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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 30 10
Rank change year-on-year +15 -20 +9
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 927 503 849
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 7.21% 9.85% 11.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.90% 11.03% 14.42%
Number of salaries quoted 755 171 411
10th Percentile £50,000 £47,683 £40,000
25th Percentile £60,000 £55,000 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +17.39% -8.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,625 £69,800
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £77,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.23% +19.23% -10.03%

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 9,360 4,559 5,886
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 72.81% 89.23% 78.29%
Number of salaries quoted 7,010 2,174 3,293
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,425 £35,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -0.99% -8.18%
75th Percentile £75,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -6.94%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 +7 728 £75,000 +7.14% 472
Cheshire -10 80 £65,000 -5.45% 44
Merseyside +28 70 £71,250 +5.56% 25
Lancashire -20 35 £60,326 +26.51% 34
Cumbria +5 12 £50,000 -16.67% 6
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 7 (0.76%) Apache
2 6 (0.65%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.65%) SharePoint Server
3 5 (0.54%) FactoryTalk
4 4 (0.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 4 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.32%) Apache Solr
5 3 (0.32%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.32%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.32%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.22%) CMS
6 2 (0.22%) nginx
6 2 (0.22%) WinCC
7 1 (0.11%) Confluence
7 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.11%) Kentico
7 1 (0.11%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Trello
2 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 175 (18.88%) AWS
2 88 (9.49%) Azure
3 80 (8.63%) SaaS
4 46 (4.96%) Serverless
5 36 (3.88%) GCP
6 25 (2.70%) AWS Lambda
6 25 (2.70%) Azure DevOps
7 20 (2.16%) GitHub
8 19 (2.05%) Anthropic Claude
8 19 (2.05%) Power Platform
9 17 (1.83%) Datadog
10 13 (1.40%) Firebase
10 13 (1.40%) Route 53
11 12 (1.29%) Dynamics 365
12 9 (0.97%) Amazon S3
12 9 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.86%) GitHub Copilot
13 8 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
14 6 (0.65%) Azure AI
14 6 (0.65%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.76%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.32%) AMQP
2 3 (0.32%) Firewall
3 2 (0.22%) Bluetooth
3 2 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (0.22%) Wireless
3 2 (0.22%) ZigBee
4 1 (0.11%) 5G
4 1 (0.11%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.27%) NoSQL
2 20 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (2.16%) SQL Server
3 16 (1.73%) MongoDB
4 11 (1.19%) MySQL
5 6 (0.65%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.54%) Chroma
6 5 (0.54%) Pinecone
6 5 (0.54%) Power BI
6 5 (0.54%) Redis
7 4 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.43%) Big Data
7 4 (0.43%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.43%) FileMaker
7 4 (0.43%) MariaDB
7 4 (0.43%) Metadata
7 4 (0.43%) Power Query
8 3 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.32%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 28 (3.02%) Git
2 17 (1.83%) Claude Code
3 15 (1.62%) GitLab
4 12 (1.29%) JUnit
5 11 (1.19%) Maven
6 9 (0.97%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.97%) JIRA
6 9 (0.97%) Spock
7 6 (0.65%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.43%) IntelliJ
8 4 (0.43%) Storybook
8 4 (0.43%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.32%) Mockito
9 3 (0.32%) Selenium
10 2 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.22%) Mocha
10 2 (0.22%) NUnit
10 2 (0.22%) Vite
11 1 (0.11%) Postman
General
1 83 (8.95%) Social Skills
2 81 (8.74%) Finance
3 38 (4.10%) Retail
4 28 (3.02%) Public Sector
5 22 (2.37%) Electronics
5 22 (2.37%) Legal
6 18 (1.94%) Analytical Skills
7 16 (1.73%) Aviation
8 14 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (1.51%) Law
9 12 (1.29%) Aerospace
9 12 (1.29%) Publishing
10 9 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 7 (0.76%) Games
12 6 (0.65%) Billing
13 5 (0.54%) Automotive
13 5 (0.54%) Banking
13 5 (0.54%) Marketing
14 3 (0.32%) iGaming
14 3 (0.32%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 602 (64.94%) Software Engineer
2 276 (29.77%) Senior
3 199 (21.47%) Senior Software Engineer
4 120 (12.94%) Lead
5 89 (9.60%) Developer
6 86 (9.28%) Lead Software Engineer
7 64 (6.90%) Principal Engineer
8 55 (5.93%) Principal Software Engineer
9 48 (5.18%) Software Manager
10 46 (4.96%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 46 (4.96%) Java Engineer
11 40 (4.31%) Engineering Manager
12 38 (4.10%) Java Software Engineer
12 38 (4.10%) Python Engineer
13 37 (3.99%) Embedded Engineer
14 35 (3.78%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 33 (3.56%) Senior Developer
16 31 (3.34%) Senior Java Engineer
17 30 (3.24%) Embedded Software Engineer
17 30 (3.24%) Software Engineering Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (8.95%) React
2 78 (8.41%) .NET
3 50 (5.39%) Spring
4 41 (4.42%) Node.js
5 38 (4.10%) Terraform
6 35 (3.78%) Spring Boot
7 33 (3.56%) AngularJS
8 32 (3.45%) Next.js
9 26 (2.80%) REST
10 23 (2.48%) React Native
10 23 (2.48%) Vue
11 22 (2.37%) RESTful
12 14 (1.51%) Kafka
12 14 (1.51%) Ruby on Rails
13 12 (1.29%) CSS
14 11 (1.19%) FastAPI
15 10 (1.08%) Playwright
16 9 (0.97%) .NET Core
16 9 (0.97%) LangChain
17 6 (0.65%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 112 (12.08%) Cloud Native
2 52 (5.61%) Distributed Systems
3 41 (4.42%) Product Ownership
4 26 (2.80%) AI Agents
5 18 (1.94%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (0.97%) Private Cloud
9 8 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
9 8 (0.86%) Media Streaming
9 8 (0.86%) Podcast
10 7 (0.76%) Life Science
10 7 (0.76%) Onboarding
11 5 (0.54%) Management Information System
11 5 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (0.54%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 4 (0.43%) IoT
12 4 (0.43%) Low-Code
12 4 (0.43%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 42 (4.53%) Linux
2 14 (1.51%) Windows
3 9 (0.97%) Embedded Linux
4 5 (0.54%) Android
4 5 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.43%) VMS
6 3 (0.32%) CentOS
6 3 (0.32%) Debian
6 3 (0.32%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.32%) Unix
7 2 (0.22%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.22%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (16.94%) AI
2 154 (16.61%) Agile
3 140 (15.10%) CI/CD
4 137 (14.78%) DevOps
5 128 (13.81%) Full-Stack Development
6 118 (12.73%) Mentoring
7 96 (10.36%) Problem-Solving
8 92 (9.92%) Continuous Improvement
9 83 (8.95%) Microservices
10 67 (7.23%) Test Automation
11 66 (7.12%) Observability
12 60 (6.47%) Technical Leadership
13 54 (5.83%) Code Quality
14 49 (5.29%) Roadmaps
15 48 (5.18%) TDD
16 46 (4.96%) Collaborative Culture
16 46 (4.96%) Stakeholder Management
17 43 (4.64%) Event-Driven
18 42 (4.53%) Infrastructure as Code
19 41 (4.42%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 136 (14.67%) Python
2 124 (13.38%) Java
3 114 (12.30%) TypeScript
4 88 (9.49%) SQL
5 86 (9.28%) C#
6 80 (8.63%) JavaScript
7 33 (3.56%) Go
8 26 (2.80%) C++
9 17 (1.83%) C
10 15 (1.62%) Ruby
11 11 (1.19%) PHP
12 10 (1.08%) Bash
13 6 (0.65%) PowerShell
14 4 (0.43%) COBOL
14 4 (0.43%) Groovy
14 4 (0.43%) Scala
15 2 (0.22%) Bicep
15 2 (0.22%) Ladder Logic
15 2 (0.22%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.22%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 78 (8.41%) Security Cleared
2 62 (6.69%) SC Cleared
3 40 (4.31%) DV Cleared
4 29 (3.13%) Degree
5 14 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.65%) DBS Check
6 6 (0.65%) PMI Certification
7 4 (0.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.43%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.43%) PMP
8 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.11%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.11%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.11%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.56%) QA
2 18 (1.94%) Accessibility
3 7 (0.76%) Data Quality
3 7 (0.76%) WCAG
4 4 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.32%) GDPR
5 3 (0.32%) IEC 61131
6 2 (0.22%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.11%) GRC
System Software
1 61 (6.58%) Docker
2 7 (0.76%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 56 (6.04%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.29%) Ansible
3 6 (0.65%) Grafana
3 6 (0.65%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.43%) Packer
4 4 (0.43%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.32%) Puppet
6 2 (0.22%) Argo
6 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.22%) Podman
7 1 (0.11%) Functional Safety
7 1 (0.11%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (2.59%) Microsoft
2 18 (1.94%) Splunk
3 15 (1.62%) Google
4 10 (1.08%) Rockwell
5 9 (0.97%) AppDynamics
5 9 (0.97%) Databricks
6 8 (0.86%) OpenAI
6 8 (0.86%) Siemens
7 5 (0.54%) New Relic
7 5 (0.54%) Red Hat
7 5 (0.54%) YouTube
8 4 (0.43%) Adobe
8 4 (0.43%) OneTrust
8 4 (0.43%) Xamarin
9 3 (0.32%) IBM
9 3 (0.32%) SaltStack
10 2 (0.22%) MEDITECH
10 2 (0.22%) Mistral
10 2 (0.22%) Thales
11 1 (0.11%) Alteryx