Software Engineering Job Trends in the South West

Software Engineering
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 10 10
Rank change year-on-year +3 0 +9
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 664 346 1,186
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 9.05% 13.02% 13.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.08% 14.50% 16.18%
Number of salaries quoted 495 217 940
10th Percentile £45,000 £31,750 £32,500
25th Percentile £53,750 £47,231 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £64,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +13.28% -11.72%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South West

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the South West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,077 2,387 7,331
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 69.16% 89.84% 84.10%
Number of salaries quoted 3,376 1,526 5,556
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £36,813 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,600 £50,969
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% +3.20% -2.92%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,568 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £81,250 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -12.00%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the South West

Software Engineering
Salary Trend in the South West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the South West over the 6 months to 19 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineering in the South West

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the South West region over the 6 months to 19 April 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 -2 263 £65,000 +8.33% 81
Gloucestershire +11 198 £70,000 +27.27% 59
Dorset +9 71 £52,500 +10.53% 13
Devon +1 51 £55,000 -15.38% 5
Somerset -21 25 £65,000 -16.13% 32
Wiltshire -12 23 £60,000 +73.91% 11
Cornwall -1 10 £47,000 -39.35%
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
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 12 (1.81%) Apache
2 4 (0.60%) CMS
3 3 (0.45%) Confluence
4 2 (0.30%) nginx
5 1 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.15%) Drupal
5 1 (0.15%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.15%) IIS
5 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 4 (0.60%) Visualfiles
2 2 (0.30%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.15%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 75 (11.30%) AWS
2 46 (6.93%) Azure
3 38 (5.72%) SaaS
4 27 (4.07%) GCP
5 15 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
6 14 (2.11%) Serverless
7 12 (1.81%) Azure AKS
8 11 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (1.51%) Amazon S3
9 10 (1.51%) GitHub
10 8 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (0.90%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.75%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.75%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.60%) Figma
13 4 (0.60%) OpenShift
14 3 (0.45%) Amazon SQS
15 2 (0.30%) Azure Pipelines
15 2 (0.30%) Cloud Functions
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.66%) Broadband
2 6 (0.90%) Wireless
3 4 (0.60%) DNS
3 4 (0.60%) Ethernet
3 4 (0.60%) HTTP
3 4 (0.60%) SMTP
3 4 (0.60%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.30%) Network Security
5 1 (0.15%) AMQP
5 1 (0.15%) Modbus
5 1 (0.15%) Profibus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.56%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
4 14 (2.11%) MySQL
5 13 (1.96%) MongoDB
6 10 (1.51%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.05%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.75%) Big Data
9 4 (0.60%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.45%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.30%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.30%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.30%) Redis
12 1 (0.15%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.15%) Cloudera CDH
12 1 (0.15%) GIS
12 1 (0.15%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.15%) InterSystems Cache
12 1 (0.15%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 32 (4.82%) Git
2 13 (1.96%) JIRA
3 12 (1.81%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.66%) GitLab
5 10 (1.51%) Cypress.io
6 8 (1.20%) JUnit
7 7 (1.05%) Cucumber
7 7 (1.05%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.75%) Gradle
9 3 (0.45%) Balsamiq
9 3 (0.45%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.30%) Gatling
10 2 (0.30%) JMeter
10 2 (0.30%) LabVIEW
10 2 (0.30%) Maven
10 2 (0.30%) Mockito
10 2 (0.30%) PROIV
10 2 (0.30%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.30%) Subversion
10 2 (0.30%) Xcode
General
1 52 (7.83%) Social Skills
2 37 (5.57%) Finance
3 30 (4.52%) Aerospace
4 22 (3.31%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (2.41%) Automotive
6 14 (2.11%) Manufacturing
7 13 (1.96%) Electronics
8 10 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.36%) Public Sector
10 8 (1.20%) Military
10 8 (1.20%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (1.05%) Aeronautics
12 6 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.60%) Marketing
13 4 (0.60%) Tech for Good
13 4 (0.60%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.45%) Law
14 3 (0.45%) Social Housing
15 2 (0.30%) Aviation
15 2 (0.30%) Avionics
Job Titles
1 494 (74.40%) Software Engineer
2 160 (24.10%) Senior
3 139 (20.93%) Senior Software Engineer
4 91 (13.70%) Embedded Engineer
5 89 (13.40%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 51 (7.68%) Developer
7 33 (4.97%) C++ Software Engineer
8 32 (4.82%) Lead
8 32 (4.82%) Principal Engineer
8 32 (4.82%) Principal Software Engineer
9 29 (4.37%) Principal Embedded Software Engineer
10 25 (3.77%) .NET Software Engineer
10 25 (3.77%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 25 (3.77%) Software Developer
11 22 (3.31%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
12 20 (3.01%) Senior Embedded Engineer
12 20 (3.01%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
12 20 (3.01%) Software Manager
13 18 (2.71%) Engineering Manager
14 17 (2.56%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (8.28%) React
2 53 (7.98%) .NET
3 31 (4.67%) REST
4 28 (4.22%) Node.js
5 24 (3.61%) Spring
6 22 (3.31%) .NET Core
6 22 (3.31%) AngularJS
7 21 (3.16%) Spring Boot
8 20 (3.01%) Vue
9 19 (2.86%) RESTful
10 18 (2.71%) HTML
11 13 (1.96%) .NET Framework
11 13 (1.96%) Playwright
12 12 (1.81%) Entity Framework
13 11 (1.66%) Dapper ORM
14 10 (1.51%) ASP.NET
14 10 (1.51%) WPF
15 9 (1.36%) Django
16 8 (1.20%) CSS
16 8 (1.20%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 32 (4.82%) Cloud Native
2 15 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
3 12 (1.81%) Algorithms
3 12 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
3 12 (1.81%) Robotics
4 11 (1.66%) IoT
4 11 (1.66%) Mobile App
5 10 (1.51%) Cyberattack
6 9 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
9 5 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (0.75%) Over-the-Top Content
10 4 (0.60%) CUDA
10 4 (0.60%) GNSS
10 4 (0.60%) Product Ownership
10 4 (0.60%) Satnav
11 3 (0.45%) ARM Cortex
11 3 (0.45%) Fat Client
11 3 (0.45%) Smart Home
Operating Systems
1 40 (6.02%) Linux
2 10 (1.51%) Windows
3 7 (1.05%) Android
4 6 (0.90%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (0.60%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.30%) SafeRTOS
7 1 (0.15%) CentOS
7 1 (0.15%) Debian
7 1 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.15%) ThreadX
7 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (14.91%) DevOps
2 97 (14.61%) CI/CD
3 92 (13.86%) Full-Stack Development
4 90 (13.55%) Agile
5 57 (8.58%) Problem-Solving
6 51 (7.68%) Test Automation
7 46 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 45 (6.78%) Mentoring
9 42 (6.33%) Containerisation
10 41 (6.17%) AI
11 36 (5.42%) Collaborative Culture
12 34 (5.12%) SDLC
13 29 (4.37%) Clean Code
14 28 (4.22%) Microservices
15 25 (3.77%) Computer Science
16 22 (3.31%) Coaching
16 22 (3.31%) Data Science
17 21 (3.16%) Infrastructure as Code
17 21 (3.16%) Platform Engineering
18 20 (3.01%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 105 (15.81%) Java
2 95 (14.31%) Python
3 71 (10.69%) TypeScript
4 67 (10.09%) C#
4 67 (10.09%) C++
5 57 (8.58%) JavaScript
6 30 (4.52%) SQL
7 24 (3.61%) C
8 20 (3.01%) PHP
9 16 (2.41%) Bash
9 16 (2.41%) Go
10 13 (1.96%) Kotlin
11 11 (1.66%) Embedded C++
12 9 (1.36%) Rust
13 7 (1.05%) PowerShell
14 6 (0.90%) Embedded C
15 5 (0.75%) Scala
16 3 (0.45%) VBScript
17 2 (0.30%) Elixir
17 2 (0.30%) Erlang
Qualifications
1 136 (20.48%) Security Cleared
2 70 (10.54%) SC Cleared
3 56 (8.43%) DV Cleared
4 46 (6.93%) Degree
5 16 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (1.51%) ISTQB
7 3 (0.45%) CITP
7 3 (0.45%) CREST Certified
8 2 (0.30%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 2 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.15%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.15%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.15%) CEH
9 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.15%) OSCP
9 1 (0.15%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.22%) QA
2 11 (1.66%) NIST
3 3 (0.45%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.45%) ISO 9001
3 3 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.30%) NCSC
5 1 (0.15%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.15%) DO-254
5 1 (0.15%) HAZOP
5 1 (0.15%) IEC 61508
5 1 (0.15%) IEC 62304
5 1 (0.15%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 51 (7.68%) Docker
2 19 (2.86%) Firmware
3 3 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.15%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 66 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 29 (4.37%) Terraform
3 14 (2.11%) Ansible
4 11 (1.66%) Grafana
5 7 (1.05%) Kibana
6 6 (0.90%) logstash
7 4 (0.60%) Prometheus
8 3 (0.45%) SCCM
8 3 (0.45%) SCOM
8 3 (0.45%) SCOrch
9 2 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.30%) Podman
9 2 (0.30%) Puppet
10 1 (0.15%) Consul
10 1 (0.15%) Packer
10 1 (0.15%) Plesk
10 1 (0.15%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.15%) Rancher
Vendors
1 19 (2.86%) Microsoft
2 10 (1.51%) Oracle
3 5 (0.75%) Adobe
4 4 (0.60%) Google
4 4 (0.60%) SAP
4 4 (0.60%) Typelevel
5 2 (0.30%) Databricks
5 2 (0.30%) Guidewire
5 2 (0.30%) Peregrine
5 2 (0.30%) VMware
6 1 (0.15%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.15%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.15%) Palantir
6 1 (0.15%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.15%) SaltStack
6 1 (0.15%) Splunk
6 1 (0.15%) TOWER Software