UK Salary Guide: how to find what your role actually pays

Most salary guides are marketing documents wearing a data costume. They quote ranges wide enough to be unfalsifiable, omit the regional variation that actually determines your offer, and sit behind a form so the agency gets your number before you get theirs.

We are not going to publish our own tables yet, because we do not have enough placement data behind them to be worth your trust. Inventing a plausible range would be easy, and it is exactly what everyone else does. Here is the thing that is genuinely more useful instead: the public sources professional recruiters actually work from, and how to read them for your specific role.

The four sources worth your time

How to read ASHE for your own role

1. 1Find your occupation code first. ASHE is organised by Standard Occupational Classification, not by job title. Search the ONS SOC tool for the work you actually do — a design engineer and a CAD technician sit in different codes and are paid differently, which is precisely the point.
2. 2Use the median, and note the percentiles either side of it. The 25th percentile is roughly where someone new to the level sits; the 75th is where strong experience in a competitive market sits. A recruiter who quotes you a single number has thrown away the most useful part of the data.
3. 3Then apply your region. Regional variation within one occupation is routinely wider than the gap between two adjacent seniority levels. The same role forty miles away genuinely pays differently, and that is not a client being awkward.
4. 4Adjust for how the money is actually paid. ASHE reports gross annual pay, so shift premiums, on-call, bonus, car allowance and overtime are all inside that figure. A headline number in nursing, driving or sales can describe a very different base salary.

Three things that move an offer more than the range

1. 1Office attendance. Every additional required day on site narrows the pool of people who will genuinely take the job. Hiring five days on site against a hybrid salary means competing for a fraction of the market, and the offer has to carry that difference.
2. 2Speed. Strong candidates hold several processes at once. A two-week process routinely wins people that a six-week process loses, regardless of which pays more — and it is the cheapest advantage available to any employer.
3. 3Why the role is open. Candidates increasingly ask, and a vague answer costs you. 'Growth' converts. An evasive response about the previous postholder does not, and it should not.

If you are the one negotiating

Anchor on what the role is worth to the employer, not on what you are currently paid — and remember that no UK employer can require you to disclose your current salary. If the base is genuinely fixed, negotiate the things that often are not: study support, holiday, notice period, office days, or a written salary review at six months rather than twelve.

If you want a view on where a specific role sits against this data, send us the job description. We will tell you honestly, whether or not you are working with us — including when the honest answer is that the range is fair and you are asking for something the market will not pay.