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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 84 172
Rank change year-on-year +13 +88 +27
Permanent jobs citing Validation 2,293 1,522 1,030
As % of all permanent jobs in England 2.23% 3.55% 1.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.04% 4.01% 1.88%
Number of salaries quoted 1,375 424 400
10th Percentile £36,100 £38,750 £38,734
25th Percentile £42,750 £41,250 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £71,250 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £91,050 £95,000
UK median annual salary £59,490 £55,000 £58,033
% change year-on-year +8.16% -5.23% -10.03%

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 75,504 37,986 54,786
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.43% 88.72% 81.76%
Number of salaries quoted 53,373 21,807 30,739
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,742 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -6.94%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
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 23 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 23 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 +69 579 £70,000 -12.50% 2,061
South East -14 494 £62,500 +13.64% 680
North of England +114 475 £53,851 +13.15% 447
North West +108 292 £55,000 +10.00% 255
Midlands -32 275 £50,000 -9.09% 356
South West +14 243 £55,000 +4.56% 341
East of England -45 194 £55,000 -8.33% 358
West Midlands +48 158 £50,000 -9.09% 246
East Midlands -53 117 £50,000 +17.65% 109
Yorkshire +25 94 £42,750 +0.59% 124
North East +2 89 £55,000 +57.14% 69
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 47 (2.05%) Apache Spark
2 42 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (1.74%) Apache
4 38 (1.66%) Confluence
5 33 (1.44%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.78%) Jupyter
7 13 (0.57%) SAS
8 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
9 9 (0.39%) WinCC
10 6 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.22%) CMS
12 3 (0.13%) Artix
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.087%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.087%) IIS
13 2 (0.087%) Kinematics
13 2 (0.087%) nginx
14 1 (0.044%) ArcGIS
14 1 (0.044%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 142 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (2.18%) Simulink
4 37 (1.61%) Microsoft Project
5 23 (1.00%) Spreadsheet
6 20 (0.87%) SOLIDWORKS
7 18 (0.78%) AutoCAD
8 15 (0.65%) MS Visio
9 11 (0.48%) Revit
10 10 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 7 (0.31%) OrCAD
12 6 (0.26%) EPLAN
12 6 (0.26%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.22%) Mathcad
14 3 (0.13%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.13%) LaTeX
14 3 (0.13%) Productboard
14 3 (0.13%) Sketch
14 3 (0.13%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 41 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.48%) SAP MDG
4 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
4 9 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.35%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
6 7 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) Infor M3
8 5 (0.22%) iTrent
8 5 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
8 5 (0.22%) SAP MDG-BP
9 4 (0.17%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.17%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.17%) Teamcenter
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
10 3 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 301 (13.13%) Azure
2 247 (10.77%) AWS
3 176 (7.68%) Power Platform
4 93 (4.06%) GCP
5 76 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
6 69 (3.01%) GitHub
7 65 (2.83%) SaaS
8 63 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
9 59 (2.57%) Serverless
10 42 (1.83%) Amazon S3
11 37 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
12 36 (1.57%) Entra ID
13 34 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
14 33 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
15 27 (1.18%) Microsoft Purview
16 26 (1.13%) Cloud Computing
17 25 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
18 23 (1.00%) PowerApps
19 22 (0.96%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 70 (3.05%) DNS
2 64 (2.79%) Firewall
3 55 (2.40%) Broadband
4 38 (1.66%) VPN
5 37 (1.61%) TCP/IP
6 36 (1.57%) Network Security
7 34 (1.48%) Ethernet
7 34 (1.48%) WAN
7 34 (1.48%) Wireless
8 32 (1.40%) Modbus
9 28 (1.22%) LAN
9 28 (1.22%) VLAN
10 26 (1.13%) OSPF
11 24 (1.05%) MQTT
12 23 (1.00%) Wireshark
13 22 (0.96%) SD-WAN
14 20 (0.87%) BGP
15 18 (0.78%) 5G
16 17 (0.74%) HTTP
16 17 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (7.11%) Power BI
2 60 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 58 (2.53%) Metadata
4 51 (2.22%) SQL Server
5 49 (2.14%) Data Lake
6 48 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
7 37 (1.61%) Relational Database
7 37 (1.61%) Tableau
8 36 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
9 30 (1.31%) MongoDB
10 27 (1.18%) Big Data
11 25 (1.09%) DynamoDB
12 24 (1.05%) BigQuery
13 23 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
13 23 (1.00%) NoSQL
14 22 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.87%) Semantic Layer
16 18 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
16 18 (0.78%) Delta Lake
16 18 (0.78%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 136 (5.93%) JIRA
2 119 (5.19%) Git
3 60 (2.62%) Jenkins
4 51 (2.22%) GitLab
5 40 (1.74%) Rational DOORS
6 28 (1.22%) LabVIEW
7 26 (1.13%) Selenium
8 22 (0.96%) Snyk
9 20 (0.87%) Postman
10 18 (0.78%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.52%) Burp Suite
11 12 (0.52%) JMeter
12 11 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.48%) Eclipse
13 10 (0.44%) Claude Code
13 10 (0.44%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.39%) Gatling
14 9 (0.39%) MLflow
14 9 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 765 (33.36%) Social Skills
2 574 (25.03%) Finance
3 547 (23.86%) Analytical Skills
4 221 (9.64%) Manufacturing
5 219 (9.55%) Electronics
6 215 (9.38%) Aerospace
7 176 (7.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 125 (5.45%) Law
9 102 (4.45%) Retail
10 101 (4.40%) Banking
10 101 (4.40%) Organisational Skills
10 101 (4.40%) Public Sector
11 84 (3.66%) Marketing
12 82 (3.58%) Pharmaceutical
13 81 (3.53%) Telecoms
14 75 (3.27%) Automotive
15 55 (2.40%) Legal
16 43 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
16 43 (1.88%) Military
17 40 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 412 (17.97%) Senior
2 268 (11.69%) Systems Engineer
3 263 (11.47%) Analyst
4 187 (8.16%) Lead
5 128 (5.58%) Test Engineer
6 115 (5.02%) Architect
7 112 (4.88%) Data Engineer
8 93 (4.06%) Developer
9 85 (3.71%) Business Analyst
10 80 (3.49%) Consultant
10 80 (3.49%) Software Engineer
11 74 (3.23%) Principal Engineer
12 65 (2.83%) Data Analyst
12 65 (2.83%) Electronics Engineer
13 61 (2.66%) Validation Engineer
14 56 (2.44%) Network Engineer
15 49 (2.14%) Embedded Engineer
16 48 (2.09%) Automation Engineer
16 48 (2.09%) Data Scientist
17 47 (2.05%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.71%) Terraform
2 56 (2.44%) REST
3 55 (2.40%) RESTful
4 54 (2.35%) Kafka
5 45 (1.96%) Node.js
6 37 (1.61%) PySpark
7 36 (1.57%) .NET
7 36 (1.57%) Playwright
8 34 (1.48%) JSON
9 31 (1.35%) FastAPI
9 31 (1.35%) XML
10 29 (1.26%) CSS
11 27 (1.18%) HTML
12 26 (1.13%) LDAP
12 26 (1.13%) Middleware
13 25 (1.09%) React
13 25 (1.09%) Swagger
14 22 (0.96%) OAuth
15 21 (0.92%) ModSecurity
16 20 (0.87%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 154 (6.72%) Cloud Native
2 130 (5.67%) Management Information System
3 124 (5.41%) Onboarding
4 79 (3.45%) Data Centre
4 79 (3.45%) Product Ownership
5 63 (2.75%) Driving Licence
6 62 (2.70%) Embedded Systems
7 60 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
8 59 (2.57%) Data Structures
9 57 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
10 48 (2.09%) SCADA
11 47 (2.05%) Algorithms
11 47 (2.05%) Life Science
12 42 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 42 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
13 38 (1.66%) Low-Code
13 38 (1.66%) Robotics
14 36 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
15 35 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
16 32 (1.40%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 135 (5.89%) Linux
2 91 (3.97%) Windows
3 31 (1.35%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.13%) Unix
5 16 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.44%) Android
7 8 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
8 7 (0.31%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
10 5 (0.22%) Kali Linux
11 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.087%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.087%) VMS
13 2 (0.087%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.044%) AIX
14 1 (0.044%) OpenWrt
14 1 (0.044%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (25.73%) Problem-Solving
2 508 (22.15%) Continuous Improvement
3 424 (18.49%) Agile
4 393 (17.14%) Verification and Validation
5 387 (16.88%) AI
6 334 (14.57%) CI/CD
7 314 (13.69%) Stakeholder Management
8 289 (12.60%) Migration
9 285 (12.43%) Test Automation
10 247 (10.77%) Analytics
11 240 (10.47%) Mentoring
12 231 (10.07%) Software Engineering
13 221 (9.64%) DevOps
14 219 (9.55%) Decision-Making
15 207 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 205 (8.94%) Business Intelligence
17 202 (8.81%) Data Analysis
18 198 (8.63%) Roadmaps
19 188 (8.20%) Data Migration
20 182 (7.94%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 469 (20.45%) Python
2 412 (17.97%) SQL
3 93 (4.06%) C++
3 93 (4.06%) Java
4 83 (3.62%) C
5 69 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 65 (2.83%) MATLAB
7 57 (2.49%) C#
8 47 (2.05%) Go
9 36 (1.57%) Bash
10 30 (1.31%) Embedded C
11 29 (1.26%) PowerShell
12 27 (1.18%) TypeScript
13 25 (1.09%) Scala
14 20 (0.87%) R
15 18 (0.78%) Embedded C++
16 14 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 12 (0.52%) Shell Script
18 10 (0.44%) T-SQL
19 9 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 494 (21.54%) Degree
2 477 (20.80%) Security Cleared
3 346 (15.09%) SC Cleared
4 111 (4.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 98 (4.27%) DV Cleared
6 95 (4.14%) Master's Degree
7 51 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 39 (1.70%) HND
9 36 (1.57%) PhD
9 36 (1.57%) PMI Certification
10 34 (1.48%) Chartered Engineer
10 34 (1.48%) HNC
11 31 (1.35%) CISSP
12 30 (1.31%) Azure Certification
13 28 (1.22%) ACCA
14 26 (1.13%) AWS Certification
15 25 (1.09%) CIMA
16 24 (1.05%) PMP
17 21 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.92%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (15.05%) Data Quality
2 292 (12.73%) QA
3 66 (2.88%) Accessibility
4 56 (2.44%) GDPR
5 37 (1.61%) GRC
6 31 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 27 (1.18%) GxP
8 23 (1.00%) IEC 61508
9 18 (0.78%) NIST
9 18 (0.78%) SLA
10 15 (0.65%) ISO 26262
10 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 15 (0.65%) PMO
11 14 (0.61%) ISO 9001
12 13 (0.57%) SOC 2
13 12 (0.52%) GMP
14 11 (0.48%) ISO 19650
15 10 (0.44%) WCAG
16 9 (0.39%) Def Stans
16 9 (0.39%) GAAP
System Software
1 93 (4.06%) Docker
2 89 (3.88%) Firmware
3 46 (2.01%) Active Directory
4 42 (1.83%) Embedded Firmware
5 28 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.78%) vSphere
7 8 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.13%) KVM
10 2 (0.087%) iptables
10 2 (0.087%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.087%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.044%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 85 (3.71%) Kubernetes
2 40 (1.74%) Grafana
3 32 (1.40%) Ansible
3 32 (1.40%) Functional Safety
4 18 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 16 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.44%) Puppet
7 9 (0.39%) Cilium
8 8 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (0.35%) Nessus
8 8 (0.35%) Nmap
9 7 (0.31%) BMC PATROL
9 7 (0.31%) Kibana
10 5 (0.22%) WMI
11 4 (0.17%) Argo
11 4 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.17%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.17%) Rancher
11 4 (0.17%) SCCM
11 4 (0.17%) yum
Vendors
1 305 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 125 (5.45%) SAP
3 103 (4.49%) Oracle
4 62 (2.70%) Salesforce
5 61 (2.66%) Databricks
6 54 (2.35%) ServiceNow
7 51 (2.22%) Cisco
7 51 (2.22%) EMC
8 37 (1.61%) Google
9 31 (1.35%) CrowdStrike
10 26 (1.13%) Palo Alto
11 24 (1.05%) Sage
11 24 (1.05%) VMware
12 23 (1.00%) Tenable
13 20 (0.87%) Red Hat
14 18 (0.78%) IBM
14 18 (0.78%) Informatica
15 17 (0.74%) Autodesk
15 17 (0.74%) Thales
15 17 (0.74%) Workday