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 6 September 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 597 586 577
Rank change year-on-year -11 -9 +28
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 192 94 220
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.19% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.21% 0.29%
Number of salaries quoted 152 75 152
10th Percentile £50,000 £50,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £58,750
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +14.89% -12.96%
75th Percentile £90,000 £85,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,500 £79,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +8.33% +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 104,733 44,390 75,643
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.79% 89.68% 95.22%
Number of salaries quoted 72,126 26,208 47,516
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,132 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,500 £74,813 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £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 6 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 6 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 -22 177 £70,000 +3.70% 36
UK excluding London -49 92 £65,000 +8.33% 17
London -16 86 £90,000 +12.50% 23
South East +12 56 £68,750 +25.00% 4
Work from Home -36 42 £95,000 +46.15% 22
North of England -75 21 £65,000 +6.12% 6
South West -65 11 £42,500 -29.17% 2
Yorkshire -41 8 £65,000 +8.33% 1
North West -41 8 £60,000 -7.69% 1
North East -62 5 £75,000 +36.36% 4
Midlands -30 4 £80,000 +97.84% 2
West Midlands - 3 £80,000 - 1
Scotland +7 2 - - 2
East Midlands -30 1 £75,000 +85.47% 1

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

For the 6 months to 6 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 59 (30.73%) Microservices
2 58 (30.21%) Java
3 57 (29.69%) AWS
4 56 (29.17%) Docker
5 50 (26.04%) CI/CD
6 49 (25.52%) Agile
6 49 (25.52%) Kubernetes
7 39 (20.31%) Git
8 35 (18.23%) Python
9 33 (17.19%) Azure
10 32 (16.67%) Node.js
11 29 (15.10%) Event-Driven
11 29 (15.10%) RESTful
11 29 (15.10%) SQL
12 28 (14.58%) DevOps
12 28 (14.58%) GCP
13 27 (14.06%) C#
13 27 (14.06%) TDD
14 26 (13.54%) .NET
14 26 (13.54%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (13.54%) TypeScript
15 24 (12.50%) AI
16 23 (11.98%) Kafka
16 23 (11.98%) OOP
16 23 (11.98%) PHP
17 22 (11.46%) Spring
18 21 (10.94%) Containerisation
18 21 (10.94%) MySQL
19 20 (10.42%) Clean Code
19 20 (10.42%) Software Engineering

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 (2.08%) Apache
1 4 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.56%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 57 (29.69%) AWS
2 33 (17.19%) Azure
3 28 (14.58%) GCP
4 15 (7.81%) GitHub
5 12 (6.25%) Serverless
6 8 (4.17%) Amazon ECS
6 8 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.13%) Amazon S3
8 6 (3.13%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.13%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (3.13%) GitHub Copilot
8 6 (3.13%) SaaS
9 5 (2.60%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (2.60%) Anthropic Claude
10 4 (2.08%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (1.56%) Azure AKS
11 3 (1.56%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.08%) Broadband
2 3 (1.56%) HTTP
3 1 (0.52%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (10.94%) MySQL
2 18 (9.38%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (6.77%) NoSQL
4 10 (5.21%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.65%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.60%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.08%) Pinecone
7 4 (2.08%) Redis
7 4 (2.08%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (1.04%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.04%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (1.04%) Couchbase
8 2 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (1.04%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 39 (20.31%) Git
2 8 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 6 (3.13%) JUnit
4 4 (2.08%) Cucumber
4 4 (2.08%) Mockito
4 4 (2.08%) PHPUnit
4 4 (2.08%) Selenium
5 3 (1.56%) GitLab
6 2 (1.04%) CircleCI
6 2 (1.04%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.04%) Gradle
6 2 (1.04%) JIRA
6 2 (1.04%) JMeter
6 2 (1.04%) Liquibase
6 2 (1.04%) Maven
7 1 (0.52%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.52%) NUnit
7 1 (0.52%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 21 (10.94%) Finance
2 15 (7.81%) Social Skills
3 11 (5.73%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.17%) Games
5 7 (3.65%) Front Office
6 4 (2.08%) Advertising
6 4 (2.08%) Digital Health
6 4 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (2.08%) Retail
7 3 (1.56%) Banking
8 2 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.04%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (16.67%) Node.js
2 29 (15.10%) RESTful
3 26 (13.54%) .NET
4 23 (11.98%) Kafka
5 22 (11.46%) Spring
6 20 (10.42%) Spring Boot
7 17 (8.85%) REST
8 14 (7.29%) RabbitMQ
9 12 (6.25%) JPA
10 10 (5.21%) Laravel
11 9 (4.69%) .NET Core
11 9 (4.69%) Hibernate
11 9 (4.69%) Terraform
12 8 (4.17%) React
13 6 (3.13%) GraphQL
13 6 (3.13%) Swagger
14 5 (2.60%) FIX Protocol
14 5 (2.60%) Jakarta EE
14 5 (2.60%) LAMP
15 4 (2.08%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 44 (22.92%) Distributed Systems
2 18 (9.38%) Greenfield Project
3 13 (6.77%) Algorithms
3 13 (6.77%) Cloud Native
3 13 (6.77%) Data Structures
4 11 (5.73%) PropTech
5 8 (4.17%) AI Agents
6 7 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (3.13%) Distributed Architecture
8 4 (2.08%) Derivative
8 4 (2.08%) Distributed Applications
8 4 (2.08%) Equities
8 4 (2.08%) Fixed Income
8 4 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 4 (2.08%) Video\Live Streaming
9 3 (1.56%) Data Centre
10 2 (1.04%) Blockchain
10 2 (1.04%) NHS
10 2 (1.04%) Online Gambling
10 2 (1.04%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.56%) Windows
2 2 (1.04%) Android
2 2 (1.04%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (30.73%) Microservices
2 50 (26.04%) CI/CD
3 49 (25.52%) Agile
4 29 (15.10%) Event-Driven
5 28 (14.58%) DevOps
6 27 (14.06%) TDD
7 26 (13.54%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (12.50%) AI
9 23 (11.98%) OOP
10 21 (10.94%) Containerisation
11 20 (10.42%) Clean Code
11 20 (10.42%) Software Engineering
12 18 (9.38%) Code Quality
13 17 (8.85%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 17 (8.85%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (8.85%) Mentoring
14 16 (8.33%) SDLC
15 15 (7.81%) Computer Science
16 14 (7.29%) Migration
16 14 (7.29%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 58 (30.21%) Java
2 35 (18.23%) Python
3 29 (15.10%) SQL
4 27 (14.06%) C#
5 26 (13.54%) TypeScript
6 23 (11.98%) PHP
7 11 (5.73%) Go
8 8 (4.17%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.08%) Scala
10 3 (1.56%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.56%) VB
10 3 (1.56%) VB.NET
11 2 (1.04%) C++
12 1 (0.52%) Google Apps Script
12 1 (0.52%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (7.81%) Computer Science Degree
1 15 (7.81%) Degree
1 15 (7.81%) Security Cleared
2 12 (6.25%) SC Cleared
3 3 (1.56%) DV Cleared
4 2 (1.04%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.73%) QA
2 2 (1.04%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.04%) HL7
System Software
1 56 (29.17%) Docker
Systems Management
1 49 (25.52%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.13%) Grafana
3 5 (2.60%) Kibana
4 3 (1.56%) Ansible
5 2 (1.04%) Podman
5 2 (1.04%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 12 (6.25%) Google
2 10 (5.21%) Oracle
3 8 (4.17%) OpenAI
4 4 (2.08%) Microsoft
5 3 (1.56%) AppDynamics
5 3 (1.56%) IBM
5 3 (1.56%) SAP
6 2 (1.04%) Bloomberg
6 2 (1.04%) Refinitiv
6 2 (1.04%) Splunk
6 2 (1.04%) Typelevel
7 1 (0.52%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.52%) Foundry