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 10 October 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 604 568 550
Rank change year-on-year -36 -18 +23
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 202 99 205
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 140 81 131
10th Percentile £50,000 £51,250 £23,750
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +28.57% -27.59%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £107,500 £77,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +22.73% +4.76% -20.15%

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 109,405 44,412 69,302
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.66% 89.84% 95.38%
Number of salaries quoted 74,287 25,750 39,695
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £40,750 £35,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,396 £53,688 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.77% -2.39% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +19.57% -8.00% -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 10 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 10 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 -35 180 £70,000 +3.70% 96
UK excluding London -75 98 £67,500 +22.73% 37
London +2 89 £85,000 +6.25% 62
Work from Home -41 49 £90,000 +50.00% 46
South East -17 42 £70,000 +33.33% 5
North of England -52 37 £65,000 +8.33% 15
North West -32 17 £60,000 - 7
Yorkshire -23 10 £65,000 +85.71% 7
North East -62 10 £77,500 +40.91% 1
Midlands -33 9 £80,000 +52.38% 6
West Midlands - 8 £80,000 - 4
Scotland +16 7 - - 3
South West -73 5 £42,500 -29.17% 2
East Midlands -35 1 £75,000 +42.86% 2
Wales -77 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 10 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 63 (31.19%) Microservices
2 61 (30.20%) Java
3 51 (25.25%) Docker
4 46 (22.77%) Kubernetes
5 45 (22.28%) Agile
6 43 (21.29%) AWS
6 43 (21.29%) CI/CD
7 41 (20.30%) SQL
8 39 (19.31%) Azure
9 37 (18.32%) C#
10 35 (17.33%) Python
11 34 (16.83%) Git
11 34 (16.83%) Mentoring
12 32 (15.84%) .NET
12 32 (15.84%) Node.js
13 31 (15.35%) Event-Driven
14 30 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
15 26 (12.87%) DevOps
15 26 (12.87%) TypeScript
16 25 (12.38%) Code Quality
17 24 (11.88%) RESTful
18 23 (11.39%) AI
18 23 (11.39%) Kafka
19 22 (10.89%) GCP
20 21 (10.40%) Go
21 20 (9.90%) Containerisation
22 19 (9.41%) Clean Code
22 19 (9.41%) Event-Driven Architecture
22 19 (9.41%) PostgreSQL
22 19 (9.41%) SDLC

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 (1.98%) Apache
1 4 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.49%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 43 (21.29%) AWS
2 39 (19.31%) Azure
3 22 (10.89%) GCP
4 15 (7.43%) GitHub
5 10 (4.95%) Serverless
6 9 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (3.47%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (3.47%) Amazon S3
7 7 (3.47%) AWS CloudFormation
7 7 (3.47%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (2.97%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (2.97%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (2.48%) Anthropic Claude
10 4 (1.98%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (1.98%) GitHub Copilot
10 4 (1.98%) SaaS
11 3 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (1.49%) ChatGPT
11 3 (1.49%) CloudFront
11 3 (1.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.49%) HTTP
2 1 (0.50%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (9.41%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (8.42%) MySQL
3 12 (5.94%) NoSQL
4 8 (3.96%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.47%) Redis
6 6 (2.97%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.48%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.98%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (1.98%) Pinecone
8 4 (1.98%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.49%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.99%) Couchbase
10 2 (0.99%) Weaviate
11 1 (0.50%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 34 (16.83%) Git
2 6 (2.97%) JUnit
3 5 (2.48%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.98%) Cucumber
4 4 (1.98%) Mockito
5 3 (1.49%) GitLab
6 2 (0.99%) Gradle
6 2 (0.99%) JMeter
6 2 (0.99%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.99%) Maven
6 2 (0.99%) PHPUnit
6 2 (0.99%) Selenium
7 1 (0.50%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.50%) NUnit
7 1 (0.50%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 34 (16.83%) Finance
2 20 (9.90%) Social Skills
3 9 (4.46%) Retail
4 8 (3.96%) Games
5 7 (3.47%) Front Office
5 7 (3.47%) Public Sector
6 5 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (1.98%) Advertising
7 4 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.99%) Banking
8 2 (0.99%) Digital Health
8 2 (0.99%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (15.84%) .NET
1 32 (15.84%) Node.js
2 24 (11.88%) RESTful
3 23 (11.39%) Kafka
4 18 (8.91%) REST
4 18 (8.91%) Spring
5 16 (7.92%) Spring Boot
6 12 (5.94%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (4.46%) Hibernate
7 9 (4.46%) JPA
8 7 (3.47%) .NET Core
8 7 (3.47%) GraphQL
8 7 (3.47%) React
8 7 (3.47%) Terraform
9 6 (2.97%) Swagger
10 5 (2.48%) FIX Protocol
11 4 (1.98%) Jest
11 4 (1.98%) Middleware
11 4 (1.98%) Spring MVC
11 4 (1.98%) Vert.x
Miscellaneous
1 39 (19.31%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (9.90%) Cloud Native
3 14 (6.93%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (5.45%) Online Gambling
4 11 (5.45%) PropTech
5 8 (3.96%) Algorithms
5 8 (3.96%) Data Structures
6 6 (2.97%) AI Agents
6 6 (2.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.98%) Derivative
8 4 (1.98%) Distributed Applications
8 4 (1.98%) Distributed Architecture
8 4 (1.98%) Equities
8 4 (1.98%) Fixed Income
9 3 (1.49%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.99%) NHS
10 2 (0.99%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.99%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.49%) Windows
2 2 (0.99%) Android
2 2 (0.99%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.50%) Linux
3 1 (0.50%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (31.19%) Microservices
2 45 (22.28%) Agile
3 43 (21.29%) CI/CD
4 34 (16.83%) Mentoring
5 31 (15.35%) Event-Driven
6 30 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
7 26 (12.87%) DevOps
8 25 (12.38%) Code Quality
9 23 (11.39%) AI
10 20 (9.90%) Containerisation
11 19 (9.41%) Clean Code
11 19 (9.41%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 19 (9.41%) SDLC
11 19 (9.41%) Test Automation
12 18 (8.91%) Infrastructure as Code
12 18 (8.91%) Observability
13 17 (8.42%) Software Engineering
13 17 (8.42%) TDD
13 17 (8.42%) Technology Transformation
14 15 (7.43%) API Development
Programming Languages
1 61 (30.20%) Java
2 41 (20.30%) SQL
3 37 (18.32%) C#
4 35 (17.33%) Python
5 26 (12.87%) TypeScript
6 21 (10.40%) Go
7 15 (7.43%) PHP
8 7 (3.47%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.98%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.49%) VB
10 3 (1.49%) VB.NET
11 2 (0.99%) C++
11 2 (0.99%) Scala
12 1 (0.50%) Google Apps Script
12 1 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (5.94%) Computer Science Degree
1 12 (5.94%) Degree
2 10 (4.95%) Security Cleared
3 7 (3.47%) SC Cleared
4 3 (1.49%) DV Cleared
5 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.45%) QA
2 2 (0.99%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.99%) HL7
3 1 (0.50%) Accessibility
System Software
1 51 (25.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 46 (22.77%) Kubernetes
2 6 (2.97%) Grafana
3 2 (0.99%) Kibana
3 2 (0.99%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.50%) logstash
Vendors
1 10 (4.95%) Google
2 8 (3.96%) Microsoft
2 8 (3.96%) OpenAI
2 8 (3.96%) Oracle
3 7 (3.47%) Splunk
4 3 (1.49%) SAP
5 2 (0.99%) Bloomberg
5 2 (0.99%) Refinitiv
6 1 (0.50%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.50%) Foundry