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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 50 16
Rank change year-on-year +19 -34 +51
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 2,795 1,447 5,939
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 4.26% 5.06% 8.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.55% 5.68% 9.14%
Number of salaries quoted 2,209 841 3,130
10th Percentile £45,000 £41,250 £38,750
25th Percentile £55,000 £50,000 £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 £77,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £93,778 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +20.83% -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 61,391 25,484 64,972
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.62% 89.06% 94.71%
Number of salaries quoted 40,427 14,344 47,359
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,750 £26,750
25th Percentile £36,250 £36,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £68,750 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,670 £52,686
% change year-on-year -4.63% +9.46% -12.19%

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 May 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 May 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 +65 749 £65,000 - 202
North of England -9 691 £65,000 - 158
South West +30 516 £65,000 +8.33% 110
North West -7 408 £67,500 - 84
East of England +40 304 £70,000 +5.73% 100
Midlands +9 258 £65,000 +8.33% 63
Yorkshire +13 200 £62,500 +2.04% 41
Scotland +2 195 £65,000 +6.12% 35
West Midlands +14 141 £70,000 +16.67% 35
East Midlands +4 117 £60,000 +6.67% 28
North East -7 83 £62,500 +13.64% 35
Wales 0 66 £40,000 -40.74% 10
Northern Ireland -20 17 £90,000 +28.57% 5
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 14 May 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 2,761 (98.78%) Software Engineering
2 414 (14.81%) C++
3 378 (13.52%) C#
4 338 (12.09%) Python
5 327 (11.70%) Agile
6 308 (11.02%) Full-Stack Development
7 277 (9.91%) .NET
8 276 (9.87%) AWS
9 261 (9.34%) Security Cleared
10 256 (9.16%) Java
11 219 (7.84%) CI/CD
12 213 (7.62%) Degree
13 204 (7.30%) JavaScript
14 203 (7.26%) C
15 200 (7.16%) DevOps
16 189 (6.76%) Azure
17 178 (6.37%) TypeScript
18 165 (5.90%) React
19 161 (5.76%) SC Cleared
20 159 (5.69%) Linux
21 152 (5.44%) SQL
22 147 (5.26%) Mentoring
23 146 (5.22%) SaaS
24 145 (5.19%) AI
24 145 (5.19%) Continuous Improvement
25 138 (4.94%) Problem-Solving
26 134 (4.79%) Microservices
27 126 (4.51%) Firmware
28 122 (4.36%) Test Automation
29 120 (4.29%) Computer Science

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 (0.47%) Apache
2 7 (0.25%) Apache Spark
2 7 (0.25%) FactoryTalk
2 7 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
3 6 (0.21%) CMS
4 5 (0.18%) Confluence
5 4 (0.14%) Apache Solr
5 4 (0.14%) GeoServer
6 2 (0.072%) WinCC
6 2 (0.072%) WordPress
7 1 (0.036%) ArchestrA
7 1 (0.036%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.036%) Kinematics
7 1 (0.036%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.14%) EngageOne
2 3 (0.11%) CANalyzer
3 2 (0.072%) AutoCAD
3 2 (0.072%) EPLAN
3 2 (0.072%) Simulink
4 1 (0.036%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.036%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (0.36%) Magento
2 2 (0.072%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 276 (9.87%) AWS
2 189 (6.76%) Azure
3 146 (5.22%) SaaS
4 55 (1.97%) Serverless
5 51 (1.82%) GCP
6 26 (0.93%) GitHub
7 25 (0.89%) Azure DevOps
8 20 (0.72%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (0.72%) Azure AKS
9 15 (0.54%) Amazon EKS
10 14 (0.50%) Amazon S3
11 11 (0.39%) Anthropic Claude
12 10 (0.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.29%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (0.29%) Stripe
14 5 (0.18%) Amazon ECS
14 5 (0.18%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 5 (0.18%) Azure Functions
14 5 (0.18%) Figma
14 5 (0.18%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 43 (1.54%) Wireless
2 30 (1.07%) Ethernet
3 19 (0.68%) RS-232
4 15 (0.54%) Bluetooth
5 14 (0.50%) Modbus
6 8 (0.29%) Network Security
6 8 (0.29%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.25%) Broadband
7 7 (0.25%) Profibus
7 7 (0.25%) ZigBee
8 6 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.18%) AMQP
9 5 (0.18%) LTE
10 4 (0.14%) MQTT
10 4 (0.14%) RS-485
11 3 (0.11%) DNS
11 3 (0.11%) HTTP
11 3 (0.11%) SMTP
11 3 (0.11%) Software-Defined Radio
12 2 (0.072%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (1.82%) SQL Server
2 49 (1.75%) NoSQL
3 45 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
4 36 (1.29%) MongoDB
5 30 (1.07%) MySQL
6 23 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
7 13 (0.47%) Big Data
8 12 (0.43%) Relational Database
9 11 (0.39%) Neo4j
10 10 (0.36%) DynamoDB
11 7 (0.25%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (0.21%) Redis
13 5 (0.18%) Cloudera CDH
13 5 (0.18%) FileMaker
14 4 (0.14%) DocumentDB
14 4 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
14 4 (0.14%) GIS
14 4 (0.14%) QGIS
15 3 (0.11%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 92 (3.29%) Git
2 29 (1.04%) GitLab
3 20 (0.72%) Visual Studio Code
4 17 (0.61%) Jenkins
5 16 (0.57%) Claude Code
6 13 (0.47%) JIRA
7 9 (0.32%) JUnit
7 9 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 7 (0.25%) Moq
8 7 (0.25%) Subversion
9 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.18%) Bitbucket
10 5 (0.18%) Cucumber
10 5 (0.18%) Eclipse
10 5 (0.18%) Yeoman
11 4 (0.14%) Gradle
11 4 (0.14%) LabVIEW
11 4 (0.14%) Maven
11 4 (0.14%) Postman
12 3 (0.11%) CANoe
General
1 137 (4.90%) Manufacturing
2 118 (4.22%) Social Skills
3 114 (4.08%) Electronics
4 69 (2.47%) Aerospace
5 66 (2.36%) Automotive
5 66 (2.36%) Finance
6 53 (1.90%) Public Sector
7 40 (1.43%) Analytical Skills
8 39 (1.40%) Pharmaceutical
9 22 (0.79%) Aviation
10 21 (0.75%) Retail
11 19 (0.68%) Games
12 17 (0.61%) Tech for Good
13 15 (0.54%) Military
14 13 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 8 (0.29%) Health Technology
15 8 (0.29%) Telecoms
16 7 (0.25%) Advertising
16 7 (0.25%) Agriculture
17 6 (0.21%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (9.91%) .NET
2 165 (5.90%) React
3 94 (3.36%) Node.js
4 78 (2.79%) Vue
5 74 (2.65%) AngularJS
6 71 (2.54%) REST
7 55 (1.97%) RESTful
8 46 (1.65%) Spring
9 45 (1.61%) .NET Core
10 44 (1.57%) HTML
11 42 (1.50%) CSS
12 40 (1.43%) Spring Boot
13 37 (1.32%) .NET Framework
14 35 (1.25%) WPF
15 23 (0.82%) Django
16 21 (0.75%) Web Services
17 20 (0.72%) Entity Framework
18 19 (0.68%) ASP.NET
19 17 (0.61%) Qt
20 16 (0.57%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 112 (4.01%) Cloud Native
2 85 (3.04%) Embedded Systems
3 69 (2.47%) Algorithms
4 51 (1.82%) IoT
4 51 (1.82%) Product Ownership
5 42 (1.50%) Robotics
6 34 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 21 (0.75%) Client/Server
9 20 (0.72%) Device Driver
9 20 (0.72%) Mobile App
10 17 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (0.57%) Hedge funds
12 15 (0.54%) CAN bus
12 15 (0.54%) Educational Technology
12 15 (0.54%) Smart Energy
13 14 (0.50%) Industry 4.0
14 13 (0.47%) Data Structures
14 13 (0.47%) e-Learning
15 12 (0.43%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 159 (5.69%) Linux
2 37 (1.32%) Android
3 36 (1.29%) Embedded Linux
4 31 (1.11%) Windows
5 19 (0.68%) FreeRTOS
6 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.18%) CentOS
6 5 (0.18%) Debian
6 5 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.18%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.14%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.072%) SafeRTOS
8 2 (0.072%) zOS
9 1 (0.036%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.036%) ThreadX
9 1 (0.036%) Unix
9 1 (0.036%) VxWorks
9 1 (0.036%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.036%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,761 (98.78%) Software Engineering
2 327 (11.70%) Agile
3 308 (11.02%) Full-Stack Development
4 219 (7.84%) CI/CD
5 200 (7.16%) DevOps
6 147 (5.26%) Mentoring
7 145 (5.19%) AI
7 145 (5.19%) Continuous Improvement
8 138 (4.94%) Problem-Solving
9 134 (4.79%) Microservices
10 122 (4.36%) Test Automation
11 120 (4.29%) Computer Science
11 120 (4.29%) SDLC
12 101 (3.61%) Scrum
13 93 (3.33%) Containerisation
14 91 (3.26%) TDD
15 73 (2.61%) Software Testing
16 71 (2.54%) Embedded Software Development
17 68 (2.43%) Technical Leadership
18 62 (2.22%) Software Architecture
Programming Languages
1 414 (14.81%) C++
2 378 (13.52%) C#
3 338 (12.09%) Python
4 256 (9.16%) Java
5 204 (7.30%) JavaScript
6 203 (7.26%) C
7 178 (6.37%) TypeScript
8 152 (5.44%) SQL
9 71 (2.54%) Rust
10 51 (1.82%) Embedded C
11 48 (1.72%) PHP
12 32 (1.14%) Go
13 21 (0.75%) Kotlin
14 17 (0.61%) COBOL
15 15 (0.54%) Embedded C++
15 15 (0.54%) Ruby
16 13 (0.47%) Bash
17 11 (0.39%) Ada
18 10 (0.36%) PL/SQL
18 10 (0.36%) Scala
Qualifications
1 261 (9.34%) Security Cleared
2 213 (7.62%) Degree
3 161 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 98 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 86 (3.08%) DV Cleared
6 34 (1.22%) Master's Degree
7 15 (0.54%) DBS Check
7 15 (0.54%) PhD
8 10 (0.36%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
9 7 (0.25%) HND
10 6 (0.21%) Azure Certification
10 6 (0.21%) HNC
11 3 (0.11%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.11%) CEH
11 3 (0.11%) OSCP
12 2 (0.072%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.072%) NVQ Level 3
12 2 (0.072%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.036%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (2.11%) QA
2 17 (0.61%) IEC 61508
3 16 (0.57%) Accessibility
3 16 (0.57%) MISRA
3 16 (0.57%) MISRA C
4 7 (0.25%) IEC 61131
5 6 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 12207
6 4 (0.14%) GDPR
6 4 (0.14%) ISO 9001
7 3 (0.11%) DO-178B
8 2 (0.072%) JTAG
9 1 (0.036%) DO-254
9 1 (0.036%) ECSS
9 1 (0.036%) HAZOP
9 1 (0.036%) IEC 62304
9 1 (0.036%) ISO 26262
9 1 (0.036%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.036%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 126 (4.51%) Firmware
2 102 (3.65%) Docker
3 38 (1.36%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.47%) Hyper-V
4 13 (0.47%) KVM
4 13 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.11%) QEMU
7 2 (0.072%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 89 (3.18%) Kubernetes
2 59 (2.11%) Terraform
3 15 (0.54%) Ansible
4 13 (0.47%) Functional Safety
5 6 (0.21%) Kibana
5 6 (0.21%) Puppet
6 5 (0.18%) Grafana
6 5 (0.18%) logstash
7 3 (0.11%) Plesk
7 3 (0.11%) Podman
7 3 (0.11%) SCCM
7 3 (0.11%) SCOM
7 3 (0.11%) SCOrch
8 2 (0.072%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.072%) Packer
8 2 (0.072%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 23 (0.82%) Siemens
2 22 (0.79%) Microsoft
3 17 (0.61%) Oracle
3 17 (0.61%) Rockwell
4 15 (0.54%) Google
4 15 (0.54%) VMware
5 13 (0.47%) Adobe
6 8 (0.29%) Allen-Bradley
6 8 (0.29%) HubSpot
6 8 (0.29%) Salesforce
7 5 (0.18%) Red Hat
7 5 (0.18%) SaltStack
7 5 (0.18%) Xamarin
8 4 (0.14%) Atlassian
8 4 (0.14%) Atmel
8 4 (0.14%) Peregrine
9 3 (0.11%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.11%) Palantir
9 3 (0.11%) Typelevel
9 3 (0.11%) Wonderware