(What the latest data tells us about pay, progression and market pressure)
Conversations about salary can be hard to navigate, and for some, they feel harder than ever.
Candidates are coming into discussions convinced they are underpaid. Employers feel they are already stretching budgets. Both sides leave frustrated, usually believing the other has unrealistic expectations.
The truth sits somewhere in the middle.
Software engineering salaries have not fallen off a cliff. But they have stopped behaving in simple, predictable ways. Some roles are holding firm, while others are still climbing..
The biggest shift is not pay itself, it is alignment. Expectations shaped by the hiring boom are colliding with a market that has become far more selective.
We see this daily across UK and US hiring conversations.
Our latest Orbis Salary Guide reflects what is happening on the ground right now. It is based on live roles, real offers and accepted packages, not scraped averages or outdated benchmarks. And it tells a much more nuanced story than most salary headlines suggest.
One of the biggest misconceptions we hear is that engineering salaries have collapsed. They have not.
What has changed is where the money is flowing.
Top engineers with in-demand skills are still commanding strong compensation. In some areas, particularly platform engineering, security, cloud infrastructure and senior data roles, salaries remain competitive and in certain cases continue to rise. According to our latest guide, senior engineers with deep domain expertise are still seeing packages comfortably above pre-2023 levels, particularly where commercial impact is clear.
Where the market has tightened is in generalist roles and inflated mid-level expectations.
During the hiring surge, titles moved quickly and salaries followed. That momentum has slowed. Many engineers who progressed rapidly during that period are now discovering that the market is less forgiving when skill depth does not match the title on paper.
This is where most friction now sits.
Remote work flattened salary bands for a while, but that effect is fading.
Companies are quietly reintroducing geographic logic into compensation models. Not always explicitly, but it shows up in offers. UK salaries remain materially lower than US equivalents for comparable roles. Even within regions, London and major US hubs continue to outpace secondary markets.
Our salary guide shows clear divergence here. US-based senior engineers, particularly in fintech, payments and high-growth SaaS, are still commanding significantly higher base pay than UK counterparts. Equity structures also differ sharply, with US packages more likely to include meaningful upside, while UK compensation skews heavier toward base.
Remote work has not removed location from salary decisions, it has simply made those decisions less visible.
Another shift we see repeatedly is the declining value of job titles.
Engineering managers, staff engineers and lead developers can all mean very different things depending on the organisation. Employers are no longer paying for the label. They are paying for what someone can actually do.
Our guide reflects this clearly. Engineers with hands-on experience in modern architectures, scalable systems and regulated environments consistently outperform peers with similar titles but narrower exposure. The gap is widening.
This is particularly evident in regulated sectors, where engineers who understand compliance, resilience and risk alongside technical delivery are commanding a premium - that combination is harder to find and harder to replace.
Most failed salary conversations do not break down because of money alone, they break down because expectations are misaligned.
Candidates anchor to previous offers, online averages or peer anecdotes, whereas employers anchor to internal bands or legacy frameworks - both are often out of date.
Our latest Orbis Salary Guide highlights this gap clearly. In several roles, candidate expectations are consistently 10 to 20 percent higher than what the market is actually paying right now. Not because employers are underpaying, but because the market has recalibrated faster than perception.
This gap creates stalled processes, prolonged hiring cycles and missed opportunities on both sides.
In a market like this, salary benchmarking is no longer a nice-to-have.
Hiring without current data increases risk. So does job hunting without a realistic view of the market. Misaligned expectations waste time, erode trust and lead to poor decisions under pressure.
Our salary guide exists to close that gap.
It provides clear benchmarks across software engineering roles in both the UK and US, grounded in real hiring data. It reflects how compensation varies by skill set, seniority and sector, not just by title.
Used properly, it allows companies to hire competitively without overspending and enables engineers to position themselves realistically without underselling their value.
The biggest mistake right now is assuming this is a downturn.
It is not.
It is a more disciplined market that rewards capability, relevance and clarity. Engineers who understand where they sit, what they offer and how that maps to current demand are still moving well. Companies that price roles accurately and communicate clearly are still hiring strong talent, but those relying on outdated assumptions are the ones struggling.
If you are hiring or considering a move, grounding decisions in current data is no longer optional. It is the difference between momentum and stagnation.
You can explore the full breakdown of software engineering salary benchmarks, trends and role-specific insights in our latest Orbis Salary Guide.