Software Engineering Job Trends in Scotland

Software Engineering
UK > Scotland

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in Scotland requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 6 2
Rank change year-on-year -11 -4 +6
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 211 424 2,416
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 6.33% 16.97% 40.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.93% 18.73% 46.42%
Number of salaries quoted 149 134 581
10th Percentile £45,000 £34,750 £38,250
25th Percentile £60,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £64,750 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.39% +7.92% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £82,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £91,000 £96,769 £80,000
UK median annual salary £72,500 £75,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.33% +20.00% -10.71%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Scotland

Software Engineering 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 Scotland.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,363 2,264 5,205
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 70.85% 90.60% 87.94%
Number of salaries quoted 1,404 1,002 2,370
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,968 £28,750
25th Percentile £32,250 £32,851 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £48,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -7.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,079 £67,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £85,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% +3.64% -8.84%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in Scotland

Software Engineering
Salary Trend in Scotland

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Software Engineering.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Salary Histogram in Scotland

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Scotland over the 6 months to 17 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineering in Scotland

Software Engineering
Job Locations in Scotland

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineering within the Scotland region over the 6 months to 17 July 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
Edinburgh +9 126 £65,000 - 24
Glasgow -25 43 £80,000 +7.38% 16
West Lothian +6 18 £67,500 +3.85% 2
South Lanarkshire -2 8 £72,500 - 1
Aberdeen -13 8 £65,000 +30.00% 2
Stirling -1 3 £40,000 -
Banffshire - 2 £30,000 -
Lanarkshire -5 1 £34,000 -57.50% 10
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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 2 (0.95%) FactoryTalk
1 2 (0.95%) WinCC
2 1 (0.47%) Apache
2 1 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.47%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Adobe XD
Cloud Services
1 20 (9.48%) AWS
2 12 (5.69%) Azure
3 9 (4.27%) SaaS
4 6 (2.84%) Azure AI
4 6 (2.84%) Azure Machine Learning
5 3 (1.42%) Amazon Bedrock
5 3 (1.42%) Amazon SageMaker
5 3 (1.42%) GitHub
5 3 (1.42%) Vertex AI
6 2 (0.95%) GCP
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon S3
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon SQS
7 1 (0.47%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.47%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (0.47%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (0.47%) Figma
7 1 (0.47%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.64%) Ethernet
1 14 (6.64%) RS-232
2 10 (4.74%) Broadband
3 2 (0.95%) Modbus
3 2 (0.95%) Profibus
4 1 (0.47%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.95%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.47%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.47%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 2 (0.95%) Git
1 2 (0.95%) SonarQube
2 1 (0.47%) Appium
2 1 (0.47%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.47%) IntelliJ
2 1 (0.47%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.47%) JIRA
2 1 (0.47%) JUnit
2 1 (0.47%) LabVIEW
2 1 (0.47%) Maven
2 1 (0.47%) MLflow
2 1 (0.47%) Mockito
2 1 (0.47%) Postman
General
1 14 (6.64%) Finance
1 14 (6.64%) Social Skills
2 10 (4.74%) Banking
3 8 (3.79%) Legal
4 2 (0.95%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (0.95%) Aviation
4 2 (0.95%) Front Office
4 2 (0.95%) Public Sector
5 1 (0.47%) Advertising
5 1 (0.47%) Electronics
5 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (0.47%) Manufacturing
5 1 (0.47%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 149 (70.62%) Software Engineer
2 61 (28.91%) Senior
3 52 (24.64%) Senior Software Engineer
4 40 (18.96%) Embedded Engineer
4 40 (18.96%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 24 (11.37%) Lead
6 22 (10.43%) Senior Embedded Engineer
6 22 (10.43%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
7 19 (9.00%) Developer
8 18 (8.53%) Principal Engineer
9 17 (8.06%) Principal Software Engineer
10 13 (6.16%) Technical Leader
11 12 (5.69%) Engineering Manager
12 10 (4.74%) C++ Software Engineer
12 10 (4.74%) Full-Stack Developer
13 8 (3.79%) C Software Engineer
13 8 (3.79%) Java Engineer
13 8 (3.79%) Lead Software Engineer
14 7 (3.32%) Database Engineer
14 7 (3.32%) Research Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (6.64%) Yocto
2 10 (4.74%) .NET
3 9 (4.27%) AWS CDK
3 9 (4.27%) React
4 5 (2.37%) J2EE
4 5 (2.37%) JSP
4 5 (2.37%) Next.js
5 3 (1.42%) LangChain
5 3 (1.42%) RESTful
5 3 (1.42%) Semantic Kernel
6 2 (0.95%) .NET Framework
6 2 (0.95%) Node.js
7 1 (0.47%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.47%) CSS3
7 1 (0.47%) Entity Framework
7 1 (0.47%) NumPy
7 1 (0.47%) OpenCV
7 1 (0.47%) Spring Batch
7 1 (0.47%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.47%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 22 (10.43%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.06%) Educational Technology
3 14 (6.64%) Device Driver
4 7 (3.32%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.37%) Legacy Code
5 5 (2.37%) Mobile App
5 5 (2.37%) NHS
6 4 (1.90%) AI Agents
6 4 (1.90%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (1.90%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
7 3 (1.42%) SCADA
8 2 (0.95%) CAN bus
8 2 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.47%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.47%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.47%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.00%) Linux
2 15 (7.11%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.47%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (24.17%) Agile
2 25 (11.85%) Full-Stack Development
3 24 (11.37%) Code Quality
4 23 (10.90%) Observability
5 22 (10.43%) CI/CD
6 21 (9.95%) Mentoring
7 17 (8.06%) DevOps
7 17 (8.06%) Infrastructure as Code
8 16 (7.58%) Technical Leadership
9 15 (7.11%) Coaching
9 15 (7.11%) Problem-Solving
9 15 (7.11%) Scrum
10 14 (6.64%) Microservices
11 12 (5.69%) Collaborative Culture
11 12 (5.69%) SDLC
12 10 (4.74%) Continuous Improvement
13 8 (3.79%) AI
13 8 (3.79%) Incident Response
13 8 (3.79%) Roadmaps
13 8 (3.79%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 26 (12.32%) C++
2 25 (11.85%) Java
3 24 (11.37%) C
4 20 (9.48%) Embedded C
5 17 (8.06%) JavaScript
6 15 (7.11%) TypeScript
7 13 (6.16%) Python
8 3 (1.42%) PHP
8 3 (1.42%) SQL
9 2 (0.95%) C#
9 2 (0.95%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 4 (1.90%) Security Cleared
2 2 (0.95%) SC Cleared
3 1 (0.47%) Degree
3 1 (0.47%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.32%) QA
2 3 (1.42%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.95%) IEC 61131
3 2 (0.95%) IEC 61508
3 2 (0.95%) MISRA
3 2 (0.95%) MISRA C
4 1 (0.47%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.47%) NCSC
System Software
1 7 (3.32%) Firmware
2 2 (0.95%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.90%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.42%) Terraform
3 2 (0.95%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.47%) Grafana
Vendors
1 6 (2.84%) Foundry
2 3 (1.42%) Databricks
2 3 (1.42%) Google
3 2 (0.95%) Microsoft
3 2 (0.95%) Rockwell
3 2 (0.95%) Siemens
4 1 (0.47%) Adobe