Software Engineer vs DevOps vs Cyber Security Pay in the UK (November 2026)
Cyber security roles advertise the highest median salary of the three at £65k, ahead of software engineering at £58k and DevOps at £50k. The figures are from live UK ads on salaryshown.com on 11 November 2026, using the salary pages updated on 10 November.
Cyber security has the smallest sample, so its ranking is the least settled. The three groups also differ in how many ads show a salary and in who posts them.
The headline comparison
| Software engineer | DevOps engineer | Cyber security engineer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open roles | 1,472 | 839 | 255 |
| Ads with a salary | 928 | 648 | 175 |
| Median advertised salary | £58k | £50k | £65k |
| Middle half of ads | £45k to £78k | £35k to £68k | £48k to £82k |
| Highest ad | £395k | £485k | £325k |
| Employer ads showing a salary | 19% | 34% | 30% |
Medians use the midpoint of each advertised range. "DevOps engineer" covers our DevOps, cloud and infrastructure family, and "cyber security engineer" covers our security family. Each is built from job titles, not from a fixed definition of the job. The last row counts startup and direct-employer ads only, because agencies appear on SalaryShown only when they state pay.
Advertised salary by level
Level matters more than role. Cyber security is ahead of both other roles from junior to lead level, and the gap is widest at senior level.
| Level | Software engineer | DevOps engineer | Cyber security engineer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | £32k (45) | £28k (20) | £34k (16) |
| Mid-level | £51k (514) | £42k (395) | £58k (94) |
| Senior | £70k (149) | £57k (84) | £80k (21) |
| Lead / Staff | £68k (195) | £62k (125) | £83k (36) |
| Head / Director | £105k (22) | £78k (23) | £94k (8) |
Brackets show the number of ads with a salary. Treat the cyber security senior (21) and head or director (8) cells with caution: a few ads can move a median that small by several thousand pounds. Head or director is the one level where software engineering is ahead (£105k against £94k), and the cyber security figure rests on 8 ads.
Software engineering's lead and staff median (£68k) is lower than its senior median (£70k). We can see that in the ads but cannot say why.
London against the rest of the UK
| Role | London median (ads) | Elsewhere median (ads) |
|---|---|---|
| Software engineer | £90k (90) | £54k (838) |
| DevOps engineer | £78k (97) | £46k (551) |
| Cyber security engineer | £85k (46) | £59k (129) |
The London gap is £36k for software engineering, £32k for DevOps and £26k for cyber security. Cyber security has the smallest gap and the highest median outside London, though 129 ads is a modest sample.
Who is advertising
The three groups are made up of different employer types. We tallied these counts ourselves from the full jobs list on 11 November 2026, using ads with a salary.
| Source | Software engineer | DevOps engineer | Cyber security engineer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Startups | £108.5k (70) | £111.3k (23) | £115k (13) |
| Direct employers (Reed) | £47.7k (58) | £38.3k (76) | £34k (21) |
| Agencies | £55.1k (800) | £50k (549) | £65k (141) |
Agency ads are 86% of salaried software ads, 85% of DevOps and 81% of cyber security. So the headline medians are mostly agency medians. Startup ads advertise far more in all three roles, but they are a small share of the sample (70, 23 and 13 ads).
Direct employers advertise the lowest medians here, but only 58, 76 and 21 of their ads show a salary. We would not read a ranking of employer types into those counts.
What to do with this
- Compare against your own level and location, not the all-UK median. A mid-level DevOps engineer outside London sees a different market from the £50k headline.
- If you work in cyber security, check the sample size before using a level median. Senior and above rest on fewer than 40 ads each.
- When a job ad shows no salary, the role pages give a range to ask about. The post on finding the salary when a job ad doesn't show one explains how.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure above comes from the live pages: the software engineer, DevOps engineer and cyber security salary pages, plus our own tally of the jobs list for the source split. You can see the underlying roles on the software engineer jobs, DevOps engineer jobs and cyber security jobs pages, or browse everything on the jobs list.
For two other comparisons in this series, see data engineer vs data scientist salary in the UK and the AI pay premium: ML engineers vs software engineers.