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 28 May 2026.

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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 43 13
Rank change year-on-year +29 -30 +50
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 518 136 847
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 6.70% 5.16% 9.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.13% 5.58% 9.45%
Number of salaries quoted 386 85 676
10th Percentile £45,000 £44,250 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £51,676 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +13.64% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £82,500 £69,063
90th Percentile £80,625 £94,511 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £77,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -9.68% +29.17% -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 7,269 2,436 8,961
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.01% 92.38% 96.09%
Number of salaries quoted 5,035 1,547 6,829
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,906
25th Percentile £35,000 £35,000 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £51,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £68,750 £66,250 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £76,250
England median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +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 28 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 28 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 +14 205 £65,000 +8.33% 63
Gloucestershire +35 163 £70,000 +12.00% 55
Dorset +12 75 £50,000 +5.26% 12
Somerset -8 28 £60,000 -22.58% 18
Wiltshire +4 20 £60,000 -7.69% 4
Devon -13 19 £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 28 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.

1 518 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 115 (22.20%) Security Cleared
3 77 (14.86%) Java
4 76 (14.67%) C++
4 76 (14.67%) Full-Stack Development
5 66 (12.74%) SC Cleared
6 60 (11.58%) Agile
6 60 (11.58%) C#
7 51 (9.85%) CI/CD
8 50 (9.65%) Python
9 45 (8.69%) DevOps
10 37 (7.14%) DV Cleared
11 36 (6.95%) JavaScript
12 34 (6.56%) Kubernetes
12 34 (6.56%) Linux
13 30 (5.79%) TypeScript
13 30 (5.79%) Vue
14 29 (5.60%) .NET
14 29 (5.60%) Docker
15 28 (5.41%) AI
15 28 (5.41%) Mentoring
15 28 (5.41%) SDLC
16 27 (5.21%) Problem-Solving
17 26 (5.02%) C
17 26 (5.02%) Microservices
17 26 (5.02%) Platform Engineering
17 26 (5.02%) React
17 26 (5.02%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 25 (4.83%) AWS
18 25 (4.83%) 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 25 (4.83%) AWS
2 18 (3.47%) Azure
3 14 (2.70%) SaaS
4 11 (2.12%) Azure AKS
5 9 (1.74%) GCP
5 9 (1.74%) GitHub
6 4 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (0.77%) Serverless
7 3 (0.58%) Amazon S3
7 3 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (0.39%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (0.39%) Amazon SQS
8 2 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (0.39%) OpenShift
9 1 (0.19%) Anthropic Claude
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 1 (0.19%) Cloud Functions
9 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 (2.12%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.93%) Elasticsearch
2 10 (1.93%) MySQL
3 8 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.35%) NoSQL
5 6 (1.16%) Big Data
6 4 (0.77%) 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 16 (3.09%) 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%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.19%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.19%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.19%) Xcode
General
1 23 (4.44%) Aerospace
2 15 (2.90%) Social Skills
3 14 (2.70%) Automotive
3 14 (2.70%) Electronics
4 13 (2.51%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (2.12%) Manufacturing
6 8 (1.54%) Finance
6 8 (1.54%) 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%) Wearables
12 1 (0.19%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (5.79%) Vue
2 29 (5.60%) .NET
3 26 (5.02%) React
4 24 (4.63%) REST
5 23 (4.44%) WPF
6 20 (3.86%) AngularJS
7 19 (3.67%) Node.js
8 15 (2.90%) Spring
9 13 (2.51%) .NET Core
9 13 (2.51%) .NET Framework
9 13 (2.51%) Spring Boot
10 12 (2.32%) HTML
11 11 (2.12%) Dapper ORM
11 11 (2.12%) Entity Framework
11 11 (2.12%) RESTful
12 7 (1.35%) ASP.NET
13 6 (1.16%) gRPC
14 5 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
14 5 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
14 5 (0.97%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 19 (3.67%) Embedded Systems
2 15 (2.90%) Algorithms
3 12 (2.32%) Cloud Native
4 11 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
5 8 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (1.35%) IoT
7 6 (1.16%) Smart Home
8 5 (0.97%) Device Driver
9 4 (0.77%) ARM Cortex
10 3 (0.58%) Fat Client
10 3 (0.58%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.58%) Operational Technology
10 3 (0.58%) Over-the-Top Content
10 3 (0.58%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.58%) Thin Client
10 3 (0.58%) Video\Live Streaming
11 2 (0.39%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.39%) Raspberry Pi
11 2 (0.39%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 34 (6.56%) 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
1 518 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 76 (14.67%) Full-Stack Development
3 60 (11.58%) Agile
4 51 (9.85%) CI/CD
5 45 (8.69%) DevOps
6 28 (5.41%) AI
6 28 (5.41%) Mentoring
6 28 (5.41%) SDLC
7 27 (5.21%) Problem-Solving
8 26 (5.02%) Microservices
8 26 (5.02%) Platform Engineering
8 26 (5.02%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 25 (4.83%) Containerisation
10 23 (4.44%) Test Automation
11 22 (4.25%) Embedded Software Development
12 20 (3.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 18 (3.47%) Clean Code
14 16 (3.09%) Data Science
14 16 (3.09%) Migration
14 16 (3.09%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 77 (14.86%) Java
2 76 (14.67%) C++
3 60 (11.58%) C#
4 50 (9.65%) Python
5 36 (6.95%) JavaScript
6 30 (5.79%) TypeScript
7 26 (5.02%) C
8 17 (3.28%) SQL
9 13 (2.51%) Embedded C++
10 12 (2.32%) Rust
11 11 (2.12%) Go
12 10 (1.93%) Kotlin
13 9 (1.74%) Bash
14 8 (1.54%) PHP
15 4 (0.77%) Embedded C
15 4 (0.77%) PowerShell
15 4 (0.77%) Scala
16 3 (0.58%) MATLAB
17 1 (0.19%) Assembly Language
17 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 115 (22.20%) Security Cleared
2 66 (12.74%) SC Cleared
3 37 (7.14%) DV Cleared
4 14 (2.70%) 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 3 (0.58%) Accessibility
1 3 (0.58%) QA
2 1 (0.19%) DO-178B
2 1 (0.19%) DO-254
2 1 (0.19%) HAZOP
2 1 (0.19%) IEC 61508
2 1 (0.19%) IEC 62304
2 1 (0.19%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 29 (5.60%) Docker
2 20 (3.86%) Firmware
3 2 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 34 (6.56%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.70%) Terraform
3 10 (1.93%) 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