Senior Java Software Engineer Job Trends

Senior Software Engineer - Java
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer - Java salary in the UK is £85,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 1 March 2026.

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

 6 months to
1 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 619 610 735
Rank change year-on-year -9 +125 +175
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Java Software Engineer 52 61 75
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.074% 0.13% 0.096%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.081% 0.14% 0.10%
Number of salaries quoted 29 60 32
10th Percentile £74,250 £64,750 £56,150
25th Percentile £81,250 £85,000 £58,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £85,000 £115,000 £69,250
Median % change year-on-year -26.09% +66.06% -4.48%
75th Percentile £112,500 £140,000 £82,500
90th Percentile £133,000 £148,750 £109,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £83,750 £65,000 £65,982
% change year-on-year +28.85% -1.49% +25.68%

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 64,106 42,650 74,151
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.47% 91.24% 94.73%
Number of salaries quoted 40,466 23,050 57,474
10th Percentile £29,500 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,000 £39,085
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 +27 50 £85,000 -20.93% 14
London +20 38 £85,000 -26.09% 10
Work from Home 0 28 £85,000 -31.31% 5
UK excluding London +4 14 £83,750 +28.85% 6
South East -4 7 £90,000 - 6
North of England -20 4 £78,750 +21.15%
North West -2 2 £101,250 +55.77%
Scotland - 2 £83,750 -
Yorkshire - 2 £72,500 -
Midlands - 1 £80,000 -
West Midlands - 1 £80,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 1 March 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 52 (100.00%) Java
2 42 (80.77%) Software Engineering
3 20 (38.46%) AWS
4 16 (30.77%) CI/CD
5 15 (28.85%) Microservices
5 15 (28.85%) Test Automation
6 13 (25.00%) Agile
7 12 (23.08%) Kubernetes
8 11 (21.15%) Mentoring
9 9 (17.31%) Clean Code
9 9 (17.31%) GCP
9 9 (17.31%) SaaS
10 8 (15.38%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (15.38%) Continuous Deployment
10 8 (15.38%) Deployment Automation
10 8 (15.38%) Grafana
10 8 (15.38%) TeamCity
10 8 (15.38%) Terraform
11 7 (13.46%) Architectural Design
11 7 (13.46%) Architectural Patterns
11 7 (13.46%) Degree
11 7 (13.46%) Design Patterns
11 7 (13.46%) Kotlin
11 7 (13.46%) Machine Learning
11 7 (13.46%) Master's Degree
11 7 (13.46%) Open Source
11 7 (13.46%) Spring
11 7 (13.46%) Systems Thinking
11 7 (13.46%) Unit Testing
12 6 (11.54%) JavaScript

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 4 (7.69%) Apache
1 4 (7.69%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 20 (38.46%) AWS
2 9 (17.31%) GCP
2 9 (17.31%) SaaS
3 8 (15.38%) Amazon EKS
4 4 (7.69%) Anthropic Claude
4 4 (7.69%) dbt
4 4 (7.69%) Snowflake
5 1 (1.92%) Azure
5 1 (1.92%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.69%) Amazon Athena
1 4 (7.69%) Apache Arrow
1 4 (7.69%) Apache Iceberg
1 4 (7.69%) Apache Ignite
1 4 (7.69%) Data Lake
1 4 (7.69%) Dremio
2 2 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.92%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (15.38%) TeamCity
2 4 (7.69%) Claude Code
3 1 (1.92%) Gradle
General
1 20 (38.46%) Finance
2 12 (23.08%) Banking
3 11 (21.15%) Retail
4 10 (19.23%) Financial Institution
5 8 (15.38%) Back Office
5 8 (15.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 8 (15.38%) Law
6 5 (9.62%) Games
7 4 (7.69%) Front Office
7 4 (7.69%) Investment Banking
8 3 (5.77%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.92%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (13.46%) Spring
2 6 (11.54%) Spring Boot
3 4 (7.69%) gRPC
3 4 (7.69%) NumPy
3 4 (7.69%) Pandas
3 4 (7.69%) Protocol Buffers
3 4 (7.69%) RESTful
3 4 (7.69%) SciPy
4 3 (5.77%) Model Context Protocol
5 2 (3.85%) Kafka
5 2 (3.85%) Micronaut
6 1 (1.92%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 10 (19.23%) Cloud Native
2 7 (13.46%) Blog
3 4 (7.69%) Derivative
3 4 (7.69%) Equities
3 4 (7.69%) Fixed Income
3 4 (7.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 4 (7.69%) Hedge funds
3 4 (7.69%) Pricing Data
4 1 (1.92%) Legacy Code
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (80.77%) Software Engineering
2 16 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 15 (28.85%) Microservices
3 15 (28.85%) Test Automation
4 13 (25.00%) Agile
5 11 (21.15%) Mentoring
6 9 (17.31%) Clean Code
7 8 (15.38%) Continuous Deployment
7 8 (15.38%) Deployment Automation
8 7 (13.46%) Architectural Design
8 7 (13.46%) Architectural Patterns
8 7 (13.46%) Design Patterns
8 7 (13.46%) Machine Learning
8 7 (13.46%) Open Source
8 7 (13.46%) Systems Thinking
8 7 (13.46%) Unit Testing
9 5 (9.62%) Fintech
10 4 (7.69%) API Development
10 4 (7.69%) Asset Management
10 4 (7.69%) Investment Management
Programming Languages
1 52 (100.00%) Java
2 7 (13.46%) Kotlin
3 6 (11.54%) JavaScript
4 5 (9.62%) Python
4 5 (9.62%) TypeScript
5 2 (3.85%) Go
5 2 (3.85%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (13.46%) Degree
1 7 (13.46%) Master's Degree
2 1 (1.92%) SC Cleared
2 1 (1.92%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.69%) QA
System Software
1 4 (7.69%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (23.08%) Kubernetes
2 8 (15.38%) Grafana
2 8 (15.38%) Terraform
Senior Java Software Engineer jobs