Backend Developer Job Trends

Backend Developer
UK

The median Backend Developer salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 19 September 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 604 585 578
Rank change year-on-year -19 -7 +15
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 191 91 215
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.18% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.21% 0.29%
Number of salaries quoted 149 73 143
10th Percentile £50,000 £51,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £57,500 £55,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +17.39% -17.86%
75th Percentile £90,000 £85,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £104,000 £80,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £60,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +12.50% +14.29% -16.00%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 108,200 44,314 74,420
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.19% 89.66% 95.24%
Number of salaries quoted 74,226 26,055 44,614
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,250 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.36% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%

Backend Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Backend Developer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Backend Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Backend Developer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Backend Developer job vacancies in the UK

Backend Developer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Backend Developer over the 6 months to 19 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Backend Developer in the UK

Backend Developer
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Backend Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 19 September 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 -33 174 £70,000 +3.70% 80
UK excluding London -87 92 £67,500 +12.50% 43
London -20 85 £85,000 +6.25% 48
South East +2 54 £70,000 +33.33% 7
Work from Home -36 42 £95,000 +49.02% 43
North of England -76 23 £65,000 +8.33% 21
South West -70 9 £42,500 -29.17% 4
Yorkshire -36 8 £65,000 +8.33% 6
North East -61 8 £75,000 +36.36% 4
North West -38 7 £60,000 -4.00% 11
Scotland +9 4 - - 7
Midlands -45 4 £80,000 +97.84% 2
West Midlands - 3 £80,000 - 2
East Midlands -37 1 £75,000 +85.47%

Backend Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 19 September 2026, Backend Developer 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 featuring Backend Developer in the job title.

1 61 (31.94%) Java
2 60 (31.41%) Microservices
3 55 (28.80%) AWS
3 55 (28.80%) Docker
4 48 (25.13%) Agile
4 48 (25.13%) CI/CD
5 47 (24.61%) Kubernetes
6 38 (19.90%) Git
7 37 (19.37%) Azure
8 35 (18.32%) Python
9 33 (17.28%) SQL
10 32 (16.75%) Node.js
11 31 (16.23%) C#
12 30 (15.71%) Event-Driven
13 28 (14.66%) DevOps
13 28 (14.66%) RESTful
14 27 (14.14%) .NET
15 26 (13.61%) TypeScript
16 25 (13.09%) AI
16 25 (13.09%) GCP
16 25 (13.09%) Problem-Solving
16 25 (13.09%) TDD
17 24 (12.57%) Kafka
18 22 (11.52%) Mentoring
18 22 (11.52%) Spring
19 21 (10.99%) Code Quality
19 21 (10.99%) OOP
19 21 (10.99%) PHP
20 20 (10.47%) Spring Boot
21 19 (9.95%) Containerisation

Backend Developer Skill Set
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 4 (2.09%) Apache
1 4 (2.09%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.57%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 55 (28.80%) AWS
2 37 (19.37%) Azure
3 25 (13.09%) GCP
4 16 (8.38%) GitHub
5 12 (6.28%) Serverless
6 9 (4.71%) Amazon ECS
7 8 (4.19%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (4.19%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.14%) Amazon S3
8 6 (3.14%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.14%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (3.14%) GitHub Copilot
8 6 (3.14%) SaaS
9 5 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (2.62%) Anthropic Claude
10 4 (2.09%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (1.57%) ChatGPT
11 3 (1.57%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.57%) HTTP
2 2 (1.05%) Broadband
3 1 (0.52%) LTE
3 1 (0.52%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (9.95%) MySQL
1 19 (9.95%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (6.28%) NoSQL
3 9 (4.71%) MongoDB
4 7 (3.66%) Relational Database
5 5 (2.62%) DynamoDB
5 5 (2.62%) Redis
6 4 (2.09%) Pinecone
6 4 (2.09%) SQL Server
7 3 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.57%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.05%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (1.05%) Couchbase
8 2 (1.05%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 38 (19.90%) Git
2 8 (4.19%) Jenkins
3 6 (3.14%) JUnit
4 4 (2.09%) Cucumber
4 4 (2.09%) Mockito
5 3 (1.57%) GitLab
5 3 (1.57%) PHPUnit
5 3 (1.57%) Selenium
6 2 (1.05%) Gradle
6 2 (1.05%) JIRA
6 2 (1.05%) JMeter
6 2 (1.05%) Liquibase
6 2 (1.05%) Maven
7 1 (0.52%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.52%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.52%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.52%) NUnit
7 1 (0.52%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 24 (12.57%) Finance
2 17 (8.90%) Social Skills
3 12 (6.28%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.19%) Games
5 7 (3.66%) Front Office
6 4 (2.09%) Advertising
6 4 (2.09%) Digital Health
6 4 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (2.09%) Retail
7 3 (1.57%) Banking
8 2 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.05%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (16.75%) Node.js
2 28 (14.66%) RESTful
3 27 (14.14%) .NET
4 24 (12.57%) Kafka
5 22 (11.52%) Spring
6 20 (10.47%) Spring Boot
7 17 (8.90%) REST
8 15 (7.85%) RabbitMQ
9 12 (6.28%) JPA
10 10 (5.24%) Terraform
11 9 (4.71%) Hibernate
11 9 (4.71%) Laravel
11 9 (4.71%) React
12 8 (4.19%) .NET Core
13 6 (3.14%) GraphQL
13 6 (3.14%) Swagger
14 5 (2.62%) FIX Protocol
14 5 (2.62%) Jakarta EE
15 4 (2.09%) AngularJS
15 4 (2.09%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 46 (24.08%) Distributed Systems
2 17 (8.90%) Greenfield Project
3 15 (7.85%) Cloud Native
4 11 (5.76%) Algorithms
4 11 (5.76%) Data Structures
4 11 (5.76%) PropTech
5 8 (4.19%) AI Agents
6 7 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (3.14%) Distributed Architecture
8 4 (2.09%) Derivative
8 4 (2.09%) Distributed Applications
8 4 (2.09%) Equities
8 4 (2.09%) Fixed Income
8 4 (2.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.57%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.57%) Video\Live Streaming
10 2 (1.05%) NHS
10 2 (1.05%) Online Gambling
10 2 (1.05%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.52%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.57%) Windows
2 2 (1.05%) Android
2 2 (1.05%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.52%) Linux
3 1 (0.52%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (31.41%) Microservices
2 48 (25.13%) Agile
2 48 (25.13%) CI/CD
3 30 (15.71%) Event-Driven
4 28 (14.66%) DevOps
5 25 (13.09%) AI
5 25 (13.09%) Problem-Solving
5 25 (13.09%) TDD
6 22 (11.52%) Mentoring
7 21 (10.99%) Code Quality
7 21 (10.99%) OOP
8 19 (9.95%) Containerisation
8 19 (9.95%) Software Engineering
9 18 (9.42%) Clean Code
9 18 (9.42%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 18 (9.42%) Infrastructure as Code
9 18 (9.42%) SDLC
10 14 (7.33%) API Development
10 14 (7.33%) Computer Science
10 14 (7.33%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 61 (31.94%) Java
2 35 (18.32%) Python
3 33 (17.28%) SQL
4 31 (16.23%) C#
5 26 (13.61%) TypeScript
6 21 (10.99%) PHP
7 15 (7.85%) Go
8 7 (3.66%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.57%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.57%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.57%) Scala
9 3 (1.57%) VB
9 3 (1.57%) VB.NET
10 2 (1.05%) C++
11 1 (0.52%) Google Apps Script
11 1 (0.52%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (7.85%) Security Cleared
2 14 (7.33%) Computer Science Degree
2 14 (7.33%) Degree
3 12 (6.28%) SC Cleared
4 3 (1.57%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.05%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.76%) QA
2 2 (1.05%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.05%) HL7
System Software
1 55 (28.80%) Docker
Systems Management
1 47 (24.61%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.14%) Grafana
3 5 (2.62%) Kibana
4 3 (1.57%) Ansible
5 2 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.52%) logstash
6 1 (0.52%) Podman
Vendors
1 10 (5.24%) Google
1 10 (5.24%) Oracle
2 8 (4.19%) OpenAI
3 4 (2.09%) Microsoft
4 3 (1.57%) AppDynamics
4 3 (1.57%) IBM
4 3 (1.57%) SAP
5 2 (1.05%) Bloomberg
5 2 (1.05%) Refinitiv
5 2 (1.05%) Splunk
6 1 (0.52%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.52%) Foundry
6 1 (0.52%) Typelevel