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

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 16 13
Rank change year-on-year -12 -3 +11
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 523 328 868
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.49% 9.02% 9.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.37% 9.58% 11.73%
Number of salaries quoted 410 281 708
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% +8.33% -1.93%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,751 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +11.54% -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 7,094 3,425 7,400
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 74.43% 94.22% 82.87%
Number of salaries quoted 4,131 2,122 5,903
10th Percentile £29,000 £31,250 £27,550
25th Percentile £37,750 £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 £66,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +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 12 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 12 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 -6 411 £70,000 +3.70% 104
Cheshire -8 55 £60,000 +20.00% 18
Merseyside -3 29 £65,000 - 7
Lancashire -8 28 £60,000 +19.87% 21
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 7 (1.34%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.96%) Apache
2 5 (0.96%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.76%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.57%) Confluence
5 2 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.38%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) CMS
6 1 (0.19%) FactoryTalk
6 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.19%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.38%) EngageOne
1 2 (0.38%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (1.91%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 111 (21.22%) AWS
2 93 (17.78%) Azure
3 41 (7.84%) SaaS
4 33 (6.31%) Serverless
5 22 (4.21%) GCP
6 12 (2.29%) Azure AKS
7 10 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
7 10 (1.91%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (1.91%) Figma
8 8 (1.53%) Anthropic Claude
8 8 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
9 7 (1.34%) GitHub
10 6 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (0.96%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 5 (0.96%) IaaS
11 5 (0.96%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.96%) PaaS
12 4 (0.76%) Cloud Computing
12 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Copilot
12 4 (0.76%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.96%) AMQP
2 2 (0.38%) HTTP
2 2 (0.38%) RTP
3 1 (0.19%) LTE
3 1 (0.19%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (6.50%) NoSQL
2 18 (3.44%) MongoDB
3 10 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.72%) Elasticsearch
4 9 (1.72%) Neo4j
5 7 (1.34%) Big Data
5 7 (1.34%) Hadoop
5 7 (1.34%) MySQL
6 6 (1.15%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.96%) Cloudera CDH
7 5 (0.96%) DocumentDB
7 5 (0.96%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.76%) FileMaker
8 4 (0.76%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.76%) GIS
8 4 (0.76%) QGIS
9 3 (0.57%) Power BI
10 2 (0.38%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.38%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.38%) Redis
Development Applications
1 9 (1.72%) Claude Code
1 9 (1.72%) Git
2 8 (1.53%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.76%) Cypress.io
3 4 (0.76%) JIRA
3 4 (0.76%) NUnit
4 3 (0.57%) GitLab
5 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.38%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.19%) GDB
6 1 (0.19%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.19%) JUnit
6 1 (0.19%) Postman
6 1 (0.19%) Protractor
6 1 (0.19%) Selenium
6 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.19%) WinDbg
General
1 50 (9.56%) Finance
2 49 (9.37%) Social Skills
3 26 (4.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 19 (3.63%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (3.63%) Public Sector
5 14 (2.68%) Manufacturing
6 12 (2.29%) Retail
7 7 (1.34%) Electronics
7 7 (1.34%) Legal
8 6 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 5 (0.96%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.76%) Banking
10 4 (0.76%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.57%) Automotive
11 3 (0.57%) French Language
11 3 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.57%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (0.57%) Spanish Language
12 2 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.38%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 340 (65.01%) Software Engineer
2 103 (19.69%) Senior
3 92 (17.59%) Lead
4 73 (13.96%) Senior Software Engineer
5 61 (11.66%) Developer
6 46 (8.80%) Lead Software Engineer
7 29 (5.54%) Java Engineer
8 26 (4.97%) Software Developer
9 24 (4.59%) Java Software Engineer
10 22 (4.21%) Lead Developer
11 20 (3.82%) Principal Engineer
12 19 (3.63%) Principal Software Engineer
13 18 (3.44%) PLC Software Engineer
13 18 (3.44%) Senior Developer
14 15 (2.87%) Python Engineer
15 14 (2.68%) Embedded Engineer
15 14 (2.68%) Embedded Software Engineer
15 14 (2.68%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 14 (2.68%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 14 (2.68%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (16.25%) .NET
2 56 (10.71%) React
3 36 (6.88%) Node.js
4 28 (5.35%) RESTful
5 26 (4.97%) AngularJS
6 21 (4.02%) REST
7 20 (3.82%) Spring
8 19 (3.63%) .NET Framework
9 18 (3.44%) Spring Boot
10 12 (2.29%) .NET Core
10 12 (2.29%) CSS
10 12 (2.29%) Vue
11 11 (2.10%) Flask
12 9 (1.72%) HTML
12 9 (1.72%) Next.js
13 8 (1.53%) Django
14 7 (1.34%) OpenAPI
14 7 (1.34%) RabbitMQ
14 7 (1.34%) Swagger
15 6 (1.15%) Celery
Miscellaneous
1 63 (12.05%) Cloud Native
2 20 (3.82%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (2.87%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.49%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (2.10%) IoT
6 9 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.72%) Industry 4.0
7 6 (1.15%) Onboarding
8 5 (0.96%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (0.96%) Management Information System
8 5 (0.96%) Robotics
9 4 (0.76%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.76%) SCADA
10 3 (0.57%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.57%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.38%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.38%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.38%) Animation
11 2 (0.38%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.38%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.10%) Linux
2 7 (1.34%) Apple iOS
3 6 (1.15%) Android
4 5 (0.96%) CentOS
4 5 (0.96%) Debian
4 5 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (0.96%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.57%) Windows
6 1 (0.19%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (21.41%) Agile
2 94 (17.97%) CI/CD
3 85 (16.25%) DevOps
4 66 (12.62%) Mentoring
5 63 (12.05%) Full-Stack Development
6 62 (11.85%) Microservices
7 47 (8.99%) Coaching
7 47 (8.99%) Scrum
8 45 (8.60%) AI
9 44 (8.41%) TDD
10 41 (7.84%) Problem-Solving
11 39 (7.46%) Technical Leadership
12 35 (6.69%) Containerisation
12 35 (6.69%) Open Source
13 34 (6.50%) Continuous Improvement
14 32 (6.12%) Analytics
15 29 (5.54%) Clean Code
16 26 (4.97%) Infrastructure as Code
17 22 (4.21%) Design Patterns
18 21 (4.02%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 85 (16.25%) Java
2 66 (12.62%) Python
3 60 (11.47%) C#
4 59 (11.28%) SQL
5 48 (9.18%) JavaScript
6 47 (8.99%) TypeScript
7 16 (3.06%) PHP
8 12 (2.29%) C++
9 9 (1.72%) C
9 9 (1.72%) Go
10 5 (0.96%) COBOL
11 4 (0.76%) Bash
11 4 (0.76%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.57%) Bicep
12 3 (0.57%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.38%) Scala
14 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.19%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 38 (7.27%) Security Cleared
2 25 (4.78%) DV Cleared
3 20 (3.82%) SC Cleared
4 15 (2.87%) Degree
5 11 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.57%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.19%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (3.06%) QA
2 9 (1.72%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.19%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (7.46%) Docker
2 2 (0.38%) Firmware
3 1 (0.19%) KVM
3 1 (0.19%) QEMU
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 48 (9.18%) Kubernetes
2 32 (6.12%) Terraform
3 6 (1.15%) Ansible
4 5 (0.96%) Grafana
4 5 (0.96%) Puppet
5 3 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.38%) Packer
6 2 (0.38%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 30 (5.74%) Microsoft
1 30 (5.74%) Salesforce
2 25 (4.78%) Cisco
3 10 (1.91%) Adobe
4 8 (1.53%) Google
5 6 (1.15%) SaltStack
6 5 (0.96%) BiZZdesign
6 5 (0.96%) Red Hat
6 5 (0.96%) Rockwell
7 4 (0.76%) Siemens
8 3 (0.57%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.38%) Xamarin
10 1 (0.19%) Databricks
10 1 (0.19%) Dynatrace