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 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 44 26
Rank change year-on-year +18 -18 +53
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 619 375 447
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.78% 7.21% 5.95%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.11% 8.17% 6.25%
Number of salaries quoted 518 71 218
10th Percentile £50,000 £50,000 £42,125
25th Percentile £60,000 £61,250 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +25.00% -
75th Percentile £85,000 £92,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £75,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £82,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -15.15% +26.92% -7.14%

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 12,125 4,589 7,154
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.62% 88.18% 95.17%
Number of salaries quoted 8,942 2,246 4,205
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,847 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £77,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 September 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 30 September 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 +11 496 £75,000 - 227
Merseyside +16 43 £75,000 +13.21% 15
Cheshire -31 39 £70,000 -6.04% 11
Lancashire -16 29 £69,305 +26.01% 4
Cumbria +6 12 £50,000 -16.67% 4
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 30 September 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.

1 619 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 94 (15.19%) AWS
3 86 (13.89%) Java
4 85 (13.73%) Agile
5 84 (13.57%) AI
6 77 (12.44%) TypeScript
7 73 (11.79%) Full-Stack Development
8 71 (11.47%) Python
9 62 (10.02%) DevOps
10 60 (9.69%) React
10 60 (9.69%) Security Cleared
11 58 (9.37%) CI/CD
11 58 (9.37%) Mentoring
12 48 (7.75%) Microservices
12 48 (7.75%) SC Cleared
13 46 (7.43%) SQL
14 44 (7.11%) SaaS
15 42 (6.79%) Problem-Solving
16 41 (6.62%) C#
17 37 (5.98%) Code Quality
17 37 (5.98%) Spring
18 34 (5.49%) .NET
18 34 (5.49%) Kubernetes
19 33 (5.33%) Continuous Improvement
19 33 (5.33%) Spring Boot
20 32 (5.17%) Azure
20 32 (5.17%) DV Cleared
21 30 (4.85%) Docker
21 30 (4.85%) JavaScript
21 30 (4.85%) Node.js

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 7 (1.13%) Apache
2 6 (0.97%) SharePoint Server
3 5 (0.81%) FactoryTalk
4 4 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.48%) Apache Solr
5 3 (0.48%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.48%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.48%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.48%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.32%) CMS
6 2 (0.32%) Headless CMS
6 2 (0.32%) WinCC
Cloud Services
1 94 (15.19%) AWS
2 44 (7.11%) SaaS
3 32 (5.17%) Azure
4 23 (3.72%) Serverless
5 15 (2.42%) GCP
6 12 (1.94%) Firebase
7 10 (1.62%) Anthropic Claude
8 9 (1.45%) GitHub
9 6 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (0.97%) GitHub Copilot
10 5 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (0.81%) Snowflake
11 4 (0.65%) dbt
11 4 (0.65%) OpenShift
12 3 (0.48%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (0.48%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (0.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 3 (0.48%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (0.48%) Azure Functions
12 3 (0.48%) Vercel
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.81%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.48%) AMQP
2 3 (0.48%) Firewall
3 2 (0.32%) Bluetooth
3 2 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (0.32%) Wireless
3 2 (0.32%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (2.26%) NoSQL
3 13 (2.10%) MongoDB
4 9 (1.45%) SQL Server
5 4 (0.65%) Chroma
5 4 (0.65%) DynamoDB
5 4 (0.65%) FileMaker
5 4 (0.65%) Pinecone
6 3 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.48%) Big Data
6 3 (0.48%) Cloudera CDH
6 3 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.48%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.48%) Redis
7 2 (0.32%) DocumentDB
7 2 (0.32%) MySQL
7 2 (0.32%) Neo4j
7 2 (0.32%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.16%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 9 (1.45%) Git
2 8 (1.29%) Claude Code
3 5 (0.81%) Cypress.io
4 4 (0.65%) GitLab
5 3 (0.48%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.48%) JUnit
5 3 (0.48%) Mockito
5 3 (0.48%) Selenium
6 2 (0.32%) Maven
6 2 (0.32%) Mocha
6 2 (0.32%) Vagrant
6 2 (0.32%) Vite
7 1 (0.16%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.16%) JIRA
7 1 (0.16%) Postman
General
1 32 (5.17%) Finance
2 30 (4.85%) Social Skills
3 24 (3.88%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.39%) Electronics
4 21 (3.39%) Retail
5 12 (1.94%) Publishing
6 9 (1.45%) Aerospace
7 6 (0.97%) Billing
8 5 (0.81%) Banking
9 4 (0.65%) Analytical Skills
9 4 (0.65%) Law
10 2 (0.32%) Games
10 2 (0.32%) Legal
10 2 (0.32%) Marketing
11 1 (0.16%) Automotive
11 1 (0.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.16%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.16%) Local Government
11 1 (0.16%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (9.69%) React
2 37 (5.98%) Spring
3 34 (5.49%) .NET
4 33 (5.33%) Spring Boot
5 30 (4.85%) Node.js
6 27 (4.36%) Next.js
7 20 (3.23%) Terraform
8 19 (3.07%) React Native
9 16 (2.58%) Vue
10 15 (2.42%) RESTful
11 12 (1.94%) AngularJS
11 12 (1.94%) Kafka
11 12 (1.94%) REST
12 11 (1.78%) Ruby on Rails
13 10 (1.62%) FastAPI
14 6 (0.97%) .NET Core
14 6 (0.97%) CSS
15 5 (0.81%) Jest
15 5 (0.81%) OpenAPI
16 4 (0.65%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 60 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.07%) Product Ownership
3 16 (2.58%) AI Agents
3 16 (2.58%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (1.94%) Media Streaming
5 12 (1.94%) Podcast
6 10 (1.62%) Mobile App
7 9 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
8 7 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.48%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (0.48%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.16%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.16%) Blog
10 1 (0.16%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.16%) IoT
10 1 (0.16%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 29 (4.68%) Linux
2 12 (1.94%) Windows
3 9 (1.45%) Embedded Linux
4 5 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.65%) Android
6 3 (0.48%) CentOS
6 3 (0.48%) Debian
6 3 (0.48%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.32%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 619 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 85 (13.73%) Agile
3 84 (13.57%) AI
4 73 (11.79%) Full-Stack Development
5 62 (10.02%) DevOps
6 58 (9.37%) CI/CD
6 58 (9.37%) Mentoring
7 48 (7.75%) Microservices
8 42 (6.79%) Problem-Solving
9 37 (5.98%) Code Quality
10 33 (5.33%) Continuous Improvement
11 30 (4.85%) Platform Engineering
12 28 (4.52%) Containerisation
12 28 (4.52%) Observability
12 28 (4.52%) Technical Leadership
13 27 (4.36%) Event-Driven
14 21 (3.39%) TDD
15 20 (3.23%) B2B
16 19 (3.07%) Scrum
16 19 (3.07%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 86 (13.89%) Java
2 77 (12.44%) TypeScript
3 71 (11.47%) Python
4 46 (7.43%) SQL
5 41 (6.62%) C#
6 30 (4.85%) JavaScript
7 24 (3.88%) Go
8 14 (2.26%) C++
9 12 (1.94%) C
9 12 (1.94%) Ruby
10 7 (1.13%) PHP
11 2 (0.32%) Bash
12 1 (0.16%) COBOL
12 1 (0.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 60 (9.69%) Security Cleared
2 48 (7.75%) SC Cleared
3 32 (5.17%) DV Cleared
4 16 (2.58%) Degree
5 7 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (0.65%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.32%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (1.29%) QA
2 4 (0.65%) Accessibility
2 4 (0.65%) Data Quality
3 3 (0.48%) WCAG
4 2 (0.32%) IEC 61131
4 2 (0.32%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 30 (4.85%) Docker
2 7 (1.13%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 34 (5.49%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.94%) Ansible
3 3 (0.48%) Puppet
4 2 (0.32%) Packer
4 2 (0.32%) Podman
4 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 9 (1.45%) Rockwell
1 9 (1.45%) Splunk
2 6 (0.97%) Siemens
3 5 (0.81%) New Relic
3 5 (0.81%) Red Hat
4 4 (0.65%) Databricks
4 4 (0.65%) Google
4 4 (0.65%) Xamarin
5 3 (0.48%) IBM
5 3 (0.48%) Microsoft
5 3 (0.48%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.48%) SaltStack
6 2 (0.32%) Mistral
6 2 (0.32%) Thales
7 1 (0.16%) Alteryx