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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 24 12
Rank change year-on-year -2 -12 +17
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 673 607 1,014
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 6.01% 13.11% 9.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.39% 13.74% 12.42%
Number of salaries quoted 559 272 747
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £67,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +12.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £85,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £75,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -6.67% +20.00% -16.11%

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 8,022 4,418 8,166
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 71.58% 95.42% 79.93%
Number of salaries quoted 5,386 2,000 6,325
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £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 £72,500 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £84,435 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £58,100 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.27% +5.64% -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 June 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 June 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 +1 526 £70,000 -3.45% 217
Cheshire -16 73 £65,000 +20.93% 19
Lancashire -15 37 £60,000 +25.83% 34
Merseyside -5 34 £70,000 +5.66% 9
Cumbria -13 3 £50,000 +21.95% 2
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 (0.89%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.74%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.74%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.59%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.59%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.45%) Apache
5 2 (0.30%) Confluence
5 2 (0.30%) nginx
6 1 (0.15%) CMS
6 1 (0.15%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.30%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (1.49%) Magento
2 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 135 (20.06%) AWS
2 85 (12.63%) Azure
3 54 (8.02%) SaaS
4 38 (5.65%) Serverless
5 19 (2.82%) GCP
6 17 (2.53%) Anthropic Claude
7 13 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (1.49%) Azure AKS
9 9 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (1.19%) GitHub
11 6 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (0.89%) Figma
12 4 (0.59%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (0.59%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.59%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 4 (0.59%) Amazon S3
12 4 (0.59%) Azure Key Vault
12 4 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.59%) Twilio
13 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.45%) AMQP
2 2 (0.30%) RTP
3 1 (0.15%) LTE
3 1 (0.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.86%) NoSQL
2 18 (2.67%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.04%) MySQL
5 6 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (0.89%) Neo4j
6 5 (0.74%) Big Data
6 5 (0.74%) FileMaker
6 5 (0.74%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.74%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.74%) SQL Server
7 4 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.59%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.59%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.59%) GIS
7 4 (0.59%) QGIS
8 3 (0.45%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.30%) MariaDB
9 2 (0.30%) Redis
Development Applications
1 18 (2.67%) Claude Code
2 9 (1.34%) Git
2 9 (1.34%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.59%) JIRA
4 3 (0.45%) Bitbucket
4 3 (0.45%) NUnit
5 2 (0.30%) Maven
5 2 (0.30%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.15%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.15%) GDB
6 1 (0.15%) Gemini Tracker
6 1 (0.15%) GitLab
6 1 (0.15%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.15%) JUnit
6 1 (0.15%) Postman
6 1 (0.15%) Selenium
6 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.15%) WinDbg
General
1 71 (10.55%) Finance
2 42 (6.24%) Social Skills
3 25 (3.71%) Public Sector
4 19 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 17 (2.53%) Retail
6 16 (2.38%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (2.08%) Manufacturing
8 13 (1.93%) Electronics
9 12 (1.78%) Legal
10 6 (0.89%) Aerospace
11 5 (0.74%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.59%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.45%) Aviation
13 3 (0.45%) Banking
13 3 (0.45%) Billing
13 3 (0.45%) French Language
13 3 (0.45%) Marketing
13 3 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.45%) Portuguese Language
13 3 (0.45%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 449 (66.72%) Software Engineer
2 151 (22.44%) Senior
3 112 (16.64%) Senior Software Engineer
4 106 (15.75%) Lead
5 88 (13.08%) Developer
6 61 (9.06%) Lead Software Engineer
7 41 (6.09%) Software Developer
8 39 (5.79%) Java Engineer
9 35 (5.20%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 33 (4.90%) Java Software Engineer
11 31 (4.61%) Principal Engineer
12 30 (4.46%) Senior Developer
13 29 (4.31%) Principal Software Engineer
14 27 (4.01%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
14 27 (4.01%) Lead Developer
15 26 (3.86%) Software Manager
16 24 (3.57%) PLC Software Engineer
17 20 (2.97%) Python Engineer
17 20 (2.97%) Python Software Engineer
17 20 (2.97%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (14.41%) .NET
2 55 (8.17%) React
3 41 (6.09%) Node.js
4 28 (4.16%) RESTful
5 27 (4.01%) Spring
6 25 (3.71%) Spring Boot
7 22 (3.27%) Next.js
7 22 (3.27%) REST
8 21 (3.12%) AngularJS
9 15 (2.23%) Vue
10 13 (1.93%) .NET Framework
11 11 (1.63%) React Native
11 11 (1.63%) Ruby on Rails
12 10 (1.49%) .NET Core
12 10 (1.49%) CSS
13 8 (1.19%) Flask
14 6 (0.89%) FastAPI
14 6 (0.89%) HTML
15 5 (0.74%) LangChain
15 5 (0.74%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 77 (11.44%) Cloud Native
2 31 (4.61%) Product Ownership
3 28 (4.16%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (2.23%) Mobile App
5 11 (1.63%) AI Agents
6 10 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
6 10 (1.49%) IoT
7 9 (1.34%) Industry 4.0
7 9 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (0.74%) Life Science
8 5 (0.74%) Management Information System
8 5 (0.74%) Robotics
9 4 (0.59%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.59%) Onboarding
10 3 (0.45%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.45%) Legacy Applications
11 2 (0.30%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.30%) Embedded Systems
12 1 (0.15%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.78%) Linux
2 9 (1.34%) Android
3 7 (1.04%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.59%) Windows
5 3 (0.45%) CentOS
5 3 (0.45%) Debian
5 3 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.45%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (17.98%) Full-Stack Development
2 115 (17.09%) Agile
3 104 (15.45%) DevOps
4 95 (14.12%) CI/CD
5 78 (11.59%) Mentoring
6 73 (10.85%) AI
7 69 (10.25%) Microservices
8 56 (8.32%) Problem-Solving
9 52 (7.73%) TDD
10 43 (6.39%) Coaching
11 41 (6.09%) Scrum
12 40 (5.94%) Technical Leadership
13 36 (5.35%) Continuous Improvement
13 36 (5.35%) Open Source
14 33 (4.90%) Event-Driven
14 33 (4.90%) Test Automation
15 28 (4.16%) Containerisation
15 28 (4.16%) Infrastructure as Code
16 27 (4.01%) Clean Code
17 25 (3.71%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 107 (15.90%) Java
2 99 (14.71%) Python
3 78 (11.59%) C#
4 67 (9.96%) SQL
5 64 (9.51%) JavaScript
6 54 (8.02%) TypeScript
7 21 (3.12%) C++
8 16 (2.38%) Go
8 16 (2.38%) PHP
9 11 (1.63%) C
9 11 (1.63%) Ruby
10 5 (0.74%) Bash
10 5 (0.74%) COBOL
11 4 (0.59%) Bicep
11 4 (0.59%) Kotlin
11 4 (0.59%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.30%) Scala
13 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.15%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 53 (7.88%) Security Cleared
2 38 (5.65%) DV Cleared
2 38 (5.65%) SC Cleared
3 15 (2.23%) Degree
4 10 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (0.59%) DBS Check
6 2 (0.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.15%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.23%) QA
2 7 (1.04%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.15%) GDPR
4 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (4.75%) Docker
2 6 (0.89%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 36 (5.35%) Kubernetes
2 34 (5.05%) Terraform
3 6 (0.89%) Ansible
4 4 (0.59%) Grafana
5 3 (0.45%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.45%) Puppet
6 2 (0.30%) Packer
6 2 (0.30%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.15%) Argo
Vendors
1 23 (3.42%) Microsoft
2 20 (2.97%) Salesforce
3 15 (2.23%) Cisco
4 11 (1.63%) Rockwell
5 10 (1.49%) Adobe
6 6 (0.89%) Google
6 6 (0.89%) Siemens
7 5 (0.74%) Xamarin
8 3 (0.45%) DevExpress
8 3 (0.45%) Red Hat
8 3 (0.45%) SaltStack
8 3 (0.45%) Splunk
9 2 (0.30%) BiZZdesign
9 2 (0.30%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.15%) Databricks