Senior Software Engineer Job Trends

Senior Software Engineer
UK

The median Senior Software Engineer salary in the UK is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 September 2025.

The table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 219 109 296
Rank change year-on-year -110 +187 -125
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Software Engineer 705 1,812 688
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 1.42% 2.31% 1.10%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.59% 2.43% 1.17%
Number of salaries quoted 382 1,235 543
10th Percentile £60,000 £50,000 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £56,250 £55,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £65,465 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +37.48% -3.02% -3.57%
75th Percentile £115,000 £93,750 £85,000
90th Percentile £135,000 £122,500 £101,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +16.67% -4.00% -0.79%

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 44,459 74,568 58,777
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.66% 95.26% 93.87%
Number of salaries quoted 26,159 45,575 45,404
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £40,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £73,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £92,500 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -

Senior Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Senior Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Senior Software Engineer 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 -105 647 £90,000 +28.57% 227
UK excluding London -130 388 £70,000 +16.67% 183
Work from Home -50 383 £110,000 +37.50% 141
London -20 295 £110,000 +15.79% 77
North of England +11 243 £70,000 +16.67% 54
North West +65 218 £74,500 +21.63% 30
Scotland -35 45 £66,250 +10.42% 10
South West -73 35 £65,000 +8.33% 25
South East -152 32 £70,000 +16.67% 47
East of England -78 18 £65,000 - 24
Yorkshire -23 13 £65,000 +8.33% 18
Midlands -39 13 £75,000 +15.38% 17
North East -21 12 £10,000 -81.82% 6
West Midlands -22 8 £75,000 +15.38% 9
East Midlands -16 5 £70,000 +7.69% 8
Wales -13 2 - - 7

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 13 September 2025, Senior Software Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Senior Software Engineer in the job title.

1 702 (99.57%) Software Engineering
2 451 (63.97%) Agile
3 413 (58.58%) AWS
4 412 (58.44%) Python
5 411 (58.30%) Java
6 325 (46.10%) JavaScript
7 287 (40.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 271 (38.44%) Microservices
9 269 (38.16%) Finance
10 267 (37.87%) Azure
11 250 (35.46%) .NET
12 247 (35.04%) C++
13 221 (31.35%) Machine Learning
14 220 (31.21%) GCP
15 219 (31.06%) Linux
16 217 (30.78%) Mentoring
17 214 (30.35%) Go
18 211 (29.93%) Rust
19 204 (28.94%) Scrum
20 203 (28.79%) Node.js
21 199 (28.23%) Banking
22 196 (27.80%) User Experience
23 194 (27.52%) Security Cleared
24 193 (27.38%) Cloud Security
25 190 (26.95%) TypeScript
26 185 (26.24%) Data Engineering
27 184 (26.10%) DV Cleared
28 182 (25.82%) AWS Certification
29 181 (25.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
30 179 (25.39%) Self-Motivation

Senior Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 92 (13.05%) Apache
2 88 (12.48%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.28%) Confluence
5 1 (0.14%) JBoss
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 3 (0.43%) Chatbot
1 3 (0.43%) Simulink
2 1 (0.14%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 3 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 413 (58.58%) AWS
2 267 (37.87%) Azure
3 220 (31.21%) GCP
4 89 (12.62%) Snowflake
5 88 (12.48%) dbt
6 15 (2.13%) Apigee
6 15 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
7 14 (1.99%) GitHub
7 14 (1.99%) Serverless
8 11 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
8 11 (1.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 10 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (1.28%) Amazon S3
11 8 (1.13%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (0.99%) Amazon Bedrock
12 7 (0.99%) SaaS
13 6 (0.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 6 (0.85%) Azure Event Grid
13 6 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.13%) Multicast
2 6 (0.85%) HTTP
3 4 (0.57%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.43%) Internet
4 3 (0.43%) SSL
5 2 (0.28%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.14%) AMQP
6 1 (0.14%) DNS
6 1 (0.14%) GSM
6 1 (0.14%) RS-232
6 1 (0.14%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (13.05%) Amazon Athena
1 92 (13.05%) Apache Iceberg
1 92 (13.05%) Data Lake
2 88 (12.48%) Apache Arrow
2 88 (12.48%) Apache Ignite
2 88 (12.48%) Dremio
3 29 (4.11%) NoSQL
4 27 (3.83%) Relational Database
5 25 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 21 (2.98%) MySQL
7 15 (2.13%) MongoDB
8 12 (1.70%) DynamoDB
8 12 (1.70%) KDB
9 9 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (1.28%) Big Data
10 8 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
10 8 (1.13%) Kdb+
11 7 (0.99%) Redis
12 6 (0.85%) SQL Server
13 5 (0.71%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 37 (5.25%) Git
2 21 (2.98%) Jenkins
3 18 (2.55%) JUnit
4 14 (1.99%) JIRA
4 14 (1.99%) Maven
5 13 (1.84%) SonarQube
6 11 (1.56%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (1.13%) Vite
8 5 (0.71%) GitLab
9 4 (0.57%) Moq
9 4 (0.57%) rollup.js
9 4 (0.57%) SpecFlow
10 3 (0.43%) Mockito
10 3 (0.43%) webpack
11 2 (0.28%) Ant
11 2 (0.28%) Selenium
11 2 (0.28%) Visual Studio
12 1 (0.14%) Cypress.io
12 1 (0.14%) LabVIEW
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 287 (40.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 269 (38.16%) Finance
3 199 (28.23%) Banking
4 110 (15.60%) Front Office
5 105 (14.89%) Law
6 97 (13.76%) Investment Banking
7 46 (6.52%) Social Skills
8 23 (3.26%) Marketing
9 17 (2.41%) Retail
10 15 (2.13%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.99%) Analytical Skills
12 10 (1.42%) Automotive
12 10 (1.42%) Legal
13 9 (1.28%) Games
13 9 (1.28%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.85%) Advertising
14 6 (0.85%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.85%) Military
15 5 (0.71%) Back Office
15 5 (0.71%) Electronics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (35.46%) .NET
2 203 (28.79%) Node.js
3 107 (15.18%) React
4 94 (13.33%) gRPC
5 91 (12.91%) Protocol Buffers
6 88 (12.48%) NumPy
6 88 (12.48%) Pandas
6 88 (12.48%) SciPy
7 50 (7.09%) Spring
8 46 (6.52%) RESTful
9 42 (5.96%) AngularJS
10 38 (5.39%) Spring Boot
11 37 (5.25%) Kafka
12 29 (4.11%) REST
13 28 (3.97%) Web Services
14 25 (3.55%) GraphQL
14 25 (3.55%) OAuth
15 21 (2.98%) OpenID
16 19 (2.70%) CSS
17 17 (2.41%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 179 (25.39%) Self-Motivation
2 178 (25.25%) Cyberattack
2 178 (25.25%) Linux Command Line
3 121 (17.16%) Derivative
4 105 (14.89%) Equities
5 96 (13.62%) Fixed Income
6 90 (12.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 88 (12.48%) Hedge funds
7 88 (12.48%) Pricing Data
8 73 (10.35%) Cloud Native
9 47 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
10 35 (4.96%) Algorithms
11 26 (3.69%) Greenfield Project
12 18 (2.55%) Public Cloud
13 17 (2.41%) Data Structures
14 13 (1.84%) Management Information System
15 12 (1.70%) AI Agents
16 11 (1.56%) Product Ownership
17 9 (1.28%) Renewable Energy
18 8 (1.13%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 219 (31.06%) Linux
2 20 (2.84%) Unix
3 6 (0.85%) Windows
4 4 (0.57%) Android
4 4 (0.57%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 702 (99.57%) Software Engineering
2 451 (63.97%) Agile
3 271 (38.44%) Microservices
4 221 (31.35%) Machine Learning
5 217 (30.78%) Mentoring
6 204 (28.94%) Scrum
7 196 (27.80%) User Experience
8 193 (27.38%) Cloud Security
9 185 (26.24%) Data Engineering
10 181 (25.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 114 (16.17%) CI/CD
12 103 (14.61%) Investment Management
13 98 (13.90%) SDLC
14 92 (13.05%) Asset Management
15 88 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
16 74 (10.50%) DevOps
17 65 (9.22%) Artificial Intelligence
18 64 (9.08%) Full-Stack Development
19 62 (8.79%) Operational Stability
20 61 (8.65%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 412 (58.44%) Python
2 411 (58.30%) Java
3 325 (46.10%) JavaScript
4 247 (35.04%) C++
5 214 (30.35%) Go
6 211 (29.93%) Rust
7 190 (26.95%) TypeScript
8 65 (9.22%) C#
9 52 (7.38%) SQL
10 28 (3.97%) C
11 14 (1.99%) Ruby
12 9 (1.28%) Kotlin
13 7 (0.99%) Scala
14 6 (0.85%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.85%) MATLAB
15 4 (0.57%) Lua
15 4 (0.57%) Objective-C
15 4 (0.57%) PHP
15 4 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 3 (0.43%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 194 (27.52%) Security Cleared
2 184 (26.10%) DV Cleared
3 182 (25.82%) AWS Certification
4 178 (25.25%) AWS Certified Developer
4 178 (25.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 36 (5.11%) Degree
6 11 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.13%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.57%) SC Cleared
9 3 (0.43%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.43%) PhD
10 2 (0.28%) City & Guilds
11 1 (0.14%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.14%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.70%) QA
2 13 (1.84%) Accessibility
3 4 (0.57%) WCAG
4 2 (0.28%) CDISC
4 2 (0.28%) ISO 9000
4 2 (0.28%) ISO 9001
4 2 (0.28%) JTAG
5 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.14%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.14%) GDPR
5 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.14%) PSD2
System Software
1 70 (9.93%) Docker
2 5 (0.71%) Firmware
3 2 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 103 (14.61%) Kubernetes
2 58 (8.23%) Terraform
3 11 (1.56%) Istio
3 11 (1.56%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (0.85%) Ansible
5 2 (0.28%) Grafana
5 2 (0.28%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.14%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 17 (2.41%) Google
1 17 (2.41%) Microsoft
2 14 (1.99%) Ping Identity
3 10 (1.42%) Databricks
4 8 (1.13%) Oracle
5 7 (0.99%) OpenAI
6 6 (0.85%) ForgeRock
7 5 (0.71%) MuleSoft
8 4 (0.57%) Facebook
8 4 (0.57%) MKS
8 4 (0.57%) Vertica
9 3 (0.43%) Remedy
9 3 (0.43%) Roku
9 3 (0.43%) ServiceNow
10 2 (0.28%) Adobe
10 2 (0.28%) Apple
10 2 (0.28%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.28%) Avaloq
10 2 (0.28%) Splunk
11 1 (0.14%) Xilinx