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 2 October 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 68 20
Rank change year-on-year +46 -48 +43
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 4,480 1,295 3,796
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.18% 3.74% 7.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.57% 4.18% 7.51%
Number of salaries quoted 3,482 478 2,170
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £54,625 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £56,509
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +15.03% -5.43%
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 80,372 30,974 50,542
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.94% 89.50% 95.28%
Number of salaries quoted 55,674 17,230 28,439
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,600 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +6.55% - -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 2 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 2 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 +36 1,087 £70,000 +7.69% 429
South East +90 1,017 £70,000 - 378
South West +46 929 £68,500 +5.38% 347
North West +18 620 £70,000 -6.67% 280
East of England +109 607 £70,000 +7.69% 344
Midlands +59 458 £65,000 +4.00% 240
East Midlands +39 265 £55,000 -21.43% 133
Yorkshire +81 261 £60,000 - 100
Scotland +1 231 £78,750 +22.09% 352
North East +28 206 £70,000 +25.56% 50
West Midlands +39 193 £65,000 +8.33% 107
Wales +17 141 £60,000 +4.35% 47
Northern Ireland - 11 £82,500 - 78
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 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 4,451 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 668 (14.91%) C++
3 608 (13.57%) C#
4 568 (12.68%) Agile
5 544 (12.14%) Python
6 439 (9.80%) AI
6 439 (9.80%) AWS
7 408 (9.11%) Security Cleared
8 394 (8.79%) Java
9 383 (8.55%) CI/CD
10 374 (8.35%) Full-Stack Development
11 310 (6.92%) .NET
12 302 (6.74%) Linux
13 288 (6.43%) Azure
14 276 (6.16%) Degree
15 274 (6.12%) TypeScript
16 263 (5.87%) SC Cleared
17 258 (5.76%) JavaScript
18 255 (5.69%) Mentoring
19 236 (5.27%) C
19 236 (5.27%) DevOps
20 230 (5.13%) React
21 228 (5.09%) Problem-Solving
22 200 (4.46%) SDLC
23 199 (4.44%) Microservices
24 193 (4.31%) Test Automation
25 188 (4.20%) Docker
26 181 (4.04%) Continuous Improvement
27 179 (4.00%) SQL
28 174 (3.88%) 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 30 (0.67%) Apache
2 15 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
3 9 (0.20%) Apache Spark
4 8 (0.18%) FactoryTalk
5 7 (0.16%) WinCC
6 6 (0.13%) Confluence
7 5 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.067%) CMS
8 3 (0.067%) 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 20 (0.45%) Lightworks
2 12 (0.27%) Simulink
3 4 (0.089%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.089%) 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 4 (0.089%) Visualfiles
3 2 (0.045%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.022%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 439 (9.80%) AWS
2 288 (6.43%) Azure
3 136 (3.04%) SaaS
4 111 (2.48%) GCP
5 78 (1.74%) Serverless
6 50 (1.12%) GitHub
7 39 (0.87%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (0.83%) Firebase
9 30 (0.67%) Anthropic Claude
9 30 (0.67%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (0.47%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (0.45%) AWS CloudFormation
12 19 (0.42%) Amazon EKS
12 19 (0.42%) Amazon S3
13 17 (0.38%) Cloud Run
14 14 (0.31%) OpenShift
15 13 (0.29%) GitHub Copilot
16 11 (0.25%) Azure Service Bus
16 11 (0.25%) Slack
17 10 (0.22%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 73 (1.63%) Wireless
2 34 (0.76%) Ethernet
3 31 (0.69%) Bluetooth
4 27 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 25 (0.56%) Modbus
6 24 (0.54%) MQTT
7 22 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
8 16 (0.36%) ZigBee
9 15 (0.33%) RS-232
10 13 (0.29%) 5G
10 13 (0.29%) LTE
10 13 (0.29%) Profibus
11 11 (0.25%) RS-485
12 10 (0.22%) ATM
13 9 (0.20%) Internet
14 7 (0.16%) AMQP
14 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
15 4 (0.089%) HTTP
15 4 (0.089%) Software-Defined Radio
16 3 (0.067%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
2 61 (1.36%) SQL Server
3 50 (1.12%) MongoDB
4 47 (1.05%) NoSQL
5 43 (0.96%) MySQL
6 38 (0.85%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.47%) Redis
8 18 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
9 17 (0.38%) DynamoDB
10 16 (0.36%) Chroma
10 16 (0.36%) Pinecone
11 14 (0.31%) Big Data
12 9 (0.20%) Hadoop
13 7 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.16%) Cloudera CDH
14 4 (0.089%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (0.089%) Data Lake
14 4 (0.089%) MariaDB
15 3 (0.067%) Data Warehouse
15 3 (0.067%) FileMaker
Development Applications
1 143 (3.19%) Git
2 57 (1.27%) GitLab
3 35 (0.78%) Jenkins
4 31 (0.69%) JIRA
5 20 (0.45%) Visual Studio Code
6 18 (0.40%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.38%) Cucumber
8 16 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.22%) JUnit
11 8 (0.18%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.16%) GDB
12 7 (0.16%) LabVIEW
12 7 (0.16%) Mockito
12 7 (0.16%) Moq
12 7 (0.16%) Rational Rhapsody
13 6 (0.13%) PetaLinux
13 6 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
14 5 (0.11%) CMake
14 5 (0.11%) Yeoman
General
1 219 (4.89%) Manufacturing
2 212 (4.73%) Electronics
3 200 (4.46%) Social Skills
4 199 (4.44%) Finance
5 130 (2.90%) Aerospace
6 108 (2.41%) Public Sector
7 85 (1.90%) Automotive
8 64 (1.43%) Aviation
9 55 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 50 (1.12%) Analytical Skills
11 34 (0.76%) Retail
12 29 (0.65%) Law
13 28 (0.63%) Military
14 27 (0.60%) Games
14 27 (0.60%) Tech for Good
15 22 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
16 21 (0.47%) Financial Institution
17 19 (0.42%) Banking
18 17 (0.38%) Health Technology
18 17 (0.38%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (6.92%) .NET
2 230 (5.13%) React
3 119 (2.66%) Node.js
4 96 (2.14%) Vue
5 94 (2.10%) Terraform
6 83 (1.85%) Spring
6 83 (1.85%) WPF
7 81 (1.81%) Spring Boot
8 69 (1.54%) AngularJS
9 67 (1.50%) CSS
10 60 (1.34%) RESTful
11 54 (1.21%) REST
12 45 (1.00%) HTML
13 40 (0.89%) Next.js
14 35 (0.78%) React Native
15 34 (0.76%) .NET Core
15 34 (0.76%) Kafka
16 31 (0.69%) Django
17 29 (0.65%) .NET Framework
18 25 (0.56%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 182 (4.06%) Cloud Native
2 132 (2.95%) Robotics
3 128 (2.86%) Embedded Systems
4 106 (2.37%) Algorithms
5 83 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
6 67 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
6 67 (1.50%) Product Ownership
7 66 (1.47%) AI Agents
8 52 (1.16%) IoT
9 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
10 45 (1.00%) Public Cloud
11 38 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
12 26 (0.58%) Mobile App
13 25 (0.56%) Data Structures
14 24 (0.54%) Device Driver
14 24 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
15 19 (0.42%) NHS
16 18 (0.40%) Educational Technology
17 17 (0.38%) ARM Cortex
18 16 (0.36%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 302 (6.74%) Linux
2 73 (1.63%) Windows
3 60 (1.34%) Embedded Linux
4 38 (0.85%) Android
5 28 (0.63%) FreeRTOS
6 13 (0.29%) 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 5 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.11%) Unix
11 5 (0.11%) Windows Server
12 3 (0.067%) Gentoo
13 2 (0.045%) Robot Operating System
13 2 (0.045%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.045%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.022%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,451 (99.35%) Software Engineering
2 568 (12.68%) Agile
3 439 (9.80%) AI
4 383 (8.55%) CI/CD
5 374 (8.35%) Full-Stack Development
6 255 (5.69%) Mentoring
7 236 (5.27%) DevOps
8 228 (5.09%) Problem-Solving
9 200 (4.46%) SDLC
10 199 (4.44%) Microservices
11 193 (4.31%) Test Automation
12 181 (4.04%) Continuous Improvement
13 167 (3.73%) Computer Science
14 147 (3.28%) Software Architecture
15 137 (3.06%) Technical Leadership
16 134 (2.99%) Code Quality
17 127 (2.83%) Containerisation
18 117 (2.61%) Machine Learning
19 108 (2.41%) Software Testing
20 99 (2.21%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 668 (14.91%) C++
2 608 (13.57%) C#
3 544 (12.14%) Python
4 394 (8.79%) Java
5 274 (6.12%) TypeScript
6 258 (5.76%) JavaScript
7 236 (5.27%) C
8 179 (4.00%) SQL
9 127 (2.83%) Rust
10 74 (1.65%) Go
11 59 (1.32%) PHP
12 36 (0.80%) Embedded C
13 31 (0.69%) Ruby
14 28 (0.63%) Embedded C++
15 27 (0.60%) Ada
16 23 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 22 (0.49%) Bash
18 21 (0.47%) MATLAB
19 13 (0.29%) Scala
20 8 (0.18%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 408 (9.11%) Security Cleared
2 276 (6.16%) Degree
3 263 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 174 (3.88%) DV Cleared
5 120 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 48 (1.07%) Master's Degree
7 40 (0.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 24 (0.54%) PhD
9 12 (0.27%) Azure Certification
10 11 (0.25%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.11%) CEH
12 5 (0.11%) OSCP
13 4 (0.089%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.067%) Chartered Engineer
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 65 (1.45%) QA
2 49 (1.09%) Accessibility
3 10 (0.22%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.18%) DO-178B
5 6 (0.13%) JTAG
6 5 (0.11%) MISRA
6 5 (0.11%) MISRA C
6 5 (0.11%) WCAG
7 4 (0.089%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.089%) ECSS
7 4 (0.089%) IEC 61508
8 3 (0.067%) Automotive SPICE
8 3 (0.067%) GAMP
8 3 (0.067%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.067%) MIL-STD-1553
9 2 (0.045%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.045%) GDPR
9 2 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.022%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.022%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 188 (4.20%) Docker
2 154 (3.44%) Firmware
3 46 (1.03%) Embedded Firmware
4 6 (0.13%) QEMU
5 4 (0.089%) 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
1 160 (3.57%) Kubernetes
2 47 (1.05%) Ansible
3 15 (0.33%) Grafana
4 11 (0.25%) Podman
5 9 (0.20%) Puppet
6 8 (0.18%) Kibana
6 8 (0.18%) logstash
7 5 (0.11%) Functional Safety
8 4 (0.089%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.067%) Plesk
9 3 (0.067%) SCCM
9 3 (0.067%) SCOM
9 3 (0.067%) SCOrch
10 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.045%) Packer
10 2 (0.045%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 38 (0.85%) Microsoft
2 34 (0.76%) Siemens
3 24 (0.54%) Google
4 18 (0.40%) Salesforce
5 15 (0.33%) Databricks
6 14 (0.31%) Okta
6 14 (0.31%) Ping Identity
7 13 (0.29%) RedGate
7 13 (0.29%) Rockwell
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle
8 12 (0.27%) Splunk
9 11 (0.25%) OpenAI
10 10 (0.22%) Red Hat
11 8 (0.18%) Sage
12 7 (0.16%) Allen-Bradley
12 7 (0.16%) SaltStack
13 6 (0.13%) Intel
14 5 (0.11%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.11%) New Relic
14 5 (0.11%) Xamarin