Software Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Software Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 August 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 55 14
Rank change year-on-year +33 -41 +62
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 3,908 1,486 5,092
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 4.99% 4.28% 8.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.29% 4.79% 9.00%
Number of salaries quoted 3,063 627 2,852
10th Percentile £45,000 £43,750 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +18.18% -8.33%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £78,810 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.18% +31.35% -14.29%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 excluding London with a recognized job title 73,883 31,030 56,602
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.33% 89.47% 95.05%
Number of salaries quoted 51,050 17,796 36,963
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,171 £48,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.77% -4.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the UK excluding London

Software Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 20 August 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
South East +79 1,002 £65,000 -4.06% 201
North of England +21 996 £65,000 -5.11% 189
South West +32 747 £65,000 - 184
North West +8 552 £70,000 -6.04% 113
East of England +97 484 £70,000 +27.27% 172
Midlands +58 398 £62,500 -3.85% 86
Yorkshire +72 264 £60,000 -10.11% 39
East Midlands +33 208 £55,000 -21.43% 51
West Midlands +39 190 £65,000 +4.00% 35
North East +18 180 £70,000 +24.44% 37
Scotland -11 150 £67,500 +3.85% 100
Wales +3 118 £57,500 -11.54% 19
Northern Ireland -67 14 £90,000 +80.00% 13
Software Engineer
UK

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 20 August 2026, 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 across the UK excluding London region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 3,867 (98.95%) Software Engineering
2 637 (16.30%) C++
3 597 (15.28%) C#
4 511 (13.08%) Python
5 478 (12.23%) Agile
6 398 (10.18%) AWS
7 391 (10.01%) Security Cleared
8 362 (9.26%) Full-Stack Development
9 356 (9.11%) CI/CD
10 346 (8.85%) AI
11 327 (8.37%) Java
12 319 (8.16%) .NET
13 292 (7.47%) Degree
14 284 (7.27%) Azure
15 275 (7.04%) Linux
16 267 (6.83%) JavaScript
17 263 (6.73%) C
18 257 (6.58%) Mentoring
19 249 (6.37%) SC Cleared
20 245 (6.27%) TypeScript
21 236 (6.04%) DevOps
22 214 (5.48%) Problem-Solving
23 210 (5.37%) React
24 197 (5.04%) Test Automation
25 196 (5.02%) SDLC
26 194 (4.96%) Microservices
27 186 (4.76%) SQL
28 180 (4.61%) Docker
29 178 (4.55%) Computer Science
30 175 (4.48%) Continuous Improvement

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (0.61%) Apache
2 15 (0.38%) SharePoint Server
3 9 (0.23%) Confluence
4 8 (0.20%) FactoryTalk
5 7 (0.18%) WinCC
6 6 (0.15%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
8 4 (0.10%) Apache Solr
9 3 (0.077%) CMS
9 3 (0.077%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.051%) ArchestrA
10 2 (0.051%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.051%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.051%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.051%) WordPress
11 1 (0.026%) Cloud Foundry
11 1 (0.026%) OpenStack
11 1 (0.026%) Umbraco
Applications
1 14 (0.36%) Lightworks
2 8 (0.20%) Simulink
3 4 (0.10%) EPLAN
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.077%) CANalyzer
5 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.026%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.026%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.026%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.026%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 398 (10.18%) AWS
2 284 (7.27%) Azure
3 149 (3.81%) SaaS
4 110 (2.81%) GCP
5 72 (1.84%) Serverless
6 53 (1.36%) GitHub
7 38 (0.97%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (0.87%) Firebase
9 32 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
10 27 (0.69%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (0.51%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (0.44%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (0.41%) Amazon EKS
13 16 (0.41%) Amazon S3
13 16 (0.41%) Cloud Run
14 12 (0.31%) OpenShift
15 11 (0.28%) Slack
16 9 (0.23%) AWS Step Functions
16 9 (0.23%) Azure Functions
16 9 (0.23%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.54%) Wireless
2 36 (0.92%) Ethernet
3 28 (0.72%) Bluetooth
4 24 (0.61%) Modbus
5 21 (0.54%) RS-232
6 20 (0.51%) MQTT
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
7 17 (0.44%) ZigBee
8 15 (0.38%) Profibus
9 12 (0.31%) RS-485
10 10 (0.26%) ATM
10 10 (0.26%) LTE
11 6 (0.15%) 5G
11 6 (0.15%) Network Security
11 6 (0.15%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.13%) AMQP
13 4 (0.10%) Broadband
14 3 (0.077%) Firewall
14 3 (0.077%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (1.59%) SQL Server
3 57 (1.46%) MongoDB
4 48 (1.23%) NoSQL
5 40 (1.02%) MySQL
6 30 (0.77%) Relational Database
7 19 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
7 19 (0.49%) Redis
8 16 (0.41%) Pinecone
9 15 (0.38%) DynamoDB
10 13 (0.33%) Big Data
11 7 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
11 7 (0.18%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.13%) Cloudera CDH
12 5 (0.13%) FileMaker
12 5 (0.13%) Neo4j
13 4 (0.10%) Data Lake
13 4 (0.10%) MariaDB
14 3 (0.077%) GIS
14 3 (0.077%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 144 (3.68%) Git
2 50 (1.28%) GitLab
3 35 (0.90%) JIRA
4 34 (0.87%) Jenkins
5 20 (0.51%) Claude Code
5 20 (0.51%) Visual Studio Code
6 14 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 11 (0.28%) Cucumber
8 9 (0.23%) JUnit
8 9 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.20%) GDB
10 7 (0.18%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.18%) LabVIEW
10 7 (0.18%) Moq
11 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.15%) CMake
11 6 (0.15%) Yeoman
12 5 (0.13%) Mockito
12 5 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
12 5 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 227 (5.81%) Manufacturing
2 203 (5.19%) Electronics
3 190 (4.86%) Social Skills
4 139 (3.56%) Finance
5 121 (3.10%) Aerospace
6 95 (2.43%) Public Sector
7 87 (2.23%) Automotive
8 57 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 53 (1.36%) Aviation
10 48 (1.23%) Analytical Skills
11 38 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 35 (0.90%) Retail
13 27 (0.69%) Law
14 25 (0.64%) Games
15 24 (0.61%) Military
16 17 (0.44%) Telecoms
17 16 (0.41%) Marketing
18 15 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
19 11 (0.28%) Tech for Good
20 9 (0.23%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (8.16%) .NET
2 210 (5.37%) React
3 119 (3.05%) Node.js
4 100 (2.56%) Vue
5 93 (2.38%) Terraform
6 79 (2.02%) WPF
7 75 (1.92%) AngularJS
8 71 (1.82%) CSS
9 66 (1.69%) Spring
10 63 (1.61%) REST
11 60 (1.54%) Spring Boot
12 57 (1.46%) HTML
13 54 (1.38%) RESTful
14 37 (0.95%) Next.js
15 36 (0.92%) Django
16 34 (0.87%) .NET Core
17 31 (0.79%) .NET Framework
18 26 (0.67%) React Native
19 25 (0.64%) Yocto
20 23 (0.59%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 173 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 129 (3.30%) Embedded Systems
3 104 (2.66%) Robotics
4 101 (2.58%) Algorithms
5 84 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
6 70 (1.79%) Product Ownership
7 65 (1.66%) AI Agents
8 64 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
9 58 (1.48%) IoT
10 46 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
11 31 (0.79%) Public Cloud
12 29 (0.74%) Mobile App
13 27 (0.69%) Device Driver
14 26 (0.67%) Data Structures
15 21 (0.54%) ARM Cortex
15 21 (0.54%) Cyber Threat
16 20 (0.51%) Distributed Computing
17 18 (0.46%) Educational Technology
17 18 (0.46%) Hedge funds
18 16 (0.41%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 275 (7.04%) Linux
2 62 (1.59%) Windows
3 54 (1.38%) Embedded Linux
4 30 (0.77%) FreeRTOS
5 28 (0.72%) Android
6 10 (0.26%) Debian
7 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.13%) CentOS
8 5 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.13%) Unix
8 5 (0.13%) VxWorks
8 5 (0.13%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.077%) Gentoo
10 2 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
10 2 (0.051%) SafeRTOS
10 2 (0.051%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.051%) zOS
11 1 (0.026%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,867 (98.95%) Software Engineering
2 478 (12.23%) Agile
3 362 (9.26%) Full-Stack Development
4 356 (9.11%) CI/CD
5 346 (8.85%) AI
6 257 (6.58%) Mentoring
7 236 (6.04%) DevOps
8 214 (5.48%) Problem-Solving
9 197 (5.04%) Test Automation
10 196 (5.02%) SDLC
11 194 (4.96%) Microservices
12 178 (4.55%) Computer Science
13 175 (4.48%) Continuous Improvement
14 132 (3.38%) Containerisation
14 132 (3.38%) Software Architecture
15 121 (3.10%) Technical Leadership
16 119 (3.05%) Code Quality
17 111 (2.84%) Software Testing
18 102 (2.61%) TDD
19 99 (2.53%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 637 (16.30%) C++
2 597 (15.28%) C#
3 511 (13.08%) Python
4 327 (8.37%) Java
5 267 (6.83%) JavaScript
6 263 (6.73%) C
7 245 (6.27%) TypeScript
8 186 (4.76%) SQL
9 128 (3.28%) Rust
10 66 (1.69%) Go
11 59 (1.51%) PHP
12 48 (1.23%) Embedded C
13 30 (0.77%) Ruby
14 28 (0.72%) Embedded C++
15 21 (0.54%) Ada
16 17 (0.44%) Bash
16 17 (0.44%) COBOL
16 17 (0.44%) Kotlin
17 15 (0.38%) MATLAB
17 15 (0.38%) Scala
Qualifications
1 391 (10.01%) Security Cleared
2 292 (7.47%) Degree
3 249 (6.37%) SC Cleared
4 174 (4.45%) DV Cleared
5 128 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 55 (1.41%) Master's Degree
7 32 (0.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 26 (0.67%) PhD
9 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.23%) HND
10 8 (0.20%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.15%) HNC
12 5 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.13%) CEH
12 5 (0.13%) OSCP
13 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.077%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 2 (0.051%) Numerate Degree
15 2 (0.051%) NVQ Level 3
16 1 (0.026%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (1.84%) QA
2 49 (1.25%) Accessibility
3 10 (0.26%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.20%) IEC 61508
4 8 (0.20%) MISRA
4 8 (0.20%) MISRA C
5 6 (0.15%) JTAG
6 5 (0.13%) DO-178B
7 4 (0.10%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.077%) ECSS
8 3 (0.077%) GAMP
8 3 (0.077%) GDPR
8 3 (0.077%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.077%) MIL-STD-1553
8 3 (0.077%) WCAG
9 2 (0.051%) Automotive SPICE
9 2 (0.051%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.051%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.026%) DO-254
10 1 (0.026%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 180 (4.61%) Docker
2 164 (4.20%) Firmware
3 51 (1.31%) Embedded Firmware
4 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.18%) QEMU
6 6 (0.15%) KVM
6 6 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
7 5 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.051%) Active Directory
8 2 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 137 (3.51%) Kubernetes
2 39 (1.00%) Ansible
3 12 (0.31%) Grafana
4 7 (0.18%) Kibana
4 7 (0.18%) logstash
4 7 (0.18%) Podman
4 7 (0.18%) Puppet
5 5 (0.13%) Functional Safety
6 3 (0.077%) Plesk
6 3 (0.077%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.077%) SCCM
6 3 (0.077%) SCOM
6 3 (0.077%) SCOrch
7 2 (0.051%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 36 (0.92%) Siemens
2 31 (0.79%) Microsoft
3 21 (0.54%) Google
4 19 (0.49%) Rockwell
5 18 (0.46%) Oracle
6 14 (0.36%) Okta
6 14 (0.36%) Ping Identity
6 14 (0.36%) Salesforce
7 11 (0.28%) Splunk
8 10 (0.26%) Allen-Bradley
8 10 (0.26%) OpenAI
9 8 (0.20%) VMware
10 7 (0.18%) Atlassian
10 7 (0.18%) Databricks
11 6 (0.15%) Intel
12 5 (0.13%) IBM
12 5 (0.13%) Red Hat
12 5 (0.13%) SaltStack
12 5 (0.13%) Xamarin
13 4 (0.10%) New Relic