Validation Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Validation
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Validation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 143 148 157
Rank change year-on-year +5 +9 -59
Permanent jobs citing Validation 600 684 623
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 1.43% 1.83% 2.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.79% 2.07% 2.25%
Number of salaries quoted 301 244 296
10th Percentile £32,500 £35,309 £36,875
25th Percentile £39,625 £42,875 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £53,750
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67,500 £62,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -4.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,444 33,009 27,736
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 79.71% 88.20% 90.56%
Number of salaries quoted 19,110 15,194 20,646
10th Percentile £27,707 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,760 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.34%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,435
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Validation
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Validation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Validation job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Validation
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Validation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Validation

Validation
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Validation in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Validation in the UK excluding London

Validation
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Validation within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 December 2025. 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
South East +20 205 £46,000 -21.70% 729
North of England -22 127 £54,500 +18.48% 543
Midlands +18 84 £42,215 -15.57% 401
North West -4 80 £53,375 +11.94% 286
South West +30 73 £50,000 -7.06% 316
East of England -3 71 £60,000 +9.09% 387
West Midlands +9 51 £37,500 -28.57% 212
Yorkshire -2 36 £61,250 +63.33% 219
East Midlands +6 33 £42,500 -5.56% 168
Scotland -10 28 £70,079 +20.76% 113
North East +2 11 £31,000 -25.30% 38
Wales +10 9 £65,000 +32.37% 66
Northern Ireland -12 3 - - 24
Validation
UK

Validation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 15 (2.50%) Confluence
2 10 (1.67%) CMS
2 10 (1.67%) SugarCRM
3 7 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.83%) Apache
4 5 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.67%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.50%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.33%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.17%) FileNet
8 1 (0.17%) Kinematics
8 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 51 (8.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (7.67%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (2.50%) Simulink
4 8 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.67%) Fusion 360
5 4 (0.67%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.50%) Mathcad
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe Captivate
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.33%) Elementor
7 2 (0.33%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.33%) Weka
8 1 (0.17%) CATIA
8 1 (0.17%) Doxygen
8 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.17%) Navisworks
8 1 (0.17%) Revit
Business Applications
1 10 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.67%) Markit EDM
2 4 (0.67%) SAP BPC
3 3 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.33%) Primavera
4 2 (0.33%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.17%) SAP Business One
5 1 (0.17%) Shopify
5 1 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 58 (9.67%) Azure
2 57 (9.50%) Power Platform
3 28 (4.67%) AWS
4 19 (3.17%) SaaS
5 17 (2.83%) dbt
6 14 (2.33%) Snowflake
7 13 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
8 12 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.50%) GitHub
10 8 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
11 6 (1.00%) Amazon S3
11 6 (1.00%) Datadog
11 6 (1.00%) PaaS
12 5 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.83%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.83%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (0.83%) GCP
12 5 (0.83%) Serverless
13 4 (0.67%) Entra ID
13 4 (0.67%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.33%) HTTP
1 8 (1.33%) TCP/IP
1 8 (1.33%) WAN
2 7 (1.17%) 5G
2 7 (1.17%) DNS
2 7 (1.17%) MQTT
3 6 (1.00%) SD-WAN
4 5 (0.83%) Firewall
4 5 (0.83%) Modbus
5 4 (0.67%) SMTP
6 3 (0.50%) DHCP
6 3 (0.50%) LAN
6 3 (0.50%) Network Security
6 3 (0.50%) VLAN
6 3 (0.50%) Wireless
7 2 (0.33%) GSM
7 2 (0.33%) IPsec
7 2 (0.33%) LTE
7 2 (0.33%) VPN
7 2 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (9.17%) Power BI
2 27 (4.50%) Tableau
3 23 (3.83%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (3.17%) Metadata
5 15 (2.50%) BigQuery
6 14 (2.33%) Relational Database
7 10 (1.67%) Spotfire
7 10 (1.67%) SQL Server
8 9 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
9 8 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 7 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
11 6 (1.00%) Data Lake
12 4 (0.67%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
12 4 (0.67%) Big Data
12 4 (0.67%) Data Vault
12 4 (0.67%) MySQL
12 4 (0.67%) SAP HANA
13 3 (0.50%) Data Mining
13 3 (0.50%) GIS
13 3 (0.50%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 43 (7.17%) JIRA
2 41 (6.83%) Rational DOORS
3 33 (5.50%) Git
4 9 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.17%) Cucumber
5 7 (1.17%) JMeter
5 7 (1.17%) TestRail
6 6 (1.00%) LabVIEW
6 6 (1.00%) Locust
6 6 (1.00%) Postman
7 5 (0.83%) GitLab
7 5 (0.83%) Selenium
8 4 (0.67%) Subversion
9 3 (0.50%) ERwin
9 3 (0.50%) PowerDesigner
9 3 (0.50%) Rational Rhapsody
10 2 (0.33%) Charles Proxy
10 2 (0.33%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.33%) Robot Framework
10 2 (0.33%) SonarQube
General
1 167 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 104 (17.33%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (15.00%) Finance
4 50 (8.33%) Electronics
5 39 (6.50%) Manufacturing
6 36 (6.00%) Law
7 33 (5.50%) Aerospace
8 28 (4.67%) Documentation Skills
9 24 (4.00%) Pharmaceutical
9 24 (4.00%) Presentation Skills
9 24 (4.00%) Retail
10 22 (3.67%) Public Sector
11 21 (3.50%) Marketing
11 21 (3.50%) Organisational Skills
12 18 (3.00%) Telecoms
13 17 (2.83%) Automotive
13 17 (2.83%) Avionics
14 16 (2.67%) Aviation
15 15 (2.50%) Legal
16 10 (1.67%) Games
Job Titles
1 102 (17.00%) Analyst
2 87 (14.50%) Senior
3 76 (12.67%) Systems Engineer
4 68 (11.33%) Lead
5 35 (5.83%) Test Engineer
6 31 (5.17%) Applications Engineer
7 28 (4.67%) Junior
7 28 (4.67%) Principal Engineer
8 27 (4.50%) Applications Support
8 27 (4.50%) Data Analyst
8 27 (4.50%) Support Engineer
8 27 (4.50%) Validation Engineer
9 25 (4.17%) Applications Support Engineer
10 24 (4.00%) Business Analyst
10 24 (4.00%) Integration Engineer
11 23 (3.83%) Team Leader
12 17 (2.83%) Architect
12 17 (2.83%) Support Analyst
12 17 (2.83%) Systems Integration Engineer
12 17 (2.83%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.50%) REST
2 11 (1.83%) React
3 9 (1.50%) CSS
3 9 (1.50%) HTML
3 9 (1.50%) Middleware
4 7 (1.17%) GraphQL
4 7 (1.17%) JSON
4 7 (1.17%) Next.js
5 6 (1.00%) Gherkin
5 6 (1.00%) Pandas
5 6 (1.00%) XML
6 5 (0.83%) OLE
6 5 (0.83%) PySpark
6 5 (0.83%) pytest
7 4 (0.67%) Playwright
7 4 (0.67%) SOAP
8 3 (0.50%) .NET
8 3 (0.50%) OpenGL
8 3 (0.50%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.50%) Vulkan
Miscellaneous
1 63 (10.50%) Management Information System
2 42 (7.00%) Life Science
3 29 (4.83%) Operational Technology
4 20 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 20 (3.33%) Self-Motivation
5 15 (2.50%) Onboarding
6 13 (2.17%) Algorithms
6 13 (2.17%) SCADA
7 10 (1.67%) Embedded Systems
7 10 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (1.67%) FPGA
8 9 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 8 (1.33%) LIMS
10 7 (1.17%) Cloud Native
10 7 (1.17%) e-Learning
10 7 (1.17%) IoT
10 7 (1.17%) Semantic Web
11 6 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.00%) Self-Driving Car
Operating Systems
1 31 (5.17%) Windows
2 25 (4.17%) Linux
3 9 (1.50%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.83%) Unix
4 5 (0.83%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.50%) Android
5 3 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.17%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.17%) VxWorks
7 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (22.17%) Agile
2 132 (22.00%) Verification and Validation
3 124 (20.67%) Problem-Solving
4 90 (15.00%) Systems Engineering
5 89 (14.83%) Continuous Improvement
6 72 (12.00%) Data Validation
6 72 (12.00%) Migration
7 64 (10.67%) Data Analysis
8 62 (10.33%) Business Intelligence
9 60 (10.00%) Analytics
10 55 (9.17%) Test Automation
11 52 (8.67%) Data Cleansing
12 51 (8.50%) Mentoring
13 50 (8.33%) Data Management
14 47 (7.83%) Software Engineering
15 44 (7.33%) CI/CD
15 44 (7.33%) Visualisation
16 43 (7.17%) ETL
17 41 (6.83%) Requirements Management
18 40 (6.67%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 109 (18.17%) SQL
2 101 (16.83%) Python
3 30 (5.00%) C
4 27 (4.50%) C++
4 27 (4.50%) MATLAB
5 14 (2.33%) Java
5 14 (2.33%) JavaScript
6 11 (1.83%) TypeScript
7 8 (1.33%) PowerShell
8 7 (1.17%) Bash
9 5 (0.83%) C#
10 4 (0.67%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.50%) Embedded C
11 3 (0.50%) GLSL
11 3 (0.50%) Go
11 3 (0.50%) Google Apps Script
11 3 (0.50%) R
11 3 (0.50%) Tcl
11 3 (0.50%) VB
12 2 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 199 (33.17%) Degree
2 102 (17.00%) BPSS Clearance
3 83 (13.83%) Security Cleared
4 37 (6.17%) SC Cleared
5 20 (3.33%) HNC
6 19 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (2.83%) Master's Degree
8 14 (2.33%) DV Cleared
9 12 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 12 (2.00%) PMP
10 11 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
11 9 (1.50%) CCNA
11 9 (1.50%) Chartered Engineer
11 9 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.50%) Numerate Degree
12 8 (1.33%) HND
12 8 (1.33%) RIBA
13 7 (1.17%) ISTQB
14 6 (1.00%) Network+ Certification
15 5 (0.83%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (12.83%) QA
2 64 (10.67%) Data Quality
3 39 (6.50%) ISO/IEC 15288
4 32 (5.33%) GxP
5 27 (4.50%) SLA
6 22 (3.67%) Accessibility
7 16 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 12207
8 13 (2.17%) GDPR
9 10 (1.67%) Good Clinical Practice
10 9 (1.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (1.33%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 6 (1.00%) WCAG
13 5 (0.83%) ARP4761
13 5 (0.83%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.67%) GMP
14 4 (0.67%) ISO 13485
14 4 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.67%) NIST
14 4 (0.67%) SEPA
14 4 (0.67%) TARGET2
System Software
1 25 (4.17%) VMware Infrastructure
2 23 (3.83%) Docker
3 20 (3.33%) Firmware
4 12 (2.00%) Active Directory
5 10 (1.67%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.33%) Ceph
6 2 (0.33%) Lustre
6 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 2 (0.33%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.33%) vCloud
6 2 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.33%) vSphere
7 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.17%) pfSense
Systems Management
1 18 (3.00%) Kubernetes
2 11 (1.83%) Terraform
3 9 (1.50%) Grafana
4 7 (1.17%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 6 (1.00%) Ansible
6 3 (0.50%) Argo
6 3 (0.50%) Rancher
6 3 (0.50%) yum
7 2 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (0.33%) Functional Safety
7 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.33%) Nessus
7 2 (0.33%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.33%) Rundeck
8 1 (0.17%) Control-M
8 1 (0.17%) Kibana
8 1 (0.17%) Puppet
8 1 (0.17%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 71 (11.83%) Microsoft
2 29 (4.83%) VMware
3 27 (4.50%) SAP
4 22 (3.67%) IBM
4 22 (3.67%) Oracle
5 7 (1.17%) Cisco
5 7 (1.17%) Salesforce
6 5 (0.83%) Databricks
7 4 (0.67%) Ab Initio
7 4 (0.67%) Google
7 4 (0.67%) Guidewire
7 4 (0.67%) ServiceNow
8 3 (0.50%) Agilent
8 3 (0.50%) EMC
8 3 (0.50%) MathWorks
8 3 (0.50%) Siemens
9 2 (0.33%) Adobe
9 2 (0.33%) Alteryx
9 2 (0.33%) BT
9 2 (0.33%) Sage