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 9 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 20 14
Rank change year-on-year -6 -6 +10
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 585 571 853
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.66% 12.97% 9.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.79% 13.56% 11.11%
Number of salaries quoted 470 288 721
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £67,037 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.69% +11.73% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £107,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £72,500 £72,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year - +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 7,508 4,210 7,675
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 72.65% 95.64% 82.00%
Number of salaries quoted 4,673 2,178 6,094
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,425 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,400 £71,250 £65,603
90th Percentile £89,900 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 9 May 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 9 May 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 -1 465 £70,000 +3.70% 117
Cheshire -22 60 £62,500 +19.05% 25
Merseyside -4 32 £70,000 +5.66% 10
Lancashire -35 26 £60,000 +22.78% 32
Cumbria -16 2 £50,000 +25.00% 4
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 5 (0.85%) Apache Spark
1 5 (0.85%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (0.68%) Apache Solr
2 4 (0.68%) GeoServer
3 3 (0.51%) Apache
4 2 (0.34%) Confluence
4 2 (0.34%) nginx
5 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.17%) CMS
5 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.34%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (1.71%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 115 (19.66%) AWS
2 81 (13.85%) Azure
3 47 (8.03%) SaaS
4 32 (5.47%) Serverless
5 18 (3.08%) GCP
6 14 (2.39%) Anthropic Claude
7 12 (2.05%) Azure AKS
8 9 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.37%) Figma
9 8 (1.37%) GitHub
10 7 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.68%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.68%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 4 (0.68%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.68%) IaaS
12 4 (0.68%) PaaS
12 4 (0.68%) Twilio
13 3 (0.51%) Azure Key Vault
13 3 (0.51%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.51%) AMQP
2 2 (0.34%) RTP
3 1 (0.17%) LTE
3 1 (0.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.44%) NoSQL
2 14 (2.39%) MongoDB
3 8 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (1.20%) MySQL
4 7 (1.20%) Neo4j
5 6 (1.03%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.85%) Big Data
6 5 (0.85%) FileMaker
6 5 (0.85%) Hadoop
7 4 (0.68%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.68%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.68%) GIS
7 4 (0.68%) QGIS
7 4 (0.68%) SQL Server
8 3 (0.51%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.34%) PostHog
9 2 (0.34%) Power BI
9 2 (0.34%) Redis
10 1 (0.17%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 15 (2.56%) Claude Code
2 8 (1.37%) Git
2 8 (1.37%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.51%) GitLab
3 3 (0.51%) JIRA
3 3 (0.51%) NUnit
4 2 (0.34%) Bitbucket
4 2 (0.34%) Maven
4 2 (0.34%) Vagrant
5 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.17%) GDB
5 1 (0.17%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.17%) JUnit
5 1 (0.17%) Postman
5 1 (0.17%) Selenium
5 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.17%) WinDbg
General
1 61 (10.43%) Finance
2 42 (7.18%) Social Skills
3 23 (3.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 18 (3.08%) Public Sector
5 17 (2.91%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (2.91%) Retail
6 14 (2.39%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.54%) Electronics
8 8 (1.37%) Legal
9 6 (1.03%) Aerospace
10 5 (0.85%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.68%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.51%) Banking
12 3 (0.51%) French Language
12 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.51%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (0.51%) Spanish Language
13 2 (0.34%) Marketing
13 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 389 (66.50%) Software Engineer
2 113 (19.32%) Senior
3 98 (16.75%) Lead
4 81 (13.85%) Senior Software Engineer
5 70 (11.97%) Developer
6 53 (9.06%) Lead Software Engineer
7 35 (5.98%) Java Engineer
8 32 (5.47%) Software Developer
9 29 (4.96%) Java Software Engineer
10 27 (4.62%) Principal Engineer
10 27 (4.62%) Principal Software Engineer
11 26 (4.44%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 24 (4.10%) PLC Software Engineer
13 23 (3.93%) Senior Developer
14 22 (3.76%) Lead Developer
15 21 (3.59%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
16 17 (2.91%) C# Software Engineer
16 17 (2.91%) Python Engineer
17 16 (2.74%) Python Software Engineer
17 16 (2.74%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (14.36%) .NET
2 49 (8.38%) React
3 37 (6.32%) Node.js
4 27 (4.62%) RESTful
5 24 (4.10%) Spring
6 22 (3.76%) Spring Boot
7 21 (3.59%) AngularJS
7 21 (3.59%) REST
8 17 (2.91%) .NET Framework
9 12 (2.05%) CSS
9 12 (2.05%) Vue
10 10 (1.71%) .NET Core
10 10 (1.71%) Next.js
11 8 (1.37%) Flask
11 8 (1.37%) HTML
12 5 (0.85%) CSS3
12 5 (0.85%) Django
12 5 (0.85%) Entity Framework
12 5 (0.85%) RabbitMQ
12 5 (0.85%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 68 (11.62%) Cloud Native
2 23 (3.93%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (3.59%) Product Ownership
4 11 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
5 10 (1.71%) IoT
6 9 (1.54%) Industry 4.0
7 8 (1.37%) Mobile App
8 7 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (0.85%) AI Agents
9 5 (0.85%) Management Information System
9 5 (0.85%) Onboarding
9 5 (0.85%) Robotics
10 4 (0.68%) Algorithms
11 3 (0.51%) Data Centre
11 3 (0.51%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (0.51%) Life Science
12 2 (0.34%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (0.34%) Embedded Systems
13 1 (0.17%) Digital Signage
13 1 (0.17%) Lidar
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.71%) Linux
2 8 (1.37%) Android
3 7 (1.20%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.68%) Windows
5 3 (0.51%) CentOS
5 3 (0.51%) Debian
5 3 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.51%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.17%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (18.97%) Agile
2 89 (15.21%) DevOps
2 89 (15.21%) Full-Stack Development
3 84 (14.36%) CI/CD
4 64 (10.94%) Mentoring
5 62 (10.60%) Microservices
6 55 (9.40%) AI
7 48 (8.21%) TDD
8 45 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
9 44 (7.52%) Scrum
10 41 (7.01%) Coaching
11 38 (6.50%) Technical Leadership
12 33 (5.64%) Open Source
13 32 (5.47%) Containerisation
13 32 (5.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 31 (5.30%) Event-Driven
15 28 (4.79%) Analytics
16 27 (4.62%) Clean Code
17 24 (4.10%) Infrastructure as Code
18 21 (3.59%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 97 (16.58%) Java
2 81 (13.85%) Python
3 65 (11.11%) C#
4 57 (9.74%) SQL
5 54 (9.23%) JavaScript
6 49 (8.38%) TypeScript
7 16 (2.74%) C++
8 15 (2.56%) PHP
9 13 (2.22%) Go
10 12 (2.05%) C
11 5 (0.85%) COBOL
12 4 (0.68%) Bash
12 4 (0.68%) Bicep
12 4 (0.68%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.51%) PowerShell
13 3 (0.51%) Ruby
14 2 (0.34%) Scala
15 1 (0.17%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.17%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 44 (7.52%) Security Cleared
2 30 (5.13%) DV Cleared
2 30 (5.13%) SC Cleared
3 14 (2.39%) Degree
4 9 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.08%) QA
2 7 (1.20%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (5.47%) Docker
2 4 (0.68%) Firmware
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 39 (6.67%) Kubernetes
2 28 (4.79%) Terraform
3 5 (0.85%) Grafana
4 3 (0.51%) Ansible
4 3 (0.51%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.51%) Puppet
5 2 (0.34%) Packer
5 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 26 (4.44%) Salesforce
2 25 (4.27%) Microsoft
3 21 (3.59%) Cisco
4 11 (1.88%) Rockwell
5 10 (1.71%) Adobe
6 6 (1.03%) Google
6 6 (1.03%) Siemens
7 4 (0.68%) BiZZdesign
7 4 (0.68%) Xamarin
8 3 (0.51%) DevExpress
8 3 (0.51%) Red Hat
8 3 (0.51%) SaltStack
9 1 (0.17%) OpenAI