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 25 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 84 177
Rank change year-on-year +14 +93 +24
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,312 1,517 1,046
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.24% 3.52% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.05% 3.96% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 1,384 418 402
10th Percentile £36,075 £38,750 £38,734
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,250 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.91% -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £71,250 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £91,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,033
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.23% -10.72%

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 75,808 38,286 56,076
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.42% 88.78% 82.02%
Number of salaries quoted 53,559 21,944 31,035
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,215 £37,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.98% -6.40%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,560
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.45% -4.07%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 +76 589 £70,000 -12.50% 2,057
South East -16 495 £62,500 +13.64% 689
North of England +115 477 £53,851 +13.15% 448
North West +109 294 £55,000 +10.00% 249
Midlands -26 277 £50,000 -9.09% 358
South West +16 243 £55,000 +4.56% 332
East of England -43 198 £55,000 -8.33% 344
West Midlands +43 159 £50,000 -9.09% 245
East Midlands -52 118 £50,000 +17.65% 112
Yorkshire +24 93 £43,000 +1.18% 132
North East 0 90 £55,000 +57.14% 69
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 47 (2.03%) Apache Spark
2 42 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.73%) Apache
4 38 (1.64%) Confluence
5 34 (1.47%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.56%) SAS
8 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.39%) WinCC
10 6 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.22%) CMS
12 3 (0.13%) Artix
12 3 (0.13%) nginx
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.087%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.087%) IIS
13 2 (0.087%) Kinematics
14 1 (0.043%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.043%) WebSphere
Applications
1 142 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (2.16%) Simulink
4 37 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 23 (0.99%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.87%) SOLIDWORKS
7 18 (0.78%) AutoCAD
8 15 (0.65%) MS Visio
9 11 (0.48%) Revit
10 10 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 7 (0.30%) EPLAN
11 7 (0.30%) OrCAD
12 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.22%) Mathcad
14 3 (0.13%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
14 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.13%) Productboard
14 3 (0.13%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 41 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.48%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.30%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) Infor M3
8 5 (0.22%) iTrent
8 5 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
8 5 (0.22%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.17%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.13%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 304 (13.15%) Azure
2 249 (10.77%) AWS
3 176 (7.61%) Power Platform
4 94 (4.07%) GCP
5 76 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
6 71 (3.07%) GitHub
7 65 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
7 65 (2.81%) SaaS
8 59 (2.55%) Serverless
9 42 (1.82%) Amazon S3
10 38 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
11 37 (1.60%) Entra ID
12 35 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
12 35 (1.51%) Microsoft Copilot
13 28 (1.21%) Microsoft Purview
14 27 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
15 26 (1.12%) Cloud Computing
16 25 (1.08%) Amazon EMR
17 23 (0.99%) PowerApps
18 22 (0.95%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 69 (2.98%) DNS
2 64 (2.77%) Firewall
3 54 (2.34%) Broadband
4 39 (1.69%) VPN
5 37 (1.60%) Network Security
5 37 (1.60%) TCP/IP
6 35 (1.51%) Wireless
7 34 (1.47%) Ethernet
7 34 (1.47%) WAN
8 32 (1.38%) Modbus
9 29 (1.25%) LAN
10 28 (1.21%) VLAN
11 26 (1.12%) OSPF
12 24 (1.04%) MQTT
13 23 (0.99%) Wireshark
14 22 (0.95%) SD-WAN
15 20 (0.87%) BGP
16 18 (0.78%) 5G
17 17 (0.74%) HTTP
17 17 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (7.05%) Power BI
2 62 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 60 (2.60%) Metadata
4 52 (2.25%) SQL Server
5 49 (2.12%) Data Lake
5 49 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
6 37 (1.60%) Relational Database
6 37 (1.60%) Tableau
7 36 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
8 30 (1.30%) MongoDB
9 27 (1.17%) Big Data
10 25 (1.08%) DynamoDB
11 24 (1.04%) BigQuery
11 24 (1.04%) NoSQL
12 23 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.87%) Semantic Layer
15 18 (0.78%) Delta Lake
15 18 (0.78%) MySQL
15 18 (0.78%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 137 (5.93%) JIRA
2 119 (5.15%) Git
3 60 (2.60%) Jenkins
4 53 (2.29%) GitLab
5 41 (1.77%) Rational DOORS
6 28 (1.21%) LabVIEW
7 25 (1.08%) Selenium
8 22 (0.95%) Snyk
9 20 (0.87%) Postman
10 18 (0.78%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.52%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.52%) JMeter
12 11 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.48%) Eclipse
13 10 (0.43%) Claude Code
13 10 (0.43%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.39%) Gatling
14 9 (0.39%) MLflow
14 9 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 772 (33.39%) Social Skills
2 585 (25.30%) Finance
3 549 (23.75%) Analytical Skills
4 222 (9.60%) Manufacturing
5 220 (9.52%) Electronics
6 217 (9.39%) Aerospace
7 177 (7.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 125 (5.41%) Law
9 106 (4.58%) Retail
10 103 (4.46%) Banking
10 103 (4.46%) Public Sector
11 102 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
12 86 (3.72%) Marketing
13 83 (3.59%) Telecoms
14 81 (3.50%) Pharmaceutical
15 77 (3.33%) Automotive
16 54 (2.34%) Legal
17 44 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
18 43 (1.86%) Military
19 40 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 417 (18.04%) Senior
2 267 (11.55%) Systems Engineer
3 265 (11.46%) Analyst
4 189 (8.17%) Lead
5 127 (5.49%) Test Engineer
6 115 (4.97%) Architect
7 113 (4.89%) Data Engineer
8 95 (4.11%) Developer
9 86 (3.72%) Business Analyst
10 81 (3.50%) Software Engineer
11 80 (3.46%) Consultant
12 75 (3.24%) Principal Engineer
13 66 (2.85%) Electronics Engineer
14 65 (2.81%) Data Analyst
15 61 (2.64%) Validation Engineer
16 57 (2.47%) Network Engineer
17 50 (2.16%) Embedded Engineer
18 49 (2.12%) Automation Engineer
19 48 (2.08%) Data Scientist
20 47 (2.03%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.68%) Terraform
2 59 (2.55%) REST
3 55 (2.38%) RESTful
4 54 (2.34%) Kafka
5 47 (2.03%) Node.js
6 37 (1.60%) .NET
6 37 (1.60%) PySpark
7 36 (1.56%) Playwright
8 35 (1.51%) JSON
9 32 (1.38%) FastAPI
10 31 (1.34%) XML
11 30 (1.30%) CSS
12 28 (1.21%) HTML
13 26 (1.12%) Middleware
13 26 (1.12%) React
14 25 (1.08%) LDAP
14 25 (1.08%) Swagger
15 22 (0.95%) OAuth
16 21 (0.91%) pytest
16 21 (0.91%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 154 (6.66%) Cloud Native
2 129 (5.58%) Management Information System
3 125 (5.41%) Onboarding
4 79 (3.42%) Data Centre
4 79 (3.42%) Product Ownership
5 64 (2.77%) Driving Licence
6 62 (2.68%) Embedded Systems
7 60 (2.60%) Data Structures
7 60 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
8 59 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (2.08%) SCADA
10 47 (2.03%) Algorithms
10 47 (2.03%) Life Science
11 43 (1.86%) AI Agents
12 42 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
13 39 (1.69%) Robotics
14 38 (1.64%) Low-Code
15 36 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
15 36 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
16 33 (1.43%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 134 (5.80%) Linux
2 91 (3.94%) Windows
3 30 (1.30%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.12%) Unix
5 15 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.43%) Android
7 8 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.30%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.087%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.087%) VMS
13 2 (0.087%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.043%) AIX
14 1 (0.043%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.043%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 596 (25.78%) Problem-Solving
2 514 (22.23%) Continuous Improvement
3 424 (18.34%) Agile
4 396 (17.13%) Verification and Validation
5 390 (16.87%) AI
6 337 (14.58%) CI/CD
7 319 (13.80%) Stakeholder Management
8 293 (12.67%) Migration
9 289 (12.50%) Test Automation
10 248 (10.73%) Analytics
11 244 (10.55%) Mentoring
12 233 (10.08%) Software Engineering
13 221 (9.56%) Decision-Making
13 221 (9.56%) DevOps
14 210 (9.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 206 (8.91%) Business Intelligence
16 205 (8.87%) Data Analysis
17 198 (8.56%) Roadmaps
18 189 (8.17%) Data Migration
19 183 (7.92%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 476 (20.59%) Python
2 418 (18.08%) SQL
3 93 (4.02%) C++
3 93 (4.02%) Java
4 83 (3.59%) C
5 71 (3.07%) JavaScript
6 65 (2.81%) MATLAB
7 58 (2.51%) C#
8 47 (2.03%) Go
9 36 (1.56%) Bash
10 31 (1.34%) PowerShell
11 30 (1.30%) Embedded C
12 27 (1.17%) TypeScript
13 25 (1.08%) Scala
14 20 (0.87%) R
15 18 (0.78%) Embedded C++
16 14 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 12 (0.52%) Shell Script
18 10 (0.43%) T-SQL
19 9 (0.39%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 499 (21.58%) Degree
2 479 (20.72%) Security Cleared
3 349 (15.10%) SC Cleared
4 111 (4.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 97 (4.20%) DV Cleared
6 95 (4.11%) Master's Degree
7 51 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 39 (1.69%) HND
9 36 (1.56%) PhD
9 36 (1.56%) PMI Certification
10 34 (1.47%) Chartered Engineer
10 34 (1.47%) HNC
11 32 (1.38%) CISSP
12 30 (1.30%) Azure Certification
13 29 (1.25%) ACCA
14 26 (1.12%) AWS Certification
14 26 (1.12%) CIMA
15 24 (1.04%) PMP
16 21 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
16 21 (0.91%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (15.14%) Data Quality
2 294 (12.72%) QA
3 65 (2.81%) Accessibility
4 56 (2.42%) GDPR
5 37 (1.60%) GRC
6 32 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.17%) GxP
8 23 (0.99%) IEC 61508
9 19 (0.82%) NIST
9 19 (0.82%) SLA
10 15 (0.65%) ISO 26262
10 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 15 (0.65%) PMO
11 14 (0.61%) ISO 9001
12 13 (0.56%) SOC 2
13 11 (0.48%) GMP
13 11 (0.48%) ISO 19650
14 10 (0.43%) GAAP
14 10 (0.43%) WCAG
15 9 (0.39%) IFRS
System Software
1 97 (4.20%) Docker
2 91 (3.94%) Firmware
3 45 (1.95%) Active Directory
4 42 (1.82%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.74%) vSphere
7 8 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) KVM
10 2 (0.087%) iptables
10 2 (0.087%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.087%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.043%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.043%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 85 (3.68%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.82%) Grafana
3 32 (1.38%) Ansible
3 32 (1.38%) Functional Safety
4 18 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 16 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.43%) Puppet
7 9 (0.39%) Cilium
7 9 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (0.35%) Nessus
8 8 (0.35%) Nmap
9 7 (0.30%) BMC PATROL
9 7 (0.30%) Kibana
10 5 (0.22%) WMI
11 4 (0.17%) Argo
11 4 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.17%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.17%) SCCM
11 4 (0.17%) yum
Vendors
1 308 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 125 (5.41%) SAP
3 103 (4.46%) Oracle
4 62 (2.68%) Salesforce
5 61 (2.64%) Databricks
6 54 (2.34%) ServiceNow
7 53 (2.29%) EMC
8 51 (2.21%) Cisco
9 36 (1.56%) Google
10 32 (1.38%) CrowdStrike
11 26 (1.12%) Palo Alto
12 24 (1.04%) Sage
13 23 (0.99%) Tenable
13 23 (0.99%) VMware
14 20 (0.87%) Thales
15 19 (0.82%) IBM
15 19 (0.82%) Informatica
15 19 (0.82%) Red Hat
16 17 (0.74%) Autodesk
16 17 (0.74%) Siemens