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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 16 13
Rank change year-on-year -13 -3 +9
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 468 336 850
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.26% 9.34% 9.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.01% 9.93% 11.82%
Number of salaries quoted 369 279 696
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,250 £49,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -1.64%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,751 £75,313
90th Percentile £100,000 £99,279 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +11.54% -7.14%

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 6,679 3,383 7,189
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 75.03% 94.02% 83.42%
Number of salaries quoted 3,817 2,119 5,743
10th Percentile £28,500 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £40,748 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £66,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £56,875 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -5.21% +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 2 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 2 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 -9 363 £70,000 +3.70% 112
Cheshire -8 53 £60,000 +20.00% 23
Merseyside -7 26 £65,000 - 7
Lancashire -24 26 £60,000 +18.81% 17
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 (1.28%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.07%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.85%) Apache
3 4 (0.85%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.64%) Confluence
5 2 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.43%) nginx
6 1 (0.21%) CMS
6 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.21%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.43%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.43%) EngageOne
1 2 (0.43%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (2.14%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 105 (22.44%) AWS
2 90 (19.23%) Azure
3 33 (7.05%) SaaS
4 27 (5.77%) Serverless
5 19 (4.06%) GCP
6 12 (2.56%) Azure AKS
7 10 (2.14%) Figma
8 9 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.50%) Anthropic Claude
10 7 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.28%) IaaS
11 6 (1.28%) PaaS
12 5 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.07%) GitHub
13 4 (0.85%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 4 (0.85%) Cloud Computing
13 4 (0.85%) Microsoft Copilot
13 4 (0.85%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.85%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.85%) AMQP
2 2 (0.43%) HTTP
2 2 (0.43%) RTP
3 1 (0.21%) LTE
3 1 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.84%) NoSQL
2 17 (3.63%) MongoDB
3 10 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (1.71%) MySQL
5 8 (1.71%) Neo4j
6 6 (1.28%) Big Data
6 6 (1.28%) Hadoop
7 5 (1.07%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.07%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.85%) Cloudera CDH
8 4 (0.85%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.85%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.85%) GIS
8 4 (0.85%) QGIS
9 3 (0.64%) FileMaker
9 3 (0.64%) Power BI
10 2 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.43%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (2.14%) Git
2 8 (1.71%) Claude Code
3 7 (1.50%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.85%) Cypress.io
4 4 (0.85%) GitLab
4 4 (0.85%) JIRA
4 4 (0.85%) NUnit
5 2 (0.43%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.43%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.21%) GDB
6 1 (0.21%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.21%) JUnit
6 1 (0.21%) Postman
6 1 (0.21%) Protractor
6 1 (0.21%) Selenium
6 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.21%) WinDbg
General
1 52 (11.11%) Finance
2 47 (10.04%) Social Skills
3 26 (5.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 20 (4.27%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (3.21%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.92%) Retail
8 7 (1.50%) Electronics
9 5 (1.07%) Aerospace
9 5 (1.07%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.85%) Banking
10 4 (0.85%) Italian Language
10 4 (0.85%) Legal
11 3 (0.64%) Automotive
11 3 (0.64%) French Language
11 3 (0.64%) Games
11 3 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.64%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (0.64%) Spanish Language
12 2 (0.43%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 295 (63.03%) Software Engineer
2 91 (19.44%) Lead
3 87 (18.59%) Senior
4 60 (12.82%) Developer
5 59 (12.61%) Senior Software Engineer
6 45 (9.62%) Lead Software Engineer
7 29 (6.20%) Java Engineer
8 27 (5.77%) Software Developer
9 25 (5.34%) Java Software Engineer
10 22 (4.70%) Lead Developer
11 17 (3.63%) Senior Developer
12 16 (3.42%) PLC Software Engineer
13 14 (2.99%) Embedded Engineer
13 14 (2.99%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 14 (2.99%) Principal Engineer
13 14 (2.99%) Project Manager
14 13 (2.78%) Principal Software Engineer
15 12 (2.56%) .NET Software Engineer
15 12 (2.56%) Python Engineer
16 11 (2.35%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (17.31%) .NET
2 52 (11.11%) React
3 35 (7.48%) Node.js
4 29 (6.20%) RESTful
5 25 (5.34%) AngularJS
6 20 (4.27%) Spring
7 19 (4.06%) .NET Framework
7 19 (4.06%) REST
8 18 (3.85%) Spring Boot
9 12 (2.56%) .NET Core
10 11 (2.35%) CSS
11 10 (2.14%) Flask
11 10 (2.14%) Vue
12 9 (1.92%) HTML
12 9 (1.92%) Next.js
13 7 (1.50%) Django
14 6 (1.28%) FastAPI
14 6 (1.28%) OpenAPI
14 6 (1.28%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (1.28%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 50 (10.68%) Cloud Native
2 17 (3.63%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (2.99%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (2.35%) IoT
4 11 (2.35%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.92%) Industry 4.0
7 5 (1.07%) Distributed Computing
7 5 (1.07%) Management Information System
7 5 (1.07%) Onboarding
8 4 (0.85%) Algorithms
8 4 (0.85%) Robotics
8 4 (0.85%) SCADA
9 3 (0.64%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.43%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.43%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.43%) Animation
10 2 (0.43%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.43%) Embedded Systems
10 2 (0.43%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.35%) Linux
2 7 (1.50%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.07%) Android
4 4 (0.85%) CentOS
4 4 (0.85%) Debian
4 4 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.85%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.85%) Windows
5 1 (0.21%) Unix
5 1 (0.21%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (23.93%) Agile
2 90 (19.23%) CI/CD
3 70 (14.96%) DevOps
4 65 (13.89%) Mentoring
5 61 (13.03%) Microservices
6 59 (12.61%) Full-Stack Development
7 47 (10.04%) Coaching
7 47 (10.04%) Scrum
8 43 (9.19%) TDD
9 40 (8.55%) AI
10 38 (8.12%) Technical Leadership
11 37 (7.91%) Problem-Solving
12 32 (6.84%) Analytics
12 32 (6.84%) Containerisation
12 32 (6.84%) Continuous Improvement
13 30 (6.41%) Open Source
14 29 (6.20%) Clean Code
15 23 (4.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 22 (4.70%) Design Patterns
17 19 (4.06%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 86 (18.38%) Java
2 58 (12.39%) C#
2 58 (12.39%) Python
3 56 (11.97%) SQL
4 47 (10.04%) JavaScript
5 44 (9.40%) TypeScript
6 17 (3.63%) PHP
7 9 (1.92%) C++
8 8 (1.71%) C
8 8 (1.71%) Go
9 6 (1.28%) Kotlin
10 4 (0.85%) COBOL
10 4 (0.85%) Scala
11 3 (0.64%) Bicep
12 2 (0.43%) Bash
12 2 (0.43%) Ruby
13 1 (0.21%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 30 (6.41%) Security Cleared
2 20 (4.27%) DV Cleared
3 13 (2.78%) Degree
4 12 (2.56%) SC Cleared
5 9 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.64%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.21%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.21%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.21%) QA
2 9 (1.92%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.21%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 36 (7.69%) Docker
2 1 (0.21%) Firmware
2 1 (0.21%) KVM
2 1 (0.21%) QEMU
2 1 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 28 (5.98%) Terraform
3 6 (1.28%) Ansible
4 4 (0.85%) Puppet
5 3 (0.64%) Grafana
6 2 (0.43%) Packer
6 2 (0.43%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 31 (6.62%) Microsoft
2 29 (6.20%) Salesforce
3 25 (5.34%) Cisco
4 10 (2.14%) Adobe
5 6 (1.28%) BiZZdesign
5 6 (1.28%) Google
6 5 (1.07%) SaltStack
7 4 (0.85%) Red Hat
8 3 (0.64%) DevExpress
8 3 (0.64%) Rockwell
8 3 (0.64%) Siemens
9 1 (0.21%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.21%) Databricks
9 1 (0.21%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle
9 1 (0.21%) SAP
9 1 (0.21%) Xamarin