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 26 March 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 49 19
Rank change year-on-year -2 -30 +44
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 2,056 1,315 5,147
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.70% 5.07% 8.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 5.66% 8.79%
Number of salaries quoted 1,593 884 2,765
10th Percentile £41,050 £40,150 £39,695
25th Percentile £51,250 £48,750 £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 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £93,778 £82,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £71,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -2.10% +19.17% -11.76%

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 51,237 23,220 58,579
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 89.55% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 32,551 14,277 43,878
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,500 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,568 £63,750
90th Percentile £81,250 £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 26 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 26 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 +1 512 £65,000 - 146
South East -1 494 £65,000 +8.33% 186
South West +19 408 £65,000 +8.33% 136
North West +8 276 £65,000 - 80
East of England -13 210 £70,000 +5.73% 90
Midlands +25 184 £65,000 +13.04% 79
Scotland -4 182 £65,000 +4.00% 59
Yorkshire +7 169 £62,500 -7.41% 45
West Midlands +27 93 £65,000 +13.04% 46
East Midlands +8 92 £60,000 +4.35% 33
North East -4 67 £70,000 +27.27% 21
Wales -12 50 £40,000 -40.74% 22
Northern Ireland -31 16 £90,000 - 5
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 26 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 2,038 (99.12%) Software Engineering
2 278 (13.52%) C++
3 259 (12.60%) Agile
4 257 (12.50%) C#
5 246 (11.96%) Java
6 240 (11.67%) AWS
7 230 (11.19%) Python
8 229 (11.14%) .NET
9 212 (10.31%) Full-Stack Development
10 190 (9.24%) Security Cleared
11 180 (8.75%) Azure
12 177 (8.61%) CI/CD
13 172 (8.37%) JavaScript
14 161 (7.83%) Degree
14 161 (7.83%) DevOps
15 152 (7.39%) React
16 150 (7.30%) SQL
17 142 (6.91%) C
18 141 (6.86%) TypeScript
19 127 (6.18%) Linux
20 115 (5.59%) Mentoring
21 114 (5.54%) Microservices
22 111 (5.40%) Continuous Improvement
23 110 (5.35%) Problem-Solving
24 104 (5.06%) SC Cleared
25 103 (5.01%) SaaS
26 98 (4.77%) Kubernetes
27 93 (4.52%) Computer Science
28 92 (4.47%) AI
29 86 (4.18%) Docker

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 (0.58%) Apache
2 8 (0.39%) IIS
3 7 (0.34%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.29%) CMS
5 5 (0.24%) Confluence
6 4 (0.19%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.097%) Apache Solr
7 2 (0.097%) NServiceBus
8 1 (0.049%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.049%) Kinematics
8 1 (0.049%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.049%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.19%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.097%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.097%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.097%) CANalyzer
2 2 (0.097%) EPLAN
2 2 (0.097%) Sketch
3 1 (0.049%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.049%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.049%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.049%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.49%) Magento
2 2 (0.097%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.049%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 240 (11.67%) AWS
2 180 (8.75%) Azure
3 103 (5.01%) SaaS
4 50 (2.43%) GCP
5 46 (2.24%) Serverless
6 28 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
7 25 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
8 24 (1.17%) GitHub
9 22 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
10 21 (1.02%) Amazon S3
10 21 (1.02%) Azure AKS
11 9 (0.44%) OpenShift
12 8 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (0.39%) Stripe
13 7 (0.34%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (0.34%) Figma
14 6 (0.29%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (0.24%) AWS Fargate
15 5 (0.24%) GitHub Actions
16 4 (0.19%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.41%) Wireless
2 19 (0.92%) RS-232
3 13 (0.63%) Ethernet
4 10 (0.49%) Bluetooth
5 8 (0.39%) Modbus
5 8 (0.39%) Network Security
6 6 (0.29%) HTTP
6 6 (0.29%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.24%) AMQP
7 5 (0.24%) Broadband
7 5 (0.24%) LTE
7 5 (0.24%) Software-Defined Radio
8 4 (0.19%) DNS
8 4 (0.19%) SMTP
8 4 (0.19%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.15%) ATM
9 3 (0.15%) RS-485
10 2 (0.097%) GPRS
10 2 (0.097%) GSM
10 2 (0.097%) SpaceWire
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (2.58%) SQL Server
2 45 (2.19%) NoSQL
3 42 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
4 29 (1.41%) MongoDB
5 24 (1.17%) MySQL
6 23 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (0.78%) Relational Database
8 13 (0.63%) DynamoDB
9 11 (0.54%) Big Data
9 11 (0.54%) Neo4j
10 8 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 7 (0.34%) Hadoop
11 7 (0.34%) Redis
12 6 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
13 5 (0.24%) Cloudera CDH
13 5 (0.24%) GIS
14 4 (0.19%) QGIS
15 3 (0.15%) Amazon RDS
15 3 (0.15%) Azure SQL Database
15 3 (0.15%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 59 (2.87%) Git
2 15 (0.73%) GitLab
3 14 (0.68%) Jenkins
3 14 (0.68%) JIRA
4 12 (0.58%) Visual Studio
5 11 (0.54%) JUnit
6 9 (0.44%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.34%) Subversion
8 5 (0.24%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.24%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.24%) Selenium
9 4 (0.19%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.19%) Postman
10 3 (0.15%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.15%) Gradle
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.097%) Rational DOORS
11 2 (0.097%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.097%) Vagrant
General
1 109 (5.30%) Social Skills
2 86 (4.18%) Finance
3 75 (3.65%) Manufacturing
4 66 (3.21%) Electronics
5 42 (2.04%) Aerospace
6 41 (1.99%) Automotive
6 41 (1.99%) Public Sector
7 34 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
8 28 (1.36%) Analytical Skills
9 25 (1.22%) Games
10 17 (0.83%) Retail
11 15 (0.73%) Tech for Good
12 11 (0.54%) Health Technology
13 10 (0.49%) Military
14 8 (0.39%) Telecoms
15 7 (0.34%) Aeronautics
15 7 (0.34%) Financial Institution
15 7 (0.34%) Marketing
16 5 (0.24%) Law
17 4 (0.19%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (11.14%) .NET
2 152 (7.39%) React
3 81 (3.94%) Node.js
4 62 (3.02%) AngularJS
5 58 (2.82%) REST
6 53 (2.58%) RESTful
7 47 (2.29%) Vue
8 46 (2.24%) .NET Core
9 42 (2.04%) .NET Framework
10 41 (1.99%) Spring
11 38 (1.85%) HTML
12 35 (1.70%) Spring Boot
13 31 (1.51%) CSS
14 27 (1.31%) ASP.NET
15 26 (1.26%) Qt
16 25 (1.22%) Django
17 23 (1.12%) Entity Framework
18 20 (0.97%) Web Services
19 18 (0.88%) Next.js
20 15 (0.73%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 94 (4.57%) Cloud Native
2 58 (2.82%) Embedded Systems
3 40 (1.95%) IoT
4 35 (1.70%) Robotics
5 34 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.12%) Algorithms
7 20 (0.97%) Smart Energy
8 19 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
8 19 (0.92%) Product Ownership
9 17 (0.83%) Client/Server
9 17 (0.83%) Hedge funds
9 17 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (0.68%) Industry 4.0
11 13 (0.63%) Mobile App
12 11 (0.54%) CAN bus
12 11 (0.54%) Device Driver
12 11 (0.54%) Driving Licence
13 8 (0.39%) AI Agents
13 8 (0.39%) Distributed Computing
13 8 (0.39%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 127 (6.18%) Linux
2 33 (1.61%) Embedded Linux
3 27 (1.31%) Windows
4 26 (1.26%) Android
5 9 (0.44%) FreeRTOS
6 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.24%) CentOS
6 5 (0.24%) Debian
6 5 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.24%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.097%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.097%) VxWorks
7 2 (0.097%) zOS
8 1 (0.049%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.049%) SafeRTOS
8 1 (0.049%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,038 (99.12%) Software Engineering
2 259 (12.60%) Agile
3 212 (10.31%) Full-Stack Development
4 177 (8.61%) CI/CD
5 161 (7.83%) DevOps
6 115 (5.59%) Mentoring
7 114 (5.54%) Microservices
8 111 (5.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 110 (5.35%) Problem-Solving
10 93 (4.52%) Computer Science
11 92 (4.47%) AI
12 85 (4.13%) Test Automation
13 82 (3.99%) Scrum
14 81 (3.94%) SDLC
15 79 (3.84%) Containerisation
16 74 (3.60%) TDD
17 54 (2.63%) Technical Leadership
18 52 (2.53%) Embedded Software Development
19 51 (2.48%) Software Testing
20 46 (2.24%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 278 (13.52%) C++
2 257 (12.50%) C#
3 246 (11.96%) Java
4 230 (11.19%) Python
5 172 (8.37%) JavaScript
6 150 (7.30%) SQL
7 142 (6.91%) C
8 141 (6.86%) TypeScript
9 50 (2.43%) PHP
10 43 (2.09%) Rust
11 35 (1.70%) Embedded C
12 26 (1.26%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.02%) Ruby
14 19 (0.92%) Embedded C++
15 17 (0.83%) PL/SQL
16 16 (0.78%) Ada
16 16 (0.78%) Scala
17 15 (0.73%) Go
18 14 (0.68%) T-SQL
19 9 (0.44%) Bash
Qualifications
1 190 (9.24%) Security Cleared
2 161 (7.83%) Degree
3 104 (5.06%) SC Cleared
4 77 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 54 (2.63%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.17%) Master's Degree
7 12 (0.58%) PhD
8 7 (0.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.34%) Chartered Engineer
8 7 (0.34%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.29%) HND
10 5 (0.24%) HNC
11 2 (0.097%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.097%) NVQ Level 3
11 2 (0.097%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (2.24%) QA
2 15 (0.73%) MISRA
3 14 (0.68%) IEC 61508
4 13 (0.63%) MISRA C
5 12 (0.58%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 12207
7 4 (0.19%) ECSS
7 4 (0.19%) GDPR
7 4 (0.19%) ISO 9001
8 1 (0.049%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.049%) DO-254
8 1 (0.049%) HAZOP
8 1 (0.049%) IEC 62304
8 1 (0.049%) ISO 26262
8 1 (0.049%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 86 (4.18%) Docker
2 80 (3.89%) Firmware
3 23 (1.12%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.63%) Hyper-V
4 13 (0.63%) KVM
4 13 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.097%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.049%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 98 (4.77%) Kubernetes
2 52 (2.53%) Terraform
3 11 (0.54%) Functional Safety
4 6 (0.29%) Ansible
5 5 (0.24%) Kibana
5 5 (0.24%) Puppet
6 4 (0.19%) Grafana
7 2 (0.097%) Packer
7 2 (0.097%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.049%) logstash
8 1 (0.049%) Podman
8 1 (0.049%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 24 (1.17%) Oracle
2 16 (0.78%) Microsoft
3 13 (0.63%) Google
3 13 (0.63%) VMware
4 12 (0.58%) Adobe
5 11 (0.54%) Xamarin
6 9 (0.44%) Siemens
7 8 (0.39%) HubSpot
7 8 (0.39%) Sage
8 6 (0.29%) Salesforce
9 5 (0.24%) Atlassian
9 5 (0.24%) Red Hat
9 5 (0.24%) Rockwell
9 5 (0.24%) SaltStack
10 4 (0.19%) Atmel
11 3 (0.15%) Allen-Bradley
11 3 (0.15%) SAP
11 3 (0.15%) Wonderware
11 3 (0.15%) Zoho
12 2 (0.097%) IBM