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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 14 2
Rank change year-on-year +3 -12 +10
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 323 327 835
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 7.87% 12.86% 21.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.58% 14.21% 25.92%
Number of salaries quoted 230 68 374
10th Percentile £52,388 £44,625 £38,250
25th Percentile £63,750 £49,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - +4.35%
75th Percentile £100,000 £81,563 £73,539
90th Percentile - £90,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £75,000 £75,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +15.38% -7.14%

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 2,789 2,301 3,221
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 67.92% 90.48% 84.65%
Number of salaries quoted 1,655 993 1,501
10th Percentile £29,100 £26,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,011 £32,000 £40,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £38,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +44.74% -30.91% +4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £60,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £75,980 £82,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -3.33%

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 28 September 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 28 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
Glasgow -3 163 £85,000 +13.71% 250
Edinburgh +29 128 £70,000 +37.25% 172
West Lothian +4 11 £67,500 +28.57% 8
Aberdeen -6 9 £65,000 +18.18% 14
South Lanarkshire -2 8 £72,500 - 3
Stirling -6 2 £40,000 - 3
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 3 (0.93%) Confluence
2 2 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.62%) FactoryTalk
2 2 (0.62%) WinCC
3 1 (0.31%) Apache
3 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.31%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (0.31%) Ethereum
3 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Simulink
2 1 (0.31%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 49 (15.17%) AWS
2 25 (7.74%) Azure
3 17 (5.26%) GCP
4 13 (4.02%) SaaS
5 8 (2.48%) Amazon Bedrock
6 6 (1.86%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (1.55%) GitHub
8 4 (1.24%) Azure AI
8 4 (1.24%) Azure Functions
8 4 (1.24%) Serverless
9 3 (0.93%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Logic Apps
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Machine Learning
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (0.93%) dbt
10 2 (0.62%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.62%) AWS Step Functions
10 2 (0.62%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (0.62%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.17%) Ethernet
1 7 (2.17%) RS-232
2 6 (1.86%) Broadband
3 5 (1.55%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.93%) DNS
4 3 (0.93%) Network Security
5 2 (0.62%) Modbus
5 2 (0.62%) Profibus
6 1 (0.31%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (1.86%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.24%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.24%) SQL Server
3 3 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.93%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (0.62%) Parquet
5 1 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.31%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.31%) Big Data
5 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.31%) Redis
5 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 8 (2.48%) Git
2 4 (1.24%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.93%) JIRA
3 3 (0.93%) Rational DOORS
3 3 (0.93%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.62%) Cucumber
4 2 (0.62%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.62%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.62%) JUnit
4 2 (0.62%) Maven
4 2 (0.62%) Mockito
5 1 (0.31%) Browser DevTools
General
1 64 (19.81%) Finance
2 32 (9.91%) Social Skills
3 18 (5.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 14 (4.33%) Financial Institution
5 13 (4.02%) Banking
6 12 (3.72%) Law
7 10 (3.10%) Analytical Skills
8 9 (2.79%) Marketing
9 8 (2.48%) Games
10 6 (1.86%) Legal
11 5 (1.55%) Aerospace
11 5 (1.55%) Front Office
12 3 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.93%) Electronics
12 3 (0.93%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.62%) Automotive
13 2 (0.62%) Aviation
13 2 (0.62%) Tech for Good
14 1 (0.31%) Advertising
14 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 217 (67.18%) Software Engineer
2 77 (23.84%) Senior
3 73 (22.60%) Lead
4 56 (17.34%) Senior Software Engineer
5 46 (14.24%) Lead Software Engineer
6 23 (7.12%) Principal Engineer
7 22 (6.81%) Developer
8 19 (5.88%) Principal Software Engineer
9 18 (5.57%) Java Engineer
10 15 (4.64%) C++ Software Engineer
10 15 (4.64%) Embedded Engineer
10 15 (4.64%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 15 (4.64%) Java Software Engineer
10 15 (4.64%) Software Manager
10 15 (4.64%) Technical Leader
11 11 (3.41%) Data Engineer
11 11 (3.41%) Reliability Engineer
12 10 (3.10%) Full-Stack Developer
13 9 (2.79%) Senior Embedded Engineer
13 9 (2.79%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.57%) .NET
2 16 (4.95%) React
3 8 (2.48%) Jakarta EE
3 8 (2.48%) JSP
3 8 (2.48%) Next.js
4 7 (2.17%) .NET Framework
4 7 (2.17%) AWS CDK
4 7 (2.17%) Terraform
4 7 (2.17%) Yocto
5 4 (1.24%) PySpark
6 3 (0.93%) ASP.NET
6 3 (0.93%) CrewAI
6 3 (0.93%) LangChain
6 3 (0.93%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.93%) OpenTelemetry
6 3 (0.93%) Ray
6 3 (0.93%) Spring
6 3 (0.93%) Spring Boot
6 3 (0.93%) vLLM
6 3 (0.93%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 30 (9.29%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.26%) Educational Technology
3 9 (2.79%) AI Agents
3 9 (2.79%) Public Cloud
4 7 (2.17%) Data Centre
4 7 (2.17%) Device Driver
5 5 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (1.55%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.24%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (1.24%) Product Ownership
7 3 (0.93%) Private Cloud
7 3 (0.93%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (0.93%) SCADA
8 2 (0.62%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.62%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.62%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.62%) Reference Data
9 1 (0.31%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.31%) Bitcoin
9 1 (0.31%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 16 (4.95%) Linux
2 7 (2.17%) Embedded Linux
3 5 (1.55%) Unix
4 4 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.93%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (28.79%) Agile
2 42 (13.00%) AI
3 38 (11.76%) CI/CD
4 33 (10.22%) Full-Stack Development
5 32 (9.91%) DevOps
5 32 (9.91%) Mentoring
6 27 (8.36%) Code Quality
6 27 (8.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 24 (7.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 23 (7.12%) Observability
8 23 (7.12%) Problem-Solving
8 23 (7.12%) SDLC
9 18 (5.57%) LLM
9 18 (5.57%) Microservices
10 17 (5.26%) Analytics
10 17 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 17 (5.26%) Technical Leadership
11 16 (4.95%) Data Engineering
11 16 (4.95%) KYC
12 15 (4.64%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 46 (14.24%) Java
2 37 (11.46%) Python
3 33 (10.22%) JavaScript
4 29 (8.98%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.81%) C++
6 7 (2.17%) C
6 7 (2.17%) Embedded C
6 7 (2.17%) SQL
7 4 (1.24%) C#
7 4 (1.24%) PHP
8 3 (0.93%) Go
8 3 (0.93%) MATLAB
8 3 (0.93%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.62%) Ada
10 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 15 (4.64%) Security Cleared
2 12 (3.72%) Degree
3 11 (3.41%) SC Cleared
4 5 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.55%) DV Cleared
5 3 (0.93%) Chartered Engineer
6 2 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.41%) QA
2 10 (3.10%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.93%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.62%) IEC 61131
5 1 (0.31%) GDPR
5 1 (0.31%) ISO 22301
5 1 (0.31%) NCSC
5 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (0.93%) Docker
2 2 (0.62%) Firmware
3 1 (0.31%) GPFS
3 1 (0.31%) NFS
Systems Management
1 13 (4.02%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.24%) Grafana
3 3 (0.93%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (3.10%) Databricks
2 5 (1.55%) Siemens
2 5 (1.55%) YouTube
3 4 (1.24%) IBM
4 3 (0.93%) Foundry
4 3 (0.93%) Google
4 3 (0.93%) Microsoft
4 3 (0.93%) NVIDIA
4 3 (0.93%) Red Hat
5 2 (0.62%) Rockwell
6 1 (0.31%) Adobe
6 1 (0.31%) Brocade
6 1 (0.31%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.31%) EMC
6 1 (0.31%) NetApp
6 1 (0.31%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle
6 1 (0.31%) Splunk
6 1 (0.31%) Veritas