Lead Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Lead Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Lead Software Engineer salary in the North West is £80,000 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 169 191 183
Rank change year-on-year +22 -8 +52
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Software Engineer 17 14 20
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 0.27% 0.28% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.30% 0.47%
Number of salaries quoted 14 8 10
10th Percentile £67,500 £55,000 £56,175
25th Percentile £68,750 £55,188 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% +7.14% +16.67%
75th Percentile £88,750 £82,500 -
90th Percentile £98,750 £85,500 £80,000
England median annual salary £82,500 £85,000 £90,000
% change year-on-year -2.94% -5.56% +24.14%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
North West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the North West. 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 the North West with a recognized job title 5,478 4,660 4,269
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 85.98% 92.20% 95.33%
Number of salaries quoted 3,043 2,452 3,359
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £38,734
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.87%
75th Percentile £67,500 £66,113 £67,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £78,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -6.50%

Lead Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Lead Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the North West

Lead Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for Lead Software Engineer job vacancies in the North West.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Software Engineer job vacancies in the North West

Lead Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the North West

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

Salary histogram for Lead Software Engineer in the North West

Lead Software Engineer
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Software Engineer within the North West 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
Manchester +25 13 £75,000 -3.23% 15
Cheshire - 2 £95,000 - 1
Lancashire - 2 £90,000 - 2
Lead Software Engineer
England

Lead Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 14 January 2026, Lead 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 North West region featuring Lead Software Engineer in the job title.

1 17 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 8 (47.06%) .NET
2 8 (47.06%) Agile
2 8 (47.06%) Java
3 6 (35.29%) JavaScript
3 6 (35.29%) Mentoring
3 6 (35.29%) Technical Leadership
3 6 (35.29%) TypeScript
4 5 (29.41%) AWS
4 5 (29.41%) CI/CD
4 5 (29.41%) TDD
5 4 (23.53%) C#
5 4 (23.53%) CSS
5 4 (23.53%) Docker
5 4 (23.53%) HTML
5 4 (23.53%) Microservices
5 4 (23.53%) SQL
6 3 (17.65%) .NET Framework
6 3 (17.65%) Azure
6 3 (17.65%) Containerisation
6 3 (17.65%) Data Pipeline
6 3 (17.65%) Design Patterns
6 3 (17.65%) Event-Driven
6 3 (17.65%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 3 (17.65%) Git
6 3 (17.65%) Kubernetes
6 3 (17.65%) MySQL
6 3 (17.65%) NoSQL
6 3 (17.65%) OOP
6 3 (17.65%) Performance Engineering

Lead Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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:

Cloud Services
1 5 (29.41%) AWS
2 3 (17.65%) Azure
3 1 (5.88%) GitHub
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (17.65%) MySQL
1 3 (17.65%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (17.65%) Git
2 1 (5.88%) Cypress.io
2 1 (5.88%) Jenkins
General
1 4 (23.53%) Public Sector
2 2 (11.76%) Finance
2 2 (11.76%) Games
3 1 (5.88%) Banking
3 1 (5.88%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (47.06%) .NET
2 4 (23.53%) CSS
2 4 (23.53%) HTML
3 3 (17.65%) .NET Framework
3 3 (17.65%) React
3 3 (17.65%) Web Services
4 2 (11.76%) AngularJS
4 2 (11.76%) Node.js
5 1 (5.88%) CSS3
5 1 (5.88%) HTML5
5 1 (5.88%) Jest
5 1 (5.88%) Playwright
5 1 (5.88%) Redux
5 1 (5.88%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 3 (17.65%) Cloud Native
1 3 (17.65%) Distributed Computing
1 3 (17.65%) Distributed Systems
2 2 (11.76%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (5.88%) Online Banking
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 8 (47.06%) Agile
3 6 (35.29%) Mentoring
3 6 (35.29%) Technical Leadership
4 5 (29.41%) CI/CD
4 5 (29.41%) TDD
5 4 (23.53%) Microservices
6 3 (17.65%) Containerisation
6 3 (17.65%) Data Pipeline
6 3 (17.65%) Design Patterns
6 3 (17.65%) Event-Driven
6 3 (17.65%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 3 (17.65%) OOP
6 3 (17.65%) Performance Engineering
6 3 (17.65%) Performance Optimisation
6 3 (17.65%) Platform Engineering
6 3 (17.65%) Scrum
6 3 (17.65%) Software Architecture
6 3 (17.65%) Software Testing
6 3 (17.65%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 8 (47.06%) Java
2 6 (35.29%) JavaScript
2 6 (35.29%) TypeScript
3 4 (23.53%) C#
3 4 (23.53%) SQL
4 3 (17.65%) Python
System Software
1 4 (23.53%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (17.65%) Kubernetes
2 1 (5.88%) Grafana
Vendors
1 1 (5.88%) Databricks