Senior Software Engineer Job Trends

Senior Software Engineer
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 November 2025.

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

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 249 133 290
Rank change year-on-year -116 +157 -68
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Software Engineer 524 1,339 576
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.00% 1.99% 1.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.11% 2.10% 1.14%
Number of salaries quoted 367 879 464
10th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £48,750
25th Percentile £65,000 £60,000 £56,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £105,000 £95,000 £81,250
90th Percentile £122,500 £122,500 £99,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 47,105 63,636 50,400
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.93% 94.54% 95.42%
Number of salaries quoted 29,438 35,640 39,065
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,500 £31,291
25th Percentile £35,000 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,750 £51,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% -2.86% -

Senior Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

Senior Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Software Engineer over the 6 months to 17 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Senior Software Engineer in the UK

Senior Software Engineer
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 17 November 2025. 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 -110 467 £80,000 +14.29% 701
London -23 259 £102,500 +13.89% 355
UK excluding London -148 248 £70,000 +7.69% 365
Work from Home -135 158 £88,750 +11.54% 433
North of England -38 69 £75,000 +20.00% 75
South West -56 48 £65,000 +8.33% 63
Scotland -32 44 £80,000 +23.08% 43
South East -119 43 £65,000 - 89
North West +1 35 £75,000 +20.00% 52
Yorkshire -10 23 £75,000 +25.00% 19
Midlands +4 22 £72,649 +11.77% 29
East of England -62 17 £65,000 -3.70% 55
West Midlands +12 13 £75,000 +15.38% 10
North East -12 11 £73,750 +12.66% 4
East Midlands -3 9 £70,000 +7.69% 19
Wales -12 5 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 17 November 2025, Senior 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 Software Engineer in the job title.

1 519 (99.05%) Software Engineering
2 226 (43.13%) Agile
3 194 (37.02%) AWS
4 190 (36.26%) Java
5 165 (31.49%) Python
6 136 (25.95%) TypeScript
7 111 (21.18%) CI/CD
8 97 (18.51%) React
9 95 (18.13%) SDLC
10 94 (17.94%) JavaScript
11 93 (17.75%) Kubernetes
12 84 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
13 75 (14.31%) Azure
14 73 (13.93%) Microservices
15 69 (13.17%) C#
16 67 (12.79%) AI
17 66 (12.60%) C++
18 64 (12.21%) Apache
19 63 (12.02%) Amazon Athena
19 63 (12.02%) Apache Iceberg
19 63 (12.02%) Asset Management
19 63 (12.02%) Data Lake
19 63 (12.02%) gRPC
19 63 (12.02%) Investment Management
20 62 (11.83%) Operational Stability
20 62 (11.83%) Protocol Buffers
21 61 (11.64%) Full-Stack Development
22 60 (11.45%) Computer Science
23 59 (11.26%) Apache Airflow
23 59 (11.26%) Apache Arrow

Senior 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 64 (12.21%) Apache
2 59 (11.26%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.38%) Confluence
5 1 (0.19%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.19%) JBoss
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.19%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Photoshop
Cloud Services
1 194 (37.02%) AWS
2 75 (14.31%) Azure
3 59 (11.26%) dbt
3 59 (11.26%) Snowflake
4 39 (7.44%) GCP
5 21 (4.01%) GitHub
6 17 (3.24%) Amazon EKS
7 14 (2.67%) SaaS
7 14 (2.67%) Serverless
8 12 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (1.72%) Amazon S3
10 9 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (1.53%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (1.15%) Amazon Bedrock
13 5 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
13 5 (0.95%) Kong
14 4 (0.76%) Amazon SageMaker
14 4 (0.76%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.91%) Multicast
2 3 (0.57%) SSL
3 2 (0.38%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.38%) HTTP
3 2 (0.38%) Internet
3 2 (0.38%) RS-232
4 1 (0.19%) AMQP
4 1 (0.19%) DNS
4 1 (0.19%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (12.02%) Amazon Athena
1 63 (12.02%) Apache Iceberg
1 63 (12.02%) Data Lake
2 59 (11.26%) Apache Arrow
2 59 (11.26%) Apache Ignite
2 59 (11.26%) Dremio
3 28 (5.34%) Relational Database
4 27 (5.15%) PostgreSQL
5 24 (4.58%) NoSQL
6 16 (3.05%) MySQL
7 12 (2.29%) DynamoDB
7 12 (2.29%) KDB
8 10 (1.91%) MongoDB
9 9 (1.72%) Azure SQL Database
9 9 (1.72%) Big Data
9 9 (1.72%) SQL Server
10 8 (1.53%) Kdb+
11 7 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
11 7 (1.34%) Redis
12 6 (1.15%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 30 (5.73%) Git
2 17 (3.24%) JIRA
3 8 (1.53%) Vite
4 7 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.34%) JUnit
5 6 (1.15%) TeamCity
6 4 (0.76%) rollup.js
7 3 (0.57%) Maven
7 3 (0.57%) Mockito
8 2 (0.38%) Ant
8 2 (0.38%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.38%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.38%) webpack
9 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.19%) GitLab
9 1 (0.19%) Gradle
9 1 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.19%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.19%) Rational Statemate
General
1 232 (44.27%) Finance
2 163 (31.11%) Banking
3 110 (20.99%) Law
4 108 (20.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 76 (14.50%) Front Office
6 66 (12.60%) Investment Banking
7 53 (10.11%) Social Skills
8 21 (4.01%) Financial Institution
9 19 (3.63%) Marketing
10 14 (2.67%) Retail
11 11 (2.10%) Analytical Skills
12 8 (1.53%) Back Office
13 7 (1.34%) Legal
13 7 (1.34%) Public Sector
14 6 (1.15%) Health Technology
14 6 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.95%) Electronics
15 5 (0.95%) Games
15 5 (0.95%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.76%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (18.51%) React
2 63 (12.02%) gRPC
3 62 (11.83%) Protocol Buffers
4 59 (11.26%) NumPy
4 59 (11.26%) Pandas
4 59 (11.26%) SciPy
5 52 (9.92%) .NET
6 43 (8.21%) RESTful
7 32 (6.11%) Spring
8 28 (5.34%) AngularJS
8 28 (5.34%) Kafka
9 23 (4.39%) Spring Boot
10 21 (4.01%) GraphQL
11 19 (3.63%) CSS
12 16 (3.05%) FastAPI
12 16 (3.05%) Node.js
13 15 (2.86%) FIX Protocol
13 15 (2.86%) OpenID
13 15 (2.86%) REST
14 14 (2.67%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (17.18%) Derivative
2 82 (15.65%) Cloud Native
3 78 (14.89%) Equities
4 69 (13.17%) Fixed Income
5 59 (11.26%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 59 (11.26%) Hedge funds
5 59 (11.26%) Pricing Data
6 46 (8.78%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (6.11%) Algorithms
8 19 (3.63%) Public Cloud
9 18 (3.44%) Greenfield Project
10 14 (2.67%) Legacy Code
11 13 (2.48%) Data Structures
12 10 (1.91%) Management Information System
12 10 (1.91%) Product Ownership
13 9 (1.72%) AI Agents
13 9 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (1.15%) Virtual Team
15 4 (0.76%) Distributed Applications
15 4 (0.76%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 42 (8.02%) Linux
2 10 (1.91%) Unix
3 5 (0.95%) Android
3 5 (0.95%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (0.76%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 519 (99.05%) Software Engineering
2 226 (43.13%) Agile
3 111 (21.18%) CI/CD
4 95 (18.13%) SDLC
5 84 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
6 73 (13.93%) Microservices
7 67 (12.79%) AI
8 63 (12.02%) Asset Management
8 63 (12.02%) Investment Management
9 62 (11.83%) Operational Stability
10 61 (11.64%) Full-Stack Development
11 60 (11.45%) Computer Science
12 57 (10.88%) DevOps
13 52 (9.92%) Mentoring
14 43 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 43 (8.21%) Mathematics
15 42 (8.02%) Machine Learning
16 41 (7.82%) Community of Practice
17 40 (7.63%) Fintech
18 39 (7.44%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 190 (36.26%) Java
2 165 (31.49%) Python
3 136 (25.95%) TypeScript
4 94 (17.94%) JavaScript
5 69 (13.17%) C#
6 66 (12.60%) C++
7 42 (8.02%) SQL
8 32 (6.11%) Rust
9 30 (5.73%) Go
10 29 (5.53%) C
11 14 (2.67%) Kotlin
12 12 (2.29%) Ruby
13 6 (1.15%) Delphi
14 5 (0.95%) PHP
15 4 (0.76%) Embedded C
15 4 (0.76%) Lua
15 4 (0.76%) Scala
15 4 (0.76%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.38%) Bash
16 2 (0.38%) Fortran
Qualifications
1 37 (7.06%) Degree
2 15 (2.86%) Security Cleared
3 11 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
4 10 (1.91%) Master's Degree
5 6 (1.15%) SC Cleared
6 5 (0.95%) DV Cleared
6 5 (0.95%) PhD
7 4 (0.76%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.19%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.58%) QA
2 11 (2.10%) Accessibility
3 4 (0.76%) WCAG
4 2 (0.38%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.38%) ISO 9000
4 2 (0.38%) ISO 9001
4 2 (0.38%) JTAG
5 1 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.19%) ECSS
5 1 (0.19%) PSD2
System Software
1 47 (8.97%) Docker
2 7 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
2 7 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
3 5 (0.95%) Firmware
4 2 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 93 (17.75%) Kubernetes
2 48 (9.16%) Terraform
3 9 (1.72%) Grafana
4 6 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.95%) Ansible
6 1 (0.19%) Argo
Vendors
1 18 (3.44%) Google
2 11 (2.10%) Microsoft
3 9 (1.72%) Databricks
4 7 (1.34%) Oracle
5 6 (1.15%) OpenAI
6 5 (0.95%) MuleSoft
7 4 (0.76%) Facebook
7 4 (0.76%) MKS
7 4 (0.76%) Vertica
8 2 (0.38%) Atlassian
8 2 (0.38%) Avaloq
8 2 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.38%) Roku
8 2 (0.38%) SAP
9 1 (0.19%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.19%) ForgeRock
9 1 (0.19%) Green Hills
9 1 (0.19%) SendGrid
9 1 (0.19%) Splunk