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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 90 172
Rank change year-on-year +22 +82 +23
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,438 1,472 1,018
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.34% 3.42% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.18% 3.85% 1.90%
Number of salaries quoted 1,439 396 377
10th Percentile £36,250 £38,725 £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 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +6.36% -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 76,626 38,274 53,567
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.70% 88.94% 82.71%
Number of salaries quoted 53,560 21,879 28,580
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,585 £36,250 £44,000
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 £75,246 £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 11 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 11 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 +85 630 £68,750 -14.06% 1,740
South East -14 505 £62,500 +13.64% 623
North of England +113 497 £51,000 +6.96% 405
Midlands -15 318 £50,000 -9.09% 383
North West +116 306 £55,000 +9.88% 210
South West +28 247 £55,000 +7.32% 292
East of England -38 217 £55,000 -10.20% 346
West Midlands +45 174 £47,500 -13.64% 244
East Midlands -35 144 £50,000 +17.65% 139
Yorkshire +22 99 £42,500 - 139
North East +1 92 £55,000 +57.14% 57
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 (2.17%) Apache Spark
2 45 (1.85%) Apache
3 43 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (1.44%) SharePoint
5 33 (1.35%) Confluence
6 32 (1.31%) 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%) FactoryTalk
14 1 (0.041%) Oracle Workflow
14 1 (0.041%) WebSphere
Applications
1 158 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (2.21%) Simulink
4 38 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 27 (1.11%) Spreadsheet
6 22 (0.90%) AutoCAD
7 19 (0.78%) SOLIDWORKS
8 15 (0.62%) Revit
9 14 (0.57%) MS Visio
10 13 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 12 (0.49%) OrCAD
12 10 (0.41%) EPLAN
12 10 (0.41%) Navisworks
13 6 (0.25%) Mathcad
13 6 (0.25%) Notion
14 5 (0.21%) Stateflow
15 4 (0.16%) CANalyzer
15 4 (0.16%) Chatbot
16 3 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
16 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
1 331 (13.58%) Azure
2 258 (10.58%) AWS
3 189 (7.75%) Power Platform
4 96 (3.94%) GCP
5 83 (3.40%) GitHub
6 78 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
7 71 (2.91%) SaaS
8 69 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 55 (2.26%) Serverless
10 48 (1.97%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.93%) Amazon S3
12 39 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
13 36 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
14 33 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
15 31 (1.27%) Microsoft Purview
16 29 (1.19%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
18 27 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
19 24 (0.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (0.98%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 73 (2.99%) DNS
2 70 (2.87%) Firewall
3 56 (2.30%) Broadband
4 50 (2.05%) TCP/IP
5 48 (1.97%) VPN
6 40 (1.64%) Modbus
7 39 (1.60%) VLAN
7 39 (1.60%) Wireless
8 38 (1.56%) Ethernet
9 36 (1.48%) WAN
10 35 (1.44%) Network Security
11 31 (1.27%) LAN
11 31 (1.27%) OSPF
12 28 (1.15%) MQTT
13 26 (1.07%) Wireshark
14 24 (0.98%) SD-WAN
15 22 (0.90%) BGP
16 21 (0.86%) DHCP
17 18 (0.74%) 5G
17 18 (0.74%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (7.22%) Power BI
2 67 (2.75%) Metadata
3 65 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (2.34%) SQL Server
5 47 (1.93%) Data Lake
6 46 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
7 39 (1.60%) Amazon Athena
8 35 (1.44%) Relational Database
8 35 (1.44%) Tableau
9 29 (1.19%) MongoDB
10 27 (1.11%) Big Data
11 26 (1.07%) NoSQL
12 25 (1.03%) Power Query
13 24 (0.98%) BigQuery
14 22 (0.90%) 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
1 134 (5.50%) JIRA
2 128 (5.25%) Git
3 62 (2.54%) GitLab
3 62 (2.54%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.85%) Rational DOORS
5 33 (1.35%) 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 10 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
13 9 (0.37%) Cucumber
13 9 (0.37%) JMeter
14 8 (0.33%) Gatling
14 8 (0.33%) Metasploit
14 8 (0.33%) MLflow
General
1 825 (33.84%) Social Skills
2 619 (25.39%) Finance
3 580 (23.79%) Analytical Skills
4 248 (10.17%) Manufacturing
5 245 (10.05%) Electronics
6 233 (9.56%) Aerospace
7 222 (9.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 126 (5.17%) Law
9 116 (4.76%) Marketing
10 112 (4.59%) Public Sector
11 108 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
12 106 (4.35%) Banking
13 98 (4.02%) Retail
14 91 (3.73%) Telecoms
15 84 (3.45%) Pharmaceutical
16 83 (3.40%) Automotive
17 54 (2.21%) Legal
18 48 (1.97%) Military
19 43 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
20 40 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 433 (17.76%) Senior
2 263 (10.79%) Systems Engineer
3 251 (10.30%) Analyst
4 192 (7.88%) Lead
5 123 (5.05%) Data Engineer
6 122 (5.00%) Test Engineer
7 111 (4.55%) Architect
8 103 (4.22%) Developer
9 92 (3.77%) Software Engineer
10 89 (3.65%) Consultant
11 85 (3.49%) Principal Engineer
12 80 (3.28%) Electronics Engineer
13 74 (3.04%) Business Analyst
14 61 (2.50%) Data Analyst
15 60 (2.46%) Network Engineer
16 57 (2.34%) Automation Engineer
17 56 (2.30%) Validation Engineer
18 53 (2.17%) Design Engineer
19 50 (2.05%) Data Scientist
20 48 (1.97%) Principal Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (3.69%) Terraform
2 69 (2.83%) REST
3 60 (2.46%) Kafka
3 60 (2.46%) RESTful
4 54 (2.21%) .NET
5 51 (2.09%) Node.js
6 38 (1.56%) PySpark
7 37 (1.52%) FastAPI
7 37 (1.52%) JSON
8 36 (1.48%) Playwright
9 33 (1.35%) CSS
10 32 (1.31%) HTML
11 31 (1.27%) XML
12 30 (1.23%) React
13 29 (1.19%) Swagger
14 26 (1.07%) RabbitMQ
15 25 (1.03%) Middleware
15 25 (1.03%) OpenAPI
16 23 (0.94%) LDAP
17 22 (0.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 158 (6.48%) Cloud Native
1 158 (6.48%) Onboarding
2 148 (6.07%) Management Information System
3 78 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 75 (3.08%) Driving Licence
5 74 (3.04%) Data Centre
6 68 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (2.71%) Embedded Systems
8 65 (2.67%) Data Structures
9 64 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
10 57 (2.34%) SCADA
11 52 (2.13%) AI Agents
12 49 (2.01%) Life Science
13 47 (1.93%) Algorithms
14 42 (1.72%) Robotics
15 38 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
15 38 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
15 38 (1.56%) Low-Code
16 34 (1.39%) Analogue Electronics
17 32 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.54%) Linux
2 95 (3.90%) Windows
3 36 (1.48%) 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%) macOS
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
1 632 (25.92%) Problem-Solving
2 554 (22.72%) Continuous Improvement
3 446 (18.29%) Agile
4 442 (18.13%) AI
5 412 (16.90%) Verification and Validation
6 350 (14.36%) CI/CD
7 330 (13.54%) Stakeholder Management
8 319 (13.08%) Test Automation
9 303 (12.43%) Migration
10 265 (10.87%) Analytics
11 259 (10.62%) Mentoring
12 250 (10.25%) Software Engineering
13 238 (9.76%) Decision-Making
14 233 (9.56%) DevOps
15 216 (8.86%) Business Intelligence
16 211 (8.65%) Data Analysis
17 207 (8.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 203 (8.33%) Roadmaps
19 193 (7.92%) Data Migration
20 189 (7.75%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 511 (20.96%) Python
2 437 (17.92%) SQL
3 98 (4.02%) C++
4 96 (3.94%) Java
5 94 (3.86%) C
6 77 (3.16%) C#
7 72 (2.95%) JavaScript
8 67 (2.75%) MATLAB
9 45 (1.85%) Go
10 39 (1.60%) PowerShell
11 37 (1.52%) Bash
12 31 (1.27%) TypeScript
13 29 (1.19%) Embedded C
14 25 (1.03%) Scala
15 24 (0.98%) 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
1 543 (22.27%) Degree
2 506 (20.75%) Security Cleared
3 369 (15.14%) SC Cleared
4 111 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 105 (4.31%) Master's Degree
6 98 (4.02%) DV Cleared
7 48 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 45 (1.85%) PhD
9 43 (1.76%) HND
10 36 (1.48%) Chartered Engineer
10 36 (1.48%) HNC
11 34 (1.39%) PMI Certification
12 32 (1.31%) Azure Certification
13 31 (1.27%) CISSP
14 30 (1.23%) ACCA
15 27 (1.11%) AWS Certification
15 27 (1.11%) CIMA
16 26 (1.07%) PMP
17 23 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
18 20 (0.82%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (15.34%) Data Quality
2 295 (12.10%) QA
3 78 (3.20%) Accessibility
4 62 (2.54%) GDPR
5 32 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 29 (1.19%) GRC
7 28 (1.15%) GxP
8 22 (0.90%) SLA
9 18 (0.74%) IEC 61508
9 18 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 15288
9 18 (0.74%) NIST
10 16 (0.66%) ISO 19650
10 16 (0.66%) ISO 9001
11 14 (0.57%) GMP
12 11 (0.45%) ISO 26262
12 11 (0.45%) PMO
12 11 (0.45%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.37%) WCAG
14 8 (0.33%) Automotive SPICE
14 8 (0.33%) GAAP
System Software
1 114 (4.68%) Docker
2 94 (3.86%) Firmware
3 53 (2.17%) Active Directory
4 43 (1.76%) Embedded Firmware
5 21 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.62%) vSphere
7 9 (0.37%) 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 94 (3.86%) Kubernetes
2 42 (1.72%) Grafana
3 38 (1.56%) Ansible
4 28 (1.15%) Functional Safety
5 18 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.62%) Prometheus
8 13 (0.53%) Puppet
9 9 (0.37%) BMC PATROL
10 8 (0.33%) Kibana
10 8 (0.33%) Nessus
10 8 (0.33%) Nmap
11 7 (0.29%) Cilium
12 5 (0.21%) Argo
12 5 (0.21%) Autotask
12 5 (0.21%) Rancher
12 5 (0.21%) SCCM
12 5 (0.21%) WMI
12 5 (0.21%) yum
13 4 (0.16%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 345 (14.15%) Microsoft
2 122 (5.00%) SAP
3 100 (4.10%) Salesforce
4 99 (4.06%) Oracle
5 72 (2.95%) EMC
6 65 (2.67%) Databricks
7 55 (2.26%) Cisco
7 55 (2.26%) ServiceNow
8 39 (1.60%) Adobe
9 37 (1.52%) Google
10 30 (1.23%) Samsung
11 28 (1.15%) TikTok
12 26 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
13 25 (1.03%) Sage
14 23 (0.94%) Thales
15 22 (0.90%) Informatica
15 22 (0.90%) VMware
16 21 (0.86%) IBM
17 20 (0.82%) Siemens
18 19 (0.78%) Autodesk