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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 2 10
Rank change year-on-year -12 +8 -2
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 341 1,287 370
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 13.35% 29.83% 13.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.85% 34.83% 14.52%
Number of salaries quoted 72 413 296
10th Percentile £45,250 £38,750 £36,875
25th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,250 £60,000 £58,250
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% +3.00% -2.92%
75th Percentile £82,500 £72,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £89,750 £80,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £75,000 £65,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +15.38% -7.14% -

All Process and 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 2,296 3,695 2,548
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 89.90% 85.65% 95.86%
Number of salaries quoted 1,003 1,596 1,991
10th Percentile £26,794 £31,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £32,000 £41,489 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -30.91% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £61,250 £70,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £81,750 £82,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 0 216 £74,750 +24.58% 33
Edinburgh -34 54 £51,000 -15.00% 41
Lanarkshire -2 21 £67,500 - 8
Fife +7 6 £51,250 +2.50% 3
West Lothian -11 6 £56,250 -6.25% 1
Renfrewshire 0 4 - - 2
North Lanarkshire - 4 - -
Aberdeen -5 3 £55,000 +10.00% 10
Stirling - 3 - -
Ayrshire - 3 £58,033 -
South Ayrshire +11 2 - -
East Ayrshire -5 2 £58,033 -3.28%
West Dunbartonshire - 2 - -
North Ayrshire - 2 £58,033 -
Dundee +1 1 £65,000 +33.33% 1
Inverclyde -4 1 - -
South Lanarkshire - 1 - -
Strathclyde - 1 - -
Falkirk - 1 - -
Clackmannanshire - 1 - -
Software Engineering
UK

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Scotland by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 49 (14.37%) Confluence
2 25 (7.33%) Apache Spark
3 13 (3.81%) Apache
4 8 (2.35%) Camunda
4 8 (2.35%) Oracle Workflow
5 5 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (1.17%) Cloud Foundry
6 4 (1.17%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.29%) WinCC
Applications
1 6 (1.76%) Simulink
2 2 (0.59%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 159 (46.63%) AWS
2 97 (28.45%) Azure
3 78 (22.87%) GCP
4 21 (6.16%) GitHub
5 15 (4.40%) Amazon S3
6 11 (3.23%) Serverless
7 10 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (2.64%) SaaS
9 8 (2.35%) Amazon ECS
9 8 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (2.05%) npm
10 7 (2.05%) OpenShift
10 7 (2.05%) Yarn
11 6 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.47%) ChatGPT
12 5 (1.47%) Cloud Computing
12 5 (1.47%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (1.47%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.93%) Bluetooth
2 9 (2.64%) RS-232
3 8 (2.35%) Wireless
4 3 (0.88%) Ethernet
5 2 (0.59%) FTP
5 2 (0.59%) LoRaWAN
5 2 (0.59%) Modbus
5 2 (0.59%) MQTT
6 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) SpaceWire
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (17.01%) SQL Server
2 29 (8.50%) NoSQL
3 27 (7.92%) Big Data
4 17 (4.99%) Amazon Athena
4 17 (4.99%) Apache Cassandra
5 16 (4.69%) Relational Database
6 14 (4.11%) Elasticsearch
7 12 (3.52%) KDB
7 12 (3.52%) Kdb+
7 12 (3.52%) MongoDB
7 12 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
8 9 (2.64%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (2.64%) Apache Hive
8 9 (2.64%) Apache Iceberg
8 9 (2.64%) Oracle Database
9 8 (2.35%) Hadoop
9 8 (2.35%) RDBMS
10 6 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (1.76%) DynamoDB
11 5 (1.47%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 65 (19.06%) Maven
2 54 (15.84%) JIRA
3 51 (14.96%) GitLab
3 51 (14.96%) SonarQube
3 51 (14.96%) Sonatype Nexus
4 50 (14.66%) Selenium
5 49 (14.37%) Bitbucket
5 49 (14.37%) Cucumber
6 23 (6.74%) Git
7 22 (6.45%) Jenkins
8 18 (5.28%) JUnit
9 9 (2.64%) Cypress.io
10 8 (2.35%) webpack
11 7 (2.05%) Vite
12 5 (1.47%) Gradle
13 4 (1.17%) Subversion
14 3 (0.88%) Visual Studio
15 2 (0.59%) LabVIEW
15 2 (0.59%) Postman
15 2 (0.59%) SoapUI
General
1 252 (73.90%) Finance
2 237 (69.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 186 (54.55%) Law
4 157 (46.04%) Banking
5 79 (23.17%) Marketing
6 43 (12.61%) Social Skills
7 27 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
8 18 (5.28%) Legal
9 16 (4.69%) Investment Banking
10 12 (3.52%) Electronics
11 8 (2.35%) Private Banking
12 6 (1.76%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.47%) Manufacturing
13 5 (1.47%) Tech for Good
13 5 (1.47%) Telecoms
14 4 (1.17%) Front Office
14 4 (1.17%) Games
14 4 (1.17%) Publishing
15 2 (0.59%) Agriculture
15 2 (0.59%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 298 (87.39%) Software Engineer
2 102 (29.91%) Java Engineer
3 101 (29.62%) Java Software Engineer
4 65 (19.06%) Lead
5 59 (17.30%) Lead Software Engineer
6 54 (15.84%) Full-Stack Engineer
7 53 (15.54%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
8 49 (14.37%) Senior
9 45 (13.20%) Senior Software Engineer
10 33 (9.68%) Python Engineer
10 33 (9.68%) Python Software Engineer
11 25 (7.33%) Developer
12 24 (7.04%) Lead Java Engineer
13 20 (5.87%) AWS Engineer
13 20 (5.87%) AWS Software Engineer
14 17 (4.99%) Java Developer
15 16 (4.69%) Software Developer
16 15 (4.40%) Embedded Engineer
16 15 (4.40%) Embedded Software Engineer
17 14 (4.11%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (44.57%) Spring
2 134 (39.30%) React
3 117 (34.31%) Kafka
4 110 (32.26%) Spring Boot
5 66 (19.35%) HTML
6 65 (19.06%) CSS
7 63 (18.48%) Hibernate
8 58 (17.01%) JPA
9 49 (14.37%) Redux
10 43 (12.61%) AngularJS
11 34 (9.97%) RESTful
12 28 (8.21%) REST
13 23 (6.74%) .NET
14 14 (4.11%) PySpark
15 13 (3.81%) Web Services
16 12 (3.52%) .NET Core
17 10 (2.93%) Pandas
18 9 (2.64%) Blazor
18 9 (2.64%) JDBC
19 8 (2.35%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 80 (23.46%) Algorithms
2 58 (17.01%) Cloud Native
3 53 (15.54%) Enterprise Software
4 50 (14.66%) Product Ownership
5 16 (4.69%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.52%) Public Cloud
7 11 (3.23%) Reference Data
8 8 (2.35%) Derivative
8 8 (2.35%) Fixed Income
9 6 (1.76%) Embedded Systems
10 5 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.17%) Credit Risk
11 4 (1.17%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.17%) Equities
11 4 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 4 (1.17%) Onboarding
12 3 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.88%) Virtual Team
13 2 (0.59%) Data Structures
13 2 (0.59%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.52%) Linux
2 8 (2.35%) Unix
3 4 (1.17%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (1.17%) Ubuntu
3 4 (1.17%) Windows
4 1 (0.29%) Android
4 1 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 266 (78.01%) Agile
2 210 (61.58%) SDLC
3 209 (61.29%) CI/CD
4 156 (45.75%) Operational Stability
5 123 (36.07%) Continuous Improvement
6 122 (35.78%) Full-Stack Development
7 117 (34.31%) Artificial Intelligence
8 109 (31.96%) Machine Learning
9 106 (31.09%) Community of Practice
10 88 (25.81%) Microservices
11 83 (24.34%) DevOps
12 80 (23.46%) TDD
12 80 (23.46%) Visualisation
13 74 (21.70%) Test Automation
14 69 (20.23%) Containerisation
15 62 (18.18%) Front End Development
16 61 (17.89%) Clean Code
17 59 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
18 54 (15.84%) Decision-Making
19 49 (14.37%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 217 (63.64%) Java
2 129 (37.83%) SQL
3 89 (26.10%) JavaScript
4 71 (20.82%) Python
5 30 (8.80%) TypeScript
6 29 (8.50%) C#
7 23 (6.74%) C
7 23 (6.74%) C++
8 10 (2.93%) Go
9 8 (2.35%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.76%) MATLAB
11 4 (1.17%) Objective-C
11 4 (1.17%) PowerShell
11 4 (1.17%) Scala
11 4 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.88%) Swift
13 2 (0.59%) Bash
13 2 (0.59%) Embedded C
13 2 (0.59%) RPG
13 2 (0.59%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 22 (6.45%) Degree
2 12 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
3 6 (1.76%) HNC
3 6 (1.76%) HND
4 5 (1.47%) SC Cleared
4 5 (1.47%) Security Cleared
5 4 (1.17%) Azure Certification
6 2 (0.59%) CCA
7 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.29%) Chartered Engineer
7 1 (0.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (15.54%) QA
2 9 (2.64%) Data Quality
3 2 (0.59%) ISO 20022
3 2 (0.59%) JTAG
3 2 (0.59%) SEPA
4 1 (0.29%) ECSS
4 1 (0.29%) IEC 61131
4 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 12207
System Software
1 80 (23.46%) Docker
2 12 (3.52%) Firmware
3 5 (1.47%) HDFS
4 4 (1.17%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 119 (34.90%) Kubernetes
2 26 (7.62%) Terraform
3 16 (4.69%) Grafana
4 5 (1.47%) Ansible
5 4 (1.17%) ITRS Geneos
5 4 (1.17%) Netcool
5 4 (1.17%) Netcool/OMNIbus
5 4 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.17%) Tivoli
6 2 (0.59%) Istio
6 2 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.29%) Opsgenie
7 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 49 (14.37%) Solace
2 47 (13.78%) Oracle
3 25 (7.33%) Splunk
4 20 (5.87%) Dynatrace
5 14 (4.11%) Databricks
6 9 (2.64%) Microsoft
7 8 (2.35%) Google
7 8 (2.35%) IBM
7 8 (2.35%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.76%) Facebook
9 5 (1.47%) Cloudera
10 4 (1.17%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.88%) Murex
11 3 (0.88%) Ping Identity
12 2 (0.59%) Avaloq
12 2 (0.59%) ForgeRock
12 2 (0.59%) Mentor Graphics
12 2 (0.59%) NVIDIA
12 2 (0.59%) SAP
13 1 (0.29%) Siemens