Software Engineer Job Trends in the South West

Software Engineer
England > South West

The median Software Engineer salary in the South West is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 1 December 2025.

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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 33 16 43
Rank change year-on-year -17 +27 -19
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 227 513 263
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 4.87% 9.35% 6.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.26% 9.95% 6.34%
Number of salaries quoted 160 270 203
10th Percentile £45,000 £40,000 £41,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £45,000 £46,300
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £68,750 £72,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £82,538
England median annual salary £75,000 £67,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +11.11% -3.57% +0.80%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 4,319 5,157 4,148
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.68% 93.97% 95.51%
Number of salaries quoted 2,930 3,061 3,247
10th Percentile £27,707 £30,000 £30,635
25th Percentile £32,500 £40,000 £40,560
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £51,422 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -7.63% -2.05% +5.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,272 £68,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £58,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 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
Bristol -13 85 £60,000 -4.00% 61
Gloucestershire +13 60 £77,500 +10.71% 40
Dorset -12 43 £55,000 +10.00% 8
Somerset -18 13 £65,000 +8.33% 21
Devon -25 9 £43,875 -29.80% 6
Wiltshire -19 7 £40,792 -9.35% 4
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 December 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 West region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 227 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 50 (22.03%) Security Cleared
3 49 (21.59%) Java
4 40 (17.62%) Python
5 39 (17.18%) C++
6 36 (15.86%) CI/CD
7 35 (15.42%) Agile
7 35 (15.42%) AWS
8 29 (12.78%) React
9 28 (12.33%) JavaScript
10 27 (11.89%) DV Cleared
10 27 (11.89%) TypeScript
11 25 (11.01%) Full-Stack Development
11 25 (11.01%) Linux
11 25 (11.01%) SC Cleared
12 23 (10.13%) Degree
13 21 (9.25%) AI
13 21 (9.25%) Test Automation
14 20 (8.81%) Git
15 19 (8.37%) Kubernetes
15 19 (8.37%) Machine Learning
16 17 (7.49%) Oracle
16 17 (7.49%) Problem-Solving
16 17 (7.49%) Spring
17 15 (6.61%) C#
17 15 (6.61%) Continuous Improvement
17 15 (6.61%) HTML
17 15 (6.61%) Mentoring
17 15 (6.61%) Microservices
18 13 (5.73%) C

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 8 (3.52%) Apache
2 6 (2.64%) Confluence
3 1 (0.44%) CMS
Cloud Services
1 35 (15.42%) AWS
2 10 (4.41%) Amazon S3
2 10 (4.41%) AWS Lambda
2 10 (4.41%) Serverless
3 8 (3.52%) Amazon EKS
4 7 (3.08%) Amazon ECS
5 5 (2.20%) Azure
6 3 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
6 3 (1.32%) AWS Fargate
7 2 (0.88%) Amazon Bedrock
7 2 (0.88%) Amazon MSK
7 2 (0.88%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 2 (0.88%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (0.88%) OpenShift
8 1 (0.44%) Amazon SQS
8 1 (0.44%) Cloud Run
8 1 (0.44%) GCP
8 1 (0.44%) GitHub
8 1 (0.44%) NuGet
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.76%) Software-Defined Radio
1 4 (1.76%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.32%) DNS
2 3 (1.32%) HTTP
2 3 (1.32%) SMTP
3 1 (0.44%) Bluetooth
3 1 (0.44%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.44%) J1939
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.96%) Elasticsearch
2 8 (3.52%) MongoDB
3 5 (2.20%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.76%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.32%) NoSQL
5 3 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.88%) GIS
6 2 (0.88%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.44%) CockroachDB
7 1 (0.44%) DocumentDB
7 1 (0.44%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.44%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.44%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.44%) Redis
7 1 (0.44%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (8.81%) Git
2 10 (4.41%) JUnit
3 8 (3.52%) GitLab
4 7 (3.08%) JIRA
5 6 (2.64%) Jenkins
6 5 (2.20%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.76%) Cypress.io
7 4 (1.76%) Oracle APEX
8 3 (1.32%) Maven
8 3 (1.32%) Selenium
9 2 (0.88%) Locust
9 2 (0.88%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.44%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.44%) Gatling
10 1 (0.44%) Gradle
10 1 (0.44%) JMeter
10 1 (0.44%) LabVIEW
10 1 (0.44%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.44%) Mockito
10 1 (0.44%) Xcode
General
1 29 (12.78%) Finance
2 15 (6.61%) Social Skills
3 14 (6.17%) Law
4 13 (5.73%) Aerospace
4 13 (5.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 12 (5.29%) Marketing
6 10 (4.41%) Analytical Skills
7 7 (3.08%) Electronics
7 7 (3.08%) Public Sector
8 6 (2.64%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.76%) Aeronautics
9 4 (1.76%) Automotive
9 4 (1.76%) Banking
9 4 (1.76%) Military
9 4 (1.76%) Pharmaceutical
9 4 (1.76%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.88%) Games
11 1 (0.44%) Wholesale Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (12.78%) React
2 17 (7.49%) Spring
3 15 (6.61%) HTML
4 12 (5.29%) Spring Boot
5 11 (4.85%) CSS
6 10 (4.41%) Qt
7 8 (3.52%) RESTful
8 7 (3.08%) AngularJS
8 7 (3.08%) Hibernate
8 7 (3.08%) REST
9 6 (2.64%) .NET
9 6 (2.64%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (2.64%) JSF
10 5 (2.20%) Jest
10 5 (2.20%) Kafka
10 5 (2.20%) Node.js
10 5 (2.20%) WPF
11 4 (1.76%) LAMP
11 4 (1.76%) PrimeFaces
11 4 (1.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.73%) Cloud Native
2 12 (5.29%) Embedded Systems
3 10 (4.41%) Algorithms
3 10 (4.41%) Robotics
4 5 (2.20%) IoT
5 4 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.32%) GNSS
6 3 (1.32%) Public Cloud
6 3 (1.32%) Satnav
7 2 (0.88%) Legacy Code
7 2 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.88%) Management Information System
7 2 (0.88%) Reference Data
8 1 (0.44%) ARM Cortex
8 1 (0.44%) Device Driver
8 1 (0.44%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.44%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (0.44%) PKI
8 1 (0.44%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.44%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 25 (11.01%) Linux
2 5 (2.20%) Windows
3 2 (0.88%) FreeRTOS
4 1 (0.44%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 36 (15.86%) CI/CD
3 35 (15.42%) Agile
4 25 (11.01%) Full-Stack Development
5 21 (9.25%) AI
5 21 (9.25%) Test Automation
6 19 (8.37%) Machine Learning
7 17 (7.49%) Problem-Solving
8 15 (6.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 15 (6.61%) Mentoring
8 15 (6.61%) Microservices
9 13 (5.73%) Digital Signal Processing
9 13 (5.73%) SDLC
9 13 (5.73%) Signal Processing
10 12 (5.29%) DevOps
11 11 (4.85%) Community of Practice
12 10 (4.41%) Operational Stability
13 9 (3.96%) Coaching
13 9 (3.96%) Unit Testing
14 8 (3.52%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 49 (21.59%) Java
2 40 (17.62%) Python
3 39 (17.18%) C++
4 28 (12.33%) JavaScript
5 27 (11.89%) TypeScript
6 15 (6.61%) C#
7 13 (5.73%) C
8 9 (3.96%) Embedded C++
8 9 (3.96%) SQL
9 6 (2.64%) Kotlin
9 6 (2.64%) Rust
10 4 (1.76%) PHP
10 4 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.76%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.88%) VC++
12 1 (0.44%) Delphi
12 1 (0.44%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.44%) Go
12 1 (0.44%) Ruby
12 1 (0.44%) Swift
Qualifications
1 50 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 27 (11.89%) DV Cleared
3 25 (11.01%) SC Cleared
4 23 (10.13%) Degree
5 4 (1.76%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.44%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.44%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.32%) QA
2 2 (0.88%) ISO 9001
3 1 (0.44%) JTAG
3 1 (0.44%) MISRA
System Software
1 8 (3.52%) Docker
Systems Management
1 19 (8.37%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.96%) Kibana
3 2 (0.88%) Terraform
4 1 (0.44%) Grafana
Vendors
1 17 (7.49%) Oracle
2 9 (3.96%) Atlassian
3 3 (1.32%) SAP
4 2 (0.88%) Databricks
4 2 (0.88%) Google
4 2 (0.88%) Microsoft
4 2 (0.88%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.44%) Palantir
5 1 (0.44%) Sybase