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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 24 10
Rank change year-on-year +11 -14 +16
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 801 611 1,063
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 7.03% 11.93% 11.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.89% 13.02% 14.22%
Number of salaries quoted 678 272 668
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £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 £109,750 £85,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £75,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +15.38% -10.34%

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 8,098 4,692 7,476
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 71.11% 91.59% 78.79%
Number of salaries quoted 6,213 2,275 5,387
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £28,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £38,750
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 £65,593
90th Percentile £90,000 £81,000 £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 21 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 21 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 +3 608 £70,000 -3.45% 169
Cheshire -3 91 £60,000 - 26
Lancashire -1 50 £60,000 +25.83% 16
Merseyside +4 42 £73,750 +13.46% 11
Cumbria -10 10 £50,000 -16.67%
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 (0.75%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.62%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.62%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.50%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.50%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.25%) Apache
5 2 (0.25%) Confluence
5 2 (0.25%) nginx
6 1 (0.12%) CMS
6 1 (0.12%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 4 (0.50%) Trello
2 1 (0.12%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 142 (17.73%) AWS
2 84 (10.49%) Azure
3 56 (6.99%) SaaS
4 37 (4.62%) Serverless
5 22 (2.75%) GCP
6 21 (2.62%) Anthropic Claude
7 19 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (1.62%) Power Platform
9 12 (1.50%) GitHub
10 11 (1.37%) Firebase
11 10 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
12 9 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (0.87%) Microsoft Copilot
14 6 (0.75%) Azure AKS
15 5 (0.62%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (0.62%) Amazon S3
15 5 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
15 5 (0.62%) Azure AI
15 5 (0.62%) Azure Cognitive Services
15 5 (0.62%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.25%) AMQP
1 2 (0.25%) Bluetooth
1 2 (0.25%) RTP
1 2 (0.25%) TCP/IP
1 2 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
1 2 (0.25%) Wireless
1 2 (0.25%) ZigBee
2 1 (0.12%) LTE
2 1 (0.12%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.37%) NoSQL
2 21 (2.62%) MongoDB
3 18 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.62%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.50%) MySQL
6 6 (0.75%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.62%) FileMaker
7 5 (0.62%) 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 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.37%) DocumentDB
9 3 (0.37%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.37%) Redis
10 2 (0.25%) Big Data
10 2 (0.25%) Cloudera CDH
Development Applications
1 20 (2.50%) Claude Code
2 15 (1.87%) Git
3 11 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.00%) GitLab
4 8 (1.00%) JIRA
5 6 (0.75%) JUnit
5 6 (0.75%) Maven
6 5 (0.62%) Spock
7 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.37%) NUnit
8 3 (0.37%) Storybook
9 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.25%) Vagrant
9 2 (0.25%) Vite
10 1 (0.12%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.12%) GDB
10 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
10 1 (0.12%) Mocha
10 1 (0.12%) WinDbg
General
1 84 (10.49%) Finance
2 56 (6.99%) Social Skills
3 28 (3.50%) Public Sector
4 24 (3.00%) Electronics
5 23 (2.87%) Retail
6 17 (2.12%) Legal
7 15 (1.87%) Manufacturing
8 12 (1.50%) Analytical Skills
9 8 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (0.75%) Billing
10 6 (0.75%) Law
11 5 (0.62%) Aerospace
11 5 (0.62%) Health Technology
11 5 (0.62%) Marketing
12 4 (0.50%) Games
13 3 (0.37%) Aviation
13 3 (0.37%) Banking
13 3 (0.37%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 536 (66.92%) Software Engineer
2 204 (25.47%) Senior
3 147 (18.35%) Senior Software Engineer
4 112 (13.98%) Lead
5 97 (12.11%) Developer
6 70 (8.74%) Lead Software Engineer
7 44 (5.49%) Principal Engineer
8 42 (5.24%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 42 (5.24%) Java Engineer
9 38 (4.74%) Software Manager
10 37 (4.62%) Java Software Engineer
11 36 (4.49%) Principal Software Engineer
11 36 (4.49%) Software Developer
12 33 (4.12%) Engineering Manager
13 32 (4.00%) Senior Developer
14 30 (3.75%) PLC Software Engineer
15 29 (3.62%) Lead Developer
16 27 (3.37%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
16 27 (3.37%) Python Engineer
17 26 (3.25%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (12.73%) .NET
2 66 (8.24%) React
3 46 (5.74%) Node.js
4 35 (4.37%) Next.js
5 31 (3.87%) AngularJS
5 31 (3.87%) Spring
6 28 (3.50%) RESTful
7 24 (3.00%) Spring Boot
8 20 (2.50%) Vue
9 19 (2.37%) REST
10 18 (2.25%) React Native
11 14 (1.75%) Ruby on Rails
12 13 (1.62%) CSS
13 12 (1.50%) FastAPI
14 10 (1.25%) .NET Core
14 10 (1.25%) .NET Framework
15 9 (1.12%) LangChain
16 8 (1.00%) HTML
17 6 (0.75%) ASP.NET
17 6 (0.75%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 89 (11.11%) Cloud Native
2 41 (5.12%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (4.24%) Product Ownership
4 21 (2.62%) AI Agents
5 18 (2.25%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.75%) Greenfield Project
6 14 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (1.12%) Industry 4.0
8 7 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
8 7 (0.87%) IoT
9 5 (0.62%) Life Science
9 5 (0.62%) Onboarding
9 5 (0.62%) Private Cloud
9 5 (0.62%) Robotics
9 5 (0.62%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.50%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.37%) Algorithms
11 3 (0.37%) Distributed Architecture
11 3 (0.37%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (0.37%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (2.12%) Linux
2 9 (1.12%) Android
3 8 (1.00%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.50%) Windows
5 2 (0.25%) CentOS
5 2 (0.25%) Debian
5 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
5 2 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
5 2 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.25%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (16.85%) Full-Stack Development
2 126 (15.73%) DevOps
3 124 (15.48%) Agile
4 122 (15.23%) CI/CD
5 109 (13.61%) AI
6 87 (10.86%) Mentoring
7 80 (9.99%) Microservices
8 72 (8.99%) Problem-Solving
9 58 (7.24%) TDD
10 55 (6.87%) Continuous Improvement
11 50 (6.24%) Scrum
11 50 (6.24%) Test Automation
12 39 (4.87%) Event-Driven
12 39 (4.87%) Observability
13 38 (4.74%) Coaching
14 36 (4.49%) Technical Leadership
15 35 (4.37%) Containerisation
15 35 (4.37%) Decision-Making
15 35 (4.37%) Infrastructure as Code
16 31 (3.87%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 115 (14.36%) Python
2 113 (14.11%) Java
3 90 (11.24%) C#
4 89 (11.11%) TypeScript
5 85 (10.61%) SQL
6 77 (9.61%) JavaScript
7 28 (3.50%) C++
7 28 (3.50%) Go
8 17 (2.12%) C
9 14 (1.75%) PHP
9 14 (1.75%) Ruby
10 8 (1.00%) Bash
11 6 (0.75%) PowerShell
12 5 (0.62%) COBOL
13 4 (0.50%) Bicep
13 4 (0.50%) Kotlin
14 3 (0.37%) Scala
15 1 (0.12%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.12%) Groovy
15 1 (0.12%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 56 (6.99%) Security Cleared
2 41 (5.12%) DV Cleared
3 39 (4.87%) SC Cleared
4 20 (2.50%) Degree
5 14 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (0.87%) DBS Check
7 6 (0.75%) PMI Certification
8 4 (0.50%) PMP
9 2 (0.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (2.87%) QA
2 9 (1.12%) Accessibility
3 4 (0.50%) WCAG
4 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.12%) GDPR
5 1 (0.12%) IEC 61131
System Software
1 45 (5.62%) Docker
2 7 (0.87%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 45 (5.62%) Kubernetes
2 38 (4.74%) Terraform
3 8 (1.00%) Ansible
4 6 (0.75%) Grafana
4 6 (0.75%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.25%) Argo
5 2 (0.25%) Packer
5 2 (0.25%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.25%) Puppet
6 1 (0.12%) Functional Safety
Vendors
1 17 (2.12%) Microsoft
2 11 (1.37%) Rockwell
2 11 (1.37%) Splunk
3 8 (1.00%) Google
4 7 (0.87%) Siemens
5 6 (0.75%) OpenAI
6 5 (0.62%) AppDynamics
6 5 (0.62%) Xamarin
7 4 (0.50%) Databricks
8 3 (0.37%) Adobe
8 3 (0.37%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.25%) Red Hat
9 2 (0.25%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.25%) SaltStack
10 1 (0.12%) Brio
10 1 (0.12%) Cisco