Senior Java Software Engineer Job Trends

Senior Software Engineer - Java
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer - Java salary in the UK is £95,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 26 January 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 599 617 725
Rank change year-on-year +18 +108 +168
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Java Software Engineer 55 85 54
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.088% 0.16% 0.080%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.097% 0.17% 0.084%
Number of salaries quoted 38 83 20
10th Percentile £77,625 - £55,900
25th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £61,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £95,000 £115,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.39% +64.29% -9.68%
75th Percentile £135,000 £143,750 £77,813
90th Percentile - £148,750 £91,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £83,750 £65,000 £69,250
% change year-on-year +28.85% -6.14% +31.90%

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 56,920 48,584 64,352
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.79% 92.29% 95.13%
Number of salaries quoted 35,330 24,964 50,275
10th Percentile £28,750 £33,663 £29,017
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £79,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £93,750 £98,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -5.25%

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 26 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Java Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Java Software Engineer
Top 9 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 26 January 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 53 £102,500 -10.87% 14
London +18 45 £110,000 -4.35% 5
Work from Home +27 33 £110,000 -4.35% 4
UK excluding London +20 10 £83,750 +28.85% 12
South East +29 5 £90,000 - 6
North of England +10 3 £75,000 +15.38%
Yorkshire - 2 £72,500 -
Scotland - 2 £83,750 -
North West +23 1 £82,500 +26.92%

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

For the 6 months to 26 January 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 55 (100.00%) Java
2 45 (81.82%) Software Engineering
3 28 (50.91%) AWS
4 22 (40.00%) Agile
5 18 (32.73%) JavaScript
5 18 (32.73%) TypeScript
6 17 (30.91%) Amazon Athena
6 17 (30.91%) Apache
6 17 (30.91%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (30.91%) Apache Arrow
6 17 (30.91%) Apache Iceberg
6 17 (30.91%) Apache Ignite
6 17 (30.91%) Asset Management
6 17 (30.91%) Data Lake
6 17 (30.91%) dbt
6 17 (30.91%) Dremio
6 17 (30.91%) gRPC
6 17 (30.91%) Investment Management
6 17 (30.91%) NumPy
6 17 (30.91%) Pandas
6 17 (30.91%) Protocol Buffers
6 17 (30.91%) Python
6 17 (30.91%) SciPy
6 17 (30.91%) Snowflake
7 10 (18.18%) CI/CD
7 10 (18.18%) Mentoring
8 9 (16.36%) Microservices
8 9 (16.36%) Test Automation
9 8 (14.55%) Kubernetes
10 7 (12.73%) Architectural Design

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 17 (30.91%) Apache
1 17 (30.91%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 28 (50.91%) AWS
2 17 (30.91%) dbt
2 17 (30.91%) Snowflake
3 5 (9.09%) Amazon EKS
3 5 (9.09%) GCP
3 5 (9.09%) SaaS
4 1 (1.82%) Anthropic Claude
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (30.91%) Amazon Athena
1 17 (30.91%) Apache Arrow
1 17 (30.91%) Apache Iceberg
1 17 (30.91%) Apache Ignite
1 17 (30.91%) Data Lake
1 17 (30.91%) Dremio
2 2 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.82%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (9.09%) TeamCity
2 1 (1.82%) Gradle
General
1 30 (54.55%) Finance
2 22 (40.00%) Banking
3 17 (30.91%) Front Office
3 17 (30.91%) Investment Banking
4 8 (14.55%) Retail
5 7 (12.73%) Financial Institution
6 5 (9.09%) Back Office
6 5 (9.09%) Games
6 5 (9.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (9.09%) Law
7 1 (1.82%) Aviation
7 1 (1.82%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (30.91%) gRPC
1 17 (30.91%) NumPy
1 17 (30.91%) Pandas
1 17 (30.91%) Protocol Buffers
1 17 (30.91%) SciPy
2 6 (10.91%) Spring
3 5 (9.09%) Spring Boot
4 4 (7.27%) RESTful
5 2 (3.64%) Kafka
5 2 (3.64%) Micronaut
6 1 (1.82%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 17 (30.91%) Derivative
1 17 (30.91%) Equities
1 17 (30.91%) Fixed Income
1 17 (30.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
1 17 (30.91%) Hedge funds
1 17 (30.91%) Pricing Data
2 7 (12.73%) Blog
2 7 (12.73%) Cloud Native
3 1 (1.82%) Legacy Code
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (81.82%) Software Engineering
2 22 (40.00%) Agile
3 17 (30.91%) Asset Management
3 17 (30.91%) Investment Management
4 10 (18.18%) CI/CD
4 10 (18.18%) Mentoring
5 9 (16.36%) Microservices
5 9 (16.36%) Test Automation
6 7 (12.73%) Architectural Design
6 7 (12.73%) Architectural Patterns
6 7 (12.73%) Design Patterns
6 7 (12.73%) Machine Learning
6 7 (12.73%) Open Source
6 7 (12.73%) Systems Thinking
6 7 (12.73%) Unit Testing
7 6 (10.91%) Clean Code
8 5 (9.09%) Continuous Deployment
8 5 (9.09%) Deployment Automation
8 5 (9.09%) Fintech
9 4 (7.27%) API Development
Programming Languages
1 55 (100.00%) Java
2 18 (32.73%) JavaScript
2 18 (32.73%) TypeScript
3 17 (30.91%) Python
4 7 (12.73%) Kotlin
5 2 (3.64%) Go
6 1 (1.82%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (12.73%) Degree
1 7 (12.73%) Master's Degree
2 1 (1.82%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.45%) QA
System Software
1 3 (5.45%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (14.55%) Kubernetes
2 5 (9.09%) Grafana
2 5 (9.09%) Terraform