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 16 September 2025.

The table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 39 26 80
Rank change year-on-year -13 +54 -41
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 387 472 164
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 7.55% 6.11% 3.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 8.55% 6.41% 3.82%
Number of salaries quoted 80 244 124
10th Percentile £53,375 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £50,000 £46,350
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - +9.09%
75th Percentile £92,000 £70,000 £70,625
90th Percentile £110,000 £75,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £82,500 £65,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +26.92% -7.14% -

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 4,528 7,359 4,297
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 88.33% 95.26% 92.99%
Number of salaries quoted 2,279 4,541 3,277
10th Percentile £27,000 £30,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £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 £65,250 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - -8.33% -

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings that featured Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -5 193 £77,500 +29.17% 70
Lancashire -10 91 £65,000 +18.18% 41
Cheshire +2 85 £74,750 +24.58% 18
Merseyside -15 17 £65,000 - 1
Cumbria +5 1 £60,000 +9.09%
Software Engineer
England

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 16 September 2025, Software Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the North West region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 387 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 334 (86.30%) AWS
3 318 (82.17%) Java
4 315 (81.40%) Agile
5 313 (80.88%) Microservices
6 300 (77.52%) JavaScript
7 298 (77.00%) Azure
8 282 (72.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 254 (65.63%) Mentoring
10 242 (62.53%) User Experience
11 213 (55.04%) GCP
12 194 (50.13%) .NET
13 187 (48.32%) Python
14 186 (48.06%) Node.js
15 182 (47.03%) Security Cleared
16 180 (46.51%) DV Cleared
16 180 (46.51%) Cloud Security
17 176 (45.48%) Go
18 175 (45.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 175 (45.22%) Linux
18 175 (45.22%) C++
18 175 (45.22%) Scrum
19 173 (44.70%) Machine Learning
19 173 (44.70%) Rust
20 172 (44.44%) AWS Certification
20 172 (44.44%) Self-Motivation
20 172 (44.44%) Linux Command Line
20 172 (44.44%) Data Engineering
20 172 (44.44%) Cyberattack
20 172 (44.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 43 (11.11%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 334 (86.30%) AWS
2 298 (77.00%) Azure
3 213 (55.04%) GCP
4 9 (2.33%) Serverless
5 6 (1.55%) GitHub
6 5 (1.29%) Cloud Computing
7 4 (1.03%) SaaS
8 3 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (0.78%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (0.52%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 1 (0.26%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (0.26%) Apigee
10 1 (0.26%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.26%) Azure API Management
10 1 (0.26%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 1 (0.26%) Azure Functions
10 1 (0.26%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (0.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 1 (0.26%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.78%) Internet
2 2 (0.52%) HTTP
3 1 (0.26%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.26%) Software-Defined Radio
3 1 (0.26%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.26%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (28.68%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.36%) MongoDB
3 12 (3.10%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.33%) MySQL
5 8 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.52%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.26%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.26%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 115 (29.72%) GitLab
2 113 (29.20%) Cucumber
2 113 (29.20%) JIRA
2 113 (29.20%) Selenium
3 110 (28.42%) Maven
3 110 (28.42%) SonarQube
3 110 (28.42%) Sonatype Nexus
4 109 (28.17%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.03%) Git
6 3 (0.78%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.78%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.52%) webpack
8 1 (0.26%) JUnit
General
1 282 (72.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 132 (34.11%) Finance
3 112 (28.94%) Banking
4 81 (20.93%) Retail
5 70 (18.09%) Corporate Banking
5 70 (18.09%) Investment Banking
6 12 (3.10%) Social Skills
7 3 (0.78%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (0.78%) Legal
8 2 (0.52%) Electronics
8 2 (0.52%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.52%) Marketing
8 2 (0.52%) Public Sector
8 2 (0.52%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.26%) Billing
9 1 (0.26%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (50.13%) .NET
2 186 (48.06%) Node.js
3 144 (37.21%) React
4 122 (31.52%) Spring
4 122 (31.52%) Spring Boot
5 119 (30.75%) Kafka
6 114 (29.46%) CSS
6 114 (29.46%) HTML
7 110 (28.42%) Redux
8 109 (28.17%) JPA
9 80 (20.67%) REST
10 78 (20.16%) RESTful
11 73 (18.86%) CSS3
11 73 (18.86%) Jest
12 71 (18.35%) HTML5
13 70 (18.09%) Sass
14 40 (10.34%) Hibernate
15 11 (2.84%) AngularJS
16 7 (1.81%) .NET Core
17 6 (1.55%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 172 (44.44%) Cyberattack
1 172 (44.44%) Linux Command Line
1 172 (44.44%) Self-Motivation
2 120 (31.01%) Product Ownership
3 109 (28.17%) Enterprise Software
4 18 (4.65%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.10%) Greenfield Project
6 8 (2.07%) AI Agents
7 7 (1.81%) Wiki
8 5 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (0.78%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (0.78%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.52%) Marketing Technology
11 1 (0.26%) Algorithms
11 1 (0.26%) Analytical Mindset
11 1 (0.26%) Data Structures
11 1 (0.26%) IoT
11 1 (0.26%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.26%) Private Cloud
11 1 (0.26%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 175 (45.22%) Linux
2 1 (0.26%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 387 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 315 (81.40%) Agile
3 313 (80.88%) Microservices
4 254 (65.63%) Mentoring
5 242 (62.53%) User Experience
6 180 (46.51%) Cloud Security
7 175 (45.22%) Scrum
7 175 (45.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 173 (44.70%) Machine Learning
9 172 (44.44%) Data Engineering
10 146 (37.73%) CI/CD
11 134 (34.63%) DevOps
12 125 (32.30%) Containerisation
13 124 (32.04%) Full-Stack Development
14 120 (31.01%) Test Automation
15 115 (29.72%) SDLC
16 112 (28.94%) Performance Optimisation
17 111 (28.68%) Front End Development
18 71 (18.35%) Strategic Thinking
19 70 (18.09%) Responsive Web Design
Programming Languages
1 318 (82.17%) Java
2 300 (77.52%) JavaScript
3 187 (48.32%) Python
4 176 (45.48%) Go
5 175 (45.22%) C++
6 173 (44.70%) Rust
7 124 (32.04%) SQL
8 104 (26.87%) TypeScript
9 24 (6.20%) C#
10 4 (1.03%) Ruby
11 2 (0.52%) Embedded C++
12 1 (0.26%) C
12 1 (0.26%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 182 (47.03%) Security Cleared
2 180 (46.51%) DV Cleared
3 172 (44.44%) AWS Certification
3 172 (44.44%) AWS Certified Developer
3 172 (44.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 4 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (1.03%) Degree
5 1 (0.26%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (28.68%) QA
2 71 (18.35%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.26%) MISRA
3 1 (0.26%) MISRA C
System Software
1 132 (34.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 128 (33.07%) Kubernetes
2 16 (4.13%) Terraform
3 2 (0.52%) Grafana
3 2 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.26%) Ansible
4 1 (0.26%) Istio
4 1 (0.26%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 109 (28.17%) Solace
2 7 (1.81%) Ping Identity
3 2 (0.52%) ForgeRock
3 2 (0.52%) Oracle
3 2 (0.52%) SAP
4 1 (0.26%) Microsoft
4 1 (0.26%) Workday
4 1 (0.26%) Xilinx