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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 23 10
Rank change year-on-year +10 -13 +17
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 793 616 1,139
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 7.03% 11.96% 11.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.90% 13.02% 14.04%
Number of salaries quoted 670 276 741
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,313 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +12.50% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £85,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £75,000 £64,000
% change year-on-year - +17.19% -11.72%

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 8,008 4,732 8,113
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 71.02% 91.87% 79.04%
Number of salaries quoted 6,152 2,288 5,974
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,925 £28,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,625 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,055 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.88% +0.11% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,150 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -12.00%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 +3 601 £70,000 -3.45% 141
Cheshire -3 93 £60,000 - 18
Lancashire +4 49 £60,000 +25.83% 15
Merseyside -1 41 £70,000 +7.69% 10
Cumbria -9 9 £50,000 -16.67% 4
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 (0.76%) Apache Spark
1 6 (0.76%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.63%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.50%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.50%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.38%) Apache
5 2 (0.25%) Confluence
5 2 (0.25%) nginx
6 1 (0.13%) CMS
6 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 3 (0.38%) Trello
2 2 (0.25%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 139 (17.53%) AWS
2 81 (10.21%) Azure
3 56 (7.06%) SaaS
4 40 (5.04%) Serverless
5 23 (2.90%) GCP
6 21 (2.65%) Anthropic Claude
7 17 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (1.39%) Firebase
8 11 (1.39%) GitHub
9 10 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (1.26%) Power Platform
10 7 (0.88%) Azure AKS
10 7 (0.88%) Dynamics 365
11 6 (0.76%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (0.76%) Microsoft Copilot
12 5 (0.63%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.63%) Amazon S3
13 4 (0.50%) Azure AI
13 4 (0.50%) Datadog
13 4 (0.50%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.38%) AMQP
2 2 (0.25%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.25%) RTP
2 2 (0.25%) TCP/IP
2 2 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (0.25%) Wireless
2 2 (0.25%) ZigBee
3 1 (0.13%) LTE
3 1 (0.13%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.66%) NoSQL
2 22 (2.77%) MongoDB
3 19 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.51%) MySQL
5 10 (1.26%) SQL Server
6 6 (0.76%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.63%) FileMaker
7 5 (0.63%) Pinecone
8 4 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.50%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.50%) GIS
8 4 (0.50%) Neo4j
8 4 (0.50%) QGIS
9 3 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.38%) Big Data
9 3 (0.38%) Cloudera CDH
9 3 (0.38%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.38%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.38%) Redis
Development Applications
1 20 (2.52%) Claude Code
2 15 (1.89%) Git
3 11 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.88%) GitLab
4 7 (0.88%) JIRA
5 5 (0.63%) JUnit
6 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.50%) Spock
7 3 (0.38%) Maven
7 3 (0.38%) NUnit
8 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.25%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.25%) Vagrant
8 2 (0.25%) Vite
9 1 (0.13%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.13%) GDB
9 1 (0.13%) Gemini Tracker
9 1 (0.13%) Mocha
9 1 (0.13%) Postman
9 1 (0.13%) WinDbg
General
1 83 (10.47%) Finance
2 54 (6.81%) Social Skills
3 27 (3.40%) Public Sector
4 24 (3.03%) Electronics
4 24 (3.03%) Retail
5 17 (2.14%) Legal
6 15 (1.89%) Manufacturing
7 13 (1.64%) Analytical Skills
8 9 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (0.76%) Aerospace
9 6 (0.76%) Billing
9 6 (0.76%) Law
10 5 (0.63%) Health Technology
10 5 (0.63%) Marketing
11 4 (0.50%) Games
11 4 (0.50%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.38%) Banking
12 3 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.38%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (0.38%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 537 (67.72%) Software Engineer
2 200 (25.22%) Senior
3 148 (18.66%) Senior Software Engineer
4 112 (14.12%) Lead
5 96 (12.11%) Developer
6 69 (8.70%) Lead Software Engineer
7 44 (5.55%) Principal Engineer
8 42 (5.30%) Java Engineer
9 41 (5.17%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 40 (5.04%) Software Developer
11 37 (4.67%) Java Software Engineer
11 37 (4.67%) Principal Software Engineer
11 37 (4.67%) Software Manager
12 31 (3.91%) Engineering Manager
12 31 (3.91%) Senior Developer
13 30 (3.78%) Lead Developer
13 30 (3.78%) PLC Software Engineer
14 27 (3.40%) Embedded Engineer
14 27 (3.40%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 26 (3.28%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (12.74%) .NET
2 67 (8.45%) React
3 45 (5.67%) Node.js
4 35 (4.41%) Next.js
5 31 (3.91%) Spring
6 29 (3.66%) RESTful
7 26 (3.28%) AngularJS
8 25 (3.15%) Spring Boot
9 21 (2.65%) Vue
10 20 (2.52%) REST
11 18 (2.27%) React Native
12 14 (1.77%) Ruby on Rails
13 13 (1.64%) FastAPI
14 11 (1.39%) .NET Framework
14 11 (1.39%) CSS
15 9 (1.13%) .NET Core
15 9 (1.13%) LangChain
16 6 (0.76%) HTML
17 5 (0.63%) ASP.NET
17 5 (0.63%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 92 (11.60%) Cloud Native
2 39 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
3 33 (4.16%) Product Ownership
4 21 (2.65%) AI Agents
5 18 (2.27%) Mobile App
6 15 (1.89%) Greenfield Project
7 14 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (1.13%) Industry 4.0
9 8 (1.01%) IoT
10 7 (0.88%) Embedded Systems
11 6 (0.76%) Onboarding
12 5 (0.63%) Life Science
12 5 (0.63%) Robotics
12 5 (0.63%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.50%) Algorithms
13 4 (0.50%) Management Information System
13 4 (0.50%) Private Cloud
14 3 (0.38%) Data Centre
14 3 (0.38%) Distributed Architecture
14 3 (0.38%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.27%) Linux
2 10 (1.26%) Android
3 9 (1.13%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.50%) Windows
5 3 (0.38%) CentOS
5 3 (0.38%) Debian
5 3 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.38%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (17.02%) Full-Stack Development
2 124 (15.64%) DevOps
3 122 (15.38%) Agile
4 118 (14.88%) CI/CD
5 104 (13.11%) AI
6 84 (10.59%) Mentoring
7 79 (9.96%) Microservices
8 73 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
9 55 (6.94%) TDD
10 51 (6.43%) Continuous Improvement
11 49 (6.18%) Scrum
12 47 (5.93%) Test Automation
13 38 (4.79%) Coaching
13 38 (4.79%) Event-Driven
14 37 (4.67%) Observability
15 36 (4.54%) Containerisation
16 35 (4.41%) Infrastructure as Code
16 35 (4.41%) Open Source
16 35 (4.41%) Technical Leadership
17 34 (4.29%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 112 (14.12%) Java
1 112 (14.12%) Python
2 89 (11.22%) SQL
3 86 (10.84%) C#
4 82 (10.34%) TypeScript
5 75 (9.46%) JavaScript
6 27 (3.40%) C++
7 26 (3.28%) Go
8 16 (2.02%) C
9 14 (1.77%) Ruby
10 12 (1.51%) PHP
11 8 (1.01%) Bash
12 6 (0.76%) PowerShell
13 5 (0.63%) COBOL
14 4 (0.50%) Bicep
14 4 (0.50%) Kotlin
15 3 (0.38%) Scala
16 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
16 1 (0.13%) Groovy
16 1 (0.13%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 58 (7.31%) Security Cleared
2 43 (5.42%) DV Cleared
3 40 (5.04%) SC Cleared
4 21 (2.65%) Degree
5 14 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.01%) DBS Check
7 5 (0.63%) PMI Certification
8 3 (0.38%) PMP
9 2 (0.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (2.77%) QA
2 6 (0.76%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.13%) GDPR
4 1 (0.13%) IEC 61131
4 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 43 (5.42%) Docker
2 7 (0.88%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 45 (5.67%) Kubernetes
2 39 (4.92%) Terraform
3 9 (1.13%) Ansible
4 5 (0.63%) Grafana
4 5 (0.63%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.38%) Puppet
6 2 (0.25%) Argo
6 2 (0.25%) Packer
6 2 (0.25%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.13%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 17 (2.14%) Microsoft
2 11 (1.39%) Rockwell
3 10 (1.26%) Splunk
4 8 (1.01%) Google
5 7 (0.88%) Siemens
6 6 (0.76%) OpenAI
7 5 (0.63%) Xamarin
8 4 (0.50%) AppDynamics
8 4 (0.50%) Databricks
8 4 (0.50%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.38%) Cisco
9 3 (0.38%) DevExpress
9 3 (0.38%) Red Hat
9 3 (0.38%) SaltStack
10 1 (0.13%) Brio