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 15 October 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 67 21
Rank change year-on-year +46 -46 +39
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 4,558 1,287 3,550
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.24% 3.74% 7.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.67% 4.18% 7.42%
Number of salaries quoted 3,434 475 1,968
10th Percentile £45,000 £43,600 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £57,750
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +12.55% -3.75%
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 80,403 30,800 47,820
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 89.55% 95.39%
Number of salaries quoted 55,684 17,423 26,302
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +19.57% -8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £53,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.35% -2.73% -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 15 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 15 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 +32 1,076 £70,000 +4.87% 349
South East +84 1,020 £70,000 +2.94% 303
South West +42 949 £68,000 +4.62% 213
East of England +114 639 £70,000 +7.69% 252
North West +10 604 £70,000 -6.67% 226
Midlands +63 462 £65,000 - 152
East Midlands +44 274 £55,000 -21.43% 64
Yorkshire +72 258 £60,000 - 79
Scotland +3 255 £80,000 +24.03% 246
North East +33 214 £70,000 +27.27% 44
West Midlands +39 188 £65,000 +4.00% 88
Wales +19 149 £60,000 - 26
Northern Ireland -69 9 £75,000 - 65
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 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 4,527 (99.32%) Software Engineering
2 654 (14.35%) C++
3 598 (13.12%) C#
4 590 (12.94%) Agile
5 544 (11.94%) Python
6 461 (10.11%) AI
7 451 (9.89%) AWS
8 413 (9.06%) Java
9 393 (8.62%) Security Cleared
10 385 (8.45%) CI/CD
11 381 (8.36%) Full-Stack Development
12 315 (6.91%) .NET
13 309 (6.78%) Linux
14 301 (6.60%) Azure
15 276 (6.06%) Degree
16 268 (5.88%) TypeScript
17 257 (5.64%) Mentoring
18 254 (5.57%) SC Cleared
19 247 (5.42%) JavaScript
20 236 (5.18%) DevOps
21 231 (5.07%) C
22 230 (5.05%) Problem-Solving
23 220 (4.83%) React
24 208 (4.56%) Microservices
25 207 (4.54%) Test Automation
26 198 (4.34%) SDLC
27 195 (4.28%) Docker
28 182 (3.99%) SQL
29 177 (3.88%) Continuous Improvement
30 173 (3.80%) Kubernetes

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 (0.66%) Apache
2 15 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
3 9 (0.20%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
4 7 (0.15%) WinCC
5 6 (0.13%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.11%) Confluence
7 4 (0.088%) CMS
7 4 (0.088%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.066%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.066%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.044%) ArchestrA
10 1 (0.022%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.022%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.022%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.022%) WordPress
Applications
1 21 (0.46%) Lightworks
2 12 (0.26%) Simulink
3 7 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.044%) EPLAN
5 2 (0.044%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.022%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
1 6 (0.13%) Visualfiles
2 3 (0.066%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.022%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 451 (9.89%) AWS
2 301 (6.60%) Azure
3 127 (2.79%) SaaS
4 110 (2.41%) GCP
5 78 (1.71%) Serverless
6 53 (1.16%) GitHub
7 44 (0.97%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (0.81%) Firebase
9 35 (0.77%) Anthropic Claude
10 30 (0.66%) AWS Lambda
11 22 (0.48%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (0.46%) Amazon EKS
13 20 (0.44%) Amazon S3
13 20 (0.44%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (0.35%) Cloud Run
15 14 (0.31%) Azure Functions
15 14 (0.31%) Azure Service Bus
15 14 (0.31%) GitHub Copilot
15 14 (0.31%) OpenShift
16 11 (0.24%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 74 (1.62%) Wireless
2 30 (0.66%) Ethernet
3 29 (0.64%) Bluetooth
4 28 (0.61%) TCP/IP
5 27 (0.59%) MQTT
6 24 (0.53%) Modbus
7 23 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
8 15 (0.33%) 5G
8 15 (0.33%) ZigBee
9 14 (0.31%) LTE
10 12 (0.26%) Profibus
10 12 (0.26%) RS-232
11 10 (0.22%) ATM
11 10 (0.22%) RS-485
12 9 (0.20%) Internet
13 8 (0.18%) AMQP
14 7 (0.15%) Wireshark
15 5 (0.11%) HTTP
16 4 (0.088%) Software-Defined Radio
17 3 (0.066%) RS-422
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
2 66 (1.45%) SQL Server
3 48 (1.05%) MongoDB
4 43 (0.94%) NoSQL
5 42 (0.92%) Relational Database
6 41 (0.90%) MySQL
7 27 (0.59%) Redis
8 17 (0.37%) Big Data
8 17 (0.37%) DynamoDB
8 17 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.35%) Chroma
9 16 (0.35%) Pinecone
10 9 (0.20%) Hadoop
11 7 (0.15%) Azure SQL Database
11 7 (0.15%) Cloudera CDH
12 4 (0.088%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.088%) Data Lake
13 3 (0.066%) Data Warehouse
13 3 (0.066%) MariaDB
13 3 (0.066%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 132 (2.90%) Git
2 54 (1.18%) GitLab
3 37 (0.81%) Jenkins
4 31 (0.68%) JIRA
5 21 (0.46%) Claude Code
6 18 (0.39%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
9 10 (0.22%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.20%) JUnit
11 7 (0.15%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.15%) GDB
11 7 (0.15%) Moq
11 7 (0.15%) PetaLinux
11 7 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (0.15%) Rational Rhapsody
12 6 (0.13%) LabVIEW
12 6 (0.13%) Mockito
13 5 (0.11%) Eclipse
13 5 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 227 (4.98%) Finance
2 214 (4.70%) Manufacturing
3 210 (4.61%) Electronics
4 204 (4.48%) Social Skills
5 138 (3.03%) Aerospace
6 111 (2.44%) Public Sector
7 80 (1.76%) Automotive
8 68 (1.49%) Aviation
9 55 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 52 (1.14%) Analytical Skills
11 32 (0.70%) Retail
11 32 (0.70%) Tech for Good
12 30 (0.66%) Law
13 29 (0.64%) Games
13 29 (0.64%) Military
14 26 (0.57%) Banking
15 24 (0.53%) Financial Institution
16 21 (0.46%) Health Technology
17 19 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
18 17 (0.37%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (6.91%) .NET
2 220 (4.83%) React
3 123 (2.70%) Node.js
4 93 (2.04%) Terraform
5 88 (1.93%) Vue
6 81 (1.78%) Spring
7 80 (1.76%) Spring Boot
8 79 (1.73%) WPF
9 62 (1.36%) AngularJS
9 62 (1.36%) CSS
9 62 (1.36%) RESTful
10 57 (1.25%) REST
11 42 (0.92%) Next.js
12 40 (0.88%) HTML
12 40 (0.88%) Kafka
13 36 (0.79%) .NET Core
14 35 (0.77%) React Native
15 31 (0.68%) Django
16 30 (0.66%) OpenAPI
17 29 (0.64%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 187 (4.10%) Cloud Native
2 142 (3.12%) Robotics
3 128 (2.81%) Embedded Systems
4 99 (2.17%) Algorithms
5 87 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
7 68 (1.49%) AI Agents
8 55 (1.21%) Product Ownership
9 51 (1.12%) Public Cloud
10 50 (1.10%) IoT
11 47 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
12 42 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
13 25 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
14 24 (0.53%) Mobile App
15 23 (0.50%) Data Structures
15 23 (0.50%) Device Driver
16 19 (0.42%) NHS
17 17 (0.37%) ARM Cortex
18 16 (0.35%) Enterprise Software
18 16 (0.35%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 309 (6.78%) Linux
2 72 (1.58%) Windows
3 61 (1.34%) Embedded Linux
4 36 (0.79%) Android
5 27 (0.59%) FreeRTOS
6 15 (0.33%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.26%) Debian
8 11 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 9 (0.20%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.20%) VxWorks
10 8 (0.18%) macOS
11 7 (0.15%) CentOS
12 5 (0.11%) Unix
13 3 (0.066%) Gentoo
13 3 (0.066%) Windows Server
14 2 (0.044%) Robot Operating System
14 2 (0.044%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.044%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,527 (99.32%) Software Engineering
2 590 (12.94%) Agile
3 461 (10.11%) AI
4 385 (8.45%) CI/CD
5 381 (8.36%) Full-Stack Development
6 257 (5.64%) Mentoring
7 236 (5.18%) DevOps
8 230 (5.05%) Problem-Solving
9 208 (4.56%) Microservices
10 207 (4.54%) Test Automation
11 198 (4.34%) SDLC
12 177 (3.88%) Continuous Improvement
13 166 (3.64%) Computer Science
14 147 (3.23%) Software Architecture
15 143 (3.14%) Technical Leadership
16 138 (3.03%) Code Quality
17 137 (3.01%) Containerisation
18 127 (2.79%) Machine Learning
19 112 (2.46%) Software Testing
20 110 (2.41%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 654 (14.35%) C++
2 598 (13.12%) C#
3 544 (11.94%) Python
4 413 (9.06%) Java
5 268 (5.88%) TypeScript
6 247 (5.42%) JavaScript
7 231 (5.07%) C
8 182 (3.99%) SQL
9 131 (2.87%) Rust
10 79 (1.73%) Go
11 59 (1.29%) PHP
12 38 (0.83%) Embedded C
13 31 (0.68%) Ruby
14 30 (0.66%) Embedded C++
15 28 (0.61%) Ada
16 27 (0.59%) Kotlin
17 23 (0.50%) Bash
18 22 (0.48%) MATLAB
19 14 (0.31%) Scala
20 9 (0.20%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 393 (8.62%) Security Cleared
2 276 (6.06%) Degree
3 254 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 163 (3.58%) DV Cleared
5 118 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (0.99%) Master's Degree
7 43 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 26 (0.57%) PhD
9 19 (0.42%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.15%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.088%) CEH
12 4 (0.088%) Chartered Engineer
12 4 (0.088%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.088%) OSCP
13 3 (0.066%) HND
14 2 (0.044%) ISTQB
14 2 (0.044%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.044%) Numerate Degree
15 1 (0.022%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (1.40%) QA
2 50 (1.10%) Accessibility
3 8 (0.18%) DO-178B
3 8 (0.18%) IEC 61131
4 7 (0.15%) JTAG
5 5 (0.11%) WCAG
6 4 (0.088%) Data Quality
6 4 (0.088%) ECSS
7 3 (0.066%) Automotive SPICE
7 3 (0.066%) GAMP
7 3 (0.066%) ISO 26262
7 3 (0.066%) MIL-STD-1553
7 3 (0.066%) MISRA
7 3 (0.066%) MISRA C
8 2 (0.044%) AUTOSAR
8 2 (0.044%) GDPR
8 2 (0.044%) IEC 61508
8 2 (0.044%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.022%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.022%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 195 (4.28%) Docker
2 146 (3.20%) Firmware
3 41 (0.90%) Embedded Firmware
4 5 (0.11%) QEMU
5 4 (0.088%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.044%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.044%) KVM
6 2 (0.044%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.022%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 173 (3.80%) Kubernetes
2 48 (1.05%) Ansible
3 15 (0.33%) Grafana
4 11 (0.24%) Podman
5 9 (0.20%) Puppet
6 8 (0.18%) Kibana
6 8 (0.18%) logstash
7 4 (0.088%) Functional Safety
7 4 (0.088%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.044%) Packer
8 2 (0.044%) Plesk
8 2 (0.044%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.022%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.022%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.022%) SCCM
9 1 (0.022%) SCOM
9 1 (0.022%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 39 (0.86%) Microsoft
2 32 (0.70%) Siemens
3 29 (0.64%) Google
4 19 (0.42%) Salesforce
5 16 (0.35%) Databricks
6 14 (0.31%) Okta
6 14 (0.31%) Ping Identity
6 14 (0.31%) RedGate
7 12 (0.26%) Oracle
7 12 (0.26%) Rockwell
7 12 (0.26%) Splunk
8 11 (0.24%) OpenAI
8 11 (0.24%) Red Hat
9 9 (0.20%) Sage
10 8 (0.18%) New Relic
11 7 (0.15%) SaltStack
11 7 (0.15%) Thales
12 6 (0.13%) Atlassian
12 6 (0.13%) Intel
12 6 (0.13%) LexisNexis