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 13 July 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 34 12
Rank change year-on-year +21 -22 +67
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 602 184 916
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 7.25% 5.56% 9.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 7.71% 6.04% 9.78%
Number of salaries quoted 435 107 709
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £39,750
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +13.04% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £100,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £78,810 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.18% +31.35% -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 7,807 3,047 9,369
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.05% 92.00% 96.00%
Number of salaries quoted 5,357 2,047 6,972
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £28,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £34,500 £37,199
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,300 £77,500
England median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% +3.77% -11.67%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 +34 227 £75,000 -4.76% 73
Bristol +17 214 £70,000 - 42
Dorset +3 76 £50,000 -7.17% 16
Somerset -15 39 £55,000 -15.38% 17
Devon -8 26 £57,500 +15.00% 6
Wiltshire -2 17 £55,000 -15.38% 2
Cornwall - 2 - -
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 13 July 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.

1 602 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 132 (21.93%) Security Cleared
3 104 (17.28%) C++
4 97 (16.11%) Java
5 92 (15.28%) Full-Stack Development
6 81 (13.46%) Agile
7 77 (12.79%) Python
7 77 (12.79%) SC Cleared
8 76 (12.62%) CI/CD
9 67 (11.13%) C#
10 51 (8.47%) DV Cleared
11 49 (8.14%) DevOps
12 47 (7.81%) JavaScript
13 46 (7.64%) Linux
14 42 (6.98%) Microservices
15 40 (6.64%) SDLC
16 39 (6.48%) Vue
17 37 (6.15%) Mentoring
18 36 (5.98%) AI
18 36 (5.98%) WPF
19 35 (5.81%) Kubernetes
20 34 (5.65%) Test Automation
21 33 (5.48%) AWS
22 30 (4.98%) Software Architecture
23 28 (4.65%) C
23 28 (4.65%) Docker
24 27 (4.49%) Containerisation
24 27 (4.49%) Site Reliability Engineering
24 27 (4.49%) TypeScript
25 26 (4.32%) Azure

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 11 (1.83%) Apache
2 3 (0.50%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.17%) CMS
3 1 (0.17%) Confluence
3 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 33 (5.48%) AWS
2 26 (4.32%) Azure
3 15 (2.49%) GCP
4 11 (1.83%) SaaS
5 9 (1.50%) Firebase
6 8 (1.33%) Azure AKS
6 8 (1.33%) GitHub
7 5 (0.83%) OpenShift
8 4 (0.66%) Anthropic Claude
8 4 (0.66%) Cloud Run
8 4 (0.66%) Serverless
9 3 (0.50%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.50%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (0.50%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.33%) Amazon S3
11 1 (0.17%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 1 (0.17%) Cloud Functions
11 1 (0.17%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.83%) Wireless
2 8 (1.33%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.50%) AMQP
3 3 (0.50%) Broadband
4 2 (0.33%) Network Security
4 2 (0.33%) RS-485
4 2 (0.33%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.17%) Modbus
5 1 (0.17%) MQTT
5 1 (0.17%) Profibus
5 1 (0.17%) RS-232
5 1 (0.17%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.16%) Elasticsearch
2 12 (1.99%) MongoDB
3 10 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.50%) Big Data
5 8 (1.33%) MySQL
5 8 (1.33%) SQL Server
6 5 (0.83%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.66%) Hadoop
8 3 (0.50%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (0.50%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.50%) Pinecone
8 3 (0.50%) Redis
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.17%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.17%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 23 (3.82%) Git
2 16 (2.66%) GitLab
3 9 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 9 (1.50%) JIRA
3 9 (1.50%) SonarQube
4 8 (1.33%) Cucumber
5 4 (0.66%) Gradle
6 2 (0.33%) JUnit
6 2 (0.33%) Maven
6 2 (0.33%) Mockito
6 2 (0.33%) Subversion
6 2 (0.33%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.33%) Visual Studio Code
7 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.17%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.17%) GoogleTest
7 1 (0.17%) LabVIEW
General
1 24 (3.99%) Aerospace
2 17 (2.82%) Electronics
3 14 (2.33%) Automotive
4 11 (1.83%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (1.83%) Social Skills
5 10 (1.66%) Manufacturing
6 9 (1.50%) Finance
7 5 (0.83%) Aviation
7 5 (0.83%) Social Housing
7 5 (0.83%) Tech for Good
8 3 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (0.50%) Public Sector
9 2 (0.33%) Avionics
9 2 (0.33%) Law
9 2 (0.33%) Military
9 2 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.33%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (6.48%) Vue
2 36 (5.98%) WPF
3 26 (4.32%) Spring
4 21 (3.49%) React
5 20 (3.32%) REST
6 18 (2.99%) Spring Boot
7 17 (2.82%) AngularJS
8 16 (2.66%) Node.js
9 14 (2.33%) .NET
10 12 (1.99%) HTML
10 12 (1.99%) RESTful
11 10 (1.66%) .NET Framework
12 9 (1.50%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (1.33%) .NET Core
13 8 (1.33%) Apache NiFi
13 8 (1.33%) Dapper ORM
13 8 (1.33%) Entity Framework
14 7 (1.16%) gRPC
15 6 (1.00%) CSS
15 6 (1.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 25 (4.15%) Embedded Systems
2 17 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
3 16 (2.66%) Cloud Native
4 15 (2.49%) Algorithms
5 11 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (1.66%) Public Cloud
7 9 (1.50%) AI Agents
8 7 (1.16%) Device Driver
9 5 (0.83%) ARM Cortex
9 5 (0.83%) IoT
9 5 (0.83%) Operational Technology
9 5 (0.83%) Smart Home
10 4 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.50%) Fat Client
11 3 (0.50%) Thin Client
12 2 (0.33%) Data Structures
12 2 (0.33%) Over-the-Top Content
12 2 (0.33%) PKI
12 2 (0.33%) Smartphone
12 2 (0.33%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 46 (7.64%) Linux
2 17 (2.82%) Android
3 13 (2.16%) Windows
4 6 (1.00%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (0.83%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.50%) CentOS
6 3 (0.50%) Debian
6 3 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.50%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.33%) SafeRTOS
7 2 (0.33%) Unix
7 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.17%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 602 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 92 (15.28%) Full-Stack Development
3 81 (13.46%) Agile
4 76 (12.62%) CI/CD
5 49 (8.14%) DevOps
6 42 (6.98%) Microservices
7 40 (6.64%) SDLC
8 37 (6.15%) Mentoring
9 36 (5.98%) AI
10 34 (5.65%) Test Automation
11 30 (4.98%) Software Architecture
12 27 (4.49%) Containerisation
12 27 (4.49%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 26 (4.32%) Continuous Improvement
13 26 (4.32%) Platform Engineering
14 25 (4.15%) Embedded Software Development
14 25 (4.15%) Problem-Solving
15 20 (3.32%) Clean Code
16 19 (3.16%) Migration
17 16 (2.66%) Secure Coding
Programming Languages
1 104 (17.28%) C++
2 97 (16.11%) Java
3 77 (12.79%) Python
4 67 (11.13%) C#
5 47 (7.81%) JavaScript
6 28 (4.65%) C
7 27 (4.49%) TypeScript
8 24 (3.99%) Rust
9 22 (3.65%) Embedded C++
10 17 (2.82%) Go
11 16 (2.66%) Kotlin
12 15 (2.49%) SQL
13 12 (1.99%) Bash
14 10 (1.66%) PHP
15 5 (0.83%) Scala
16 4 (0.66%) Embedded C
16 4 (0.66%) MATLAB
16 4 (0.66%) PowerShell
17 1 (0.17%) Assembly Language
17 1 (0.17%) R
Qualifications
1 132 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 77 (12.79%) SC Cleared
3 51 (8.47%) DV Cleared
4 13 (2.16%) Degree
5 5 (0.83%) CEH
5 5 (0.83%) OSCP
6 3 (0.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.33%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (0.50%) Accessibility
2 2 (0.33%) QA
3 1 (0.17%) DO-178B
3 1 (0.17%) DO-254
3 1 (0.17%) HAZOP
3 1 (0.17%) IEC 61508
3 1 (0.17%) IEC 62304
3 1 (0.17%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 28 (4.65%) Docker
2 22 (3.65%) Firmware
3 3 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 35 (5.81%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.66%) Terraform
3 15 (2.49%) Ansible
4 8 (1.33%) Grafana
4 8 (1.33%) Kibana
4 8 (1.33%) logstash
5 3 (0.50%) Plesk
5 3 (0.50%) Puppet
5 3 (0.50%) SCCM
5 3 (0.50%) SCOM
5 3 (0.50%) SCOrch
6 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.33%) Podman
Vendors
1 5 (0.83%) Google
1 5 (0.83%) Microsoft
2 4 (0.66%) Intel
2 4 (0.66%) OpenAI
2 4 (0.66%) Peregrine
3 3 (0.50%) Oracle
3 3 (0.50%) Red Hat
3 3 (0.50%) SaltStack
4 2 (0.33%) Atlassian
4 2 (0.33%) Typelevel
4 2 (0.33%) VMware
5 1 (0.17%) TOWER Software