Design Engineer Job Trends in England

Design Engineer
UK > England

The median Design Engineer salary in England is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 2 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 542 515 628
Rank change year-on-year -27 +113 +103
Permanent jobs requiring a Design Engineer 131 90 199
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.16% 0.24% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.27% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 84 53 161
10th Percentile £45,000 £42,500 £25,750
25th Percentile £51,250 £48,869 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +10.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,000 £67,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -23.08%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in England with a recognized job title 74,369 33,693 78,830
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.85% 89.14% 94.44%
Number of salaries quoted 48,888 21,310 60,127
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,000 £38,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -11.13%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £72,433
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £59,648 £53,000
% change year-on-year -7.79% +12.54% -11.67%

Design Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Design Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

Design Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Design Engineer
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for Design Engineer job vacancies in England.

Salary distribution trend for Design Engineer job vacancies in England

Design Engineer
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Design Engineer in England over the 6 months to 2 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Design Engineer in England

Design Engineer
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Design Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 2 May 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
North of England -35 34 £55,000 +9.88% 10
South East -26 26 £56,500 +2.73% 27
North West -5 22 £56,000 +14.22% 5
South West -57 22 £55,000 - 19
London +4 21 £75,000 -2.28% 4
East of England -12 21 £55,000 +4.76% 28
Yorkshire -53 11 £55,000 - 2
Midlands -29 7 £47,500 - 6
West Midlands -17 6 £46,250 +8.82% 4
North East -38 1 £45,000 -25.00% 4
East Midlands -43 1 £70,000 +33.33% 2
Design Engineer
UK

Design Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 2 May 2026, Design Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the England region featuring Design Engineer in the job title.

1 25 (19.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 22 (16.79%) C
2 22 (16.79%) Firmware
3 21 (16.03%) C++
4 19 (14.50%) Embedded Firmware
5 14 (10.69%) Software Engineering
6 12 (9.16%) Synthetic Environment
7 11 (8.40%) Embedded C
8 10 (7.63%) Degree
9 9 (6.87%) FPGA Design
10 8 (6.11%) Cybersecurity
10 8 (6.11%) Digital Signal Processing
10 8 (6.11%) Security Cleared
10 8 (6.11%) Signal Processing
11 7 (5.34%) Altera
11 7 (5.34%) Assembly Language
11 7 (5.34%) Collaborative Working
11 7 (5.34%) Configuration Management
11 7 (5.34%) DV Cleared
11 7 (5.34%) FreeRTOS
11 7 (5.34%) Information Assurance
11 7 (5.34%) Linux
11 7 (5.34%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (5.34%) Requirements Analysis
11 7 (5.34%) Roadmaps
11 7 (5.34%) Schematic Capture
11 7 (5.34%) System Testing
11 7 (5.34%) Technology Roadmap
11 7 (5.34%) Towers Watson Igloo
11 7 (5.34%) UVM

Design Engineer Skill Set
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:

Applications
1 5 (3.82%) AutoCAD
2 2 (1.53%) Solid Edge
3 1 (0.76%) PTC Creo
3 1 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 7 (5.34%) Towers Watson Igloo
Cloud Services
1 3 (2.29%) Figma
2 2 (1.53%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.05%) DNS
2 3 (2.29%) Firewall
2 3 (2.29%) Wireless
3 2 (1.53%) NAS
3 2 (1.53%) NetScaler
3 2 (1.53%) SAN
3 2 (1.53%) Wireshark
4 1 (0.76%) 4G
4 1 (0.76%) 5G
4 1 (0.76%) Broadband
4 1 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
4 1 (0.76%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.76%) WAN
4 1 (0.76%) WebEx
4 1 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (5.34%) Rational DOORS
General
1 21 (16.03%) Electronics
2 16 (12.21%) Manufacturing
3 9 (6.87%) Social Skills
4 6 (4.58%) Telecoms
5 4 (3.05%) Finance
5 4 (3.05%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.29%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.29%) Legal
7 1 (0.76%) Agriculture
7 1 (0.76%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (2.29%) React
2 2 (1.53%) JSON
2 2 (1.53%) JSON Schema
2 2 (1.53%) LDAP
2 2 (1.53%) Regular Expression
2 2 (1.53%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (9.16%) Analogue Electronics
2 9 (6.87%) FPGA
2 9 (6.87%) VHDL
3 8 (6.11%) Algorithms
4 7 (5.34%) NVMe
4 7 (5.34%) PCIe
5 5 (3.82%) Embedded Systems
6 3 (2.29%) Arduino
6 3 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (2.29%) Raspberry Pi
6 3 (2.29%) Robotics
7 2 (1.53%) ARM Cortex
7 2 (1.53%) Cloud Native
7 2 (1.53%) Data Centre
7 2 (1.53%) PKI
7 2 (1.53%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.76%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.34%) FreeRTOS
1 7 (5.34%) Linux
2 4 (3.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 4 (3.05%) Windows
2 4 (3.05%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (19.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 14 (10.69%) Software Engineering
3 12 (9.16%) Synthetic Environment
4 9 (6.87%) FPGA Design
5 8 (6.11%) Cybersecurity
5 8 (6.11%) Digital Signal Processing
5 8 (6.11%) Signal Processing
6 7 (5.34%) Collaborative Working
6 7 (5.34%) Configuration Management
6 7 (5.34%) Information Assurance
6 7 (5.34%) Requirements Analysis
6 7 (5.34%) Roadmaps
6 7 (5.34%) Schematic Capture
6 7 (5.34%) System Testing
6 7 (5.34%) Technology Roadmap
6 7 (5.34%) UVM
6 7 (5.34%) Validation
7 5 (3.82%) Agile
7 5 (3.82%) Problem-Solving
8 4 (3.05%) Prototyping
Programming Languages
1 22 (16.79%) C
2 21 (16.03%) C++
3 11 (8.40%) Embedded C
4 7 (5.34%) Assembly Language
5 4 (3.05%) Embedded C++
6 3 (2.29%) Pascal
7 2 (1.53%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.53%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.76%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 10 (7.63%) Degree
2 8 (6.11%) Security Cleared
3 7 (5.34%) DV Cleared
4 4 (3.05%) Master's Degree
5 3 (2.29%) PhD
5 3 (2.29%) SC Cleared
6 2 (1.53%) HNC
6 2 (1.53%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.29%) GDPR
System Software
1 22 (16.79%) Firmware
2 19 (14.50%) Embedded Firmware
3 4 (3.05%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.05%) vSphere
Vendors
1 7 (5.34%) Altera
1 7 (5.34%) Xilinx
2 5 (3.82%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.05%) VMware
4 3 (2.29%) Motorola
5 2 (1.53%) Citrix
5 2 (1.53%) EMC
5 2 (1.53%) NetApp
6 1 (0.76%) Aruba
6 1 (0.76%) Cisco
6 1 (0.76%) Ekahau
6 1 (0.76%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.76%) Juniper