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 21 March 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 45 22
Rank change year-on-year -7 -23 +38
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,982 1,421 4,820
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.64% 5.27% 8.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.96% 5.87% 8.48%
Number of salaries quoted 1,532 881 2,619
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,750
25th Percentile £51,000 £47,603 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £82,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +16.67% -12.43%

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 50,103 24,215 56,831
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.12% 89.84% 94.78%
Number of salaries quoted 31,854 14,307 42,786
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £39,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -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 21 March 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 21 March 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
North of England 0 488 £65,000 - 141
South East -4 471 £65,000 +8.33% 192
South West +15 400 £65,000 +8.33% 133
North West +10 260 £65,000 - 68
East of England -12 206 £70,000 +5.70% 92
Scotland -2 180 £65,000 +7.88% 59
Midlands +29 174 £65,000 +13.04% 90
Yorkshire -1 162 £62,500 - 49
East Midlands -4 90 £60,000 +6.67% 39
West Midlands +18 85 £65,000 +10.64% 51
North East -5 66 £70,000 +27.27% 24
Wales -17 48 £40,000 -40.74% 22
Northern Ireland -31 15 £90,000 - 5
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 21 March 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 1,968 (99.29%) Software Engineering
2 268 (13.52%) C++
3 252 (12.71%) Agile
4 249 (12.56%) C#
5 240 (12.11%) Java
6 233 (11.76%) AWS
7 232 (11.71%) .NET
8 219 (11.05%) Python
9 205 (10.34%) Full-Stack Development
10 185 (9.33%) Security Cleared
11 181 (9.13%) Azure
12 174 (8.78%) CI/CD
13 164 (8.27%) JavaScript
14 157 (7.92%) DevOps
15 156 (7.87%) Degree
16 151 (7.62%) React
17 149 (7.52%) SQL
18 138 (6.96%) TypeScript
19 136 (6.86%) C
20 128 (6.46%) Linux
21 111 (5.60%) Mentoring
21 111 (5.60%) Problem-Solving
22 110 (5.55%) Microservices
23 105 (5.30%) Continuous Improvement
24 101 (5.10%) SC Cleared
25 99 (4.99%) SaaS
26 97 (4.89%) Kubernetes
27 94 (4.74%) Computer Science
28 88 (4.44%) Docker
29 85 (4.29%) AI

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 12 (0.61%) Apache
2 10 (0.50%) IIS
3 7 (0.35%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.30%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Confluence
6 4 (0.20%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.15%) Apache Solr
8 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
9 1 (0.050%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.050%) Kinematics
9 1 (0.050%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.20%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
2 2 (0.10%) Sketch
3 1 (0.050%) CANalyzer
3 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.050%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.50%) Magento
2 2 (0.10%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.050%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 233 (11.76%) AWS
2 181 (9.13%) Azure
3 99 (4.99%) SaaS
4 50 (2.52%) GCP
5 46 (2.32%) Serverless
6 29 (1.46%) AWS Lambda
6 29 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (1.26%) GitHub
8 22 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
9 21 (1.06%) Amazon S3
9 21 (1.06%) Azure AKS
10 9 (0.45%) OpenShift
11 8 (0.40%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (0.40%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (0.40%) Stripe
12 7 (0.35%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (0.35%) Figma
13 5 (0.25%) AWS Fargate
13 5 (0.25%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (0.20%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.41%) Wireless
2 18 (0.91%) RS-232
3 12 (0.61%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.45%) Bluetooth
5 7 (0.35%) Modbus
5 7 (0.35%) Network Security
6 6 (0.30%) HTTP
6 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Radio
6 6 (0.30%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.25%) AMQP
7 5 (0.25%) Broadband
7 5 (0.25%) LTE
8 4 (0.20%) DNS
8 4 (0.20%) SMTP
8 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.15%) ATM
10 2 (0.10%) 3G
10 2 (0.10%) GPRS
10 2 (0.10%) GSM
10 2 (0.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (2.83%) SQL Server
2 44 (2.22%) NoSQL
2 44 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (1.41%) MongoDB
4 24 (1.21%) MySQL
5 23 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
6 18 (0.91%) Relational Database
7 13 (0.66%) DynamoDB
8 11 (0.55%) Big Data
8 11 (0.55%) Neo4j
9 10 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 8 (0.40%) Redis
11 7 (0.35%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
13 5 (0.25%) Cloudera CDH
13 5 (0.25%) GIS
14 4 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (0.20%) QGIS
15 3 (0.15%) DocumentDB
15 3 (0.15%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 59 (2.98%) Git
2 16 (0.81%) GitLab
3 15 (0.76%) JIRA
4 14 (0.71%) Jenkins
5 12 (0.61%) Visual Studio
6 11 (0.55%) JUnit
7 9 (0.45%) Claude Code
8 7 (0.35%) Subversion
9 5 (0.25%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.25%) Selenium
10 4 (0.20%) Eclipse
10 4 (0.20%) Postman
11 3 (0.15%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.15%) Gradle
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle APEX
11 3 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
12 2 (0.10%) Rational DOORS
12 2 (0.10%) SpecFlow
12 2 (0.10%) Vagrant
General
1 110 (5.55%) Social Skills
2 86 (4.34%) Finance
3 72 (3.63%) Manufacturing
4 62 (3.13%) Electronics
5 41 (2.07%) Aerospace
6 40 (2.02%) Public Sector
7 37 (1.87%) Automotive
8 35 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
9 28 (1.41%) Analytical Skills
10 24 (1.21%) Games
11 17 (0.86%) Retail
12 15 (0.76%) Tech for Good
13 11 (0.55%) Health Technology
14 10 (0.50%) Military
15 8 (0.40%) Telecoms
16 7 (0.35%) Aeronautics
16 7 (0.35%) Financial Institution
16 7 (0.35%) Marketing
17 5 (0.25%) Law
18 4 (0.20%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 232 (11.71%) .NET
2 151 (7.62%) React
3 81 (4.09%) Node.js
4 63 (3.18%) AngularJS
5 57 (2.88%) REST
6 52 (2.62%) RESTful
7 48 (2.42%) .NET Core
8 44 (2.22%) .NET Framework
9 41 (2.07%) Spring
9 41 (2.07%) Vue
10 38 (1.92%) HTML
11 36 (1.82%) Spring Boot
12 31 (1.56%) CSS
13 28 (1.41%) ASP.NET
14 27 (1.36%) Qt
15 25 (1.26%) Entity Framework
16 24 (1.21%) Django
17 20 (1.01%) Web Services
18 18 (0.91%) Next.js
19 15 (0.76%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 90 (4.54%) Cloud Native
2 55 (2.77%) Embedded Systems
3 38 (1.92%) IoT
4 35 (1.77%) Robotics
5 33 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.16%) Algorithms
7 20 (1.01%) Product Ownership
8 19 (0.96%) Smart Energy
9 17 (0.86%) Client/Server
9 17 (0.86%) Hedge funds
9 17 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (0.71%) Industry 4.0
11 13 (0.66%) Mobile App
12 12 (0.61%) Driving Licence
13 11 (0.55%) CAN bus
13 11 (0.55%) Device Driver
14 8 (0.40%) e-Learning
15 7 (0.35%) Enterprise Software
15 7 (0.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 128 (6.46%) Linux
2 33 (1.66%) Embedded Linux
3 30 (1.51%) Windows
4 26 (1.31%) Android
5 6 (0.30%) FreeRTOS
6 5 (0.25%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.25%) CentOS
6 5 (0.25%) Debian
6 5 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.25%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.10%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.10%) Unix
7 2 (0.10%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.050%) Fedora
8 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.050%) SafeRTOS
8 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,968 (99.29%) Software Engineering
2 252 (12.71%) Agile
3 205 (10.34%) Full-Stack Development
4 174 (8.78%) CI/CD
5 157 (7.92%) DevOps
6 111 (5.60%) Mentoring
6 111 (5.60%) Problem-Solving
7 110 (5.55%) Microservices
8 105 (5.30%) Continuous Improvement
9 94 (4.74%) Computer Science
10 85 (4.29%) AI
11 83 (4.19%) Scrum
12 80 (4.04%) Containerisation
12 80 (4.04%) Test Automation
13 77 (3.88%) SDLC
14 71 (3.58%) TDD
15 50 (2.52%) Embedded Software Development
15 50 (2.52%) Technical Leadership
16 48 (2.42%) Software Testing
17 45 (2.27%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 268 (13.52%) C++
2 249 (12.56%) C#
3 240 (12.11%) Java
4 219 (11.05%) Python
5 164 (8.27%) JavaScript
6 149 (7.52%) SQL
7 138 (6.96%) TypeScript
8 136 (6.86%) C
9 50 (2.52%) PHP
10 43 (2.17%) Rust
11 34 (1.72%) Embedded C
12 26 (1.31%) Kotlin
13 21 (1.06%) Ruby
14 20 (1.01%) Embedded C++
15 18 (0.91%) PL/SQL
16 16 (0.81%) Ada
16 16 (0.81%) Scala
16 16 (0.81%) T-SQL
17 14 (0.71%) Go
18 9 (0.45%) Bash
Qualifications
1 185 (9.33%) Security Cleared
2 156 (7.87%) Degree
3 101 (5.10%) SC Cleared
4 74 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 52 (2.62%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.01%) Master's Degree
7 7 (0.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.35%) Chartered Engineer
7 7 (0.35%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.35%) PhD
8 5 (0.25%) HND
9 4 (0.20%) HNC
10 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.10%) NVQ Level 3
10 2 (0.10%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (2.12%) QA
2 13 (0.66%) MISRA
3 12 (0.61%) IEC 61508
4 11 (0.55%) MISRA C
5 8 (0.40%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 12207
7 4 (0.20%) ECSS
7 4 (0.20%) GDPR
7 4 (0.20%) ISO 9001
8 1 (0.050%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.050%) DO-254
8 1 (0.050%) HAZOP
8 1 (0.050%) IEC 62304
8 1 (0.050%) ISO 26262
8 1 (0.050%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 88 (4.44%) Docker
2 73 (3.68%) Firmware
3 21 (1.06%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.66%) Hyper-V
4 13 (0.66%) KVM
4 13 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.050%) QEMU
6 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 97 (4.89%) Kubernetes
2 51 (2.57%) Terraform
3 11 (0.55%) Functional Safety
4 6 (0.30%) Ansible
5 5 (0.25%) Grafana
5 5 (0.25%) Kibana
5 5 (0.25%) Puppet
6 2 (0.10%) Packer
6 2 (0.10%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.10%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.050%) logstash
7 1 (0.050%) Podman
Vendors
1 24 (1.21%) Oracle
2 18 (0.91%) Microsoft
3 13 (0.66%) Google
3 13 (0.66%) VMware
3 13 (0.66%) Xamarin
4 12 (0.61%) Adobe
5 10 (0.50%) Sage
6 9 (0.45%) Siemens
7 8 (0.40%) HubSpot
8 6 (0.30%) Red Hat
8 6 (0.30%) Salesforce
9 5 (0.25%) Rockwell
9 5 (0.25%) SaltStack
10 4 (0.20%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.20%) Atmel
10 4 (0.20%) Zoho
11 3 (0.15%) Allen-Bradley
11 3 (0.15%) SAP
11 3 (0.15%) Wonderware
12 2 (0.10%) Palantir