Tech interviews in the UK: pay, notice periods, and what's different

1. What tech roles actually pay in London (in £)

The first thing to fix is your number. Salary sites and Levels.fyi mostly show US pay, and UK pay is a lot lower. A rough picture for a senior software engineer in London:

• Most companies: around £70,000 to £125,000 base, with a median near £90,000.
• Big US tech in London (Google, Meta, Amazon): roughly £180,000 to £220,000 total once stock is included.
• Quant firms (Jane Street and similar): far higher again, with senior packages well past £400,000 — the top of the London market.

For comparison, a US senior engineer averages around $200,000, and the big US firms pay $300,000 or more. So London is roughly two to three times lower in total pay, and the main reason is equity. UK packages are more base salary and much less stock, especially outside US-headquartered firms and a few large scale-ups. The takeaway is simple: negotiate against the £ bands above, not the US numbers, and use the company type (see below) to set your expectations. Our 2026 Tech Interview Report has the full per-role breakdown, but note its headline figures are US — knock them down for London.

2. UK notice periods are long — plan your search around them

This is the biggest practical difference, and the one people forget. In the UK your notice period is usually written into your contract and runs one to three months. Senior roles are often a full three. In the US, two weeks is normal. Once you add the interview process on top, the time between accepting an offer and actually starting is often eight to sixteen weeks for a senior role.

What that means for how you run your search:

• Start earlier than feels necessary. The whole thing moves slowly, so give yourself runway.
• Tell a new employer your notice period up front. Three months isn't a dealbreaker here — they expect it — but spring it late and you look disorganised.
• Be ready for “gardening leave.” Some employers send you home on full pay for your notice, often when you're joining a competitor, and you can't start the new job until it ends.
• Remember you're committed once you resign. A long notice cuts both ways, so be sure before you hand it in.

If you're job hunting while still employed, the long notice makes discretion and timing even more important — we cover that in how to interview while you're still employed.

3. UK interview loops differ depending on the company

There isn't one “UK interview.” What you face depends a lot on who's hiring:

• Big US tech in London (Google, Meta, Amazon) runs almost the same loop as in the US: LeetCode-style coding rounds, system design, and behavioural interviews. If you're prepping for one of these, the standard US-style prep applies directly.
• UK-grown companies — fintech, scale-ups, and startups — more often use take-home tasks, practical or pairing exercises, and put more weight on whether you fit the team and communicate well. There's usually less raw algorithm pressure and more “can you actually do this job with us.”

So check the company before you prep. A Monzo or Revolut loop and a Google London loop ask for fairly different things.

4. Who's hiring in London, and what they pay

London's tech employers fall into roughly three pay tiers:

• Top tier: quant firms (Jane Street, Optiver, Citadel) and big US tech (Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Bloomberg, Palantir, Stripe). Highest pay, US-style interviews, and they sponsor visas.
• Scale-ups and fintech: Monzo, Revolut, Wise, Starling, Cleo, plus AI labs like DeepMind and Wayve. Solid pay, usually some equity, and a wider mix of interview formats. London's real strengths are fintech and AI.
• Startups: lower base, more equity, and faster, less formal processes. Visa sponsorship is hit or miss, so ask early.

5. Visas and right to work in the UK

If you need the right to work, the main route into a tech job is the Skilled Worker visa, and only employers with a sponsor licence can offer it. Big tech and most established scale-ups sponsor; smaller startups often can't. The simplest move is to ask the recruiter on the very first call whether the role comes with sponsorship. It takes one sentence and stops you spending weeks on a company that can't actually hire you.

6. How to prep for a UK interview

The role itself doesn't change at the border. A senior engineer is held to a senior engineer's bar in London just as in San Francisco, so the substance of your prep — the questions, the level, the failure modes — comes from the role-by-role guides. This page is the UK layer on top: pay in pounds, a longer timeline, and a process that shifts with the company. It's also worth reading why strong candidates get rejected, since those mistakes don't care which country you're in.

When you have a specific UK role in front of you, paste its job description into Calibrd. It reads that exact posting, predicts the questions that company tends to ask, and benchmarks the comp — which you can sanity-check against the £ bands above.

Sources

• Levels.fyi — Senior Software Engineer, London — London total-compensation data, including big-tech and quant pay.
• Glassdoor UK — Senior Software Engineer, London — base-salary ranges and median across London employers.
• Notice Periods UK: a guide for tech professionals — typical one-to-three-month tech notice periods and offer-to-start timing.
• Notice periods explained: UK vs US — the contrast with US at-will, two-week norms.