Software Engineer Job Trends in the South East

Software Engineer
England > South East

The median Software Engineer salary in the South East is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 24 October 2025.

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

6 months to
24 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 111 21 68
Rank change year-on-year -90 +47 -35
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 210 897 306
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 2.33% 7.84% 3.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.59% 8.12% 4.00%
Number of salaries quoted 124 500 226
10th Percentile £36,250 £40,000 £41,000
25th Percentile £54,375 £45,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% +9.09%
75th Percentile £83,750 £67,500 £72,375
90th Percentile £95,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £80,000 £65,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +23.08% -7.14% +0.80%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 8,119 11,051 7,649
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.17% 96.55% 94.88%
Number of salaries quoted 4,579 6,213 5,412
10th Percentile £27,500 £31,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £33,750 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £69,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £82,500
England median annual salary £53,750 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -6.52% -4.17% -

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 24 October 2025.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the South East

Software Engineer
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 Software Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 24 October 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
Hampshire -20 80 £65,000 +18.18% 47
Surrey -21 56 £90,000 +80.00% 28
Thames Valley -129 49 £56,430 +2.60% 183
Oxfordshire -28 19 £70,000 +16.67% 34
Buckinghamshire -47 18 £35,000 -30.00% 22
Berkshire -109 12 £61,250 +11.36% 127
Kent -49 10 £62,500 -10.71% 6
Isle of Wight -16 8 £68,000 +23.64%
East Sussex 0 5 £86,250 -6.76% 5
Middlesex -25 2 - - 1
Software Engineer
England

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 24 October 2025, Software Engineer 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 Software Engineer in the job title.

1 210 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 98 (46.67%) Agile
3 61 (29.05%) C++
4 55 (26.19%) DevOps
5 50 (23.81%) Degree
6 47 (22.38%) C
7 45 (21.43%) SQL
8 43 (20.48%) Security Cleared
9 42 (20.00%) C#
9 42 (20.00%) Linux
10 40 (19.05%) Azure
11 39 (18.57%) SC Cleared
12 38 (18.10%) Innovative Thinking
13 36 (17.14%) Firmware
14 34 (16.19%) Computer Science
14 34 (16.19%) Digital Signal Processing
14 34 (16.19%) Embedded Firmware
14 34 (16.19%) Embedded Linux
14 34 (16.19%) Signal Processing
14 34 (16.19%) Software-Defined Radio
14 34 (16.19%) Wireless
15 33 (15.71%) .NET
16 31 (14.76%) Mentoring
17 29 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
18 28 (13.33%) CI/CD
19 27 (12.86%) Coaching
20 25 (11.90%) React
20 25 (11.90%) SDLC
21 23 (10.95%) AI
21 23 (10.95%) Microservices

Software Engineer 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 11 (5.24%) IIS
2 8 (3.81%) Confluence
3 5 (2.38%) CMS
4 1 (0.48%) ArchestrA
4 1 (0.48%) FactoryTalk
4 1 (0.48%) WinCC
Applications
1 4 (1.90%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.48%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 4 (1.90%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 40 (19.05%) Azure
2 19 (9.05%) AWS
2 19 (9.05%) Azure DevOps
3 13 (6.19%) GCP
4 5 (2.38%) GitHub
5 4 (1.90%) Serverless
6 2 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
6 2 (0.95%) Cloudflare
6 2 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (0.95%) SaaS
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.48%) Amazon S3
7 1 (0.48%) Azure API Management
7 1 (0.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (0.48%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.48%) Heroku
7 1 (0.48%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 34 (16.19%) Software-Defined Radio
1 34 (16.19%) Wireless
2 2 (0.95%) Broadband
3 1 (0.48%) DNS
3 1 (0.48%) Firewall
3 1 (0.48%) Modbus
3 1 (0.48%) Profibus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (10.48%) SQL Server
2 12 (5.71%) NoSQL
3 11 (5.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 10 (4.76%) MongoDB
5 6 (2.86%) MySQL
5 6 (2.86%) Redis
6 4 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (1.43%) GIS
8 2 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.95%) Couchbase
8 2 (0.95%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.48%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.48%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 12 (5.71%) JIRA
2 8 (3.81%) Bitbucket
2 8 (3.81%) Cucumber
2 8 (3.81%) GitLab
2 8 (3.81%) Maven
2 8 (3.81%) Selenium
2 8 (3.81%) SonarQube
2 8 (3.81%) Sonatype Nexus
3 7 (3.33%) Git
4 5 (2.38%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.43%) TestRail
6 2 (0.95%) Octopus Deploy
6 2 (0.95%) Spock
6 2 (0.95%) TeamCity
General
1 54 (25.71%) Finance
2 25 (11.90%) Social Skills
3 15 (7.14%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 8 (3.81%) Banking
6 5 (2.38%) Automotive
6 5 (2.38%) Military
6 5 (2.38%) Tech for Good
7 4 (1.90%) Aerospace
7 4 (1.90%) Aviation
8 3 (1.43%) Electronics
8 3 (1.43%) Law
8 3 (1.43%) Retail
9 1 (0.48%) Games
9 1 (0.48%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (15.71%) .NET
2 25 (11.90%) React
3 14 (6.67%) WinForms
4 12 (5.71%) ASP.NET
5 11 (5.24%) .NET Framework
5 11 (5.24%) Entity Framework
5 11 (5.24%) Kafka
6 10 (4.76%) CSS
6 10 (4.76%) HTML
6 10 (4.76%) Redux
6 10 (4.76%) Spring
6 10 (4.76%) Spring Boot
7 9 (4.29%) Node.js
8 8 (3.81%) Hibernate
8 8 (3.81%) JPA
9 7 (3.33%) Qt
10 6 (2.86%) Ruby on Rails
11 5 (2.38%) WPF
12 4 (1.90%) RESTful
12 4 (1.90%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (18.10%) e-Learning
2 37 (17.62%) Embedded Systems
3 36 (17.14%) RISC-V
4 34 (16.19%) MicroBlaze
5 12 (5.71%) Manufacturing Execution System
6 11 (5.24%) Product Ownership
7 10 (4.76%) Algorithms
8 8 (3.81%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (2.86%) 3D Graphics
10 4 (1.90%) Reference Data
10 4 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.43%) Data Structures
11 3 (1.43%) IoT
11 3 (1.43%) Mobile App
12 2 (0.95%) Cloud Native
13 1 (0.48%) Driving Licence
13 1 (0.48%) Greenfield Project
13 1 (0.48%) Renewable Energy
13 1 (0.48%) Robotics
13 1 (0.48%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 42 (20.00%) Linux
2 34 (16.19%) Embedded Linux
3 12 (5.71%) Windows
4 6 (2.86%) Android
5 4 (1.90%) Unix
6 3 (1.43%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.48%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 98 (46.67%) Agile
3 55 (26.19%) DevOps
4 38 (18.10%) Innovative Thinking
5 34 (16.19%) Computer Science
5 34 (16.19%) Digital Signal Processing
5 34 (16.19%) Signal Processing
6 31 (14.76%) Mentoring
7 29 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
8 28 (13.33%) CI/CD
9 27 (12.86%) Coaching
10 25 (11.90%) SDLC
11 23 (10.95%) AI
11 23 (10.95%) Microservices
12 19 (9.05%) Full-Stack Development
13 18 (8.57%) Machine Learning
13 18 (8.57%) TDD
14 17 (8.10%) Mathematics
15 16 (7.62%) Technical Leadership
16 14 (6.67%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 61 (29.05%) C++
2 47 (22.38%) C
3 45 (21.43%) SQL
4 42 (20.00%) C#
5 23 (10.95%) Python
6 21 (10.00%) Java
6 21 (10.00%) JavaScript
7 15 (7.14%) TypeScript
8 12 (5.71%) T-SQL
9 8 (3.81%) Ada
9 8 (3.81%) Ada 95
10 7 (3.33%) Bash
11 6 (2.86%) Ruby
12 4 (1.90%) Fortran
12 4 (1.90%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.90%) Uniface
13 3 (1.43%) Delphi
13 3 (1.43%) Julia
13 3 (1.43%) Kotlin
13 3 (1.43%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 50 (23.81%) Degree
2 43 (20.48%) Security Cleared
3 39 (18.57%) SC Cleared
4 18 (8.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (6.19%) Master's Degree
5 13 (6.19%) PhD
6 8 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (3.81%) Chartered Engineer
7 2 (0.95%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.48%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.24%) QA
2 8 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 12207
3 4 (1.90%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.95%) ISO 9000
4 2 (0.95%) JTAG
5 1 (0.48%) IEC 61131
5 1 (0.48%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 36 (17.14%) Firmware
2 34 (16.19%) Embedded Firmware
3 15 (7.14%) Docker
4 1 (0.48%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (7.14%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.43%) Terraform
3 2 (0.95%) Grafana
3 2 (0.95%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 17 (8.10%) Sage
2 16 (7.62%) Guidewire
3 13 (6.19%) Microsoft
4 11 (5.24%) Xamarin
5 8 (3.81%) Solace
6 5 (2.38%) Google
6 5 (2.38%) Zoho
7 3 (1.43%) Databricks
7 3 (1.43%) Roku
8 2 (0.95%) Oracle
9 1 (0.48%) Rockwell
9 1 (0.48%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.48%) SendGrid
9 1 (0.48%) Siemens
9 1 (0.48%) VMware