Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 28 January 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 65 32
Rank change year-on-year 0 -33 +40
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 156 170 353
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 2.30% 3.44% 6.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.67% 3.77% 6.35%
Number of salaries quoted 132 99 266
10th Percentile £50,000 £45,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,125 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +8.70% +4.55%
75th Percentile £80,938 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £87,500 £82,548
England median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +7.69% -6.40%

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 5,837 4,509 5,556
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 86.19% 91.28% 94.83%
Number of salaries quoted 3,314 2,364 4,539
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £67,500 £67,500 £66,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 +15 132 £65,000 - 86
Cheshire -25 15 £50,000 -9.09% 23
Lancashire -5 6 £75,000 +49.84% 19
Merseyside -7 3 £29,030 -59.96% 7
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 January 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.

1 154 (98.72%) Software Engineering
2 53 (33.97%) AWS
3 44 (28.21%) Azure
4 35 (22.44%) Agile
4 35 (22.44%) CI/CD
4 35 (22.44%) React
5 33 (21.15%) Microservices
6 32 (20.51%) Java
7 31 (19.87%) .NET
7 31 (19.87%) C#
8 29 (18.59%) DevOps
9 25 (16.03%) Containerisation
9 25 (16.03%) Kubernetes
9 25 (16.03%) Python
9 25 (16.03%) TypeScript
10 24 (15.38%) TDD
11 23 (14.74%) Docker
11 23 (14.74%) SQL
12 20 (12.82%) AngularJS
13 17 (10.90%) JavaScript
13 17 (10.90%) Mentoring
13 17 (10.90%) NoSQL
13 17 (10.90%) Scrum
13 17 (10.90%) Security Cleared
14 15 (9.62%) DV Cleared
14 15 (9.62%) Full-Stack Development
15 14 (8.97%) GCP
15 14 (8.97%) REST
15 14 (8.97%) RESTful
16 12 (7.69%) AI

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 (3.85%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.56%) Apache
3 1 (0.64%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 2 (1.28%) Adobe XD
1 2 (1.28%) EngageOne
1 2 (1.28%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (6.41%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 53 (33.97%) AWS
2 44 (28.21%) Azure
3 14 (8.97%) GCP
4 11 (7.05%) Serverless
5 6 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
5 6 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (3.85%) SaaS
6 5 (3.21%) Azure AKS
7 4 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (2.56%) OpenShift
8 2 (1.28%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.28%) Figma
8 2 (1.28%) GitHub
8 2 (1.28%) Salesforce Einstein
9 1 (0.64%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.64%) AWS Fargate
9 1 (0.64%) Firebase
9 1 (0.64%) Google App Engine
9 1 (0.64%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.56%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (10.90%) NoSQL
2 6 (3.85%) Big Data
2 6 (3.85%) Hadoop
2 6 (3.85%) MongoDB
2 6 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.21%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (3.21%) MySQL
3 5 (3.21%) Neo4j
4 4 (2.56%) Cloudera CDH
4 4 (2.56%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.28%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.64%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.64%) DocumentDB
6 1 (0.64%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 5 (3.21%) Cypress.io
1 5 (3.21%) Git
2 2 (1.28%) GitLab
2 2 (1.28%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.64%) Postman
3 1 (0.64%) Selenium
General
1 16 (10.26%) Finance
2 9 (5.77%) Social Skills
3 4 (2.56%) Aerospace
3 4 (2.56%) Public Sector
4 3 (1.92%) Electronics
4 3 (1.92%) Games
5 2 (1.28%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.28%) Banking
5 2 (1.28%) Billing
6 1 (0.64%) Automotive
6 1 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.64%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.64%) Marketing
6 1 (0.64%) Retail
6 1 (0.64%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (22.44%) React
2 31 (19.87%) .NET
3 20 (12.82%) AngularJS
4 14 (8.97%) REST
4 14 (8.97%) RESTful
5 12 (7.69%) Node.js
6 9 (5.77%) .NET Core
6 9 (5.77%) Spring
6 9 (5.77%) Spring Boot
7 8 (5.13%) .NET Framework
7 8 (5.13%) Vue
8 7 (4.49%) CSS
8 7 (4.49%) Django
9 5 (3.21%) Celery
9 5 (3.21%) FastAPI
9 5 (3.21%) Flask
9 5 (3.21%) HTML
9 5 (3.21%) Next.js
9 5 (3.21%) Web Services
10 4 (2.56%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 22 (14.10%) Cloud Native
2 7 (4.49%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (3.21%) Distributed Computing
4 4 (2.56%) IoT
5 3 (1.92%) AI Agents
6 2 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.28%) Animation
6 2 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.28%) Online Banking
7 1 (0.64%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.64%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.64%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.64%) Industry 4.0
7 1 (0.64%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.64%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.56%) CentOS
1 4 (2.56%) Debian
1 4 (2.56%) Linux
1 4 (2.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1 4 (2.56%) Ubuntu
2 1 (0.64%) Android
2 1 (0.64%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (98.72%) Software Engineering
2 35 (22.44%) Agile
2 35 (22.44%) CI/CD
3 33 (21.15%) Microservices
4 29 (18.59%) DevOps
5 25 (16.03%) Containerisation
6 24 (15.38%) TDD
7 17 (10.90%) Mentoring
7 17 (10.90%) Scrum
8 15 (9.62%) Full-Stack Development
9 12 (7.69%) AI
10 11 (7.05%) Clean Code
11 10 (6.41%) SDLC
11 10 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
12 9 (5.77%) B2B
12 9 (5.77%) Data Pipeline
13 8 (5.13%) Computer Science
13 8 (5.13%) Open Source
13 8 (5.13%) Pair Programming
13 8 (5.13%) Software Architecture
Programming Languages
1 32 (20.51%) Java
2 31 (19.87%) C#
3 25 (16.03%) Python
3 25 (16.03%) TypeScript
4 23 (14.74%) SQL
5 17 (10.90%) JavaScript
6 12 (7.69%) PHP
7 5 (3.21%) C
8 4 (2.56%) Scala
9 3 (1.92%) C++
10 2 (1.28%) Go
10 2 (1.28%) Kotlin
10 2 (1.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 17 (10.90%) Security Cleared
2 15 (9.62%) DV Cleared
3 8 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
3 8 (5.13%) Degree
4 5 (3.21%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.92%) QA
2 2 (1.28%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 23 (14.74%) Docker
Systems Management
1 25 (16.03%) Kubernetes
2 11 (7.05%) Terraform
3 4 (2.56%) Ansible
3 4 (2.56%) Puppet
4 2 (1.28%) Grafana
Vendors
1 10 (6.41%) Adobe
2 4 (2.56%) Google
2 4 (2.56%) Red Hat
2 4 (2.56%) SaltStack
3 2 (1.28%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.64%) Databricks
4 1 (0.64%) Dynatrace
4 1 (0.64%) Xamarin