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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 6 2
Rank change year-on-year -9 -4 +3
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 227 433 2,746
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 6.96% 19.38% 42.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.91% 20.90% 47.68%
Number of salaries quoted 147 143 628
10th Percentile £45,000 £38,600 £38,750
25th Percentile £55,000 £50,625 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £75,000 £84,250 £70,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £100,000 £82,548
UK median annual salary £70,000 £75,000 £60,500
% change year-on-year -6.67% +23.97% -13.57%

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 2,290 2,072 5,759
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 70.25% 92.75% 88.18%
Number of salaries quoted 1,329 857 2,593
10th Percentile £28,250 £26,929 £28,000
25th Percentile £31,500 £32,851 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,250
90th Percentile £80,250 £90,022 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 +10 151 £65,000 -3.70% 20
Glasgow -26 34 £80,000 +7.38% 14
West Lothian +7 20 £67,500 +8.00%
South Lanarkshire 0 8 £72,500 -
Aberdeen -17 4 £65,000 +30.00% 2
Fife -11 2 - -
Banffshire - 2 £30,000 -
Lanarkshire -5 1 £34,000 -57.50% 7
Stirling -6 1 - - 2
Midlothian - 1 - - 9
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 (0.88%) FactoryTalk
1 2 (0.88%) WinCC
2 1 (0.44%) Apache
2 1 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.44%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Adobe XD
Cloud Services
1 16 (7.05%) AWS
2 13 (5.73%) Azure
3 11 (4.85%) SaaS
4 5 (2.20%) Azure AI
4 5 (2.20%) Azure Machine Learning
5 3 (1.32%) GitHub
5 3 (1.32%) Vertex AI
6 2 (0.88%) Amazon Bedrock
6 2 (0.88%) Amazon SageMaker
6 2 (0.88%) GCP
7 1 (0.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.44%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.44%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.44%) Anthropic Claude
7 1 (0.44%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.44%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (0.44%) Azure AKS
7 1 (0.44%) Dagster
7 1 (0.44%) Figma
7 1 (0.44%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (6.61%) Broadband
1 15 (6.61%) Ethernet
1 15 (6.61%) RS-232
2 2 (0.88%) Modbus
2 2 (0.88%) Profibus
3 1 (0.44%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (1.32%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.88%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.44%) MySQL
3 1 (0.44%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 2 (0.88%) Git
1 2 (0.88%) SonarQube
2 1 (0.44%) Appium
2 1 (0.44%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.44%) IntelliJ
2 1 (0.44%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.44%) JIRA
2 1 (0.44%) JUnit
2 1 (0.44%) LabVIEW
2 1 (0.44%) Maven
2 1 (0.44%) MLflow
2 1 (0.44%) Mockito
2 1 (0.44%) Postman
2 1 (0.44%) Subversion
General
1 16 (7.05%) Social Skills
2 13 (5.73%) Finance
3 10 (4.41%) Legal
4 9 (3.96%) Banking
5 6 (2.64%) Games
6 5 (2.20%) Telecoms
7 2 (0.88%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (0.88%) Aviation
7 2 (0.88%) Public Sector
8 1 (0.44%) Advertising
8 1 (0.44%) Electronics
8 1 (0.44%) Front Office
8 1 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.44%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.44%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 170 (74.89%) Software Engineer
2 80 (35.24%) Senior
3 70 (30.84%) Senior Software Engineer
4 54 (23.79%) Embedded Engineer
4 54 (23.79%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 33 (14.54%) Senior Embedded Engineer
5 33 (14.54%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
6 23 (10.13%) Lead
7 19 (8.37%) Principal Engineer
8 18 (7.93%) Principal Software Engineer
9 13 (5.73%) Engineering Manager
10 11 (4.85%) Developer
11 10 (4.41%) Technical Leader
12 9 (3.96%) Full-Stack Developer
13 8 (3.52%) C Software Engineer
13 8 (3.52%) Lead Software Engineer
13 8 (3.52%) Linux Engineer
13 8 (3.52%) Senior Linux Engineer
14 7 (3.08%) C++ Software Engineer
14 7 (3.08%) Database Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.61%) Yocto
2 9 (3.96%) AWS CDK
3 6 (2.64%) .NET
3 6 (2.64%) React
4 3 (1.32%) .NET Framework
4 3 (1.32%) LangChain
4 3 (1.32%) Semantic Kernel
5 2 (0.88%) .NET Core
5 2 (0.88%) AngularJS
5 2 (0.88%) ASP.NET
5 2 (0.88%) ASP.NET MVC
5 2 (0.88%) Entity Framework
5 2 (0.88%) J2EE
5 2 (0.88%) JSP
5 2 (0.88%) Next.js
5 2 (0.88%) Node.js
5 2 (0.88%) RESTful
5 2 (0.88%) Spring
5 2 (0.88%) Spring Boot
5 2 (0.88%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 19 (8.37%) Cloud Native
2 17 (7.49%) Educational Technology
3 15 (6.61%) Device Driver
4 9 (3.96%) Embedded Systems
5 8 (3.52%) Onboarding
6 7 (3.08%) CAN bus
6 7 (3.08%) Renewable Energy
7 6 (2.64%) NHS
8 5 (2.20%) Legacy Code
8 5 (2.20%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.76%) SCADA
10 3 (1.32%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
11 2 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
12 1 (0.44%) Analytical Mindset
12 1 (0.44%) Cyber Threat
12 1 (0.44%) Data Structures
12 1 (0.44%) Distributed Architecture
12 1 (0.44%) Public Cloud
12 1 (0.44%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 25 (11.01%) Linux
2 21 (9.25%) Embedded Linux
3 5 (2.20%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (23.79%) Agile
2 25 (11.01%) Full-Stack Development
3 23 (10.13%) Observability
4 21 (9.25%) Code Quality
5 19 (8.37%) CI/CD
6 18 (7.93%) Mentoring
7 17 (7.49%) Coaching
8 16 (7.05%) Problem-Solving
8 16 (7.05%) Scrum
9 15 (6.61%) Microservices
9 15 (6.61%) Technical Leadership
10 14 (6.17%) DevOps
10 14 (6.17%) Infrastructure as Code
10 14 (6.17%) Roadmaps
10 14 (6.17%) SDLC
11 12 (5.29%) Line Management
12 11 (4.85%) Collaborative Culture
13 10 (4.41%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (4.41%) Cybersecurity
13 10 (4.41%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 31 (13.66%) C
2 30 (13.22%) C++
3 23 (10.13%) Java
4 21 (9.25%) Embedded C
5 14 (6.17%) JavaScript
6 12 (5.29%) Python
6 12 (5.29%) TypeScript
7 6 (2.64%) Kotlin
8 4 (1.76%) SQL
9 3 (1.32%) C#
10 1 (0.44%) Perl
Qualifications
1 3 (1.32%) Security Cleared
2 2 (0.88%) SC Cleared
3 1 (0.44%) Degree
3 1 (0.44%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.08%) IEC 61508
1 7 (3.08%) MISRA
1 7 (3.08%) MISRA C
2 4 (1.76%) QA
3 2 (0.88%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.88%) IEC 61131
3 2 (0.88%) NCSC
4 1 (0.44%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.44%) NIST
4 1 (0.44%) SLA
System Software
1 10 (4.41%) Firmware
2 3 (1.32%) Embedded Firmware
3 2 (0.88%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (3.08%) Functional Safety
2 4 (1.76%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.32%) Terraform
4 1 (0.44%) Grafana
Vendors
1 5 (2.20%) Foundry
2 3 (1.32%) Google
2 3 (1.32%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.32%) Siemens
3 2 (0.88%) Databricks
3 2 (0.88%) Oracle
3 2 (0.88%) Rockwell
4 1 (0.44%) Adobe