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 25 September 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 614 589 566
Rank change year-on-year -25 -23 +16
Permanent jobs requiring a Backend Developer 199 92 217
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.19% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.21% 0.30%
Number of salaries quoted 153 74 145
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 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +22.73% -21.43%
75th Percentile £87,500 £85,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,250 £79,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +17.39% +9.52% -17.65%

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 109,088 44,314 73,256
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.07% 89.71% 95.27%
Number of salaries quoted 74,631 25,938 43,073
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £40,641 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £74,258 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £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 25 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 25 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 -31 181 £70,000 +3.70% 98
UK excluding London -80 96 £67,500 +17.39% 49
London +6 89 £85,000 +6.25% 54
South East -2 54 £70,000 +33.33% 4
Work from Home -33 44 £92,500 +48.00% 45
North of England -71 26 £65,000 +8.33% 24
North West -46 9 £60,000 -4.00% 15
North East -62 9 £75,000 +36.36% 2
South West -71 9 £42,500 -29.17% 3
Yorkshire -29 8 £65,000 +36.84% 7
Scotland +13 5 - - 6
Midlands -41 4 £80,000 +97.84% 7
West Midlands - 3 £80,000 - 5
East Midlands -33 1 £75,000 +85.47% 2

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

For the 6 months to 25 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 (31.66%) Java
1 63 (31.66%) Microservices
2 57 (28.64%) Docker
3 55 (27.64%) AWS
4 49 (24.62%) Agile
4 49 (24.62%) CI/CD
4 49 (24.62%) Kubernetes
5 39 (19.60%) Azure
6 38 (19.10%) Git
7 36 (18.09%) Python
7 36 (18.09%) SQL
8 34 (17.09%) C#
9 32 (16.08%) Node.js
10 30 (15.08%) Event-Driven
11 29 (14.57%) .NET
11 29 (14.57%) DevOps
12 28 (14.07%) RESTful
13 26 (13.07%) GCP
13 26 (13.07%) Mentoring
13 26 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
13 26 (13.07%) TypeScript
14 25 (12.56%) AI
14 25 (12.56%) TDD
15 24 (12.06%) Kafka
16 23 (11.56%) Code Quality
17 22 (11.06%) Spring
18 21 (10.55%) OOP
18 21 (10.55%) PHP
19 20 (10.05%) Containerisation
19 20 (10.05%) PostgreSQL

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 (2.01%) Apache
1 4 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 3 (1.51%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 55 (27.64%) AWS
2 39 (19.60%) Azure
3 26 (13.07%) GCP
4 16 (8.04%) GitHub
5 12 (6.03%) Serverless
6 9 (4.52%) Amazon ECS
7 8 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (3.52%) SaaS
9 6 (3.02%) Amazon S3
9 6 (3.02%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (3.02%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (3.02%) GitHub Copilot
10 5 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.51%) Anthropic Claude
11 4 (2.01%) Cloud Computing
12 3 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (1.51%) Azure AKS
12 3 (1.51%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.51%) HTTP
2 2 (1.01%) Broadband
3 1 (0.50%) LTE
3 1 (0.50%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (10.05%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (9.55%) MySQL
3 12 (6.03%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.52%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.52%) Relational Database
6 6 (3.02%) Redis
7 5 (2.51%) DynamoDB
8 4 (2.01%) Pinecone
8 4 (2.01%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.51%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (1.01%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (1.01%) Couchbase
10 2 (1.01%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 38 (19.10%) Git
2 8 (4.02%) Jenkins
3 6 (3.02%) JUnit
4 4 (2.01%) Cucumber
4 4 (2.01%) Mockito
5 3 (1.51%) GitLab
5 3 (1.51%) PHPUnit
5 3 (1.51%) Selenium
6 2 (1.01%) Gradle
6 2 (1.01%) JIRA
6 2 (1.01%) JMeter
6 2 (1.01%) Liquibase
6 2 (1.01%) Maven
7 1 (0.50%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.50%) Crashlytics
7 1 (0.50%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.50%) NUnit
7 1 (0.50%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 27 (13.57%) Finance
2 18 (9.05%) Social Skills
3 12 (6.03%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.02%) Games
5 7 (3.52%) Front Office
6 5 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
6 5 (2.51%) Retail
7 4 (2.01%) Advertising
7 4 (2.01%) Digital Health
7 4 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.51%) Banking
8 3 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (1.01%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (16.08%) Node.js
2 29 (14.57%) .NET
3 28 (14.07%) RESTful
4 24 (12.06%) Kafka
5 22 (11.06%) Spring
6 20 (10.05%) Spring Boot
7 18 (9.05%) REST
8 15 (7.54%) RabbitMQ
9 12 (6.03%) JPA
10 10 (5.03%) React
10 10 (5.03%) Terraform
11 9 (4.52%) Hibernate
11 9 (4.52%) Laravel
12 8 (4.02%) .NET Core
13 6 (3.02%) GraphQL
13 6 (3.02%) Swagger
14 5 (2.51%) FIX Protocol
14 5 (2.51%) Jakarta EE
15 4 (2.01%) AngularJS
15 4 (2.01%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 46 (23.12%) Distributed Systems
2 17 (8.54%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.54%) Greenfield Project
3 11 (5.53%) PropTech
4 10 (5.03%) Algorithms
4 10 (5.03%) Data Structures
5 8 (4.02%) AI Agents
6 7 (3.52%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (3.02%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (2.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 4 (2.01%) Derivative
9 4 (2.01%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (2.01%) Equities
9 4 (2.01%) Fixed Income
10 3 (1.51%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.51%) Video\Live Streaming
11 2 (1.01%) NHS
11 2 (1.01%) Online Gambling
11 2 (1.01%) Product Ownership
12 1 (0.50%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.51%) Windows
2 2 (1.01%) Android
2 2 (1.01%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.50%) Linux
3 1 (0.50%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (31.66%) Microservices
2 49 (24.62%) Agile
2 49 (24.62%) CI/CD
3 30 (15.08%) Event-Driven
4 29 (14.57%) DevOps
5 26 (13.07%) Mentoring
5 26 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
6 25 (12.56%) AI
6 25 (12.56%) TDD
7 23 (11.56%) Code Quality
8 21 (10.55%) OOP
9 20 (10.05%) Containerisation
10 19 (9.55%) Clean Code
10 19 (9.55%) SDLC
10 19 (9.55%) Software Engineering
11 18 (9.05%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 18 (9.05%) Infrastructure as Code
12 14 (7.04%) API Development
12 14 (7.04%) Computer Science
12 14 (7.04%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 63 (31.66%) Java
2 36 (18.09%) Python
2 36 (18.09%) SQL
3 34 (17.09%) C#
4 26 (13.07%) TypeScript
5 21 (10.55%) PHP
6 17 (8.54%) Go
7 7 (3.52%) JavaScript
8 3 (1.51%) Kotlin
8 3 (1.51%) PL/SQL
8 3 (1.51%) Scala
8 3 (1.51%) VB
8 3 (1.51%) VB.NET
9 2 (1.01%) C++
10 1 (0.50%) Google Apps Script
10 1 (0.50%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (7.54%) Security Cleared
2 14 (7.04%) Computer Science Degree
2 14 (7.04%) Degree
3 12 (6.03%) SC Cleared
4 3 (1.51%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.01%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.53%) QA
2 2 (1.01%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.01%) HL7
System Software
1 57 (28.64%) Docker
Systems Management
1 49 (24.62%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.02%) Grafana
3 5 (2.51%) Kibana
4 3 (1.51%) Ansible
5 2 (1.01%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.50%) logstash
6 1 (0.50%) Podman
Vendors
1 11 (5.53%) Google
2 10 (5.03%) Oracle
3 8 (4.02%) OpenAI
4 4 (2.01%) Microsoft
5 3 (1.51%) AppDynamics
5 3 (1.51%) IBM
5 3 (1.51%) SAP
5 3 (1.51%) Splunk
6 2 (1.01%) Bloomberg
6 2 (1.01%) Refinitiv
7 1 (0.50%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.50%) Foundry
7 1 (0.50%) Typelevel