Software Engineer Job Trends

Software Engineer
UK

The median Software Engineer salary in the UK is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 December 2025.

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

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 76 26 60
Rank change year-on-year -50 +34 -19
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 1,758 3,977 2,377
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 3.12% 6.40% 4.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.47% 6.81% 4.94%
Number of salaries quoted 1,240 2,288 1,818
10th Percentile £45,000 £41,458 £43,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £50,514 £50,686
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £65,465 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +14.57% -3.02% -
75th Percentile £97,500 £93,750 £95,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £116,250 £122,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 50,704 58,391 48,070
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.90% 94.00% 95.24%
Number of salaries quoted 31,404 32,367 37,457
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £58,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Software Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the UK

Software Engineer
Top 17 Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 13 December 2025. 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
England -47 1,541 £75,000 +11.11% 1,965
UK excluding London -54 1,073 £65,000 +8.33% 1,807
London -23 616 £102,500 +7.89% 365
Work from Home -47 571 £80,000 +6.67% 1,161
South East -56 252 £65,000 +8.33% 455
South West -17 228 £65,000 +13.04% 260
North of England -62 208 £65,000 +8.33% 408
Scotland -19 142 £60,000 - 133
Midlands -48 113 £65,000 +26.83% 265
East of England -52 104 £70,000 +3.70% 262
North West -50 95 £70,000 +16.67% 225
Yorkshire -43 88 £55,000 -8.33% 150
West Midlands -22 67 £60,000 +2.13% 131
East Midlands -49 49 £65,000 +30.00% 118
North East -35 25 £56,500 -7.38% 34
Wales -38 20 £57,500 -4.17% 45
Northern Ireland -29 7 £85,000 +13.33% 22

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 13 December 2025, 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 featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 1,740 (98.98%) Software Engineering
2 531 (30.20%) Agile
3 478 (27.19%) AWS
4 452 (25.71%) Java
5 401 (22.81%) Python
6 331 (18.83%) CI/CD
7 330 (18.77%) React
8 320 (18.20%) TypeScript
9 294 (16.72%) JavaScript
10 259 (14.73%) C#
11 242 (13.77%) C++
11 242 (13.77%) Kubernetes
12 236 (13.42%) Azure
13 224 (12.74%) Full-Stack Development
14 217 (12.34%) Microservices
15 216 (12.29%) AI
16 213 (12.12%) DevOps
17 198 (11.26%) Degree
18 189 (10.75%) Mentoring
19 188 (10.69%) SQL
20 185 (10.52%) Security Cleared
21 184 (10.47%) .NET
22 179 (10.18%) Problem-Solving
23 174 (9.90%) SDLC
24 172 (9.78%) GCP
25 168 (9.56%) Fintech
26 162 (9.22%) Computer Science
27 146 (8.30%) AngularJS
28 142 (8.08%) Linux
29 139 (7.91%) Node.js

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 100 (5.69%) Apache Airflow
2 65 (3.70%) Apache
3 17 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.68%) IIS
5 10 (0.57%) Confluence
6 4 (0.23%) CMS
7 3 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.11%) Apache Solr
8 2 (0.11%) ArchestrA
8 2 (0.11%) Camunda
8 2 (0.11%) FactoryTalk
8 2 (0.11%) nginx
8 2 (0.11%) NServiceBus
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.11%) WinCC
9 1 (0.057%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.057%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.057%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.057%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.057%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 5 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.17%) Adobe XD
2 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.17%) Sketch
3 1 (0.057%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.057%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (0.057%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.057%) Endur
1 1 (0.057%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.057%) Q-Pulse
1 1 (0.057%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 478 (27.19%) AWS
2 236 (13.42%) Azure
3 172 (9.78%) GCP
4 99 (5.63%) dbt
5 69 (3.92%) SaaS
6 62 (3.53%) GitHub
7 56 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (3.13%) Snowflake
9 50 (2.84%) Serverless
10 45 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
11 37 (2.10%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.71%) Amazon S3
13 24 (1.37%) Amazon ECS
14 22 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
16 12 (0.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 12 (0.68%) GitHub Copilot
17 9 (0.51%) Amazon Bedrock
17 9 (0.51%) Cloud Run
17 9 (0.51%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 35 (1.99%) Wireless
2 21 (1.19%) Software-Defined Radio
3 18 (1.02%) RS-232
4 16 (0.91%) Bluetooth
5 15 (0.85%) Multicast
6 13 (0.74%) HTTP
7 9 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.46%) DNS
9 5 (0.28%) Modbus
10 4 (0.23%) AMQP
10 4 (0.23%) Ethernet
10 4 (0.23%) SMTP
11 3 (0.17%) ATM
11 3 (0.17%) Internet
12 2 (0.11%) 3G
12 2 (0.11%) Firewall
12 2 (0.11%) HTTPS
12 2 (0.11%) Profibus
12 2 (0.11%) SSL
12 2 (0.11%) UWB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (5.86%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.69%) Amazon Athena
3 97 (5.52%) Apache Iceberg
4 94 (5.35%) Apache Arrow
4 94 (5.35%) Dremio
5 56 (3.19%) NoSQL
6 53 (3.01%) Data Lake
7 51 (2.90%) Relational Database
8 50 (2.84%) MongoDB
9 49 (2.79%) Apache Ignite
10 43 (2.45%) SQL Server
11 29 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
12 27 (1.54%) MySQL
13 26 (1.48%) DynamoDB
14 18 (1.02%) Redis
15 16 (0.91%) Big Data
16 15 (0.85%) BigQuery
17 12 (0.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 11 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 9 (0.51%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 100 (5.69%) Git
2 45 (2.56%) JIRA
3 26 (1.48%) Jenkins
4 22 (1.25%) GitLab
5 20 (1.14%) JUnit
6 15 (0.85%) Cypress.io
6 15 (0.85%) TeamCity
7 14 (0.80%) Visual Studio
8 11 (0.63%) Maven
9 7 (0.40%) Cucumber
9 7 (0.40%) Selenium
10 6 (0.34%) Bitbucket
10 6 (0.34%) Vite
11 5 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
12 4 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 4 (0.23%) CircleCI
12 4 (0.23%) Gradle
12 4 (0.23%) MLflow
12 4 (0.23%) Subversion
12 4 (0.23%) webpack
General
1 484 (27.53%) Finance
2 184 (10.47%) Banking
3 171 (9.73%) Law
4 165 (9.39%) Social Skills
5 157 (8.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 135 (7.68%) Front Office
7 71 (4.04%) Marketing
8 69 (3.92%) Manufacturing
9 66 (3.75%) Investment Banking
10 58 (3.30%) Electronics
11 49 (2.79%) Financial Institution
12 43 (2.45%) Analytical Skills
13 41 (2.33%) Public Sector
14 39 (2.22%) Retail
15 27 (1.54%) Legal
16 26 (1.48%) Games
17 23 (1.31%) Telecoms
18 20 (1.14%) Aerospace
19 19 (1.08%) Back Office
19 19 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (18.77%) React
2 184 (10.47%) .NET
3 146 (8.30%) AngularJS
4 139 (7.91%) Node.js
5 119 (6.77%) Spring
6 109 (6.20%) Kafka
7 97 (5.52%) Pandas
8 96 (5.46%) NumPy
9 94 (5.35%) SciPy
10 92 (5.23%) Vue
11 90 (5.12%) Spring Boot
12 78 (4.44%) RESTful
13 63 (3.58%) GraphQL
14 61 (3.47%) REST
15 55 (3.13%) gRPC
16 51 (2.90%) Protocol Buffers
17 49 (2.79%) HTML
18 47 (2.67%) CSS
19 45 (2.56%) .NET Core
19 45 (2.56%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 199 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 137 (7.79%) Fixed Income
3 113 (6.43%) Equities
4 105 (5.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 99 (5.63%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (4.84%) Algorithms
7 69 (3.92%) Derivative
8 60 (3.41%) Embedded Systems
9 58 (3.30%) Hedge funds
10 49 (2.79%) Pricing Data
11 39 (2.22%) Greenfield Project
12 35 (1.99%) Product Ownership
13 32 (1.82%) Data Structures
14 29 (1.65%) Public Cloud
15 25 (1.42%) Legacy Code
16 24 (1.37%) IoT
17 22 (1.25%) e-Learning
18 21 (1.19%) Robotics
19 19 (1.08%) RISC-V
20 18 (1.02%) Manufacturing Execution System
Operating Systems
1 142 (8.08%) Linux
2 38 (2.16%) Windows
3 31 (1.76%) Embedded Linux
4 17 (0.97%) Android
5 13 (0.74%) Unix
6 8 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 4 (0.23%) FreeRTOS
8 2 (0.11%) CentOS
8 2 (0.11%) Debian
8 2 (0.11%) Mac OS X
8 2 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.057%) Fedora
9 1 (0.057%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.057%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.057%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,740 (98.98%) Software Engineering
2 531 (30.20%) Agile
3 331 (18.83%) CI/CD
4 224 (12.74%) Full-Stack Development
5 217 (12.34%) Microservices
6 216 (12.29%) AI
7 213 (12.12%) DevOps
8 189 (10.75%) Mentoring
9 179 (10.18%) Problem-Solving
10 174 (9.90%) SDLC
11 168 (9.56%) Fintech
12 162 (9.22%) Computer Science
13 133 (7.57%) Machine Learning
14 127 (7.22%) Investment Management
15 112 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
16 106 (6.03%) Asset Management
17 97 (5.52%) Test Automation
18 92 (5.23%) TDD
19 89 (5.06%) Operational Stability
20 83 (4.72%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 452 (25.71%) Java
2 401 (22.81%) Python
3 320 (18.20%) TypeScript
4 294 (16.72%) JavaScript
5 259 (14.73%) C#
6 242 (13.77%) C++
7 188 (10.69%) SQL
8 126 (7.17%) C
9 89 (5.06%) Go
10 63 (3.58%) Rust
11 53 (3.01%) Kotlin
12 29 (1.65%) Ruby
13 27 (1.54%) PHP
14 24 (1.37%) Ada
15 19 (1.08%) Embedded C++
15 19 (1.08%) Scala
15 19 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 18 (1.02%) PL/SQL
17 15 (0.85%) Embedded C
18 14 (0.80%) Ada 95
Qualifications
1 198 (11.26%) Degree
2 185 (10.52%) Security Cleared
3 109 (6.20%) SC Cleared
4 91 (5.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (4.38%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.28%) Master's Degree
7 23 (1.31%) PhD
8 17 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 15 (0.85%) Chartered Engineer
10 8 (0.46%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.28%) Azure Certification
12 3 (0.17%) MCP
13 2 (0.11%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.11%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.057%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 1 (0.057%) CREST Certified
14 1 (0.057%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (2.22%) QA
2 16 (0.91%) Accessibility
3 14 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 4 (0.23%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.23%) GDPR
4 4 (0.23%) MISRA
4 4 (0.23%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.17%) ECSS
5 3 (0.17%) IEC 61131
5 3 (0.17%) IEC 61508
5 3 (0.17%) JTAG
6 2 (0.11%) ISO 9000
6 2 (0.11%) ISO 9001
6 2 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.11%) MISRA C
6 2 (0.11%) PSD2
6 2 (0.11%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.057%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.057%) SLA
7 1 (0.057%) WCAG
System Software
1 132 (7.51%) Docker
2 57 (3.24%) Firmware
3 39 (2.22%) Embedded Firmware
4 18 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.11%) HDFS
6 2 (0.11%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 242 (13.77%) Kubernetes
2 87 (4.95%) Terraform
3 31 (1.76%) Grafana
4 15 (0.85%) Ansible
5 14 (0.80%) Kibana
6 6 (0.34%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.28%) Argo
8 4 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.17%) logstash
9 3 (0.17%) Puppet
10 1 (0.057%) Functional Safety
10 1 (0.057%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.057%) Istio
10 1 (0.057%) ITRS Geneos
10 1 (0.057%) Mesos
10 1 (0.057%) Netcool
10 1 (0.057%) Netcool/OMNIbus
10 1 (0.057%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.057%) Salt
10 1 (0.057%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 40 (2.28%) Google
1 40 (2.28%) Microsoft
2 39 (2.22%) Oracle
3 19 (1.08%) SAP
4 15 (0.85%) Databricks
5 14 (0.80%) Guidewire
5 14 (0.80%) Sage
5 14 (0.80%) Xamarin
6 11 (0.63%) Palantir
7 9 (0.51%) Atlassian
7 9 (0.51%) OpenAI
8 6 (0.34%) Dynatrace
8 6 (0.34%) MuleSoft
9 5 (0.28%) Splunk
9 5 (0.28%) Zoho
10 4 (0.23%) Rockwell
10 4 (0.23%) Siemens
11 3 (0.17%) ForgeRock
11 3 (0.17%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.17%) SaltStack