Legacy Code Job Trends

Legacy Code
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Legacy Code in permanent job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Legacy Code over the 6 months leading up to 18 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 637 563 710
Rank change year-on-year -74 +147 +182
Permanent jobs citing Legacy Code 35 119 88
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.052% 0.24% 0.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.16% 0.64% 0.33%
Number of salaries quoted 31 106 55
10th Percentile £40,000 £31,250 £45,500
25th Percentile £59,375 £42,500 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £72,500 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year +37.93% -14.71% +61.90%
75th Percentile £115,000 £95,000 £105,000
90th Percentile £125,000 £115,000 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% +18.28%

All Generic Skills
UK

Legacy Code falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 21,916 18,689 27,016
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 32.28% 37.99% 36.19%
Number of salaries quoted 11,111 8,691 19,739
10th Percentile £28,000 £34,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,173
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.28% -15.12%
75th Percentile £77,500 £83,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £113,979 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £48,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -12.73% +10.00% -9.09%

Legacy Code
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Legacy Code relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Legacy Code job vacancy trend in the UK

Legacy Code
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Code.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Code

Legacy Code
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Legacy Code over the 6 months to 18 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Legacy Code in the UK

Legacy Code
Top 12 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Legacy Code within the UK over the 6 months to 18 February 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 -24 33 £100,000 +17.65% 26
London +1 20 £100,000 +11.11% 5
UK excluding London -48 15 £55,000 -12.00% 26
North of England -17 8 £55,000 -22.81% 8
Work from Home -1 7 £55,000 +25.71% 20
Midlands -9 5 £42,500 -34.62% 3
East Midlands -36 4 £42,500 -34.62% 2
Yorkshire -24 3 £40,000 -36.00% 4
North East - 3 £67,500 - 1
North West +3 2 £55,000 -24.14% 3
Scotland -9 2 £75,000 +87.50% 4
West Midlands +16 1 £70,000 +33.33%

Legacy Code
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 (11.43%) Apache
2 1 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (2.86%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 3 (8.57%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 5 (14.29%) AWS
2 4 (11.43%) Azure
3 3 (8.57%) ChatGPT
4 2 (5.71%) SaaS
5 1 (2.86%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (2.86%) Azure App Service
5 1 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (2.86%) Azure Key Vault
5 1 (2.86%) Azure Logic Apps
5 1 (2.86%) Azure Monitor
5 1 (2.86%) Entra ID
5 1 (2.86%) Firebase
5 1 (2.86%) GitHub
5 1 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (2.86%) Power Platform
5 1 (2.86%) PowerApps
5 1 (2.86%) Pulumi
5 1 (2.86%) Serverless
5 1 (2.86%) Snowflake
5 1 (2.86%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 3 (8.57%) Intranet
2 1 (2.86%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (22.86%) SQL Server
2 4 (11.43%) MySQL
3 2 (5.71%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (2.86%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (2.86%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (2.86%) MongoDB
4 1 (2.86%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
4 1 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 7 (20.00%) Git
2 1 (2.86%) Gradle
2 1 (2.86%) Visual Studio
General
1 5 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 3 (8.57%) Finance
3 2 (5.71%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (5.71%) Law
3 2 (5.71%) Pharmaceutical
4 1 (2.86%) Back Office
4 1 (2.86%) Banking
4 1 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
4 1 (2.86%) Investment Banking
4 1 (2.86%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 17 (48.57%) Software Engineer
2 14 (40.00%) Cloud Engineer
2 14 (40.00%) Cloud Native Engineer
2 14 (40.00%) Cloud Software Engineer
3 13 (37.14%) Developer
4 12 (34.29%) Senior
5 10 (28.57%) Senior Software Engineer
6 8 (22.86%) Lead
7 7 (20.00%) Lead Cloud Engineer
7 7 (20.00%) Lead Software Engineer
7 7 (20.00%) Senior Cloud Engineer
8 5 (14.29%) PHP Developer
9 3 (8.57%) PHP Laravel Developer
10 2 (5.71%) .NET Developer
10 2 (5.71%) Embedded Engineer
10 2 (5.71%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 2 (5.71%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
10 2 (5.71%) Senior Embedded Engineer
10 2 (5.71%) Senior Embedded Software Engineer
11 1 (2.86%) Principal Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (17.14%) RESTful
2 5 (14.29%) CSS
2 5 (14.29%) HTML
3 4 (11.43%) .NET
3 4 (11.43%) Laravel
3 4 (11.43%) React
4 3 (8.57%) jQuery
4 3 (8.57%) REST
4 3 (8.57%) Spring
5 2 (5.71%) Kafka
6 1 (2.86%) AngularJS
6 1 (2.86%) ASP.NET Web API
6 1 (2.86%) ASP.NET Web Forms
6 1 (2.86%) GraphQL
6 1 (2.86%) gRPC
6 1 (2.86%) NestJS
6 1 (2.86%) Next.js
6 1 (2.86%) OAuth2
6 1 (2.86%) React Native
6 1 (2.86%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 16 (45.71%) Cloud Native
2 14 (40.00%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (8.57%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (5.71%) Distributed Computing
4 2 (5.71%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (5.71%) Legacy Applications
4 2 (5.71%) Reinsurance
5 1 (2.86%) Credit Risk
5 1 (2.86%) Data Structures
5 1 (2.86%) Hackathon
5 1 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.86%) Mobile App
5 1 (2.86%) Product Ownership
5 1 (2.86%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (2.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 16 (45.71%) Linux
2 4 (11.43%) Windows
2 4 (11.43%) Windows Server
3 1 (2.86%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (60.00%) Software Engineering
2 14 (40.00%) Network Virtualisation
2 14 (40.00%) Open Source
3 9 (25.71%) Agile
4 7 (20.00%) AI
5 5 (14.29%) Migration
5 5 (14.29%) OO
5 5 (14.29%) User Experience
6 4 (11.43%) API Integration
6 4 (11.43%) CI/CD
6 4 (11.43%) Full-Stack Development
6 4 (11.43%) Microservices
7 3 (8.57%) Data Pipeline
7 3 (8.57%) Mentoring
7 3 (8.57%) MVC
7 3 (8.57%) OOP
7 3 (8.57%) Secure Coding
7 3 (8.57%) TDD
8 2 (5.71%) Mathematics
8 2 (5.71%) Physics
Programming Languages
1 17 (48.57%) Java
2 15 (42.86%) Go
3 14 (40.00%) C
3 14 (40.00%) C++
3 14 (40.00%) Rust
4 9 (25.71%) SQL
5 7 (20.00%) JavaScript
6 6 (17.14%) PHP
7 5 (14.29%) C#
7 5 (14.29%) TypeScript
8 3 (8.57%) Python
8 3 (8.57%) T-SQL
9 2 (5.71%) Julia
9 2 (5.71%) R
10 1 (2.86%) Delphi
10 1 (2.86%) MATLAB
10 1 (2.86%) Perl
Qualifications
1 3 (8.57%) Degree
2 1 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
2 1 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (2.86%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.57%) Accessibility
2 1 (2.86%) WCAG
System Software
1 14 (40.00%) Virtual Machines
1 14 (40.00%) Virtual Servers
2 3 (8.57%) Docker
3 2 (5.71%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 14 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.86%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (11.43%) Microsoft
2 3 (8.57%) OpenAI
2 3 (8.57%) SAP
3 1 (2.86%) Foundry
3 1 (2.86%) Oracle