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 14 October 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 36 23
Rank change year-on-year +9 -13 +52
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 606 368 433
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.70% 7.21% 6.00%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.06% 8.22% 6.30%
Number of salaries quoted 487 65 202
10th Percentile £50,000 £51,500 £41,375
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 £97,500 £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 11,982 4,476 6,872
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 87.75% 95.25%
Number of salaries quoted 8,792 2,277 3,904
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £34,000 £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 £59,500 £55,000 £56,525
% change year-on-year +8.18% -2.70% -5.79%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 +11 477 £75,000 -4.46% 182
Cheshire -23 44 £67,500 -9.40% 20
Merseyside +16 41 £75,000 +13.21% 11
Lancashire -11 31 £69,305 +26.01% 14
Cumbria +8 13 £50,000 -16.67% 2
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 14 October 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.

1 606 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 91 (15.02%) AWS
3 90 (14.85%) Java
4 86 (14.19%) AI
5 85 (14.03%) Agile
6 75 (12.38%) TypeScript
7 72 (11.88%) Python
8 68 (11.22%) Full-Stack Development
9 55 (9.08%) CI/CD
9 55 (9.08%) Mentoring
10 54 (8.91%) Security Cleared
11 53 (8.75%) DevOps
12 51 (8.42%) React
13 45 (7.43%) Microservices
13 45 (7.43%) SQL
14 43 (7.10%) C#
14 43 (7.10%) SC Cleared
15 36 (5.94%) Problem-Solving
15 36 (5.94%) SaaS
16 35 (5.78%) Code Quality
17 34 (5.61%) Azure
18 33 (5.45%) Continuous Improvement
18 33 (5.45%) Spring
19 32 (5.28%) .NET
20 31 (5.12%) Kubernetes
21 30 (4.95%) Docker
21 30 (4.95%) Linux
21 30 (4.95%) Spring Boot
22 28 (4.62%) DV Cleared
22 28 (4.62%) Go

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 (0.99%) Apache
1 6 (0.99%) SharePoint Server
2 4 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (0.66%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (0.66%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.50%) CMS
3 3 (0.50%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.50%) Tomcat
3 3 (0.50%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.33%) WinCC
5 1 (0.17%) Apache Solr
Cloud Services
1 91 (15.02%) AWS
2 36 (5.94%) SaaS
3 34 (5.61%) Azure
4 18 (2.97%) Serverless
5 12 (1.98%) Firebase
5 12 (1.98%) GCP
6 11 (1.82%) Anthropic Claude
7 9 (1.49%) GitHub
8 6 (0.99%) GitHub Copilot
9 5 (0.83%) Azure Functions
9 5 (0.83%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.66%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (0.66%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (0.66%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 4 (0.66%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (0.66%) dbt
11 3 (0.50%) OpenShift
11 3 (0.50%) Vercel
12 2 (0.33%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (0.33%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.83%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.50%) AMQP
2 3 (0.50%) Firewall
3 2 (0.33%) Bluetooth
3 2 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (0.33%) Wireless
3 2 (0.33%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (1.65%) NoSQL
3 9 (1.49%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.49%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.66%) Chroma
4 4 (0.66%) DynamoDB
4 4 (0.66%) Pinecone
4 4 (0.66%) Redis
5 3 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.33%) Big Data
6 2 (0.33%) Cloudera CDH
6 2 (0.33%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.33%) MySQL
6 2 (0.33%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.17%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.17%) FileMaker
7 1 (0.17%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 9 (1.49%) Git
2 8 (1.32%) Claude Code
3 5 (0.83%) Cypress.io
4 4 (0.66%) GitLab
4 4 (0.66%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.50%) JUnit
5 3 (0.50%) Mockito
5 3 (0.50%) Selenium
6 2 (0.33%) Maven
6 2 (0.33%) Mocha
6 2 (0.33%) Vagrant
6 2 (0.33%) Vite
7 1 (0.17%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.17%) JIRA
7 1 (0.17%) Postman
General
1 39 (6.44%) Finance
2 30 (4.95%) Social Skills
3 24 (3.96%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.47%) Electronics
5 18 (2.97%) Retail
6 14 (2.31%) Aerospace
7 12 (1.98%) Publishing
8 8 (1.32%) Banking
9 6 (0.99%) Billing
10 4 (0.66%) Law
11 3 (0.50%) Analytical Skills
11 3 (0.50%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.33%) Games
12 2 (0.33%) Legal
12 2 (0.33%) Marketing
13 1 (0.17%) Automotive
13 1 (0.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.17%) Local Government
13 1 (0.17%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (8.42%) React
2 33 (5.45%) Spring
3 32 (5.28%) .NET
4 30 (4.95%) Spring Boot
5 27 (4.46%) Next.js
6 25 (4.13%) Node.js
7 19 (3.14%) React Native
8 16 (2.64%) Terraform
9 14 (2.31%) Vue
10 13 (2.15%) Kafka
10 13 (2.15%) RESTful
11 11 (1.82%) Ruby on Rails
12 9 (1.49%) FastAPI
13 8 (1.32%) AngularJS
13 8 (1.32%) REST
14 7 (1.16%) .NET Core
15 5 (0.83%) CSS
15 5 (0.83%) Jest
16 4 (0.66%) OpenAPI
16 4 (0.66%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.76%) Cloud Native
2 16 (2.64%) AI Agents
2 16 (2.64%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (2.31%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (1.98%) Media Streaming
5 12 (1.98%) Podcast
6 11 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
7 9 (1.49%) Mobile App
8 7 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.50%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (0.50%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (0.50%) Mobile Banking
10 1 (0.17%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.17%) Blog
10 1 (0.17%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.17%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 30 (4.95%) Linux
2 12 (1.98%) Windows
3 9 (1.49%) Embedded Linux
4 6 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.50%) Android
6 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.33%) CentOS
6 2 (0.33%) Debian
6 2 (0.33%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 606 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 86 (14.19%) AI
3 85 (14.03%) Agile
4 68 (11.22%) Full-Stack Development
5 55 (9.08%) CI/CD
5 55 (9.08%) Mentoring
6 53 (8.75%) DevOps
7 45 (7.43%) Microservices
8 36 (5.94%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (5.78%) Code Quality
10 33 (5.45%) Continuous Improvement
11 27 (4.46%) Technical Leadership
12 26 (4.29%) Containerisation
12 26 (4.29%) Event-Driven
13 25 (4.13%) Platform Engineering
14 23 (3.80%) Observability
15 20 (3.30%) Machine Learning
15 20 (3.30%) Test Automation
16 19 (3.14%) Infrastructure as Code
16 19 (3.14%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 90 (14.85%) Java
2 75 (12.38%) TypeScript
3 72 (11.88%) Python
4 45 (7.43%) SQL
5 43 (7.10%) C#
6 28 (4.62%) Go
7 25 (4.13%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.98%) C
8 12 (1.98%) C++
8 12 (1.98%) Ruby
9 7 (1.16%) PHP
10 4 (0.66%) Bash
11 3 (0.50%) Kotlin
11 3 (0.50%) Rust
12 1 (0.17%) Bicep
12 1 (0.17%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 54 (8.91%) Security Cleared
2 43 (7.10%) SC Cleared
3 28 (4.62%) DV Cleared
4 14 (2.31%) Degree
5 5 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (0.66%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.50%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.33%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (1.16%) QA
2 4 (0.66%) Accessibility
2 4 (0.66%) Data Quality
3 3 (0.50%) WCAG
4 2 (0.33%) IEC 61131
4 2 (0.33%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 30 (4.95%) Docker
2 7 (1.16%) Firmware
3 1 (0.17%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (5.12%) Kubernetes
2 13 (2.15%) Ansible
3 4 (0.66%) Podman
4 2 (0.33%) Packer
4 2 (0.33%) Progress Chef
4 2 (0.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 9 (1.49%) Splunk
2 6 (0.99%) Red Hat
2 6 (0.99%) Rockwell
3 5 (0.83%) Google
3 5 (0.83%) New Relic
4 4 (0.66%) Databricks
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft
4 4 (0.66%) Siemens
4 4 (0.66%) Thales
5 3 (0.50%) IBM
5 3 (0.50%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.50%) Xamarin
6 2 (0.33%) Mistral
6 2 (0.33%) SaltStack
7 1 (0.17%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.17%) EMC