Software Engineer Job Trends in Manchester

Software Engineer
North West > Manchester

The median Software Engineer salary in Manchester is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 14 January 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 53 28
Rank change year-on-year +11 -25 +28
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 111 120 189
As % of all permanent jobs in Manchester 3.81% 4.50% 7.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.26% 4.80% 7.86%
Number of salaries quoted 95 70 130
10th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £47,813
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £63,750 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +6.25% +9.09%
75th Percentile £84,375 £75,000 £77,188
90th Percentile £100,000 £87,500 £82,548
North West median annual salary £66,250 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +6.00% +4.17% +9.09%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
Manchester

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in Manchester. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in Manchester with a recognized job title 2,606 2,502 2,404
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.34% 93.81% 95.02%
Number of salaries quoted 1,701 1,211 1,937
10th Percentile £30,000 £35,000 £32,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £72,500 £72,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £89,000 £86,250 £84,056
North West median annual salary £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.87%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in Manchester

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in Manchester

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Manchester.

Salary distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Manchester

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in Manchester

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in Manchester over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in Manchester

Software Engineer
Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Engineer within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 14 January 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Salford - 1 £55,000 - 8
Software Engineer
North West

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester

For the 6 months to 14 January 2026, Software Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the Manchester region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 111 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 50 (45.05%) AWS
3 41 (36.94%) Azure
4 35 (31.53%) Agile
5 33 (29.73%) CI/CD
5 33 (29.73%) Microservices
5 33 (29.73%) React
6 32 (28.83%) .NET
6 32 (28.83%) Java
7 30 (27.03%) C#
8 28 (25.23%) DevOps
9 24 (21.62%) Containerisation
9 24 (21.62%) Kubernetes
9 24 (21.62%) TypeScript
10 23 (20.72%) Python
11 22 (19.82%) TDD
12 21 (18.92%) Docker
12 21 (18.92%) SQL
13 19 (17.12%) Mentoring
14 18 (16.22%) AngularJS
15 16 (14.41%) AI
15 16 (14.41%) NoSQL
16 14 (12.61%) REST
16 14 (12.61%) RESTful
16 14 (12.61%) Scrum
16 14 (12.61%) Security Cleared
17 13 (11.71%) JavaScript
18 12 (10.81%) Clean Code
18 12 (10.81%) DV Cleared
18 12 (10.81%) Full-Stack Development

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 5 (4.50%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.70%) Apache
3 1 (0.90%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 2 (1.80%) Adobe XD
1 2 (1.80%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (9.01%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 50 (45.05%) AWS
2 41 (36.94%) Azure
3 12 (10.81%) GCP
4 9 (8.11%) Serverless
5 6 (5.41%) SaaS
6 5 (4.50%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (4.50%) Azure AKS
6 5 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (2.70%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (2.70%) OpenShift
8 2 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (1.80%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.80%) Figma
8 2 (1.80%) Salesforce Einstein
9 1 (0.90%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.90%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (0.90%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 1 (0.90%) Datadog
9 1 (0.90%) Firebase
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.70%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (14.41%) NoSQL
2 8 (7.21%) MySQL
3 6 (5.41%) MongoDB
4 5 (4.50%) Big Data
4 5 (4.50%) Hadoop
4 5 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (3.60%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (3.60%) Neo4j
5 4 (3.60%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.70%) Cloudera CDH
7 2 (1.80%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.90%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.90%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.90%) DocumentDB
8 1 (0.90%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 5 (4.50%) Git
2 3 (2.70%) Cypress.io
3 2 (1.80%) GitLab
4 1 (0.90%) Postman
4 1 (0.90%) Selenium
General
1 11 (9.91%) Finance
2 8 (7.21%) Social Skills
3 4 (3.60%) Public Sector
4 3 (2.70%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.70%) Games
5 2 (1.80%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.80%) Billing
6 1 (0.90%) Automotive
6 1 (0.90%) Electronics
6 1 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.90%) Legal
6 1 (0.90%) Marketing
6 1 (0.90%) Retail
6 1 (0.90%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (29.73%) React
2 32 (28.83%) .NET
3 18 (16.22%) AngularJS
4 14 (12.61%) REST
4 14 (12.61%) RESTful
5 10 (9.01%) Node.js
6 9 (8.11%) .NET Core
6 9 (8.11%) .NET Framework
7 8 (7.21%) Spring
7 8 (7.21%) Spring Boot
7 8 (7.21%) Vue
8 6 (5.41%) Django
9 5 (4.50%) CSS
9 5 (4.50%) Next.js
9 5 (4.50%) Web Services
10 4 (3.60%) Celery
10 4 (3.60%) FastAPI
10 4 (3.60%) Flask
11 3 (2.70%) gRPC
11 3 (2.70%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 23 (20.72%) Cloud Native
2 8 (7.21%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (4.50%) AI Agents
3 5 (4.50%) Distributed Computing
4 3 (2.70%) Greenfield Project
4 3 (2.70%) IoT
5 2 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (1.80%) Animation
5 2 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.90%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.90%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.90%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.90%) Private Cloud
6 1 (0.90%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (2.70%) CentOS
1 3 (2.70%) Debian
1 3 (2.70%) Linux
1 3 (2.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1 3 (2.70%) Ubuntu
2 1 (0.90%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 35 (31.53%) Agile
3 33 (29.73%) CI/CD
3 33 (29.73%) Microservices
4 28 (25.23%) DevOps
5 24 (21.62%) Containerisation
6 22 (19.82%) TDD
7 19 (17.12%) Mentoring
8 16 (14.41%) AI
9 14 (12.61%) Scrum
10 12 (10.81%) Clean Code
10 12 (10.81%) Full-Stack Development
11 9 (8.11%) Data Pipeline
11 9 (8.11%) Fintech
11 9 (8.11%) Pair Programming
12 8 (7.21%) B2B
12 8 (7.21%) Software Architecture
13 7 (6.31%) Computer Science
13 7 (6.31%) Performance Tuning
13 7 (6.31%) SOLID
Programming Languages
1 32 (28.83%) Java
2 30 (27.03%) C#
3 24 (21.62%) TypeScript
4 23 (20.72%) Python
5 21 (18.92%) SQL
6 13 (11.71%) JavaScript
7 12 (10.81%) PHP
8 3 (2.70%) C
8 3 (2.70%) Scala
9 2 (1.80%) Go
10 1 (0.90%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.90%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 14 (12.61%) Security Cleared
2 12 (10.81%) DV Cleared
3 7 (6.31%) Computer Science Degree
3 7 (6.31%) Degree
4 4 (3.60%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.70%) QA
2 2 (1.80%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.90%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 21 (18.92%) Docker
Systems Management
1 24 (21.62%) Kubernetes
2 11 (9.91%) Terraform
3 3 (2.70%) Ansible
3 3 (2.70%) Puppet
4 1 (0.90%) Grafana
Vendors
1 10 (9.01%) Adobe
2 3 (2.70%) Google
2 3 (2.70%) Red Hat
2 3 (2.70%) SaltStack
3 2 (1.80%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.90%) Databricks
4 1 (0.90%) Dynatrace