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2026 Technology Salary Guide
The intelligence behind your next hire. Salary benchmarks and hiring insights across London and the North of England.
What's inside:
The emergence of AI Roles
The transitional and specialist roles we're seeing built out across technology businesses right now.
How Engineering teams are being redefined
How leading companies are building leaner, higher-impact teams and the skillsets they're prioritising to get there.
Building transparent career frameworks
How to build pay and progression frameworks that work — with practical insights from Cleo's public-facing model.
Equity insights for scale-up talent leaders
How to structure, price, and communicate equity packages that close candidates, with guidance from the EQT Early Stage Talent team.
Introducing AI to the hiring loop
How talent teams are assessing AI competency at interview and building workflows that make their hiring faster and sharper.
The definitive guide to technology salaries and hiring trends across London and the North of England.
Our 2026 Technology Salary Guide is built from live placement data, direct candidate and client conversations, and over two decades of specialist market knowledge.
After two years of correction — redundancies, hiring freezes, and cautious headcount planning — confidence is returning to the UK tech hiring market. But the landscape has shifted with it. Businesses are hiring with precision: fewer roles, higher bars, and a sharper focus on impact from day one.
This guide tells you exactly where the market has moved, and what it takes to compete for the people who will define your team in 2026.
Permanent & contract benchmarks across:
C-Suite & Technology Leadership · Software Engineering · Platform, Infrastructure & Security · Data · Artificial Intelligence · Product & Design
"Burns Sheehan’s salary guide is a tool I've regularly referenced over the years. The data covers contractors as well as permanent roles which is really useful - for contract roles in particular I lean on it to get a sense check on the market."
"Having a trusted source of data to share with key hiring leaders is so valuable. We use it for future planning and to keep our salaries competitive."