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 28 September 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 616 588 577
Rank change year-on-year -28 -11 -1
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 196 92 213
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 148 74 141
10th Percentile £50,000 £50,375 £23,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £53,125 £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 £77,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +17.39% +9.52% -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 109,191 44,243 72,281
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 89.71% 95.27%
Number of salaries quoted 74,643 25,711 42,130
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £40,750 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,598 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.54% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
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 28 September 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 28 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 -36 176 £70,000 +3.70% 80
UK excluding London -89 94 £67,500 +17.39% 46
London +6 88 £85,000 +6.25% 40
South East -5 53 £70,000 +33.33% 2
Work from Home -21 45 £95,000 +52.00% 38
North of England -67 25 £65,000 +8.33% 25
North East -57 9 £75,000 +36.36% 2
Yorkshire -22 8 £65,000 +36.84% 7
North West -54 8 £60,000 -4.00% 16
South West -79 7 £42,500 -29.17% 2
Scotland +11 6 - - 6
Midlands -47 4 £80,000 +97.84% 7
West Midlands - 3 £80,000 - 5
East Midlands -37 1 £75,000 +85.47% 2
Wales -60 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 28 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 63 (32.14%) Java
1 63 (32.14%) Microservices
2 55 (28.06%) Docker
3 52 (26.53%) AWS
4 50 (25.51%) Agile
5 48 (24.49%) Kubernetes
6 46 (23.47%) CI/CD
7 39 (19.90%) Azure
7 39 (19.90%) SQL
8 38 (19.39%) Git
9 35 (17.86%) Python
10 34 (17.35%) C#
11 32 (16.33%) Node.js
12 30 (15.31%) Event-Driven
13 29 (14.80%) .NET
13 29 (14.80%) DevOps
14 28 (14.29%) Mentoring
15 27 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (13.78%) RESTful
16 25 (12.76%) AI
16 25 (12.76%) Code Quality
16 25 (12.76%) GCP
16 25 (12.76%) TDD
16 25 (12.76%) TypeScript
17 24 (12.24%) Kafka
18 22 (11.22%) Spring
19 21 (10.71%) OOP
19 21 (10.71%) PHP
20 20 (10.20%) PostgreSQL
20 20 (10.20%) Spring Boot

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 (2.04%) Apache
1 4 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.53%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 52 (26.53%) AWS
2 39 (19.90%) Azure
3 25 (12.76%) GCP
4 16 (8.16%) GitHub
5 12 (6.12%) Serverless
6 9 (4.59%) Amazon ECS
7 8 (4.08%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (3.57%) SaaS
9 6 (3.06%) Amazon S3
9 6 (3.06%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (3.06%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (3.06%) GitHub Copilot
10 5 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.55%) Anthropic Claude
11 4 (2.04%) Cloud Computing
12 3 (1.53%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.53%) ChatGPT
12 3 (1.53%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.53%) HTTP
2 1 (0.51%) Broadband
2 1 (0.51%) LTE
2 1 (0.51%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (10.20%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (9.69%) MySQL
3 12 (6.12%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.59%) MongoDB
5 8 (4.08%) Relational Database
6 6 (3.06%) Redis
7 5 (2.55%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.55%) SQL Server
8 4 (2.04%) Pinecone
9 3 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.53%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (1.02%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (1.02%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (1.02%) Couchbase
10 2 (1.02%) Weaviate
11 1 (0.51%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (19.39%) Git
2 8 (4.08%) Jenkins
3 6 (3.06%) JUnit
4 4 (2.04%) Cucumber
4 4 (2.04%) Mockito
5 3 (1.53%) GitLab
5 3 (1.53%) PHPUnit
5 3 (1.53%) Selenium
6 2 (1.02%) Gradle
6 2 (1.02%) JIRA
6 2 (1.02%) JMeter
6 2 (1.02%) Liquibase
6 2 (1.02%) Maven
7 1 (0.51%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.51%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.51%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.51%) NUnit
7 1 (0.51%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.51%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 30 (15.31%) Finance
2 18 (9.18%) Social Skills
3 12 (6.12%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.08%) Games
5 7 (3.57%) Front Office
6 6 (3.06%) Retail
7 5 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (2.04%) Advertising
8 4 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.53%) Banking
9 3 (1.53%) Digital Health
9 3 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (1.02%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (16.33%) Node.js
2 29 (14.80%) .NET
3 27 (13.78%) RESTful
4 24 (12.24%) Kafka
5 22 (11.22%) Spring
6 20 (10.20%) Spring Boot
7 18 (9.18%) REST
8 15 (7.65%) RabbitMQ
9 12 (6.12%) JPA
10 11 (5.61%) React
11 10 (5.10%) Terraform
12 9 (4.59%) Hibernate
13 8 (4.08%) Laravel
14 6 (3.06%) .NET Core
14 6 (3.06%) GraphQL
14 6 (3.06%) Swagger
15 5 (2.55%) FIX Protocol
15 5 (2.55%) Jakarta EE
16 4 (2.04%) Spring MVC
16 4 (2.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (22.96%) Distributed Systems
2 18 (9.18%) Cloud Native
3 17 (8.67%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (5.61%) PropTech
5 10 (5.10%) Algorithms
5 10 (5.10%) Data Structures
6 8 (4.08%) AI Agents
7 7 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (3.06%) Distributed Architecture
9 5 (2.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 4 (2.04%) Derivative
10 4 (2.04%) Distributed Applications
10 4 (2.04%) Equities
10 4 (2.04%) Fixed Income
11 3 (1.53%) Data Centre
12 2 (1.02%) NHS
12 2 (1.02%) Online Gambling
12 2 (1.02%) Product Ownership
12 2 (1.02%) Video\Live Streaming
13 1 (0.51%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.53%) Windows
2 2 (1.02%) Android
2 2 (1.02%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.51%) Linux
3 1 (0.51%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (32.14%) Microservices
2 50 (25.51%) Agile
3 46 (23.47%) CI/CD
4 30 (15.31%) Event-Driven
5 29 (14.80%) DevOps
6 28 (14.29%) Mentoring
7 27 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
8 25 (12.76%) AI
8 25 (12.76%) Code Quality
8 25 (12.76%) TDD
9 21 (10.71%) OOP
10 19 (9.69%) Clean Code
10 19 (9.69%) SDLC
11 18 (9.18%) Containerisation
11 18 (9.18%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 18 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (8.67%) Software Engineering
13 14 (7.14%) API Development
13 14 (7.14%) Observability
13 14 (7.14%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 63 (32.14%) Java
2 39 (19.90%) SQL
3 35 (17.86%) Python
4 34 (17.35%) C#
5 25 (12.76%) TypeScript
6 21 (10.71%) PHP
7 17 (8.67%) Go
8 7 (3.57%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.53%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.53%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.53%) VB
9 3 (1.53%) VB.NET
10 2 (1.02%) C++
10 2 (1.02%) Scala
11 1 (0.51%) Google Apps Script
11 1 (0.51%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (7.65%) Security Cleared
2 12 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
2 12 (6.12%) Degree
2 12 (6.12%) SC Cleared
3 3 (1.53%) DV Cleared
4 2 (1.02%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.61%) QA
2 2 (1.02%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.02%) HL7
System Software
1 55 (28.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 48 (24.49%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.06%) Grafana
3 5 (2.55%) Kibana
4 3 (1.53%) Ansible
5 2 (1.02%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.51%) logstash
6 1 (0.51%) Podman
Vendors
1 11 (5.61%) Google
1 11 (5.61%) Oracle
2 8 (4.08%) OpenAI
3 5 (2.55%) Microsoft
4 4 (2.04%) Splunk
5 3 (1.53%) AppDynamics
5 3 (1.53%) IBM
5 3 (1.53%) SAP
6 2 (1.02%) Bloomberg
6 2 (1.02%) Refinitiv
7 1 (0.51%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.51%) Foundry