Software Engineer Jobs

A software engineer builds and maintains the applications, APIs, and services a business runs on. The day-to-day involves less uninterrupted coding than people expect: writing and reviewing pull requests, pairing on a tricky bug, sitting in a stand-up, and shipping features behind feature flags. Most teams work in two-week sprints on a ticket board, and a fair chunk of the week goes on reading other people's code, debugging production incidents, and keeping CI pipelines green.

The stack employers ask for has settled. Front-end roles want React with TypeScript; back-end roles want one of Node, Python, Java, or C#, sitting behind REST or GraphQL APIs with PostgreSQL or similar underneath. Cloud is now a baseline rather than a bonus — AWS (occasionally Azure or GCP) is expected, and Docker, plus some Kubernetes, turns up in most mid and senior specs. Git, a CI/CD tool such as GitHub Actions, and a working grasp of testing round it out. These technologies appear in around 90 per cent of full-stack job descriptions. Many fintechs and scale-ups have dropped the degree requirement and screen on a take-home or live coding task instead; roughly 45 per cent of UK tech hires in 2025 had no degree.

Pay splits by experience. Juniors (0-2 years) sit around £28,000-£38,000, more in London. Mid-level (3-5 years) runs roughly £45,000-£65,000, and seniors typically land £60,000-£95,000, with a London median nearer £80,000 and big-tech or AI-heavy firms pushing base past £100,000 before equity. Fully remote roles still exist but have thinned; hybrid at two or three days in the office is now the norm, averaging about 2.3 office days a week. Progression runs junior to mid to senior, then forks: tech lead and engineering manager on the people track, or staff and principal engineer for those who prefer to stay hands-on.