Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £71,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 16 November 2025.

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

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 87 25 52
Rank change year-on-year -62 +27 +4
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 109 395 199
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 2.16% 5.71% 5.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.45% 6.02% 5.29%
Number of salaries quoted 86 178 133
10th Percentile £48,750 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £57,500 £50,313 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,250 £60,000 £61,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% -1.64% +10.91%
75th Percentile £87,500 £70,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £103,750 £75,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £75,000 £65,000 £69,469
% change year-on-year +15.38% -6.43% +0.03%

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 4,458 6,562 3,765
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 88.17% 94.83% 96.34%
Number of salaries quoted 2,649 3,636 2,868
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £30,807
25th Percentile £33,750 £40,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,500 £50,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £53,455 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -7.04% -4.17% -

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 16 November 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 November 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 -36 89 £75,000 +25.00% 112
Cheshire -39 8 £82,500 +50.00% 5
Merseyside -18 7 £62,500 -3.85% 4
Lancashire -24 4 £75,000 +36.36% 38
Cumbria +8 1 £60,000 +9.09%
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 16 November 2025, 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.

1 109 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 38 (34.86%) AWS
3 35 (32.11%) CI/CD
3 35 (32.11%) React
4 32 (29.36%) Java
5 31 (28.44%) Microservices
6 30 (27.52%) Agile
7 25 (22.94%) C#
7 25 (22.94%) Docker
7 25 (22.94%) TypeScript
8 23 (21.10%) Containerisation
8 23 (21.10%) DevOps
8 23 (21.10%) Kubernetes
9 22 (20.18%) .NET
9 22 (20.18%) Azure
9 22 (20.18%) SQL
10 20 (18.35%) TDD
11 19 (17.43%) Security Cleared
12 16 (14.68%) DV Cleared
12 16 (14.68%) Mentoring
13 15 (13.76%) Python
14 14 (12.84%) Full-Stack Development
14 14 (12.84%) JavaScript
14 14 (12.84%) NoSQL
15 13 (11.93%) AngularJS
15 13 (11.93%) Spring
15 13 (11.93%) Spring Boot
16 12 (11.01%) Event-Driven
16 12 (11.01%) MongoDB
16 12 (11.01%) Terraform

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 3 (2.75%) Confluence
2 2 (1.83%) Apache
2 2 (1.83%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (1.83%) Adobe XD
1 2 (1.83%) Sketch
Cloud Services
1 38 (34.86%) AWS
2 22 (20.18%) Azure
3 8 (7.34%) Serverless
4 6 (5.50%) AWS Lambda
4 6 (5.50%) GCP
4 6 (5.50%) GitHub
5 5 (4.59%) SaaS
6 3 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (1.83%) Amazon S3
7 2 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.83%) Azure AKS
7 2 (1.83%) Figma
7 2 (1.83%) OpenShift
8 1 (0.92%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.92%) Amazon EventBridge
8 1 (0.92%) Datadog
8 1 (0.92%) GitHub Copilot
8 1 (0.92%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.83%) AMQP
1 2 (1.83%) Internet
2 1 (0.92%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (12.84%) NoSQL
2 12 (11.01%) MongoDB
3 10 (9.17%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (7.34%) MySQL
5 2 (1.83%) Big Data
5 2 (1.83%) Cloudera CDH
5 2 (1.83%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.83%) Hadoop
5 2 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.92%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.92%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 6 (5.50%) Cypress.io
2 5 (4.59%) Git
3 4 (3.67%) GitLab
4 3 (2.75%) Cucumber
4 3 (2.75%) JIRA
4 3 (2.75%) Selenium
5 2 (1.83%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.83%) webpack
General
1 22 (20.18%) Finance
2 10 (9.17%) Social Skills
3 4 (3.67%) Retail
4 3 (2.75%) Games
4 3 (2.75%) Legal
4 3 (2.75%) Public Sector
5 2 (1.83%) Aerospace
5 2 (1.83%) Banking
5 2 (1.83%) Billing
5 2 (1.83%) Electronics
5 2 (1.83%) Manufacturing
5 2 (1.83%) Marketing
5 2 (1.83%) Telecoms
6 1 (0.92%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (0.92%) Automotive
6 1 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.92%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (32.11%) React
2 22 (20.18%) .NET
3 13 (11.93%) AngularJS
3 13 (11.93%) Spring
3 13 (11.93%) Spring Boot
4 11 (10.09%) RESTful
5 8 (7.34%) CSS
5 8 (7.34%) Kafka
5 8 (7.34%) Node.js
6 7 (6.42%) .NET Core
6 7 (6.42%) Vue
7 6 (5.50%) FastAPI
7 6 (5.50%) HTML
7 6 (5.50%) Jest
7 6 (5.50%) Next.js
8 5 (4.59%) .NET Framework
8 5 (4.59%) REST
9 4 (3.67%) Celery
9 4 (3.67%) CSS3
9 4 (3.67%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 21 (19.27%) Cloud Native
2 8 (7.34%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (6.42%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (4.59%) AI Agents
4 5 (4.59%) Wiki
5 4 (3.67%) Distributed Computing
5 4 (3.67%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.83%) Animation
6 2 (1.83%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (1.83%) Marketing Technology
6 2 (1.83%) Online Banking
7 1 (0.92%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.92%) IoT
7 1 (0.92%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.67%) Linux
2 2 (1.83%) CentOS
2 2 (1.83%) Debian
2 2 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (1.83%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.92%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 35 (32.11%) CI/CD
3 31 (28.44%) Microservices
4 30 (27.52%) Agile
5 23 (21.10%) Containerisation
5 23 (21.10%) DevOps
6 20 (18.35%) TDD
7 16 (14.68%) Mentoring
8 14 (12.84%) Full-Stack Development
9 12 (11.01%) Event-Driven
10 11 (10.09%) AI
11 10 (9.17%) Fintech
12 9 (8.26%) Clean Code
12 9 (8.26%) Prototyping
12 9 (8.26%) Test Automation
13 8 (7.34%) Code Quality
13 8 (7.34%) Scrum
13 8 (7.34%) Stakeholder Management
14 7 (6.42%) SOLID
15 6 (5.50%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 32 (29.36%) Java
2 25 (22.94%) C#
2 25 (22.94%) TypeScript
3 22 (20.18%) SQL
4 15 (13.76%) Python
5 14 (12.84%) JavaScript
6 4 (3.67%) C++
6 4 (3.67%) Ruby
7 3 (2.75%) C
7 3 (2.75%) Go
8 2 (1.83%) Embedded C++
8 2 (1.83%) Kotlin
8 2 (1.83%) PHP
8 2 (1.83%) Scala
9 1 (0.92%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 19 (17.43%) Security Cleared
2 16 (14.68%) DV Cleared
3 4 (3.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (3.67%) Degree
4 3 (2.75%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.75%) QA
2 2 (1.83%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.92%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.92%) MISRA
3 1 (0.92%) MISRA C
System Software
1 25 (22.94%) Docker
Systems Management
1 23 (21.10%) Kubernetes
2 12 (11.01%) Terraform
3 3 (2.75%) Grafana
4 2 (1.83%) Ansible
4 2 (1.83%) Puppet
Vendors
1 2 (1.83%) Google
1 2 (1.83%) Oracle
1 2 (1.83%) Red Hat
1 2 (1.83%) SaltStack
1 2 (1.83%) SAP
2 1 (0.92%) Databricks
2 1 (0.92%) Dynatrace