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 22 December 2025.

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

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 77 31 43
Rank change year-on-year -46 +12 +2
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,120 2,170 1,642
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.67% 5.72% 5.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.95% 6.12% 6.16%
Number of salaries quoted 861 1,056 1,031
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £52,250 £47,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £84,982 £84,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £69,447
% change year-on-year - +0.80% +2.88%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 37,920 35,482 26,658
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.23% 93.47% 95.37%
Number of salaries quoted 23,015 17,792 20,250
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £34,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,000 £52,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% - -
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £67,070
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -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 22 December 2025.

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 22 December 2025. 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
South East -42 275 £65,000 +8.33% 500
North of England -31 246 £65,000 +6.56% 422
South West -8 245 £65,000 +18.18% 279
East of England -37 118 £70,000 +3.70% 299
Yorkshire -14 112 £57,500 -8.00% 150
Midlands -29 110 £62,500 +13.64% 271
North West -30 106 £70,000 +16.67% 222
Scotland -31 101 £60,000 - 121
West Midlands -7 64 £60,000 - 125
East Midlands -32 49 £65,000 +30.00% 134
North East -24 28 £67,500 +10.66% 51
Wales -38 18 £60,000 -15.79% 54
Northern Ireland -30 8 £85,000 +13.33% 20
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 22 December 2025, 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 1,119 (99.91%) Software Engineering
2 188 (16.79%) Agile
3 185 (16.52%) C++
4 179 (15.98%) C#
5 151 (13.48%) Java
6 149 (13.30%) .NET
7 143 (12.77%) Security Cleared
8 142 (12.68%) CI/CD
9 141 (12.59%) AWS
10 135 (12.05%) React
11 131 (11.70%) DevOps
12 123 (10.98%) Azure
12 123 (10.98%) Python
13 120 (10.71%) Full-Stack Development
14 116 (10.36%) JavaScript
15 115 (10.27%) Degree
16 113 (10.09%) Mentoring
17 100 (8.93%) SQL
17 100 (8.93%) TypeScript
18 99 (8.84%) C
19 98 (8.75%) Linux
20 94 (8.39%) Microservices
21 81 (7.23%) Problem-Solving
22 75 (6.70%) SC Cleared
23 74 (6.61%) Kubernetes
24 72 (6.43%) AI
25 68 (6.07%) Computer Science
26 62 (5.54%) Docker
27 61 (5.45%) Firmware
28 56 (5.00%) AngularJS

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 (1.07%) IIS
2 11 (0.98%) Apache
3 6 (0.54%) Confluence
4 4 (0.36%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.27%) Apache Solr
5 3 (0.27%) CMS
6 2 (0.18%) ArchestrA
6 2 (0.18%) FactoryTalk
6 2 (0.18%) NServiceBus
6 2 (0.18%) WinCC
7 1 (0.089%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.089%) Kinematics
Applications
1 3 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.18%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.18%) Sketch
3 1 (0.089%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.089%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.089%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.18%) Magento
2 1 (0.089%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 141 (12.59%) AWS
2 123 (10.98%) Azure
3 38 (3.39%) SaaS
4 36 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (3.21%) Serverless
5 29 (2.59%) AWS Lambda
6 24 (2.14%) GitHub
7 22 (1.96%) Amazon S3
8 21 (1.88%) GCP
9 18 (1.61%) Amazon EKS
10 14 (1.25%) Amazon ECS
11 11 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
12 8 (0.71%) OpenShift
13 7 (0.63%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (0.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (0.54%) AWS CloudFormation
14 6 (0.54%) Azure AKS
15 5 (0.45%) Amazon EventBridge
15 5 (0.45%) AWS Fargate
15 5 (0.45%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.30%) Wireless
2 19 (1.70%) Software-Defined Radio
3 18 (1.61%) RS-232
4 16 (1.43%) Bluetooth
5 6 (0.54%) HTTP
5 6 (0.54%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.45%) DNS
6 5 (0.45%) Modbus
7 4 (0.36%) AMQP
7 4 (0.36%) SMTP
8 3 (0.27%) ATM
8 3 (0.27%) Ethernet
9 2 (0.18%) 3G
9 2 (0.18%) Firewall
9 2 (0.18%) GPRS
9 2 (0.18%) GSM
9 2 (0.18%) Profibus
9 2 (0.18%) RS-485
9 2 (0.18%) SSL
9 2 (0.18%) UWB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (3.04%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (2.41%) SQL Server
3 24 (2.14%) NoSQL
4 19 (1.70%) Elasticsearch
5 18 (1.61%) MongoDB
5 18 (1.61%) Relational Database
6 17 (1.52%) MySQL
7 14 (1.25%) DynamoDB
8 12 (1.07%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 9 (0.80%) Redis
10 7 (0.63%) Neo4j
11 4 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
11 4 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
11 4 (0.36%) Big Data
11 4 (0.36%) GIS
11 4 (0.36%) Hadoop
12 3 (0.27%) Cloudera CDH
12 3 (0.27%) MariaDB
12 3 (0.27%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 52 (4.64%) Git
2 16 (1.43%) GitLab
2 16 (1.43%) JIRA
3 15 (1.34%) Visual Studio
4 12 (1.07%) JUnit
5 10 (0.89%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.63%) Cypress.io
7 5 (0.45%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.36%) Oracle APEX
8 4 (0.36%) Selenium
9 2 (0.18%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.18%) Maven
9 2 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.18%) TestRail
10 1 (0.089%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.089%) Gatling
10 1 (0.089%) Katalon Studio
10 1 (0.089%) Rational Rhapsody
10 1 (0.089%) Rational Statemate
10 1 (0.089%) REST Assured
General
1 94 (8.39%) Social Skills
2 80 (7.14%) Finance
3 45 (4.02%) Manufacturing
4 42 (3.75%) Electronics
5 23 (2.05%) Aerospace
6 20 (1.79%) Public Sector
7 18 (1.61%) Games
8 17 (1.52%) Automotive
9 16 (1.43%) Analytical Skills
9 16 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
10 15 (1.34%) Retail
11 12 (1.07%) Tech for Good
12 10 (0.89%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.71%) Law
14 7 (0.63%) Aeronautics
14 7 (0.63%) Marketing
14 7 (0.63%) Military
15 6 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.45%) Health Technology
16 5 (0.45%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (13.30%) .NET
2 135 (12.05%) React
3 56 (5.00%) AngularJS
4 48 (4.29%) Node.js
5 42 (3.75%) RESTful
6 39 (3.48%) Spring
7 37 (3.30%) Spring Boot
8 32 (2.86%) .NET Core
9 31 (2.77%) HTML
10 29 (2.59%) CSS
11 27 (2.41%) .NET Framework
11 27 (2.41%) ASP.NET
12 26 (2.32%) Vue
13 23 (2.05%) REST
14 18 (1.61%) Entity Framework
14 18 (1.61%) Qt
15 17 (1.52%) Next.js
16 16 (1.43%) WinForms
17 15 (1.34%) Blazor
18 13 (1.16%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 64 (5.71%) Cloud Native
2 62 (5.54%) Embedded Systems
3 28 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
4 21 (1.88%) IoT
5 20 (1.79%) e-Learning
6 19 (1.70%) Robotics
7 17 (1.52%) RISC-V
8 16 (1.43%) Algorithms
9 15 (1.34%) MicroBlaze
10 13 (1.16%) Product Ownership
11 12 (1.07%) Manufacturing Execution System
12 11 (0.98%) Driving Licence
13 10 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
14 9 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
14 9 (0.80%) Mobile App
14 9 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.80%) Smart Energy
15 7 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
15 7 (0.63%) Hedge funds
16 6 (0.54%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 98 (8.75%) Linux
2 34 (3.04%) Embedded Linux
3 33 (2.95%) Windows
4 12 (1.07%) Android
5 6 (0.54%) Unix
6 3 (0.27%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.27%) CentOS
6 3 (0.27%) Debian
6 3 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
6 3 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.27%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.18%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.18%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.089%) Fedora
8 1 (0.089%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.089%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,119 (99.91%) Software Engineering
2 188 (16.79%) Agile
3 142 (12.68%) CI/CD
4 131 (11.70%) DevOps
5 120 (10.71%) Full-Stack Development
6 113 (10.09%) Mentoring
7 94 (8.39%) Microservices
8 81 (7.23%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (6.43%) AI
10 68 (6.07%) Computer Science
11 48 (4.29%) Continuous Improvement
12 47 (4.20%) Coaching
12 47 (4.20%) Containerisation
13 41 (3.66%) Scrum
14 39 (3.48%) Machine Learning
14 39 (3.48%) SDLC
15 37 (3.30%) Technical Leadership
16 35 (3.13%) Test Automation
17 34 (3.04%) Fintech
18 32 (2.86%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 185 (16.52%) C++
2 179 (15.98%) C#
3 151 (13.48%) Java
4 123 (10.98%) Python
5 116 (10.36%) JavaScript
6 100 (8.93%) SQL
6 100 (8.93%) TypeScript
7 99 (8.84%) C
8 29 (2.59%) PHP
9 24 (2.14%) Ada
10 20 (1.79%) Embedded C++
11 19 (1.70%) Kotlin
12 18 (1.61%) Ruby
12 18 (1.61%) T-SQL
13 14 (1.25%) Ada 95
14 13 (1.16%) Embedded C
14 13 (1.16%) PL/SQL
15 12 (1.07%) Rust
16 10 (0.89%) Scala
17 9 (0.80%) Bash
Qualifications
1 143 (12.77%) Security Cleared
2 115 (10.27%) Degree
3 75 (6.70%) SC Cleared
4 50 (4.46%) DV Cleared
5 47 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.43%) Master's Degree
7 15 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (1.34%) Chartered Engineer
8 11 (0.98%) PhD
9 3 (0.27%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.18%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.18%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.18%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (1.70%) QA
2 14 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 12207
3 7 (0.63%) MISRA
4 6 (0.54%) IEC 61508
5 5 (0.45%) MISRA C
6 4 (0.36%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.27%) ECSS
7 3 (0.27%) GDPR
7 3 (0.27%) IEC 61131
7 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.18%) ISO 9000
8 2 (0.18%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.18%) JTAG
8 2 (0.18%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.089%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.089%) Data Quality
System Software
1 62 (5.54%) Docker
2 61 (5.45%) Firmware
3 38 (3.39%) Embedded Firmware
4 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.089%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 74 (6.61%) Kubernetes
2 28 (2.50%) Terraform
3 8 (0.71%) Kibana
4 7 (0.63%) Grafana
5 4 (0.36%) Functional Safety
6 3 (0.27%) Ansible
6 3 (0.27%) Puppet
7 2 (0.18%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.089%) Istio
Vendors
1 21 (1.88%) Microsoft
2 16 (1.43%) Oracle
3 14 (1.25%) Sage
3 14 (1.25%) Xamarin
4 10 (0.89%) Google
5 9 (0.80%) Guidewire
6 8 (0.71%) Atlassian
7 5 (0.45%) Zoho
8 4 (0.36%) Adobe
8 4 (0.36%) HubSpot
8 4 (0.36%) Red Hat
9 3 (0.27%) Databricks
9 3 (0.27%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.27%) Rockwell
9 3 (0.27%) SaltStack
9 3 (0.27%) SAP
9 3 (0.27%) Siemens
10 2 (0.18%) Palantir
10 2 (0.18%) Roku
10 2 (0.18%) VMware