (4.92%) Manufacturing
8 39 (4.57%) Presentation Skills
9 32 (3.75%) Law
10 31 (3.63%) Aerospace
11 30 (3.52%) Telecoms
12 28 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
13 26 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
13 26 (3.05%) Public Sector
13 26 (3.05%) Retail
14 24 (2.81%) Legal
15 23 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 20 (2.34%) Pharmaceutical
17 17 (1.99%) Avionics
Job Titles
1 133 (15.59%) Analyst
2 126 (14.77%) Senior
3 99 (11.61%) Systems Engineer
4 62 (7.27%) Lead
5 54 (6.33%) Architect
6 50 (5.86%) Test Engineer
7 44 (5.16%) Business Analyst
8 40 (4.69%) Validation Engineer
9 36 (4.22%) Integration Engineer
10 32 (3.75%) Principal Engineer
11 31 (3.63%) Data Analyst
12 30 (3.52%) Data Engineer
12 30 (3.52%) Developer
12 30 (3.52%) Junior
13 27 (3.17%) Systems Integration Engineer
14 26 (3.05%) Applications Support
14 26 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
15 24 (2.81%) Principal Systems Engineer
16 22 (2.58%) Verification Engineer
17 21 (2.46%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (5.74%) REST
2 30 (3.52%) Middleware
3 26 (3.05%) JSON
3 26 (3.05%) pytest
4 24 (2.81%) Pandas
5 20 (2.34%) PyTorch
5 20 (2.34%) scikit-learn
5 20 (2.34%) TensorFlow
5 20 (2.34%) XML
6 17 (1.99%) NumPy
7 16 (1.88%) OAuth
8 15 (1.76%) FastAPI
8 15 (1.76%) JWT
8 15 (1.76%) Swagger
8 15 (1.76%) Web Services
9 14 (1.64%) CSS
9 14 (1.64%) Flask
10 13 (1.52%) HTML
10 13 (1.52%) React
11 12 (1.41%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 57 (6.68%) Management Information System
2 37 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 30 (3.52%) Self-Motivation
4 25 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
5 24 (2.81%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.58%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.46%) Low-Code
8 19 (2.23%) Life Science
9 17 (1.99%) Algorithms
10 16 (1.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 14 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
12 13 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.41%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 11 (1.29%) Blockchain
14 11 (1.29%) Data Centre
14 11 (1.29%) Self-Driving Car
15 10 (1.17%) IoT
16 9 (1.06%) Reinsurance
16 9 (1.06%) SCADA
17 8 (0.94%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.81%) Windows
2 35 (4.10%) Linux
3 12 (1.41%) Unix
4 10 (1.17%) Android
4 10 (1.17%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.47%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.35%) Robot Operating System
6 3 (0.35%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.23%) AIX
7 2 (0.23%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.23%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (24.27%) Agile
2 191 (22.39%) Problem-Solving
3 143 (16.76%) Verification and Validation
4 121 (14.19%) Analytics
5 119 (13.95%) Data Validation
6 106 (12.43%) Continuous Improvement
7 102 (11.96%) Test Automation
8 99 (11.61%) Migration
9 96 (11.25%) DevOps
10 89 (10.43%) Business Intelligence
10 89 (10.43%) Systems Engineering
11 88 (10.32%) CI/CD
12 86 (10.08%) ETL
13 82 (9.61%) Mentoring
13 82 (9.61%) Software Engineering
14 81 (9.50%) AI
15 79 (9.26%) Decision-Making
16 78 (9.14%) Roadmaps
17 76 (8.91%) Stakeholder Management
18 70 (8.21%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 192 (22.51%) SQL
2 159 (18.64%) Python
3 31 (3.63%) Java
4 30 (3.52%) C
5 28 (3.28%) C++
6 24 (2.81%) JavaScript
7 23 (2.70%) MATLAB
8 22 (2.58%) PowerShell
9 15 (1.76%) Bash
10 12 (1.41%) TypeScript
11 11 (1.29%) C#
12 9 (1.06%) R
12 9 (1.06%) T-SQL
13 6 (0.70%) Bicep
13 6 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 6 (0.70%) PL/SQL
14 5 (0.59%) Go
14 5 (0.59%) PHP
15 4 (0.47%) VB
16 3 (0.35%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 239 (28.02%) Degree
2 107 (12.54%) Security Cleared
3 101 (11.84%) BPSS Clearance
4 49 (5.74%) Master's Degree
5 43 (5.04%) SC Cleared
6 37 (4.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (2.34%) CISA
7 20 (2.34%) CISSP
8 19 (2.23%) CGEIT
8 19 (2.23%) CISM
8 19 (2.23%) FFIEC
8 19 (2.23%) SANS
9 18 (2.11%) DV Cleared
10 16 (1.88%) ISTQB
11 15 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
11 15 (1.76%) HNC
12 14 (1.64%) Chartered Engineer
13 12 (1.41%) HND
14 11 (1.29%) CCNP
15 10 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (11.96%) Data Quality
2 100 (11.72%) QA
3 39 (4.57%) GDPR
4 37 (4.34%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 31 (3.63%) Accessibility
6 28 (3.28%) SLA
7 19 (2.23%) COBIT
7 19 (2.23%) NIST
8 12 (1.41%) ISO 20022
8 12 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (1.41%) SEPA
9 10 (1.17%) Good Clinical Practice
9 10 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 9 (1.06%) WCAG
11 8 (0.94%) GRC
11 8 (0.94%) GxP
11 8 (0.94%) TARGET2
12 7 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 7 (0.82%) IFRS
13 5 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 43 (5.04%) Docker
2 16 (1.88%) Firmware
3 10 (1.17%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.23%) Ceph
5 2 (0.23%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.23%) Lustre
5 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.23%) vSphere
6 1 (0.12%) iptables
6 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 1 (0.12%) OpenAM
6 1 (0.12%) OpenDJ
6 1 (0.12%) OpenIDM
6 1 (0.12%) pfSense
6 1 (0.12%) Terminal Services
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 36 (4.22%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.58%) Terraform
3 13 (1.52%) Ansible
4 10 (1.17%) Grafana
5 8 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (0.82%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 7 (0.82%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.70%) SCCM
8 4 (0.47%) Argo
8 4 (0.47%) Rancher
8 4 (0.47%) yum
9 2 (0.23%) BMC PATROL
9 2 (0.23%) Functional Safety
9 2 (0.23%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.23%) Nessus
9 2 (0.23%) Puppet
10 1 (0.12%) Control-M
10 1 (0.12%) Kibana
10 1 (0.12%) PowerCLI
10 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 112 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 53 (6.21%) SAP
3 34 (3.99%) Oracle
4 26 (3.05%) Cisco
5 24 (2.81%) Salesforce
6 17 (1.99%) Foundry
7 14 (1.64%) IBM
7 14 (1.64%) Software AG
8 13 (1.52%) Adobe
9 12 (1.41%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.41%) ServiceNow
10 11 (1.29%) Automation Anywhere
10 11 (1.29%) F5
10 11 (1.29%) UiPath
11 10 (1.17%) CheckPoint
12 9 (1.06%) Databricks
13 8 (0.94%) Intapp
14 7 (0.82%) Google
14 7 (0.82%) Guidewire
15 6 (0.70%) MuleSoft