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 19 March 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 45 23
Rank change year-on-year -9 -22 +36
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,942 1,426 4,688
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.61% 5.24% 7.89%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.92% 5.83% 8.33%
Number of salaries quoted 1,502 881 2,594
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,750
25th Percentile £51,250 £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 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £82,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +16.67% -11.29%

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 49,507 24,477 56,283
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.08% 89.98% 94.78%
Number of salaries quoted 31,410 14,315 42,596
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £39,304 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £64,294
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 19 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 19 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 +1 479 £65,000 +4.00% 140
South East -4 461 £65,000 +8.33% 170
South West +14 395 £65,000 +8.33% 133
North West +10 253 £65,000 - 66
East of England -14 199 £70,000 +5.70% 75
Scotland -4 178 £65,000 +12.55% 48
Midlands +24 167 £60,000 +6.67% 80
Yorkshire +4 162 £62,500 +2.26% 46
East Midlands -6 86 £60,000 +6.67% 32
West Midlands +16 82 £65,000 +15.56% 48
North East -2 64 £70,000 +27.27% 28
Wales -13 48 £40,000 -40.74% 18
Northern Ireland -30 15 £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 19 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 1,928 (99.28%) Software Engineering
2 259 (13.34%) C++
3 246 (12.67%) C#
4 243 (12.51%) Agile
5 238 (12.26%) Java
6 227 (11.69%) AWS
7 225 (11.59%) .NET
8 209 (10.76%) Python
9 197 (10.14%) Full-Stack Development
10 182 (9.37%) Security Cleared
11 176 (9.06%) Azure
12 172 (8.86%) CI/CD
13 159 (8.19%) JavaScript
14 154 (7.93%) Degree
14 154 (7.93%) DevOps
15 150 (7.72%) React
16 147 (7.57%) SQL
17 137 (7.05%) TypeScript
18 128 (6.59%) C
19 123 (6.33%) Linux
20 110 (5.66%) Problem-Solving
21 109 (5.61%) Mentoring
22 106 (5.46%) Microservices
23 101 (5.20%) Continuous Improvement
24 99 (5.10%) SC Cleared
25 98 (5.05%) Kubernetes
26 96 (4.94%) SaaS
27 92 (4.74%) Computer Science
28 88 (4.53%) Docker
29 82 (4.22%) 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 (0.62%) Apache
2 10 (0.51%) IIS
3 7 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.31%) CMS
5 5 (0.26%) Confluence
6 3 (0.15%) Apache Solr
6 3 (0.15%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
8 1 (0.051%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.051%) Kinematics
8 1 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.21%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
2 2 (0.10%) Sketch
3 1 (0.051%) CANalyzer
3 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.51%) Magento
2 2 (0.10%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.051%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 227 (11.69%) AWS
2 176 (9.06%) Azure
3 96 (4.94%) SaaS
4 47 (2.42%) GCP
5 45 (2.32%) Serverless
6 29 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
6 29 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
7 23 (1.18%) GitHub
8 22 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
9 21 (1.08%) Amazon S3
9 21 (1.08%) Azure AKS
10 9 (0.46%) OpenShift
11 8 (0.41%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (0.41%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (0.41%) Stripe
12 7 (0.36%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (0.31%) Figma
14 5 (0.26%) AWS Fargate
14 5 (0.26%) GitHub Actions
15 4 (0.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.44%) Wireless
2 18 (0.93%) RS-232
3 11 (0.57%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.46%) Bluetooth
5 7 (0.36%) Modbus
5 7 (0.36%) Network Security
6 6 (0.31%) HTTP
6 6 (0.31%) Software-Defined Radio
6 6 (0.31%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.26%) AMQP
7 5 (0.26%) Broadband
7 5 (0.26%) LTE
8 4 (0.21%) DNS
8 4 (0.21%) SMTP
8 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.15%) ATM
10 2 (0.10%) 3G
10 2 (0.10%) GPRS
10 2 (0.10%) GSM
10 2 (0.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (2.88%) SQL Server
2 44 (2.27%) NoSQL
2 44 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.44%) MongoDB
4 24 (1.24%) MySQL
5 23 (1.18%) Elasticsearch
6 18 (0.93%) Relational Database
7 13 (0.67%) DynamoDB
8 11 (0.57%) Big Data
8 11 (0.57%) Neo4j
9 10 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 8 (0.41%) Redis
11 7 (0.36%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.26%) Cloudera CDH
12 5 (0.26%) Geospatial Data
13 4 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.21%) GIS
14 3 (0.15%) Azure SQL Database
14 3 (0.15%) Oracle Database
14 3 (0.15%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 56 (2.88%) Git
2 16 (0.82%) GitLab
3 15 (0.77%) JIRA
4 13 (0.67%) Jenkins
4 13 (0.67%) Visual Studio
5 11 (0.57%) JUnit
6 9 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.36%) Subversion
8 5 (0.26%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.26%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.26%) Selenium
9 4 (0.21%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.21%) 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 (0.10%) Appium
11 2 (0.10%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.10%) Vagrant
General
1 109 (5.61%) Social Skills
2 87 (4.48%) Finance
3 72 (3.71%) Manufacturing
4 59 (3.04%) Electronics
5 40 (2.06%) Aerospace
6 36 (1.85%) Automotive
6 36 (1.85%) Public Sector
7 33 (1.70%) Pharmaceutical
8 27 (1.39%) Analytical Skills
9 23 (1.18%) Games
10 16 (0.82%) Retail
11 15 (0.77%) Tech for Good
12 10 (0.51%) Health Technology
12 10 (0.51%) Military
13 8 (0.41%) Financial Institution
14 7 (0.36%) Aeronautics
14 7 (0.36%) Marketing
14 7 (0.36%) Telecoms
15 5 (0.26%) Law
16 4 (0.21%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (11.59%) .NET
2 150 (7.72%) React
3 79 (4.07%) Node.js
4 63 (3.24%) AngularJS
5 55 (2.83%) REST
6 52 (2.68%) RESTful
7 48 (2.47%) .NET Core
8 44 (2.27%) .NET Framework
9 42 (2.16%) Spring
10 38 (1.96%) Vue
11 37 (1.91%) Spring Boot
12 34 (1.75%) HTML
13 28 (1.44%) CSS
14 27 (1.39%) ASP.NET
14 27 (1.39%) Qt
15 25 (1.29%) Entity Framework
16 22 (1.13%) Django
17 19 (0.98%) Web Services
18 18 (0.93%) Next.js
19 14 (0.72%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 89 (4.58%) Cloud Native
2 55 (2.83%) Embedded Systems
3 37 (1.91%) IoT
4 33 (1.70%) Robotics
5 32 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.18%) Algorithms
7 19 (0.98%) Product Ownership
8 18 (0.93%) Smart Energy
9 17 (0.88%) Hedge funds
10 16 (0.82%) Client/Server
10 16 (0.82%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.72%) Industry 4.0
12 13 (0.67%) Mobile App
13 11 (0.57%) CAN bus
13 11 (0.57%) Device Driver
13 11 (0.57%) Driving Licence
14 8 (0.41%) e-Learning
15 7 (0.36%) AI Agents
15 7 (0.36%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 123 (6.33%) Linux
2 33 (1.70%) Embedded Linux
3 28 (1.44%) Windows
4 26 (1.34%) 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 3 (0.15%) Unix
7 2 (0.10%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.10%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.051%) Fedora
8 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,928 (99.28%) Software Engineering
2 243 (12.51%) Agile
3 197 (10.14%) Full-Stack Development
4 172 (8.86%) CI/CD
5 154 (7.93%) DevOps
6 110 (5.66%) Problem-Solving
7 109 (5.61%) Mentoring
8 106 (5.46%) Microservices
9 101 (5.20%) Continuous Improvement
10 92 (4.74%) Computer Science
11 82 (4.22%) AI
12 81 (4.17%) Scrum
13 79 (4.07%) Containerisation
14 77 (3.96%) Test Automation
15 73 (3.76%) SDLC
16 69 (3.55%) TDD
17 49 (2.52%) Embedded Software Development
17 49 (2.52%) Technical Leadership
18 45 (2.32%) Clean Code
19 44 (2.27%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 259 (13.34%) C++
2 246 (12.67%) C#
3 238 (12.26%) Java
4 209 (10.76%) Python
5 159 (8.19%) JavaScript
6 147 (7.57%) SQL
7 137 (7.05%) TypeScript
8 128 (6.59%) C
9 49 (2.52%) PHP
10 40 (2.06%) Rust
11 32 (1.65%) Embedded C
12 26 (1.34%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.08%) Ruby
14 19 (0.98%) Embedded C++
15 18 (0.93%) PL/SQL
16 16 (0.82%) Ada
16 16 (0.82%) Scala
16 16 (0.82%) T-SQL
17 14 (0.72%) Go
18 10 (0.51%) Bash
Qualifications
1 182 (9.37%) Security Cleared
2 154 (7.93%) Degree
3 99 (5.10%) SC Cleared
4 72 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (2.52%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.08%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.41%) PhD
8 7 (0.36%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.36%) Chartered Engineer
8 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.21%) HND
10 3 (0.15%) HNC
11 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.10%) NVQ Level 3
11 2 (0.10%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (2.11%) QA
2 13 (0.67%) MISRA
3 11 (0.57%) IEC 61508
3 11 (0.57%) MISRA C
4 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 12207
6 4 (0.21%) ECSS
6 4 (0.21%) GDPR
6 4 (0.21%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.051%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.051%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 88 (4.53%) Docker
2 71 (3.66%) Firmware
3 22 (1.13%) Embedded Firmware
4 12 (0.62%) Hyper-V
4 12 (0.62%) KVM
4 12 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 98 (5.05%) Kubernetes
2 49 (2.52%) Terraform
3 11 (0.57%) Functional Safety
4 6 (0.31%) Ansible
5 5 (0.26%) Grafana
5 5 (0.26%) Kibana
5 5 (0.26%) Puppet
6 2 (0.10%) Packer
6 2 (0.10%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.10%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.051%) logstash
7 1 (0.051%) Podman
Vendors
1 24 (1.24%) Oracle
2 18 (0.93%) Microsoft
3 13 (0.67%) Xamarin
4 12 (0.62%) Adobe
4 12 (0.62%) Google
4 12 (0.62%) VMware
5 10 (0.51%) Sage
6 8 (0.41%) HubSpot
7 7 (0.36%) Siemens
8 6 (0.31%) Red Hat
8 6 (0.31%) Salesforce
9 5 (0.26%) SaltStack
10 4 (0.21%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.21%) Atmel
10 4 (0.21%) Rockwell
10 4 (0.21%) Zoho
11 3 (0.15%) SAP
12 2 (0.10%) Allen-Bradley
12 2 (0.10%) Palantir
12 2 (0.10%) Wonderware