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 26 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 37 14
Rank change year-on-year +12 -23 +10
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 561 330 866
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.51% 7.93% 9.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.45% 8.35% 11.39%
Number of salaries quoted 441 281 728
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.45% +16.00% -13.79%

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 7,533 3,954 7,604
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 74.00% 95.00% 82.37%
Number of salaries quoted 4,444 2,154 6,051
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £54,793 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.18% +9.59% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £65,875
90th Percentile £87,500 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £59,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -1.67% +9.09% -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 26 April 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 26 April 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 -1 440 £70,000 +3.70% 116
Cheshire +7 59 £60,000 +20.00% 16
Merseyside -2 34 £65,000 - 5
Lancashire -4 28 £60,000 +19.87% 30
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 (1.07%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.71%) Apache
2 4 (0.71%) Apache Solr
2 4 (0.71%) GeoServer
3 3 (0.53%) Confluence
3 3 (0.53%) FactoryTalk
4 2 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.36%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) CMS
5 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.36%) EngageOne
2 1 (0.18%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.18%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (1.78%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 114 (20.32%) AWS
2 87 (15.51%) Azure
3 46 (8.20%) SaaS
4 33 (5.88%) Serverless
5 19 (3.39%) GCP
6 12 (2.14%) Azure AKS
7 10 (1.78%) Anthropic Claude
7 10 (1.78%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (1.60%) Figma
9 8 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (1.25%) GitHub
11 6 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (0.89%) IaaS
12 5 (0.89%) PaaS
13 4 (0.71%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 4 (0.71%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.71%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.71%) Twilio
14 3 (0.53%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.71%) AMQP
2 2 (0.36%) RTP
3 1 (0.18%) HTTP
3 1 (0.18%) LTE
3 1 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.53%) NoSQL
2 15 (2.67%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
4 8 (1.43%) Neo4j
5 7 (1.25%) MySQL
6 6 (1.07%) Big Data
6 6 (1.07%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.07%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.89%) FileMaker
8 4 (0.71%) Cloudera CDH
8 4 (0.71%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.71%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.71%) GIS
8 4 (0.71%) QGIS
8 4 (0.71%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.36%) PostHog
9 2 (0.36%) Power BI
9 2 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 11 (1.96%) Claude Code
2 9 (1.60%) Git
3 8 (1.43%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.71%) JIRA
4 4 (0.71%) NUnit
5 3 (0.53%) GitLab
6 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.36%) Cypress.io
6 2 (0.36%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.18%) GDB
7 1 (0.18%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.18%) JUnit
7 1 (0.18%) Maven
7 1 (0.18%) Postman
7 1 (0.18%) Selenium
7 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.18%) WinDbg
General
1 51 (9.09%) Finance
2 45 (8.02%) Social Skills
3 26 (4.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 19 (3.39%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.21%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (2.50%) Manufacturing
6 14 (2.50%) Retail
7 9 (1.60%) Legal
8 7 (1.25%) Electronics
9 5 (0.89%) Aerospace
9 5 (0.89%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.71%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.53%) Banking
11 3 (0.53%) French Language
11 3 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.53%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (0.53%) Spanish Language
12 2 (0.36%) Automotive
12 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 370 (65.95%) Software Engineer
2 112 (19.96%) Senior
3 96 (17.11%) Lead
4 81 (14.44%) Senior Software Engineer
5 65 (11.59%) Developer
6 52 (9.27%) Lead Software Engineer
7 31 (5.53%) Java Engineer
8 29 (5.17%) Software Developer
9 25 (4.46%) Java Software Engineer
10 23 (4.10%) Principal Engineer
10 23 (4.10%) Principal Software Engineer
11 22 (3.92%) Lead Developer
11 22 (3.92%) PLC Software Engineer
12 20 (3.57%) Senior Developer
13 19 (3.39%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 16 (2.85%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 14 (2.50%) Embedded Engineer
15 14 (2.50%) Embedded Software Engineer
15 14 (2.50%) Project Manager
15 14 (2.50%) Software Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (15.33%) .NET
2 53 (9.45%) React
3 38 (6.77%) Node.js
4 28 (4.99%) RESTful
5 25 (4.46%) AngularJS
6 20 (3.57%) REST
6 20 (3.57%) Spring
7 19 (3.39%) .NET Framework
8 18 (3.21%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.32%) CSS
10 12 (2.14%) .NET Core
10 12 (2.14%) Vue
11 9 (1.60%) Flask
11 9 (1.60%) HTML
12 8 (1.43%) Next.js
13 6 (1.07%) Django
13 6 (1.07%) OpenAPI
13 6 (1.07%) RabbitMQ
13 6 (1.07%) Swagger
14 5 (0.89%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 66 (11.76%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (2.85%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.32%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (1.96%) IoT
6 9 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.60%) Industry 4.0
7 6 (1.07%) Onboarding
8 5 (0.89%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (0.89%) Management Information System
8 5 (0.89%) Robotics
9 4 (0.71%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.71%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.53%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.53%) SCADA
11 2 (0.36%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.36%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.36%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.36%) Embedded Systems
12 1 (0.18%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.78%) Linux
2 7 (1.25%) Android
2 7 (1.25%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.71%) CentOS
3 4 (0.71%) Debian
3 4 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (0.71%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.53%) Windows
5 1 (0.18%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (19.61%) Agile
2 90 (16.04%) CI/CD
3 87 (15.51%) DevOps
4 73 (13.01%) Full-Stack Development
5 66 (11.76%) Mentoring
6 62 (11.05%) Microservices
7 46 (8.20%) AI
7 46 (8.20%) Coaching
7 46 (8.20%) Scrum
8 45 (8.02%) TDD
9 40 (7.13%) Technical Leadership
10 39 (6.95%) Problem-Solving
11 34 (6.06%) Containerisation
11 34 (6.06%) Continuous Improvement
11 34 (6.06%) Open Source
12 32 (5.70%) Analytics
13 28 (4.99%) Clean Code
14 25 (4.46%) Infrastructure as Code
15 23 (4.10%) Event-Driven
16 21 (3.74%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 91 (16.22%) Java
2 67 (11.94%) Python
3 63 (11.23%) C#
4 60 (10.70%) SQL
5 53 (9.45%) JavaScript
6 50 (8.91%) TypeScript
7 15 (2.67%) PHP
8 14 (2.50%) C++
9 11 (1.96%) Go
10 10 (1.78%) C
11 5 (0.89%) COBOL
12 4 (0.71%) Bash
12 4 (0.71%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.53%) Bicep
13 3 (0.53%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.36%) Scala
15 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.18%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 41 (7.31%) Security Cleared
2 26 (4.63%) DV Cleared
3 24 (4.28%) SC Cleared
4 14 (2.50%) Degree
5 9 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.53%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.18%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.18%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.03%) QA
2 8 (1.43%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 36 (6.42%) Docker
2 3 (0.53%) Firmware
3 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (7.66%) Kubernetes
2 30 (5.35%) Terraform
3 5 (0.89%) Grafana
4 4 (0.71%) Ansible
4 4 (0.71%) Puppet
5 3 (0.53%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.36%) Packer
6 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 30 (5.35%) Salesforce
2 29 (5.17%) Microsoft
3 25 (4.46%) Cisco
4 10 (1.78%) Adobe
5 9 (1.60%) Rockwell
6 7 (1.25%) Google
7 6 (1.07%) Siemens
8 5 (0.89%) BiZZdesign
9 4 (0.71%) Red Hat
9 4 (0.71%) SaltStack
10 3 (0.53%) DevExpress
10 3 (0.53%) Xamarin
11 1 (0.18%) Databricks