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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 24 12
Rank change year-on-year +11 -12 +16
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 725 607 1,184
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 6.70% 12.87% 10.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.65% 13.58% 13.52%
Number of salaries quoted 610 270 791
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £57,500 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +12.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £70,625
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £85,000
England median annual salary £71,000 £75,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -5.33% +20.00% -16.67%

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 7,514 4,469 8,756
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 69.45% 94.78% 78.63%
Number of salaries quoted 5,754 2,035 6,609
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,850 £27,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £52,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £84,050 £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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +3 568 £70,000 -3.45% 199
Cheshire -5 76 £65,000 +8.33% 24
Lancashire +1 41 £60,000 +25.83% 40
Merseyside -3 36 £70,000 +3.70% 10
Cumbria - 4 £50,000 - 5
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 (0.83%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.69%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.69%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.55%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.41%) Apache
4 3 (0.41%) Apache Solr
5 2 (0.28%) Confluence
5 2 (0.28%) nginx
6 1 (0.14%) CMS
6 1 (0.14%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.28%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (1.38%) Magento
2 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 148 (20.41%) AWS
2 88 (12.14%) Azure
3 55 (7.59%) SaaS
4 38 (5.24%) Serverless
5 22 (3.03%) GCP
6 19 (2.62%) Anthropic Claude
7 15 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (1.38%) GitHub
9 9 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (1.24%) Azure AKS
10 6 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (0.83%) Firebase
11 4 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (0.55%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (0.55%) Amazon S3
11 4 (0.55%) Azure Key Vault
11 4 (0.55%) Figma
11 4 (0.55%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (0.55%) Microsoft Copilot
11 4 (0.55%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.41%) AMQP
2 2 (0.28%) RTP
3 1 (0.14%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.00%) NoSQL
2 18 (2.48%) MongoDB
3 12 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.10%) MySQL
5 5 (0.69%) Big Data
5 5 (0.69%) FileMaker
5 5 (0.69%) Hadoop
6 4 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.55%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.55%) GIS
6 4 (0.55%) Neo4j
6 4 (0.55%) Pinecone
6 4 (0.55%) QGIS
6 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.55%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.41%) Cloudera CDH
7 3 (0.41%) DocumentDB
8 2 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.28%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 19 (2.62%) Claude Code
2 13 (1.79%) Git
3 11 (1.52%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.69%) GitLab
5 4 (0.55%) JIRA
6 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.41%) JUnit
6 3 (0.41%) NUnit
7 2 (0.28%) Maven
7 2 (0.28%) Spock
7 2 (0.28%) Vagrant
7 2 (0.28%) Vite
8 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.14%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.14%) GDB
8 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.14%) Postman
8 1 (0.14%) Selenium
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.14%) WinDbg
General
1 78 (10.76%) Finance
2 41 (5.66%) Social Skills
3 24 (3.31%) Public Sector
4 21 (2.90%) Retail
5 15 (2.07%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 15 (2.07%) Manufacturing
6 14 (1.93%) Electronics
6 14 (1.93%) Legal
7 6 (0.83%) Aerospace
8 5 (0.69%) Health Technology
9 4 (0.55%) Billing
9 4 (0.55%) Italian Language
9 4 (0.55%) Marketing
10 3 (0.41%) Aviation
10 3 (0.41%) Banking
10 3 (0.41%) French Language
10 3 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
10 3 (0.41%) Portuguese Language
10 3 (0.41%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 493 (68.00%) Software Engineer
2 177 (24.41%) Senior
3 136 (18.76%) Senior Software Engineer
4 106 (14.62%) Lead
5 92 (12.69%) Developer
6 59 (8.14%) Lead Software Engineer
7 43 (5.93%) Java Engineer
7 43 (5.93%) Software Developer
8 41 (5.66%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 37 (5.10%) Java Software Engineer
10 36 (4.97%) Principal Engineer
11 31 (4.28%) Principal Software Engineer
11 31 (4.28%) Software Manager
12 30 (4.14%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
12 30 (4.14%) Lead Developer
12 30 (4.14%) Senior Developer
13 26 (3.59%) PLC Software Engineer
14 24 (3.31%) Senior Java Engineer
15 23 (3.17%) Python Engineer
15 23 (3.17%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (14.07%) .NET
2 59 (8.14%) React
3 42 (5.79%) Node.js
4 30 (4.14%) Spring
5 28 (3.86%) Next.js
5 28 (3.86%) RESTful
6 26 (3.59%) Spring Boot
7 23 (3.17%) AngularJS
7 23 (3.17%) REST
8 16 (2.21%) Vue
9 13 (1.79%) React Native
9 13 (1.79%) Ruby on Rails
10 12 (1.66%) .NET Framework
11 11 (1.52%) CSS
11 11 (1.52%) FastAPI
12 10 (1.38%) .NET Core
13 8 (1.10%) LangChain
14 7 (0.97%) Flask
15 6 (0.83%) HTML
16 5 (0.69%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 87 (12.00%) Cloud Native
2 37 (5.10%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 19 (2.62%) AI Agents
5 16 (2.21%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.24%) Industry 4.0
8 9 (1.24%) IoT
9 5 (0.69%) Life Science
9 5 (0.69%) Onboarding
9 5 (0.69%) Robotics
10 4 (0.55%) Algorithms
10 4 (0.55%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.41%) Data Centre
11 3 (0.41%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (0.41%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.28%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (0.28%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.28%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.79%) Linux
2 9 (1.24%) Android
3 7 (0.97%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.55%) Windows
5 3 (0.41%) CentOS
5 3 (0.41%) Debian
5 3 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.41%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (18.34%) Full-Stack Development
2 119 (16.41%) Agile
3 113 (15.59%) DevOps
4 106 (14.62%) CI/CD
5 91 (12.55%) AI
6 81 (11.17%) Mentoring
7 77 (10.62%) Microservices
8 58 (8.00%) Problem-Solving
9 55 (7.59%) TDD
10 45 (6.21%) Coaching
11 43 (5.93%) Scrum
12 42 (5.79%) Technical Leadership
13 39 (5.38%) Continuous Improvement
14 38 (5.24%) Test Automation
15 36 (4.97%) Event-Driven
16 35 (4.83%) Open Source
17 33 (4.55%) Infrastructure as Code
18 32 (4.41%) Containerisation
19 31 (4.28%) Observability
20 29 (4.00%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 113 (15.59%) Java
2 106 (14.62%) Python
3 85 (11.72%) C#
4 75 (10.34%) SQL
5 68 (9.38%) JavaScript
6 61 (8.41%) TypeScript
7 22 (3.03%) C++
8 20 (2.76%) Go
9 18 (2.48%) PHP
10 13 (1.79%) Ruby
11 11 (1.52%) C
12 5 (0.69%) Bash
12 5 (0.69%) COBOL
13 4 (0.55%) Bicep
13 4 (0.55%) Kotlin
13 4 (0.55%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.28%) Scala
15 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.14%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 55 (7.59%) Security Cleared
2 41 (5.66%) SC Cleared
3 38 (5.24%) DV Cleared
4 17 (2.34%) Degree
5 12 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (0.55%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (1.79%) QA
2 6 (0.83%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.14%) GDPR
4 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 40 (5.52%) Docker
2 6 (0.83%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 41 (5.66%) Kubernetes
2 40 (5.52%) Terraform
3 8 (1.10%) Ansible
4 3 (0.41%) Grafana
4 3 (0.41%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.41%) Puppet
5 2 (0.28%) Packer
5 2 (0.28%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.14%) Argo
Vendors
1 20 (2.76%) Microsoft
2 14 (1.93%) Salesforce
3 11 (1.52%) Cisco
3 11 (1.52%) Rockwell
4 10 (1.38%) Adobe
5 7 (0.97%) Splunk
6 6 (0.83%) Google
6 6 (0.83%) Siemens
7 5 (0.69%) Xamarin
8 4 (0.55%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.41%) DevExpress
9 3 (0.41%) Red Hat
9 3 (0.41%) SaltStack
10 2 (0.28%) AppDynamics
11 1 (0.14%) Databricks