Developer/Software Engineer Job Trends

Software Engineer/Developer
UK

The median Software Engineer/Developer salary in the UK is £125,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 15 October 2026.

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

 6 months to
15 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 748 502 482
Rank change year-on-year -246 -20 -48
Permanent jobs requiring a Developer/Software Engineer 55 156 290
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.046% 0.32% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.050% 0.35% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 37 127 276
10th Percentile £47,500 - £71,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £100,000 £81,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £125,000 £130,000 £105,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +23.81% -2.33%
75th Percentile £142,500 £137,500 £142,500
90th Percentile £172,500 £142,500 £165,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £63,750
% change year-on-year -8.33% -5.88% +13.33%

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 109,883 44,162 67,664
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 89.77% 95.35%
Number of salaries quoted 74,751 25,776 38,845
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £35,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £53,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.35% -2.73% -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%

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 15 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Developer/Software Engineer in the UK

Developer/Software Engineer
Top 11 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 15 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 -229 53 £125,000 -3.85% 12
Work from Home -133 36 £125,000 -3.85% 9
London -171 35 £125,000 -3.85% 2
UK excluding London -161 20 £55,000 -8.33% 10
North of England -59 12 £50,000 -16.67% 6
Yorkshire -27 10 £50,000 -16.67% 2
South East -49 5 £55,000 -15.38% 1
Midlands - 2 £75,000 - 2
North West - 2 £65,000 - 4
West Midlands - 2 £75,000 - 2
South West - 1 £47,500 -

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

For the 6 months to 15 October 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 52 (94.55%) Software Engineering
2 34 (61.82%) Python
3 30 (54.55%) AWS
4 28 (50.91%) Investment Management
5 26 (47.27%) AI
6 23 (41.82%) Azure
7 18 (32.73%) .NET
7 18 (32.73%) C#
8 17 (30.91%) GCP
8 17 (30.91%) R
9 16 (29.09%) Full-Stack Development
10 15 (27.27%) Amazon Bedrock
10 15 (27.27%) CrewAI
10 15 (27.27%) Google
10 15 (27.27%) LangChain
10 15 (27.27%) LangGraph
10 15 (27.27%) Pair Programming
10 15 (27.27%) pydantic
11 13 (23.64%) Analytics
11 13 (23.64%) Microservices
12 12 (21.82%) LLM
12 12 (21.82%) Quantitative Research
13 11 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
13 11 (20.00%) SaaS
14 10 (18.18%) Anthropic Claude
14 10 (18.18%) ChatGPT
14 10 (18.18%) CQRS
14 10 (18.18%) CSS
14 10 (18.18%) HTML
14 10 (18.18%) Microsoft Copilot

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:

Application Platforms
1 3 (5.45%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 30 (54.55%) AWS
2 23 (41.82%) Azure
3 17 (30.91%) GCP
4 15 (27.27%) Amazon Bedrock
5 11 (20.00%) SaaS
6 10 (18.18%) Anthropic Claude
6 10 (18.18%) ChatGPT
6 10 (18.18%) Microsoft Copilot
7 7 (12.73%) GitHub
7 7 (12.73%) GitHub Copilot
7 7 (12.73%) Serverless
8 4 (7.27%) Azure Functions
9 3 (5.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (5.45%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (5.45%) Azure App Service
9 3 (5.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 3 (5.45%) Azure Logic Apps
9 3 (5.45%) Datadog
9 3 (5.45%) PaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.45%) Amazon RDS
1 3 (5.45%) DynamoDB
1 3 (5.45%) KDB
1 3 (5.45%) NoSQL
1 3 (5.45%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.64%) MySQL
3 1 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (12.73%) Claude Code
2 3 (5.45%) CircleCI
2 3 (5.45%) GitLab
2 3 (5.45%) Jenkins
3 2 (3.64%) Git
3 2 (3.64%) JIRA
3 2 (3.64%) Visual Studio
General
1 31 (56.36%) Finance
2 29 (52.73%) Banking
3 28 (50.91%) Front Office
4 18 (32.73%) Social Skills
5 15 (27.27%) Marketing
6 3 (5.45%) Aerospace
6 3 (5.45%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (5.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (5.45%) Investment Banking
6 3 (5.45%) Law
7 2 (3.64%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.82%) Agriculture
8 1 (1.82%) Military
8 1 (1.82%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (32.73%) .NET
2 15 (27.27%) CrewAI
2 15 (27.27%) LangChain
2 15 (27.27%) LangGraph
2 15 (27.27%) pydantic
3 10 (18.18%) CSS
3 10 (18.18%) HTML
3 10 (18.18%) Vue
4 6 (10.91%) Kafka
5 5 (9.09%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (5.45%) FIX Protocol
6 3 (5.45%) gRPC
6 3 (5.45%) RESTful
6 3 (5.45%) Terraform
7 2 (3.64%) OpenCV
7 2 (3.64%) React
7 2 (3.64%) web3js
8 1 (1.82%) .NET Core
8 1 (1.82%) OpenFin
8 1 (1.82%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 24 (43.64%) Hedge funds
2 16 (29.09%) AI Agents
3 12 (21.82%) Equities
4 10 (18.18%) Fixed Income
5 9 (16.36%) Derivative
6 7 (12.73%) Equity Derivative
6 7 (12.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 3 (5.45%) Algorithms
7 3 (5.45%) Cloud Native
8 2 (3.64%) Blockchain
8 2 (3.64%) Credit Derivative
8 2 (3.64%) Web3
9 1 (1.82%) IoT
9 1 (1.82%) Mobile App
9 1 (1.82%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (5.45%) Linux
2 2 (3.64%) Windows
3 1 (1.82%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (94.55%) Software Engineering
2 28 (50.91%) Investment Management
3 26 (47.27%) AI
4 16 (29.09%) Full-Stack Development
5 15 (27.27%) Pair Programming
6 13 (23.64%) Analytics
6 13 (23.64%) Microservices
7 12 (21.82%) LLM
7 12 (21.82%) Quantitative Research
8 11 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
9 10 (18.18%) CQRS
9 10 (18.18%) Product Vision
9 10 (18.18%) Resource Allocation
9 10 (18.18%) SDLC
10 9 (16.36%) Agile
10 9 (16.36%) Asset Management
11 7 (12.73%) DevOps
11 7 (12.73%) Pricing Analytics
11 7 (12.73%) Quantitative Analysis
12 6 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 34 (61.82%) Python
2 18 (32.73%) C#
3 17 (30.91%) R
4 9 (16.36%) Java
5 6 (10.91%) SQL
6 4 (7.27%) Go
6 4 (7.27%) JavaScript
7 3 (5.45%) Bicep
7 3 (5.45%) C++
8 2 (3.64%) VB.NET
9 1 (1.82%) PHP
9 1 (1.82%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
1 3 (5.45%) Degree
2 1 (1.82%) SC Cleared
2 1 (1.82%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 3 (5.45%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (5.45%) Kubernetes
1 3 (5.45%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (27.27%) Google
2 2 (3.64%) Bloomberg
3 1 (1.82%) Microsoft
Developer/Software Engineer jobs