Full-Stack Engineer Salary in London 2026: £45K–£155K Complete Guide

# Full-Stack Engineer Salary in London 2026: £45K–£155K Complete Guide

London is Europe's highest-paying city for full-stack engineers in 2026. A dense fintech ecosystem — home to Revolut, Monzo, Wise, Checkout.com, and GoCardless — combined with FAANG engineering offices and a post-Brexit talent market that actively competes for skilled engineers has pushed senior full-stack packages well past £100K. The breadth required of a full-stack engineer — owning both the React frontend and the Node.js backend, managing deployments, and understanding the full product lifecycle — commands a clear premium in London's fast-moving product environment.

This guide covers exactly what full-stack engineers earn in London in 2026, broken down by seniority, employer type, and tech stack, with a full UK tax analysis, a city comparison against Berlin and Amsterdam, and negotiation strategies tailored to the London market. For live percentile benchmarks, see the London full-stack engineer salary tool.

Full-Stack Engineer Salary by Level in London (2026)

Total compensation includes base salary, annual performance bonus (typically 10–20% of base at fintech and scale-ups), and equity (RSUs or options). All figures are gross annual salary before UK income tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs).

Junior engineers at early-stage startups may sit at the lower end of the £45K–£62K range, while those joining Google or Revolut graduate programmes often start above £55K with meaningful equity. The real market differentiation happens at mid and senior level, where fintech employers have structurally raised the floor.

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Top London Employers for Full-Stack Engineers

London's full-stack talent market is dominated by two distinct employer segments: global technology companies and the city's exceptional fintech ecosystem.

FAANG and global tech:

Google — London engineering hub pays top-of-market across all levels; senior full-stack engineers typically earn £110K–£145K base with substantial RSU grants

Meta — strong React/GraphQL stack, competitive with Google on total comp

Amazon — AWS integration experience highly valued; L5–L6 engineers earn £100K–£135K

London fintech (the heartbeat of the market):

Revolut — aggressive compensation at senior level, known for equity upside; requires strong TypeScript and microservices experience

Monzo — trusted brand, strong engineering culture, RSU grants at senior and staff level; Go and React stack

Wise — TypeScript-first, engineering-led culture, strong mid-to-senior pay relative to startup risk

Checkout.com — payments infrastructure, premium pay for engineers who understand financial transaction flows

GoCardless — open-banking specialist, competitive packages especially for engineers with Ruby/Node.js and React experience

Deliveroo — scale engineering problems, competitive at senior level, strong React/TypeScript culture

Farfetch — luxury e-commerce, complex full-stack challenges across web and marketplace infrastructure

Fintech employers routinely pay 10–20% above the London tech average because the regulated environment, financial data sensitivity, and real-money transaction requirements raise the bar for engineering quality — and salaries follow.

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Full-Stack Premium: How London Rewards Breadth

In London's 2026 market, full-stack engineers earn a consistent premium over pure frontend specialists and broadly match backend engineers in salary.

Full-stack vs frontend: Full-stack engineers typically earn 8–14% more than frontend specialists at equivalent seniority. The ability to own an entire feature — from the React UI through the Node.js API to the database schema — is valued at fintech startups and scale-ups where small squads need to ship independently. At Monzo and Wise, full-stack engineers own product areas end-to-end; this autonomy commands a premium. Full-stack vs backend: The gap here is narrower — typically 0–5% in either direction depending on the employer and the specific backend domain. Engineers with Go or Java expertise in high-throughput financial systems can sometimes exceed full-stack packages at specialist backend shops. However, full-stack engineers are more versatile hiring targets, which keeps demand elevated.

For a detailed breakdown of frontend-only compensation, see Frontend Engineer Salary in London 2026. For the broader London software engineering picture, see Software Engineer Salary in London 2026.

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The Stack That Pays: TypeScript, React, and Node.js in London Fintech

The highest-demand and highest-paying full-stack profile in London in 2026 is TypeScript across the entire stack: React with TypeScript on the frontend, Node.js (or Next.js) with TypeScript on the backend, deployed via containerised microservices on AWS or GCP. This is the default stack at Monzo, Wise, Revolut, GoCardless, and Checkout.com.

Engineers who combine this with fintech-specific knowledge earn additional leverage:

Payment flows and regulatory context (PSD2, Open Banking) — adds credibility at Checkout.com, Wise, and GoCardless

Real-time systems and event-driven architecture (Kafka, RabbitMQ) — valued at Revolut and Monzo for transaction processing

Performance-critical frontends — SSR with Next.js, Core Web Vitals, and financial dashboard UX experience

TypeScript strict-mode depth — engineers who write type-safe codebases reduce production bugs in regulated environments; employers pay a premium for this fluency

Engineers without TypeScript fluency typically earn £8,000–£15,000 less than stack-matched peers at equivalent seniority levels. For roles at FAANG, React 18, GraphQL, and Next.js App Router experience are table stakes; the premium comes from system design knowledge at scale.

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London vs Berlin vs Amsterdam: Full-Stack Salary Comparison

London leads on gross nominal salary at every level, particularly at senior and staff. The delta is most pronounced for Staff engineers — £115K–£155K+ in London versus €110K–€140K in Berlin. However, the comparison shifts significantly once tax and cost of living enter the picture.

A senior full-stack engineer earning £100K in London takes home approximately £66,500 after income tax and NICs. The equivalent €95K in Berlin takes home approximately €64,000 after German income tax and social contributions — a difference of only around £2,500 in net annual take-home despite a £5K higher gross. Add London's average Zone 1–2 one-bedroom rent of £2,200–£2,800 per month versus Berlin's €1,200–€1,800, and the purchasing-power advantage narrows significantly.

Amsterdam for qualifying international engineers with the Dutch 30% ruling can deliver a net take-home on €95K gross of approximately €69,000–€72,000 — exceeding London's take-home despite a lower gross. Without the 30% ruling, Amsterdam and London are broadly comparable on a net basis.

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UK Tax and NIC Breakdown for London Full-Stack Engineers

Understanding your actual take-home is essential for evaluating London offers. The UK system in 2026:

Income Tax:

Personal Allowance: £12,570 (0% tax)

Basic Rate: 20% on £12,571–£50,270

Higher Rate: 40% on £50,271–£125,140

Additional Rate: 45% above £125,140

Employee National Insurance Contributions (NICs):

8% on earnings £12,570–£50,270

2% on earnings above £50,270

Illustrative take-home figures (2026):

Note: at £100K gross, the personal allowance begins to taper (losing £1 for every £2 earned over £100K), creating an effective 60% marginal rate on income between £100K and £125,140. This is a critical threshold in London full-stack salary negotiations — many employers at this level will discuss salary sacrifice into pension to mitigate it.

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Post-Brexit Context: How Brexit Shaped London's Full-Stack Market

The UK's departure from the EU's single market fundamentally changed the London tech talent pool in ways that continue to affect full-stack salaries in 2026.

Freedom of movement ended with Brexit, replacing it with a points-based immigration system. European engineers who previously relocated freely to London now require a Skilled Worker visa, which requires employer sponsorship, a minimum salary threshold (£38,700 for most tech roles in 2026), and a sponsor licence from the employer. This has structurally reduced the supply of entry and mid-level EU engineers into the London market, while large fintech employers and FAANG offices that hold sponsor licences have gained a competitive advantage in hiring internationally.

The net effect on salaries has been inflationary at mid and senior level: reduced labour supply combined with sustained demand from the fintech sector has kept compensation growing faster than inflation since 2022. Engineers with Skilled Worker visa status or UK/EU settled status are negotiating from a position of structural scarcity in 2026.

Separately, several European fintech unicorns — Revolut, Wise, and Checkout.com — have retained London as their primary engineering hub post-Brexit, choosing London's established financial regulatory environment and talent network over Dublin or Amsterdam relocation.

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5 Salary Negotiation Strategies for London Full-Stack Engineers

1. Lead with total compensation, not just base. London's fintech employers structure packages with meaningful bonus and equity components. A Revolut offer at £95K base with 15% bonus and 4-year RSU vest may exceed a £105K base at a non-equity employer. Model the full 4-year value before comparing. 2. Use seniority-level data. Generic salary surveys understate London fintech pay. Use CareerCheck's full-stack engineer London salary data to benchmark your specific level — junior, mid, senior, or staff — against current market data, then anchor your ask at the 75th percentile. 3. Highlight the TypeScript stack explicitly. London fintechs are TypeScript-obsessive. Candidates who can demonstrate end-to-end TypeScript fluency — strict type systems, generic utilities, API type safety with Zod or tRPC — routinely negotiate 10–15% above peers who cannot. Bring concrete examples to the offer stage. 4. Leverage the £100K marginal rate in your favour. If you are negotiating near the £100K threshold, propose pension salary sacrifice to bring your taxable income below £100K and recover your full personal allowance — this is worth up to £5,000 in effective additional net income per year. Sophisticated employers will negotiate this structure proactively; it costs them little and costs you nothing. 5. Create competitive tension. London's fintech hiring market is competitive. Engineers with senior full-stack profiles routinely hold multiple offers. Time your final rounds with 2–3 employers simultaneously. A competing offer from Wise or GoCardless significantly strengthens your negotiating position at Monzo or Revolut, and vice versa.

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Related London and Full-Stack Salary Guides

Software Engineer Salary in London 2026 — full London engineering market overview

Frontend Engineer Salary in London 2026 — frontend specialist compensation in London

Live salary data: London full-stack engineer — current percentile benchmarks updated monthly

London's full-stack engineering market in 2026 rewards breadth, TypeScript depth, and fintech domain knowledge more than any other European city. For engineers who combine those three, the ceiling of £120K–£155K+ at senior and staff level is genuinely achievable — and the competition among Revolut, Monzo, Wise, and the FAANG offices ensures the floor keeps rising.