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 £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 72 22
Rank change year-on-year +50 -50 +40
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 4,490 1,286 3,577
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.20% 3.69% 6.99%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.61% 4.12% 7.33%
Number of salaries quoted 3,426 470 2,007
10th Percentile £45,000 £43,750 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +13.04% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £80,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -12.50% +23.08% -3.70%

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 80,060 31,196 48,798
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.68% 89.60% 95.37%
Number of salaries quoted 55,304 17,435 27,014
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +19.57% -8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,210 £53,688 £55,000
% change year-on-year +8.42% -2.39% -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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +36 1,073 £70,000 +7.69% 392
South East +90 1,017 £70,000 +1.45% 367
South West +44 937 £68,000 +4.62% 267
East of England +112 618 £70,000 +7.69% 339
North West +19 612 £70,000 -6.67% 258
Midlands +65 450 £65,000 - 198
East Midlands +44 269 £55,000 -21.43% 96
Yorkshire +72 255 £60,000 - 87
Scotland +3 244 £80,000 +24.03% 341
North East +32 206 £70,000 +25.56% 47
West Midlands +40 181 £65,000 +4.00% 102
Wales +18 143 £60,000 +4.35% 35
Northern Ireland - 9 £75,000 - 88
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 October 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 4,461 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 657 (14.63%) C++
3 593 (13.21%) C#
4 577 (12.85%) Agile
5 536 (11.94%) Python
6 446 (9.93%) AI
7 443 (9.87%) AWS
8 402 (8.95%) Java
9 401 (8.93%) Security Cleared
10 378 (8.42%) CI/CD
11 370 (8.24%) Full-Stack Development
12 309 (6.88%) .NET
13 307 (6.84%) Linux
14 293 (6.53%) Azure
15 270 (6.01%) Degree
15 270 (6.01%) TypeScript
16 259 (5.77%) SC Cleared
17 252 (5.61%) Mentoring
18 251 (5.59%) JavaScript
19 229 (5.10%) C
20 227 (5.06%) DevOps
21 226 (5.03%) React
22 223 (4.97%) Problem-Solving
23 201 (4.48%) Microservices
23 201 (4.48%) SDLC
24 200 (4.45%) Test Automation
25 191 (4.25%) Docker
26 179 (3.99%) Continuous Improvement
27 174 (3.88%) SQL
28 169 (3.76%) DV Cleared

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 31 (0.69%) Apache
2 15 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
3 10 (0.22%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
4 7 (0.16%) WinCC
5 6 (0.13%) Confluence
6 5 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (0.089%) CMS
7 4 (0.089%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.067%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.067%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.067%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.045%) Apache Solr
9 2 (0.045%) ArchestrA
9 2 (0.045%) WordPress
10 1 (0.022%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.022%) OpenStack
Applications
1 21 (0.47%) Lightworks
2 12 (0.27%) Simulink
3 4 (0.089%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.089%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.045%) EPLAN
6 1 (0.022%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.022%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
2 5 (0.11%) Visualfiles
3 2 (0.045%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.022%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 443 (9.87%) AWS
2 293 (6.53%) Azure
3 127 (2.83%) SaaS
4 110 (2.45%) GCP
5 76 (1.69%) Serverless
6 52 (1.16%) GitHub
7 39 (0.87%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (0.82%) Firebase
9 31 (0.69%) Anthropic Claude
10 30 (0.67%) AWS Lambda
11 22 (0.49%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (0.47%) Amazon EKS
13 19 (0.42%) Amazon S3
13 19 (0.42%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (0.38%) Cloud Run
15 15 (0.33%) OpenShift
16 14 (0.31%) GitHub Copilot
17 13 (0.29%) Azure Service Bus
18 11 (0.24%) Azure Functions
19 10 (0.22%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 72 (1.60%) Wireless
2 31 (0.69%) Ethernet
3 29 (0.65%) Bluetooth
4 27 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.58%) MQTT
6 24 (0.53%) Modbus
7 23 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
8 15 (0.33%) ZigBee
9 14 (0.31%) LTE
10 13 (0.29%) 5G
10 13 (0.29%) RS-232
11 12 (0.27%) Profibus
12 10 (0.22%) ATM
12 10 (0.22%) RS-485
13 9 (0.20%) Internet
14 8 (0.18%) AMQP
15 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
16 5 (0.11%) HTTP
17 4 (0.089%) Software-Defined Radio
18 3 (0.067%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (1.38%) SQL Server
3 50 (1.11%) MongoDB
4 44 (0.98%) NoSQL
5 41 (0.91%) MySQL
6 38 (0.85%) Relational Database
7 23 (0.51%) Redis
8 18 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.36%) Big Data
9 16 (0.36%) Chroma
9 16 (0.36%) DynamoDB
9 16 (0.36%) Pinecone
10 10 (0.22%) Hadoop
11 8 (0.18%) Cloudera CDH
12 7 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
13 4 (0.089%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.089%) Data Lake
14 3 (0.067%) Data Warehouse
14 3 (0.067%) MariaDB
14 3 (0.067%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 133 (2.96%) Git
2 55 (1.22%) GitLab
3 36 (0.80%) Jenkins
4 29 (0.65%) JIRA
5 20 (0.45%) Claude Code
6 17 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 16 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.36%) Visual Studio Code
8 11 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.22%) JUnit
10 8 (0.18%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.16%) GDB
11 7 (0.16%) LabVIEW
11 7 (0.16%) Mockito
11 7 (0.16%) Moq
11 7 (0.16%) Rational Rhapsody
12 6 (0.13%) PetaLinux
12 6 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
13 5 (0.11%) CMake
13 5 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 217 (4.83%) Finance
2 210 (4.68%) Manufacturing
3 205 (4.57%) Electronics
4 200 (4.45%) Social Skills
5 132 (2.94%) Aerospace
6 108 (2.41%) Public Sector
7 79 (1.76%) Automotive
8 67 (1.49%) Aviation
9 55 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 50 (1.11%) Analytical Skills
11 32 (0.71%) Retail
11 32 (0.71%) Tech for Good
12 29 (0.65%) Games
12 29 (0.65%) Law
13 28 (0.62%) Military
14 24 (0.53%) Financial Institution
15 22 (0.49%) Banking
16 20 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
17 19 (0.42%) Health Technology
18 17 (0.38%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (6.88%) .NET
2 226 (5.03%) React
3 121 (2.69%) Node.js
4 94 (2.09%) Terraform
5 89 (1.98%) Vue
6 81 (1.80%) Spring
7 80 (1.78%) Spring Boot
7 80 (1.78%) WPF
8 66 (1.47%) AngularJS
9 64 (1.43%) CSS
10 60 (1.34%) RESTful
11 59 (1.31%) REST
12 41 (0.91%) HTML
12 41 (0.91%) Next.js
13 37 (0.82%) Kafka
14 35 (0.78%) .NET Core
14 35 (0.78%) React Native
15 30 (0.67%) Django
16 29 (0.65%) .NET Framework
17 28 (0.62%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 186 (4.14%) Cloud Native
2 133 (2.96%) Robotics
3 125 (2.78%) Embedded Systems
4 99 (2.20%) Algorithms
5 85 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
6 69 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (1.45%) AI Agents
8 61 (1.36%) Product Ownership
9 51 (1.14%) IoT
10 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
11 47 (1.05%) Public Cloud
12 41 (0.91%) Cyber Threat
13 25 (0.56%) Data Structures
13 25 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
13 25 (0.56%) Mobile App
14 23 (0.51%) Device Driver
15 19 (0.42%) NHS
16 17 (0.38%) ARM Cortex
17 16 (0.36%) Hedge funds
17 16 (0.36%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 307 (6.84%) Linux
2 70 (1.56%) Windows
3 62 (1.38%) Embedded Linux
4 37 (0.82%) Android
5 26 (0.58%) FreeRTOS
6 14 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.29%) Debian
8 11 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.18%) CentOS
10 8 (0.18%) VxWorks
11 7 (0.16%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.11%) Unix
13 3 (0.067%) Gentoo
13 3 (0.067%) Windows Server
14 2 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
14 2 (0.045%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.045%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.022%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,461 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 577 (12.85%) Agile
3 446 (9.93%) AI
4 378 (8.42%) CI/CD
5 370 (8.24%) Full-Stack Development
6 252 (5.61%) Mentoring
7 227 (5.06%) DevOps
8 223 (4.97%) Problem-Solving
9 201 (4.48%) Microservices
9 201 (4.48%) SDLC
10 200 (4.45%) Test Automation
11 179 (3.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 162 (3.61%) Computer Science
13 142 (3.16%) Software Architecture
14 140 (3.12%) Technical Leadership
15 137 (3.05%) Code Quality
16 136 (3.03%) Containerisation
17 118 (2.63%) Machine Learning
18 106 (2.36%) Software Testing
19 101 (2.25%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 657 (14.63%) C++
2 593 (13.21%) C#
3 536 (11.94%) Python
4 402 (8.95%) Java
5 270 (6.01%) TypeScript
6 251 (5.59%) JavaScript
7 229 (5.10%) C
8 174 (3.88%) SQL
9 130 (2.90%) Rust
10 76 (1.69%) Go
11 60 (1.34%) PHP
12 37 (0.82%) Embedded C
13 31 (0.69%) Ruby
14 29 (0.65%) Embedded C++
15 28 (0.62%) Ada
16 26 (0.58%) Kotlin
17 22 (0.49%) Bash
18 20 (0.45%) MATLAB
19 14 (0.31%) Scala
20 7 (0.16%) XAML
Qualifications
1 401 (8.93%) Security Cleared
2 270 (6.01%) Degree
3 259 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 169 (3.76%) DV Cleared
5 116 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (1.00%) Master's Degree
7 42 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 25 (0.56%) PhD
9 15 (0.33%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.18%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.089%) CEH
12 4 (0.089%) Chartered Engineer
12 4 (0.089%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.089%) OSCP
13 3 (0.067%) HND
13 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.045%) Numerate Degree
15 1 (0.022%) ISTQB
15 1 (0.022%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (1.43%) QA
2 48 (1.07%) Accessibility
3 9 (0.20%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.18%) DO-178B
5 7 (0.16%) JTAG
6 5 (0.11%) WCAG
7 4 (0.089%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.089%) ECSS
8 3 (0.067%) Automotive SPICE
8 3 (0.067%) GAMP
8 3 (0.067%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.067%) MIL-STD-1553
8 3 (0.067%) MISRA
8 3 (0.067%) MISRA C
9 2 (0.045%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.045%) GDPR
9 2 (0.045%) IEC 61508
9 2 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.022%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.022%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 191 (4.25%) Docker
2 148 (3.30%) Firmware
3 41 (0.91%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (0.11%) QEMU
5 4 (0.089%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.045%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.045%) KVM
6 2 (0.045%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.022%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 168 (3.74%) Kubernetes
2 47 (1.05%) Ansible
3 15 (0.33%) Grafana
4 11 (0.24%) Podman
5 10 (0.22%) Puppet
6 8 (0.18%) Kibana
6 8 (0.18%) logstash
7 4 (0.089%) Functional Safety
7 4 (0.089%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.045%) Packer
8 2 (0.045%) Plesk
8 2 (0.045%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.022%) SCCM
9 1 (0.022%) SCOM
9 1 (0.022%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 38 (0.85%) Microsoft
2 32 (0.71%) Siemens
3 27 (0.60%) Google
4 18 (0.40%) Salesforce
5 15 (0.33%) Databricks
6 14 (0.31%) Okta
6 14 (0.31%) Ping Identity
6 14 (0.31%) RedGate
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle
7 12 (0.27%) Splunk
8 11 (0.24%) OpenAI
8 11 (0.24%) Red Hat
8 11 (0.24%) Rockwell
9 8 (0.18%) Sage
9 8 (0.18%) SaltStack
10 6 (0.13%) Allen-Bradley
10 6 (0.13%) Atlassian
10 6 (0.13%) Intel
10 6 (0.13%) New Relic
11 5 (0.11%) Foundry