Software Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Software Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 March 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 39 26
Rank change year-on-year -12 -13 +31
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,889 1,540 4,332
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.59% 5.49% 7.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.90% 6.07% 7.87%
Number of salaries quoted 1,467 896 2,500
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,750
25th Percentile £51,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £82,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +16.67% -11.11%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 48,400 25,371 55,019
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.91% 90.44% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 30,652 14,216 41,990
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £26,700
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £54,983 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.06% +9.97% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £64,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 12 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 12 March 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
North of England -3 460 £65,000 +4.00% 136
South East -9 451 £65,000 +8.33% 180
South West +10 386 £65,000 +8.33% 139
North West +5 239 £65,000 - 68
East of England -13 194 £70,000 +5.70% 76
Scotland -6 174 £65,000 +13.04% 49
Midlands +13 164 £62,500 +13.64% 71
Yorkshire 0 158 £62,500 +6.62% 49
East Midlands -6 85 £60,000 +6.67% 35
West Midlands +15 81 £63,750 +15.91% 36
North East +2 63 £70,000 +27.27% 19
Wales -18 46 £40,000 -40.74% 17
Northern Ireland -25 14 £90,000 - 8
Software Engineer
UK

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 12 March 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 UK excluding London region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 1,876 (99.31%) Software Engineering
2 247 (13.08%) C++
3 239 (12.65%) C#
4 234 (12.39%) Agile
5 230 (12.18%) Java
6 225 (11.91%) .NET
7 223 (11.81%) AWS
8 207 (10.96%) Python
9 198 (10.48%) Full-Stack Development
10 181 (9.58%) Security Cleared
11 176 (9.32%) Azure
12 170 (9.00%) CI/CD
13 157 (8.31%) DevOps
13 157 (8.31%) JavaScript
14 151 (7.99%) Degree
14 151 (7.99%) React
15 146 (7.73%) SQL
16 138 (7.31%) TypeScript
17 126 (6.67%) C
18 117 (6.19%) Linux
19 107 (5.66%) Microservices
19 107 (5.66%) Problem-Solving
20 106 (5.61%) Mentoring
21 99 (5.24%) Continuous Improvement
22 98 (5.19%) Kubernetes
23 97 (5.13%) SC Cleared
24 93 (4.92%) SaaS
25 91 (4.82%) Computer Science
26 87 (4.61%) Docker
27 80 (4.24%) AI

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (0.64%) Apache
1 12 (0.64%) IIS
2 7 (0.37%) Apache Spark
3 5 (0.26%) CMS
4 4 (0.21%) Confluence
5 3 (0.16%) Apache Solr
5 3 (0.16%) GeoServer
6 2 (0.11%) NServiceBus
7 1 (0.053%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.053%) Kinematics
7 1 (0.053%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 4 (0.21%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.11%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.11%) EPLAN
2 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.11%) Sketch
3 1 (0.053%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.53%) Magento
2 2 (0.11%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.053%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 223 (11.81%) AWS
2 176 (9.32%) Azure
3 93 (4.92%) SaaS
4 48 (2.54%) GCP
5 45 (2.38%) Serverless
6 32 (1.69%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
8 23 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
9 22 (1.16%) Amazon S3
10 21 (1.11%) Azure AKS
10 21 (1.11%) GitHub
11 10 (0.53%) OpenShift
12 9 (0.48%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (0.42%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.42%) Stripe
14 7 (0.37%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (0.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 5 (0.26%) AWS Fargate
15 5 (0.26%) Figma
16 4 (0.21%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.38%) Wireless
2 17 (0.90%) RS-232
3 10 (0.53%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.48%) Bluetooth
5 7 (0.37%) Modbus
6 6 (0.32%) HTTP
6 6 (0.32%) Network Security
6 6 (0.32%) Software-Defined Radio
6 6 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.26%) AMQP
7 5 (0.26%) Broadband
8 4 (0.21%) DNS
8 4 (0.21%) LTE
8 4 (0.21%) SMTP
8 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.16%) ATM
10 2 (0.11%) GPRS
10 2 (0.11%) GSM
10 2 (0.11%) RS-485
10 2 (0.11%) SpaceWire
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (2.96%) SQL Server
2 46 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
3 44 (2.33%) NoSQL
4 27 (1.43%) MongoDB
5 24 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
6 23 (1.22%) MySQL
7 18 (0.95%) Relational Database
8 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
9 12 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.58%) Big Data
11 10 (0.53%) Neo4j
12 8 (0.42%) Redis
13 7 (0.37%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.26%) Cloudera CDH
14 5 (0.26%) Geospatial Data
15 4 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
15 4 (0.21%) GIS
16 3 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
16 3 (0.16%) DocumentDB
16 3 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 55 (2.91%) Git
2 16 (0.85%) GitLab
3 14 (0.74%) Jenkins
3 14 (0.74%) JIRA
4 12 (0.64%) Visual Studio
5 11 (0.58%) JUnit
6 8 (0.42%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.37%) Cypress.io
7 7 (0.37%) Subversion
8 5 (0.26%) Selenium
9 4 (0.21%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.21%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.16%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.16%) Gradle
10 3 (0.16%) Postman
10 3 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.11%) Android Studio
11 2 (0.11%) Appium
11 2 (0.11%) Rational DOORS
General
1 110 (5.82%) Social Skills
2 88 (4.66%) Finance
3 72 (3.81%) Manufacturing
4 57 (3.02%) Electronics
5 40 (2.12%) Aerospace
6 34 (1.80%) Automotive
6 34 (1.80%) Public Sector
7 32 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
8 25 (1.32%) Analytical Skills
9 23 (1.22%) Games
10 16 (0.85%) Tech for Good
11 15 (0.79%) Retail
12 10 (0.53%) Military
13 9 (0.48%) Health Technology
14 8 (0.42%) Financial Institution
15 7 (0.37%) Aeronautics
15 7 (0.37%) Marketing
15 7 (0.37%) Telecoms
16 6 (0.32%) Law
17 4 (0.21%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (11.91%) .NET
2 151 (7.99%) React
3 78 (4.13%) Node.js
4 63 (3.34%) AngularJS
5 54 (2.86%) RESTful
6 51 (2.70%) REST
7 48 (2.54%) .NET Core
8 45 (2.38%) .NET Framework
8 45 (2.38%) Spring
9 41 (2.17%) Spring Boot
10 37 (1.96%) Vue
11 36 (1.91%) HTML
12 32 (1.69%) CSS
13 28 (1.48%) ASP.NET
14 27 (1.43%) Entity Framework
14 27 (1.43%) Qt
15 21 (1.11%) Django
16 20 (1.06%) Next.js
17 18 (0.95%) Web Services
18 14 (0.74%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 87 (4.61%) Cloud Native
2 55 (2.91%) Embedded Systems
3 37 (1.96%) IoT
4 32 (1.69%) Robotics
5 30 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
6 20 (1.06%) Algorithms
7 18 (0.95%) Smart Energy
8 17 (0.90%) Product Ownership
9 16 (0.85%) Hedge funds
9 16 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.74%) Client/Server
11 14 (0.74%) Industry 4.0
12 12 (0.64%) Mobile App
13 11 (0.58%) CAN bus
13 11 (0.58%) Driving Licence
14 10 (0.53%) Device Driver
15 8 (0.42%) e-Learning
16 7 (0.37%) Enterprise Software
17 6 (0.32%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 117 (6.19%) Linux
2 32 (1.69%) Embedded Linux
3 29 (1.54%) Windows
4 26 (1.38%) Android
5 5 (0.26%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.26%) CentOS
5 5 (0.26%) Debian
5 5 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.26%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.21%) Unix
7 2 (0.11%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.11%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.053%) Fedora
8 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,876 (99.31%) Software Engineering
2 234 (12.39%) Agile
3 198 (10.48%) Full-Stack Development
4 170 (9.00%) CI/CD
5 157 (8.31%) DevOps
6 107 (5.66%) Microservices
6 107 (5.66%) Problem-Solving
7 106 (5.61%) Mentoring
8 99 (5.24%) Continuous Improvement
9 91 (4.82%) Computer Science
10 80 (4.24%) AI
10 80 (4.24%) Scrum
11 75 (3.97%) Containerisation
12 70 (3.71%) Test Automation
13 69 (3.65%) SDLC
14 66 (3.49%) TDD
15 46 (2.44%) Embedded Software Development
16 45 (2.38%) Technical Leadership
17 43 (2.28%) Clean Code
17 43 (2.28%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 247 (13.08%) C++
2 239 (12.65%) C#
3 230 (12.18%) Java
4 207 (10.96%) Python
5 157 (8.31%) JavaScript
6 146 (7.73%) SQL
7 138 (7.31%) TypeScript
8 126 (6.67%) C
9 48 (2.54%) PHP
10 37 (1.96%) Rust
11 31 (1.64%) Embedded C
12 26 (1.38%) Kotlin
13 19 (1.01%) Embedded C++
13 19 (1.01%) Ruby
13 19 (1.01%) T-SQL
14 18 (0.95%) PL/SQL
15 16 (0.85%) Ada
16 15 (0.79%) Scala
17 13 (0.69%) Go
18 11 (0.58%) Bash
Qualifications
1 181 (9.58%) Security Cleared
2 151 (7.99%) Degree
3 97 (5.13%) SC Cleared
4 73 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (2.59%) DV Cleared
6 22 (1.16%) Master's Degree
7 9 (0.48%) PhD
8 7 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.32%) Chartered Engineer
10 3 (0.16%) HND
11 2 (0.11%) HNC
11 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.11%) NVQ Level 3
11 2 (0.11%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (2.01%) QA
2 13 (0.69%) MISRA
3 11 (0.58%) IEC 61508
3 11 (0.58%) MISRA C
4 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 5 (0.26%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.21%) ECSS
6 4 (0.21%) ISO 9001
7 3 (0.16%) GDPR
8 1 (0.053%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.053%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 87 (4.61%) Docker
2 71 (3.76%) Firmware
3 23 (1.22%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.58%) Hyper-V
4 11 (0.58%) KVM
4 11 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 98 (5.19%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.49%) Terraform
3 11 (0.58%) Functional Safety
4 6 (0.32%) Ansible
4 6 (0.32%) Grafana
4 6 (0.32%) Kibana
5 5 (0.26%) Puppet
6 2 (0.11%) Packer
6 2 (0.11%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.11%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.053%) logstash
7 1 (0.053%) Podman
Vendors
1 24 (1.27%) Oracle
2 20 (1.06%) Microsoft
3 15 (0.79%) Xamarin
4 14 (0.74%) Google
5 12 (0.64%) Adobe
5 12 (0.64%) Sage
6 11 (0.58%) VMware
7 8 (0.42%) HubSpot
8 7 (0.37%) Siemens
9 6 (0.32%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.26%) Salesforce
10 5 (0.26%) SaltStack
10 5 (0.26%) Zoho
11 4 (0.21%) Atmel
11 4 (0.21%) Rockwell
12 3 (0.16%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.16%) SAP
13 2 (0.11%) Allen-Bradley
13 2 (0.11%) Palantir
13 2 (0.11%) Wonderware