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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 49 15
Rank change year-on-year +24 -34 +64
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 3,306 1,564 6,508
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 4.81% 4.99% 8.48%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.08% 5.61% 8.94%
Number of salaries quoted 2,645 724 3,732
10th Percentile £45,000 £42,500 £38,084
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,000 £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 £66,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £77,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -9.68% +29.17% -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 65,070 27,856 72,780
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.57% 88.95% 94.84%
Number of salaries quoted 45,126 15,434 52,041
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £37,500 £33,750 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,268 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -3.51% +8.57% -12.50%

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 June 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 June 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 +81 919 £65,000 - 180
North of England +17 891 £69,305 -0.99% 124
South West +22 554 £65,000 - 116
North West +6 514 £70,000 -6.67% 82
East of England +63 365 £70,000 +5.73% 107
Midlands +43 321 £65,000 - 50
Yorkshire +61 236 £65,000 -12.46% 18
West Midlands +35 170 £69,305 +10.89% 22
Scotland -16 165 £65,000 +0.39% 10
East Midlands +15 151 £55,000 -21.43% 28
North East +8 141 £70,000 +27.27% 24
Wales +2 76 £40,000 -38.46% 15
Northern Ireland -17 16 £90,000 +80.00% 19
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 June 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 3,264 (98.73%) Software Engineering
2 542 (16.39%) C++
3 514 (15.55%) C#
4 417 (12.61%) Python
5 395 (11.95%) Agile
6 368 (11.13%) AWS
7 366 (11.07%) Full-Stack Development
8 309 (9.35%) .NET
9 299 (9.04%) Security Cleared
10 291 (8.80%) Java
11 284 (8.59%) CI/CD
12 273 (8.26%) Degree
13 248 (7.50%) Azure
13 248 (7.50%) JavaScript
14 244 (7.38%) AI
14 244 (7.38%) C
15 240 (7.26%) DevOps
16 229 (6.93%) TypeScript
17 211 (6.38%) Linux
18 207 (6.26%) Mentoring
19 197 (5.96%) React
20 189 (5.72%) SQL
21 187 (5.66%) SC Cleared
22 185 (5.60%) Microservices
23 178 (5.38%) Problem-Solving
24 174 (5.26%) Continuous Improvement
25 173 (5.23%) SaaS
26 166 (5.02%) Computer Science
27 163 (4.93%) Test Automation
28 155 (4.69%) SDLC

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 18 (0.54%) Apache
2 15 (0.45%) SharePoint Server
3 8 (0.24%) FactoryTalk
4 6 (0.18%) Apache Spark
5 5 (0.15%) CMS
6 4 (0.12%) Apache Solr
6 4 (0.12%) Confluence
6 4 (0.12%) GeoServer
6 4 (0.12%) WinCC
7 2 (0.060%) ArchestrA
7 2 (0.060%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.060%) WordPress
8 1 (0.030%) Umbraco
Applications
1 6 (0.18%) Lightworks
2 4 (0.12%) EngageOne
3 3 (0.091%) CANalyzer
3 3 (0.091%) EPLAN
3 3 (0.091%) Simulink
4 2 (0.060%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.030%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.030%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.030%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.030%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.15%) Magento
2 1 (0.030%) ResourceLink
2 1 (0.030%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 368 (11.13%) AWS
2 248 (7.50%) Azure
3 173 (5.23%) SaaS
4 74 (2.24%) GCP
5 72 (2.18%) Serverless
6 41 (1.24%) GitHub
7 38 (1.15%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (0.79%) Anthropic Claude
8 26 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (0.67%) Firebase
10 19 (0.57%) Amazon S3
11 18 (0.54%) Azure AKS
12 17 (0.51%) Amazon EKS
13 15 (0.45%) GitHub Actions
14 14 (0.42%) AWS CloudFormation
15 10 (0.30%) Cloud Run
16 8 (0.24%) Amazon ECS
16 8 (0.24%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 7 (0.21%) AWS Step Functions
18 6 (0.18%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.57%) Wireless
2 36 (1.09%) Ethernet
3 25 (0.76%) Bluetooth
3 25 (0.76%) RS-232
4 22 (0.67%) Modbus
5 14 (0.42%) Profibus
5 14 (0.42%) ZigBee
6 13 (0.39%) MQTT
6 13 (0.39%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.30%) RS-485
9 8 (0.24%) LTE
9 8 (0.24%) Network Security
10 7 (0.21%) Broadband
11 6 (0.18%) AMQP
12 4 (0.12%) Software-Defined Radio
12 4 (0.12%) Wireshark
13 3 (0.091%) Software-Defined Networking
14 2 (0.060%) ATM
14 2 (0.060%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (1.81%) NoSQL
3 59 (1.78%) SQL Server
4 56 (1.69%) MongoDB
5 43 (1.30%) MySQL
6 19 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
6 19 (0.57%) Relational Database
7 14 (0.42%) Redis
8 13 (0.39%) Big Data
9 12 (0.36%) DynamoDB
10 11 (0.33%) Pinecone
11 7 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
11 7 (0.21%) Neo4j
12 6 (0.18%) Cloudera CDH
12 6 (0.18%) Hadoop
13 5 (0.15%) FileMaker
14 4 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
14 4 (0.12%) GIS
14 4 (0.12%) QGIS
15 3 (0.091%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 117 (3.54%) Git
2 38 (1.15%) GitLab
3 27 (0.82%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.67%) Visual Studio Code
5 21 (0.64%) JIRA
6 19 (0.57%) Claude Code
7 12 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 9 (0.27%) Cucumber
8 9 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.21%) Eclipse
9 7 (0.21%) JUnit
9 7 (0.21%) Moq
9 7 (0.21%) Subversion
10 6 (0.18%) Bitbucket
10 6 (0.18%) Yeoman
11 5 (0.15%) GDB
11 5 (0.15%) Maven
12 4 (0.12%) Gradle
12 4 (0.12%) LabVIEW
12 4 (0.12%) Robot Framework
General
1 186 (5.63%) Manufacturing
2 158 (4.78%) Electronics
3 148 (4.48%) Social Skills
4 95 (2.87%) Finance
5 81 (2.45%) Aerospace
6 77 (2.33%) Automotive
7 66 (2.00%) Public Sector
8 40 (1.21%) Analytical Skills
9 34 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
10 28 (0.85%) Aviation
11 20 (0.60%) Games
11 20 (0.60%) Retail
12 16 (0.48%) Military
12 16 (0.48%) Telecoms
13 15 (0.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 12 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.30%) Tech for Good
16 9 (0.27%) Wearables
17 8 (0.24%) Health Technology
18 7 (0.21%) Agriculture
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (9.35%) .NET
2 197 (5.96%) React
3 123 (3.72%) Node.js
4 100 (3.02%) Vue
5 75 (2.27%) REST
6 74 (2.24%) AngularJS
7 64 (1.94%) RESTful
8 61 (1.85%) CSS
9 60 (1.81%) WPF
10 59 (1.78%) Spring
11 56 (1.69%) HTML
12 50 (1.51%) Spring Boot
13 47 (1.42%) .NET Core
14 40 (1.21%) .NET Framework
15 34 (1.03%) Next.js
16 30 (0.91%) Django
17 25 (0.76%) Entity Framework
18 22 (0.67%) ASP.NET
18 22 (0.67%) Yocto
19 20 (0.60%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 136 (4.11%) Cloud Native
2 111 (3.36%) Embedded Systems
3 84 (2.54%) Algorithms
4 70 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
5 62 (1.88%) Product Ownership
6 61 (1.85%) Robotics
7 59 (1.78%) IoT
8 45 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
9 43 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
10 41 (1.24%) AI Agents
11 27 (0.82%) Device Driver
11 27 (0.82%) Mobile App
12 24 (0.73%) Client/Server
13 22 (0.67%) Hedge funds
14 18 (0.54%) Educational Technology
15 17 (0.51%) Data Structures
15 17 (0.51%) Distributed Computing
15 17 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
16 16 (0.48%) e-Learning
17 15 (0.45%) ARM Cortex
Operating Systems
1 211 (6.38%) Linux
2 46 (1.39%) Embedded Linux
3 45 (1.36%) Windows
4 33 (1.00%) Android
5 27 (0.82%) FreeRTOS
6 10 (0.30%) Debian
7 7 (0.21%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.18%) CentOS
8 6 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server
10 3 (0.091%) Gentoo
11 2 (0.060%) SafeRTOS
11 2 (0.060%) Unix
11 2 (0.060%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.060%) zOS
12 1 (0.030%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.030%) ThreadX
12 1 (0.030%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,264 (98.73%) Software Engineering
2 395 (11.95%) Agile
3 366 (11.07%) Full-Stack Development
4 284 (8.59%) CI/CD
5 244 (7.38%) AI
6 240 (7.26%) DevOps
7 207 (6.26%) Mentoring
8 185 (5.60%) Microservices
9 178 (5.38%) Problem-Solving
10 174 (5.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 166 (5.02%) Computer Science
12 163 (4.93%) Test Automation
13 155 (4.69%) SDLC
14 118 (3.57%) Containerisation
15 110 (3.33%) TDD
16 108 (3.27%) Scrum
17 99 (2.99%) Software Architecture
18 89 (2.69%) Software Testing
19 84 (2.54%) Code Quality
20 82 (2.48%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 542 (16.39%) C++
2 514 (15.55%) C#
3 417 (12.61%) Python
4 291 (8.80%) Java
5 248 (7.50%) JavaScript
6 244 (7.38%) C
7 229 (6.93%) TypeScript
8 189 (5.72%) SQL
9 108 (3.27%) Rust
10 59 (1.78%) PHP
11 54 (1.63%) Embedded C
12 47 (1.42%) Go
13 24 (0.73%) Ruby
14 22 (0.67%) Embedded C++
15 19 (0.57%) Bash
16 18 (0.54%) Kotlin
17 17 (0.51%) COBOL
18 12 (0.36%) MATLAB
18 12 (0.36%) Scala
19 7 (0.21%) XAML
Qualifications
1 299 (9.04%) Security Cleared
2 273 (8.26%) Degree
3 187 (5.66%) SC Cleared
4 128 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 108 (3.27%) DV Cleared
6 51 (1.54%) Master's Degree
7 23 (0.70%) PhD
8 13 (0.39%) DBS Check
9 10 (0.30%) HND
10 8 (0.24%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.18%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (0.18%) HNC
12 5 (0.15%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.091%) CEH
13 3 (0.091%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.091%) OSCP
14 2 (0.060%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.060%) NVQ Level 3
15 1 (0.030%) ISTQB
15 1 (0.030%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (2.21%) QA
2 19 (0.57%) Accessibility
3 11 (0.33%) IEC 61508
3 11 (0.33%) MISRA
3 11 (0.33%) MISRA C
4 8 (0.24%) IEC 61131
5 4 (0.12%) DO-178B
5 4 (0.12%) ISO 9001
5 4 (0.12%) JTAG
6 3 (0.091%) ECSS
6 3 (0.091%) GAMP
6 3 (0.091%) GDPR
7 2 (0.060%) ISO 26262
8 1 (0.030%) Automotive SPICE
8 1 (0.030%) DO-254
8 1 (0.030%) HAZOP
8 1 (0.030%) IEC 62304
8 1 (0.030%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.030%) WCAG
System Software
1 152 (4.60%) Firmware
2 142 (4.30%) Docker
3 52 (1.57%) Embedded Firmware
4 14 (0.42%) Hyper-V
4 14 (0.42%) KVM
4 14 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.091%) QEMU
7 2 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 111 (3.36%) Kubernetes
2 77 (2.33%) Terraform
3 33 (1.00%) Ansible
4 8 (0.24%) Functional Safety
5 7 (0.21%) Grafana
5 7 (0.21%) Kibana
5 7 (0.21%) logstash
5 7 (0.21%) Puppet
6 6 (0.18%) Podman
7 3 (0.091%) Plesk
7 3 (0.091%) SCCM
7 3 (0.091%) SCOM
7 3 (0.091%) SCOrch
8 2 (0.060%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.060%) Packer
8 2 (0.060%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 29 (0.88%) Siemens
2 26 (0.79%) Microsoft
3 18 (0.54%) Rockwell
4 17 (0.51%) Google
5 16 (0.48%) Oracle
5 16 (0.48%) VMware
6 12 (0.36%) Salesforce
7 9 (0.27%) Allen-Bradley
8 8 (0.24%) OpenAI
9 6 (0.18%) Adobe
9 6 (0.18%) Red Hat
9 6 (0.18%) SaltStack
9 6 (0.18%) Splunk
9 6 (0.18%) Xamarin
10 4 (0.12%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.12%) Atmel
10 4 (0.12%) Peregrine
11 3 (0.091%) HubSpot
11 3 (0.091%) Palantir
11 3 (0.091%) Wonderware