Senior Systems Engineer Job Trends

Senior System Engineer
UK

The median Senior System Engineer salary in the UK is £60,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 18 April 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 312 459 498
Rank change year-on-year +147 +39 +258
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Systems Engineer 498 181 422
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.43% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.49% 0.47%
Number of salaries quoted 275 140 300
10th Percentile £45,000 £47,683 £45,000
25th Percentile £50,000 £48,869 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £65,650 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,000 £70,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £54,793 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.50% -0.38% -

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 80,276 37,162 89,418
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 89.30% 94.57%
Number of salaries quoted 51,387 23,373 66,316
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +12.15% -10.83%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%

Senior Systems Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Systems Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Systems Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

Senior Systems Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Systems Engineer over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Systems Engineer in the UK

Senior Systems 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 Systems Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 18 April 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 +147 465 £60,000 +9.50% 66
UK excluding London +112 427 £60,000 +9.50% 65
South East +52 134 £60,000 +5.26% 25
South West +26 114 £60,000 +14.07% 9
London +42 64 £82,500 +8.55% 9
Midlands +16 62 £60,000 +14.29% 15
North of England -67 54 £55,000 +9.88% 6
North West -34 45 £55,000 +9.88% 2
West Midlands +10 40 £50,000 - 7
East of England -2 36 £60,000 -23.81% 4
Work from Home -3 33 £50,000 -28.57% 23
East Midlands -30 22 £65,000 +18.18% 8
Scotland -8 20 £49,000 -34.98% 7
Yorkshire -63 9 £50,861 -7.53% 2
Wales -23 4 £51,935 -16.23%
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 18 April 2026, Senior Systems 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 Systems Engineer in the job title.

1 176 (35.34%) Systems Engineering
2 116 (23.29%) BPSS Clearance
3 72 (14.46%) Degree
4 58 (11.65%) Requirements Management
5 45 (9.04%) Azure
5 45 (9.04%) Validation
6 43 (8.63%) AI
6 43 (8.63%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
7 41 (8.23%) Agile
8 38 (7.63%) Machine Learning
9 36 (7.23%) Rational DOORS
10 35 (7.03%) Cybersecurity
10 35 (7.03%) SysML
11 34 (6.83%) Verification and Validation
12 33 (6.63%) Python
13 32 (6.43%) AWS
14 31 (6.22%) SQL
15 29 (5.82%) Analytics
15 29 (5.82%) Mentoring
15 29 (5.82%) Siemens
16 28 (5.62%) GCP
16 28 (5.62%) ISO/IEC 15288
16 28 (5.62%) Technical Leadership
17 27 (5.42%) Coaching
17 27 (5.42%) Systems Thinking
17 27 (5.42%) Use Case
18 26 (5.22%) Generative AI
18 26 (5.22%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 26 (5.22%) Semantic Search
19 25 (5.02%) Kafka

Senior Systems 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 24 (4.82%) Apache Airflow
1 24 (4.82%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.20%) SharePoint
Applications
1 21 (4.22%) Simulink
2 9 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (1.41%) CATIA
4 3 (0.60%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 45 (9.04%) Azure
2 32 (6.43%) AWS
3 28 (5.62%) GCP
4 25 (5.02%) Power Platform
5 24 (4.82%) dbt
6 23 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 23 (4.62%) Snowflake
7 9 (1.81%) Entra ID
8 8 (1.61%) Google Workspace
9 7 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
10 3 (0.60%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (0.60%) Serverless
11 2 (0.40%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (0.40%) Copilot Studio
11 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Copilot
11 2 (0.40%) SaaS
11 2 (0.40%) Vertex AI
12 1 (0.20%) IaaS
12 1 (0.20%) Mimecast
12 1 (0.20%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.41%) Broadband
2 5 (1.00%) Tactical Data Link
3 2 (0.40%) Firewall
4 1 (0.20%) Multicast
4 1 (0.20%) RS-422
4 1 (0.20%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.02%) Power BI
2 24 (4.82%) BigQuery
3 23 (4.62%) Amazon Redshift
3 23 (4.62%) Data Lake
3 23 (4.62%) Data Warehouse
3 23 (4.62%) Elasticsearch
3 23 (4.62%) Looker
3 23 (4.62%) Snowflake Schema
3 23 (4.62%) Tableau
4 2 (0.40%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.40%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 2 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 2 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 1 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.20%) Metadata
5 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.20%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 36 (7.23%) Rational DOORS
2 23 (4.62%) MLflow
3 10 (2.01%) JIRA
4 5 (1.00%) Apache Continuum
5 3 (0.60%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.40%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.20%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 49 (9.84%) Aerospace
2 30 (6.02%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (5.42%) Electronics
4 24 (4.82%) Social Skills
5 23 (4.62%) Military
6 22 (4.42%) Finance
7 15 (3.01%) Manufacturing
8 11 (2.21%) Avionics
9 10 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (1.81%) Games
10 9 (1.81%) Legal
11 6 (1.20%) Retail
12 4 (0.80%) Aviation
12 4 (0.80%) Digital Health
12 4 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.80%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.60%) Automotive
13 3 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.40%) Aeronautics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (5.02%) Kafka
1 25 (5.02%) LangChain
2 23 (4.62%) LlamaIndex
2 23 (4.62%) pgvector
2 23 (4.62%) PyTorch
2 23 (4.62%) scikit-learn
2 23 (4.62%) TensorFlow
3 9 (1.81%) REST
4 8 (1.61%) GraphQL
4 8 (1.61%) LDAP
4 8 (1.61%) OAuth
4 8 (1.61%) OpenID
4 8 (1.61%) SAML
4 8 (1.61%) SOAP
5 2 (0.40%) Akka
5 2 (0.40%) LangGraph
6 1 (0.20%) Middleware
6 1 (0.20%) Model Context Protocol
6 1 (0.20%) React
6 1 (0.20%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 26 (5.22%) Management Information System
2 25 (5.02%) Public Cloud
3 24 (4.82%) Cloud Native
4 23 (4.62%) Clustering
5 14 (2.81%) SCADA
6 10 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
6 10 (2.01%) Driving Licence
7 8 (1.61%) Cyberattack
8 7 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.20%) CCTV
10 4 (0.80%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.40%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.40%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.40%) Over-the-Top Content
11 2 (0.40%) Verilog
11 2 (0.40%) VHDL
11 2 (0.40%) Video\Live Streaming
12 1 (0.20%) FPGA
12 1 (0.20%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 18 (3.61%) Linux
2 10 (2.01%) Ubuntu
3 5 (1.00%) Windows
4 2 (0.40%) VMS
5 1 (0.20%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (35.34%) Systems Engineering
2 58 (11.65%) Requirements Management
3 45 (9.04%) Validation
4 43 (8.63%) AI
4 43 (8.63%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
5 41 (8.23%) Agile
6 38 (7.63%) Machine Learning
7 35 (7.03%) Cybersecurity
7 35 (7.03%) SysML
8 34 (6.83%) Verification and Validation
9 29 (5.82%) Analytics
9 29 (5.82%) Mentoring
10 28 (5.62%) Technical Leadership
11 27 (5.42%) Coaching
11 27 (5.42%) Systems Thinking
11 27 (5.42%) Use Case
12 26 (5.22%) Generative AI
12 26 (5.22%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
12 26 (5.22%) Semantic Search
13 24 (4.82%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 33 (6.63%) Python
2 31 (6.22%) SQL
3 24 (4.82%) MATLAB
4 9 (1.81%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.61%) Bash
5 8 (1.61%) Java
5 8 (1.61%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.60%) C++
6 3 (0.60%) Scala
7 2 (0.40%) C
7 2 (0.40%) C#
7 2 (0.40%) Rust
8 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 116 (23.29%) BPSS Clearance
2 72 (14.46%) Degree
3 17 (3.41%) HNC
4 14 (2.81%) Chartered Engineer
5 12 (2.41%) HND
6 6 (1.20%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.80%) SC Cleared
7 4 (0.80%) Security Cleared
8 3 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.60%) PhD
9 1 (0.20%) APMP
9 1 (0.20%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (5.62%) ISO/IEC 15288
2 23 (4.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
2 23 (4.62%) GDPR
3 8 (1.61%) NCSC
3 8 (1.61%) NIST
4 6 (1.20%) IEC 61508
5 5 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 5 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.60%) PMO
7 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 17025
8 1 (0.20%) ARP4754
8 1 (0.20%) ARP4761
8 1 (0.20%) DO-160
8 1 (0.20%) DO-254
System Software
1 9 (1.81%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.60%) Docker
3 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
3 2 (0.40%) KVM
3 2 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 12 (2.41%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.40%) BMC PATROL
3 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 29 (5.82%) Siemens
2 23 (4.62%) Cloudera
2 23 (4.62%) Databricks
2 23 (4.62%) Dell
3 13 (2.61%) IBM
3 13 (2.61%) Microsoft
4 10 (2.01%) NVIDIA
5 9 (1.81%) Allen-Bradley
6 4 (0.80%) Rockwell
6 4 (0.80%) VMware
7 3 (0.60%) AVEVA
7 3 (0.60%) Wonderware
8 2 (0.40%) Foundry
8 2 (0.40%) Google
8 2 (0.40%) iManage
8 2 (0.40%) Intapp
9 1 (0.20%) CrowdStrike