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 25 August 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 56 14
Rank change year-on-year +34 -42 +60
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 3,991 1,484 5,035
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 5.02% 4.27% 8.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.33% 4.78% 8.83%
Number of salaries quoted 3,142 627 2,845
10th Percentile £45,000 £43,750 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £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 £80,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £93,750 £95,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £78,810 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.18% +31.35% -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 74,850 31,070 57,020
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.23% 89.40% 95.08%
Number of salaries quoted 51,898 17,899 36,723
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £28,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,520 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.74% -4.96% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% - -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 25 August 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 25 August 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 +20 1,024 £66,250 -3.28% 100
South East +79 1,006 £65,000 -3.70% 124
South West +33 769 £65,000 - 164
North West +9 562 £70,000 -6.04% 64
East of England +92 506 £70,000 +27.27% 70
Midlands +54 403 £63,750 -1.92% 56
Yorkshire +68 268 £60,000 -5.88% 21
East Midlands +34 210 £55,000 -21.43% 36
North East +21 194 £70,000 +24.44% 15
West Midlands +41 193 £65,000 +4.00% 20
Scotland -12 151 £70,000 +8.11% 42
Wales +7 119 £57,500 -13.53% 14
Northern Ireland -66 14 £90,000 +80.00% 1
Software Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 August 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 3,952 (99.02%) Software Engineering
2 647 (16.21%) C++
3 603 (15.11%) C#
4 516 (12.93%) Python
5 490 (12.28%) Agile
6 402 (10.07%) AWS
7 399 (10.00%) Security Cleared
8 361 (9.05%) Full-Stack Development
9 357 (8.95%) CI/CD
10 352 (8.82%) AI
11 333 (8.34%) Java
12 318 (7.97%) .NET
13 291 (7.29%) Degree
14 283 (7.09%) Azure
15 281 (7.04%) Linux
16 266 (6.66%) JavaScript
17 262 (6.56%) C
18 257 (6.44%) Mentoring
19 254 (6.36%) SC Cleared
20 245 (6.14%) TypeScript
21 235 (5.89%) DevOps
22 215 (5.39%) Problem-Solving
23 209 (5.24%) React
24 199 (4.99%) SDLC
25 197 (4.94%) Test Automation
26 194 (4.86%) Microservices
27 184 (4.61%) SQL
28 179 (4.49%) Computer Science
29 177 (4.43%) Docker
30 176 (4.41%) Continuous Improvement

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 24 (0.60%) Apache
2 15 (0.38%) SharePoint Server
3 9 (0.23%) Confluence
4 8 (0.20%) FactoryTalk
5 7 (0.18%) WinCC
6 6 (0.15%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.075%) Apache Solr
8 3 (0.075%) CMS
8 3 (0.075%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.050%) ArchestrA
9 2 (0.050%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.050%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.050%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.050%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.050%) WordPress
10 1 (0.025%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.025%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.025%) Umbraco
Applications
1 14 (0.35%) Lightworks
2 8 (0.20%) Simulink
3 4 (0.10%) EPLAN
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.075%) CANalyzer
5 2 (0.050%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.025%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.025%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.025%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.025%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 402 (10.07%) AWS
2 283 (7.09%) Azure
3 150 (3.76%) SaaS
4 109 (2.73%) GCP
5 70 (1.75%) Serverless
6 53 (1.33%) GitHub
7 38 (0.95%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (0.85%) Firebase
9 32 (0.80%) Anthropic Claude
10 27 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
11 21 (0.53%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (0.43%) Amazon EKS
12 17 (0.43%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (0.40%) Amazon S3
13 16 (0.40%) Cloud Run
14 12 (0.30%) OpenShift
15 11 (0.28%) Slack
16 9 (0.23%) AWS Step Functions
16 9 (0.23%) GitHub Copilot
17 8 (0.20%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.50%) Wireless
2 35 (0.88%) Ethernet
3 28 (0.70%) Bluetooth
4 24 (0.60%) Modbus
5 20 (0.50%) MQTT
5 20 (0.50%) RS-232
5 20 (0.50%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
6 17 (0.43%) ZigBee
7 15 (0.38%) Profibus
8 12 (0.30%) RS-485
9 10 (0.25%) ATM
9 10 (0.25%) LTE
10 7 (0.18%) 5G
11 6 (0.15%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.13%) AMQP
12 5 (0.13%) Network Security
13 4 (0.10%) Broadband
14 3 (0.075%) Firewall
14 3 (0.075%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
2 60 (1.50%) SQL Server
3 57 (1.43%) MongoDB
4 48 (1.20%) NoSQL
5 40 (1.00%) MySQL
6 30 (0.75%) Relational Database
7 19 (0.48%) Redis
8 18 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.40%) Pinecone
10 15 (0.38%) DynamoDB
11 13 (0.33%) Big Data
12 7 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.18%) Hadoop
13 5 (0.13%) Cloudera CDH
13 5 (0.13%) FileMaker
14 4 (0.10%) Data Lake
14 4 (0.10%) MariaDB
14 4 (0.10%) Neo4j
15 3 (0.075%) Amazon RDS
15 3 (0.075%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 142 (3.56%) Git
2 50 (1.25%) GitLab
3 35 (0.88%) JIRA
4 34 (0.85%) Jenkins
5 20 (0.50%) Claude Code
5 20 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
6 14 (0.35%) Visual Studio
7 11 (0.28%) Cucumber
8 9 (0.23%) JUnit
8 9 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.20%) GDB
10 7 (0.18%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.18%) LabVIEW
10 7 (0.18%) Moq
11 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.15%) CMake
11 6 (0.15%) Yeoman
12 5 (0.13%) Mockito
12 5 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
12 5 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 225 (5.64%) Manufacturing
2 208 (5.21%) Electronics
3 187 (4.69%) Social Skills
4 140 (3.51%) Finance
5 122 (3.06%) Aerospace
6 100 (2.51%) Public Sector
7 85 (2.13%) Automotive
8 58 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 55 (1.38%) Aviation
10 48 (1.20%) Analytical Skills
11 38 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
12 35 (0.88%) Retail
13 27 (0.68%) Law
14 25 (0.63%) Games
15 24 (0.60%) Military
16 17 (0.43%) Telecoms
17 16 (0.40%) Marketing
18 15 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
19 14 (0.35%) Tech for Good
20 9 (0.23%) Agriculture
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (7.97%) .NET
2 209 (5.24%) React
3 118 (2.96%) Node.js
4 100 (2.51%) Vue
5 94 (2.36%) Terraform
6 81 (2.03%) WPF
7 74 (1.85%) AngularJS
8 71 (1.78%) CSS
9 67 (1.68%) Spring
10 62 (1.55%) Spring Boot
11 60 (1.50%) REST
12 57 (1.43%) HTML
13 54 (1.35%) RESTful
14 37 (0.93%) Next.js
15 35 (0.88%) Django
16 33 (0.83%) .NET Core
17 31 (0.78%) .NET Framework
18 26 (0.65%) React Native
19 24 (0.60%) Yocto
20 23 (0.58%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 174 (4.36%) Cloud Native
2 128 (3.21%) Embedded Systems
3 110 (2.76%) Robotics
4 105 (2.63%) Algorithms
5 84 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
6 69 (1.73%) Product Ownership
7 65 (1.63%) AI Agents
8 62 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
9 57 (1.43%) IoT
10 46 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
11 33 (0.83%) Public Cloud
12 29 (0.73%) Mobile App
13 28 (0.70%) Data Structures
14 26 (0.65%) Device Driver
15 21 (0.53%) ARM Cortex
15 21 (0.53%) Cyber Threat
16 20 (0.50%) Distributed Computing
17 18 (0.45%) Educational Technology
17 18 (0.45%) Hedge funds
18 16 (0.40%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 281 (7.04%) Linux
2 65 (1.63%) Windows
3 55 (1.38%) Embedded Linux
4 30 (0.75%) FreeRTOS
5 29 (0.73%) Android
6 10 (0.25%) Debian
7 7 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.15%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.13%) CentOS
9 5 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.13%) Unix
9 5 (0.13%) VxWorks
9 5 (0.13%) Windows Server
10 3 (0.075%) Gentoo
11 2 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.050%) SafeRTOS
11 2 (0.050%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.050%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.050%) zOS
12 1 (0.025%) ThreadX
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,952 (99.02%) Software Engineering
2 490 (12.28%) Agile
3 361 (9.05%) Full-Stack Development
4 357 (8.95%) CI/CD
5 352 (8.82%) AI
6 257 (6.44%) Mentoring
7 235 (5.89%) DevOps
8 215 (5.39%) Problem-Solving
9 199 (4.99%) SDLC
10 197 (4.94%) Test Automation
11 194 (4.86%) Microservices
12 179 (4.49%) Computer Science
13 176 (4.41%) Continuous Improvement
14 133 (3.33%) Software Architecture
15 129 (3.23%) Containerisation
16 125 (3.13%) Technical Leadership
17 118 (2.96%) Code Quality
18 112 (2.81%) Software Testing
19 102 (2.56%) TDD
20 100 (2.51%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 647 (16.21%) C++
2 603 (15.11%) C#
3 516 (12.93%) Python
4 333 (8.34%) Java
5 266 (6.66%) JavaScript
6 262 (6.56%) C
7 245 (6.14%) TypeScript
8 184 (4.61%) SQL
9 128 (3.21%) Rust
10 69 (1.73%) Go
11 59 (1.48%) PHP
12 46 (1.15%) Embedded C
13 30 (0.75%) Ruby
14 28 (0.70%) Embedded C++
15 21 (0.53%) Ada
16 17 (0.43%) Bash
16 17 (0.43%) COBOL
16 17 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 16 (0.40%) Scala
18 15 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 399 (10.00%) Security Cleared
2 291 (7.29%) Degree
3 254 (6.36%) SC Cleared
4 176 (4.41%) DV Cleared
5 127 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 55 (1.38%) Master's Degree
7 32 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 26 (0.65%) PhD
9 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.23%) HND
10 8 (0.20%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.15%) HNC
12 5 (0.13%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.13%) CEH
12 5 (0.13%) OSCP
13 4 (0.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.075%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 2 (0.050%) Numerate Degree
15 2 (0.050%) NVQ Level 3
16 1 (0.025%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (1.78%) QA
2 50 (1.25%) Accessibility
3 10 (0.25%) IEC 61131
4 8 (0.20%) IEC 61508
4 8 (0.20%) MISRA
4 8 (0.20%) MISRA C
5 6 (0.15%) JTAG
6 5 (0.13%) DO-178B
7 4 (0.10%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.075%) ECSS
8 3 (0.075%) GAMP
8 3 (0.075%) GDPR
8 3 (0.075%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.075%) MIL-STD-1553
8 3 (0.075%) WCAG
9 2 (0.050%) Automotive SPICE
9 2 (0.050%) AUTOSAR
9 2 (0.050%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.025%) HAZOP
10 1 (0.025%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 177 (4.43%) Docker
2 168 (4.21%) Firmware
3 51 (1.28%) Embedded Firmware
4 8 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.18%) QEMU
6 6 (0.15%) KVM
6 6 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
7 5 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.050%) Active Directory
8 2 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 136 (3.41%) Kubernetes
2 39 (0.98%) Ansible
3 13 (0.33%) Grafana
4 7 (0.18%) Kibana
4 7 (0.18%) logstash
4 7 (0.18%) Podman
4 7 (0.18%) Puppet
5 5 (0.13%) Functional Safety
6 3 (0.075%) Plesk
6 3 (0.075%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.075%) SCCM
6 3 (0.075%) SCOM
6 3 (0.075%) SCOrch
7 2 (0.050%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 37 (0.93%) Siemens
2 31 (0.78%) Microsoft
3 21 (0.53%) Google
4 17 (0.43%) Oracle
4 17 (0.43%) Rockwell
5 16 (0.40%) Salesforce
6 14 (0.35%) Okta
6 14 (0.35%) Ping Identity
7 12 (0.30%) Splunk
8 10 (0.25%) Allen-Bradley
8 10 (0.25%) OpenAI
9 8 (0.20%) VMware
10 7 (0.18%) Atlassian
10 7 (0.18%) Databricks
11 6 (0.15%) Intel
12 5 (0.13%) IBM
12 5 (0.13%) Red Hat
12 5 (0.13%) SaltStack
12 5 (0.13%) Xamarin
13 4 (0.10%) New Relic