Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 30 November 2025.

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

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 88 28 44
Rank change year-on-year -60 +16 +19
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 100 367 212
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 2.02% 5.54% 5.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.30% 5.88% 5.93%
Number of salaries quoted 83 171 145
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £57,500 £51,250 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -4.00% +13.64%
75th Percentile £87,500 £70,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £103,500 £75,000 £83,900
England median annual salary £75,000 £67,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +11.11% -3.57% +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 4,339 6,238 3,577
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 87.69% 94.22% 96.26%
Number of salaries quoted 2,605 3,441 2,732
10th Percentile £27,500 £31,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £34,000 £40,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £84,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £58,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -

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 30 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 30 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 -35 82 £70,000 +16.67% 32
Cheshire -34 7 £95,000 +72.73% 1
Merseyside -11 6 £61,750 -5.00%
Lancashire -29 4 £75,000 +36.36% 19
Cumbria +2 1 £60,000 +9.09%
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 100 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 35 (35.00%) React
3 33 (33.00%) CI/CD
4 32 (32.00%) AWS
5 29 (29.00%) Microservices
6 26 (26.00%) Agile
6 26 (26.00%) Java
7 25 (25.00%) C#
8 24 (24.00%) .NET
9 23 (23.00%) Docker
9 23 (23.00%) Kubernetes
9 23 (23.00%) TypeScript
10 22 (22.00%) Azure
11 20 (20.00%) Containerisation
11 20 (20.00%) DevOps
11 20 (20.00%) SQL
12 17 (17.00%) Security Cleared
12 17 (17.00%) TDD
13 16 (16.00%) Mentoring
14 14 (14.00%) AngularJS
14 14 (14.00%) DV Cleared
14 14 (14.00%) Python
15 13 (13.00%) JavaScript
15 13 (13.00%) NoSQL
16 12 (12.00%) RESTful
17 11 (11.00%) Full-Stack Development
17 11 (11.00%) Terraform
18 10 (10.00%) AI
19 9 (9.00%) Clean Code
19 9 (9.00%) Event-Driven

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 2 (2.00%) Apache
1 2 (2.00%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (2.00%) Adobe XD
1 2 (2.00%) Sketch
Cloud Services
1 32 (32.00%) AWS
2 22 (22.00%) Azure
3 7 (7.00%) GCP
4 6 (6.00%) Serverless
5 4 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.00%) SaaS
6 3 (3.00%) Azure AKS
6 3 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.00%) GitHub
7 2 (2.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (2.00%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (2.00%) Figma
7 2 (2.00%) OpenShift
8 1 (1.00%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.00%) Datadog
8 1 (1.00%) Firebase
8 1 (1.00%) Google App Engine
8 1 (1.00%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.00%) AMQP
2 1 (1.00%) Internet
2 1 (1.00%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (13.00%) NoSQL
2 9 (9.00%) MySQL
3 7 (7.00%) MongoDB
4 5 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.00%) Big Data
5 2 (2.00%) Cloudera CDH
5 2 (2.00%) DynamoDB
5 2 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (2.00%) Hadoop
5 2 (2.00%) Neo4j
5 2 (2.00%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (1.00%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (1.00%) BigQuery
6 1 (1.00%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 6 (6.00%) Git
2 5 (5.00%) Cypress.io
3 2 (2.00%) GitLab
3 2 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.00%) webpack
General
1 16 (16.00%) Finance
2 7 (7.00%) Social Skills
3 4 (4.00%) Retail
4 3 (3.00%) Games
5 2 (2.00%) Aerospace
5 2 (2.00%) Banking
5 2 (2.00%) Billing
5 2 (2.00%) Legal
6 1 (1.00%) Automotive
6 1 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.00%) Marketing
6 1 (1.00%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.00%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (35.00%) React
2 24 (24.00%) .NET
3 14 (14.00%) AngularJS
4 12 (12.00%) RESTful
5 8 (8.00%) CSS
5 8 (8.00%) Spring
5 8 (8.00%) Spring Boot
6 7 (7.00%) .NET Core
6 7 (7.00%) .NET Framework
6 7 (7.00%) Node.js
6 7 (7.00%) Vue
7 6 (6.00%) Django
7 6 (6.00%) HTML
7 6 (6.00%) Next.js
7 6 (6.00%) REST
8 5 (5.00%) Jest
8 5 (5.00%) Kafka
9 4 (4.00%) Celery
9 4 (4.00%) FastAPI
9 4 (4.00%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 21 (21.00%) Cloud Native
2 8 (8.00%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (5.00%) Distributed Computing
3 5 (5.00%) Greenfield Project
4 4 (4.00%) AI Agents
5 3 (3.00%) Product Ownership
6 2 (2.00%) Animation
6 2 (2.00%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (2.00%) IoT
6 2 (2.00%) Marketing Technology
6 2 (2.00%) Online Banking
7 1 (1.00%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.00%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.00%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.00%) Private Cloud
7 1 (1.00%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.00%) Linux
2 2 (2.00%) CentOS
2 2 (2.00%) Debian
2 2 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (2.00%) Ubuntu
3 1 (1.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 33 (33.00%) CI/CD
3 29 (29.00%) Microservices
4 26 (26.00%) Agile
5 20 (20.00%) Containerisation
5 20 (20.00%) DevOps
6 17 (17.00%) TDD
7 16 (16.00%) Mentoring
8 11 (11.00%) Full-Stack Development
9 10 (10.00%) AI
10 9 (9.00%) Clean Code
10 9 (9.00%) Event-Driven
10 9 (9.00%) Scrum
11 8 (8.00%) Fintech
12 7 (7.00%) Data Pipeline
12 7 (7.00%) SOLID
13 6 (6.00%) Pair Programming
13 6 (6.00%) Prototyping
13 6 (6.00%) SDLC
13 6 (6.00%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 26 (26.00%) Java
2 25 (25.00%) C#
3 23 (23.00%) TypeScript
4 20 (20.00%) SQL
5 14 (14.00%) Python
6 13 (13.00%) JavaScript
7 4 (4.00%) C
8 3 (3.00%) C++
8 3 (3.00%) Ruby
9 2 (2.00%) Embedded C++
9 2 (2.00%) Go
9 2 (2.00%) Kotlin
9 2 (2.00%) PHP
9 2 (2.00%) Scala
10 1 (1.00%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 17 (17.00%) Security Cleared
2 14 (14.00%) DV Cleared
3 5 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (5.00%) Degree
4 3 (3.00%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.00%) QA
2 2 (2.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.00%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.00%) MISRA
3 1 (1.00%) MISRA C
System Software
1 23 (23.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 23 (23.00%) Kubernetes
2 11 (11.00%) Terraform
3 3 (3.00%) Grafana
4 2 (2.00%) Ansible
4 2 (2.00%) Puppet
Vendors
1 2 (2.00%) Google
1 2 (2.00%) Red Hat
1 2 (2.00%) SaltStack
2 1 (1.00%) Databricks
2 1 (1.00%) Dynatrace