Remote vs Office Tech Pay in the UK (November 2026)
Remote and hybrid UK tech ads advertise a median salary of about £67k, against £55k for on-site roles. That gap is real in the data, but it shrinks or reverses once you compare like with like. The figures are from live ads on salaryshown.com on 4 November 2026 (3,978 open roles, 2,435 with a salary).
Treat the headline as a starting point. Where the ad says nothing about work pattern, which is nearly half of all ads, we cannot tell.
Advertised salary by work pattern
| Work pattern | Open roles | Ads with a salary | Median advertised salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hybrid | 1,386 | 847 | £67.5k |
| Remote | 263 | 168 | £67.3k |
| On-site | 432 | 186 | £55k |
| Not stated | 1,897 | 1,234 | £52.5k |
Medians use the midpoint of each advertised range. Work pattern is read from the ad text, so "not stated" means the ad did not say, not that the job is on-site. Remote is only 6.6% of open roles and hybrid is 34.8%.
Why the headline is misleading
On-site looks cheaper overall, but the pattern is not evenly spread across employer types and places. Among ads with a salary, 691 of the 847 hybrid ads and 143 of the 168 remote ads come from recruitment agencies, which we list only when they state pay. On-site ads are more mixed, so the groups are not comparable on employer type alone.
London on-site is the clearest distortion. Of 59 London on-site ads with a salary, 35 are from startups, with a median of £122.5k. That pushes the London on-site median to £115k, higher than London hybrid or remote. Outside London the order is the opposite.
| Location | Work pattern | Ads with a salary | Median advertised salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | Hybrid | 295 | £84k |
| London | Remote | 57 | £82.5k |
| London | On-site | 59 | £115k |
| Elsewhere | Remote | 111 | £62.5k |
| Elsewhere | Hybrid | 552 | £57.8k |
| Elsewhere | On-site | 127 | £45k |
Outside London, remote ads advertise a median £17.5k more than on-site. In London, on-site is the highest, but that figure leans on 35 startup ads.
Controlling for seniority
Level matters as much as place. Here are mid-level and senior roles, split by London and elsewhere, with counts because several cells are small.
| Level and place | Hybrid | Remote | On-site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid, elsewhere | £55k (324) | £50k (65) | £42.5k (68) |
| Senior, elsewhere | £67.5k (80) | £76.3k (28) | £60k (19) |
| Mid, London | £75k (135) | £65k (24) | £95k (29) |
| Senior, London | £85k (68) | £82.5k (11) | £120k (13) |
Each cell shows the median advertised salary and the number of ads with a salary in brackets. Treat anything under about 10 ads, and the London on-site cells, with caution. Outside London, hybrid pays more than remote at mid level, but remote pays more at senior level. We do not have enough data to say that is a lasting pattern.
Which roles show a remote premium
Only a few role families have enough remote ads with a salary to compare.
| Role family | Remote (ads) | Hybrid (ads) | On-site (ads) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineering | £72.5k (58) | £67.5k (281) | £58.8k (66) |
| Infrastructure | £51k (35) | £55.3k (186) | £45k (64) |
| Security | £67k (13) | £70k (73) | £60k (6) |
| Data engineering | £85k (13) | £72.5k (47) | £65k (4) |
| Analytics | £42.5k (13) | £60k (103) | £52.5k (9) |
Software engineering shows a clean ladder of remote, then hybrid, then on-site. Analytics and infrastructure do not, and the on-site samples for security and data engineering are too small to lean on. For the full picture of each role, see the software engineer salary page and the DevOps engineer salary page.
How to use this
- Compare against your own level and place, not the all-UK median.
- If an ad does not state a work pattern, ask. Nearly half of ads leave it out.
- Do not treat a remote job as a pay cut or a rise on this evidence alone. Employer type and location explain much of the gap.
- Browse the live remote tech jobs or the full jobs list and filter by salary.
Related reading
- Which UK tech employers show the salary? explains why startups and direct employers are underrepresented in the salary figures.
- How to find the salary when a job ad doesn't show one covers benchmarking by role and level.
- Market-wide figures are on the insights page.
Figures taken 4 November 2026 from salaryshown.com/jobs.json. Advertised salary is the range in the ad, not what anyone is paid.