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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 15 2
Rank change year-on-year +4 -13 +9
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 316 332 990
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 7.71% 13.05% 24.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.36% 14.45% 29.44%
Number of salaries quoted 229 70 389
10th Percentile £52,275 £44,875 £38,650
25th Percentile £63,750 £50,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - +1.69%
75th Percentile £100,000 £80,625 £72,500
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 2,781 2,297 3,363
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 67.86% 90.26% 84.90%
Number of salaries quoted 1,650 1,001 1,533
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,125 £32,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,194 £38,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +42.62% -30.91% +4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £60,265 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £77,500 £81,900
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,560
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.45% -4.07%

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 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 25 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 -3 157 £85,000 +13.71% 302
Edinburgh +33 127 £70,000 +37.25% 173
West Lothian +4 11 £67,500 +20.00% 8
Aberdeen -7 9 £65,000 +18.18% 14
South Lanarkshire -4 8 £72,500 - 3
Stirling -5 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 (0.95%) Confluence
2 2 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.63%) FactoryTalk
2 2 (0.63%) WinCC
3 1 (0.32%) Apache
3 1 (0.32%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.32%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (0.32%) Ethereum
Applications
1 3 (0.95%) Simulink
2 1 (0.32%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 3 (0.95%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 50 (15.82%) AWS
2 24 (7.59%) Azure
3 17 (5.38%) GCP
4 13 (4.11%) SaaS
5 8 (2.53%) Amazon Bedrock
6 6 (1.90%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (1.58%) GitHub
8 3 (0.95%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (0.95%) Azure AI
8 3 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (0.95%) Azure Functions
8 3 (0.95%) Azure Logic Apps
8 3 (0.95%) Azure Machine Learning
8 3 (0.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 3 (0.95%) dbt
8 3 (0.95%) Serverless
9 2 (0.63%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (0.63%) AWS Step Functions
9 2 (0.63%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.22%) Ethernet
1 7 (2.22%) RS-232
2 6 (1.90%) Broadband
3 5 (1.58%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.95%) DNS
4 3 (0.95%) Network Security
5 2 (0.63%) Modbus
5 2 (0.63%) Profibus
6 1 (0.32%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (1.90%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.27%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.27%) SQL Server
3 3 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.95%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (0.63%) Parquet
5 1 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.32%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.32%) Big Data
5 1 (0.32%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.32%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.32%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.32%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.32%) Redis
5 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 8 (2.53%) Git
2 4 (1.27%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.95%) JIRA
3 3 (0.95%) Rational DOORS
3 3 (0.95%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.63%) Cucumber
4 2 (0.63%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.63%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.63%) JUnit
4 2 (0.63%) Maven
4 2 (0.63%) Mockito
5 1 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
General
1 60 (18.99%) Finance
2 32 (10.13%) Social Skills
3 18 (5.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 14 (4.43%) Banking
5 13 (4.11%) Financial Institution
6 12 (3.80%) Law
7 9 (2.85%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (2.85%) Marketing
8 8 (2.53%) Games
9 6 (1.90%) Legal
10 5 (1.58%) Aerospace
10 5 (1.58%) Front Office
11 3 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.95%) Electronics
11 3 (0.95%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.63%) Automotive
12 2 (0.63%) Aviation
12 2 (0.63%) Tech for Good
13 1 (0.32%) Advertising
13 1 (0.32%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 212 (67.09%) Software Engineer
2 76 (24.05%) Senior
3 71 (22.47%) Lead
4 55 (17.41%) Senior Software Engineer
5 44 (13.92%) Lead Software Engineer
6 24 (7.59%) Principal Engineer
7 22 (6.96%) Developer
8 20 (6.33%) Principal Software Engineer
9 17 (5.38%) Java Engineer
10 16 (5.06%) Technical Leader
11 15 (4.75%) C++ Software Engineer
11 15 (4.75%) Embedded Engineer
11 15 (4.75%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 14 (4.43%) Java Software Engineer
12 14 (4.43%) Software Manager
13 11 (3.48%) Reliability Engineer
14 10 (3.16%) Full-Stack Developer
15 9 (2.85%) Cloud Engineer
15 9 (2.85%) Cloud Software Engineer
15 9 (2.85%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.70%) .NET
2 16 (5.06%) React
3 8 (2.53%) AWS CDK
3 8 (2.53%) Jakarta EE
3 8 (2.53%) JSP
3 8 (2.53%) Next.js
4 7 (2.22%) .NET Framework
4 7 (2.22%) Terraform
4 7 (2.22%) Yocto
5 4 (1.27%) PySpark
6 3 (0.95%) CrewAI
6 3 (0.95%) Kafka
6 3 (0.95%) LangChain
6 3 (0.95%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
6 3 (0.95%) Ray
6 3 (0.95%) Spring
6 3 (0.95%) Spring Boot
6 3 (0.95%) vLLM
6 3 (0.95%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 30 (9.49%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.38%) Educational Technology
3 9 (2.85%) AI Agents
3 9 (2.85%) Public Cloud
4 7 (2.22%) Data Centre
4 7 (2.22%) Device Driver
5 5 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (1.58%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (1.27%) Product Ownership
7 3 (0.95%) Private Cloud
7 3 (0.95%) Renewable Energy
7 3 (0.95%) SCADA
8 2 (0.63%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.63%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.63%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.63%) Reference Data
9 1 (0.32%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.32%) Bitcoin
9 1 (0.32%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 16 (5.06%) Linux
2 7 (2.22%) Embedded Linux
3 5 (1.58%) Unix
4 4 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.95%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (28.48%) Agile
2 41 (12.97%) AI
3 39 (12.34%) CI/CD
4 34 (10.76%) Full-Stack Development
5 33 (10.44%) DevOps
5 33 (10.44%) Mentoring
6 28 (8.86%) Code Quality
6 28 (8.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 24 (7.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 24 (7.59%) Observability
8 23 (7.28%) Problem-Solving
8 23 (7.28%) SDLC
9 19 (6.01%) Microservices
10 18 (5.70%) Technical Leadership
11 17 (5.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 17 (5.38%) LLM
12 16 (5.06%) Analytics
13 15 (4.75%) Roadmaps
14 14 (4.43%) Data Engineering
14 14 (4.43%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 45 (14.24%) Java
2 36 (11.39%) Python
3 34 (10.76%) JavaScript
4 30 (9.49%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.96%) C++
6 7 (2.22%) C
6 7 (2.22%) Embedded C
7 6 (1.90%) SQL
8 4 (1.27%) PHP
9 3 (0.95%) C#
9 3 (0.95%) Go
9 3 (0.95%) MATLAB
9 3 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.63%) Ada
11 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 15 (4.75%) Security Cleared
2 12 (3.80%) Degree
3 11 (3.48%) SC Cleared
4 5 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.58%) DV Cleared
5 3 (0.95%) Chartered Engineer
6 2 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.32%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.48%) QA
2 10 (3.16%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.95%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.63%) IEC 61131
5 1 (0.32%) ISO 22301
5 1 (0.32%) NCSC
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (0.95%) Docker
2 2 (0.63%) Firmware
3 1 (0.32%) GPFS
3 1 (0.32%) NFS
Systems Management
1 13 (4.11%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.27%) Grafana
3 3 (0.95%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (3.16%) Databricks
2 5 (1.58%) Siemens
2 5 (1.58%) YouTube
3 4 (1.27%) IBM
4 3 (0.95%) Foundry
4 3 (0.95%) Google
4 3 (0.95%) NVIDIA
4 3 (0.95%) Red Hat
5 2 (0.63%) Microsoft
5 2 (0.63%) Rockwell
6 1 (0.32%) Adobe
6 1 (0.32%) Brocade
6 1 (0.32%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.32%) EMC
6 1 (0.32%) NetApp
6 1 (0.32%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle
6 1 (0.32%) Splunk
6 1 (0.32%) Veritas