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 7 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 10 15
Rank change year-on-year -17 +5 -2
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 328 773 425
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 6.72% 11.12% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.99% 13.75% 11.51%
Number of salaries quoted 183 322 281
10th Percentile £46,500 £40,125 £41,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £57,500 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% -8.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £87,500 £68,750 £76,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £75,000 £86,250
England median annual salary £75,000 £68,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +9.49% -2.14% -

All Process and 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 4,105 5,621 3,694
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 84.12% 80.89% 94.14%
Number of salaries quoted 2,410 2,806 2,829
10th Percentile £27,000 £32,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £83,750
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -

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 7 November 2025.

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 7 November 2025. 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 -6 221 £72,500 +20.83% 332
Cheshire -8 53 £60,000 +10.09% 99
Lancashire -23 41 £51,342 +1.67% 128
Merseyside -31 12 £62,500 -3.85% 20
Cumbria +5 1 £60,000 +4.35% 1
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 9 (2.74%) Confluence
2 3 (0.91%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.61%) Apache
3 2 (0.61%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.61%) IIS
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.30%) CMS
4 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.91%) Adobe XD
2 3 (0.91%) Simulink
2 3 (0.91%) Sketch
3 2 (0.61%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 174 (53.05%) AWS
2 154 (46.95%) Azure
3 79 (24.09%) GCP
4 25 (7.62%) SaaS
5 13 (3.96%) GitHub
5 13 (3.96%) Serverless
6 9 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (2.74%) Power Platform
7 6 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (1.52%) IaaS
8 5 (1.52%) PaaS
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (0.91%) Figma
9 3 (0.91%) OpenShift
10 2 (0.61%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (0.61%) Azure Service Bus
10 2 (0.61%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.91%) Internet
2 2 (0.61%) HTTP
3 1 (0.30%) AMQP
3 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (10.98%) SQL Server
2 22 (6.71%) NoSQL
3 21 (6.40%) MongoDB
4 14 (4.27%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (3.66%) MySQL
6 6 (1.83%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (1.52%) Power BI
8 4 (1.22%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 4 (1.22%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.91%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.61%) Big Data
10 2 (0.61%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.61%) SQL CLR
11 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.30%) DocumentDB
11 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.30%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 39 (11.89%) JIRA
2 37 (11.28%) GitLab
3 35 (10.67%) Cucumber
3 35 (10.67%) Selenium
4 29 (8.84%) Bitbucket
4 29 (8.84%) Maven
4 29 (8.84%) SonarQube
4 29 (8.84%) Sonatype Nexus
5 9 (2.74%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.74%) Git
6 5 (1.52%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.61%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.61%) webpack
8 1 (0.30%) CMake
8 1 (0.30%) Gatling
8 1 (0.30%) JMeter
8 1 (0.30%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.30%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.30%) NUnit
8 1 (0.30%) Protractor
General
1 95 (28.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 77 (23.48%) Finance
3 38 (11.59%) Retail
3 38 (11.59%) Social Skills
4 36 (10.98%) Banking
5 29 (8.84%) Corporate Banking
5 29 (8.84%) Investment Banking
6 9 (2.74%) Marketing
7 8 (2.44%) Public Sector
8 7 (2.13%) Analytical Skills
9 6 (1.83%) Legal
9 6 (1.83%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.83%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.52%) Billing
11 4 (1.22%) Electronics
11 4 (1.22%) Games
11 4 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.91%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.61%) Automotive
13 2 (0.61%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 201 (61.28%) Software Engineer
2 133 (40.55%) Senior
3 100 (30.49%) Senior Software Engineer
4 31 (9.45%) Developer
5 30 (9.15%) Lead
6 15 (4.57%) Java Engineer
7 13 (3.96%) Lead Software Engineer
8 12 (3.66%) Java Software Engineer
8 12 (3.66%) Systems Engineer
9 11 (3.35%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
10 10 (3.05%) Architect
10 10 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
10 10 (3.05%) Principal Engineer
10 10 (3.05%) Python Engineer
11 9 (2.74%) Control Systems Engineer
11 9 (2.74%) Python Software Engineer
11 9 (2.74%) Senior Developer
11 9 (2.74%) Senior Systems Engineer
12 8 (2.44%) Data Engineer
12 8 (2.44%) Engineering Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (32.32%) .NET
2 77 (23.48%) React
3 75 (22.87%) Node.js
4 52 (15.85%) Spring
4 52 (15.85%) Spring Boot
5 46 (14.02%) RESTful
6 45 (13.72%) Kafka
7 42 (12.80%) CSS
8 41 (12.50%) HTML
9 38 (11.59%) Jest
9 38 (11.59%) REST
10 33 (10.06%) CSS3
11 32 (9.76%) HTML5
11 32 (9.76%) Redux
12 30 (9.15%) Sass
13 29 (8.84%) JPA
14 19 (5.79%) AngularJS
15 13 (3.96%) .NET Core
16 10 (3.05%) .NET Framework
17 9 (2.74%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 61 (18.60%) Cyberattack
1 61 (18.60%) Linux Command Line
1 61 (18.60%) Self-Motivation
2 47 (14.33%) Product Ownership
3 31 (9.45%) Enterprise Software
4 28 (8.54%) Cloud Native
5 17 (5.18%) Distributed Systems
5 17 (5.18%) Greenfield Project
6 9 (2.74%) SCADA
7 8 (2.44%) AI Agents
7 8 (2.44%) Wiki
8 4 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (0.91%) BBC
9 3 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.91%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.91%) Private Cloud
9 3 (0.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.61%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (0.61%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.61%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 67 (20.43%) Linux
2 7 (2.13%) Windows
3 4 (1.22%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Android
4 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) CentOS
4 1 (0.30%) Debian
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (52.74%) Agile
2 141 (42.99%) Microservices
3 129 (39.33%) Mentoring
4 108 (32.93%) CI/CD
5 107 (32.62%) User Experience
6 90 (27.44%) DevOps
7 75 (22.87%) Scrum
8 71 (21.65%) Machine Learning
9 68 (20.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 65 (19.82%) Cloud Security
10 65 (19.82%) Containerisation
11 64 (19.51%) Data Engineering
12 58 (17.68%) Full-Stack Development
13 49 (14.94%) Test Automation
14 43 (13.11%) SDLC
14 43 (13.11%) TDD
15 35 (10.67%) Front End Development
15 35 (10.67%) Performance Optimisation
16 34 (10.37%) Migration
17 31 (9.45%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 149 (45.43%) Java
2 120 (36.59%) JavaScript
3 99 (30.18%) Python
4 71 (21.65%) SQL
4 71 (21.65%) TypeScript
5 68 (20.73%) C++
6 64 (19.51%) Rust
7 63 (19.21%) Go
8 52 (15.85%) C#
9 5 (1.52%) PHP
9 5 (1.52%) Ruby
10 4 (1.22%) C
11 3 (0.91%) Kotlin
11 3 (0.91%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.61%) Bash
12 2 (0.61%) Embedded C++
12 2 (0.61%) Scala
13 1 (0.30%) Embedded C
13 1 (0.30%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.30%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 88 (26.83%) Security Cleared
2 79 (24.09%) DV Cleared
3 62 (18.90%) AWS Certification
4 61 (18.60%) AWS Certified Developer
4 61 (18.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 22 (6.71%) Degree
6 14 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.74%) SC Cleared
8 3 (0.91%) HNC
8 3 (0.91%) HND
9 2 (0.61%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.61%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.61%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (10.67%) QA
2 33 (10.06%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.91%) ISO 20022
3 3 (0.91%) SEPA
3 3 (0.91%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.30%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.30%) GDPR
4 1 (0.30%) MISRA
4 1 (0.30%) MISRA C
4 1 (0.30%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (22.56%) Docker
2 2 (0.61%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.30%) KVM
3 1 (0.30%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 65 (19.82%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.49%) Terraform
3 6 (1.83%) Ansible
4 4 (1.22%) Grafana
5 2 (0.61%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.61%) Puppet
6 1 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (0.30%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 29 (8.84%) Solace
2 24 (7.32%) Microsoft
3 5 (1.52%) BiZZdesign
4 4 (1.22%) Cisco
4 4 (1.22%) Google
4 4 (1.22%) Oracle
4 4 (1.22%) Salesforce
4 4 (1.22%) SAP
5 3 (0.91%) Databricks
6 2 (0.61%) Avaya
6 2 (0.61%) Concur
6 2 (0.61%) IBM
6 2 (0.61%) Ping Identity
6 2 (0.61%) Sage
6 2 (0.61%) SaltStack
6 2 (0.61%) VMware
7 1 (0.30%) Adobe
7 1 (0.30%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.30%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.30%) TOWER Software