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 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 21 13
Rank change year-on-year -15 -8 +3
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 248 387 453
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 3.93% 7.58% 10.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.81% 8.36% 12.21%
Number of salaries quoted 188 225 334
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £63,000
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -4.76% +3.28%
75th Percentile £88,125 £72,500 £75,938
90th Percentile £100,750 £84,700 £86,250
England median annual salary £72,500 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +3.57% - -

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 5,161 4,630 3,710
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 81.82% 90.71% 87.31%
Number of salaries quoted 2,514 2,262 2,867
10th Percentile £28,000 £32,114 £31,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,389 £69,800
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -9 200 £67,500 +8.00% 166
Cheshire -22 30 £74,000 +48.00% 58
Merseyside -6 10 £75,000 +7.14% 30
Lancashire -9 8 £75,000 +48.51% 53
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 (2.42%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.61%) Apache
2 4 (1.61%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.81%) Confluence
3 2 (0.81%) nginx
4 1 (0.40%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.81%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 9 (3.63%) Magento
2 1 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 82 (33.06%) Azure
2 75 (30.24%) AWS
3 26 (10.48%) SaaS
4 20 (8.06%) GCP
5 10 (4.03%) Serverless
6 9 (3.63%) IaaS
6 9 (3.63%) PaaS
7 8 (3.23%) Power Platform
8 7 (2.82%) Azure AKS
9 6 (2.42%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (2.42%) Figma
10 5 (2.02%) GitHub
11 4 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
12 3 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (1.21%) OpenShift
12 3 (1.21%) Power Automate
13 2 (0.81%) AWS Step Functions
13 2 (0.81%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.21%) AMQP
2 2 (0.81%) HTTP
3 1 (0.40%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.47%) NoSQL
2 11 (4.44%) MySQL
3 10 (4.03%) MongoDB
4 7 (2.82%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (2.42%) Big Data
5 6 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.42%) Power BI
5 6 (2.42%) SQL Server
6 5 (2.02%) Hadoop
6 5 (2.02%) Neo4j
6 5 (2.02%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.61%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.21%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.81%) DocumentDB
9 2 (0.81%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.81%) PostHog
9 2 (0.81%) Redis
10 1 (0.40%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 9 (3.63%) Git
2 7 (2.82%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.61%) GitLab
3 4 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.81%) JIRA
5 1 (0.40%) Gatling
5 1 (0.40%) JMeter
5 1 (0.40%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.40%) NUnit
5 1 (0.40%) Postman
5 1 (0.40%) Protractor
5 1 (0.40%) Selenium
General
1 38 (15.32%) Social Skills
2 36 (14.52%) Finance
3 21 (8.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 10 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.23%) Marketing
5 8 (3.23%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.82%) Banking
7 5 (2.02%) Billing
7 5 (2.02%) Retail
8 4 (1.61%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.61%) Electronics
8 4 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.21%) Automotive
9 3 (1.21%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.21%) Games
9 3 (1.21%) Legal
10 2 (0.81%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.81%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.40%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 121 (48.79%) Software Engineer
2 60 (24.19%) Senior
3 44 (17.74%) Lead
4 35 (14.11%) Senior Software Engineer
5 26 (10.48%) Developer
6 17 (6.85%) Lead Software Engineer
7 13 (5.24%) Architect
8 10 (4.03%) Analyst
8 10 (4.03%) Business Analyst
8 10 (4.03%) Project Manager
8 10 (4.03%) Solutions Architect
9 9 (3.63%) Python Engineer
10 8 (3.23%) AWS Engineer
10 8 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) .NET Software Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) Engineering Manager
11 7 (2.82%) Python Software Engineer
11 7 (2.82%) Senior Data Engineer
12 6 (2.42%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (21.37%) .NET
2 48 (19.35%) React
3 20 (8.06%) RESTful
4 19 (7.66%) AngularJS
5 17 (6.85%) Node.js
6 15 (6.05%) .NET Framework
7 12 (4.84%) REST
8 11 (4.44%) Spring
8 11 (4.44%) Spring Boot
9 10 (4.03%) .NET Core
9 10 (4.03%) CSS
10 9 (3.63%) HTML
11 8 (3.23%) Flask
11 8 (3.23%) Vue
12 7 (2.82%) Next.js
13 6 (2.42%) Django
13 6 (2.42%) Entity Framework
13 6 (2.42%) Jest
13 6 (2.42%) RabbitMQ
14 5 (2.02%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 35 (14.11%) Cloud Native
2 16 (6.45%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (6.05%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (3.63%) Product Ownership
5 8 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.42%) SCADA
7 5 (2.02%) AI Agents
7 5 (2.02%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.21%) IoT
9 3 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.81%) Animation
10 2 (0.81%) BBC
10 2 (0.81%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.81%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.81%) Online Banking
11 1 (0.40%) Distributed Architecture
11 1 (0.40%) NVMe
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.82%) Linux
2 3 (1.21%) CentOS
2 3 (1.21%) Debian
2 3 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.21%) Ubuntu
2 3 (1.21%) Windows
3 2 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.40%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (29.84%) Agile
2 71 (28.63%) CI/CD
3 53 (21.37%) Mentoring
3 53 (21.37%) Microservices
4 43 (17.34%) DevOps
5 36 (14.52%) Coaching
6 32 (12.90%) Containerisation
7 31 (12.50%) TDD
8 28 (11.29%) AI
8 28 (11.29%) Problem-Solving
9 26 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (9.68%) Scrum
11 23 (9.27%) Full-Stack Development
12 22 (8.87%) Analytics
12 22 (8.87%) Clean Code
13 20 (8.06%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (6.85%) Stakeholder Management
14 17 (6.85%) User Experience
15 15 (6.05%) Fintech
16 14 (5.65%) B2B
Programming Languages
1 51 (20.56%) C#
2 46 (18.55%) Java
3 38 (15.32%) Python
4 34 (13.71%) TypeScript
5 33 (13.31%) SQL
6 26 (10.48%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.65%) PHP
8 5 (2.02%) C
9 4 (1.61%) Scala
10 3 (1.21%) Rust
11 2 (0.81%) C++
11 2 (0.81%) Go
11 2 (0.81%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.81%) Ruby
12 1 (0.40%) Embedded C++
12 1 (0.40%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.40%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 21 (8.47%) Security Cleared
2 13 (5.24%) DV Cleared
3 10 (4.03%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.23%) Degree
5 7 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.40%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.84%) QA
2 6 (2.42%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.21%) ISO 20022
3 3 (1.21%) SEPA
3 3 (1.21%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.40%) Data Quality
System Software
1 35 (14.11%) Docker
2 2 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.40%) Firmware
3 1 (0.40%) KVM
3 1 (0.40%) QEMU
3 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 33 (13.31%) Kubernetes
2 16 (6.45%) Terraform
3 6 (2.42%) Ansible
4 5 (2.02%) Grafana
5 3 (1.21%) Puppet
6 1 (0.40%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 33 (13.31%) Microsoft
2 23 (9.27%) Salesforce
3 20 (8.06%) Cisco
4 9 (3.63%) Adobe
4 9 (3.63%) BiZZdesign
5 4 (1.61%) Google
5 4 (1.61%) SaltStack
6 3 (1.21%) Red Hat
7 2 (0.81%) Concur
7 2 (0.81%) Databricks
7 2 (0.81%) Sage
7 2 (0.81%) SAP
8 1 (0.40%) Atlassian
8 1 (0.40%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.40%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.40%) Oracle