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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 51 16
Rank change year-on-year +20 -35 +51
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 2,835 1,451 5,986
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 4.28% 4.97% 8.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.57% 5.55% 9.14%
Number of salaries quoted 2,240 843 3,167
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 62,100 26,161 65,489
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.69% 89.57% 94.78%
Number of salaries quoted 41,005 14,451 47,722
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £26,750
25th Percentile £36,250 £36,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £69,762 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £76,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%

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 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 17 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 +73 762 £65,000 - 208
North of England -8 706 £65,000 - 162
South West +29 520 £65,000 +8.33% 115
North West -4 413 £67,500 - 87
East of England +37 304 £70,000 +5.73% 112
Midlands +21 265 £65,000 +8.33% 65
Yorkshire +19 205 £65,000 +6.12% 41
Scotland +4 194 £65,000 +4.00% 30
West Midlands +17 144 £69,653 +16.09% 37
East Midlands +4 121 £60,000 +2.13% 28
North East -8 88 £65,000 +18.18% 36
Wales -2 68 £42,000 -37.78% 10
Northern Ireland -21 17 £90,000 +28.57% 7
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 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 2,800 (98.77%) Software Engineering
2 427 (15.06%) C++
3 392 (13.83%) C#
4 343 (12.10%) Python
5 336 (11.85%) Agile
6 313 (11.04%) Full-Stack Development
7 287 (10.12%) .NET
8 285 (10.05%) AWS
9 263 (9.28%) Security Cleared
10 262 (9.24%) Java
11 225 (7.94%) CI/CD
12 221 (7.80%) Degree
13 209 (7.37%) C
13 209 (7.37%) JavaScript
14 206 (7.27%) DevOps
15 198 (6.98%) Azure
16 181 (6.38%) TypeScript
17 163 (5.75%) Linux
18 162 (5.71%) React
19 161 (5.68%) SC Cleared
20 155 (5.47%) SQL
21 152 (5.36%) Mentoring
22 149 (5.26%) SaaS
23 148 (5.22%) Continuous Improvement
24 146 (5.15%) AI
25 139 (4.90%) Microservices
25 139 (4.90%) Problem-Solving
26 129 (4.55%) Firmware
27 127 (4.48%) Test Automation
28 124 (4.37%) SDLC

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 (0.46%) Apache
2 10 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
3 7 (0.25%) Apache Spark
3 7 (0.25%) FactoryTalk
4 6 (0.21%) CMS
5 5 (0.18%) Confluence
6 4 (0.14%) Apache Solr
6 4 (0.14%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.071%) WinCC
7 2 (0.071%) WordPress
8 1 (0.035%) ArchestrA
8 1 (0.035%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.035%) Kinematics
8 1 (0.035%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.14%) EngageOne
2 3 (0.11%) CANalyzer
3 2 (0.071%) AutoCAD
3 2 (0.071%) EPLAN
3 2 (0.071%) Simulink
4 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (0.35%) Magento
2 2 (0.071%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 285 (10.05%) AWS
2 198 (6.98%) Azure
3 149 (5.26%) SaaS
4 56 (1.98%) Serverless
5 51 (1.80%) GCP
6 27 (0.95%) Azure DevOps
7 26 (0.92%) GitHub
8 21 (0.74%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (0.71%) Azure AKS
10 15 (0.53%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (0.53%) Amazon S3
11 11 (0.39%) Anthropic Claude
11 11 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (0.28%) GitHub Actions
12 8 (0.28%) Stripe
13 6 (0.21%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (0.21%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 5 (0.18%) Amazon EC2
14 5 (0.18%) Azure Functions
14 5 (0.18%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 44 (1.55%) Wireless
2 31 (1.09%) Ethernet
3 21 (0.74%) RS-232
4 17 (0.60%) Bluetooth
5 15 (0.53%) Modbus
6 9 (0.32%) ZigBee
7 8 (0.28%) Network Security
7 8 (0.28%) Profibus
7 8 (0.28%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.25%) Broadband
8 7 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.18%) AMQP
9 5 (0.18%) LTE
9 5 (0.18%) MQTT
9 5 (0.18%) RS-485
10 4 (0.14%) Software-Defined Radio
11 3 (0.11%) DNS
11 3 (0.11%) HTTP
11 3 (0.11%) SMTP
12 2 (0.071%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (1.80%) NoSQL
1 51 (1.80%) SQL Server
2 48 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
3 39 (1.38%) MongoDB
4 34 (1.20%) MySQL
5 23 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
6 13 (0.46%) Big Data
7 11 (0.39%) DynamoDB
7 11 (0.39%) Neo4j
8 10 (0.35%) Relational Database
9 7 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.25%) Hadoop
9 7 (0.25%) Redis
10 5 (0.18%) Cloudera CDH
10 5 (0.18%) FileMaker
11 4 (0.14%) DocumentDB
11 4 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
11 4 (0.14%) GIS
11 4 (0.14%) QGIS
12 3 (0.11%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 93 (3.28%) Git
2 30 (1.06%) GitLab
3 20 (0.71%) Visual Studio Code
4 18 (0.63%) Jenkins
5 16 (0.56%) Claude Code
6 13 (0.46%) 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%) GDB
11 4 (0.14%) Gradle
11 4 (0.14%) LabVIEW
11 4 (0.14%) Maven
11 4 (0.14%) Postman
General
1 141 (4.97%) Manufacturing
2 121 (4.27%) Social Skills
3 117 (4.13%) Electronics
4 69 (2.43%) Aerospace
5 68 (2.40%) Automotive
6 65 (2.29%) Finance
7 57 (2.01%) Public Sector
8 40 (1.41%) Analytical Skills
9 39 (1.38%) Pharmaceutical
10 22 (0.78%) Aviation
11 21 (0.74%) Retail
12 18 (0.63%) Games
13 16 (0.56%) Tech for Good
14 15 (0.53%) Military
15 13 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.32%) Telecoms
17 8 (0.28%) Health Technology
18 7 (0.25%) Advertising
18 7 (0.25%) Agriculture
19 6 (0.21%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (10.12%) .NET
2 162 (5.71%) React
3 95 (3.35%) Node.js
4 80 (2.82%) Vue
5 76 (2.68%) AngularJS
6 71 (2.50%) REST
7 58 (2.05%) RESTful
8 46 (1.62%) Spring
9 44 (1.55%) .NET Core
9 44 (1.55%) HTML
10 42 (1.48%) CSS
11 41 (1.45%) Spring Boot
12 37 (1.31%) .NET Framework
13 36 (1.27%) WPF
14 24 (0.85%) Django
15 21 (0.74%) Web Services
16 20 (0.71%) ASP.NET
16 20 (0.71%) Entity Framework
17 18 (0.63%) Yocto
18 17 (0.60%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 112 (3.95%) Cloud Native
2 85 (3.00%) Embedded Systems
3 70 (2.47%) Algorithms
4 52 (1.83%) IoT
4 52 (1.83%) Product Ownership
5 40 (1.41%) Robotics
6 35 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
8 22 (0.78%) Device Driver
9 21 (0.74%) Client/Server
10 20 (0.71%) Mobile App
11 17 (0.60%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (0.56%) Educational Technology
12 16 (0.56%) Hedge funds
13 15 (0.53%) CAN bus
13 15 (0.53%) Smart Energy
14 14 (0.49%) Greenfield Project
14 14 (0.49%) Industry 4.0
15 13 (0.46%) Data Structures
15 13 (0.46%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 163 (5.75%) Linux
2 36 (1.27%) Android
2 36 (1.27%) Embedded Linux
3 31 (1.09%) Windows
4 20 (0.71%) FreeRTOS
5 5 (0.18%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.18%) CentOS
5 5 (0.18%) Debian
5 5 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.18%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.14%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.071%) SafeRTOS
7 2 (0.071%) zOS
8 1 (0.035%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.035%) ThreadX
8 1 (0.035%) VxWorks
8 1 (0.035%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,800 (98.77%) Software Engineering
2 336 (11.85%) Agile
3 313 (11.04%) Full-Stack Development
4 225 (7.94%) CI/CD
5 206 (7.27%) DevOps
6 152 (5.36%) Mentoring
7 148 (5.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 146 (5.15%) AI
9 139 (4.90%) Microservices
9 139 (4.90%) Problem-Solving
10 127 (4.48%) Test Automation
11 124 (4.37%) SDLC
12 123 (4.34%) Computer Science
13 102 (3.60%) Scrum
14 95 (3.35%) Containerisation
14 95 (3.35%) TDD
15 75 (2.65%) Software Testing
16 73 (2.57%) Embedded Software Development
17 71 (2.50%) Technical Leadership
18 64 (2.26%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 427 (15.06%) C++
2 392 (13.83%) C#
3 343 (12.10%) Python
4 262 (9.24%) Java
5 209 (7.37%) C
5 209 (7.37%) JavaScript
6 181 (6.38%) TypeScript
7 155 (5.47%) SQL
8 71 (2.50%) Rust
9 51 (1.80%) Embedded C
10 49 (1.73%) PHP
11 31 (1.09%) Go
12 21 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 17 (0.60%) COBOL
14 16 (0.56%) Embedded C++
15 15 (0.53%) Ruby
16 14 (0.49%) Bash
17 11 (0.39%) Ada
17 11 (0.39%) Scala
18 10 (0.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 263 (9.28%) Security Cleared
2 221 (7.80%) Degree
3 161 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 104 (3.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 87 (3.07%) DV Cleared
6 39 (1.38%) Master's Degree
7 17 (0.60%) PhD
8 15 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 10 (0.35%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (0.25%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.25%) Chartered Engineer
10 7 (0.25%) HND
11 6 (0.21%) HNC
12 3 (0.11%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.11%) CEH
12 3 (0.11%) OSCP
13 2 (0.071%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.071%) NVQ Level 3
13 2 (0.071%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (2.15%) QA
2 17 (0.60%) IEC 61508
3 16 (0.56%) Accessibility
3 16 (0.56%) MISRA
3 16 (0.56%) 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
7 3 (0.11%) JTAG
8 1 (0.035%) DO-254
8 1 (0.035%) ECSS
8 1 (0.035%) HAZOP
8 1 (0.035%) IEC 62304
8 1 (0.035%) ISO 26262
8 1 (0.035%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.035%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 129 (4.55%) Firmware
2 102 (3.60%) Docker
3 40 (1.41%) Embedded Firmware
4 13 (0.46%) Hyper-V
4 13 (0.46%) KVM
4 13 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.11%) QEMU
7 2 (0.071%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 90 (3.17%) Kubernetes
2 61 (2.15%) Terraform
3 15 (0.53%) Ansible
4 13 (0.46%) 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 (0.071%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.071%) Packer
8 2 (0.071%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 23 (0.81%) Siemens
2 22 (0.78%) Microsoft
3 17 (0.60%) Oracle
3 17 (0.60%) Rockwell
4 15 (0.53%) Google
4 15 (0.53%) VMware
5 13 (0.46%) Adobe
6 8 (0.28%) Allen-Bradley
6 8 (0.28%) HubSpot
6 8 (0.28%) 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