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 30 May 2026.

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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 45 13
Rank change year-on-year +31 -32 +49
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 517 146 865
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 6.74% 5.43% 9.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.17% 5.87% 9.54%
Number of salaries quoted 386 84 689
10th Percentile £45,000 £44,125 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £51,569 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £61,250 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% +11.36% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £82,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £80,625 £94,633 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £77,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +28.33% -14.29%

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 7,214 2,487 9,063
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.05% 92.45% 96.09%
Number of salaries quoted 5,016 1,575 6,888
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,945
25th Percentile £35,000 £35,000 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £51,198 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.34% +2.40% -4.76%
75th Percentile £68,750 £67,405 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £76,250
England median annual salary £55,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -3.48% +9.52% -13.65%

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 30 May 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 30 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
Bristol +15 203 £65,000 +8.33% 62
Gloucestershire +33 163 £70,000 +12.00% 41
Dorset +7 74 £50,000 +5.26% 8
Somerset -5 29 £60,000 -22.58% 20
Wiltshire +3 20 £60,000 -7.69% 3
Devon -10 20 £55,000 -8.33% 7
Cornwall - 3 - -
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 30 May 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.

1 517 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 113 (21.86%) Security Cleared
3 77 (14.89%) C++
3 77 (14.89%) Full-Stack Development
3 77 (14.89%) Java
4 65 (12.57%) SC Cleared
5 62 (11.99%) Agile
6 60 (11.61%) C#
7 52 (10.06%) CI/CD
8 50 (9.67%) Python
9 46 (8.90%) DevOps
10 38 (7.35%) JavaScript
11 37 (7.16%) DV Cleared
12 35 (6.77%) Kubernetes
12 35 (6.77%) Linux
13 30 (5.80%) Docker
13 30 (5.80%) TypeScript
13 30 (5.80%) Vue
14 28 (5.42%) .NET
14 28 (5.42%) AI
14 28 (5.42%) Mentoring
14 28 (5.42%) SDLC
15 27 (5.22%) AWS
15 27 (5.22%) Microservices
15 27 (5.22%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (5.22%) React
16 26 (5.03%) C
16 26 (5.03%) Platform Engineering
16 26 (5.03%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 25 (4.84%) Containerisation

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 7 (1.35%) Apache
2 2 (0.39%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.39%) CMS
3 1 (0.19%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (0.39%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 27 (5.22%) AWS
2 19 (3.68%) Azure
3 14 (2.71%) SaaS
4 11 (2.13%) Azure AKS
5 10 (1.93%) GCP
6 9 (1.74%) GitHub
7 4 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (0.77%) Serverless
8 3 (0.58%) Amazon S3
8 3 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (0.39%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (0.39%) Amazon SQS
9 2 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (0.39%) OpenShift
10 1 (0.19%) Anthropic Claude
10 1 (0.19%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 1 (0.19%) Cloud Functions
10 1 (0.19%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.74%) Wireless
2 6 (1.16%) Ethernet
3 4 (0.77%) Broadband
4 3 (0.58%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.39%) AMQP
5 2 (0.39%) Network Security
6 1 (0.19%) DNS
6 1 (0.19%) HTTP
6 1 (0.19%) Modbus
6 1 (0.19%) MQTT
6 1 (0.19%) Profibus
6 1 (0.19%) RS-232
6 1 (0.19%) RS-485
6 1 (0.19%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.13%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.93%) Elasticsearch
2 10 (1.93%) MySQL
3 8 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.35%) NoSQL
5 6 (1.16%) Big Data
6 5 (0.97%) MongoDB
7 3 (0.58%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.39%) Cloudera CDH
8 2 (0.39%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.39%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.19%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.19%) Redis
9 1 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 17 (3.29%) Git
2 9 (1.74%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.16%) GitLab
3 6 (1.16%) SonarQube
4 5 (0.97%) Cucumber
4 5 (0.97%) JUnit
5 4 (0.77%) Gradle
5 4 (0.77%) JIRA
6 2 (0.39%) Maven
6 2 (0.39%) Mockito
6 2 (0.39%) PROIV
6 2 (0.39%) Subversion
6 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio Code
7 1 (0.19%) Android Studio
7 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.19%) GoogleTest
General
1 23 (4.45%) Aerospace
2 16 (3.09%) Social Skills
3 14 (2.71%) Automotive
3 14 (2.71%) Electronics
4 13 (2.51%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (2.13%) Manufacturing
6 8 (1.55%) Finance
6 8 (1.55%) Pharmaceutical
7 6 (1.16%) Social Housing
7 6 (1.16%) Tech for Good
8 5 (0.97%) Aviation
9 4 (0.77%) Military
10 3 (0.58%) Aeronautics
11 2 (0.39%) Avionics
11 2 (0.39%) Law
11 2 (0.39%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.39%) Public Sector
11 2 (0.39%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (5.80%) Vue
2 28 (5.42%) .NET
3 27 (5.22%) React
4 24 (4.64%) REST
4 24 (4.64%) WPF
5 20 (3.87%) AngularJS
6 19 (3.68%) Node.js
7 16 (3.09%) Spring
8 13 (2.51%) .NET Core
8 13 (2.51%) .NET Framework
8 13 (2.51%) Spring Boot
9 12 (2.32%) HTML
10 11 (2.13%) Dapper ORM
10 11 (2.13%) Entity Framework
10 11 (2.13%) RESTful
11 6 (1.16%) ASP.NET
11 6 (1.16%) gRPC
12 5 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
12 5 (0.97%) CSS
12 5 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 18 (3.48%) Embedded Systems
2 15 (2.90%) Algorithms
3 12 (2.32%) Cloud Native
4 11 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
6 6 (1.16%) IoT
6 6 (1.16%) Smart Home
7 5 (0.97%) Device Driver
8 4 (0.77%) ARM Cortex
9 3 (0.58%) Fat Client
9 3 (0.58%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.58%) Operational Technology
9 3 (0.58%) Over-the-Top Content
9 3 (0.58%) Public Cloud
9 3 (0.58%) Thin Client
9 3 (0.58%) Video\Live Streaming
10 2 (0.39%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.39%) PKI
10 2 (0.39%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 35 (6.77%) Linux
2 10 (1.93%) Windows
3 9 (1.74%) Android
4 6 (1.16%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (0.97%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.39%) CentOS
6 2 (0.39%) Debian
6 2 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.39%) SafeRTOS
6 2 (0.39%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.39%) Unix
6 2 (0.39%) Windows 10
6 2 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.19%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 517 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 77 (14.89%) Full-Stack Development
3 62 (11.99%) Agile
4 52 (10.06%) CI/CD
5 46 (8.90%) DevOps
6 28 (5.42%) AI
6 28 (5.42%) Mentoring
6 28 (5.42%) SDLC
7 27 (5.22%) Microservices
7 27 (5.22%) Problem-Solving
8 26 (5.03%) Platform Engineering
8 26 (5.03%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 25 (4.84%) Containerisation
10 24 (4.64%) Test Automation
11 23 (4.45%) Embedded Software Development
12 20 (3.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 18 (3.48%) Clean Code
14 16 (3.09%) Data Science
14 16 (3.09%) Migration
14 16 (3.09%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 77 (14.89%) C++
1 77 (14.89%) Java
2 60 (11.61%) C#
3 50 (9.67%) Python
4 38 (7.35%) JavaScript
5 30 (5.80%) TypeScript
6 26 (5.03%) C
7 17 (3.29%) SQL
8 14 (2.71%) Embedded C++
9 12 (2.32%) Rust
10 11 (2.13%) Go
11 10 (1.93%) Kotlin
12 9 (1.74%) Bash
13 8 (1.55%) PHP
14 4 (0.77%) Embedded C
14 4 (0.77%) PowerShell
14 4 (0.77%) Scala
15 3 (0.58%) MATLAB
16 1 (0.19%) Assembly Language
16 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 113 (21.86%) Security Cleared
2 65 (12.57%) SC Cleared
3 37 (7.16%) DV Cleared
4 14 (2.71%) Degree
5 3 (0.58%) CEH
5 3 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (0.58%) OSCP
6 2 (0.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.39%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (0.77%) QA
2 3 (0.58%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.19%) DO-178B
3 1 (0.19%) DO-254
3 1 (0.19%) HAZOP
3 1 (0.19%) IEC 61508
3 1 (0.19%) IEC 62304
3 1 (0.19%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 30 (5.80%) Docker
2 20 (3.87%) Firmware
3 2 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 35 (6.77%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.71%) Terraform
3 11 (2.13%) Ansible
4 5 (0.97%) Grafana
4 5 (0.97%) Kibana
4 5 (0.97%) logstash
5 3 (0.58%) Plesk
5 3 (0.58%) SCCM
5 3 (0.58%) SCOM
5 3 (0.58%) SCOrch
6 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.39%) Podman
6 2 (0.39%) Puppet
Vendors
1 5 (0.97%) Microsoft
2 4 (0.77%) Google
2 4 (0.77%) Peregrine
3 3 (0.58%) OpenAI
3 3 (0.58%) Oracle
4 2 (0.39%) Red Hat
4 2 (0.39%) SaltStack
4 2 (0.39%) Typelevel
4 2 (0.39%) VMware
5 1 (0.19%) Atlassian
5 1 (0.19%) TOWER Software