Developer/Software Engineer Job Trends

Software Engineer/Developer
UK

The median Software Engineer/Developer salary in the UK is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 21 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
21 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 753 485 486
Rank change year-on-year -268 +1 -47
Permanent jobs requiring a Developer/Software Engineer 44 182 329
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.038% 0.37% 0.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.041% 0.41% 0.45%
Number of salaries quoted 30 153 299
10th Percentile £47,500 - £71,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £100,000 £87,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £130,000 £110,000
Median % change year-on-year -57.69% +18.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £128,750 £137,500 £142,500
90th Percentile £143,250 £142,500 £165,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% -14.29% +27.27%

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 108,248 44,029 73,823
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.20% 89.64% 95.26%
Number of salaries quoted 74,086 25,880 44,136
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,500 £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 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £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%

Developer/Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Developer/Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Developer/Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Developer/Software Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Developer/Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Developer/Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Developer/Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Developer/Software Engineer over the 6 months to 21 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Developer/Software Engineer in the UK

Developer/Software Engineer
Top 9 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Developer/Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 21 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 -231 42 £55,000 -57.69% 29
Work from Home -159 28 £55,000 -57.69% 12
UK excluding London -107 22 £55,000 -8.33% 19
London -203 22 £125,000 -3.85% 15
South East -46 11 £55,000 -15.38%
North of England -60 10 £50,000 -16.67% 4
Yorkshire -31 9 £50,000 -16.67%
North West - 1 £65,000 - 3
South West - 1 £47,500 - 6

Developer/Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 September 2026, Developer/Software Engineer 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 Developer/Software Engineer in the job title.

1 41 (93.18%) Software Engineering
2 28 (63.64%) AWS
3 20 (45.45%) .NET
3 20 (45.45%) C#
3 20 (45.45%) Full-Stack Development
3 20 (45.45%) Microservices
4 18 (40.91%) Continuous Improvement
4 18 (40.91%) Python
4 18 (40.91%) SaaS
5 17 (38.64%) CQRS
5 17 (38.64%) CSS
5 17 (38.64%) HTML
5 17 (38.64%) Product Vision
5 17 (38.64%) Resource Allocation
5 17 (38.64%) SDLC
5 17 (38.64%) Vue
6 13 (29.55%) Investment Management
7 12 (27.27%) SQL
8 10 (22.73%) AI
9 9 (20.45%) Agile
9 9 (20.45%) Azure
10 8 (18.18%) GCP
10 8 (18.18%) R
11 7 (15.91%) Analytics
12 6 (13.64%) Amazon Bedrock
12 6 (13.64%) CrewAI
12 6 (13.64%) Google
12 6 (13.64%) Kafka
12 6 (13.64%) LangChain
12 6 (13.64%) LangGraph

Developer/Software Engineer 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:

Cloud Services
1 28 (63.64%) AWS
2 18 (40.91%) SaaS
3 9 (20.45%) Azure
4 8 (18.18%) GCP
5 6 (13.64%) Amazon Bedrock
6 4 (9.09%) Serverless
7 3 (6.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (6.82%) Amazon EC2
7 3 (6.82%) Amazon S3
7 3 (6.82%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (6.82%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (6.82%) Cloud Computing
7 3 (6.82%) Datadog
8 1 (2.27%) Anthropic Claude
8 1 (2.27%) Azure Functions
8 1 (2.27%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (2.27%) ChatGPT
8 1 (2.27%) GitHub
8 1 (2.27%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Copilot
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (6.82%) Amazon RDS
1 3 (6.82%) DynamoDB
1 3 (6.82%) KDB
1 3 (6.82%) NoSQL
1 3 (6.82%) SQL Server
2 2 (4.55%) MySQL
3 1 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (6.82%) CircleCI
1 3 (6.82%) GitLab
1 3 (6.82%) Jenkins
2 2 (4.55%) Git
2 2 (4.55%) JIRA
2 2 (4.55%) Visual Studio
3 1 (2.27%) Claude Code
General
1 16 (36.36%) Finance
2 14 (31.82%) Banking
3 13 (29.55%) Front Office
4 9 (20.45%) Social Skills
5 6 (13.64%) Marketing
6 3 (6.82%) Aerospace
6 3 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (6.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (6.82%) Investment Banking
6 3 (6.82%) Law
7 2 (4.55%) Manufacturing
8 1 (2.27%) Agriculture
8 1 (2.27%) Military
8 1 (2.27%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (45.45%) .NET
2 17 (38.64%) CSS
2 17 (38.64%) HTML
2 17 (38.64%) Vue
3 6 (13.64%) CrewAI
3 6 (13.64%) Kafka
3 6 (13.64%) LangChain
3 6 (13.64%) LangGraph
3 6 (13.64%) pydantic
4 5 (11.36%) RabbitMQ
5 3 (6.82%) FIX Protocol
5 3 (6.82%) gRPC
5 3 (6.82%) RESTful
5 3 (6.82%) Terraform
6 2 (4.55%) AngularJS
6 2 (4.55%) OpenCV
6 2 (4.55%) React
6 2 (4.55%) web3js
7 1 (2.27%) Laravel
7 1 (2.27%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 9 (20.45%) Hedge funds
2 7 (15.91%) AI Agents
3 6 (13.64%) Equities
4 4 (9.09%) Fixed Income
5 3 (6.82%) Algorithms
5 3 (6.82%) Cloud Native
5 3 (6.82%) Derivative
6 2 (4.55%) Blockchain
6 2 (4.55%) Credit Derivative
6 2 (4.55%) Web3
7 1 (2.27%) Equity Derivative
7 1 (2.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (2.27%) IoT
7 1 (2.27%) Mobile App
7 1 (2.27%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (6.82%) Linux
2 2 (4.55%) Windows
3 1 (2.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (93.18%) Software Engineering
2 20 (45.45%) Full-Stack Development
2 20 (45.45%) Microservices
3 18 (40.91%) Continuous Improvement
4 17 (38.64%) CQRS
4 17 (38.64%) Product Vision
4 17 (38.64%) Resource Allocation
4 17 (38.64%) SDLC
5 13 (29.55%) Investment Management
6 10 (22.73%) AI
7 9 (20.45%) Agile
8 7 (15.91%) Analytics
9 6 (13.64%) Pair Programming
9 6 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
9 6 (13.64%) Quantitative Research
10 5 (11.36%) CI/CD
11 4 (9.09%) DevOps
11 4 (9.09%) Order Management
11 4 (9.09%) Performance Optimisation
12 3 (6.82%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 20 (45.45%) C#
2 18 (40.91%) Python
3 12 (27.27%) SQL
4 8 (18.18%) R
5 4 (9.09%) Go
5 4 (9.09%) JavaScript
6 3 (6.82%) C++
6 3 (6.82%) Java
7 2 (4.55%) VB.NET
8 1 (2.27%) PHP
8 1 (2.27%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (6.82%) Computer Science Degree
1 3 (6.82%) Degree
2 1 (2.27%) SC Cleared
2 1 (2.27%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 3 (6.82%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (6.82%) Kubernetes
1 3 (6.82%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (13.64%) Google
2 2 (4.55%) Bloomberg
3 1 (2.27%) Microsoft
37 Developer/Software Engineer jobs Nationwide