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 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 328 488 417
Rank change year-on-year +160 -71 -33
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Systems Engineer 631 196 441
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.40% 0.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.59% 0.44% 0.59%
Number of salaries quoted 361 108 265
10th Percentile £48,750 £46,250 £45,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £49,993
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,780 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -2.03% -6.98%
75th Percentile £65,000 £62,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £75,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,780 £60,000
% change year-on-year +2.08% -2.03% -6.25%

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 106,506 44,266 74,164
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.35% 89.67% 95.25%
Number of salaries quoted 73,200 26,014 44,625
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 16 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Systems Engineer in the UK

Senior Systems Engineer
Top 17 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 16 September 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 +152 577 £60,000 +4.24% 574
UK excluding London +129 547 £60,000 +2.08% 379
South East +106 255 £56,000 -6.67% 111
South West +8 113 £65,000 +20.82% 68
North of England -46 72 £53,386 -2.57% 49
Work from Home +10 64 £56,750 +16.35% 173
London -11 57 £100,000 +33.33% 205
East of England +8 49 £60,000 -31.43% 60
North West -30 36 £55,000 +0.38% 22
Midlands -23 30 £60,000 +9.09% 28
Scotland - 26 £55,000 - 57
Yorkshire -13 24 £50,000 +4.10% 25
East Midlands -20 18 £60,000 +46.34% 5
West Midlands -43 12 £50,000 -9.09% 23
North East - 12 £47,500 - 4
Northern Ireland -74 1 - - 6
Wales -76 1 £66,300 +6.94% 5

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

For the 6 months to 16 September 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.

1 146 (23.14%) Systems Engineering
2 80 (12.68%) Degree
3 73 (11.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 58 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
5 49 (7.77%) Python
6 48 (7.61%) Software Engineering
7 43 (6.81%) AI
7 43 (6.81%) Requirements Management
8 42 (6.66%) Azure
9 37 (5.86%) Problem-Solving
10 35 (5.55%) Data Pipeline
11 34 (5.39%) Rational DOORS
11 34 (5.39%) SQL
12 33 (5.23%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
13 32 (5.07%) AWS
14 31 (4.91%) Physics
15 30 (4.75%) Agile
16 29 (4.60%) Systems Thinking
17 28 (4.44%) GCP
17 28 (4.44%) MATLAB
18 27 (4.28%) Chartered Engineer
18 27 (4.28%) Siemens
19 26 (4.12%) Customer Requirements
19 26 (4.12%) Validation
20 25 (3.96%) Mathematics
20 25 (3.96%) SysML
21 23 (3.65%) Continuous Improvement
21 23 (3.65%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
21 23 (3.65%) Semantic Search
22 21 (3.33%) Change Management

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 15 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
2 14 (2.22%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.27%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.48%) FactoryTalk
4 3 (0.48%) WinCC
Applications
1 17 (2.69%) Simulink
2 14 (2.22%) Lightworks
3 12 (1.90%) CATIA
4 9 (1.43%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (0.95%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 42 (6.66%) Azure
2 32 (5.07%) AWS
3 28 (4.44%) GCP
4 18 (2.85%) Power Platform
5 14 (2.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 14 (2.22%) dbt
5 14 (2.22%) Snowflake
6 9 (1.43%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (1.11%) OneDrive
8 5 (0.79%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (0.79%) SaaS
9 3 (0.48%) Entra ID
10 2 (0.32%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (0.32%) Azure AKS
10 2 (0.32%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (0.32%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (0.32%) Azure Service Bus
10 2 (0.32%) Cloudflare
10 2 (0.32%) Datadog
10 2 (0.32%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.90%) DNS
2 10 (1.58%) Intrusion Detection
3 8 (1.27%) Wireless
4 7 (1.11%) DHCP
5 5 (0.79%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.63%) Firewall
6 4 (0.63%) LAN
6 4 (0.63%) WAN
7 3 (0.48%) Modbus
7 3 (0.48%) Profibus
7 3 (0.48%) SSL
8 2 (0.32%) 3GPP
8 2 (0.32%) 5G
8 2 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.32%) HTTP
8 2 (0.32%) Internet
8 2 (0.32%) MQTT
8 2 (0.32%) Network Security
8 2 (0.32%) RS-422
8 2 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.54%) Power BI
2 14 (2.22%) Amazon Redshift
2 14 (2.22%) BigQuery
2 14 (2.22%) Data Lake
2 14 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
2 14 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
2 14 (2.22%) Looker
2 14 (2.22%) Milvus
2 14 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
2 14 (2.22%) Tableau
3 13 (2.06%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.74%) SQL Server
5 3 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.32%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.32%) Redis
6 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 34 (5.39%) Rational DOORS
2 14 (2.22%) MLflow
3 10 (1.58%) JIRA
4 9 (1.43%) LabVIEW
5 4 (0.63%) Apache Continuum
6 2 (0.32%) NUnit
7 1 (0.16%) Git
7 1 (0.16%) Subversion
General
1 131 (20.76%) Aerospace
2 77 (12.20%) Finance
3 38 (6.02%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (5.55%) Social Skills
5 28 (4.44%) Electronics
6 24 (3.80%) Military
7 23 (3.65%) Aviation
8 15 (2.38%) Avionics
9 14 (2.22%) Manufacturing
10 13 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.74%) Retail
13 8 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (1.11%) Legal
15 6 (0.95%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.79%) Local Government
17 4 (0.63%) Law
17 4 (0.63%) Public Sector
18 3 (0.48%) Digital Health
19 2 (0.32%) Aeronautics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.38%) PyTorch
2 14 (2.22%) Kafka
2 14 (2.22%) LangChain
2 14 (2.22%) LlamaIndex
2 14 (2.22%) pgvector
2 14 (2.22%) scikit-learn
2 14 (2.22%) TensorFlow
3 12 (1.90%) Node.js
4 10 (1.58%) Next.js
5 6 (0.95%) .NET
6 5 (0.79%) REST
6 5 (0.79%) Terraform
7 3 (0.48%) React
7 3 (0.48%) WinForms
8 2 (0.32%) .NET Framework
8 2 (0.32%) Entity Framework
8 2 (0.32%) JSON
8 2 (0.32%) MassTransit
8 2 (0.32%) MediatR
8 2 (0.32%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.75%) Cloud Native
2 22 (3.49%) Driving Licence
3 18 (2.85%) CCTV
4 15 (2.38%) Clustering
4 15 (2.38%) Public Cloud
5 13 (2.06%) Data Centre
6 12 (1.90%) SCADA
7 11 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (1.74%) Management Information System
8 10 (1.58%) Robotics
9 8 (1.27%) Fibre Optics
9 8 (1.27%) IoT
10 6 (0.95%) Augmented Reality
10 6 (0.95%) Virtual Reality
11 5 (0.79%) Algorithms
11 5 (0.79%) Cyber Security Posture
11 5 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (0.79%) PKI
11 5 (0.79%) Renewable Energy
12 4 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 15 (2.38%) Windows
2 11 (1.74%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.43%) Linux
4 3 (0.48%) VMS
5 1 (0.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (23.14%) Systems Engineering
2 58 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
3 48 (7.61%) Software Engineering
4 43 (6.81%) AI
4 43 (6.81%) Requirements Management
5 37 (5.86%) Problem-Solving
6 35 (5.55%) Data Pipeline
7 33 (5.23%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
8 31 (4.91%) Physics
9 30 (4.75%) Agile
10 29 (4.60%) Systems Thinking
11 26 (4.12%) Customer Requirements
11 26 (4.12%) Validation
12 25 (3.96%) Mathematics
12 25 (3.96%) SysML
13 23 (3.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (3.65%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
13 23 (3.65%) Semantic Search
14 21 (3.33%) Change Management
15 20 (3.17%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 49 (7.77%) Python
2 34 (5.39%) SQL
3 28 (4.44%) MATLAB
4 17 (2.69%) PowerShell
5 6 (0.95%) C#
5 6 (0.95%) C++
6 3 (0.48%) Bash
6 3 (0.48%) Java
6 3 (0.48%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.48%) VB.NET
7 2 (0.32%) C
8 1 (0.16%) R
Qualifications
1 80 (12.68%) Degree
2 73 (11.57%) BPSS Clearance
3 27 (4.28%) Chartered Engineer
4 13 (2.06%) Master's Degree
4 13 (2.06%) Security Cleared
5 10 (1.58%) SC Cleared
6 9 (1.43%) PhD
7 7 (1.11%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.95%) HNC
8 6 (0.95%) HND
9 4 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.32%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.16%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.16%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 15288
2 14 (2.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
2 14 (2.22%) GDPR
3 8 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 4 (0.63%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.48%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.16%) ARP4754
6 1 (0.16%) ARP4761
6 1 (0.16%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.16%) DO-160
6 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.16%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 21 (3.33%) Docker
2 13 (2.06%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.95%) vSphere
4 4 (0.63%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.32%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 18 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.79%) SCCM
3 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.48%) BMC PATROL
4 3 (0.48%) Grafana
5 2 (0.32%) Ansible
6 1 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (0.16%) Graylog
6 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
6 1 (0.16%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 27 (4.28%) Siemens
2 20 (3.17%) Microsoft
3 16 (2.54%) Databricks
4 15 (2.38%) Dell
5 14 (2.22%) Cisco
5 14 (2.22%) Cloudera
5 14 (2.22%) IBM
6 12 (1.90%) OpenAI
7 10 (1.58%) Rockwell
8 8 (1.27%) Google
9 7 (1.11%) Allen-Bradley
9 7 (1.11%) Aruba
9 7 (1.11%) AVEVA
9 7 (1.11%) Wonderware
10 6 (0.95%) VMware
11 5 (0.79%) ServiceNow
12 2 (0.32%) Dynatrace
12 2 (0.32%) iManage
12 2 (0.32%) Intapp
12 2 (0.32%) Palo Alto