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 5 December 2025.

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

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 35 17 44
Rank change year-on-year -18 +27 -19
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 223 477 261
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 4.73% 9.10% 6.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.10% 9.68% 6.38%
Number of salaries quoted 163 246 201
10th Percentile £45,000 £40,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £45,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £58,750 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.64% -2.08% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £68,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £75,000 £67,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +11.11% -3.57% +1.34%

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 4,372 4,926 4,090
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.71% 93.94% 95.47%
Number of salaries quoted 2,980 2,908 3,196
10th Percentile £27,707 £30,000 £30,500
25th Percentile £32,500 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £51,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.86% -2.86% +5.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,813 £68,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -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 5 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 5 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 -12 89 £60,000 -4.00% 88
Gloucestershire +13 58 £76,250 +7.02% 62
Dorset -13 36 £55,000 +10.00% 25
Somerset -16 12 £65,000 +8.33% 35
Devon -26 11 £45,000 -21.74% 20
Wiltshire -14 7 £40,792 -9.35% 9
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 5 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.

1 223 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 48 (21.52%) Security Cleared
3 44 (19.73%) Java
4 39 (17.49%) C++
5 36 (16.14%) Python
6 31 (13.90%) AWS
7 30 (13.45%) Agile
7 30 (13.45%) CI/CD
8 27 (12.11%) React
9 26 (11.66%) DV Cleared
9 26 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
9 26 (11.66%) JavaScript
9 26 (11.66%) TypeScript
10 25 (11.21%) Degree
10 25 (11.21%) Linux
10 25 (11.21%) SC Cleared
11 21 (9.42%) Test Automation
12 19 (8.52%) Git
13 17 (7.62%) Kubernetes
14 15 (6.73%) AI
14 15 (6.73%) C#
14 15 (6.73%) Oracle
14 15 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (6.73%) Spring
15 14 (6.28%) HTML
15 14 (6.28%) Mentoring
15 14 (6.28%) Microservices
16 13 (5.83%) Digital Signal Processing
16 13 (5.83%) Machine Learning
16 13 (5.83%) Signal Processing

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 (3.59%) Apache
2 6 (2.69%) Confluence
3 1 (0.45%) CMS
Cloud Services
1 31 (13.90%) AWS
2 9 (4.04%) Amazon S3
2 9 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
2 9 (4.04%) Serverless
3 7 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
4 6 (2.69%) Amazon ECS
5 5 (2.24%) Azure
6 3 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
6 3 (1.35%) AWS Fargate
7 2 (0.90%) Amazon MSK
7 2 (0.90%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 2 (0.90%) OpenShift
8 1 (0.45%) Amazon Bedrock
8 1 (0.45%) Amazon SageMaker
8 1 (0.45%) Amazon SQS
8 1 (0.45%) GCP
8 1 (0.45%) GitHub
8 1 (0.45%) NuGet
8 1 (0.45%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.24%) TCP/IP
2 4 (1.79%) DNS
2 4 (1.79%) HTTP
2 4 (1.79%) SMTP
2 4 (1.79%) Software-Defined Radio
3 1 (0.45%) Bluetooth
3 1 (0.45%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.45%) J1939
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.59%) Elasticsearch
2 7 (3.14%) MongoDB
3 4 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 3 (1.35%) NoSQL
4 3 (1.35%) Oracle Database
4 3 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.90%) GIS
5 2 (0.90%) Neo4j
6 1 (0.45%) CockroachDB
6 1 (0.45%) DocumentDB
6 1 (0.45%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (0.45%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.45%) MySQL
6 1 (0.45%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.45%) Redis
6 1 (0.45%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (8.52%) Git
2 9 (4.04%) JUnit
3 7 (3.14%) GitLab
3 7 (3.14%) JIRA
4 5 (2.24%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.79%) Cypress.io
5 4 (1.79%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.79%) Oracle APEX
6 2 (0.90%) Maven
6 2 (0.90%) Selenium
6 2 (0.90%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.45%) Android Studio
7 1 (0.45%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.45%) Gradle
7 1 (0.45%) JMeter
7 1 (0.45%) LabVIEW
7 1 (0.45%) LoadRunner
7 1 (0.45%) Mockito
7 1 (0.45%) Xcode
7 1 (0.45%) Zephyr
General
1 22 (9.87%) Finance
2 13 (5.83%) Social Skills
3 12 (5.38%) Aerospace
4 9 (4.04%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (3.14%) Electronics
5 7 (3.14%) Law
5 7 (3.14%) Marketing
5 7 (3.14%) Public Sector
6 6 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.69%) Manufacturing
7 4 (1.79%) Aeronautics
7 4 (1.79%) Automotive
7 4 (1.79%) Military
7 4 (1.79%) Pharmaceutical
7 4 (1.79%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.90%) Banking
8 2 (0.90%) Games
9 1 (0.45%) Wholesale Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (12.11%) React
2 15 (6.73%) Spring
3 14 (6.28%) HTML
4 12 (5.38%) Spring Boot
5 10 (4.48%) CSS
5 10 (4.48%) Qt
6 8 (3.59%) RESTful
7 6 (2.69%) .NET
7 6 (2.69%) AngularJS
7 6 (2.69%) Apache NiFi
8 5 (2.24%) Hibernate
8 5 (2.24%) Jest
8 5 (2.24%) JSF
8 5 (2.24%) REST
8 5 (2.24%) WPF
9 4 (1.79%) Kafka
9 4 (1.79%) LAMP
9 4 (1.79%) Node.js
9 4 (1.79%) PrimeFaces
9 4 (1.79%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 12 (5.38%) Cloud Native
1 12 (5.38%) Embedded Systems
2 10 (4.48%) Robotics
3 8 (3.59%) Algorithms
4 5 (2.24%) IoT
4 5 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (1.79%) GNSS
5 4 (1.79%) Satnav
6 2 (0.90%) Legacy Code
6 2 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (0.90%) Management Information System
6 2 (0.90%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.45%) CAN bus
7 1 (0.45%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.45%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.45%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.45%) PKI
7 1 (0.45%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.45%) Reference Data
7 1 (0.45%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 25 (11.21%) Linux
2 6 (2.69%) Windows
3 2 (0.90%) FreeRTOS
4 1 (0.45%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 223 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 30 (13.45%) Agile
2 30 (13.45%) CI/CD
3 26 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
4 21 (9.42%) Test Automation
5 15 (6.73%) AI
5 15 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (6.28%) Mentoring
6 14 (6.28%) Microservices
7 13 (5.83%) Digital Signal Processing
7 13 (5.83%) Machine Learning
7 13 (5.83%) Signal Processing
8 12 (5.38%) Continuous Improvement
8 12 (5.38%) DevOps
9 9 (4.04%) Coaching
10 8 (3.59%) Mathematics
10 8 (3.59%) SDLC
10 8 (3.59%) Unit Testing
11 7 (3.14%) Community of Practice
11 7 (3.14%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 44 (19.73%) Java
2 39 (17.49%) C++
3 36 (16.14%) Python
4 26 (11.66%) JavaScript
4 26 (11.66%) TypeScript
5 15 (6.73%) C#
6 12 (5.38%) C
7 9 (4.04%) Embedded C++
7 9 (4.04%) SQL
8 6 (2.69%) Kotlin
8 6 (2.69%) Rust
9 5 (2.24%) PHP
10 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.79%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.90%) VC++
12 1 (0.45%) Delphi
12 1 (0.45%) Go
12 1 (0.45%) Ruby
12 1 (0.45%) Scala
12 1 (0.45%) Swift
Qualifications
1 48 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 26 (11.66%) DV Cleared
3 25 (11.21%) Degree
3 25 (11.21%) SC Cleared
4 4 (1.79%) Master's Degree
5 1 (0.45%) AWS Certification
5 1 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.35%) QA
2 2 (0.90%) ISO 9001
3 1 (0.45%) JTAG
System Software
1 7 (3.14%) Docker
Systems Management
1 17 (7.62%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.59%) Kibana
3 2 (0.90%) Terraform
4 1 (0.45%) Grafana
Vendors
1 15 (6.73%) Oracle
2 8 (3.59%) Atlassian
3 3 (1.35%) SAP
4 2 (0.90%) Google
4 2 (0.90%) Microsoft
5 1 (0.45%) Databricks
5 1 (0.45%) Palantir
5 1 (0.45%) ServiceNow