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 £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 8 October 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 69 22
Rank change year-on-year +48 -47 +40
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 4,467 1,285 3,650
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.18% 3.70% 7.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.59% 4.13% 7.39%
Number of salaries quoted 3,425 468 2,060
10th Percentile £45,000 £43,750 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +13.04% -3.77%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £80,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -12.50% +23.08% -3.70%

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 79,932 31,080 49,413
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.72% 89.51% 95.35%
Number of salaries quoted 55,319 17,327 27,490
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,242 £39,390
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £46,750 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -6.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £54,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.34% -0.91% -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 8 October 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 8 October 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 +33 1,069 £70,000 +7.69% 362
South East +87 1,012 £70,000 - 342
South West +45 927 £68,000 +4.62% 244
East of England +116 616 £70,000 +7.69% 302
North West +18 609 £70,000 -6.67% 237
Midlands +66 449 £65,000 - 186
East Midlands +45 267 £55,000 -21.43% 87
Yorkshire +76 255 £60,000 - 81
Scotland +3 243 £80,000 +24.03% 305
North East +32 205 £70,000 +25.56% 44
West Midlands +40 182 £65,000 +4.00% 99
Wales +17 142 £60,000 +4.35% 35
Northern Ireland - 10 £75,000 - 86
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 8 October 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 4,438 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 656 (14.69%) C++
3 595 (13.32%) C#
4 573 (12.83%) Agile
5 533 (11.93%) Python
6 439 (9.83%) AWS
7 437 (9.78%) AI
8 400 (8.95%) Security Cleared
9 397 (8.89%) Java
10 380 (8.51%) CI/CD
11 365 (8.17%) Full-Stack Development
12 307 (6.87%) Linux
13 306 (6.85%) .NET
14 289 (6.47%) Azure
15 271 (6.07%) Degree
16 263 (5.89%) TypeScript
17 261 (5.84%) SC Cleared
18 252 (5.64%) Mentoring
19 248 (5.55%) JavaScript
20 229 (5.13%) DevOps
21 226 (5.06%) C
22 224 (5.01%) React
23 222 (4.97%) Problem-Solving
24 200 (4.48%) Microservices
25 198 (4.43%) SDLC
26 192 (4.30%) Test Automation
27 191 (4.28%) Docker
28 177 (3.96%) Continuous Improvement
29 173 (3.87%) SQL
30 171 (3.83%) DV Cleared

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 29 (0.65%) Apache
2 15 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
3 9 (0.20%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
4 7 (0.16%) WinCC
5 6 (0.13%) Confluence
6 5 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (0.090%) CMS
7 4 (0.090%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.067%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.067%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.067%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.045%) Apache Solr
9 2 (0.045%) ArchestrA
9 2 (0.045%) WordPress
10 1 (0.022%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.022%) OpenStack
Applications
1 21 (0.47%) Lightworks
2 12 (0.27%) Simulink
3 4 (0.090%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.090%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.045%) EPLAN
6 1 (0.022%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.022%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
2 5 (0.11%) Visualfiles
3 2 (0.045%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.022%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 439 (9.83%) AWS
2 289 (6.47%) Azure
3 128 (2.87%) SaaS
4 110 (2.46%) GCP
5 75 (1.68%) Serverless
6 50 (1.12%) GitHub
7 39 (0.87%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (0.83%) Firebase
9 31 (0.69%) Anthropic Claude
10 29 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
11 21 (0.47%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (0.43%) Amazon EKS
12 19 (0.43%) Amazon S3
13 18 (0.40%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (0.38%) Cloud Run
15 14 (0.31%) OpenShift
16 13 (0.29%) Azure Service Bus
16 13 (0.29%) GitHub Copilot
17 11 (0.25%) Azure Functions
18 10 (0.22%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 71 (1.59%) Wireless
2 31 (0.69%) Ethernet
3 30 (0.67%) Bluetooth
4 27 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.58%) MQTT
6 24 (0.54%) Modbus
7 23 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
8 15 (0.34%) ZigBee
9 14 (0.31%) LTE
10 13 (0.29%) 5G
10 13 (0.29%) RS-232
11 12 (0.27%) Profibus
12 10 (0.22%) ATM
12 10 (0.22%) RS-485
13 9 (0.20%) Internet
14 7 (0.16%) AMQP
14 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
15 4 (0.090%) HTTP
15 4 (0.090%) Software-Defined Radio
16 3 (0.067%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (1.39%) SQL Server
3 50 (1.12%) MongoDB
4 45 (1.01%) NoSQL
5 41 (0.92%) MySQL
6 37 (0.83%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.49%) Redis
8 17 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.36%) Chroma
9 16 (0.36%) DynamoDB
9 16 (0.36%) Pinecone
10 15 (0.34%) Big Data
11 9 (0.20%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.16%) Cloudera CDH
13 4 (0.090%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.090%) Data Lake
14 3 (0.067%) Data Warehouse
14 3 (0.067%) MariaDB
14 3 (0.067%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 137 (3.07%) Git
2 56 (1.25%) GitLab
3 34 (0.76%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.67%) JIRA
5 19 (0.43%) Claude Code
5 19 (0.43%) Visual Studio Code
6 16 (0.36%) Cucumber
6 16 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 10 (0.22%) JUnit
7 10 (0.22%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.18%) Cypress.io
9 7 (0.16%) GDB
9 7 (0.16%) LabVIEW
9 7 (0.16%) Mockito
9 7 (0.16%) Moq
9 7 (0.16%) Rational Rhapsody
10 6 (0.13%) PetaLinux
10 6 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.11%) CMake
11 5 (0.11%) Yeoman
General
1 211 (4.72%) Manufacturing
2 207 (4.63%) Finance
3 203 (4.54%) Electronics
4 197 (4.41%) Social Skills
5 130 (2.91%) Aerospace
6 107 (2.40%) Public Sector
7 82 (1.84%) Automotive
8 64 (1.43%) Aviation
9 55 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 49 (1.10%) Analytical Skills
11 32 (0.72%) Retail
11 32 (0.72%) Tech for Good
12 29 (0.65%) Games
12 29 (0.65%) Law
13 28 (0.63%) Military
14 24 (0.54%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
16 19 (0.43%) Banking
16 19 (0.43%) Health Technology
17 17 (0.38%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 306 (6.85%) .NET
2 224 (5.01%) React
3 118 (2.64%) Node.js
4 91 (2.04%) Terraform
5 89 (1.99%) Vue
6 80 (1.79%) Spring
6 80 (1.79%) WPF
7 79 (1.77%) Spring Boot
8 65 (1.46%) AngularJS
9 64 (1.43%) CSS
10 61 (1.37%) RESTful
11 57 (1.28%) REST
12 41 (0.92%) HTML
13 40 (0.90%) Next.js
14 37 (0.83%) Kafka
15 35 (0.78%) React Native
16 34 (0.76%) .NET Core
17 31 (0.69%) Django
18 29 (0.65%) .NET Framework
19 27 (0.60%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 183 (4.10%) Cloud Native
2 134 (3.00%) Robotics
3 125 (2.80%) Embedded Systems
4 102 (2.28%) Algorithms
5 84 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
6 69 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (1.46%) AI Agents
8 61 (1.37%) Product Ownership
9 50 (1.12%) IoT
10 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
11 47 (1.05%) Public Cloud
12 39 (0.87%) Cyber Threat
13 25 (0.56%) Data Structures
13 25 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
13 25 (0.56%) Mobile App
14 23 (0.51%) Device Driver
15 19 (0.43%) NHS
16 16 (0.36%) ARM Cortex
16 16 (0.36%) Educational Technology
16 16 (0.36%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 307 (6.87%) Linux
2 72 (1.61%) Windows
3 60 (1.34%) Embedded Linux
4 37 (0.83%) Android
5 25 (0.56%) FreeRTOS
6 14 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.27%) Debian
8 10 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 9 (0.20%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.16%) CentOS
10 7 (0.16%) VxWorks
11 6 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.11%) Unix
13 4 (0.090%) Windows Server
14 3 (0.067%) Gentoo
15 2 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
15 2 (0.045%) Windows 10
15 2 (0.045%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.022%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,438 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 573 (12.83%) Agile
3 437 (9.78%) AI
4 380 (8.51%) CI/CD
5 365 (8.17%) Full-Stack Development
6 252 (5.64%) Mentoring
7 229 (5.13%) DevOps
8 222 (4.97%) Problem-Solving
9 200 (4.48%) Microservices
10 198 (4.43%) SDLC
11 192 (4.30%) Test Automation
12 177 (3.96%) Continuous Improvement
13 164 (3.67%) Computer Science
14 144 (3.22%) Software Architecture
15 138 (3.09%) Technical Leadership
16 134 (3.00%) Code Quality
17 132 (2.96%) Containerisation
18 115 (2.57%) Machine Learning
19 106 (2.37%) Software Testing
20 99 (2.22%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 656 (14.69%) C++
2 595 (13.32%) C#
3 533 (11.93%) Python
4 397 (8.89%) Java
5 263 (5.89%) TypeScript
6 248 (5.55%) JavaScript
7 226 (5.06%) C
8 173 (3.87%) SQL
9 125 (2.80%) Rust
10 72 (1.61%) Go
11 60 (1.34%) PHP
12 35 (0.78%) Embedded C
13 31 (0.69%) Ruby
14 28 (0.63%) Ada
14 28 (0.63%) Embedded C++
15 23 (0.51%) Kotlin
16 21 (0.47%) Bash
17 20 (0.45%) MATLAB
18 14 (0.31%) Scala
19 7 (0.16%) XAML
Qualifications
1 400 (8.95%) Security Cleared
2 271 (6.07%) Degree
3 261 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 171 (3.83%) DV Cleared
5 117 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 47 (1.05%) Master's Degree
7 41 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 24 (0.54%) PhD
9 12 (0.27%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.18%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.11%) CEH
12 5 (0.11%) OSCP
13 4 (0.090%) Chartered Engineer
13 4 (0.090%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.067%) HND
14 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 2 (0.045%) Numerate Degree
16 1 (0.022%) ISTQB
16 1 (0.022%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (1.41%) QA
2 48 (1.07%) Accessibility
3 9 (0.20%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.18%) DO-178B
5 6 (0.13%) JTAG
6 5 (0.11%) WCAG
7 4 (0.090%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.090%) ECSS
8 3 (0.067%) Automotive SPICE
8 3 (0.067%) GAMP
8 3 (0.067%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.067%) MIL-STD-1553
8 3 (0.067%) MISRA
8 3 (0.067%) MISRA C
9 2 (0.045%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.045%) GDPR
9 2 (0.045%) IEC 61508
9 2 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.022%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.022%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 191 (4.28%) Docker
2 146 (3.27%) Firmware
3 41 (0.92%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (0.11%) QEMU
5 4 (0.090%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.045%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.045%) KVM
6 2 (0.045%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.022%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 164 (3.67%) Kubernetes
2 46 (1.03%) Ansible
3 14 (0.31%) Grafana
4 11 (0.25%) Podman
5 9 (0.20%) Puppet
6 7 (0.16%) Kibana
6 7 (0.16%) logstash
7 4 (0.090%) Functional Safety
7 4 (0.090%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.045%) Packer
8 2 (0.045%) Plesk
8 2 (0.045%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.045%) SCCM
8 2 (0.045%) SCOM
8 2 (0.045%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 38 (0.85%) Microsoft
2 32 (0.72%) Siemens
3 23 (0.51%) Google
4 18 (0.40%) Salesforce
5 15 (0.34%) Databricks
6 14 (0.31%) Okta
6 14 (0.31%) Ping Identity
6 14 (0.31%) RedGate
7 12 (0.27%) Oracle
7 12 (0.27%) Splunk
8 11 (0.25%) OpenAI
8 11 (0.25%) Rockwell
9 10 (0.22%) Red Hat
10 8 (0.18%) Sage
11 7 (0.16%) SaltStack
12 6 (0.13%) Allen-Bradley
12 6 (0.13%) Atlassian
12 6 (0.13%) Intel
12 6 (0.13%) New Relic
13 5 (0.11%) Foundry