API Design Job Trends

API Design
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring API Design skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 483 535 489
Rank change year-on-year +52 -46 +145
Permanent jobs citing API Design 166 178 299
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.26% 0.34% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.33% 0.37% 0.50%
Number of salaries quoted 130 84 218
10th Percentile £52,500 £45,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £61,250 £58,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £71,991 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +4.18% +2.01% -19.34%
75th Percentile £100,000 £94,083 £83,438
90th Percentile £132,500 £104,625 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £65,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +11.54% - -16.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

API Design falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 50,778 48,019 60,381
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.25% 91.58% 88.81%
Number of salaries quoted 30,009 23,112 46,660
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,444
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.45% -8.09%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £76,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

API Design
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing API Design relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

API Design job vacancy trend in the UK

API Design
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing API Design.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing API Design

API Design
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing API Design over the 6 months to 29 January 2026.

Salary histogram for API Design in the UK

API Design
Top 13 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing API Design within the UK over the 6 months to 29 January 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
England +66 162 £75,000 +4.18% 185
London +64 95 £86,250 +4.55% 62
UK excluding London -3 62 £72,500 +11.54% 154
Work from Home +25 43 £75,000 +7.14% 97
North of England +22 27 £62,500 -20.51% 38
North West +32 14 £57,500 +6.98% 23
Yorkshire -13 13 £72,500 -23.39% 12
Midlands +11 12 £72,500 +20.83% 16
South West +12 10 £72,500 -33.31% 19
West Midlands +32 9 £72,500 +45.00% 8
East of England +20 9 £78,750 +26.00% 16
South East -6 4 £90,000 +44.00% 56
East Midlands -12 1 £60,000 -33.33% 7

API Design
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 5 (3.01%) Apache Pulsar
2 4 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (2.41%) Appian
2 4 (2.41%) CMS
2 4 (2.41%) Confluence
3 3 (1.81%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.60%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.60%) Apache Solr
4 1 (0.60%) Camunda
4 1 (0.60%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.60%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 7 (4.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (3.61%) NetSuite
3 2 (1.20%) Shopify
4 1 (0.60%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 78 (46.99%) Azure
2 65 (39.16%) AWS
3 27 (16.27%) GCP
4 25 (15.06%) Serverless
5 22 (13.25%) GitHub
6 16 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (9.04%) Azure Service Bus
8 14 (8.43%) SaaS
9 12 (7.23%) AWS Lambda
9 12 (7.23%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (6.63%) Amazon S3
10 11 (6.63%) Power Platform
11 10 (6.02%) Power Automate
12 9 (5.42%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (4.82%) Azure API Management
13 8 (4.82%) Azure Functions
13 8 (4.82%) Azure Logic Apps
14 5 (3.01%) Boomi
14 5 (3.01%) Datadog
14 5 (3.01%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.01%) Multicast
2 3 (1.81%) AMQP
2 3 (1.81%) HTTP
2 3 (1.81%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.81%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (9.04%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (7.83%) NoSQL
3 10 (6.02%) DynamoDB
4 9 (5.42%) MySQL
5 7 (4.22%) Redis
6 6 (3.61%) SQL Server
7 5 (3.01%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (3.01%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.41%) Pinecone
8 4 (2.41%) Weaviate
9 3 (1.81%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.81%) MariaDB
9 3 (1.81%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.81%) Power BI
10 2 (1.20%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (1.20%) TimescaleDB
11 1 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.60%) InfluxDB
11 1 (0.60%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 17 (10.24%) Postman
2 12 (7.23%) Git
3 3 (1.81%) Snyk
4 2 (1.20%) GitLab
4 2 (1.20%) Gradle
4 2 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.20%) JIRA
4 2 (1.20%) JMeter
4 2 (1.20%) Maven
4 2 (1.20%) Selenium
4 2 (1.20%) SpecFlow
4 2 (1.20%) Storybook
4 2 (1.20%) Visual Studio
4 2 (1.20%) Visual Studio Code
5 1 (0.60%) CircleCI
5 1 (0.60%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.60%) MSTest
5 1 (0.60%) NUnit
General
1 49 (29.52%) Social Skills
2 35 (21.08%) Finance
3 22 (13.25%) Law
4 12 (7.23%) Retail
5 9 (5.42%) Banking
6 8 (4.82%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (4.82%) Legal
6 8 (4.82%) Telecoms
7 5 (3.01%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.41%) Manufacturing
8 4 (2.41%) Marketing
9 3 (1.81%) Advertising
9 3 (1.81%) Front Office
9 3 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.20%) Tech for Good
11 1 (0.60%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 40 (24.10%) Developer
2 31 (18.67%) Senior
3 27 (16.27%) Software Engineer
4 26 (15.66%) Architect
5 16 (9.64%) Solutions Architect
6 15 (9.04%) Analyst
6 15 (9.04%) Data Analyst
6 15 (9.04%) Lead
7 10 (6.02%) Full-Stack Developer
8 8 (4.82%) Cloud Developer
8 8 (4.82%) Development Manager
8 8 (4.82%) Security Engineer
8 8 (4.82%) Senior Software Engineer
9 7 (4.22%) Integration Engineer
9 7 (4.22%) Technical Architect
10 6 (3.61%) Applications Developer
10 6 (3.61%) Enterprise Architect
10 6 (3.61%) Python Engineer
10 6 (3.61%) Senior Developer
10 6 (3.61%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (30.72%) RESTful
2 44 (26.51%) React
3 40 (24.10%) REST
4 38 (22.89%) Node.js
5 22 (13.25%) OAuth
6 21 (12.65%) OpenAPI
6 21 (12.65%) Swagger
7 19 (11.45%) .NET
8 17 (10.24%) OAuth2
9 16 (9.64%) GraphQL
9 16 (9.64%) Kafka
10 14 (8.43%) Django
10 14 (8.43%) HTML
11 12 (7.23%) CSS
11 12 (7.23%) FastAPI
12 10 (6.02%) AngularJS
13 9 (5.42%) JSON
13 9 (5.42%) JWT
14 8 (4.82%) Next.js
15 7 (4.22%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 39 (23.49%) Cloud Native
2 21 (12.65%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (11.45%) Data Structures
4 8 (4.82%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (4.82%) Management Information System
4 8 (4.82%) Product Ownership
5 6 (3.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 6 (3.61%) Low-Code
6 5 (3.01%) Algorithms
6 5 (3.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (3.01%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.41%) Hackathon
7 4 (2.41%) IoT
7 4 (2.41%) Mobile App
7 4 (2.41%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.81%) AI Agents
8 3 (1.81%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.81%) Virtual Team
9 2 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.60%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.01%) Linux
2 2 (1.20%) Android
3 1 (0.60%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (42.17%) CI/CD
2 67 (40.36%) DevOps
3 58 (34.94%) Microservices
4 48 (28.92%) Software Engineering
5 47 (28.31%) Agile
6 43 (25.90%) AI
7 33 (19.88%) API Integration
8 31 (18.67%) Full-Stack Development
8 31 (18.67%) Roadmaps
8 31 (18.67%) Test Automation
9 30 (18.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 30 (18.07%) Problem-Solving
10 29 (17.47%) Data Modelling
11 27 (16.27%) Observability
12 26 (15.66%) Decision-Making
13 23 (13.86%) Containerisation
13 23 (13.86%) TDD
14 22 (13.25%) Computer Science
14 22 (13.25%) Machine Learning
15 21 (12.65%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 69 (41.57%) Python
2 39 (23.49%) SQL
2 39 (23.49%) TypeScript
3 35 (21.08%) JavaScript
4 27 (16.27%) Java
5 19 (11.45%) C#
6 14 (8.43%) Go
7 6 (3.61%) PHP
8 5 (3.01%) C++
9 3 (1.81%) Kotlin
10 2 (1.20%) ActionScript
10 2 (1.20%) ActionScript 2.0
10 2 (1.20%) C
10 2 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 2 (1.20%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.20%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.60%) Bash
11 1 (0.60%) Bicep
11 1 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 26 (15.66%) Degree
2 22 (13.25%) Computer Science Degree
3 17 (10.24%) Security Cleared
4 6 (3.61%) SC Cleared
5 3 (1.81%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.20%) CISSP
6 2 (1.20%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.20%) MCP
6 2 (1.20%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.23%) QA
2 10 (6.02%) GDPR
3 8 (4.82%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (2.41%) SLA
4 4 (2.41%) WCAG
5 3 (1.81%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.60%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.60%) NIST
6 1 (0.60%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.60%) SOC 2
System Software
1 29 (17.47%) Docker
2 6 (3.61%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 27 (16.27%) Kubernetes
2 23 (13.86%) Terraform
3 6 (3.61%) Ansible
4 5 (3.01%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.81%) Grafana
6 2 (1.20%) Nagios
7 1 (0.60%) Istio
Vendors
1 22 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 13 (7.83%) Salesforce
3 10 (6.02%) MuleSoft
4 9 (5.42%) Google
4 9 (5.42%) SAP
5 7 (4.22%) OpenAI
6 6 (3.61%) Atlassian
6 6 (3.61%) Oracle
7 5 (3.01%) Ericsson
7 5 (3.01%) Foundry
7 5 (3.01%) Mavenir
7 5 (3.01%) Nokia
7 5 (3.01%) Pega
8 4 (2.41%) Databricks
8 4 (2.41%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.81%) Checkmarx
9 3 (1.81%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.81%) Qualys
10 2 (1.20%) Adobe
10 2 (1.20%) Dell