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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 24 10
Rank change year-on-year +11 -14 +17
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 807 610 990
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 7.02% 11.85% 11.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.85% 13.00% 14.18%
Number of salaries quoted 683 271 603
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,198
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £49,875
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 £107,500 £84,993
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 8,195 4,691 6,984
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 71.34% 91.16% 78.33%
Number of salaries quoted 6,271 2,290 4,928
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £29,175
25th Percentile £40,000 £35,000 £39,390
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,055 £51,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.88% -1.85% -7.27%
75th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £65,603
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,325 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £56,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +6.19% +2.73% -11.29%

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 28 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 28 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 +3 617 £70,000 -3.45% 167
Cheshire -5 85 £65,000 +8.33% 26
Lancashire -4 50 £60,000 +25.83% 21
Merseyside +2 44 £72,500 +11.54% 13
Cumbria -7 11 £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 (0.74%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.62%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.62%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (0.50%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.50%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.37%) Apache
5 2 (0.25%) Confluence
5 2 (0.25%) nginx
6 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.12%) CMS
6 1 (0.12%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.12%) WinCC
Applications
1 4 (0.50%) Trello
2 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 149 (18.46%) AWS
2 87 (10.78%) Azure
3 60 (7.43%) SaaS
4 38 (4.71%) Serverless
5 25 (3.10%) GCP
6 22 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (2.60%) Anthropic Claude
8 15 (1.86%) GitHub
9 14 (1.73%) Power Platform
10 11 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
10 11 (1.36%) Firebase
11 8 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
12 6 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (0.74%) Azure AKS
12 6 (0.74%) Datadog
12 6 (0.74%) npm
13 5 (0.62%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (0.62%) Amazon S3
13 5 (0.62%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.50%) TCP/IP
2 2 (0.25%) AMQP
2 2 (0.25%) Bluetooth
2 2 (0.25%) RTP
2 2 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (0.25%) Wireless
2 2 (0.25%) ZigBee
3 1 (0.12%) Firewall
3 1 (0.12%) LTE
3 1 (0.12%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.35%) NoSQL
2 21 (2.60%) MongoDB
3 20 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.73%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.49%) MySQL
6 6 (0.74%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.62%) FileMaker
7 5 (0.62%) Pinecone
8 4 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.50%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.50%) GIS
8 4 (0.50%) QGIS
9 3 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.37%) DocumentDB
9 3 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.37%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.37%) Neo4j
9 3 (0.37%) Redis
10 2 (0.25%) Big Data
10 2 (0.25%) Cloudera CDH
Development Applications
1 20 (2.48%) Claude Code
2 17 (2.11%) Git
3 12 (1.49%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.12%) GitLab
4 9 (1.12%) JIRA
5 7 (0.87%) Maven
6 6 (0.74%) JUnit
7 5 (0.62%) Spock
8 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.50%) Storybook
9 3 (0.37%) NUnit
10 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.25%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.25%) Vagrant
10 2 (0.25%) Vite
11 1 (0.12%) GDB
11 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
11 1 (0.12%) Mocha
11 1 (0.12%) Postman
11 1 (0.12%) WinDbg
General
1 82 (10.16%) Finance
2 62 (7.68%) Social Skills
3 28 (3.47%) Public Sector
3 28 (3.47%) Retail
4 23 (2.85%) Electronics
5 17 (2.11%) Legal
6 14 (1.73%) Manufacturing
7 11 (1.36%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (0.74%) Aerospace
9 6 (0.74%) Billing
9 6 (0.74%) Law
10 5 (0.62%) Aviation
10 5 (0.62%) Health Technology
10 5 (0.62%) Marketing
11 4 (0.50%) Banking
11 4 (0.50%) Games
11 4 (0.50%) Publishing
12 3 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.25%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 534 (66.17%) Software Engineer
2 214 (26.52%) Senior
3 153 (18.96%) Senior Software Engineer
4 109 (13.51%) Lead
5 97 (12.02%) Developer
6 68 (8.43%) Lead Software Engineer
7 47 (5.82%) Principal Engineer
8 43 (5.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 42 (5.20%) Java Engineer
10 40 (4.96%) Software Manager
11 39 (4.83%) Principal Software Engineer
12 37 (4.58%) Java Software Engineer
13 34 (4.21%) Engineering Manager
13 34 (4.21%) Software Developer
14 33 (4.09%) Senior Developer
15 30 (3.72%) PLC Software Engineer
15 30 (3.72%) Python Engineer
16 29 (3.59%) Lead Developer
17 27 (3.35%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
17 27 (3.35%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (12.39%) .NET
2 66 (8.18%) React
3 46 (5.70%) Node.js
4 34 (4.21%) Next.js
5 32 (3.97%) AngularJS
6 31 (3.84%) Spring
7 28 (3.47%) RESTful
8 24 (2.97%) Spring Boot
9 20 (2.48%) REST
9 20 (2.48%) Vue
10 19 (2.35%) React Native
11 14 (1.73%) Ruby on Rails
12 12 (1.49%) CSS
12 12 (1.49%) FastAPI
13 11 (1.36%) .NET Framework
14 9 (1.12%) .NET Core
14 9 (1.12%) LangChain
15 7 (0.87%) ASP.NET
15 7 (0.87%) ASP.NET Core
15 7 (0.87%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 95 (11.77%) Cloud Native
2 42 (5.20%) Distributed Systems
3 35 (4.34%) Product Ownership
4 22 (2.73%) AI Agents
5 18 (2.23%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.73%) Greenfield Project
6 14 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (0.99%) Industry 4.0
8 6 (0.74%) Embedded Systems
8 6 (0.74%) IoT
9 5 (0.62%) Life Science
9 5 (0.62%) Private Cloud
9 5 (0.62%) Robotics
9 5 (0.62%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.50%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.50%) Onboarding
11 3 (0.37%) Distributed Architecture
11 3 (0.37%) Legacy Applications
11 3 (0.37%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (0.25%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.48%) Linux
2 6 (0.74%) Android
3 5 (0.62%) Apple iOS
3 5 (0.62%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) CentOS
4 2 (0.25%) Debian
4 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
4 2 (0.25%) FreeRTOS
4 2 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.25%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.12%) Unix
5 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (16.48%) Full-Stack Development
2 131 (16.23%) Agile
2 131 (16.23%) DevOps
3 126 (15.61%) CI/CD
4 112 (13.88%) AI
5 91 (11.28%) Mentoring
6 78 (9.67%) Microservices
7 73 (9.05%) Problem-Solving
8 58 (7.19%) Continuous Improvement
8 58 (7.19%) TDD
9 52 (6.44%) Test Automation
10 49 (6.07%) Scrum
11 42 (5.20%) Observability
12 40 (4.96%) Event-Driven
13 39 (4.83%) Coaching
14 38 (4.71%) Infrastructure as Code
15 37 (4.58%) Decision-Making
15 37 (4.58%) Technical Leadership
16 36 (4.46%) Collaborative Culture
17 34 (4.21%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 119 (14.75%) Python
2 112 (13.88%) Java
3 91 (11.28%) TypeScript
4 87 (10.78%) C#
5 84 (10.41%) SQL
6 76 (9.42%) JavaScript
7 32 (3.97%) Go
8 27 (3.35%) C++
9 17 (2.11%) C
10 14 (1.73%) Ruby
11 13 (1.61%) PHP
12 8 (0.99%) Bash
13 6 (0.74%) PowerShell
14 5 (0.62%) COBOL
15 4 (0.50%) Bicep
15 4 (0.50%) Kotlin
16 3 (0.37%) Scala
17 1 (0.12%) Apex Code
17 1 (0.12%) Groovy
17 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 57 (7.06%) Security Cleared
2 41 (5.08%) DV Cleared
2 41 (5.08%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.60%) Degree
4 14 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (0.74%) PMI Certification
6 5 (0.62%) DBS Check
7 4 (0.50%) PMP
8 3 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.12%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.22%) QA
2 9 (1.12%) Accessibility
3 4 (0.50%) WCAG
4 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.25%) GDPR
5 2 (0.25%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.12%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.12%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 46 (5.70%) Docker
2 7 (0.87%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 45 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 40 (4.96%) Terraform
3 8 (0.99%) Ansible
4 6 (0.74%) Grafana
4 6 (0.74%) 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
6 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 20 (2.48%) Microsoft
2 12 (1.49%) Splunk
3 11 (1.36%) Rockwell
4 10 (1.24%) Google
5 8 (0.99%) Siemens
6 6 (0.74%) OpenAI
7 5 (0.62%) AppDynamics
7 5 (0.62%) Databricks
8 4 (0.50%) Adobe
8 4 (0.50%) Xamarin
9 3 (0.37%) DevExpress
10 2 (0.25%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.25%) SaltStack
11 1 (0.12%) Brio
11 1 (0.12%) New Relic
11 1 (0.12%) Salesforce