Software Engineering Job Trends in the North West

Software Engineering
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 22 12
Rank change year-on-year -13 -10 +5
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 316 347 672
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.58% 7.13% 10.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.79% 7.71% 12.13%
Number of salaries quoted 243 208 537
10th Percentile £50,000 £43,525 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £85,000 £73,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £87,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +7.69% -7.14%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Software Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,460 4,498 5,542
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 79.12% 92.40% 86.27%
Number of salaries quoted 2,771 2,185 4,521
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £28,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £65,640 £67,500 £66,778
90th Percentile £82,500 £81,250 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £61,350 £56,000
% change year-on-year -10.35% +9.55% -10.40%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the North West

Software Engineering
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Engineering.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the North West over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Engineering in the North West

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the North West region over the 6 months to 2 February 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 -5 252 £67,500 +3.85% 144
Cheshire -12 41 £60,000 +14.29% 31
Merseyside -4 15 £50,000 -25.93% 10
Lancashire -21 8 £75,000 +49.84% 32
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
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 (1.90%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.27%) Apache
2 4 (1.27%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.63%) Confluence
3 2 (0.63%) nginx
4 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.63%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.63%) EngageOne
1 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.63%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (3.16%) Magento
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 86 (27.22%) Azure
2 85 (26.90%) AWS
3 31 (9.81%) SaaS
4 21 (6.65%) GCP
5 14 (4.43%) Serverless
6 9 (2.85%) IaaS
6 9 (2.85%) PaaS
7 8 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
8 7 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
8 7 (2.22%) Azure AKS
8 7 (2.22%) Figma
8 7 (2.22%) Power Platform
9 5 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.27%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (1.27%) GitHub
10 4 (1.27%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.27%) OpenShift
11 3 (0.95%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.63%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.27%) AMQP
2 2 (0.63%) HTTP
3 1 (0.32%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (6.65%) NoSQL
2 9 (2.85%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.53%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (1.90%) Big Data
4 6 (1.90%) Hadoop
4 6 (1.90%) MySQL
4 6 (1.90%) Neo4j
4 6 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (1.90%) Power BI
4 6 (1.90%) Relational Database
5 5 (1.58%) SQL Server
6 4 (1.27%) Cloudera CDH
7 2 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.63%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.63%) DocumentDB
7 2 (0.63%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.63%) PostHog
7 2 (0.63%) Redis
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 8 (2.53%) Git
2 7 (2.22%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.27%) GitLab
3 4 (1.27%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.63%) Claude Code
4 2 (0.63%) JIRA
5 1 (0.32%) Gatling
5 1 (0.32%) JMeter
5 1 (0.32%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.32%) NUnit
5 1 (0.32%) Postman
5 1 (0.32%) Protractor
5 1 (0.32%) Selenium
5 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
General
1 48 (15.19%) Finance
2 41 (12.97%) Social Skills
3 26 (8.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 14 (4.43%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (2.85%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.22%) Banking
6 7 (2.22%) Electronics
7 6 (1.90%) Marketing
8 5 (1.58%) Aerospace
8 5 (1.58%) Billing
8 5 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.27%) Italian Language
9 4 (1.27%) Retail
10 3 (0.95%) Automotive
10 3 (0.95%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.95%) French Language
10 3 (0.95%) Games
10 3 (0.95%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.95%) Portuguese Language
10 3 (0.95%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 161 (50.95%) Software Engineer
2 65 (20.57%) Senior
3 57 (18.04%) Lead
4 43 (13.61%) Developer
5 38 (12.03%) Senior Software Engineer
6 21 (6.65%) Lead Software Engineer
7 16 (5.06%) Software Developer
8 14 (4.43%) Project Manager
9 13 (4.11%) Architect
10 11 (3.48%) Analyst
10 11 (3.48%) Business Analyst
10 11 (3.48%) Java Engineer
11 10 (3.16%) AWS Engineer
11 10 (3.16%) C# Software Engineer
11 10 (3.16%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
11 10 (3.16%) Lead Developer
11 10 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
12 9 (2.85%) Embedded Engineer
12 9 (2.85%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 9 (2.85%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (18.99%) .NET
2 50 (15.82%) React
3 22 (6.96%) AngularJS
4 21 (6.65%) Node.js
5 19 (6.01%) RESTful
6 15 (4.75%) REST
7 14 (4.43%) CSS
7 14 (4.43%) Spring
7 14 (4.43%) Spring Boot
8 13 (4.11%) .NET Framework
9 12 (3.80%) HTML
10 11 (3.48%) .NET Core
11 9 (2.85%) Flask
12 7 (2.22%) Next.js
12 7 (2.22%) Vue
13 6 (1.90%) Django
13 6 (1.90%) Jest
13 6 (1.90%) RabbitMQ
13 6 (1.90%) Web Services
14 5 (1.58%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 39 (12.34%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.38%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.80%) Greenfield Project
4 10 (3.16%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.22%) IoT
7 5 (1.58%) Distributed Computing
7 5 (1.58%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.58%) SCADA
8 4 (1.27%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (0.95%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.63%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.63%) Animation
10 2 (0.63%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.63%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.63%) Online Banking
11 1 (0.32%) Industry 4.0
Operating Systems
1 8 (2.53%) Linux
2 5 (1.58%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.27%) Android
3 4 (1.27%) CentOS
3 4 (1.27%) Debian
3 4 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (1.27%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.95%) Windows
5 2 (0.63%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (26.90%) Agile
2 74 (23.42%) CI/CD
3 61 (19.30%) Mentoring
4 55 (17.41%) Microservices
5 43 (13.61%) Coaching
5 43 (13.61%) DevOps
6 36 (11.39%) Full-Stack Development
6 36 (11.39%) TDD
7 33 (10.44%) Containerisation
8 32 (10.13%) Problem-Solving
9 29 (9.18%) AI
9 29 (9.18%) Analytics
10 28 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
10 28 (8.86%) Scrum
10 28 (8.86%) Technical Leadership
11 22 (6.96%) Clean Code
11 22 (6.96%) Fintech
12 20 (6.33%) Open Source
12 20 (6.33%) User Experience
13 17 (5.38%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 59 (18.67%) C#
2 54 (17.09%) Java
3 43 (13.61%) Python
4 39 (12.34%) SQL
5 35 (11.08%) TypeScript
6 32 (10.13%) JavaScript
7 16 (5.06%) PHP
8 6 (1.90%) C
9 4 (1.27%) Scala
10 3 (0.95%) C++
10 3 (0.95%) Rust
11 2 (0.63%) Go
11 2 (0.63%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.63%) Ruby
12 1 (0.32%) Bash
12 1 (0.32%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 26 (8.23%) Security Cleared
2 17 (5.38%) DV Cleared
3 12 (3.80%) SC Cleared
4 11 (3.48%) Degree
5 7 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.95%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.32%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.32%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.43%) QA
2 7 (2.22%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.95%) ISO 20022
3 3 (0.95%) SEPA
3 3 (0.95%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 35 (11.08%) Docker
2 2 (0.63%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.32%) Firmware
3 1 (0.32%) KVM
3 1 (0.32%) QEMU
3 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 33 (10.44%) Kubernetes
2 17 (5.38%) Terraform
3 7 (2.22%) Ansible
4 4 (1.27%) Grafana
4 4 (1.27%) Puppet
5 2 (0.63%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.32%) Packer
Vendors
1 36 (11.39%) Microsoft
2 29 (9.18%) Salesforce
3 25 (7.91%) Cisco
4 10 (3.16%) Adobe
5 9 (2.85%) BiZZdesign
6 5 (1.58%) Google
6 5 (1.58%) SaltStack
7 4 (1.27%) Red Hat
8 2 (0.63%) Concur
8 2 (0.63%) Sage
8 2 (0.63%) SAP
9 1 (0.32%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.32%) Databricks
9 1 (0.32%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.32%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle
9 1 (0.32%) Xamarin