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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 87 175
Rank change year-on-year +19 +88 +26
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,406 1,499 1,041
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.32% 3.46% 1.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.16% 3.89% 1.92%
Number of salaries quoted 1,429 409 387
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,686 £37,400
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 £78,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,300 £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 76,241 38,534 54,114
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.63% 89.00% 82.49%
Number of salaries quoted 53,599 21,786 29,155
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £43,500
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 £75,900 £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 8 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 8 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 +79 624 £68,000 -15.00% 2,033
South East -18 499 £62,500 +19.05% 659
North of England +121 492 £51,000 +6.96% 448
Midlands -12 307 £50,000 -9.09% 382
North West +119 304 £55,000 +9.94% 241
South West +23 244 £55,000 +4.56% 334
East of England -40 215 £55,000 -10.20% 386
West Midlands +50 171 £47,500 -13.64% 246
East Midlands -36 136 £50,000 +17.65% 136
Yorkshire +30 97 £42,500 - 145
North East +10 91 £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 (2.16%) Apache Spark
2 44 (1.83%) Apache
3 43 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.45%) SharePoint
5 33 (1.37%) Confluence
6 32 (1.33%) CMS
7 19 (0.79%) Jupyter
8 15 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 13 (0.54%) SAS
10 10 (0.42%) WinCC
11 6 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 6 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.17%) Artix
13 3 (0.12%) nginx
13 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.083%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.083%) IIS
15 1 (0.042%) ArcGIS
15 1 (0.042%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 152 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (2.16%) Simulink
4 37 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 26 (1.08%) 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 9 (0.37%) EPLAN
10 9 (0.37%) Navisworks
11 5 (0.21%) Mathcad
11 5 (0.21%) Stateflow
12 4 (0.17%) CANalyzer
12 4 (0.17%) Notion
13 3 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.12%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.12%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 42 (1.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.42%) SAP MDG
3 10 (0.42%) Workday HCM
4 8 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 8 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 7 (0.29%) Infor M3
5 7 (0.29%) Oracle Applications
5 7 (0.29%) SAP ERP
6 5 (0.21%) Elite 3E
6 5 (0.21%) iTrent
6 5 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
7 4 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.17%) SAP MDG-BP
7 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
7 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
8 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
8 3 (0.12%) Maximo
8 3 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
8 3 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 326 (13.55%) Azure
2 259 (10.76%) AWS
3 181 (7.52%) Power Platform
4 98 (4.07%) GCP
5 81 (3.37%) GitHub
6 76 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
7 72 (2.99%) SaaS
8 65 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
9 55 (2.29%) Serverless
10 46 (1.91%) Amazon S3
11 43 (1.79%) Entra ID
12 39 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
14 33 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
15 30 (1.25%) Microsoft Purview
16 28 (1.16%) Amazon EMR
17 27 (1.12%) Cloud Computing
18 26 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
19 24 (1.00%) Azure Service Bus
20 23 (0.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 70 (2.91%) DNS
2 63 (2.62%) Firewall
3 56 (2.33%) Broadband
4 45 (1.87%) VPN
5 43 (1.79%) TCP/IP
6 38 (1.58%) Modbus
7 37 (1.54%) Ethernet
7 37 (1.54%) Wireless
8 36 (1.50%) Network Security
9 35 (1.45%) VLAN
9 35 (1.45%) WAN
10 30 (1.25%) LAN
10 30 (1.25%) OSPF
11 27 (1.12%) MQTT
12 25 (1.04%) Wireshark
13 23 (0.96%) SD-WAN
14 21 (0.87%) BGP
15 18 (0.75%) 5G
15 18 (0.75%) DHCP
16 17 (0.71%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (7.02%) Power BI
2 67 (2.78%) Metadata
3 60 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 55 (2.29%) SQL Server
5 49 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
6 48 (2.00%) Data Lake
7 39 (1.62%) Amazon Athena
8 37 (1.54%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.41%) Tableau
10 30 (1.25%) MongoDB
11 27 (1.12%) Big Data
11 27 (1.12%) NoSQL
12 24 (1.00%) BigQuery
12 24 (1.00%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (0.83%) Power Query
15 19 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 19 (0.79%) MySQL
16 18 (0.75%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 133 (5.53%) JIRA
2 125 (5.20%) Git
3 60 (2.49%) GitLab
3 60 (2.49%) Jenkins
4 42 (1.75%) Rational DOORS
5 31 (1.29%) LabVIEW
6 20 (0.83%) Selenium
7 17 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 17 (0.71%) Postman
8 15 (0.62%) Snyk
9 13 (0.54%) Claude Code
10 11 (0.46%) Burp Suite
10 11 (0.46%) Eclipse
10 11 (0.46%) Rational Rhapsody
11 9 (0.37%) Cucumber
11 9 (0.37%) JMeter
11 9 (0.37%) MLflow
11 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
12 8 (0.33%) Gatling
12 8 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 807 (33.54%) Social Skills
2 617 (25.64%) Finance
3 567 (23.57%) Analytical Skills
4 246 (10.22%) Manufacturing
5 239 (9.93%) Electronics
6 227 (9.43%) Aerospace
7 217 (9.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 123 (5.11%) Law
9 114 (4.74%) Marketing
10 111 (4.61%) Public Sector
11 106 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
12 102 (4.24%) Banking
13 100 (4.16%) Retail
14 88 (3.66%) Telecoms
15 83 (3.45%) Automotive
16 82 (3.41%) Pharmaceutical
17 51 (2.12%) Legal
18 46 (1.91%) Military
19 42 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
20 38 (1.58%) Games
Job Titles
1 430 (17.87%) Senior
2 258 (10.72%) Systems Engineer
3 249 (10.35%) Analyst
4 189 (7.86%) Lead
5 123 (5.11%) Data Engineer
6 118 (4.90%) Test Engineer
7 108 (4.49%) Architect
8 102 (4.24%) Developer
9 91 (3.78%) Software Engineer
10 88 (3.66%) Consultant
11 84 (3.49%) Principal Engineer
12 80 (3.33%) Electronics Engineer
13 73 (3.03%) Business Analyst
14 62 (2.58%) Data Analyst
15 58 (2.41%) Network Engineer
16 56 (2.33%) Validation Engineer
17 55 (2.29%) Automation Engineer
18 50 (2.08%) Design Engineer
19 49 (2.04%) Data Scientist
20 47 (1.95%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (3.62%) Terraform
2 66 (2.74%) REST
3 60 (2.49%) RESTful
4 59 (2.45%) Kafka
5 51 (2.12%) Node.js
6 50 (2.08%) .NET
7 38 (1.58%) PySpark
8 36 (1.50%) FastAPI
8 36 (1.50%) JSON
8 36 (1.50%) Playwright
9 33 (1.37%) CSS
10 31 (1.29%) HTML
10 31 (1.29%) React
11 30 (1.25%) XML
12 28 (1.16%) Swagger
13 25 (1.04%) RabbitMQ
14 24 (1.00%) OpenAPI
15 23 (0.96%) LDAP
15 23 (0.96%) Middleware
15 23 (0.96%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 160 (6.65%) Cloud Native
2 156 (6.48%) Onboarding
3 144 (5.99%) Management Information System
4 78 (3.24%) Product Ownership
5 72 (2.99%) Data Centre
6 71 (2.95%) Driving Licence
7 66 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (2.74%) Embedded Systems
8 64 (2.66%) Data Structures
9 61 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
10 53 (2.20%) SCADA
11 51 (2.12%) AI Agents
12 48 (2.00%) Life Science
13 46 (1.91%) Algorithms
14 40 (1.66%) Robotics
15 39 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
16 38 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
17 37 (1.54%) Low-Code
18 33 (1.37%) Analogue Electronics
19 31 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 130 (5.40%) Linux
2 90 (3.74%) Windows
3 32 (1.33%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.08%) Unix
5 13 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.42%) 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 (0.042%) AIX
12 1 (0.042%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.042%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 621 (25.81%) Problem-Solving
2 541 (22.49%) Continuous Improvement
3 432 (17.96%) Agile
3 432 (17.96%) AI
4 402 (16.71%) Verification and Validation
5 345 (14.34%) CI/CD
6 328 (13.63%) Stakeholder Management
7 309 (12.84%) Test Automation
8 302 (12.55%) Migration
9 259 (10.76%) Analytics
10 257 (10.68%) Mentoring
11 248 (10.31%) Software Engineering
12 237 (9.85%) Decision-Making
13 228 (9.48%) DevOps
14 208 (8.65%) Business Intelligence
15 207 (8.60%) Data Analysis
15 207 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 203 (8.44%) Roadmaps
17 195 (8.10%) Data Migration
18 187 (7.77%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 501 (20.82%) Python
2 430 (17.87%) SQL
3 94 (3.91%) C++
3 94 (3.91%) Java
4 90 (3.74%) C
5 72 (2.99%) C#
5 72 (2.99%) JavaScript
6 65 (2.70%) MATLAB
7 46 (1.91%) Go
8 36 (1.50%) PowerShell
9 35 (1.45%) Bash
10 32 (1.33%) TypeScript
11 28 (1.16%) Embedded C
12 25 (1.04%) Scala
13 22 (0.91%) R
14 20 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 17 (0.71%) Embedded C++
16 12 (0.50%) Shell Script
17 11 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 10 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 528 (21.95%) Degree
2 498 (20.70%) Security Cleared
3 367 (15.25%) SC Cleared
4 113 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (4.28%) Master's Degree
6 97 (4.03%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 44 (1.83%) PhD
9 43 (1.79%) HND
10 35 (1.45%) HNC
11 34 (1.41%) Chartered Engineer
11 34 (1.41%) PMI Certification
12 32 (1.33%) Azure Certification
13 31 (1.29%) CISSP
14 30 (1.25%) ACCA
15 27 (1.12%) AWS Certification
15 27 (1.12%) CIMA
16 26 (1.08%) PMP
17 22 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
18 20 (0.83%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (15.17%) Data Quality
2 290 (12.05%) QA
3 74 (3.08%) Accessibility
4 58 (2.41%) GDPR
5 32 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 29 (1.21%) GRC
7 27 (1.12%) GxP
8 22 (0.91%) SLA
9 18 (0.75%) IEC 61508
9 18 (0.75%) NIST
10 16 (0.67%) ISO 9001
11 15 (0.62%) ISO 19650
11 15 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 13 (0.54%) GMP
13 12 (0.50%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.46%) ISO 26262
14 11 (0.46%) PMO
15 9 (0.37%) WCAG
16 8 (0.33%) Automotive SPICE
16 8 (0.33%) GAAP
System Software
1 111 (4.61%) Docker
2 94 (3.91%) Firmware
3 49 (2.04%) Active Directory
4 43 (1.79%) 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 (0.042%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 91 (3.78%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.75%) Grafana
3 34 (1.41%) Ansible
4 27 (1.12%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (0.42%) 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%) WMI
11 4 (0.17%) Argo
11 4 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.17%) Rancher
11 4 (0.17%) SCCM
11 4 (0.17%) yum
Vendors
1 331 (13.76%) Microsoft
2 125 (5.20%) SAP
3 102 (4.24%) Oracle
4 98 (4.07%) Salesforce
5 70 (2.91%) EMC
6 61 (2.54%) Databricks
7 54 (2.24%) ServiceNow
8 53 (2.20%) Cisco
9 39 (1.62%) Adobe
10 37 (1.54%) Google
11 30 (1.25%) 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%) Informatica
15 21 (0.87%) VMware
16 19 (0.79%) IBM
16 19 (0.79%) Palo Alto
16 19 (0.79%) Siemens