Software Engineer Job Trends in the South West

Software Engineer
England > South West

The median Software Engineer salary in the South West is £69,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 50 12
Rank change year-on-year +41 -38 +54
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 880 143 714
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 8.61% 4.09% 9.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 9.26% 4.41% 10.06%
Number of salaries quoted 642 80 441
10th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,625 £55,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £69,250 £65,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.54% +13.04% -4.17%
75th Percentile £85,000 £83,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £82,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -15.15% +26.92% -7.14%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the South West. 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 West with a recognized job title 9,507 3,242 7,099
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.00% 92.68% 94.74%
Number of salaries quoted 6,583 2,125 4,577
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £31,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £45,272 £50,500
Median % change year-on-year +21.49% -10.35% -7.34%
75th Percentile £75,000 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £59,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +8.18% - -8.33%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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 West.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the South West

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the South West

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

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

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the South West over the 6 months to 20 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the South West

Software Engineer
Job Locations in the South West

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 West region over the 6 months to 20 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
Gloucestershire +23 358 £80,000 +3.23% 96
Bristol +40 263 £65,000 +8.33% 56
Dorset +6 108 £100,000 +81.82% 54
Somerset +13 61 £60,000 -7.69% 29
Devon +8 38 £62,500 +38.89% 9
Wiltshire +8 34 £55,000 -15.38% 9
Cornwall - 18 £45,000 - 1
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 20 September 2026, 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 West region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 880 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 167 (18.98%) Security Cleared
3 148 (16.82%) Agile
4 131 (14.89%) C++
5 115 (13.07%) Java
6 104 (11.82%) Full-Stack Development
7 97 (11.02%) CI/CD
7 97 (11.02%) Python
8 84 (9.55%) SC Cleared
9 80 (9.09%) DV Cleared
10 72 (8.18%) C#
11 58 (6.59%) SDLC
12 55 (6.25%) Linux
13 52 (5.91%) Microservices
14 51 (5.80%) JavaScript
15 48 (5.45%) AWS
15 48 (5.45%) Test Automation
16 46 (5.23%) DevOps
17 45 (5.11%) AI
18 43 (4.89%) WPF
19 41 (4.66%) Embedded Software Development
19 41 (4.66%) Vue
20 40 (4.55%) Mentoring
21 39 (4.43%) Software Architecture
22 33 (3.75%) Open Source
23 31 (3.52%) C
23 31 (3.52%) Rust
23 31 (3.52%) Spring
24 30 (3.41%) Azure
24 30 (3.41%) Spring Boot

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 12 (1.36%) Apache
2 4 (0.45%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.11%) Confluence
3 1 (0.11%) OpenStack
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) Visualfiles
Cloud Services
1 48 (5.45%) AWS
2 30 (3.41%) Azure
3 14 (1.59%) GCP
4 10 (1.14%) OpenShift
4 10 (1.14%) Serverless
5 9 (1.02%) Firebase
6 8 (0.91%) SaaS
7 7 (0.80%) GitHub
8 5 (0.57%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (0.45%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (0.45%) Anthropic Claude
9 4 (0.45%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (0.45%) Cloud Run
10 2 (0.23%) Amazon S3
11 1 (0.11%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 1 (0.11%) Azure AI
11 1 (0.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 1 (0.11%) Cloud Functions
11 1 (0.11%) GitHub Actions
11 1 (0.11%) Vercel
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.25%) Ethernet
2 9 (1.02%) Wireless
3 4 (0.45%) AMQP
4 3 (0.34%) RS-485
5 2 (0.23%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.11%) Broadband
6 1 (0.11%) Modbus
6 1 (0.11%) MQTT
6 1 (0.11%) Profibus
6 1 (0.11%) RS-232
6 1 (0.11%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
1 10 (1.14%) MongoDB
2 9 (1.02%) Big Data
2 9 (1.02%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.68%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.57%) MySQL
5 4 (0.45%) Cloudera CDH
5 4 (0.45%) MariaDB
5 4 (0.45%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.34%) Chroma
6 3 (0.34%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.34%) Pinecone
6 3 (0.34%) Redis
6 3 (0.34%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.23%) Metadata
8 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.11%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 25 (2.84%) Git
2 20 (2.27%) GitLab
3 11 (1.25%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.25%) JIRA
4 9 (1.02%) SonarQube
5 8 (0.91%) Cucumber
6 4 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (0.34%) LabVIEW
7 3 (0.34%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.23%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.23%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.23%) Gradle
8 2 (0.23%) JUnit
8 2 (0.23%) Mockito
8 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
9 1 (0.11%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.11%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.11%) GoogleTest
9 1 (0.11%) Mocha
9 1 (0.11%) Valgrind
General
1 38 (4.32%) Aerospace
2 24 (2.73%) Finance
3 21 (2.39%) Automotive
4 19 (2.16%) Electronics
4 19 (2.16%) Social Skills
5 15 (1.70%) Aviation
6 14 (1.59%) Manufacturing
7 12 (1.36%) Analytical Skills
8 11 (1.25%) Public Sector
9 9 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (0.91%) Law
11 7 (0.80%) Military
12 4 (0.45%) Avionics
12 4 (0.45%) Social Housing
12 4 (0.45%) Tech for Good
13 3 (0.34%) Marketing
13 3 (0.34%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.23%) Banking
14 2 (0.23%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.23%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.89%) WPF
2 41 (4.66%) Vue
3 31 (3.52%) Spring
4 30 (3.41%) Spring Boot
5 25 (2.84%) React
6 15 (1.70%) AngularJS
6 15 (1.70%) Terraform
7 13 (1.48%) REST
8 12 (1.36%) RESTful
9 11 (1.25%) Node.js
10 9 (1.02%) .NET
10 9 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
11 8 (0.91%) Apache NiFi
12 7 (0.80%) HTML
13 6 (0.68%) CSS
13 6 (0.68%) gRPC
13 6 (0.68%) OpenAPI
14 5 (0.57%) Kafka
14 5 (0.57%) Swagger
15 4 (0.45%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 31 (3.52%) Cloud Native
2 29 (3.30%) Embedded Systems
2 29 (3.30%) Public Cloud
3 25 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
4 18 (2.05%) Algorithms
5 15 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (1.36%) IoT
7 9 (1.02%) AI Agents
8 7 (0.80%) Device Driver
8 7 (0.80%) Robotics
9 6 (0.68%) ARM Cortex
9 6 (0.68%) Data Structures
10 5 (0.57%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.45%) Smart Home
12 3 (0.34%) Fat Client
12 3 (0.34%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.34%) Mobile App
12 3 (0.34%) Onboarding
12 3 (0.34%) Thin Client
13 2 (0.23%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 55 (6.25%) Linux
2 21 (2.39%) Android
3 16 (1.82%) Windows
4 5 (0.57%) Ubuntu
4 5 (0.57%) Unix
4 5 (0.57%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.45%) CentOS
5 4 (0.45%) Debian
5 4 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.34%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (0.23%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.23%) SafeRTOS
7 2 (0.23%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.11%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 880 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 148 (16.82%) Agile
3 104 (11.82%) Full-Stack Development
4 97 (11.02%) CI/CD
5 58 (6.59%) SDLC
6 52 (5.91%) Microservices
7 48 (5.45%) Test Automation
8 46 (5.23%) DevOps
9 45 (5.11%) AI
10 41 (4.66%) Embedded Software Development
11 40 (4.55%) Mentoring
12 39 (4.43%) Software Architecture
13 33 (3.75%) Open Source
14 29 (3.30%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (3.18%) Continuous Improvement
15 28 (3.18%) Data Pipeline
16 24 (2.73%) Collaborative Working
17 23 (2.61%) Containerisation
18 22 (2.50%) Roadmaps
19 21 (2.39%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 131 (14.89%) C++
2 115 (13.07%) Java
3 97 (11.02%) Python
4 72 (8.18%) C#
5 51 (5.80%) JavaScript
6 31 (3.52%) C
6 31 (3.52%) Rust
7 24 (2.73%) TypeScript
8 22 (2.50%) Embedded C++
9 17 (1.93%) Go
9 17 (1.93%) Kotlin
10 11 (1.25%) SQL
11 10 (1.14%) Bash
12 9 (1.02%) PHP
13 8 (0.91%) Ada
14 5 (0.57%) Scala
15 4 (0.45%) Embedded C
15 4 (0.45%) MATLAB
16 3 (0.34%) Ada 95
16 3 (0.34%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 167 (18.98%) Security Cleared
2 84 (9.55%) SC Cleared
3 80 (9.09%) DV Cleared
4 22 (2.50%) Degree
5 8 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (0.57%) CEH
6 5 (0.57%) OSCP
7 3 (0.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (0.34%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.34%) PhD
8 2 (0.23%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (1.02%) Accessibility
2 6 (0.68%) QA
3 3 (0.34%) MIL-STD-1553
4 1 (0.11%) DO-178B
4 1 (0.11%) DO-254
4 1 (0.11%) GDPR
4 1 (0.11%) HAZOP
4 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
4 1 (0.11%) IEC 62304
4 1 (0.11%) ISO 26262
4 1 (0.11%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 21 (2.39%) Firmware
2 18 (2.05%) Docker
3 4 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 26 (2.95%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.93%) Ansible
3 8 (0.91%) Grafana
3 8 (0.91%) Kibana
3 8 (0.91%) logstash
4 4 (0.45%) Puppet
5 3 (0.34%) Plesk
5 3 (0.34%) SCCM
5 3 (0.34%) SCOM
5 3 (0.34%) SCOrch
6 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 6 (0.68%) Google
1 6 (0.68%) Intel
2 5 (0.57%) Microsoft
3 4 (0.45%) OpenAI
3 4 (0.45%) Peregrine
3 4 (0.45%) Red Hat
3 4 (0.45%) SaltStack
4 3 (0.34%) Databricks
4 3 (0.34%) Salesforce
5 2 (0.23%) Atlassian
5 2 (0.23%) LexisNexis
5 2 (0.23%) VMware
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle
6 1 (0.11%) TOWER Software