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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 191 169
Rank change year-on-year +46 -22 -18
Permanent jobs citing Validation 918 691 1,133
As % of all permanent jobs in England 1.50% 1.62% 1.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.89% 1.74% 1.93%
Number of salaries quoted 497 285 701
10th Percentile £35,750 £37,600 £34,750
25th Percentile £45,000 £47,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -11.41%
75th Percentile £78,750 £71,250 £73,500
90th Percentile £92,750 £97,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% +3.64% -12.00%

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 48,506 39,645 58,832
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.09% 92.95% 88.22%
Number of salaries quoted 29,755 20,008 46,455
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £39,000 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £103,750 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 February 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 February 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 +59 307 £75,000 +7.14% 196
South East +41 199 £55,000 +4.76% 187
North of England -6 129 £60,000 +26.32% 122
Midlands +2 110 £37,500 -30.23% 117
North West +12 89 £58,000 +21.64% 74
East of England +3 89 £59,000 +7.27% 84
South West +2 71 £62,500 +18.82% 70
West Midlands +6 66 £41,108 -34.23% 80
East Midlands -14 43 £35,000 -32.69% 36
Yorkshire -23 29 £65,000 +42.94% 38
North East -11 11 £45,497 +9.63% 11
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 33 (3.59%) Apache Airflow
2 23 (2.51%) Apache Spark
3 18 (1.96%) Apache
4 14 (1.53%) Confluence
5 13 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (1.31%) Appian
7 10 (1.09%) CMS
7 10 (1.09%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.44%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.22%) Kinematics
9 2 (0.22%) WordPress
10 1 (0.11%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.11%) FileNet
10 1 (0.11%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.11%) SAS
10 1 (0.11%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 84 (9.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 53 (5.77%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.74%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.76%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.44%) Fusion 360
6 4 (0.44%) Simulink
6 4 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe Captivate
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.22%) Elementor
7 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Smart View
7 2 (0.22%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.22%) Weka
8 1 (0.11%) GNU Octave
8 1 (0.11%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.11%) Revit
Business Applications
1 22 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.44%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.33%) SAP CX
4 3 (0.33%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.33%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.33%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.22%) Primavera
6 1 (0.11%) Endur
6 1 (0.11%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.11%) Magento
6 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.11%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.11%) SAP FSCM
Cloud Services
1 136 (14.81%) Azure
2 85 (9.26%) Power Platform
3 63 (6.86%) AWS
4 47 (5.12%) SaaS
5 38 (4.14%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (3.59%) GCP
7 21 (2.29%) Amazon S3
7 21 (2.29%) Azure Data Factory
7 21 (2.29%) Power Automate
8 20 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
8 20 (2.18%) Snowflake
9 18 (1.96%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.85%) GitHub
10 17 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (1.74%) dbt
12 12 (1.31%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.31%) Azure AI
13 11 (1.20%) Figma
14 10 (1.09%) Serverless
15 9 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.18%) CHAP
2 13 (1.42%) WAN
3 12 (1.31%) SD-WAN
4 11 (1.20%) 5G
5 10 (1.09%) Firewall
6 8 (0.87%) Broadband
6 8 (0.87%) DNS
6 8 (0.87%) HTTP
6 8 (0.87%) MQTT
6 8 (0.87%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.76%) LAN
8 6 (0.65%) Modbus
9 5 (0.54%) Cisco IOS
9 5 (0.54%) VoIP
9 5 (0.54%) WAAS
9 5 (0.54%) Wireless
10 4 (0.44%) NAS
10 4 (0.44%) SMTP
11 3 (0.33%) Network Security
11 3 (0.33%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 83 (9.04%) Power BI
2 39 (4.25%) SQL Server
3 29 (3.16%) Tableau
4 24 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
4 24 (2.61%) Metadata
4 24 (2.61%) Relational Database
5 14 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
6 13 (1.42%) Oracle Reports
7 12 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 12 (1.31%) Pinecone
8 11 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 11 (1.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 10 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
9 10 (1.09%) Spotfire
10 9 (0.98%) Apache Hive
10 9 (0.98%) Impala
10 9 (0.98%) MySQL
10 9 (0.98%) Oracle Database
10 9 (0.98%) Parquet
10 9 (0.98%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 51 (5.56%) JIRA
2 49 (5.34%) Git
3 38 (4.14%) Rational DOORS
4 19 (2.07%) Postman
5 17 (1.85%) Jenkins
6 15 (1.63%) GitLab
7 14 (1.53%) LabVIEW
7 14 (1.53%) MLflow
8 11 (1.20%) Eclipse
9 10 (1.09%) Cucumber
9 10 (1.09%) TestRail
10 9 (0.98%) IBM UrbanCode
10 9 (0.98%) Selenium
10 9 (0.98%) SoapUI
11 8 (0.87%) JMeter
12 6 (0.65%) LoadRunner
12 6 (0.65%) Subversion
13 5 (0.54%) SpecFlow
14 4 (0.44%) Locust
14 4 (0.44%) TestDirector
General
1 332 (36.17%) Social Skills
2 249 (27.12%) Finance
3 228 (24.84%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (8.71%) Banking
5 48 (5.23%) Financial Institution
6 47 (5.12%) Marketing
7 46 (5.01%) Electronics
8 43 (4.68%) Manufacturing
9 38 (4.14%) Law
10 37 (4.03%) Presentation Skills
11 35 (3.81%) Aerospace
12 32 (3.49%) Legal
12 32 (3.49%) Organisational Skills
13 28 (3.05%) Telecoms
14 27 (2.94%) Retail
15 26 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 24 (2.61%) Public Sector
17 20 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
18 19 (2.07%) Billing
19 17 (1.85%) Avionics
Job Titles
1 160 (17.43%) Analyst
2 141 (15.36%) Senior
3 116 (12.64%) Systems Engineer
4 66 (7.19%) Lead
5 62 (6.75%) Architect
6 55 (5.99%) Business Analyst
7 52 (5.66%) Validation Engineer
8 51 (5.56%) Test Engineer
9 44 (4.79%) Data Analyst
9 44 (4.79%) Integration Engineer
10 35 (3.81%) Junior
10 35 (3.81%) Systems Integration Engineer
11 33 (3.59%) Principal Engineer
11 33 (3.59%) Senior Systems Engineer
12 32 (3.49%) Data Engineer
13 28 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
14 27 (2.94%) Verification Engineer
15 26 (2.83%) Principal Systems Engineer
16 25 (2.72%) Developer
17 24 (2.61%) Software Validation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (5.45%) REST
2 35 (3.81%) Pandas
3 29 (3.16%) Middleware
4 28 (3.05%) JSON
5 25 (2.72%) pytest
6 24 (2.61%) XML
7 19 (2.07%) PyTorch
7 19 (2.07%) TensorFlow
8 18 (1.96%) NumPy
9 17 (1.85%) OAuth
9 17 (1.85%) scikit-learn
10 16 (1.74%) JWT
10 16 (1.74%) Swagger
10 16 (1.74%) Web Services
11 14 (1.53%) FastAPI
11 14 (1.53%) React
12 13 (1.42%) Flask
12 13 (1.42%) Hugging Face
12 13 (1.42%) PySpark
12 13 (1.42%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 60 (6.54%) Management Information System
2 45 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 33 (3.59%) Data Structures
4 30 (3.27%) Self-Motivation
5 26 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
6 24 (2.61%) Low-Code
7 21 (2.29%) Product Ownership
8 20 (2.18%) Life Science
9 18 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
9 18 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 16 (1.74%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 15 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.42%) Reinsurance
13 12 (1.31%) Algorithms
13 12 (1.31%) Blockchain
14 11 (1.20%) Self-Driving Car
15 10 (1.09%) Data Centre
15 10 (1.09%) IoT
16 8 (0.87%) CMDB
16 8 (0.87%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 39 (4.25%) Linux
2 37 (4.03%) Windows
3 15 (1.63%) Unix
4 10 (1.09%) Android
5 6 (0.65%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.33%) Robot Operating System
8 2 (0.22%) AIX
8 2 (0.22%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.22%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (24.73%) Agile
2 207 (22.55%) Problem-Solving
3 167 (18.19%) Verification and Validation
4 133 (14.49%) Data Validation
5 128 (13.94%) Analytics
6 124 (13.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 106 (11.55%) Test Automation
8 103 (11.22%) AI
8 103 (11.22%) Business Intelligence
9 102 (11.11%) CI/CD
9 102 (11.11%) DevOps
9 102 (11.11%) Migration
9 102 (11.11%) Systems Engineering
10 94 (10.24%) Mentoring
11 90 (9.80%) ETL
12 89 (9.69%) Decision-Making
13 88 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
14 86 (9.37%) Data Modelling
14 86 (9.37%) User Acceptance Testing
15 85 (9.26%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 217 (23.64%) SQL
2 184 (20.04%) Python
3 36 (3.92%) Java
4 29 (3.16%) C
5 28 (3.05%) C++
6 27 (2.94%) PowerShell
7 24 (2.61%) JavaScript
8 19 (2.07%) MATLAB
9 17 (1.85%) Bash
10 15 (1.63%) T-SQL
11 13 (1.42%) TypeScript
12 10 (1.09%) C#
13 9 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 9 (0.98%) R
14 8 (0.87%) VBA
15 7 (0.76%) Go
15 7 (0.76%) VB
16 5 (0.54%) PHP
17 4 (0.44%) Bicep
17 4 (0.44%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 231 (25.16%) Degree
2 119 (12.96%) Security Cleared
3 112 (12.20%) BPSS Clearance
4 49 (5.34%) Master's Degree
5 47 (5.12%) SC Cleared
6 38 (4.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 24 (2.61%) CISA
7 24 (2.61%) CISSP
8 23 (2.51%) CISM
9 21 (2.29%) CGEIT
9 21 (2.29%) SANS
10 20 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 20 (2.18%) FFIEC
11 17 (1.85%) HNC
12 16 (1.74%) Chartered Engineer
12 16 (1.74%) ISTQB
13 14 (1.53%) PMI Certification
13 14 (1.53%) PMP
14 12 (1.31%) HND
15 8 (0.87%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (13.83%) Data Quality
2 85 (9.26%) QA
3 48 (5.23%) GDPR
4 39 (4.25%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 30 (3.27%) Accessibility
6 20 (2.18%) COBIT
6 20 (2.18%) NIST
7 17 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 17 (1.85%) SLA
8 16 (1.74%) ISO 20022
9 13 (1.42%) SEPA
10 11 (1.20%) GRC
11 10 (1.09%) Good Clinical Practice
12 9 (0.98%) TARGET2
12 9 (0.98%) WCAG
13 8 (0.87%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 8 (0.87%) GxP
13 8 (0.87%) IFRS
13 8 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 12207
14 6 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 49 (5.34%) Docker
2 17 (1.85%) Firmware
3 14 (1.53%) Active Directory
4 6 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.54%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.33%) vSphere
7 2 (0.22%) Ceph
7 2 (0.22%) Lustre
7 2 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.11%) iptables
8 1 (0.11%) OpenAM
8 1 (0.11%) OpenDJ
8 1 (0.11%) OpenIDM
8 1 (0.11%) pfSense
8 1 (0.11%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 32 (3.49%) Terraform
3 16 (1.74%) Ansible
4 14 (1.53%) Grafana
5 11 (1.20%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.98%) SCCM
7 7 (0.76%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 7 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (0.54%) Argo
8 5 (0.54%) Rancher
8 5 (0.54%) yum
9 2 (0.22%) BMC PATROL
9 2 (0.22%) Nessus
9 2 (0.22%) PowerCLI
9 2 (0.22%) Puppet
10 1 (0.11%) Control-M
10 1 (0.11%) Kibana
10 1 (0.11%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.11%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 124 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 54 (5.88%) SAP
3 45 (4.90%) Oracle
4 28 (3.05%) Salesforce
5 19 (2.07%) Foundry
6 18 (1.96%) Cisco
7 16 (1.74%) IBM
8 14 (1.53%) OpenAI
8 14 (1.53%) ServiceNow
8 14 (1.53%) Software AG
9 13 (1.42%) Adobe
10 12 (1.31%) Automation Anywhere
10 12 (1.31%) Databricks
10 12 (1.31%) Google
10 12 (1.31%) UiPath
11 9 (0.98%) Red Hat
12 8 (0.87%) Intapp
12 8 (0.87%) VMware
13 7 (0.76%) Citrix
13 7 (0.76%) Guidewire