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 17 January 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 35 31
Rank change year-on-year -32 -4 +21
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,307 2,029 2,423
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 5.67% 6.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.35% 6.12% 6.86%
Number of salaries quoted 1,007 957 1,464
10th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £51,698 £47,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £86,000 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +7.69% -3.89%

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 39,045 33,150 35,318
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.59% 92.66% 95.25%
Number of salaries quoted 23,868 16,140 26,897
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -5.25%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £77,715
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -4.17%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 -29 315 £65,000 +8.33% 368
North of England -12 298 £65,000 +6.56% 251
South West -7 273 £65,000 +18.18% 222
East of England -24 145 £70,000 +3.70% 168
North West -7 133 £67,500 +8.00% 134
Yorkshire -12 124 £60,000 -4.00% 80
Midlands -14 123 £60,000 +9.09% 121
Scotland -26 118 £60,000 +4.45% 74
West Midlands -2 63 £60,000 - 40
East Midlands -17 63 £60,000 +20.00% 79
North East -15 41 £70,000 +15.70% 38
Wales -29 24 £75,000 +5.26% 68
Northern Ireland -25 12 £85,000 -5.56% 25
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 January 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 1,304 (99.77%) Software Engineering
2 201 (15.38%) Agile
3 199 (15.23%) C#
4 181 (13.85%) C++
5 176 (13.47%) AWS
6 173 (13.24%) .NET
7 170 (13.01%) Java
8 157 (12.01%) CI/CD
9 154 (11.78%) Security Cleared
10 151 (11.55%) Full-Stack Development
11 149 (11.40%) React
12 148 (11.32%) DevOps
13 147 (11.25%) Python
14 139 (10.64%) Azure
15 126 (9.64%) JavaScript
16 117 (8.95%) Degree
17 115 (8.80%) Mentoring
18 113 (8.65%) SQL
18 113 (8.65%) TypeScript
19 100 (7.65%) Linux
19 100 (7.65%) Microservices
19 100 (7.65%) Problem-Solving
20 96 (7.35%) C
21 79 (6.04%) Kubernetes
21 79 (6.04%) SC Cleared
22 74 (5.66%) AI
22 74 (5.66%) Computer Science
23 72 (5.51%) Continuous Improvement
24 66 (5.05%) Docker
25 63 (4.82%) Firmware

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 14 (1.07%) Apache
2 12 (0.92%) IIS
3 7 (0.54%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.46%) Confluence
5 4 (0.31%) CMS
6 3 (0.23%) Apache Solr
7 2 (0.15%) ArchestrA
7 2 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.15%) NServiceBus
7 2 (0.15%) WinCC
8 1 (0.077%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.077%) Kinematics
Applications
1 3 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.15%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.15%) Sketch
3 1 (0.077%) EngageOne
3 1 (0.077%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.077%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 10 (0.77%) Magento
2 2 (0.15%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.077%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 176 (13.47%) AWS
2 139 (10.64%) Azure
3 58 (4.44%) SaaS
4 42 (3.21%) Serverless
5 35 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
6 32 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
7 31 (2.37%) GCP
8 24 (1.84%) Amazon S3
9 23 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
10 21 (1.61%) GitHub
11 15 (1.15%) Amazon ECS
12 10 (0.77%) Azure AKS
12 10 (0.77%) OpenShift
13 8 (0.61%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.61%) Stripe
14 7 (0.54%) Amazon EC2
14 7 (0.54%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (0.46%) Amazon SQS
16 5 (0.38%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 33 (2.52%) Wireless
2 17 (1.30%) RS-232
3 14 (1.07%) Bluetooth
4 13 (0.99%) Software-Defined Radio
5 6 (0.46%) AMQP
5 6 (0.46%) HTTP
5 6 (0.46%) Modbus
5 6 (0.46%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.38%) DNS
7 4 (0.31%) Ethernet
7 4 (0.31%) SMTP
8 3 (0.23%) ATM
9 2 (0.15%) 3G
9 2 (0.15%) Firewall
9 2 (0.15%) GPRS
9 2 (0.15%) GSM
9 2 (0.15%) Profibus
9 2 (0.15%) RS-485
9 2 (0.15%) SSL
10 1 (0.077%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (2.91%) SQL Server
2 33 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (2.14%) NoSQL
4 21 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
4 21 (1.61%) Relational Database
5 15 (1.15%) MongoDB
5 15 (1.15%) MySQL
6 14 (1.07%) DynamoDB
7 12 (0.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 8 (0.61%) Redis
9 7 (0.54%) Big Data
9 7 (0.54%) Hadoop
9 7 (0.54%) Neo4j
10 5 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.38%) Cloudera CDH
11 4 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.31%) Apache Cassandra
12 3 (0.23%) GIS
12 3 (0.23%) MariaDB
12 3 (0.23%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 50 (3.83%) Git
2 17 (1.30%) GitLab
2 17 (1.30%) Visual Studio
3 14 (1.07%) JIRA
4 12 (0.92%) Jenkins
4 12 (0.92%) JUnit
5 8 (0.61%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.38%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.38%) Selenium
7 4 (0.31%) Maven
7 4 (0.31%) Oracle APEX
8 3 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.23%) Gradle
9 2 (0.15%) Android Studio
9 2 (0.15%) PROIV
9 2 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.15%) Subversion
9 2 (0.15%) Xcode
10 1 (0.077%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.077%) JMeter
General
1 104 (7.96%) Social Skills
2 84 (6.43%) Finance
3 48 (3.67%) Electronics
4 45 (3.44%) Manufacturing
5 25 (1.91%) Aerospace
6 22 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
7 21 (1.61%) Analytical Skills
8 20 (1.53%) Games
9 18 (1.38%) Public Sector
10 17 (1.30%) Automotive
11 14 (1.07%) Retail
12 13 (0.99%) Tech for Good
13 10 (0.77%) Law
14 9 (0.69%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.61%) Military
16 7 (0.54%) Aeronautics
16 7 (0.54%) Marketing
17 6 (0.46%) Legal
18 5 (0.38%) Health Technology
19 4 (0.31%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 173 (13.24%) .NET
2 149 (11.40%) React
3 61 (4.67%) AngularJS
4 56 (4.28%) Node.js
5 46 (3.52%) Spring
6 43 (3.29%) Spring Boot
7 41 (3.14%) REST
8 39 (2.98%) RESTful
9 35 (2.68%) .NET Core
10 31 (2.37%) Vue
11 30 (2.30%) .NET Framework
12 29 (2.22%) ASP.NET
12 29 (2.22%) HTML
13 28 (2.14%) CSS
14 20 (1.53%) Entity Framework
15 19 (1.45%) Qt
16 17 (1.30%) Next.js
17 16 (1.22%) WinForms
18 14 (1.07%) Web Services
19 13 (0.99%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 74 (5.66%) Cloud Native
2 55 (4.21%) Embedded Systems
3 27 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
4 25 (1.91%) IoT
5 22 (1.68%) Robotics
6 17 (1.30%) e-Learning
7 16 (1.22%) Product Ownership
8 15 (1.15%) Algorithms
9 13 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (0.99%) Smart Energy
10 12 (0.92%) Manufacturing Execution System
11 11 (0.84%) Driving Licence
11 11 (0.84%) RISC-V
11 11 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (0.77%) Hedge funds
13 9 (0.69%) CAN bus
13 9 (0.69%) MicroBlaze
13 9 (0.69%) Renewable Energy
14 8 (0.61%) AI Agents
15 7 (0.54%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 100 (7.65%) Linux
2 34 (2.60%) Embedded Linux
2 34 (2.60%) Windows
3 17 (1.30%) Android
4 6 (0.46%) Unix
5 5 (0.38%) CentOS
5 5 (0.38%) Debian
5 5 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.38%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.23%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (0.15%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.077%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.077%) Fedora
8 1 (0.077%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.077%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,304 (99.77%) Software Engineering
2 201 (15.38%) Agile
3 157 (12.01%) CI/CD
4 151 (11.55%) Full-Stack Development
5 148 (11.32%) DevOps
6 115 (8.80%) Mentoring
7 100 (7.65%) Microservices
7 100 (7.65%) Problem-Solving
8 74 (5.66%) AI
8 74 (5.66%) Computer Science
9 72 (5.51%) Continuous Improvement
10 54 (4.13%) Scrum
11 52 (3.98%) Containerisation
12 45 (3.44%) SDLC
13 44 (3.37%) Coaching
13 44 (3.37%) Test Automation
14 41 (3.14%) Machine Learning
15 40 (3.06%) TDD
16 37 (2.83%) Fintech
17 34 (2.60%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 199 (15.23%) C#
2 181 (13.85%) C++
3 170 (13.01%) Java
4 147 (11.25%) Python
5 126 (9.64%) JavaScript
6 113 (8.65%) SQL
6 113 (8.65%) TypeScript
7 96 (7.35%) C
8 39 (2.98%) PHP
9 24 (1.84%) Kotlin
10 21 (1.61%) Ada
11 19 (1.45%) T-SQL
12 18 (1.38%) Embedded C++
12 18 (1.38%) Ruby
13 16 (1.22%) Rust
14 14 (1.07%) Embedded C
15 13 (0.99%) PL/SQL
16 12 (0.92%) Scala
17 11 (0.84%) Ada 95
18 10 (0.77%) Bash
Qualifications
1 154 (11.78%) Security Cleared
2 117 (8.95%) Degree
3 79 (6.04%) SC Cleared
4 52 (3.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 42 (3.21%) DV Cleared
6 13 (0.99%) Master's Degree
7 12 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (0.92%) Chartered Engineer
8 8 (0.61%) PhD
9 7 (0.54%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.15%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.15%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.15%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (1.91%) QA
2 11 (0.84%) IEC 61508
2 11 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 12207
2 11 (0.84%) MISRA
3 9 (0.69%) MISRA C
4 4 (0.31%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.23%) ECSS
5 3 (0.23%) GDPR
5 3 (0.23%) IEC 61131
5 3 (0.23%) ISO 9001
5 3 (0.23%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.15%) ISO 9000
6 2 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.15%) JTAG
6 2 (0.15%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.077%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.077%) Data Quality
System Software
1 66 (5.05%) Docker
2 63 (4.82%) Firmware
3 36 (2.75%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (0.38%) Hyper-V
4 5 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.23%) KVM
6 1 (0.077%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 79 (6.04%) Kubernetes
2 38 (2.91%) Terraform
3 9 (0.69%) Functional Safety
3 9 (0.69%) Kibana
4 8 (0.61%) Grafana
5 6 (0.46%) Ansible
6 5 (0.38%) Puppet
7 2 (0.15%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.077%) Istio
8 1 (0.077%) logstash
Vendors
1 18 (1.38%) Microsoft
2 17 (1.30%) Oracle
3 14 (1.07%) Xamarin
4 12 (0.92%) Adobe
4 12 (0.92%) Google
4 12 (0.92%) Sage
5 8 (0.61%) Atlassian
6 7 (0.54%) HubSpot
7 6 (0.46%) Red Hat
8 5 (0.38%) SaltStack
8 5 (0.38%) VMware
8 5 (0.38%) Zoho
9 4 (0.31%) Databricks
9 4 (0.31%) Guidewire
9 4 (0.31%) Siemens
10 3 (0.23%) OpenAI
10 3 (0.23%) Rockwell
10 3 (0.23%) SAP
11 2 (0.15%) Palantir
11 2 (0.15%) Salesforce