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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 90 173
Rank change year-on-year +23 +83 +16
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,431 1,471 1,024
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.34% 3.41% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.18% 3.84% 1.90%
Number of salaries quoted 1,436 397 378
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,730 £37,488
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 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £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 76,488 38,338 53,847
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.64% 88.97% 82.73%
Number of salaries quoted 53,556 21,844 28,773
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,500 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.32%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,250 £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 10 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 10 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 +81 628 £68,750 -14.06% 2,061
South East -13 504 £63,500 +15.45% 628
North of England +130 497 £51,000 +6.96% 418
Midlands -14 316 £50,000 -9.09% 383
North West +116 306 £55,000 +9.94% 219
South West +25 245 £55,000 +4.76% 305
East of England -40 217 £55,000 -10.20% 362
West Midlands +45 173 £47,500 -13.64% 247
East Midlands -37 143 £50,000 +17.65% 136
Yorkshire +34 99 £42,500 - 140
North East +1 92 £55,000 +57.14% 60
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 53 (2.18%) Apache Spark
2 45 (1.85%) Apache
3 44 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.44%) SharePoint
5 33 (1.36%) Confluence
6 32 (1.32%) CMS
7 19 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 19 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.53%) SAS
9 10 (0.41%) WinCC
10 6 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.16%) Artix
12 3 (0.12%) nginx
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.082%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.082%) IIS
14 1 (0.041%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.041%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 157 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (2.22%) Simulink
4 38 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 27 (1.11%) Spreadsheet
6 21 (0.86%) AutoCAD
7 19 (0.78%) SOLIDWORKS
8 14 (0.58%) MS Visio
8 14 (0.58%) Revit
9 12 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 12 (0.49%) OrCAD
10 10 (0.41%) EPLAN
11 9 (0.37%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.25%) Mathcad
12 6 (0.25%) Notion
13 5 (0.21%) Stateflow
14 4 (0.16%) CANalyzer
14 4 (0.16%) Chatbot
15 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
15 3 (0.12%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 39 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.41%) Workday HCM
4 9 (0.37%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.33%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.29%) Elite 3E
6 7 (0.29%) Infor M3
6 7 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
7 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
9 4 (0.16%) iTrent
9 4 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.16%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.16%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.12%) Maximo
10 3 (0.12%) Sage 200
10 3 (0.12%) SAP MDG-BP
10 3 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 334 (13.74%) Azure
2 259 (10.65%) AWS
3 188 (7.73%) Power Platform
4 98 (4.03%) GCP
5 84 (3.46%) GitHub
6 78 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
7 71 (2.92%) SaaS
8 69 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
9 55 (2.26%) Serverless
10 48 (1.97%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.93%) Amazon S3
12 40 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
13 35 (1.44%) Microsoft Copilot
14 33 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
15 31 (1.28%) Microsoft Purview
16 29 (1.19%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
18 27 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
19 24 (0.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (0.99%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 73 (3.00%) DNS
2 68 (2.80%) Firewall
3 55 (2.26%) Broadband
4 48 (1.97%) TCP/IP
4 48 (1.97%) VPN
5 40 (1.65%) Modbus
6 38 (1.56%) Ethernet
6 38 (1.56%) VLAN
6 38 (1.56%) Wireless
7 36 (1.48%) Network Security
8 35 (1.44%) WAN
9 30 (1.23%) LAN
9 30 (1.23%) OSPF
10 28 (1.15%) MQTT
11 25 (1.03%) Wireshark
12 23 (0.95%) SD-WAN
13 21 (0.86%) BGP
13 21 (0.86%) DHCP
14 18 (0.74%) 5G
14 18 (0.74%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 175 (7.20%) Power BI
2 67 (2.76%) Metadata
3 65 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 58 (2.39%) SQL Server
5 48 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 47 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
7 39 (1.60%) Amazon Athena
8 36 (1.48%) Relational Database
9 34 (1.40%) Tableau
10 30 (1.23%) MongoDB
11 27 (1.11%) Big Data
11 27 (1.11%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.99%) BigQuery
12 24 (0.99%) Power Query
13 23 (0.95%) DynamoDB
14 22 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 21 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
16 20 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
17 19 (0.78%) MySQL
18 18 (0.74%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 135 (5.55%) JIRA
2 128 (5.27%) Git
3 62 (2.55%) GitLab
3 62 (2.55%) Jenkins
4 46 (1.89%) Rational DOORS
5 33 (1.36%) LabVIEW
6 20 (0.82%) Selenium
7 17 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 17 (0.70%) Postman
8 15 (0.62%) Snyk
9 13 (0.53%) Claude Code
10 12 (0.49%) Eclipse
11 11 (0.45%) Burp Suite
11 11 (0.45%) Rational Rhapsody
12 9 (0.37%) Cucumber
12 9 (0.37%) JMeter
12 9 (0.37%) MLflow
12 9 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
13 8 (0.33%) Metasploit
13 8 (0.33%) TeamCity
General
1 822 (33.81%) Social Skills
2 619 (25.46%) Finance
3 576 (23.69%) Analytical Skills
4 246 (10.12%) Manufacturing
5 244 (10.04%) Electronics
6 233 (9.58%) Aerospace
7 222 (9.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 126 (5.18%) Law
9 116 (4.77%) Marketing
10 112 (4.61%) Public Sector
11 108 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
12 107 (4.40%) Banking
13 99 (4.07%) Retail
14 90 (3.70%) Telecoms
15 83 (3.41%) Pharmaceutical
16 82 (3.37%) Automotive
17 54 (2.22%) Legal
18 48 (1.97%) Military
19 43 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
20 40 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 433 (17.81%) Senior
2 263 (10.82%) Systems Engineer
3 249 (10.24%) Analyst
4 192 (7.90%) Lead
5 124 (5.10%) Data Engineer
6 121 (4.98%) Test Engineer
7 111 (4.57%) Architect
8 103 (4.24%) Developer
9 92 (3.78%) Software Engineer
10 89 (3.66%) Consultant
11 85 (3.50%) Principal Engineer
12 79 (3.25%) Electronics Engineer
13 74 (3.04%) Business Analyst
14 60 (2.47%) Data Analyst
15 58 (2.39%) Automation Engineer
15 58 (2.39%) Network Engineer
16 55 (2.26%) Validation Engineer
17 51 (2.10%) Design Engineer
18 50 (2.06%) Data Scientist
19 48 (1.97%) Principal Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (3.74%) Terraform
2 69 (2.84%) REST
3 60 (2.47%) Kafka
3 60 (2.47%) RESTful
4 54 (2.22%) .NET
5 51 (2.10%) Node.js
6 38 (1.56%) PySpark
7 37 (1.52%) FastAPI
7 37 (1.52%) JSON
8 36 (1.48%) Playwright
9 33 (1.36%) CSS
10 32 (1.32%) HTML
11 31 (1.28%) XML
12 30 (1.23%) React
13 28 (1.15%) Swagger
14 25 (1.03%) Middleware
14 25 (1.03%) RabbitMQ
15 24 (0.99%) OpenAPI
16 23 (0.95%) LDAP
17 22 (0.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 159 (6.54%) Cloud Native
2 157 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 148 (6.09%) Management Information System
4 77 (3.17%) Product Ownership
5 74 (3.04%) Driving Licence
6 73 (3.00%) Data Centre
7 68 (2.80%) Distributed Systems
8 65 (2.67%) Data Structures
8 65 (2.67%) Embedded Systems
9 64 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
10 56 (2.30%) SCADA
11 53 (2.18%) AI Agents
12 48 (1.97%) Life Science
13 47 (1.93%) Algorithms
14 42 (1.73%) Robotics
15 38 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
15 38 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
15 38 (1.56%) Low-Code
16 33 (1.36%) Analogue Electronics
17 32 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.55%) Linux
2 94 (3.87%) Windows
3 35 (1.44%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.11%) Unix
5 13 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.41%) Android
7 8 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.29%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
9 4 (0.16%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.082%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.082%) VMS
11 2 (0.082%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.041%) AIX
12 1 (0.041%) CentOS
12 1 (0.041%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.041%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.041%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 628 (25.83%) Problem-Solving
2 551 (22.67%) Continuous Improvement
3 446 (18.35%) Agile
4 442 (18.18%) AI
5 411 (16.91%) Verification and Validation
6 352 (14.48%) CI/CD
7 328 (13.49%) Stakeholder Management
8 316 (13.00%) Test Automation
9 302 (12.42%) Migration
10 266 (10.94%) Analytics
11 258 (10.61%) Mentoring
12 251 (10.32%) Software Engineering
13 237 (9.75%) Decision-Making
14 233 (9.58%) DevOps
15 214 (8.80%) Business Intelligence
16 209 (8.60%) Data Analysis
17 206 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 203 (8.35%) Roadmaps
19 193 (7.94%) Data Migration
20 189 (7.77%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 512 (21.06%) Python
2 437 (17.98%) SQL
3 98 (4.03%) C++
4 96 (3.95%) Java
5 94 (3.87%) C
6 77 (3.17%) C#
7 72 (2.96%) JavaScript
8 67 (2.76%) MATLAB
9 46 (1.89%) Go
10 38 (1.56%) PowerShell
11 37 (1.52%) Bash
12 31 (1.28%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.19%) Embedded C
14 25 (1.03%) Scala
15 24 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 22 (0.90%) R
17 17 (0.70%) Embedded C++
18 13 (0.53%) Shell Script
19 12 (0.49%) T-SQL
20 11 (0.45%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 539 (22.17%) Degree
2 505 (20.77%) Security Cleared
3 368 (15.14%) SC Cleared
4 112 (4.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 105 (4.32%) Master's Degree
6 98 (4.03%) DV Cleared
7 48 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.85%) PhD
9 43 (1.77%) HND
10 37 (1.52%) Chartered Engineer
11 36 (1.48%) HNC
12 34 (1.40%) PMI Certification
13 32 (1.32%) Azure Certification
14 31 (1.28%) CISSP
15 30 (1.23%) ACCA
16 28 (1.15%) AWS Certification
17 27 (1.11%) CIMA
18 26 (1.07%) PMP
19 22 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
20 20 (0.82%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (15.34%) Data Quality
2 295 (12.13%) QA
3 78 (3.21%) Accessibility
4 61 (2.51%) GDPR
5 33 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 30 (1.23%) GRC
7 27 (1.11%) GxP
8 23 (0.95%) SLA
9 18 (0.74%) IEC 61508
9 18 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 15288
9 18 (0.74%) NIST
10 16 (0.66%) ISO 9001
11 15 (0.62%) ISO 19650
12 14 (0.58%) GMP
13 12 (0.49%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.45%) PMO
15 10 (0.41%) ISO 26262
16 9 (0.37%) WCAG
17 8 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
17 8 (0.33%) GAAP
System Software
1 115 (4.73%) Docker
2 94 (3.87%) Firmware
3 53 (2.18%) Active Directory
4 43 (1.77%) Embedded Firmware
5 21 (0.86%) 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 (0.082%) iptables
10 2 (0.082%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.082%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.041%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.041%) LXC
Systems Management
1 95 (3.91%) Kubernetes
2 43 (1.77%) Grafana
3 37 (1.52%) Ansible
4 28 (1.15%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
6 16 (0.66%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.53%) Puppet
8 9 (0.37%) 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%) Argo
10 5 (0.21%) Autotask
10 5 (0.21%) Rancher
10 5 (0.21%) SCCM
10 5 (0.21%) WMI
10 5 (0.21%) yum
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 345 (14.19%) Microsoft
2 122 (5.02%) SAP
3 100 (4.11%) Salesforce
4 99 (4.07%) Oracle
5 71 (2.92%) EMC
6 64 (2.63%) Databricks
7 55 (2.26%) ServiceNow
8 53 (2.18%) Cisco
9 39 (1.60%) Adobe
10 37 (1.52%) Google
11 30 (1.23%) Samsung
12 28 (1.15%) TikTok
13 26 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
14 25 (1.03%) Sage
15 23 (0.95%) Thales
16 22 (0.90%) Informatica
17 21 (0.86%) IBM
17 21 (0.86%) VMware
18 20 (0.82%) Siemens
19 19 (0.78%) Autodesk