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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 6 2
Rank change year-on-year -11 -4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 209 418 2,266
As % of all permanent jobs in Scotland 6.24% 16.86% 40.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.84% 18.65% 45.99%
Number of salaries quoted 150 130 550
10th Percentile £45,000 £32,456 £37,500
25th Percentile £56,250 £50,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £64,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% +7.50% -
75th Percentile £78,438 £82,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,500 £95,253 £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 2,363 2,241 4,927
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Scotland 70.58% 90.40% 87.62%
Number of salaries quoted 1,398 992 2,242
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,933 £30,000
25th Percentile £32,250 £32,851 £40,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,500 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,043 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.01% +0.08% -8.71%

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 23 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 23 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 +6 120 £65,000 +1.96% 34
Glasgow -21 47 £80,000 +7.38% 39
West Lothian +7 18 £67,500 +3.85% 2
South Lanarkshire +1 8 £72,500 - 1
Aberdeen -13 8 £65,000 +30.00% 2
Stirling -3 3 £40,000 -
Banffshire - 2 £30,000 -
Lanarkshire -4 1 £34,000 -57.50% 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 (0.96%) FactoryTalk
1 2 (0.96%) WinCC
2 1 (0.48%) Apache
2 1 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.48%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Adobe XD
1 1 (0.48%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 22 (10.53%) AWS
2 14 (6.70%) Azure
3 7 (3.35%) SaaS
4 6 (2.87%) Azure AI
4 6 (2.87%) Azure Machine Learning
5 3 (1.44%) Amazon Bedrock
5 3 (1.44%) Amazon SageMaker
5 3 (1.44%) GCP
5 3 (1.44%) GitHub
5 3 (1.44%) Vertex AI
6 2 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (0.48%) Azure AKS
7 1 (0.48%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (0.48%) dbt
7 1 (0.48%) Figma
7 1 (0.48%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.70%) Ethernet
1 14 (6.70%) RS-232
2 9 (4.31%) Broadband
3 2 (0.96%) Modbus
3 2 (0.96%) Network Security
3 2 (0.96%) Profibus
4 1 (0.48%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.44%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.48%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.48%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 2 (0.96%) Git
1 2 (0.96%) SonarQube
2 1 (0.48%) Appium
2 1 (0.48%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.48%) IntelliJ
2 1 (0.48%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.48%) JIRA
2 1 (0.48%) JUnit
2 1 (0.48%) LabVIEW
2 1 (0.48%) Maven
2 1 (0.48%) MLflow
2 1 (0.48%) Mockito
2 1 (0.48%) Postman
2 1 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
General
1 17 (8.13%) Social Skills
2 14 (6.70%) Finance
3 11 (5.26%) Banking
4 5 (2.39%) Legal
5 3 (1.44%) Front Office
6 2 (0.96%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (0.96%) Aviation
6 2 (0.96%) Public Sector
7 1 (0.48%) Advertising
7 1 (0.48%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.48%) Electronics
7 1 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.48%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.48%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 144 (68.90%) Software Engineer
2 59 (28.23%) Senior
3 49 (23.44%) Senior Software Engineer
4 38 (18.18%) Embedded Engineer
4 38 (18.18%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 25 (11.96%) Lead
6 20 (9.57%) Senior Embedded Engineer
6 20 (9.57%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
7 19 (9.09%) Developer
8 18 (8.61%) Principal Engineer
9 16 (7.66%) Principal Software Engineer
10 14 (6.70%) Technical Leader
11 11 (5.26%) C++ Software Engineer
12 10 (4.78%) Engineering Manager
12 10 (4.78%) Full-Stack Developer
12 10 (4.78%) Java Engineer
13 8 (3.83%) C Software Engineer
13 8 (3.83%) Java Software Engineer
14 7 (3.35%) .NET Developer
14 7 (3.35%) Lead Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (6.70%) Yocto
2 10 (4.78%) React
3 9 (4.31%) .NET
3 9 (4.31%) AWS CDK
4 6 (2.87%) Jakarta EE
4 6 (2.87%) JSP
4 6 (2.87%) Next.js
5 3 (1.44%) LangChain
5 3 (1.44%) RESTful
5 3 (1.44%) Semantic Kernel
6 2 (0.96%) Node.js
7 1 (0.48%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.48%) CSS3
7 1 (0.48%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.48%) OpenCV
7 1 (0.48%) Pandas
7 1 (0.48%) pytest
7 1 (0.48%) Spring Batch
7 1 (0.48%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.48%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 23 (11.00%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.13%) Educational Technology
3 14 (6.70%) Device Driver
4 5 (2.39%) Legacy Code
4 5 (2.39%) Mobile App
4 5 (2.39%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.91%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
6 3 (1.44%) Enterprise Cloud
6 3 (1.44%) NHS
6 3 (1.44%) Renewable Energy
6 3 (1.44%) SCADA
7 1 (0.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.48%) CAN bus
7 1 (0.48%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.48%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.48%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.09%) Linux
2 14 (6.70%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.48%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (22.97%) Agile
2 27 (12.92%) Full-Stack Development
3 24 (11.48%) CI/CD
4 23 (11.00%) Code Quality
4 23 (11.00%) Mentoring
5 22 (10.53%) Observability
6 19 (9.09%) DevOps
6 19 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
7 17 (8.13%) Technical Leadership
8 15 (7.18%) Scrum
9 14 (6.70%) Microservices
10 13 (6.22%) Coaching
10 13 (6.22%) Collaborative Culture
10 13 (6.22%) Problem-Solving
11 12 (5.74%) SDLC
12 9 (4.31%) Continuous Improvement
13 8 (3.83%) AI
14 7 (3.35%) Incident Response
14 7 (3.35%) LLM
14 7 (3.35%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 28 (13.40%) Java
2 26 (12.44%) C++
3 23 (11.00%) C
4 20 (9.57%) Embedded C
5 18 (8.61%) JavaScript
6 16 (7.66%) Python
6 16 (7.66%) TypeScript
7 4 (1.91%) PHP
8 3 (1.44%) SQL
9 2 (0.96%) C#
10 1 (0.48%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.48%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6 (2.87%) Security Cleared
2 4 (1.91%) SC Cleared
3 2 (0.96%) Degree
4 1 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (0.48%) Chartered Engineer
4 1 (0.48%) DV Cleared
4 1 (0.48%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.83%) QA
2 4 (1.91%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.96%) IEC 61131
4 1 (0.48%) IEC 61508
4 1 (0.48%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.48%) MISRA
4 1 (0.48%) MISRA C
4 1 (0.48%) NCSC
System Software
1 7 (3.35%) Firmware
2 2 (0.96%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.91%) Kubernetes
1 4 (1.91%) Terraform
2 1 (0.48%) Functional Safety
2 1 (0.48%) Grafana
Vendors
1 6 (2.87%) Foundry
2 4 (1.91%) Google
3 3 (1.44%) Databricks
3 3 (1.44%) Siemens
4 2 (0.96%) Microsoft
4 2 (0.96%) Rockwell
5 1 (0.48%) Adobe
5 1 (0.48%) IBM