Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 9 November 2025.

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

6 months to
9 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 90 23 53
Rank change year-on-year -67 +30 +1
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 139 400 200
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 2.74% 5.82% 5.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.08% 6.14% 5.24%
Number of salaries quoted 85 176 134
10th Percentile £48,500 £40,625 £40,000
25th Percentile £57,500 £50,938 £47,813
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £60,000 £61,000
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -1.64% +10.91%
75th Percentile £95,000 £70,000 £75,938
90th Percentile £107,500 £75,000 £83,925
England median annual salary £75,000 £65,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +15.38% -7.14% +0.80%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 4,518 6,518 3,818
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.18% 94.90% 96.39%
Number of salaries quoted 2,643 3,607 2,913
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £31,000
25th Percentile £33,750 £40,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,979 £50,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £52,500 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -

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 9 November 2025.

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 9 November 2025. 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 -32 98 £75,000 +25.00% 178
Cheshire -35 20 £82,500 +50.00% 40
Merseyside -16 10 £62,500 -3.85% 9
Lancashire -34 10 £75,000 +36.36% 65
Cumbria +6 1 £60,000 +9.09% 1
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 9 November 2025, 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.

1 139 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 70 (50.36%) AWS
3 65 (46.76%) React
4 64 (46.04%) Java
5 62 (44.60%) CI/CD
6 60 (43.17%) Agile
6 60 (43.17%) Microservices
7 55 (39.57%) TypeScript
8 53 (38.13%) Docker
9 52 (37.41%) DevOps
10 50 (35.97%) Azure
10 50 (35.97%) Containerisation
10 50 (35.97%) Kubernetes
11 49 (35.25%) SQL
12 44 (31.65%) Mentoring
12 44 (31.65%) Spring
12 44 (31.65%) Spring Boot
13 42 (30.22%) Full-Stack Development
13 42 (30.22%) JavaScript
14 39 (28.06%) RESTful
15 38 (27.34%) Kafka
15 38 (27.34%) Test Automation
16 36 (25.90%) CSS
16 36 (25.90%) REST
17 35 (25.18%) Jest
17 35 (25.18%) SDLC
18 34 (24.46%) GitLab
18 34 (24.46%) HTML
19 33 (23.74%) CSS3
19 33 (23.74%) Cucumber

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 4 (2.88%) Confluence
2 2 (1.44%) Apache
2 2 (1.44%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (1.44%) Adobe XD
1 2 (1.44%) Sketch
Cloud Services
1 70 (50.36%) AWS
2 50 (35.97%) Azure
3 8 (5.76%) Serverless
4 7 (5.04%) GitHub
5 6 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
5 6 (4.32%) GCP
6 5 (3.60%) SaaS
7 3 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.44%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.44%) Figma
8 2 (1.44%) OpenShift
9 1 (0.72%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.72%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.72%) Azure AKS
9 1 (0.72%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 1 (0.72%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.72%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.44%) AMQP
1 2 (1.44%) Internet
2 1 (0.72%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (20.86%) SQL Server
2 13 (9.35%) MongoDB
3 12 (8.63%) NoSQL
4 10 (7.19%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (5.76%) MySQL
6 2 (1.44%) Big Data
6 2 (1.44%) Cloudera CDH
6 2 (1.44%) DynamoDB
6 2 (1.44%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.72%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.72%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 34 (24.46%) GitLab
2 33 (23.74%) Cucumber
2 33 (23.74%) JIRA
2 33 (23.74%) Selenium
3 29 (20.86%) Bitbucket
3 29 (20.86%) Maven
3 29 (20.86%) SonarQube
3 29 (20.86%) Sonatype Nexus
4 6 (4.32%) Cypress.io
5 3 (2.16%) Git
6 2 (1.44%) Jenkins
6 2 (1.44%) webpack
General
1 52 (37.41%) Finance
2 34 (24.46%) Retail
3 31 (22.30%) Banking
4 30 (21.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 29 (20.86%) Corporate Banking
5 29 (20.86%) Investment Banking
6 11 (7.91%) Social Skills
7 3 (2.16%) Games
7 3 (2.16%) Legal
7 3 (2.16%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.44%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.44%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.44%) Billing
8 2 (1.44%) Electronics
8 2 (1.44%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.44%) Marketing
8 2 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.72%) Automotive
9 1 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.72%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (46.76%) React
2 44 (31.65%) Spring
2 44 (31.65%) Spring Boot
3 39 (28.06%) RESTful
4 38 (27.34%) Kafka
5 36 (25.90%) CSS
5 36 (25.90%) REST
6 35 (25.18%) Jest
7 34 (24.46%) HTML
8 33 (23.74%) CSS3
9 31 (22.30%) HTML5
9 31 (22.30%) Redux
10 29 (20.86%) JPA
10 29 (20.86%) Sass
11 19 (13.67%) .NET
12 14 (10.07%) AngularJS
13 8 (5.76%) Node.js
14 7 (5.04%) Vue
15 6 (4.32%) .NET Core
15 6 (4.32%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 34 (24.46%) Product Ownership
2 30 (21.58%) Enterprise Software
3 18 (12.95%) Cloud Native
4 8 (5.76%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (4.32%) AI Agents
5 6 (4.32%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (4.32%) Wiki
6 2 (1.44%) Animation
6 2 (1.44%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (1.44%) Marketing Technology
6 2 (1.44%) Online Banking
7 1 (0.72%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.72%) IoT
7 1 (0.72%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.88%) Linux
2 2 (1.44%) CentOS
2 2 (1.44%) Debian
2 2 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (1.44%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 62 (44.60%) CI/CD
3 60 (43.17%) Agile
3 60 (43.17%) Microservices
4 52 (37.41%) DevOps
5 50 (35.97%) Containerisation
6 44 (31.65%) Mentoring
7 42 (30.22%) Full-Stack Development
8 38 (27.34%) Test Automation
9 35 (25.18%) SDLC
10 32 (23.02%) User Experience
11 31 (22.30%) Strategic Thinking
12 30 (21.58%) Front End Development
12 30 (21.58%) Performance Optimisation
13 29 (20.86%) Migration
13 29 (20.86%) Responsive Web Design
14 19 (13.67%) TDD
15 12 (8.63%) AI
16 11 (7.91%) Event-Driven
17 10 (7.19%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 64 (46.04%) Java
2 55 (39.57%) TypeScript
3 49 (35.25%) SQL
4 42 (30.22%) JavaScript
5 22 (15.83%) C#
6 17 (12.23%) Python
7 4 (2.88%) C++
7 4 (2.88%) Ruby
8 3 (2.16%) C
9 2 (1.44%) Embedded C++
9 2 (1.44%) Go
9 2 (1.44%) Kotlin
9 2 (1.44%) PHP
9 2 (1.44%) Scala
10 1 (0.72%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 19 (13.67%) Security Cleared
2 16 (11.51%) DV Cleared
3 4 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (2.88%) Degree
4 3 (2.16%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (22.30%) Accessibility
1 31 (22.30%) QA
2 1 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (0.72%) MISRA
2 1 (0.72%) MISRA C
System Software
1 53 (38.13%) Docker
Systems Management
1 50 (35.97%) Kubernetes
2 12 (8.63%) Terraform
3 3 (2.16%) Grafana
4 2 (1.44%) Ansible
4 2 (1.44%) Puppet
Vendors
1 29 (20.86%) Solace
2 2 (1.44%) Google
2 2 (1.44%) Oracle
2 2 (1.44%) Ping Identity
2 2 (1.44%) Red Hat
2 2 (1.44%) SaltStack
2 2 (1.44%) SAP
3 1 (0.72%) Databricks
3 1 (0.72%) Dynatrace