Software Developer

Software developers write, test and maintain the code behind applications, websites, internal business systems and the services that run behind the scenes (like payment processing or data pipelines). Most work in a team on an existing product rather than building something from scratch, and much of the job is changing and fixing code other people wrote. They build for whoever the employer serves - customers of a tech product, or other departments inside a bank, retailer, hospital trust or government agency.

Starting salary: £25k–£40k
Live graduate jobs: 36 open now
Main way in: Graduate schemes at large employers
They usually ask for: A degree in computer science, software engineering or a related…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £25,000–£40,000 to start, though this varies widely. Lower end tends to be smaller employers, the public sector and regions outside the South East; the upper end and above is more common in London, finance and large technology employers. Some specialist or high-paying employers start considerably higher, so treat these as rough bands rather than a rule.

What you'd actually do

Picking up a 'ticket' (a small, defined unit of work - a bug to fix or a feature to add) from a shared board, working out what the existing code does, and changing it
Writing code in whatever language the team uses, plus automated tests that check the code still works when someone changes it later
Opening a pull request - submitting your change so colleagues can read it and comment before it goes live - and reviewing other people's in return
A short daily stand-up meeting where the team says what they're working on and what's blocking them, usually 10-15 minutes

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Debugging: reproducing a problem a user reported, reading logs and error traces, and narrowing down which part of the system is at fault
Talking to non-technical colleagues - a product manager, designer or business stakeholder - to pin down what they actually want before building it
Occasionally dealing with something broken in production (the live system), either as part of a rota or because it's in your team's area

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes at large employers - banks, insurers, retailers, telecoms, consultancies, defence and government bodies. These usually open in the autumn for the following September and involve online tests, a coding exercise and an assessment centre. Common and well-signposted.
Direct application to a 'junior' or 'graduate' developer advert at a small or mid-sized company or startup. Very common and often faster, but there's less structured training and you're expected to be useful sooner.
Converting a summer internship or industrial placement year into a full-time offer. This is one of the most reliable routes into the bigger employers and many reserve a large share of graduate places for returning interns.
A degree apprenticeship in software engineering or digital technology solutions - an alternative to the traditional graduate route, where you work and study for a degree simultaneously. Increasingly common at large employers.

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Conversion routes for non-computing graduates: an MSc computer science conversion course, a coding bootcamp, or self-taught plus a strong portfolio. These work, but tend to be harder at employers with rigid graduate scheme filters and easier at smaller firms who will just look at your code.
Internal moves - starting in a technical support, QA (testing) or data role and moving across into development. Reasonably common and worth knowing about if your first application round doesn't land.

What employers ask for

A degree in computer science, software engineering or a related technical subject is the most common background, but the subject matters less than you'd think - maths, physics, engineering and self-taught humanities graduates all get hired, particularly outside the largest graduate schemes.
Many large employers filter on a 2:1, and some still ask for specific UCAS points or A-level grades. Plenty of smaller employers and startups don't filter on grades at all and will judge you on a technical exercise instead. This varies a lot.
Evidence you can actually write code: personal projects, a GitHub profile, university coursework you can talk about in depth, a hackathon, contributions to open-source. This often carries more weight than the degree classification.
Competence in at least one mainstream language - commonly Java, Python, C#, JavaScript/TypeScript, or C++ depending on the sector. Employers generally care that you can program well in something, not that you already know their stack.

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Familiarity with Git (the version control system almost every team uses to track changes to code) - you'll be expected to pick this up fast if you haven't used it.
Security clearance is required for defence, some government and some finance roles, which usually means UK residency for a set number of years. Worth checking before applying.

Skills that matter

Reading unfamiliar code

You will spend far more time understanding a large existing codebase written by people who have left than writing new code from scratch.

Systematic debugging

Narrowing a vague bug report down to a specific line - forming a hypothesis, testing it, discarding it - is the core problem-solving skill of the job.

Writing clearly in English

Pull request descriptions, documentation, tickets and Slack messages are how decisions get made and how you explain why your code looks the way it does.

Asking good questions and accepting criticism

Code review means senior colleagues publicly picking holes in your work every week; treating that as useful rather than personal is what separates juniors who improve quickly from those who stall.

Breaking a large problem into small shippable pieces

Teams work in short cycles, so you need to split 'build the new checkout' into changes that can each be reviewed, tested and released independently.

Enough domain curiosity to understand the business

Writing a mortgage calculation or a stock allocation rule correctly requires understanding what the business actually means, and the people who ask the right questions here get trusted with bigger work.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Graduate or junior developer: closely supervised, small well-defined tickets, lots of code review. Typically the first year or two, though structured graduate schemes often run 18 months to two years with rotations between teams.
Developer / software engineer: trusted to take a feature end to end, contribute to design discussions and review others' code. Most people reach this within a couple of years, but it varies widely by employer and how much responsibility you're given early.
Senior developer: leading pieces of work, making architectural decisions, mentoring juniors, and acting as the technical point of contact for a product area. Timelines vary a lot - some reach this in four or five years, others take longer, and job titles are inconsistent between companies.
The path then usually forks. The technical track leads to roles like tech lead, principal engineer, architect or specialist in an area such as security, data engineering, machine learning, cloud infrastructure or DevOps. The management track leads to engineering manager and above, where you stop writing code daily and manage people and delivery.
Common sideways moves include product management, technical consultancy, developer relations, solution architecture pre-sales, contracting, or founding something. Developing experience is a flexible base and lots of people leave pure coding after a few years.

What people get wrong

“It's a solitary job where you put headphones on and code all day.”

It's a collaborative job with constant written and spoken communication - stand-ups, code review, design discussions and clarifying requirements with non-technical colleagues. People who can't explain their thinking struggle regardless of how good their code is.

“You need a computer science degree, and without one you're locked out.”

Plenty of developers come from maths, physics, engineering, conversion MScs, bootcamps or no degree at all. Large graduate schemes often filter hardest on degree subject and classification; smaller employers typically just set you a technical exercise and judge the result.

“Most of the work is building exciting new things.”

Most commercial development is maintaining, extending and fixing systems that already exist and earn money. A lot of the job is careful, unglamorous change to code you didn't write, and doing that safely is a genuinely skilled activity.

“Software developer means working at a tech company.”

Most UK developer jobs are inside organisations that don't think of themselves as tech firms - banks, insurers, retailers, the NHS, local and central government, logistics, manufacturing, defence. The work, pay, pace and technology can be very different from a product startup.

Where this varies

The day-to-day differs a lot by sector. At a startup or scale-up you may touch everything - frontend, backend, infrastructure, talking to customers - with little formal process and fast releases. At a bank, insurer, defence contractor or government department there's much more process: change approvals, regulatory and audit requirements, security clearance, older systems and slower release cycles, but usually more structured training and clearer progression. Consultancies place you on client projects, which means varied work but also travel and periods between projects. Location matters too: London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds and Belfast all have substantial employer bases, with pay and competition differing between them. Remote and hybrid working is common but has tightened at many employers, so check the specific advert rather than assuming.

See all 36 live Software Developer jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.