Senior Java Software Engineer Job Trends

Senior Software Engineer - Java
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer - Java salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 July 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 694 536 662
Rank change year-on-year -158 +126 +125
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Java Software Engineer 67 135 214
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.067% 0.27% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.071% 0.30% 0.23%
Number of salaries quoted 53 108 150
10th Percentile £60,000 £101,875 £58,938
25th Percentile £65,000 £105,000 £76,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £110,000 £93,750
Median % change year-on-year -27.27% +17.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £120,000 £135,000 £148,750
90th Percentile £132,500 £138,750 -
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £68,750 £65,465
% change year-on-year +1.82% +5.02% -15.53%

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 94,139 44,347 91,129
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.26% 89.90% 94.76%
Number of salaries quoted 64,646 26,264 64,457
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year - +2.80% -10.83%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £70,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.66%

Senior Java Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Java Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Java Software Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Java Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Java Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Java Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Java Software Engineer over the 6 months to 20 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Java Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Java 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 Senior Java Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 20 July 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 -115 65 £80,000 -27.27% 12
UK excluding London -53 41 £70,000 +1.82% 3
Work from Home -66 38 £100,000 -23.08% 1
London -116 24 £100,000 -9.09% 9
North West +11 20 £70,000 +7.69%
North of England -7 20 £70,000 +1.82%
South West - 10 £60,000 -
South East - 8 £90,000 - 1
Midlands - 2 £62,500 - 2
West Midlands - 2 £62,500 -
East of England - 1 £72,500 -

Senior Java Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 July 2026, Senior Java 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 Senior Java Software Engineer in the job title.

1 67 (100.00%) Java
1 67 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 26 (38.81%) Microservices
3 25 (37.31%) AWS
3 25 (37.31%) Full-Stack Development
4 22 (32.84%) Spring
5 15 (22.39%) Agile
5 15 (22.39%) SaaS
5 15 (22.39%) Test Automation
6 14 (20.90%) AI
6 14 (20.90%) CI/CD
7 13 (19.40%) Anthropic Claude
7 13 (19.40%) Claude Code
7 13 (19.40%) Spring Boot
8 12 (17.91%) SQL
9 11 (16.42%) Kubernetes
10 8 (11.94%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (11.94%) Clean Code
10 8 (11.94%) Design Thinking
10 8 (11.94%) GCP
10 8 (11.94%) Terraform
11 7 (10.45%) Continuous Deployment
11 7 (10.45%) Deployment Automation
11 7 (10.45%) Grafana
11 7 (10.45%) TeamCity
12 5 (7.46%) LLM
12 5 (7.46%) Model Context Protocol
12 5 (7.46%) Python
12 5 (7.46%) Workflow
13 4 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement

Senior Java 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 1 (1.49%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 25 (37.31%) AWS
2 15 (22.39%) SaaS
3 13 (19.40%) Anthropic Claude
4 8 (11.94%) Amazon EKS
4 8 (11.94%) GCP
5 1 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (1.49%) Azure
5 1 (1.49%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 1 (1.49%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.99%) MySQL
1 2 (2.99%) NoSQL
1 2 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.49%) Db2
2 1 (1.49%) Relational Database
2 1 (1.49%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 13 (19.40%) Claude Code
2 7 (10.45%) TeamCity
3 1 (1.49%) Bitbucket
3 1 (1.49%) Cucumber
3 1 (1.49%) JIRA
3 1 (1.49%) Selenium
General
1 13 (19.40%) Finance
2 9 (13.43%) Banking
3 7 (10.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 7 (10.45%) Law
3 7 (10.45%) Retail
4 6 (8.96%) Back Office
4 6 (8.96%) Financial Institution
5 5 (7.46%) Public Sector
6 4 (5.97%) Digital Health
6 4 (5.97%) Health Technology
7 2 (2.99%) Social Skills
8 1 (1.49%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (32.84%) Spring
2 13 (19.40%) Spring Boot
3 5 (7.46%) Model Context Protocol
4 2 (2.99%) Kafka
4 2 (2.99%) Node.js
4 2 (2.99%) RESTful
5 1 (1.49%) .NET
5 1 (1.49%) CSS
5 1 (1.49%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.49%) Gherkin
5 1 (1.49%) HTML
5 1 (1.49%) Micronaut
5 1 (1.49%) React
5 1 (1.49%) REST
5 1 (1.49%) Spring MVC
5 1 (1.49%) Swing
Miscellaneous
1 14 (20.90%) Cloud Native
2 1 (1.49%) Blog
2 1 (1.49%) Derivative
2 1 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (1.49%) Embedded Systems
2 1 (1.49%) IoT
2 1 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (1.49%) Renewable Energy
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 26 (38.81%) Microservices
3 25 (37.31%) Full-Stack Development
4 15 (22.39%) Agile
4 15 (22.39%) Test Automation
5 14 (20.90%) AI
5 14 (20.90%) CI/CD
6 8 (11.94%) Clean Code
6 8 (11.94%) Design Thinking
7 7 (10.45%) Continuous Deployment
7 7 (10.45%) Deployment Automation
8 5 (7.46%) LLM
8 5 (7.46%) Workflow
9 4 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
10 3 (4.48%) Design Patterns
10 3 (4.48%) Investment Management
10 3 (4.48%) SDLC
11 2 (2.99%) Code Quality
11 2 (2.99%) Infrastructure as Code
11 2 (2.99%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 67 (100.00%) Java
2 12 (17.91%) SQL
3 5 (7.46%) Python
4 3 (4.48%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.49%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (1.49%) Degree
1 1 (1.49%) SC Cleared
1 1 (1.49%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.99%) QA
System Software
1 3 (4.48%) Docker
2 1 (1.49%) Embedded Firmware
2 1 (1.49%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (16.42%) Kubernetes
2 8 (11.94%) Terraform
3 7 (10.45%) Grafana