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 14 March 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 40 26
Rank change year-on-year -13 -14 +32
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,911 1,524 4,411
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.60% 5.44% 7.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.92% 6.03% 7.95%
Number of salaries quoted 1,486 896 2,528
10th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,750
25th Percentile £51,000 £47,500 £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 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £82,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +16.67% -11.11%

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 48,756 25,279 55,473
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 90.32% 94.77%
Number of salaries quoted 31,033 14,237 42,179
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £26,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £54,793 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.75% +9.59% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £64,000
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% -8.33%

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 14 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 14 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 -5 471 £65,000 +4.00% 137
South East -9 455 £65,000 +8.33% 171
South West +10 389 £65,000 +8.33% 136
North West +6 245 £65,000 - 64
East of England -10 197 £70,000 +5.70% 74
Scotland -3 174 £65,000 +12.55% 55
Midlands +8 164 £62,500 +13.64% 81
Yorkshire +4 162 £62,500 +6.62% 51
East Midlands -1 85 £60,000 +6.67% 37
West Midlands +15 81 £63,750 +15.91% 44
North East -2 64 £70,000 +27.27% 22
Wales -11 47 £40,000 -40.74% 20
Northern Ireland -29 14 £90,000 - 8
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 14 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 1,898 (99.32%) Software Engineering
2 252 (13.19%) C++
3 244 (12.77%) C#
4 238 (12.45%) Agile
5 234 (12.24%) Java
6 227 (11.88%) .NET
7 225 (11.77%) AWS
8 210 (10.99%) Python
9 198 (10.36%) Full-Stack Development
10 183 (9.58%) Security Cleared
11 179 (9.37%) Azure
12 173 (9.05%) CI/CD
13 160 (8.37%) JavaScript
14 159 (8.32%) DevOps
15 154 (8.06%) React
16 153 (8.01%) Degree
17 149 (7.80%) SQL
18 141 (7.38%) TypeScript
19 127 (6.65%) C
20 117 (6.12%) Linux
21 110 (5.76%) Microservices
22 109 (5.70%) Mentoring
22 109 (5.70%) Problem-Solving
23 101 (5.29%) Continuous Improvement
24 99 (5.18%) Kubernetes
24 99 (5.18%) SC Cleared
25 93 (4.87%) SaaS
26 92 (4.81%) Computer Science
27 87 (4.55%) Docker
28 81 (4.24%) 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 (0.63%) Apache
1 12 (0.63%) IIS
2 7 (0.37%) Apache Spark
3 6 (0.31%) CMS
4 4 (0.21%) Confluence
5 3 (0.16%) Apache Solr
5 3 (0.16%) GeoServer
6 2 (0.10%) NServiceBus
7 1 (0.052%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.052%) Kinematics
7 1 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.052%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.21%) EngageOne
2 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.10%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.10%) EPLAN
2 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.10%) Sketch
3 1 (0.052%) CANalyzer
3 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.52%) Magento
2 2 (0.10%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.052%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 225 (11.77%) AWS
2 179 (9.37%) Azure
3 93 (4.87%) SaaS
4 49 (2.56%) GCP
5 45 (2.35%) Serverless
6 32 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
8 23 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
9 22 (1.15%) Amazon S3
10 21 (1.10%) Azure AKS
10 21 (1.10%) GitHub
11 10 (0.52%) OpenShift
12 9 (0.47%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (0.42%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.42%) Stripe
14 7 (0.37%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (0.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 5 (0.26%) AWS Fargate
15 5 (0.26%) Figma
16 4 (0.21%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.36%) Wireless
2 17 (0.89%) RS-232
3 10 (0.52%) Ethernet
4 9 (0.47%) Bluetooth
5 7 (0.37%) Modbus
6 6 (0.31%) HTTP
6 6 (0.31%) Network Security
6 6 (0.31%) Software-Defined Radio
6 6 (0.31%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.26%) AMQP
7 5 (0.26%) Broadband
8 4 (0.21%) DNS
8 4 (0.21%) LTE
8 4 (0.21%) SMTP
8 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.16%) 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 57 (2.98%) SQL Server
2 47 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
3 45 (2.35%) NoSQL
4 28 (1.47%) MongoDB
5 24 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.26%) MySQL
6 18 (0.94%) Relational Database
7 13 (0.68%) DynamoDB
8 12 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.58%) Big Data
9 11 (0.58%) Neo4j
10 8 (0.42%) Redis
11 7 (0.37%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.26%) Cloudera CDH
12 5 (0.26%) Geospatial Data
13 4 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.21%) GIS
14 3 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
14 3 (0.16%) Oracle Database
14 3 (0.16%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 56 (2.93%) Git
2 16 (0.84%) GitLab
3 14 (0.73%) Jenkins
3 14 (0.73%) JIRA
4 12 (0.63%) Visual Studio
5 11 (0.58%) JUnit
6 8 (0.42%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.37%) Cypress.io
7 7 (0.37%) Subversion
8 5 (0.26%) Selenium
9 4 (0.21%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.21%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.16%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.16%) Gradle
10 3 (0.16%) Postman
10 3 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.10%) PROIV
11 2 (0.10%) Rational DOORS
11 2 (0.10%) Vagrant
General
1 112 (5.86%) Social Skills
2 91 (4.76%) Finance
3 73 (3.82%) Manufacturing
4 58 (3.04%) Electronics
5 40 (2.09%) Aerospace
6 35 (1.83%) Automotive
6 35 (1.83%) Public Sector
7 33 (1.73%) Pharmaceutical
8 26 (1.36%) Analytical Skills
9 23 (1.20%) Games
10 16 (0.84%) Retail
10 16 (0.84%) Tech for Good
11 10 (0.52%) Health Technology
11 10 (0.52%) Military
12 8 (0.42%) Financial Institution
13 7 (0.37%) Aeronautics
13 7 (0.37%) Marketing
13 7 (0.37%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.31%) Law
15 4 (0.21%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (11.88%) .NET
2 154 (8.06%) React
3 79 (4.13%) Node.js
4 65 (3.40%) AngularJS
5 55 (2.88%) RESTful
6 52 (2.72%) REST
7 49 (2.56%) .NET Core
8 45 (2.35%) .NET Framework
8 45 (2.35%) Spring
9 41 (2.15%) Spring Boot
10 39 (2.04%) Vue
11 37 (1.94%) HTML
12 32 (1.67%) CSS
13 28 (1.47%) ASP.NET
14 27 (1.41%) Entity Framework
14 27 (1.41%) Qt
15 21 (1.10%) Django
16 20 (1.05%) Next.js
17 18 (0.94%) Web Services
18 14 (0.73%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 92 (4.81%) Cloud Native
2 56 (2.93%) Embedded Systems
3 38 (1.99%) IoT
4 33 (1.73%) Robotics
5 31 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
6 21 (1.10%) Algorithms
7 18 (0.94%) Smart Energy
8 17 (0.89%) Hedge funds
8 17 (0.89%) Product Ownership
9 16 (0.84%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (0.78%) Client/Server
10 15 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (0.73%) Industry 4.0
12 12 (0.63%) Mobile App
13 11 (0.58%) CAN bus
13 11 (0.58%) Driving Licence
14 10 (0.52%) Device Driver
15 8 (0.42%) e-Learning
16 7 (0.37%) AI Agents
16 7 (0.37%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 117 (6.12%) Linux
2 32 (1.67%) Embedded Linux
3 29 (1.52%) Windows
4 26 (1.36%) Android
5 5 (0.26%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.26%) CentOS
5 5 (0.26%) Debian
5 5 (0.26%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.26%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.16%) Unix
7 2 (0.10%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.10%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.052%) Fedora
8 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,898 (99.32%) Software Engineering
2 238 (12.45%) Agile
3 198 (10.36%) Full-Stack Development
4 173 (9.05%) CI/CD
5 159 (8.32%) DevOps
6 110 (5.76%) Microservices
7 109 (5.70%) Mentoring
7 109 (5.70%) Problem-Solving
8 101 (5.29%) Continuous Improvement
9 92 (4.81%) Computer Science
10 81 (4.24%) AI
11 79 (4.13%) Scrum
12 76 (3.98%) Containerisation
13 74 (3.87%) Test Automation
14 71 (3.72%) SDLC
15 67 (3.51%) TDD
16 47 (2.46%) Embedded Software Development
16 47 (2.46%) Technical Leadership
17 45 (2.35%) Clean Code
18 44 (2.30%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 252 (13.19%) C++
2 244 (12.77%) C#
3 234 (12.24%) Java
4 210 (10.99%) Python
5 160 (8.37%) JavaScript
6 149 (7.80%) SQL
7 141 (7.38%) TypeScript
8 127 (6.65%) C
9 50 (2.62%) PHP
10 38 (1.99%) Rust
11 32 (1.67%) Embedded C
12 26 (1.36%) Kotlin
13 20 (1.05%) Ruby
14 19 (0.99%) Embedded C++
14 19 (0.99%) T-SQL
15 18 (0.94%) PL/SQL
16 16 (0.84%) Ada
16 16 (0.84%) Scala
17 14 (0.73%) Go
18 10 (0.52%) Bash
Qualifications
1 183 (9.58%) Security Cleared
2 153 (8.01%) Degree
3 99 (5.18%) SC Cleared
4 73 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (2.56%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.10%) Master's Degree
7 8 (0.42%) PhD
8 7 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.31%) Chartered Engineer
10 4 (0.21%) HND
11 3 (0.16%) HNC
12 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.10%) NVQ Level 3
12 2 (0.10%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (1.99%) QA
2 13 (0.68%) MISRA
3 11 (0.58%) IEC 61508
3 11 (0.58%) MISRA C
4 6 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 5 (0.26%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.21%) ECSS
6 4 (0.21%) GDPR
6 4 (0.21%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.052%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.052%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 87 (4.55%) Docker
2 71 (3.72%) Firmware
3 23 (1.20%) Embedded Firmware
4 11 (0.58%) Hyper-V
4 11 (0.58%) KVM
4 11 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 99 (5.18%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.46%) Terraform
3 11 (0.58%) Functional Safety
4 6 (0.31%) Ansible
4 6 (0.31%) Grafana
4 6 (0.31%) Kibana
5 5 (0.26%) Puppet
6 2 (0.10%) Packer
6 2 (0.10%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.10%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.052%) logstash
7 1 (0.052%) Podman
Vendors
1 24 (1.26%) Oracle
2 20 (1.05%) Microsoft
3 15 (0.78%) Xamarin
4 14 (0.73%) Google
5 12 (0.63%) Adobe
5 12 (0.63%) Sage
6 11 (0.58%) VMware
7 8 (0.42%) HubSpot
8 7 (0.37%) Siemens
9 6 (0.31%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.26%) Salesforce
10 5 (0.26%) SaltStack
10 5 (0.26%) Zoho
11 4 (0.21%) Atlassian
11 4 (0.21%) Atmel
11 4 (0.21%) Rockwell
12 3 (0.16%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.16%) SAP
13 2 (0.10%) Palantir
13 2 (0.10%) Wonderware