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 11 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 6 2
Rank change year-on-year -11 -4 +4
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 218 426 2,524
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 6.54% 17.02% 41.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.22% 18.76% 47.12%
Number of salaries quoted 150 136 590
10th Percentile £45,000 £35,750 £38,700
25th Percentile £60,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% -
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,751 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £98,764 £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 2,364 2,271 5,356
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 70.97% 90.73% 88.11%
Number of salaries quoted 1,394 1,002 2,427
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,971 £28,250
25th Percentile £31,500 £32,851 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £69,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £82,125 £85,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.72%

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 11 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 11 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 +8 136 £65,000 - 22
Glasgow -25 41 £80,000 +7.02% 15
West Lothian +6 19 £67,500 +3.85%
South Lanarkshire 0 8 £72,500 - 1
Aberdeen -15 7 £65,000 +30.00% 3
Stirling -2 2 £40,000 - 2
Banffshire - 2 £30,000 -
Lanarkshire -6 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 (0.92%) FactoryTalk
1 2 (0.92%) WinCC
2 1 (0.46%) Apache
2 1 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.46%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Adobe XD
Cloud Services
1 20 (9.17%) AWS
2 12 (5.50%) Azure
3 11 (5.05%) SaaS
4 6 (2.75%) Azure AI
4 6 (2.75%) Azure Machine Learning
5 3 (1.38%) Amazon Bedrock
5 3 (1.38%) Amazon SageMaker
5 3 (1.38%) GitHub
5 3 (1.38%) Vertex AI
6 2 (0.92%) GCP
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon S3
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon SQS
7 1 (0.46%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.46%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (0.46%) Azure AKS
7 1 (0.46%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (0.46%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (6.88%) Ethernet
1 15 (6.88%) RS-232
2 10 (4.59%) Broadband
3 2 (0.92%) Modbus
3 2 (0.92%) Profibus
4 1 (0.46%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (1.38%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.92%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.46%) MySQL
3 1 (0.46%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 3 (1.38%) Git
2 2 (0.92%) SonarQube
3 1 (0.46%) Appium
3 1 (0.46%) Cucumber
3 1 (0.46%) IntelliJ
3 1 (0.46%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.46%) JIRA
3 1 (0.46%) JUnit
3 1 (0.46%) LabVIEW
3 1 (0.46%) Maven
3 1 (0.46%) MLflow
3 1 (0.46%) Mockito
3 1 (0.46%) Postman
3 1 (0.46%) Subversion
General
1 15 (6.88%) Social Skills
2 14 (6.42%) Finance
3 10 (4.59%) Legal
4 9 (4.13%) Banking
5 2 (0.92%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (0.92%) Aviation
5 2 (0.92%) Public Sector
6 1 (0.46%) Advertising
6 1 (0.46%) Electronics
6 1 (0.46%) Front Office
6 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.46%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.46%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 155 (71.10%) Software Engineer
2 68 (31.19%) Senior
3 58 (26.61%) Senior Software Engineer
4 44 (20.18%) Embedded Engineer
4 44 (20.18%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 26 (11.93%) Senior Embedded Engineer
5 26 (11.93%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
6 25 (11.47%) Lead
7 18 (8.26%) Developer
7 18 (8.26%) Principal Engineer
8 17 (7.80%) Principal Software Engineer
9 13 (5.96%) Engineering Manager
9 13 (5.96%) Technical Leader
10 10 (4.59%) Full-Stack Developer
11 9 (4.13%) C++ Software Engineer
12 8 (3.67%) C Software Engineer
12 8 (3.67%) Lead Software Engineer
13 7 (3.21%) Database Engineer
13 7 (3.21%) Research Engineer
13 7 (3.21%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (6.88%) Yocto
2 10 (4.59%) .NET
2 10 (4.59%) React
3 9 (4.13%) AWS CDK
4 5 (2.29%) J2EE
4 5 (2.29%) JSP
4 5 (2.29%) Next.js
5 3 (1.38%) .NET Framework
5 3 (1.38%) LangChain
5 3 (1.38%) RESTful
5 3 (1.38%) Semantic Kernel
6 2 (0.92%) .NET Core
6 2 (0.92%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.92%) ASP.NET
6 2 (0.92%) ASP.NET MVC
6 2 (0.92%) Entity Framework
6 2 (0.92%) Node.js
6 2 (0.92%) Spring
6 2 (0.92%) Spring Boot
6 2 (0.92%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 22 (10.09%) Cloud Native
2 17 (7.80%) Educational Technology
3 15 (6.88%) Device Driver
4 8 (3.67%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.75%) NHS
6 5 (2.29%) Embedded Systems
6 5 (2.29%) Legacy Code
6 5 (2.29%) Mobile App
6 5 (2.29%) Renewable Energy
7 4 (1.83%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.83%) SCADA
8 3 (1.38%) CAN bus
8 3 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
9 2 (0.92%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.46%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.46%) Cyber Threat
10 1 (0.46%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.46%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.46%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.46%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 22 (10.09%) Linux
2 18 (8.26%) Embedded Linux
3 2 (0.92%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (24.31%) Agile
2 26 (11.93%) Full-Stack Development
3 25 (11.47%) Code Quality
4 24 (11.01%) Observability
5 22 (10.09%) CI/CD
6 21 (9.63%) Mentoring
7 17 (7.80%) Coaching
7 17 (7.80%) DevOps
7 17 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
8 16 (7.34%) Problem-Solving
8 16 (7.34%) Scrum
8 16 (7.34%) Technical Leadership
9 15 (6.88%) Microservices
10 13 (5.96%) SDLC
11 12 (5.50%) Collaborative Culture
12 11 (5.05%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (4.59%) Incident Response
14 9 (4.13%) Roadmaps
14 9 (4.13%) User Experience
15 8 (3.67%) Capacity Planning
Programming Languages
1 28 (12.84%) C++
2 27 (12.39%) C
3 26 (11.93%) Java
4 21 (9.63%) Embedded C
5 18 (8.26%) JavaScript
6 15 (6.88%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.96%) Python
8 4 (1.83%) SQL
9 3 (1.38%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.46%) C#
10 1 (0.46%) Perl
10 1 (0.46%) PHP
Qualifications
1 4 (1.83%) Security Cleared
2 2 (0.92%) SC Cleared
3 1 (0.46%) Degree
3 1 (0.46%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.21%) QA
2 3 (1.38%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.38%) IEC 61508
2 3 (1.38%) MISRA
2 3 (1.38%) MISRA C
3 2 (0.92%) IEC 61131
3 2 (0.92%) NCSC
4 1 (0.46%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.46%) NIST
4 1 (0.46%) SLA
System Software
1 7 (3.21%) Firmware
2 2 (0.92%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.83%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.38%) Functional Safety
2 3 (1.38%) Terraform
3 1 (0.46%) Grafana
Vendors
1 6 (2.75%) Foundry
2 3 (1.38%) Databricks
2 3 (1.38%) Google
2 3 (1.38%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.38%) Siemens
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle
3 2 (0.92%) Rockwell
4 1 (0.46%) Adobe