Software Engineer Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineer
England > North West

The median Software Engineer salary in the North West is £67,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 7 January 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 65 39
Rank change year-on-year -10 -26 +37
Permanent jobs requiring a Software Engineer 120 176 242
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.91% 3.45% 5.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.22% 3.74% 6.04%
Number of salaries quoted 101 105 164
10th Percentile £50,000 £45,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £47,438
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £62,500 £60,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% +3.31% +10.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £75,000 £77,554
90th Percentile £100,000 £84,700 £82,548
England median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £68,750
% change year-on-year - +1.82% -1.00%

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 5,407 4,711 4,008
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 85.99% 92.25% 95.32%
Number of salaries quoted 2,957 2,478 3,135
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £39,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,945 £52,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.85% -2.03% -1.89%
75th Percentile £67,500 £66,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £78,750 £81,700
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -2.04%

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 7 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 7 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 +3 104 £65,000 - 78
Cheshire -28 7 £95,000 +72.73% 27
Lancashire +5 6 £75,000 +49.84% 17
Merseyside -7 3 £29,030 -58.53% 7
Software Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 7 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.

1 120 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 45 (37.50%) AWS
3 38 (31.67%) Azure
4 34 (28.33%) React
5 33 (27.50%) CI/CD
6 32 (26.67%) Agile
6 32 (26.67%) Java
7 31 (25.83%) Microservices
8 29 (24.17%) .NET
9 27 (22.50%) C#
10 25 (20.83%) DevOps
11 24 (20.00%) Kubernetes
11 24 (20.00%) TypeScript
12 23 (19.17%) Containerisation
13 22 (18.33%) Docker
14 21 (17.50%) Python
14 21 (17.50%) SQL
15 20 (16.67%) TDD
16 18 (15.00%) Mentoring
17 16 (13.33%) AngularJS
17 16 (13.33%) NoSQL
17 16 (13.33%) Scrum
18 15 (12.50%) JavaScript
19 14 (11.67%) AI
19 14 (11.67%) RESTful
19 14 (11.67%) Security Cleared
20 11 (9.17%) Clean Code
20 11 (9.17%) DV Cleared
20 11 (9.17%) GCP
20 11 (9.17%) PHP

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 5 (4.17%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.50%) Apache
3 1 (0.83%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 2 (1.67%) Adobe XD
1 2 (1.67%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 9 (7.50%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 45 (37.50%) AWS
2 38 (31.67%) Azure
3 11 (9.17%) GCP
4 8 (6.67%) Serverless
5 5 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
5 5 (4.17%) Azure AKS
5 5 (4.17%) SaaS
6 4 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (2.50%) GitHub
7 3 (2.50%) OpenShift
8 2 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (1.67%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.67%) Figma
9 1 (0.83%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.83%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (0.83%) AWS Fargate
9 1 (0.83%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 1 (0.83%) Salesforce Einstein
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.50%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (13.33%) NoSQL
2 9 (7.50%) MySQL
3 6 (5.00%) MongoDB
4 5 (4.17%) Big Data
4 5 (4.17%) Hadoop
4 5 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (3.33%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (3.33%) Neo4j
6 3 (2.50%) Cloudera CDH
6 3 (2.50%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.67%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.83%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.83%) DocumentDB
8 1 (0.83%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 5 (4.17%) Cypress.io
1 5 (4.17%) Git
2 2 (1.67%) GitLab
2 2 (1.67%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.83%) Postman
3 1 (0.83%) Selenium
General
1 13 (10.83%) Finance
2 8 (6.67%) Social Skills
3 4 (3.33%) Public Sector
4 3 (2.50%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.50%) Games
5 2 (1.67%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.67%) Banking
5 2 (1.67%) Billing
6 1 (0.83%) Automotive
6 1 (0.83%) Electronics
6 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.83%) Legal
6 1 (0.83%) Marketing
6 1 (0.83%) Retail
6 1 (0.83%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (28.33%) React
2 29 (24.17%) .NET
3 16 (13.33%) AngularJS
4 14 (11.67%) RESTful
5 11 (9.17%) REST
6 10 (8.33%) Node.js
7 9 (7.50%) .NET Framework
8 8 (6.67%) .NET Core
9 7 (5.83%) CSS
9 7 (5.83%) Spring
9 7 (5.83%) Spring Boot
9 7 (5.83%) Vue
10 6 (5.00%) Django
11 5 (4.17%) HTML
11 5 (4.17%) Next.js
12 4 (3.33%) Celery
12 4 (3.33%) FastAPI
12 4 (3.33%) Flask
12 4 (3.33%) Jest
12 4 (3.33%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 22 (18.33%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (4.17%) AI Agents
3 5 (4.17%) Distributed Computing
4 4 (3.33%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (1.67%) Animation
5 2 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.67%) IoT
5 2 (1.67%) Online Banking
6 1 (0.83%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.83%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.83%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.83%) Embedded Systems
6 1 (0.83%) Private Cloud
6 1 (0.83%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.33%) Linux
2 3 (2.50%) CentOS
2 3 (2.50%) Debian
2 3 (2.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (2.50%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.83%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 33 (27.50%) CI/CD
3 32 (26.67%) Agile
4 31 (25.83%) Microservices
5 25 (20.83%) DevOps
6 23 (19.17%) Containerisation
7 20 (16.67%) TDD
8 18 (15.00%) Mentoring
9 16 (13.33%) Scrum
10 14 (11.67%) AI
11 11 (9.17%) Clean Code
12 10 (8.33%) Full-Stack Development
13 9 (7.50%) Data Pipeline
14 8 (6.67%) Fintech
14 8 (6.67%) Pair Programming
14 8 (6.67%) Software Architecture
15 7 (5.83%) Computer Science
15 7 (5.83%) Performance Tuning
15 7 (5.83%) Problem-Solving
15 7 (5.83%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 32 (26.67%) Java
2 27 (22.50%) C#
3 24 (20.00%) TypeScript
4 21 (17.50%) Python
4 21 (17.50%) SQL
5 15 (12.50%) JavaScript
6 11 (9.17%) PHP
7 4 (3.33%) C
7 4 (3.33%) Scala
8 2 (1.67%) C++
8 2 (1.67%) Go
8 2 (1.67%) Kotlin
8 2 (1.67%) Ruby
9 1 (0.83%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 14 (11.67%) Security Cleared
2 11 (9.17%) DV Cleared
3 7 (5.83%) Computer Science Degree
3 7 (5.83%) Degree
4 4 (3.33%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.50%) QA
2 2 (1.67%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.83%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 22 (18.33%) Docker
Systems Management
1 24 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 10 (8.33%) Terraform
3 3 (2.50%) Ansible
3 3 (2.50%) Grafana
3 3 (2.50%) Puppet
Vendors
1 9 (7.50%) Adobe
2 3 (2.50%) Google
2 3 (2.50%) Red Hat
2 3 (2.50%) SaltStack
3 1 (0.83%) Databricks
3 1 (0.83%) Dynatrace
3 1 (0.83%) Salesforce