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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 79 172
Rank change year-on-year +8 +93 +29
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,230 1,549 1,066
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.20% 3.59% 1.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.00% 4.04% 1.90%
Number of salaries quoted 1,338 432 410
10th Percentile £35,925 £38,750 £38,973
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £57,004
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -3.52% -11.62%
75th Percentile £71,188 £75,900 £72,500
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £93,875
UK median annual salary £59,490 £55,000 £57,767
% change year-on-year +8.16% -4.79% -9.74%

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 74,372 38,333 56,057
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.37% 88.82% 81.58%
Number of salaries quoted 52,671 22,038 32,065
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -7.26%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £96,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%

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 17 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 17 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 +70 561 £68,750 -14.06% 2,383
South East -17 491 £62,500 +16.28% 708
North of England +109 462 £52,951 +17.67% 485
North West +105 284 £55,000 +12.61% 290
Midlands -29 263 £50,000 -9.09% 405
South West +16 233 £58,750 +14.63% 384
East of England -49 186 £55,000 -8.33% 446
West Midlands +38 149 £50,000 -9.09% 275
East Midlands -53 114 £48,372 +13.82% 129
Yorkshire +16 89 £43,000 +1.18% 135
North East +5 89 £55,000 +57.14% 71
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 46 (2.06%) Apache Spark
2 42 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.79%) Apache
4 35 (1.57%) Confluence
5 33 (1.48%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.81%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.58%) SAS
8 8 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.36%) WinCC
9 5 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.18%) CMS
11 3 (0.13%) Artix
11 3 (0.13%) Kinematics
11 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.090%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.090%) IIS
12 2 (0.090%) nginx
13 1 (0.045%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.045%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 131 (5.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (2.11%) Simulink
4 37 (1.66%) Microsoft Project
5 21 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
6 18 (0.81%) SOLIDWORKS
7 15 (0.67%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.67%) MS Visio
8 9 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 7 (0.31%) Revit
10 6 (0.27%) EPLAN
11 5 (0.22%) Mathcad
11 5 (0.22%) Navisworks
11 5 (0.22%) OrCAD
12 3 (0.13%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.13%) CANalyzer
12 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.13%) Productboard
12 3 (0.13%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 40 (1.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (1.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.49%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 8 (0.36%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
5 8 (0.36%) Workday HCM
6 7 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 5 (0.22%) Elite 3E
7 5 (0.22%) Infor M3
7 5 (0.22%) iTrent
7 5 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
7 5 (0.22%) SAP MDG-BP
8 4 (0.18%) SAP MM
8 4 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.13%) SystmOne
10 2 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 286 (12.83%) Azure
2 243 (10.90%) AWS
3 170 (7.62%) Power Platform
4 90 (4.04%) GCP
5 66 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
6 64 (2.87%) Microsoft 365
7 63 (2.83%) GitHub
7 63 (2.83%) SaaS
8 55 (2.47%) Serverless
9 42 (1.88%) Amazon S3
10 36 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
11 33 (1.48%) Entra ID
12 32 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (1.43%) Microsoft Copilot
13 25 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
13 25 (1.12%) Cloud Computing
13 25 (1.12%) Microsoft Purview
14 24 (1.08%) Amazon EMR
15 23 (1.03%) PowerApps
16 21 (0.94%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 71 (3.18%) DNS
2 63 (2.83%) Firewall
3 55 (2.47%) Broadband
4 37 (1.66%) TCP/IP
5 36 (1.61%) VPN
6 34 (1.52%) Network Security
7 33 (1.48%) WAN
8 32 (1.43%) Wireless
9 30 (1.35%) Ethernet
10 28 (1.26%) Modbus
11 26 (1.17%) LAN
11 26 (1.17%) VLAN
12 25 (1.12%) OSPF
13 22 (0.99%) MQTT
13 22 (0.99%) Wireshark
14 21 (0.94%) BGP
14 21 (0.94%) SD-WAN
15 18 (0.81%) 5G
16 17 (0.76%) HTTP
16 17 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 158 (7.09%) Power BI
2 57 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (2.38%) Metadata
4 49 (2.20%) Data Lake
4 49 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 46 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
6 38 (1.70%) Tableau
7 35 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
8 32 (1.43%) Relational Database
9 30 (1.35%) MongoDB
10 25 (1.12%) Big Data
10 25 (1.12%) BigQuery
10 25 (1.12%) DynamoDB
11 22 (0.99%) NoSQL
11 22 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 21 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
12 21 (0.94%) Semantic Layer
13 18 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (0.81%) MySQL
14 16 (0.72%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 131 (5.87%) JIRA
2 117 (5.25%) Git
3 58 (2.60%) Jenkins
4 50 (2.24%) GitLab
5 39 (1.75%) Rational DOORS
6 27 (1.21%) LabVIEW
7 26 (1.17%) Selenium
8 22 (0.99%) Snyk
9 20 (0.90%) Postman
10 18 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.54%) Burp Suite
12 11 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.49%) JMeter
13 10 (0.45%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.40%) Claude Code
14 9 (0.40%) Eclipse
14 9 (0.40%) Gatling
14 9 (0.40%) MLflow
14 9 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 736 (33.00%) Social Skills
2 561 (25.16%) Finance
3 531 (23.81%) Analytical Skills
4 215 (9.64%) Aerospace
5 206 (9.24%) Manufacturing
6 205 (9.19%) Electronics
7 175 (7.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 123 (5.52%) Law
9 97 (4.35%) Banking
9 97 (4.35%) Retail
10 94 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
11 90 (4.04%) Public Sector
12 81 (3.63%) Marketing
12 81 (3.63%) Pharmaceutical
13 80 (3.59%) Telecoms
14 72 (3.23%) Automotive
15 54 (2.42%) Legal
16 42 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
16 42 (1.88%) Military
17 39 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 398 (17.85%) Senior
2 272 (12.20%) Systems Engineer
3 253 (11.35%) Analyst
4 182 (8.16%) Lead
5 127 (5.70%) Test Engineer
6 111 (4.98%) Architect
7 106 (4.75%) Data Engineer
8 94 (4.22%) Developer
9 79 (3.54%) Consultant
10 78 (3.50%) Business Analyst
11 75 (3.36%) Software Engineer
12 73 (3.27%) Principal Engineer
13 63 (2.83%) Data Analyst
13 63 (2.83%) Validation Engineer
14 60 (2.69%) Electronics Engineer
15 54 (2.42%) Network Engineer
16 49 (2.20%) Embedded Engineer
17 48 (2.15%) Data Scientist
17 48 (2.15%) Support Engineer
18 45 (2.02%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (3.59%) Terraform
2 53 (2.38%) RESTful
3 52 (2.33%) Kafka
4 50 (2.24%) REST
5 43 (1.93%) Node.js
6 36 (1.61%) Playwright
7 34 (1.52%) PySpark
8 33 (1.48%) .NET
9 32 (1.43%) JSON
10 30 (1.35%) XML
11 28 (1.26%) CSS
11 28 (1.26%) FastAPI
12 26 (1.17%) HTML
12 26 (1.17%) LDAP
13 25 (1.12%) Middleware
13 25 (1.12%) React
14 22 (0.99%) Swagger
15 21 (0.94%) ModSecurity
16 19 (0.85%) pytest
17 18 (0.81%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 150 (6.73%) Cloud Native
2 122 (5.47%) Management Information System
2 122 (5.47%) Onboarding
3 80 (3.59%) Data Centre
4 76 (3.41%) Product Ownership
5 61 (2.74%) Driving Licence
6 60 (2.69%) Embedded Systems
6 60 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
7 57 (2.56%) Data Structures
8 56 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
9 47 (2.11%) Algorithms
9 47 (2.11%) Life Science
10 44 (1.97%) SCADA
11 42 (1.88%) AI Agents
11 42 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
12 40 (1.79%) Low-Code
13 39 (1.75%) Robotics
14 35 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
15 33 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
16 31 (1.39%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 134 (6.01%) Linux
2 90 (4.04%) Windows
3 32 (1.43%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.12%) Unix
5 17 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.45%) Android
7 8 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.31%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.18%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.090%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.090%) VMS
13 2 (0.090%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.045%) AIX
14 1 (0.045%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.045%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (25.38%) Problem-Solving
2 491 (22.02%) Continuous Improvement
3 405 (18.16%) Agile
4 385 (17.26%) Verification and Validation
5 378 (16.95%) AI
6 318 (14.26%) CI/CD
7 297 (13.32%) Stakeholder Management
8 278 (12.47%) Migration
9 276 (12.38%) Test Automation
10 240 (10.76%) Analytics
11 234 (10.49%) Mentoring
12 223 (10.00%) Software Engineering
13 213 (9.55%) Decision-Making
14 208 (9.33%) DevOps
15 203 (9.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 200 (8.97%) Data Analysis
17 197 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
18 187 (8.39%) Roadmaps
19 185 (8.30%) Data Migration
20 180 (8.07%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 454 (20.36%) Python
2 402 (18.03%) SQL
3 91 (4.08%) Java
4 89 (3.99%) C++
5 82 (3.68%) C
6 67 (3.00%) JavaScript
7 61 (2.74%) MATLAB
8 53 (2.38%) C#
9 49 (2.20%) Go
10 35 (1.57%) Bash
11 30 (1.35%) Embedded C
12 28 (1.26%) PowerShell
13 25 (1.12%) TypeScript
14 24 (1.08%) Scala
15 18 (0.81%) Embedded C++
15 18 (0.81%) R
16 13 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 11 (0.49%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.40%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 473 (21.21%) Degree
2 469 (21.03%) Security Cleared
3 338 (15.16%) SC Cleared
4 115 (5.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 98 (4.39%) DV Cleared
6 94 (4.22%) Master's Degree
7 48 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (1.61%) Chartered Engineer
8 36 (1.61%) PhD
9 35 (1.57%) PMI Certification
10 34 (1.52%) HND
11 33 (1.48%) CISSP
12 29 (1.30%) HNC
13 27 (1.21%) ACCA
14 25 (1.12%) AWS Certification
14 25 (1.12%) Azure Certification
15 24 (1.08%) CIMA
16 23 (1.03%) CISM
17 22 (0.99%) PMP
18 21 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (15.16%) Data Quality
2 287 (12.87%) QA
3 68 (3.05%) Accessibility
4 55 (2.47%) GDPR
5 37 (1.66%) GRC
6 31 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.21%) GxP
8 22 (0.99%) IEC 61508
9 19 (0.85%) NIST
10 18 (0.81%) SLA
11 16 (0.72%) PMO
12 15 (0.67%) ISO 26262
13 14 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 13 (0.58%) ISO 9001
14 13 (0.58%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.49%) GMP
16 10 (0.45%) WCAG
17 9 (0.40%) Def Stans
17 9 (0.40%) GAAP
17 9 (0.40%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 88 (3.95%) Docker
2 86 (3.86%) Firmware
3 46 (2.06%) Active Directory
4 41 (1.84%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
6 19 (0.85%) vSphere
7 8 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) KVM
10 2 (0.090%) iptables
10 2 (0.090%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.090%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.045%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 81 (3.63%) Kubernetes
2 37 (1.66%) Grafana
3 32 (1.43%) Ansible
4 29 (1.30%) Functional Safety
5 17 (0.76%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (0.45%) Cilium
8 8 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (0.36%) Nessus
8 8 (0.36%) Nmap
8 8 (0.36%) Puppet
9 7 (0.31%) BMC PATROL
9 7 (0.31%) Kibana
10 5 (0.22%) WMI
11 4 (0.18%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.18%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.18%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.18%) SCCM
12 3 (0.13%) Argo
12 3 (0.13%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
Vendors
1 288 (12.91%) Microsoft
2 123 (5.52%) SAP
3 102 (4.57%) Oracle
4 59 (2.65%) Salesforce
5 55 (2.47%) Databricks
5 55 (2.47%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.24%) Cisco
7 44 (1.97%) EMC
8 37 (1.66%) Google
9 31 (1.39%) CrowdStrike
10 26 (1.17%) Palo Alto
11 25 (1.12%) VMware
12 23 (1.03%) Sage
12 23 (1.03%) Tenable
13 21 (0.94%) Red Hat
14 17 (0.76%) IBM
15 16 (0.72%) Civica
15 16 (0.72%) Informatica
15 16 (0.72%) Thales
16 15 (0.67%) Workday