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 4 October 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 610 572 576
Rank change year-on-year -38 +4 -8
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 203 98 210
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.20% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.22% 0.30%
Number of salaries quoted 148 80 139
10th Percentile £50,000 £49,800 £23,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £52,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +28.57% -25.00%
75th Percentile £85,625 £85,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £107,500 £78,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +22.73% +4.76% -19.23%

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 109,737 44,641 70,718
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.84% 89.74% 95.32%
Number of salaries quoted 74,771 25,775 40,993
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £31,000
25th Percentile £40,500 £35,750 £40,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,396 £54,987 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.20% -0.02% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,500 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,750 £50,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% -6.50% -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 4 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Backend Developer in the UK

Backend Developer
Top 15 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 4 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
England -41 182 £70,000 +3.70% 236
UK excluding London -81 100 £67,500 +22.73% 257
London -13 89 £85,000 +6.25% 59
South East -3 49 £68,750 +30.95% 32
Work from Home -29 49 £92,500 +54.17% 273
North of England -61 33 £65,000 +8.33% 61
North West -34 14 £60,000 -2.04% 27
North East -51 10 £77,500 +40.91% 11
Yorkshire -37 9 £65,000 +85.71% 24
Scotland +8 7 - - 46
South West -67 7 £42,500 -29.17% 22
Midlands -40 6 £80,000 +97.84% 34
West Midlands - 5 £80,000 - 16
East Midlands -46 1 £75,000 +85.47% 18
Wales -72 1 - - 23

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

For the 6 months to 4 October 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 62 (30.54%) Microservices
2 61 (30.05%) Java
3 53 (26.11%) Docker
4 48 (23.65%) Agile
4 48 (23.65%) AWS
5 47 (23.15%) Kubernetes
6 45 (22.17%) CI/CD
7 40 (19.70%) Azure
7 40 (19.70%) SQL
8 38 (18.72%) C#
9 36 (17.73%) Python
10 34 (16.75%) Git
11 32 (15.76%) .NET
11 32 (15.76%) Mentoring
11 32 (15.76%) Node.js
12 31 (15.27%) Event-Driven
13 29 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (12.81%) Code Quality
14 26 (12.81%) DevOps
14 26 (12.81%) RESTful
15 25 (12.32%) TypeScript
16 24 (11.82%) AI
16 24 (11.82%) GCP
16 24 (11.82%) Kafka
17 21 (10.34%) Containerisation
17 21 (10.34%) TDD
18 20 (9.85%) Go
18 20 (9.85%) PostgreSQL
19 19 (9.36%) Clean Code
19 19 (9.36%) Event-Driven Architecture

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 (1.97%) Apache
1 4 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.48%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 48 (23.65%) AWS
2 40 (19.70%) Azure
3 24 (11.82%) GCP
4 16 (7.88%) GitHub
5 9 (4.43%) Serverless
6 8 (3.94%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
7 6 (2.96%) Amazon S3
7 6 (2.96%) Amazon SQS
7 6 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (2.96%) GitHub Copilot
7 6 (2.96%) SaaS
8 5 (2.46%) Anthropic Claude
9 4 (1.97%) Cloud Computing
10 3 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
10 3 (1.48%) ChatGPT
10 3 (1.48%) CloudFront
10 3 (1.48%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.48%) HTTP
2 1 (0.49%) Broadband
2 1 (0.49%) LTE
2 1 (0.49%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (9.85%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (8.87%) MySQL
3 12 (5.91%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.43%) MongoDB
5 6 (2.96%) Redis
6 5 (2.46%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.46%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.46%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.97%) Pinecone
8 3 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.48%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.99%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.99%) Couchbase
9 2 (0.99%) Weaviate
10 1 (0.49%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 34 (16.75%) Git
2 6 (2.96%) JUnit
3 5 (2.46%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.97%) Cucumber
4 4 (1.97%) Mockito
5 3 (1.48%) GitLab
5 3 (1.48%) PHPUnit
5 3 (1.48%) Selenium
6 2 (0.99%) Gradle
6 2 (0.99%) JIRA
6 2 (0.99%) JMeter
6 2 (0.99%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.99%) Maven
7 1 (0.49%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.49%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.49%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.49%) NUnit
7 1 (0.49%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.49%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 34 (16.75%) Finance
2 19 (9.36%) Social Skills
3 8 (3.94%) Games
3 8 (3.94%) Retail
4 7 (3.45%) Front Office
4 7 (3.45%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (1.97%) Advertising
6 4 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.48%) Digital Health
7 3 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.99%) Banking
8 2 (0.99%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (15.76%) .NET
1 32 (15.76%) Node.js
2 26 (12.81%) RESTful
3 24 (11.82%) Kafka
4 19 (9.36%) Spring
5 17 (8.37%) REST
5 17 (8.37%) Spring Boot
6 12 (5.91%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (4.43%) Hibernate
7 9 (4.43%) JPA
7 9 (4.43%) React
8 8 (3.94%) .NET Core
9 7 (3.45%) GraphQL
9 7 (3.45%) Laravel
9 7 (3.45%) Terraform
10 6 (2.96%) Swagger
11 5 (2.46%) FIX Protocol
12 4 (1.97%) Jest
12 4 (1.97%) Middleware
12 4 (1.97%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 41 (20.20%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (9.85%) Cloud Native
3 16 (7.88%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (5.42%) PropTech
5 9 (4.43%) Algorithms
5 9 (4.43%) Data Structures
6 8 (3.94%) AI Agents
7 7 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.96%) Online Gambling
9 5 (2.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 4 (1.97%) Derivative
10 4 (1.97%) Distributed Applications
10 4 (1.97%) Distributed Architecture
10 4 (1.97%) Equities
10 4 (1.97%) Fixed Income
11 3 (1.48%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.99%) NHS
12 2 (0.99%) Product Ownership
12 2 (0.99%) Video\Live Streaming
13 1 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.48%) Windows
2 2 (0.99%) Android
2 2 (0.99%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.49%) Linux
3 1 (0.49%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (30.54%) Microservices
2 48 (23.65%) Agile
3 45 (22.17%) CI/CD
4 32 (15.76%) Mentoring
5 31 (15.27%) Event-Driven
6 29 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
7 26 (12.81%) Code Quality
7 26 (12.81%) DevOps
8 24 (11.82%) AI
9 21 (10.34%) Containerisation
9 21 (10.34%) TDD
10 19 (9.36%) Clean Code
10 19 (9.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 19 (9.36%) OOP
10 19 (9.36%) SDLC
11 18 (8.87%) Infrastructure as Code
11 18 (8.87%) Test Automation
12 17 (8.37%) Observability
12 17 (8.37%) Software Engineering
13 16 (7.88%) Technology Transformation
Programming Languages
1 61 (30.05%) Java
2 40 (19.70%) SQL
3 38 (18.72%) C#
4 36 (17.73%) Python
5 25 (12.32%) TypeScript
6 20 (9.85%) Go
7 19 (9.36%) PHP
8 7 (3.45%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.48%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.48%) VB
9 3 (1.48%) VB.NET
10 2 (0.99%) C++
10 2 (0.99%) Scala
11 1 (0.49%) Google Apps Script
11 1 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (5.91%) Computer Science Degree
1 12 (5.91%) Degree
2 10 (4.93%) Security Cleared
3 7 (3.45%) SC Cleared
4 3 (1.48%) DV Cleared
5 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.42%) QA
2 2 (0.99%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.99%) HL7
System Software
1 53 (26.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 47 (23.15%) Kubernetes
2 6 (2.96%) Grafana
3 2 (0.99%) Kibana
3 2 (0.99%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.49%) logstash
4 1 (0.49%) Podman
Vendors
1 11 (5.42%) Google
2 8 (3.94%) Microsoft
2 8 (3.94%) OpenAI
2 8 (3.94%) Oracle
3 6 (2.96%) Splunk
4 3 (1.48%) SAP
5 2 (0.99%) Bloomberg
5 2 (0.99%) Refinitiv
6 1 (0.49%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.49%) Foundry