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 31 August 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 756 503 477
Rank change year-on-year -253 -26 -19
Permanent jobs requiring a Developer/Software Engineer 37 191 366
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.034% 0.38% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.036% 0.42% 0.47%
Number of salaries quoted 22 162 328
10th Percentile - - £71,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £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 £60,000 £137,500 £142,500
90th Percentile - £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 103,220 45,012 77,418
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.88% 89.83% 95.16%
Number of salaries quoted 70,861 26,764 49,481
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £74,521 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
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 31 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Developer/Software Engineer in the UK

Developer/Software Engineer
Top 8 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 31 August 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 -226 35 £55,000 -57.69% 11
UK excluding London -108 24 £55,000 -8.33% 2
Work from Home -169 21 £55,000 -57.69% 4
London -196 14 £50,000 -61.54% 8
North of England -59 12 £50,000 -16.67%
South East - 12 £55,000 -
Yorkshire -29 11 £50,000 -16.67%
North West - 1 £65,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 31 August 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 34 (91.89%) Software Engineering
2 24 (64.86%) Full-Stack Development
3 23 (62.16%) .NET
3 23 (62.16%) AWS
3 23 (62.16%) Microservices
4 22 (59.46%) C#
5 21 (56.76%) Continuous Improvement
6 20 (54.05%) CQRS
6 20 (54.05%) CSS
6 20 (54.05%) HTML
6 20 (54.05%) Product Vision
6 20 (54.05%) Resource Allocation
6 20 (54.05%) SaaS
6 20 (54.05%) SDLC
6 20 (54.05%) Vue
7 12 (32.43%) SQL
8 9 (24.32%) Python
9 7 (18.92%) Agile
10 6 (16.22%) Analytics
10 6 (16.22%) Kafka
11 5 (13.51%) CI/CD
11 5 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
11 5 (13.51%) RabbitMQ
12 4 (10.81%) AI
12 4 (10.81%) DevOps
12 4 (10.81%) Go
12 4 (10.81%) Investment Management
12 4 (10.81%) Order Management
12 4 (10.81%) Performance Optimisation
12 4 (10.81%) Serverless

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 23 (62.16%) AWS
2 20 (54.05%) SaaS
3 4 (10.81%) Serverless
4 3 (8.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 3 (8.11%) Amazon EC2
4 3 (8.11%) Amazon S3
4 3 (8.11%) AWS CloudFormation
4 3 (8.11%) AWS Lambda
4 3 (8.11%) Cloud Computing
4 3 (8.11%) Datadog
5 1 (2.70%) Azure
5 1 (2.70%) Azure AKS
5 1 (2.70%) Azure Functions
5 1 (2.70%) Azure Service Bus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (8.11%) Amazon RDS
1 3 (8.11%) DynamoDB
1 3 (8.11%) KDB
1 3 (8.11%) NoSQL
1 3 (8.11%) SQL Server
2 2 (5.41%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 3 (8.11%) CircleCI
1 3 (8.11%) GitLab
1 3 (8.11%) Jenkins
2 2 (5.41%) Git
2 2 (5.41%) JIRA
2 2 (5.41%) Visual Studio
General
1 7 (18.92%) Banking
1 7 (18.92%) Finance
2 4 (10.81%) Front Office
3 3 (8.11%) Aerospace
3 3 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (8.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3 (8.11%) Investment Banking
3 3 (8.11%) Law
3 3 (8.11%) Social Skills
4 2 (5.41%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (62.16%) .NET
2 20 (54.05%) CSS
2 20 (54.05%) HTML
2 20 (54.05%) Vue
3 6 (16.22%) Kafka
4 5 (13.51%) RabbitMQ
5 3 (8.11%) AngularJS
5 3 (8.11%) FIX Protocol
5 3 (8.11%) gRPC
5 3 (8.11%) RESTful
5 3 (8.11%) Terraform
6 2 (5.41%) OpenCV
6 2 (5.41%) web3js
7 1 (2.70%) .NET Core
7 1 (2.70%) .NET Framework
7 1 (2.70%) Node.js
7 1 (2.70%) OpenFin
7 1 (2.70%) React
7 1 (2.70%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 3 (8.11%) Algorithms
1 3 (8.11%) Cloud Native
1 3 (8.11%) Equities
2 2 (5.41%) Blockchain
2 2 (5.41%) Web3
3 1 (2.70%) AI Agents
3 1 (2.70%) Fixed Income
3 1 (2.70%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (5.41%) Linux
1 2 (5.41%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (91.89%) Software Engineering
2 24 (64.86%) Full-Stack Development
3 23 (62.16%) Microservices
4 21 (56.76%) Continuous Improvement
5 20 (54.05%) CQRS
5 20 (54.05%) Product Vision
5 20 (54.05%) Resource Allocation
5 20 (54.05%) SDLC
6 7 (18.92%) Agile
7 6 (16.22%) Analytics
8 5 (13.51%) CI/CD
8 5 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (10.81%) AI
9 4 (10.81%) DevOps
9 4 (10.81%) Investment Management
9 4 (10.81%) Order Management
9 4 (10.81%) Performance Optimisation
10 3 (8.11%) Computer Science
10 3 (8.11%) High Availability
10 3 (8.11%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 22 (59.46%) C#
2 12 (32.43%) SQL
3 9 (24.32%) Python
4 4 (10.81%) Go
5 3 (8.11%) JavaScript
6 2 (5.41%) C++
6 2 (5.41%) VB.NET
7 1 (2.70%) Java
7 1 (2.70%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (8.11%) Computer Science Degree
1 3 (8.11%) Degree
System Software
1 3 (8.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (8.11%) Kubernetes
1 3 (8.11%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1 (2.70%) Microsoft