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 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 11 2
Rank change year-on-year -5 -9 +7
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 234 379 1,783
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 6.44% 14.99% 35.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.22% 16.66% 41.56%
Number of salaries quoted 158 95 480
10th Percentile £45,000 £35,950 £38,750
25th Percentile £60,000 £48,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £68,587 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.74% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,625 £71,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £100,000 £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 2,537 2,275 4,290
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 69.77% 89.96% 86.46%
Number of salaries quoted 1,456 1,005 1,923
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,929 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £32,851 £42,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £43,250 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.61% -21.36% -
75th Percentile £67,500 £65,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £81,875 £82,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 +17 118 £65,000 +18.18% 93
Glasgow -13 79 £75,000 +0.33% 134
West Lothian +8 16 £67,500 +28.57% 1
South Lanarkshire -1 8 £72,500 -
Aberdeen -13 7 £65,000 +30.00% 5
Stirling -3 3 £40,000 - 1
Lanarkshire -2 1 £34,000 -57.50% 128
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 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
1 3 (1.28%) Confluence
2 2 (0.85%) Apache
2 2 (0.85%) FactoryTalk
2 2 (0.85%) WinCC
3 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.43%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 3 (1.28%) Simulink
2 1 (0.43%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 3 (1.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 39 (16.67%) AWS
2 21 (8.97%) Azure
3 11 (4.70%) GCP
4 10 (4.27%) SaaS
5 7 (2.99%) Amazon Bedrock
6 6 (2.56%) Amazon SageMaker
6 6 (2.56%) Azure AI
6 6 (2.56%) Azure Machine Learning
7 4 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (1.28%) dbt
8 3 (1.28%) GitHub
8 3 (1.28%) Vertex AI
9 2 (0.85%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (0.85%) Dagster
9 2 (0.85%) Snowflake
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (0.43%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 1 (0.43%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 10 (4.27%) Ethernet
1 10 (4.27%) RS-232
2 9 (3.85%) Broadband
3 5 (2.14%) TCP/IP
4 3 (1.28%) DNS
4 3 (1.28%) Network Security
5 2 (0.85%) Modbus
5 2 (0.85%) Profibus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.71%) Data Lake
2 3 (1.28%) NoSQL
2 3 (1.28%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.85%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.43%) Apache Iceberg
4 1 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.43%) Big Data
4 1 (0.43%) BigQuery
4 1 (0.43%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.43%) DynamoDB
4 1 (0.43%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (2.56%) Git
2 3 (1.28%) Claude Code
2 3 (1.28%) JIRA
2 3 (1.28%) Rational DOORS
3 2 (0.85%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.43%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.43%) IntelliJ
4 1 (0.43%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.43%) JUnit
4 1 (0.43%) LabVIEW
4 1 (0.43%) Maven
4 1 (0.43%) MLflow
4 1 (0.43%) Mockito
General
1 35 (14.96%) Social Skills
2 31 (13.25%) Finance
3 18 (7.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 14 (5.98%) Banking
5 12 (5.13%) Law
6 9 (3.85%) Marketing
7 7 (2.99%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (2.14%) Aerospace
8 5 (2.14%) Front Office
8 5 (2.14%) Legal
9 3 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.28%) Electronics
10 2 (0.85%) Automotive
10 2 (0.85%) Aviation
10 2 (0.85%) Public Sector
10 2 (0.85%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.43%) Advertising
11 1 (0.43%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.43%) Games
11 1 (0.43%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 151 (64.53%) Software Engineer
2 63 (26.92%) Senior
3 46 (19.66%) Senior Software Engineer
4 29 (12.39%) Lead
5 22 (9.40%) Embedded Engineer
5 22 (9.40%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 19 (8.12%) Developer
7 18 (7.69%) Principal Engineer
8 16 (6.84%) Technical Leader
9 15 (6.41%) C++ Software Engineer
9 15 (6.41%) Principal Software Engineer
10 14 (5.98%) Senior Embedded Engineer
10 14 (5.98%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
11 11 (4.70%) Java Engineer
12 10 (4.27%) Full-Stack Developer
13 9 (3.85%) Site Engineer
13 9 (3.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 8 (3.42%) Java Software Engineer
14 8 (3.42%) Python Engineer
15 7 (2.99%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (5.13%) React
2 11 (4.70%) .NET
3 10 (4.27%) Yocto
4 9 (3.85%) AWS CDK
5 8 (3.42%) Jakarta EE
5 8 (3.42%) JSP
5 8 (3.42%) Next.js
5 8 (3.42%) Terraform
6 6 (2.56%) LangChain
7 4 (1.71%) .NET Framework
8 3 (1.28%) CrewAI
8 3 (1.28%) LangGraph
8 3 (1.28%) OpenTelemetry
8 3 (1.28%) Ray
8 3 (1.28%) RESTful
8 3 (1.28%) Semantic Kernel
8 3 (1.28%) vLLM
9 2 (0.85%) Kafka
9 2 (0.85%) PySpark
10 1 (0.43%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 28 (11.97%) Cloud Native
2 17 (7.26%) Educational Technology
3 10 (4.27%) Device Driver
4 9 (3.85%) AI Agents
5 4 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (1.71%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.71%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
6 3 (1.28%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.28%) Renewable Energy
6 3 (1.28%) SCADA
7 2 (0.85%) Algorithms
7 2 (0.85%) Credit Risk
7 2 (0.85%) Data Centre
7 2 (0.85%) Data Structures
7 2 (0.85%) Legacy Code
7 2 (0.85%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.85%) Public Cloud
7 2 (0.85%) Reference Data
8 1 (0.43%) Autonomous Agent
Operating Systems
1 17 (7.26%) Linux
2 10 (4.27%) Embedded Linux
3 5 (2.14%) Unix
4 3 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.28%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (24.36%) Agile
2 35 (14.96%) CI/CD
3 33 (14.10%) Full-Stack Development
3 33 (14.10%) Mentoring
4 30 (12.82%) Code Quality
5 27 (11.54%) Infrastructure as Code
6 26 (11.11%) AI
7 25 (10.68%) DevOps
7 25 (10.68%) Observability
8 23 (9.83%) Continuous Improvement
9 20 (8.55%) SDLC
10 19 (8.12%) Problem-Solving
10 19 (8.12%) Technical Leadership
11 17 (7.26%) Microservices
12 15 (6.41%) Machine Learning
13 14 (5.98%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 12 (5.13%) LLM
14 12 (5.13%) Scrum
15 11 (4.70%) Decision-Making
15 11 (4.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 39 (16.67%) Java
2 35 (14.96%) Python
3 26 (11.11%) JavaScript
4 25 (10.68%) C++
5 24 (10.26%) TypeScript
6 12 (5.13%) C
6 12 (5.13%) Embedded C
7 4 (1.71%) PHP
8 3 (1.28%) Go
8 3 (1.28%) MATLAB
8 3 (1.28%) Shell Script
8 3 (1.28%) SQL
9 2 (0.85%) Ada
9 2 (0.85%) C#
Qualifications
1 12 (5.13%) Degree
2 11 (4.70%) Security Cleared
3 9 (3.85%) SC Cleared
4 5 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (2.14%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.28%) Chartered Engineer
6 2 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.43%) HND
7 1 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.27%) QA
2 8 (3.42%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.85%) IEC 61131
4 1 (0.43%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.43%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.43%) NCSC
System Software
1 4 (1.71%) Firmware
2 2 (0.85%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (3.85%) Kubernetes
2 5 (2.14%) Grafana
3 3 (1.28%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (2.99%) Databricks
2 6 (2.56%) Foundry
3 5 (2.14%) Google
3 5 (2.14%) Siemens
4 3 (1.28%) IBM
4 3 (1.28%) NVIDIA
4 3 (1.28%) Red Hat
4 3 (1.28%) YouTube
5 2 (0.85%) Rockwell
6 1 (0.43%) Adobe
6 1 (0.43%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.43%) Microsoft
6 1 (0.43%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle
6 1 (0.43%) Splunk