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 20 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 78 196
Rank change year-on-year -38 +118 -15
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,366 1,523 1,315
As % of all permanent jobs in England 1.63% 3.83% 1.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.23% 4.14% 1.68%
Number of salaries quoted 841 426 716
10th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,000
25th Percentile £43,000 £46,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.51% +3.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £72,500 £72,433
90th Percentile £90,000 £95,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -11.41%

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 61,307 36,819 78,197
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.20% 92.52% 81.80%
Number of salaries quoted 43,146 20,189 56,768
10th Percentile £30,750 £29,000 £29,497
25th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 +70 389 £75,000 -1.64% 264
South East -39 309 £55,000 - 256
North of England +90 280 £55,000 +15.35% 134
North West +81 178 £55,000 +15.35% 66
Midlands -75 161 £40,000 -27.27% 104
East of England -71 109 £60,000 +5.26% 74
South West -56 97 £53,000 -3.64% 106
West Midlands -6 94 £43,250 -30.80% 59
East Midlands -85 65 £30,000 -39.70% 45
Yorkshire -4 60 £50,000 +18.69% 43
North East -13 42 £55,000 +15.79% 26
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 50 (3.66%) Apache Airflow
2 45 (3.29%) Apache Spark
3 43 (3.15%) Apache
4 22 (1.61%) Confluence
5 15 (1.10%) SharePoint
6 14 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.81%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.66%) SAS
9 6 (0.44%) Appian
10 5 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.29%) CMS
11 4 (0.29%) Kinematics
12 3 (0.22%) Artix
13 2 (0.15%) IIS
14 1 (0.073%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.073%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.073%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 83 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.76%) Microsoft Project
4 19 (1.39%) MS Visio
5 15 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (1.10%) Simulink
6 8 (0.59%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.37%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.29%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.29%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.29%) Sketch
9 3 (0.22%) Autodesk Inventor
9 3 (0.22%) Productboard
9 3 (0.22%) Solid Edge
9 3 (0.22%) Stateflow
10 1 (0.073%) CATIA
10 1 (0.073%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.073%) Revit
10 1 (0.073%) Trello
Business Applications
1 38 (2.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 34 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.73%) SAP ERP
3 10 (0.73%) SAP MDG
4 8 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.37%) iTrent
5 5 (0.37%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
5 5 (0.37%) SAP MDG-BP
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.15%) FastStats
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.15%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.15%) SAP MM
7 2 (0.15%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.073%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 1 (0.073%) SAP FSCM
8 1 (0.073%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 177 (12.96%) Azure
2 150 (10.98%) AWS
3 132 (9.66%) Power Platform
4 74 (5.42%) GCP
5 64 (4.69%) SaaS
6 55 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
7 37 (2.71%) Serverless
8 36 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 35 (2.56%) Amazon S3
10 34 (2.49%) GitHub
11 28 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
12 25 (1.83%) Azure Data Factory
13 24 (1.76%) Snowflake
14 18 (1.32%) Entra ID
14 18 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 17 (1.24%) dbt
15 17 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
16 14 (1.02%) Amazon EC2
16 14 (1.02%) OpenShift
17 13 (0.95%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 67 (4.90%) Broadband
2 42 (3.07%) Firewall
3 35 (2.56%) DNS
4 20 (1.46%) WAN
5 19 (1.39%) CHAP
6 17 (1.24%) Wireless
7 16 (1.17%) Network Security
7 16 (1.17%) SD-WAN
8 15 (1.10%) TCP/IP
9 14 (1.02%) VPN
10 13 (0.95%) 5G
11 12 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.81%) HTTP
12 11 (0.81%) MQTT
13 10 (0.73%) Ethernet
13 10 (0.73%) LAN
14 9 (0.66%) NAS
15 7 (0.51%) WebEx
16 6 (0.44%) Cisco ISE
17 5 (0.37%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (9.52%) Power BI
2 56 (4.10%) Tableau
3 53 (3.88%) PostgreSQL
4 48 (3.51%) SQL Server
5 43 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (2.42%) MongoDB
7 31 (2.27%) Relational Database
8 29 (2.12%) Metadata
9 26 (1.90%) BigQuery
10 22 (1.61%) Azure SQL Database
10 22 (1.61%) Data Lake
11 20 (1.46%) Semantic Layer
12 19 (1.39%) Spark SQL
13 17 (1.24%) Oracle Database
14 15 (1.10%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (1.10%) DynamoDB
14 15 (1.10%) MySQL
15 14 (1.02%) Parquet
15 14 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 13 (0.95%) Impala
Development Applications
1 72 (5.27%) JIRA
2 64 (4.69%) Git
3 44 (3.22%) Jenkins
4 33 (2.42%) GitLab
5 29 (2.12%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (1.61%) Snyk
7 15 (1.10%) Postman
8 14 (1.02%) Selenium
9 13 (0.95%) IBM UrbanCode
10 12 (0.88%) LabVIEW
11 10 (0.73%) Cucumber
11 10 (0.73%) Eclipse
11 10 (0.73%) MLflow
11 10 (0.73%) TeamCity
12 9 (0.66%) Cypress.io
12 9 (0.66%) JMeter
13 6 (0.44%) Rational Rhapsody
14 5 (0.37%) LoadRunner
14 5 (0.37%) REST Assured
14 5 (0.37%) SonarQube
General
1 405 (29.65%) Social Skills
2 356 (26.06%) Finance
3 316 (23.13%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (7.76%) Aerospace
5 96 (7.03%) Electronics
6 95 (6.95%) Manufacturing
7 94 (6.88%) Banking
8 82 (6.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 52 (3.81%) Law
10 51 (3.73%) Retail
11 46 (3.37%) Legal
12 43 (3.15%) Public Sector
13 42 (3.07%) Marketing
14 40 (2.93%) Games
15 39 (2.86%) Pharmaceutical
16 32 (2.34%) Automotive
16 32 (2.34%) Financial Institution
16 32 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
17 23 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
18 22 (1.61%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 232 (16.98%) Senior
2 225 (16.47%) Analyst
3 127 (9.30%) Systems Engineer
4 103 (7.54%) Lead
5 95 (6.95%) Architect
5 95 (6.95%) Test Engineer
6 83 (6.08%) Validation Engineer
7 74 (5.42%) Business Analyst
8 71 (5.20%) Data Engineer
9 63 (4.61%) Data Analyst
10 62 (4.54%) Developer
11 44 (3.22%) Principal Engineer
12 39 (2.86%) Embedded Engineer
13 38 (2.78%) Integration Engineer
14 36 (2.64%) IT Manager
15 35 (2.56%) Security Architect
16 34 (2.49%) Consultant
16 34 (2.49%) Project Manager
16 34 (2.49%) Support Engineer
17 30 (2.20%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (3.00%) RESTful
2 32 (2.34%) REST
3 30 (2.20%) PySpark
4 29 (2.12%) JSON
5 28 (2.05%) Kafka
5 28 (2.05%) Node.js
6 25 (1.83%) Pandas
6 25 (1.83%) XML
7 24 (1.76%) Middleware
8 23 (1.68%) pytest
9 21 (1.54%) .NET
10 18 (1.32%) Playwright
10 18 (1.32%) Regular Expression
10 18 (1.32%) Swagger
10 18 (1.32%) XMPP
11 15 (1.10%) CSS
11 15 (1.10%) LDAP
12 14 (1.02%) HTML
12 14 (1.02%) OAuth
12 14 (1.02%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 85 (6.22%) Cloud Native
2 67 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 63 (4.61%) Management Information System
4 59 (4.32%) Data Structures
5 49 (3.59%) Low-Code
6 36 (2.64%) Algorithms
6 36 (2.64%) Driving Licence
6 36 (2.64%) Embedded Systems
7 35 (2.56%) Product Ownership
8 34 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
9 33 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
10 32 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
10 32 (2.34%) Data Centre
10 32 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
11 31 (2.27%) Video\Live Streaming
12 30 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
13 28 (2.05%) Life Science
14 21 (1.54%) Robotics
15 19 (1.39%) PKI
16 18 (1.32%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 87 (6.37%) Linux
2 62 (4.54%) Windows
3 25 (1.83%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.68%) Unix
5 18 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.44%) Android
7 4 (0.29%) FreeRTOS
7 4 (0.29%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.29%) Mac OS X
8 3 (0.22%) AIX
8 3 (0.22%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.15%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.15%) ThreadX
10 1 (0.073%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.073%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 303 (22.18%) Problem-Solving
2 274 (20.06%) Agile
3 266 (19.47%) Continuous Improvement
4 238 (17.42%) AI
5 231 (16.91%) CI/CD
6 197 (14.42%) Test Automation
7 183 (13.40%) Analytics
8 178 (13.03%) Verification and Validation
9 162 (11.86%) Data Validation
10 152 (11.13%) Business Intelligence
11 150 (10.98%) DevOps
12 149 (10.91%) Migration
13 146 (10.69%) Data Modelling
14 136 (9.96%) Decision-Making
15 135 (9.88%) Software Engineering
16 131 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
17 130 (9.52%) Data Governance
18 126 (9.22%) Mentoring
19 122 (8.93%) Machine Learning
19 122 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 330 (24.16%) Python
2 297 (21.74%) SQL
3 60 (4.39%) C++
4 58 (4.25%) C
5 55 (4.03%) Java
6 49 (3.59%) Go
7 37 (2.71%) C#
8 31 (2.27%) JavaScript
9 26 (1.90%) MATLAB
10 24 (1.76%) Bash
11 23 (1.68%) PowerShell
12 21 (1.54%) T-SQL
13 18 (1.32%) Embedded C++
14 17 (1.24%) Embedded C
15 13 (0.95%) Scala
16 12 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.81%) TypeScript
18 9 (0.66%) VBA
19 8 (0.59%) ABAP
20 7 (0.51%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 259 (18.96%) Degree
2 156 (11.42%) Security Cleared
3 98 (7.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 73 (5.34%) SC Cleared
5 71 (5.20%) Master's Degree
6 45 (3.29%) DV Cleared
7 36 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (2.49%) Chartered Engineer
9 29 (2.12%) CISA
9 29 (2.12%) CISSP
9 29 (2.12%) SANS
10 26 (1.90%) CISM
11 24 (1.76%) HNC
12 19 (1.39%) CGEIT
12 19 (1.39%) FFIEC
12 19 (1.39%) HND
13 16 (1.17%) ACCA
13 16 (1.17%) CIMA
14 15 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 12 (0.88%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 232 (16.98%) Data Quality
2 141 (10.32%) QA
3 55 (4.03%) GDPR
4 40 (2.93%) Accessibility
5 37 (2.71%) GRC
6 26 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.68%) NIST
8 22 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 15288
9 19 (1.39%) COBIT
9 19 (1.39%) IFRS
10 18 (1.32%) IEC 61508
11 15 (1.10%) PMO
12 13 (0.95%) GAAP
12 13 (0.95%) ISO 9001
12 13 (0.95%) SLA
13 11 (0.81%) ISO 26262
13 11 (0.81%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.66%) GMP
14 9 (0.66%) GxP
15 8 (0.59%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (4.54%) Docker
2 40 (2.93%) Firmware
3 37 (2.71%) Active Directory
4 22 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (1.39%) vSphere
6 18 (1.32%) Embedded Firmware
7 8 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.15%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.073%) OpenAM
10 1 (0.073%) OpenDJ
10 1 (0.073%) OpenIDM
10 1 (0.073%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 63 (4.61%) Kubernetes
2 61 (4.47%) Terraform
3 26 (1.90%) Grafana
4 23 (1.68%) Functional Safety
5 15 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.95%) Ansible
7 10 (0.73%) Cilium
8 8 (0.59%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 7 (0.51%) Kibana
9 7 (0.51%) SCCM
10 3 (0.22%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.22%) HP Fortify
10 3 (0.22%) Puppet
11 2 (0.15%) Argo
11 2 (0.15%) BMC PATROL
11 2 (0.15%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (0.15%) Rancher
11 2 (0.15%) yum
12 1 (0.073%) MOM
Vendors
1 179 (13.10%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.37%) Oracle
3 83 (6.08%) SAP
4 46 (3.37%) Salesforce
5 38 (2.78%) Databricks
6 34 (2.49%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.34%) Red Hat
8 29 (2.12%) CrowdStrike
9 26 (1.90%) VMware
10 22 (1.61%) Palo Alto
10 22 (1.61%) Tenable
11 21 (1.54%) Adobe
12 20 (1.46%) Google
13 19 (1.39%) Cisco
14 14 (1.02%) Citrix
14 14 (1.02%) McAfee
15 12 (0.88%) Foundry
16 9 (0.66%) IBM
16 9 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 9 (0.66%) Splunk