Updated June 2026 · UK · Scotland
Edinburgh AI compensation.
Scotland's tech capital. Strong AI research presence anchored by University of Edinburgh; fintech and biotech secondary clusters.
AI salaries in the UK.
A Software Engineer in the UK earns a median of £56,264 per year in base salary.
Base salary, annual, in GBP. Reconciled from ONS ASHE Table 14 (SOC 2020). UK figures are national today; Edinburgh city-level data is on the roadmap (ONS ASHE Table 15).
| Role | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist | £45,344 | £60,642 | £80,704 |
| Data Engineer | £45,344 | £60,642 | £80,704 |
| AI Research Scientist | £45,344 | £60,642 | £80,704 |
| AI Solutions Architect | £45,344 | £60,642 | £80,704 |
| AI Infrastructure Engineer | £45,344 | £60,642 | £80,704 |
| NLP Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Prompt Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Computer Vision Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| LLM Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Generative AI Developer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Software Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Backend Developer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Frontend Developer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Full Stack Developer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| Machine Learning Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| AI Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| ML Engineer | £41,059 | £56,264 | £76,393 |
| AI Product Manager | £43,160 | £56,040 | £71,916 |
| Engineering Manager | £43,160 | £56,040 | £71,916 |
| DevOps Engineer | £35,968 | £49,930 | £65,551 |
City facts.
- Country
- Scotland
- Population (metro)
- 0.55M
- ONS GSS code
- S12000036
- Industries
- ai-research, fintech, biotech
How the number is built.
UK figures come from ONS ASHE Table 14, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which publishes the national gross weekly pay distribution per 4-digit SOC 2020 occupation. Each Orbyt role maps to its SOC code, and the figure is gross base salary in pounds. These are national figures today; Edinburgh city-level data (ONS ASHE Table 15, region by occupation) is on the roadmap.
Every estimate traces back to its government source through the methodology paper, and the API returns a USD-normalized value alongside the pound figure for cross-country comparison. Income tax and National Insurance are the consumer's calculation, not baked in.
Cite the source.
Every Edinburgh estimate Orbyt publishes traces back to a specific government data source. The methodology paper documents the per-source weights, confidence tiers, and reconciliation rules.