Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 31 33
Rank change year-on-year -9 +2 +61
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 400 442 494
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 3.90% 9.79% 5.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.26% 11.15% 5.55%
Number of salaries quoted 337 141 407
10th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £38,084
25th Percentile £53,750 £56,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% +17.39% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £92,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £110,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £70,000 £75,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -6.67% +25.00% -14.29%

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 9,389 3,964 8,907
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.62% 87.82% 94.70%
Number of salaries quoted 6,419 2,203 7,106
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,760 £27,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £54,793 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% +9.59% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,268 £84,370 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £59,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -6.78% +9.26% -11.18%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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 the North West.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the North West

Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the North West

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

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

Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the North West over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineer in the North West

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 Software Engineer within the North West region over the 6 months to 12 May 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 +1 329 £70,000 +3.70% 52
Cheshire -39 35 £50,000 -32.89% 10
Lancashire -31 21 £60,000 -4.04% 18
Merseyside -19 13 £70,000 +7.69% 1
Cumbria -11 2 £50,000 - 5
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 12 May 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 North West region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 398 (99.50%) Software Engineering
2 83 (20.75%) AWS
3 72 (18.00%) Agile
4 71 (17.75%) Java
5 61 (15.25%) DevOps
6 56 (14.00%) .NET
7 53 (13.25%) Azure
8 52 (13.00%) Full-Stack Development
8 52 (13.00%) Python
9 51 (12.75%) CI/CD
10 47 (11.75%) C#
11 44 (11.00%) Microservices
12 39 (9.75%) JavaScript
12 39 (9.75%) TypeScript
13 38 (9.50%) TDD
14 37 (9.25%) React
15 34 (8.50%) AI
15 34 (8.50%) Security Cleared
15 34 (8.50%) SQL
16 32 (8.00%) SaaS
17 31 (7.75%) Kubernetes
17 31 (7.75%) Mentoring
17 31 (7.75%) Node.js
18 30 (7.50%) Scrum
19 29 (7.25%) Serverless
20 26 (6.50%) Containerisation
21 25 (6.25%) DV Cleared
22 24 (6.00%) Docker
22 24 (6.00%) Technical Leadership
23 23 (5.75%) NoSQL

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:

Application Platforms
1 5 (1.25%) Apache Spark
1 5 (1.25%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (1.00%) Apache Solr
2 4 (1.00%) GeoServer
3 3 (0.75%) Apache
4 1 (0.25%) CMS
4 1 (0.25%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.50%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (2.50%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 83 (20.75%) AWS
2 53 (13.25%) Azure
3 32 (8.00%) SaaS
4 29 (7.25%) Serverless
5 14 (3.50%) GCP
6 9 (2.25%) Azure AKS
7 8 (2.00%) Anthropic Claude
8 5 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (1.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 4 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (1.00%) Twilio
10 3 (0.75%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (0.75%) OpenShift
11 2 (0.50%) Apigee
11 2 (0.50%) Salesforce Einstein
12 1 (0.25%) Azure Functions
12 1 (0.25%) Firebase
12 1 (0.25%) GitHub
12 1 (0.25%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.75%) AMQP
2 2 (0.50%) RTP
3 1 (0.25%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.75%) NoSQL
2 13 (3.25%) MongoDB
3 7 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
3 7 (1.75%) Neo4j
4 6 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.25%) Big Data
5 5 (1.25%) FileMaker
5 5 (1.25%) Hadoop
6 4 (1.00%) DocumentDB
6 4 (1.00%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (1.00%) GIS
6 4 (1.00%) MySQL
6 4 (1.00%) QGIS
6 4 (1.00%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.75%) Cloudera CDH
8 1 (0.25%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.25%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.25%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (2.25%) Claude Code
2 5 (1.25%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.75%) Git
4 2 (0.50%) GitLab
4 2 (0.50%) Maven
4 2 (0.50%) Vagrant
5 1 (0.25%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.25%) GDB
5 1 (0.25%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.25%) JUnit
5 1 (0.25%) Postman
5 1 (0.25%) Selenium
5 1 (0.25%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.25%) WinDbg
General
1 15 (3.75%) Public Sector
2 14 (3.50%) Manufacturing
3 13 (3.25%) Finance
4 12 (3.00%) Retail
5 10 (2.50%) Social Skills
6 8 (2.00%) Electronics
7 5 (1.25%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (0.75%) Aerospace
8 3 (0.75%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.25%) Banking
9 1 (0.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.25%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.25%) Marketing
9 1 (0.25%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (14.00%) .NET
2 37 (9.25%) React
3 31 (7.75%) Node.js
4 21 (5.25%) RESTful
4 21 (5.25%) Spring
5 19 (4.75%) REST
5 19 (4.75%) Spring Boot
6 17 (4.25%) AngularJS
7 10 (2.50%) .NET Core
7 10 (2.50%) .NET Framework
7 10 (2.50%) Vue
8 8 (2.00%) Next.js
9 6 (1.50%) CSS
10 5 (1.25%) CSS3
10 5 (1.25%) Django
11 4 (1.00%) Leaflet
11 4 (1.00%) OpenLayers
11 4 (1.00%) PostGIS
12 3 (0.75%) RabbitMQ
12 3 (0.75%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 56 (14.00%) Cloud Native
2 15 (3.75%) Product Ownership
3 9 (2.25%) Industry 4.0
4 8 (2.00%) IoT
4 8 (2.00%) Mobile App
5 6 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (1.25%) Robotics
7 4 (1.00%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.50%) AI Agents
8 2 (0.50%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.50%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.50%) Embedded Systems
9 1 (0.25%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.25%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.25%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.25%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 8 (2.00%) Linux
2 5 (1.25%) Android
3 3 (0.75%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.75%) CentOS
3 3 (0.75%) Debian
3 3 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (0.75%) Ubuntu
3 3 (0.75%) Windows
4 1 (0.25%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 398 (99.50%) Software Engineering
2 72 (18.00%) Agile
3 61 (15.25%) DevOps
4 52 (13.00%) Full-Stack Development
5 51 (12.75%) CI/CD
6 44 (11.00%) Microservices
7 38 (9.50%) TDD
8 34 (8.50%) AI
9 31 (7.75%) Mentoring
10 30 (7.50%) Scrum
11 26 (6.50%) Containerisation
12 24 (6.00%) Technical Leadership
13 23 (5.75%) Open Source
13 23 (5.75%) Problem-Solving
14 19 (4.75%) Event-Driven
15 17 (4.25%) Platform Engineering
16 16 (4.00%) Clean Code
16 16 (4.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
16 16 (4.00%) Software Architecture
17 15 (3.75%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 71 (17.75%) Java
2 52 (13.00%) Python
3 47 (11.75%) C#
4 39 (9.75%) JavaScript
4 39 (9.75%) TypeScript
5 34 (8.50%) SQL
6 14 (3.50%) PHP
7 11 (2.75%) Go
8 10 (2.50%) C++
9 9 (2.25%) C
10 5 (1.25%) COBOL
11 3 (0.75%) Ruby
12 2 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 34 (8.50%) Security Cleared
2 25 (6.25%) DV Cleared
3 23 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 10 (2.50%) Degree
5 8 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (1.75%) QA
2 2 (0.50%) Accessibility
System Software
1 24 (6.00%) Docker
2 3 (0.75%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (7.75%) Kubernetes
2 21 (5.25%) Terraform
3 3 (0.75%) Ansible
3 3 (0.75%) Puppet
4 2 (0.50%) Packer
4 2 (0.50%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 11 (2.75%) Rockwell
2 10 (2.50%) Adobe
3 6 (1.50%) Siemens
4 5 (1.25%) Google
4 5 (1.25%) Xamarin
5 3 (0.75%) Red Hat
5 3 (0.75%) SaltStack
6 2 (0.50%) Salesforce