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 £67,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 62 15
Rank change year-on-year +40 -47 +52
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 4,278 1,338 4,461
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.12% 3.89% 8.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.47% 4.36% 8.48%
Number of salaries quoted 3,401 508 2,437
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £55,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £65,000 £55,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% +17.12% -7.50%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £69,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £80,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -12.50% +28.00% -7.45%

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 78,205 30,688 52,634
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.51% 89.33% 95.20%
Number of salaries quoted 54,314 17,458 30,845
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,572
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 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.27% - -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 16 September 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 16 September 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 +27 1,055 £70,000 - 418
South East +95 1,017 £65,000 -7.14% 393
South West +41 863 £70,000 +7.69% 330
North West +14 592 £70,000 -6.67% 274
East of England +110 562 £70,000 +7.69% 392
Midlands +65 441 £65,000 - 196
Yorkshire +75 261 £60,000 -7.69% 102
East Midlands +37 241 £55,000 -18.52% 104
North East +20 202 £70,000 +25.56% 46
West Midlands +51 200 £68,403 +9.44% 92
Scotland -4 191 £76,250 +20.08% 338
Wales +17 136 £60,000 +9.09% 30
Northern Ireland - 14 £90,000 - 63
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 16 September 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 4,242 (99.16%) Software Engineering
2 664 (15.52%) C++
3 605 (14.14%) C#
4 532 (12.44%) Python
5 524 (12.25%) Agile
6 414 (9.68%) Security Cleared
7 404 (9.44%) AWS
8 396 (9.26%) AI
9 363 (8.49%) Full-Stack Development
10 360 (8.42%) CI/CD
11 345 (8.06%) Java
12 303 (7.08%) .NET
13 296 (6.92%) Linux
14 283 (6.62%) Degree
15 269 (6.29%) Azure
16 266 (6.22%) SC Cleared
17 259 (6.05%) JavaScript
18 257 (6.01%) C
19 254 (5.94%) TypeScript
20 248 (5.80%) Mentoring
21 235 (5.49%) DevOps
22 221 (5.17%) Problem-Solving
23 214 (5.00%) React
24 201 (4.70%) SDLC
25 189 (4.42%) Microservices
26 185 (4.32%) Test Automation
27 180 (4.21%) DV Cleared
28 176 (4.11%) Continuous Improvement
28 176 (4.11%) SQL
29 174 (4.07%) 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 28 (0.65%) Apache
2 15 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
3 8 (0.19%) Apache Spark
3 8 (0.19%) FactoryTalk
4 7 (0.16%) Confluence
4 7 (0.16%) WinCC
5 5 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.070%) Apache Solr
7 2 (0.047%) ArchestrA
7 2 (0.047%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.047%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.047%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.047%) WordPress
8 1 (0.023%) Cloud Foundry
8 1 (0.023%) CMS
8 1 (0.023%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.023%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.023%) OpenStack
Applications
1 17 (0.40%) Lightworks
2 11 (0.26%) Simulink
3 4 (0.094%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.094%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.094%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.047%) CANalyzer
4 2 (0.047%) EPLAN
5 1 (0.023%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.023%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.023%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.047%) Visualfiles
3 1 (0.023%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 404 (9.44%) AWS
2 269 (6.29%) Azure
3 143 (3.34%) SaaS
4 106 (2.48%) GCP
5 70 (1.64%) Serverless
6 49 (1.15%) GitHub
7 38 (0.89%) Azure DevOps
8 36 (0.84%) Firebase
9 30 (0.70%) Anthropic Claude
10 29 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
11 21 (0.49%) GitHub Actions
12 20 (0.47%) AWS CloudFormation
13 19 (0.44%) Amazon EKS
14 17 (0.40%) Amazon S3
15 16 (0.37%) Cloud Run
16 14 (0.33%) OpenShift
17 11 (0.26%) GitHub Copilot
17 11 (0.26%) Slack
18 9 (0.21%) AWS Step Functions
19 8 (0.19%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 67 (1.57%) Wireless
2 37 (0.86%) Ethernet
3 31 (0.72%) Bluetooth
4 27 (0.63%) Modbus
5 23 (0.54%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
7 20 (0.47%) MQTT
8 18 (0.42%) RS-232
9 17 (0.40%) ZigBee
10 15 (0.35%) Profibus
11 13 (0.30%) LTE
12 12 (0.28%) RS-485
13 10 (0.23%) 5G
13 10 (0.23%) ATM
14 7 (0.16%) AMQP
15 6 (0.14%) Internet
15 6 (0.14%) Wireshark
16 3 (0.070%) Firewall
16 3 (0.070%) Software-Defined Radio
17 2 (0.047%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (1.31%) SQL Server
3 51 (1.19%) MongoDB
4 46 (1.08%) NoSQL
5 40 (0.94%) MySQL
6 30 (0.70%) Relational Database
7 20 (0.47%) Redis
8 19 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.37%) Chroma
9 16 (0.37%) DynamoDB
9 16 (0.37%) Pinecone
10 13 (0.30%) Big Data
11 9 (0.21%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.16%) Cloudera CDH
13 4 (0.094%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.094%) Data Lake
13 4 (0.094%) FileMaker
13 4 (0.094%) MariaDB
14 3 (0.070%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 144 (3.37%) Git
2 54 (1.26%) GitLab
3 35 (0.82%) Jenkins
4 32 (0.75%) JIRA
5 20 (0.47%) Visual Studio Code
6 17 (0.40%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.35%) Cucumber
8 14 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.21%) JUnit
11 8 (0.19%) GDB
12 7 (0.16%) Cypress.io
12 7 (0.16%) LabVIEW
12 7 (0.16%) Moq
13 6 (0.14%) CMake
13 6 (0.14%) Mockito
14 5 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
14 5 (0.12%) Subversion
14 5 (0.12%) Yeoman
15 4 (0.094%) Robot Framework
General
1 224 (5.24%) Manufacturing
2 218 (5.10%) Electronics
3 190 (4.44%) Social Skills
4 156 (3.65%) Finance
5 126 (2.95%) Aerospace
6 107 (2.50%) Public Sector
7 82 (1.92%) Automotive
8 61 (1.43%) Aviation
9 56 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 48 (1.12%) Analytical Skills
11 36 (0.84%) Retail
12 28 (0.65%) Law
12 28 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
13 26 (0.61%) Games
14 25 (0.58%) Military
15 18 (0.42%) Marketing
16 17 (0.40%) Tech for Good
17 16 (0.37%) Telecoms
18 15 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
19 12 (0.28%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (7.08%) .NET
2 214 (5.00%) React
3 114 (2.66%) Node.js
4 101 (2.36%) Vue
5 95 (2.22%) Terraform
6 84 (1.96%) WPF
7 77 (1.80%) Spring
8 73 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 71 (1.66%) CSS
10 70 (1.64%) AngularJS
11 55 (1.29%) REST
12 52 (1.22%) HTML
12 52 (1.22%) RESTful
13 37 (0.86%) Next.js
14 33 (0.77%) React Native
15 31 (0.72%) Django
16 29 (0.68%) .NET Core
17 27 (0.63%) .NET Framework
18 23 (0.54%) Kafka
18 23 (0.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 166 (3.88%) Cloud Native
2 131 (3.06%) Embedded Systems
3 119 (2.78%) Robotics
4 106 (2.48%) Algorithms
5 84 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
6 68 (1.59%) Product Ownership
7 66 (1.54%) AI Agents
8 62 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
9 56 (1.31%) IoT
10 48 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
11 39 (0.91%) Public Cloud
12 29 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
13 28 (0.65%) Mobile App
14 25 (0.58%) Data Structures
14 25 (0.58%) Device Driver
15 23 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
16 21 (0.49%) ARM Cortex
17 18 (0.42%) Educational Technology
18 17 (0.40%) NHS
19 15 (0.35%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 296 (6.92%) Linux
2 72 (1.68%) Windows
3 60 (1.40%) Embedded Linux
4 31 (0.72%) Android
4 31 (0.72%) FreeRTOS
5 12 (0.28%) Debian
6 9 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (0.21%) Ubuntu
7 8 (0.19%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.16%) CentOS
8 7 (0.16%) VxWorks
9 5 (0.12%) Unix
9 5 (0.12%) Windows Server
10 3 (0.070%) Gentoo
11 2 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.047%) SafeRTOS
11 2 (0.047%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.047%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.047%) zOS
12 1 (0.023%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,242 (99.16%) Software Engineering
2 524 (12.25%) Agile
3 396 (9.26%) AI
4 363 (8.49%) Full-Stack Development
5 360 (8.42%) CI/CD
6 248 (5.80%) Mentoring
7 235 (5.49%) DevOps
8 221 (5.17%) Problem-Solving
9 201 (4.70%) SDLC
10 189 (4.42%) Microservices
11 185 (4.32%) Test Automation
12 176 (4.11%) Continuous Improvement
13 174 (4.07%) Computer Science
14 137 (3.20%) Software Architecture
15 126 (2.95%) Code Quality
15 126 (2.95%) Technical Leadership
16 121 (2.83%) Containerisation
17 115 (2.69%) Software Testing
18 105 (2.45%) Machine Learning
19 99 (2.31%) Embedded Software Development
Programming Languages
1 664 (15.52%) C++
2 605 (14.14%) C#
3 532 (12.44%) Python
4 345 (8.06%) Java
5 259 (6.05%) JavaScript
6 257 (6.01%) C
7 254 (5.94%) TypeScript
8 176 (4.11%) SQL
9 122 (2.85%) Rust
10 70 (1.64%) Go
11 57 (1.33%) PHP
12 45 (1.05%) Embedded C
13 30 (0.70%) Embedded C++
14 29 (0.68%) Ruby
15 25 (0.58%) Ada
16 20 (0.47%) Bash
16 20 (0.47%) MATLAB
17 17 (0.40%) COBOL
17 17 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 13 (0.30%) Scala
Qualifications
1 414 (9.68%) Security Cleared
2 283 (6.62%) Degree
3 266 (6.22%) SC Cleared
4 180 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 124 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 52 (1.22%) Master's Degree
7 34 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
8 28 (0.65%) PhD
9 11 (0.26%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.19%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.14%) AWS Certification
11 6 (0.14%) HND
12 5 (0.12%) CEH
12 5 (0.12%) OSCP
13 4 (0.094%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.070%) HNC
14 3 (0.070%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 2 (0.047%) Numerate Degree
16 1 (0.023%) ISTQB
16 1 (0.023%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (1.57%) QA
2 51 (1.19%) Accessibility
3 10 (0.23%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.19%) IEC 61508
4 8 (0.19%) MISRA
4 8 (0.19%) MISRA C
5 6 (0.14%) JTAG
6 5 (0.12%) DO-178B
7 4 (0.094%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.094%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.070%) Automotive SPICE
8 3 (0.070%) ECSS
8 3 (0.070%) GAMP
8 3 (0.070%) MIL-STD-1553
8 3 (0.070%) WCAG
9 2 (0.047%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.047%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.023%) HAZOP
10 1 (0.023%) IEC 62304
10 1 (0.023%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 174 (4.07%) Docker
2 169 (3.95%) Firmware
3 50 (1.17%) Embedded Firmware
4 7 (0.16%) QEMU
5 5 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.070%) KVM
6 3 (0.070%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.047%) Active Directory
7 2 (0.047%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.047%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.023%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 139 (3.25%) Kubernetes
2 45 (1.05%) Ansible
3 15 (0.35%) Grafana
4 10 (0.23%) Podman
5 9 (0.21%) Puppet
6 8 (0.19%) Kibana
6 8 (0.19%) logstash
7 6 (0.14%) Functional Safety
8 4 (0.094%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.070%) Plesk
9 3 (0.070%) SCCM
9 3 (0.070%) SCOM
9 3 (0.070%) SCOrch
10 2 (0.047%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.023%) Packer
11 1 (0.023%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 37 (0.86%) Siemens
2 32 (0.75%) Microsoft
3 22 (0.51%) Google
4 18 (0.42%) Salesforce
5 15 (0.35%) Rockwell
6 14 (0.33%) Okta
6 14 (0.33%) Ping Identity
7 13 (0.30%) Databricks
7 13 (0.30%) Oracle
8 12 (0.28%) Splunk
9 9 (0.21%) OpenAI
9 9 (0.21%) Red Hat
10 8 (0.19%) Allen-Bradley
10 8 (0.19%) RedGate
10 8 (0.19%) Sage
11 7 (0.16%) SaltStack
12 6 (0.14%) Atlassian
12 6 (0.14%) Intel
13 5 (0.12%) IBM
13 5 (0.12%) VMware