Backend Developer Job Trends in the South East

Backend Developer
England > South East

The median Backend Developer salary in the South East is £60,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 2 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 248 254 367
Rank change year-on-year +6 +113 -2
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 35 5 21
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 0.24% 0.070% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.25% 0.084% 0.14%
Number of salaries quoted 32 5 17
10th Percentile £48,875 £47,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £51,875 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year - -7.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile - £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £73,000 £70,000
England median annual salary £80,000 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +23.08% +4.00% -7.41%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 13,728 5,959 15,299
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.55% 83.82% 93.80%
Number of salaries quoted 9,078 3,679 11,280
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,219 £38,750 £35,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £68,750 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -11.13%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Backend Developer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Backend Developer job vacancy trend in the South East

Backend Developer
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the South East.

Salary distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the South East

Backend Developer
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Backend Developer in the South East over the 6 months to 2 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Backend Developer in the South East

Backend Developer
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Backend Developer within the South East region over the 6 months to 2 May 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
Hampshire -6 25 £60,000 -14.29% 1
Thames Valley +11 10 £85,000 +41.67% 1
Berkshire - 10 £85,000 - 1
Backend Developer
England

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 2 May 2026, Backend Developer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the South East region featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 25 (71.43%) PHP
2 24 (68.57%) TDD
3 21 (60.00%) OOP
4 19 (54.29%) MySQL
5 16 (45.71%) AWS
6 11 (31.43%) Kubernetes
7 10 (28.57%) Agile
7 10 (28.57%) Java
8 8 (22.86%) GCP
8 8 (22.86%) Migration
9 7 (20.00%) Docker
9 7 (20.00%) Git
9 7 (20.00%) RabbitMQ
9 7 (20.00%) SC Cleared
9 7 (20.00%) Security Cleared
10 6 (17.14%) Google
10 6 (17.14%) Laravel
10 6 (17.14%) SaaS
11 5 (14.29%) DevOps
11 5 (14.29%) React
11 5 (14.29%) Scrum
12 4 (11.43%) Apache Cassandra
12 4 (11.43%) CI/CD
12 4 (11.43%) Client Onboarding
12 4 (11.43%) Code Quality
12 4 (11.43%) Java EE
12 4 (11.43%) LAMP
12 4 (11.43%) nginx
12 4 (11.43%) NoSQL
12 4 (11.43%) Oracle

Backend Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 4 (11.43%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 16 (45.71%) AWS
2 8 (22.86%) GCP
3 6 (17.14%) SaaS
4 3 (8.57%) Amazon ECS
4 3 (8.57%) Amazon EKS
4 3 (8.57%) Azure
4 3 (8.57%) Serverless
5 2 (5.71%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (5.71%) Figma
5 2 (5.71%) GitHub
5 2 (5.71%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (8.57%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (54.29%) MySQL
2 4 (11.43%) Apache Cassandra
2 4 (11.43%) NoSQL
3 3 (8.57%) Relational Database
4 2 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (20.00%) Git
2 3 (8.57%) Jenkins
3 2 (5.71%) JIRA
3 2 (5.71%) PHPUnit
3 2 (5.71%) Selenium
General
1 7 (20.00%) Public Sector
2 4 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (8.57%) Digital Health
4 2 (5.71%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (20.00%) RabbitMQ
2 6 (17.14%) Laravel
3 5 (14.29%) React
4 4 (11.43%) Java EE
4 4 (11.43%) LAMP
4 4 (11.43%) REST
4 4 (11.43%) RESTful
4 4 (11.43%) Spring
5 3 (8.57%) AngularJS
5 3 (8.57%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (8.57%) JMS
5 3 (8.57%) JPA
5 3 (8.57%) Spring Boot
5 3 (8.57%) Web Services
6 2 (5.71%) CSS
6 2 (5.71%) HTML
6 2 (5.71%) jQuery
6 2 (5.71%) XHTML
7 1 (2.86%) SOAP
7 1 (2.86%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 4 (11.43%) Greenfield Project
2 3 (8.57%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (8.57%) Onboarding
3 2 (5.71%) AI Agents
3 2 (5.71%) Distributed Architecture
3 2 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (68.57%) TDD
2 21 (60.00%) OOP
3 10 (28.57%) Agile
4 8 (22.86%) Migration
5 5 (14.29%) DevOps
5 5 (14.29%) Scrum
6 4 (11.43%) CI/CD
6 4 (11.43%) Client Onboarding
6 4 (11.43%) Code Quality
6 4 (11.43%) Web Development
7 3 (8.57%) BDD
7 3 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
7 3 (8.57%) Design Patterns
7 3 (8.57%) Domain-Driven Design
7 3 (8.57%) Kanban
7 3 (8.57%) Microservices
7 3 (8.57%) Performance Optimisation
7 3 (8.57%) User Experience
8 2 (5.71%) Data Migration
8 2 (5.71%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 25 (71.43%) PHP
2 10 (28.57%) Java
3 3 (8.57%) PL/SQL
3 3 (8.57%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (20.00%) SC Cleared
1 7 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 1 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (2.86%) Degree
System Software
1 7 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (31.43%) Kubernetes
2 3 (8.57%) Ansible
2 3 (8.57%) Kibana
2 3 (8.57%) Terraform
Vendors
1 6 (17.14%) Google
2 4 (11.43%) Oracle
3 3 (8.57%) AppDynamics
3 3 (8.57%) IBM