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 28 January 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 34 28
Rank change year-on-year -29 -6 +24
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,439 1,989 3,148
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.22% 5.70% 7.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.56% 6.17% 7.42%
Number of salaries quoted 1,114 924 1,928
10th Percentile £42,500 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £52,250 £47,500 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £93,769 £82,548
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £63,358
% change year-on-year - +10.48% -6.14%

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 40,439 32,216 42,427
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.63% 92.28% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 24,888 15,493 32,832
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £26,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,748 £35,250
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 £65,000
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% -8.37%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 -27 347 £65,000 +8.33% 349
North of England -9 337 £65,000 +6.56% 213
South West -2 298 £65,000 +13.16% 211
East of England -24 158 £70,000 +5.62% 143
North West 0 156 £65,000 +4.00% 119
Scotland -22 133 £60,000 +6.19% 97
Yorkshire -8 132 £60,000 -5.88% 65
Midlands -18 128 £60,000 +4.35% 114
East Midlands -17 67 £60,000 +20.00% 79
West Midlands -4 64 £60,000 - 35
North East -15 49 £70,000 +27.27% 30
Wales -25 26 £65,000 -3.70% 49
Northern Ireland -29 13 £85,000 -5.56% 14
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 January 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 1,431 (99.44%) Software Engineering
2 209 (14.52%) C#
3 194 (13.48%) Agile
4 193 (13.41%) C++
5 186 (12.93%) AWS
6 180 (12.51%) .NET
7 179 (12.44%) Java
8 164 (11.40%) Full-Stack Development
9 159 (11.05%) CI/CD
10 158 (10.98%) Python
11 157 (10.91%) Security Cleared
12 156 (10.84%) DevOps
13 155 (10.77%) React
14 143 (9.94%) Azure
15 133 (9.24%) JavaScript
16 126 (8.76%) Degree
17 121 (8.41%) SQL
17 121 (8.41%) TypeScript
18 111 (7.71%) Mentoring
19 105 (7.30%) Problem-Solving
20 101 (7.02%) C
21 100 (6.95%) Linux
22 99 (6.88%) Microservices
23 83 (5.77%) Kubernetes
24 81 (5.63%) Computer Science
25 80 (5.56%) Continuous Improvement
26 79 (5.49%) SC Cleared
27 73 (5.07%) AI
28 70 (4.86%) Docker
29 65 (4.52%) AngularJS

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 13 (0.90%) Apache
2 12 (0.83%) IIS
3 7 (0.49%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.35%) Confluence
5 4 (0.28%) CMS
6 3 (0.21%) Apache Solr
7 2 (0.14%) ArchestrA
7 2 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.14%) NServiceBus
7 2 (0.14%) WinCC
8 1 (0.069%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.069%) Kinematics
Applications
1 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.14%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.14%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.14%) Sketch
3 1 (0.069%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.069%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.69%) Magento
2 2 (0.14%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.069%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 186 (12.93%) AWS
2 143 (9.94%) Azure
3 64 (4.45%) SaaS
4 43 (2.99%) Serverless
5 36 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
6 34 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
7 33 (2.29%) GCP
8 26 (1.81%) Amazon S3
9 25 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
10 18 (1.25%) GitHub
11 15 (1.04%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (0.90%) Azure AKS
13 10 (0.69%) OpenShift
14 9 (0.63%) Stripe
15 8 (0.56%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (0.49%) Amazon EC2
17 6 (0.42%) Amazon SQS
17 6 (0.42%) GitHub Actions
18 5 (0.35%) Amazon EventBridge
18 5 (0.35%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.95%) Wireless
2 17 (1.18%) RS-232
3 14 (0.97%) Bluetooth
4 9 (0.63%) Software-Defined Radio
5 7 (0.49%) Modbus
6 6 (0.42%) HTTP
6 6 (0.42%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.35%) AMQP
7 5 (0.35%) DNS
7 5 (0.35%) Ethernet
8 4 (0.28%) SMTP
9 3 (0.21%) ATM
10 2 (0.14%) 3G
10 2 (0.14%) Broadband
10 2 (0.14%) Firewall
10 2 (0.14%) GPRS
10 2 (0.14%) GSM
10 2 (0.14%) LTE
10 2 (0.14%) SSL
10 2 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (2.99%) SQL Server
2 36 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.88%) NoSQL
4 23 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
5 19 (1.32%) Relational Database
6 16 (1.11%) DynamoDB
7 14 (0.97%) MySQL
8 12 (0.83%) MongoDB
8 12 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 9 (0.63%) Neo4j
10 8 (0.56%) Redis
11 7 (0.49%) Big Data
11 7 (0.49%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.35%) Cloudera CDH
13 4 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
14 3 (0.21%) GIS
14 3 (0.21%) MariaDB
14 3 (0.21%) Oracle Database
15 2 (0.14%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 53 (3.68%) Git
2 17 (1.18%) GitLab
2 17 (1.18%) Visual Studio
3 13 (0.90%) JIRA
4 12 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 11 (0.76%) JUnit
6 8 (0.56%) Cypress.io
7 5 (0.35%) Selenium
8 4 (0.28%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.28%) Claude Code
8 4 (0.28%) Maven
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
9 3 (0.21%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.21%) Gradle
9 3 (0.21%) Subversion
10 2 (0.14%) Android Studio
10 2 (0.14%) Eclipse
10 2 (0.14%) PROIV
10 2 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
10 2 (0.14%) Xcode
General
1 108 (7.51%) Social Skills
2 86 (5.98%) Finance
3 53 (3.68%) Electronics
4 50 (3.47%) Manufacturing
5 27 (1.88%) Aerospace
6 23 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
7 22 (1.53%) Analytical Skills
8 21 (1.46%) Games
9 20 (1.39%) Automotive
10 17 (1.18%) Public Sector
11 14 (0.97%) Retail
12 13 (0.90%) Tech for Good
13 9 (0.63%) Financial Institution
13 9 (0.63%) Law
13 9 (0.63%) Military
14 7 (0.49%) Aeronautics
14 7 (0.49%) Marketing
15 6 (0.42%) Health Technology
16 4 (0.28%) Banking
16 4 (0.28%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 180 (12.51%) .NET
2 155 (10.77%) React
3 65 (4.52%) AngularJS
4 63 (4.38%) Node.js
5 49 (3.41%) Spring
6 45 (3.13%) Spring Boot
7 44 (3.06%) REST
8 42 (2.92%) RESTful
9 38 (2.64%) .NET Core
10 33 (2.29%) Vue
11 32 (2.22%) .NET Framework
12 30 (2.08%) HTML
13 29 (2.02%) CSS
14 27 (1.88%) ASP.NET
15 24 (1.67%) Qt
16 21 (1.46%) Entity Framework
17 17 (1.18%) Next.js
18 15 (1.04%) Web Services
18 15 (1.04%) WinForms
19 14 (0.97%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 69 (4.79%) Cloud Native
2 55 (3.82%) Embedded Systems
3 28 (1.95%) IoT
4 25 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
5 22 (1.53%) Robotics
6 19 (1.32%) Algorithms
7 15 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (0.97%) Smart Energy
9 13 (0.90%) e-Learning
9 13 (0.90%) Product Ownership
10 12 (0.83%) Manufacturing Execution System
10 12 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (0.76%) Driving Licence
11 11 (0.76%) Hedge funds
12 10 (0.69%) CAN bus
12 10 (0.69%) Renewable Energy
13 8 (0.56%) Mobile App
14 7 (0.49%) AI Agents
14 7 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
15 6 (0.42%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 100 (6.95%) Linux
2 35 (2.43%) Windows
3 31 (2.15%) Embedded Linux
4 23 (1.60%) Android
5 6 (0.42%) Unix
6 5 (0.35%) CentOS
6 5 (0.35%) Debian
6 5 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.35%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.21%) FreeRTOS
8 2 (0.14%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.14%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.14%) VxWorks
8 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.069%) Fedora
9 1 (0.069%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,431 (99.44%) Software Engineering
2 194 (13.48%) Agile
3 164 (11.40%) Full-Stack Development
4 159 (11.05%) CI/CD
5 156 (10.84%) DevOps
6 111 (7.71%) Mentoring
7 105 (7.30%) Problem-Solving
8 99 (6.88%) Microservices
9 81 (5.63%) Computer Science
10 80 (5.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 73 (5.07%) AI
12 58 (4.03%) Scrum
13 54 (3.75%) Containerisation
14 52 (3.61%) SDLC
15 44 (3.06%) Test Automation
16 43 (2.99%) Coaching
17 41 (2.85%) TDD
18 39 (2.71%) Machine Learning
19 37 (2.57%) Fintech
20 36 (2.50%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 209 (14.52%) C#
2 193 (13.41%) C++
3 179 (12.44%) Java
4 158 (10.98%) Python
5 133 (9.24%) JavaScript
6 121 (8.41%) SQL
6 121 (8.41%) TypeScript
7 101 (7.02%) C
8 42 (2.92%) PHP
9 25 (1.74%) Kotlin
10 20 (1.39%) T-SQL
11 18 (1.25%) Ada
11 18 (1.25%) Embedded C++
11 18 (1.25%) Ruby
11 18 (1.25%) Rust
12 17 (1.18%) Embedded C
13 13 (0.90%) PL/SQL
14 12 (0.83%) Scala
15 11 (0.76%) Bash
16 8 (0.56%) Go
Qualifications
1 157 (10.91%) Security Cleared
2 126 (8.76%) Degree
3 79 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 58 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 42 (2.92%) DV Cleared
6 16 (1.11%) Master's Degree
7 9 (0.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (0.63%) Chartered Engineer
8 8 (0.56%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.56%) PhD
9 2 (0.14%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.14%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.14%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.069%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (1.88%) QA
2 12 (0.83%) IEC 61508
2 12 (0.83%) MISRA
3 10 (0.69%) MISRA C
4 8 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 4 (0.28%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.28%) ECSS
5 4 (0.28%) ISO 9001
6 3 (0.21%) GDPR
6 3 (0.21%) IEC 61131
6 3 (0.21%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.14%) ISO 9000
7 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.14%) JTAG
7 2 (0.14%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.069%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.069%) Data Quality
System Software
1 70 (4.86%) Docker
2 63 (4.38%) Firmware
3 31 (2.15%) Embedded Firmware
4 6 (0.42%) Hyper-V
4 6 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.28%) KVM
6 1 (0.069%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 83 (5.77%) Kubernetes
2 43 (2.99%) Terraform
3 10 (0.69%) Functional Safety
4 7 (0.49%) Grafana
4 7 (0.49%) Kibana
5 6 (0.42%) Ansible
6 5 (0.35%) Puppet
7 2 (0.14%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.069%) Istio
8 1 (0.069%) logstash
Vendors
1 19 (1.32%) Oracle
2 17 (1.18%) Microsoft
3 15 (1.04%) Xamarin
4 12 (0.83%) Adobe
4 12 (0.83%) Google
4 12 (0.83%) Sage
5 8 (0.56%) HubSpot
6 6 (0.42%) Atlassian
6 6 (0.42%) Red Hat
6 6 (0.42%) VMware
7 5 (0.35%) SaltStack
7 5 (0.35%) Zoho
8 4 (0.28%) Siemens
9 3 (0.21%) Databricks
9 3 (0.21%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.21%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.21%) Rockwell
9 3 (0.21%) SAP
10 2 (0.14%) Atmel
10 2 (0.14%) Palantir