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 15 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 32 24
Rank change year-on-year +4 -8 +80
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 538 437 664
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.77% 8.50% 6.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.03% 9.48% 6.79%
Number of salaries quoted 467 124 440
10th Percentile £49,500 £50,000 £38,683
25th Percentile £55,000 £60,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +25.00% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £93,778 £70,000
90th Percentile £96,000 £117,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £78,810 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.18% +31.35% -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 10,697 4,612 9,785
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.80% 89.68% 95.30%
Number of salaries quoted 8,034 2,402 7,370
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,055 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.88% +0.11% -9.09%
75th Percentile £73,750 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% +3.77% -11.67%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 +9 420 £72,500 -7.64% 75
Cheshire -20 49 £60,000 -19.46% 13
Lancashire +3 42 £60,000 -20.00% 43
Merseyside -15 18 £70,000 +7.69% 8
Cumbria -8 9 £50,000 -16.67% 3
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 15 July 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.

1 536 (99.63%) Software Engineering
2 90 (16.73%) AWS
3 78 (14.50%) Agile
4 77 (14.31%) Java
5 70 (13.01%) Full-Stack Development
6 66 (12.27%) DevOps
6 66 (12.27%) Python
7 59 (10.97%) CI/CD
8 57 (10.59%) AI
9 56 (10.41%) TypeScript
10 55 (10.22%) .NET
11 53 (9.85%) C#
11 53 (9.85%) Microservices
12 52 (9.67%) SQL
13 50 (9.29%) Mentoring
14 47 (8.74%) Azure
15 46 (8.55%) JavaScript
16 45 (8.36%) SaaS
16 45 (8.36%) Security Cleared
17 44 (8.18%) React
18 38 (7.06%) Problem-Solving
19 37 (6.88%) Node.js
20 36 (6.69%) TDD
21 34 (6.32%) DV Cleared
22 32 (5.95%) Kubernetes
23 31 (5.76%) SC Cleared
23 31 (5.76%) Serverless
24 30 (5.58%) Docker
24 30 (5.58%) Next.js
24 30 (5.58%) Scrum

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 6 (1.12%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.93%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.74%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.74%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.56%) Apache
4 3 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.19%) CMS
5 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 1 (0.19%) EngageOne
Cloud Services
1 90 (16.73%) AWS
2 47 (8.74%) Azure
3 45 (8.36%) SaaS
4 31 (5.76%) Serverless
5 15 (2.79%) GCP
6 14 (2.60%) Anthropic Claude
7 10 (1.86%) Firebase
8 7 (1.30%) Azure AKS
9 6 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (0.74%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (0.74%) GitHub
11 4 (0.74%) Twilio
12 3 (0.56%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (0.56%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (0.56%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 3 (0.56%) OpenShift
12 3 (0.56%) Vercel
13 2 (0.37%) Cloud Run
13 2 (0.37%) LangSmith
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.56%) AMQP
2 2 (0.37%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.37%) RTP
2 2 (0.37%) TCP/IP
2 2 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (0.37%) Wireless
2 2 (0.37%) ZigBee
3 1 (0.19%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (4.46%) NoSQL
2 20 (3.72%) MongoDB
3 14 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.30%) SQL Server
5 5 (0.93%) FileMaker
6 4 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.74%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.74%) GIS
6 4 (0.74%) MySQL
6 4 (0.74%) Neo4j
6 4 (0.74%) Pinecone
6 4 (0.74%) QGIS
7 3 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.56%) Big Data
7 3 (0.56%) Cloudera CDH
7 3 (0.56%) DocumentDB
7 3 (0.56%) Hadoop
7 3 (0.56%) Redis
8 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.19%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 13 (2.42%) Claude Code
2 8 (1.49%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.12%) Git
4 3 (0.56%) GitLab
5 2 (0.37%) Maven
5 2 (0.37%) Vagrant
5 2 (0.37%) Vite
6 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.19%) GDB
6 1 (0.19%) Gemini Tracker
6 1 (0.19%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.19%) JIRA
6 1 (0.19%) JUnit
6 1 (0.19%) Mocha
6 1 (0.19%) Postman
6 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.19%) WinDbg
General
1 24 (4.46%) Finance
2 23 (4.28%) Electronics
3 22 (4.09%) Public Sector
4 19 (3.53%) Social Skills
5 16 (2.97%) Retail
6 14 (2.60%) Manufacturing
7 6 (1.12%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (1.12%) Billing
8 4 (0.74%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.56%) Health Technology
9 3 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.37%) Marketing
11 1 (0.19%) Automotive
11 1 (0.19%) Banking
11 1 (0.19%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (10.22%) .NET
2 44 (8.18%) React
3 37 (6.88%) Node.js
4 30 (5.58%) Next.js
5 24 (4.46%) RESTful
5 24 (4.46%) Spring
6 22 (4.09%) Spring Boot
7 14 (2.60%) AngularJS
7 14 (2.60%) React Native
8 13 (2.42%) Vue
9 12 (2.23%) FastAPI
9 12 (2.23%) REST
10 11 (2.04%) Ruby on Rails
11 9 (1.67%) .NET Core
12 7 (1.30%) .NET Framework
13 6 (1.12%) CSS
14 5 (0.93%) CSS3
15 4 (0.74%) Flask
15 4 (0.74%) Leaflet
15 4 (0.74%) PostGIS
Miscellaneous
1 64 (11.90%) Cloud Native
2 17 (3.16%) Product Ownership
3 14 (2.60%) AI Agents
3 14 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (2.23%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (2.04%) Mobile App
6 9 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (1.67%) Industry 4.0
7 7 (1.30%) Embedded Systems
7 7 (1.30%) IoT
8 5 (0.93%) Robotics
9 4 (0.74%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.56%) Distributed Architecture
10 3 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
11 1 (0.19%) Algorithms
11 1 (0.19%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.04%) Linux
2 5 (0.93%) Android
2 5 (0.93%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.74%) Windows
4 3 (0.56%) CentOS
4 3 (0.56%) Debian
4 3 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.56%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
5 2 (0.37%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 536 (99.63%) Software Engineering
2 78 (14.50%) Agile
3 70 (13.01%) Full-Stack Development
4 66 (12.27%) DevOps
5 59 (10.97%) CI/CD
6 57 (10.59%) AI
7 53 (9.85%) Microservices
8 50 (9.29%) Mentoring
9 38 (7.06%) Problem-Solving
10 36 (6.69%) TDD
11 30 (5.58%) Scrum
12 25 (4.65%) Containerisation
13 24 (4.46%) Open Source
14 23 (4.28%) Technical Leadership
15 21 (3.90%) Test Automation
16 20 (3.72%) B2B
17 19 (3.53%) Event-Driven
17 19 (3.53%) Platform Engineering
18 18 (3.35%) Infrastructure as Code
18 18 (3.35%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 77 (14.31%) Java
2 66 (12.27%) Python
3 56 (10.41%) TypeScript
4 53 (9.85%) C#
5 52 (9.67%) SQL
6 46 (8.55%) JavaScript
7 20 (3.72%) C++
8 18 (3.35%) Go
9 14 (2.60%) C
10 11 (2.04%) Ruby
11 8 (1.49%) PHP
12 5 (0.93%) COBOL
13 1 (0.19%) Scala
Qualifications
1 45 (8.36%) Security Cleared
2 34 (6.32%) DV Cleared
3 31 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 14 (2.60%) Degree
5 10 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.86%) QA
2 3 (0.56%) Accessibility
System Software
1 30 (5.58%) Docker
2 7 (1.30%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 32 (5.95%) Kubernetes
2 28 (5.20%) Terraform
3 9 (1.67%) Ansible
4 3 (0.56%) Puppet
5 2 (0.37%) Packer
5 2 (0.37%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 11 (2.04%) Rockwell
2 6 (1.12%) Siemens
2 6 (1.12%) Splunk
3 5 (0.93%) Google
3 5 (0.93%) Xamarin
4 3 (0.56%) OpenAI
4 3 (0.56%) Red Hat
4 3 (0.56%) SaltStack
5 1 (0.19%) Microsoft