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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 174 181
Rank change year-on-year +30 +7 -29
Permanent jobs citing Validation 1,001 689 1,241
As % of all permanent jobs in England 1.47% 1.81% 1.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.90% 1.94% 1.87%
Number of salaries quoted 578 335 719
10th Percentile £34,850 £38,750 £35,500
25th Percentile £44,979 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,225 £71,250 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -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 52,713 35,574 66,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.63% 93.56% 86.75%
Number of salaries quoted 32,661 20,407 51,505
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 +76 330 £75,000 +7.14% 276
South East +33 234 £55,000 +10.55% 229
North of England -4 148 £59,500 +25.26% 160
Midlands -27 121 £37,500 -31.82% 121
North West +9 100 £59,000 +23.73% 81
East of England -7 89 £60,000 +9.09% 110
West Midlands +5 75 £40,000 -39.62% 76
South West -21 65 £55,000 - 92
East Midlands -35 44 £35,000 -31.37% 45
Yorkshire -33 32 £60,000 +26.32% 54
North East -13 16 £47,500 -16.30% 25
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 39 (3.90%) Apache Airflow
2 27 (2.70%) Apache Spark
3 23 (2.30%) Apache
4 13 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (1.20%) Appian
6 11 (1.10%) CMS
6 11 (1.10%) Confluence
7 10 (1.00%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.40%) Headless CMS
8 4 (0.40%) Kinematics
9 2 (0.20%) WordPress
10 1 (0.100%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.100%) IIS
10 1 (0.100%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.100%) SAS
Applications
1 88 (8.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (5.09%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (1.70%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.70%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 5 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.40%) Fusion 360
7 4 (0.40%) Simulink
8 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.20%) Adobe After Effects
9 2 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
9 2 (0.20%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.20%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.20%) Elementor
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.20%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.20%) Solid Edge
9 2 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
9 2 (0.20%) Weka
10 1 (0.100%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 20 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.50%) SAP ERP
4 4 (0.40%) Loan IQ
4 4 (0.40%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.30%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.20%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.20%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.100%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.100%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.100%) Endur
7 1 (0.100%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.100%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.100%) Primavera
7 1 (0.100%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.100%) SAP Business ByDesign
7 1 (0.100%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 142 (14.19%) Azure
2 95 (9.49%) Power Platform
3 80 (7.99%) AWS
4 53 (5.29%) SaaS
5 39 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
6 37 (3.70%) GCP
7 24 (2.40%) Amazon S3
7 24 (2.40%) Power Automate
7 24 (2.40%) Snowflake
8 23 (2.30%) Azure Data Factory
8 23 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
9 19 (1.90%) dbt
9 19 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.80%) GitHub
11 17 (1.70%) Microsoft 365
12 13 (1.30%) Anthropic Claude
12 13 (1.30%) Datadog
12 13 (1.30%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.20%) Azure AI
14 10 (1.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 25 (2.50%) CHAP
2 17 (1.70%) Broadband
3 15 (1.50%) WAN
4 13 (1.30%) SD-WAN
5 12 (1.20%) Firewall
6 11 (1.10%) 5G
6 11 (1.10%) DNS
7 9 (0.90%) HTTP
7 9 (0.90%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.80%) Wireless
9 7 (0.70%) LAN
9 7 (0.70%) MQTT
10 6 (0.60%) Modbus
10 6 (0.60%) NAS
11 5 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
11 5 (0.50%) WAAS
12 4 (0.40%) SMTP
12 4 (0.40%) VoIP
12 4 (0.40%) VPN
13 3 (0.30%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (9.29%) Power BI
2 42 (4.20%) SQL Server
3 38 (3.80%) Tableau
4 27 (2.70%) Relational Database
5 26 (2.60%) Metadata
6 24 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
7 14 (1.40%) Azure SQL Database
7 14 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
7 14 (1.40%) Spark SQL
8 13 (1.30%) Apache Hive
8 13 (1.30%) Impala
8 13 (1.30%) MySQL
8 13 (1.30%) Oracle Database
8 13 (1.30%) Parquet
9 12 (1.20%) Pinecone
9 12 (1.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 10 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
10 10 (1.00%) Spotfire
11 9 (0.90%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 57 (5.69%) Git
2 47 (4.70%) JIRA
3 34 (3.40%) Rational DOORS
4 17 (1.70%) Postman
5 16 (1.60%) Jenkins
6 14 (1.40%) GitLab
6 14 (1.40%) LabVIEW
6 14 (1.40%) MLflow
7 13 (1.30%) IBM UrbanCode
8 12 (1.20%) Cucumber
9 11 (1.10%) Eclipse
9 11 (1.10%) JMeter
10 10 (1.00%) Selenium
10 10 (1.00%) TestRail
11 7 (0.70%) Locust
11 7 (0.70%) SoapUI
12 6 (0.60%) LoadRunner
12 6 (0.60%) Subversion
13 5 (0.50%) SpecFlow
14 4 (0.40%) Zephyr
General
1 352 (35.16%) Social Skills
2 258 (25.77%) Finance
3 240 (23.98%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.79%) Banking
5 59 (5.89%) Manufacturing
6 52 (5.19%) Electronics
7 45 (4.50%) Financial Institution
8 44 (4.40%) Aerospace
8 44 (4.40%) Marketing
9 40 (4.00%) Law
10 38 (3.80%) Legal
11 37 (3.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 32 (3.20%) Presentation Skills
13 31 (3.10%) Retail
14 27 (2.70%) Organisational Skills
15 26 (2.60%) Public Sector
16 23 (2.30%) Telecoms
17 22 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
18 19 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
19 18 (1.80%) Games
Job Titles
1 174 (17.38%) Analyst
2 156 (15.58%) Senior
3 121 (12.09%) Systems Engineer
4 72 (7.19%) Lead
5 63 (6.29%) Validation Engineer
6 57 (5.69%) Test Engineer
7 55 (5.49%) Architect
7 55 (5.49%) Business Analyst
8 48 (4.80%) Integration Engineer
9 46 (4.60%) Data Analyst
10 38 (3.80%) Systems Integration Engineer
11 37 (3.70%) Principal Engineer
12 36 (3.60%) Developer
12 36 (3.60%) Senior Systems Engineer
13 35 (3.50%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.30%) Junior
15 30 (3.00%) Software Validation Engineer
16 29 (2.90%) Verification Engineer
17 28 (2.80%) Auditor
17 28 (2.80%) Principal Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (5.29%) REST
2 37 (3.70%) Pandas
3 29 (2.90%) JSON
4 25 (2.50%) Middleware
4 25 (2.50%) pytest
5 22 (2.20%) XML
6 19 (1.90%) OAuth
7 18 (1.80%) JWT
7 18 (1.80%) NumPy
7 18 (1.80%) PySpark
7 18 (1.80%) PyTorch
7 18 (1.80%) Swagger
7 18 (1.80%) TensorFlow
8 16 (1.60%) RESTful
9 15 (1.50%) Kafka
9 15 (1.50%) React
9 15 (1.50%) scikit-learn
9 15 (1.50%) Web Services
10 14 (1.40%) .NET
10 14 (1.40%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 70 (6.99%) Management Information System
2 50 (5.00%) Onboarding
3 40 (4.00%) Data Structures
4 36 (3.60%) Low-Code
5 31 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
6 28 (2.80%) Product Ownership
6 28 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
7 24 (2.40%) Life Science
8 22 (2.20%) Analytical Mindset
9 19 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
10 14 (1.40%) Blockchain
11 13 (1.30%) Algorithms
11 13 (1.30%) Reinsurance
12 12 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 12 (1.20%) IoT
13 11 (1.10%) Data Centre
13 11 (1.10%) Hackathon
13 11 (1.10%) Robotics
13 11 (1.10%) Self-Driving Car
14 10 (1.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 47 (4.70%) Linux
2 41 (4.10%) Windows
3 17 (1.70%) Unix
4 10 (1.00%) Android
4 10 (1.00%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.30%) Robot Operating System
7 2 (0.20%) AIX
7 2 (0.20%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.20%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.100%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.100%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.100%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (23.48%) Agile
2 223 (22.28%) Problem-Solving
3 173 (17.28%) Verification and Validation
4 169 (16.88%) Continuous Improvement
5 148 (14.79%) Analytics
6 142 (14.19%) Data Validation
7 131 (13.09%) Test Automation
8 117 (11.69%) Business Intelligence
9 116 (11.59%) CI/CD
10 113 (11.29%) AI
11 112 (11.19%) Systems Engineering
12 107 (10.69%) DevOps
13 103 (10.29%) Decision-Making
13 103 (10.29%) Migration
14 101 (10.09%) Data Modelling
15 97 (9.69%) ETL
15 97 (9.69%) User Acceptance Testing
16 95 (9.49%) Mentoring
17 92 (9.19%) Stakeholder Management
18 90 (8.99%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 226 (22.58%) SQL
2 208 (20.78%) Python
3 42 (4.20%) Java
4 30 (3.00%) PowerShell
5 29 (2.90%) JavaScript
6 26 (2.60%) C++
7 25 (2.50%) C
8 19 (1.90%) Bash
8 19 (1.90%) T-SQL
9 17 (1.70%) Go
10 14 (1.40%) MATLAB
10 14 (1.40%) TypeScript
11 13 (1.30%) C#
12 11 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 9 (0.90%) R
13 9 (0.90%) VBA
14 7 (0.70%) VB
15 6 (0.60%) PHP
16 5 (0.50%) VBScript
17 4 (0.40%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 222 (22.18%) Degree
2 123 (12.29%) Security Cleared
3 111 (11.09%) BPSS Clearance
4 51 (5.09%) Master's Degree
5 47 (4.70%) SC Cleared
6 35 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 32 (3.20%) CISA
7 32 (3.20%) CISSP
8 31 (3.10%) CISM
9 25 (2.50%) CGEIT
9 25 (2.50%) DV Cleared
9 25 (2.50%) FFIEC
9 25 (2.50%) SANS
10 23 (2.30%) Chartered Engineer
11 18 (1.80%) HNC
12 17 (1.70%) ISTQB
13 15 (1.50%) PMI Certification
13 15 (1.50%) PMP
14 13 (1.30%) HND
15 7 (0.70%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (14.19%) Data Quality
2 106 (10.59%) QA
3 57 (5.69%) GDPR
4 42 (4.20%) Accessibility
5 37 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 26 (2.60%) NIST
7 25 (2.50%) COBIT
8 18 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (1.80%) SLA
9 15 (1.50%) IFRS
10 12 (1.20%) WCAG
11 11 (1.10%) GRC
11 11 (1.10%) ISO 20022
12 10 (1.00%) Good Clinical Practice
13 9 (0.90%) GAAP
13 9 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.80%) ISO 9001
15 7 (0.70%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 7 (0.70%) GxP
15 7 (0.70%) SEPA
System Software
1 56 (5.59%) Docker
2 19 (1.90%) Firmware
3 18 (1.80%) Active Directory
4 8 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.60%) vSphere
6 5 (0.50%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.20%) Ceph
8 2 (0.20%) Lustre
8 2 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 2 (0.20%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.100%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.100%) iptables
9 1 (0.100%) OpenAM
9 1 (0.100%) OpenDJ
9 1 (0.100%) OpenIDM
9 1 (0.100%) pfSense
9 1 (0.100%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 53 (5.29%) Kubernetes
2 39 (3.90%) Terraform
3 21 (2.10%) Grafana
4 17 (1.70%) Ansible
5 14 (1.40%) Prometheus
6 12 (1.20%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 10 (1.00%) SCCM
8 7 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (0.50%) Argo
9 5 (0.50%) Rancher
9 5 (0.50%) yum
10 2 (0.20%) BMC PATROL
10 2 (0.20%) Nessus
10 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
10 2 (0.20%) Puppet
11 1 (0.100%) Control-M
11 1 (0.100%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.100%) Kibana
11 1 (0.100%) SQL Sentry
11 1 (0.100%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 139 (13.89%) Microsoft
2 52 (5.19%) Oracle
3 50 (5.00%) SAP
4 35 (3.50%) Salesforce
5 17 (1.70%) Cisco
6 16 (1.60%) Foundry
6 16 (1.60%) Red Hat
7 15 (1.50%) Adobe
7 15 (1.50%) ServiceNow
8 14 (1.40%) OpenAI
9 13 (1.30%) Databricks
9 13 (1.30%) IBM
9 13 (1.30%) Software AG
9 13 (1.30%) VMware
10 12 (1.20%) Automation Anywhere
10 12 (1.20%) UiPath
11 11 (1.10%) Google
12 10 (1.00%) Citrix
13 9 (0.90%) Intapp
13 9 (0.90%) Workday