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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 28 10
Rank change year-on-year +12 -18 +8
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 908 514 877
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 7.21% 10.08% 11.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.94% 11.28% 14.66%
Number of salaries quoted 745 182 439
10th Percentile £50,000 £47,518 £40,000
25th Percentile £60,000 £54,625 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - +16.67% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,938 £70,000
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% -10.34%

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 9,131 4,558 5,981
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 72.47% 89.41% 77.55%
Number of salaries quoted 6,892 2,158 3,469
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,712 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £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 £79,300
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -7.26%

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 15 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 15 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 +8 714 £75,000 +7.14% 523
Cheshire -9 79 £65,000 +1.96% 60
Merseyside +25 65 £71,250 +9.62% 31
Lancashire -14 37 £60,000 +25.83% 31
Cumbria +3 12 £50,000 -16.67% 3
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 (0.77%) Apache
2 6 (0.66%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.66%) SharePoint Server
3 5 (0.55%) FactoryTalk
4 4 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 4 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.33%) Apache Solr
6 2 (0.22%) nginx
6 2 (0.22%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.22%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.22%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.22%) WinCC
7 1 (0.11%) Confluence
7 1 (0.11%) GeoServer
Applications
1 4 (0.44%) Trello
2 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 171 (18.83%) AWS
2 87 (9.58%) Azure
3 81 (8.92%) SaaS
4 44 (4.85%) Serverless
5 35 (3.85%) GCP
6 26 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (2.64%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (2.20%) GitHub
9 19 (2.09%) Power Platform
10 18 (1.98%) Anthropic Claude
11 17 (1.87%) Datadog
12 13 (1.43%) Firebase
12 13 (1.43%) Route 53
13 12 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
14 9 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
15 8 (0.88%) Amazon S3
15 8 (0.88%) Microsoft Copilot
16 7 (0.77%) GitHub Copilot
17 6 (0.66%) Azure AI
17 6 (0.66%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.77%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.33%) AMQP
2 3 (0.33%) 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%) LTE
4 1 (0.11%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.31%) NoSQL
2 20 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.98%) SQL Server
4 16 (1.76%) MongoDB
5 10 (1.10%) MySQL
6 6 (0.66%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.55%) Chroma
7 5 (0.55%) Pinecone
7 5 (0.55%) Power BI
7 5 (0.55%) Redis
8 4 (0.44%) Big Data
8 4 (0.44%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.44%) FileMaker
8 4 (0.44%) Metadata
8 4 (0.44%) Power Query
9 3 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.33%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 26 (2.86%) Git
2 16 (1.76%) Claude Code
3 15 (1.65%) GitLab
4 11 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.21%) JUnit
4 11 (1.21%) Maven
5 9 (0.99%) JIRA
5 9 (0.99%) Spock
6 5 (0.55%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.44%) IntelliJ
7 4 (0.44%) Storybook
8 3 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.22%) Mocha
9 2 (0.22%) Mockito
9 2 (0.22%) NUnit
9 2 (0.22%) Selenium
9 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
9 2 (0.22%) Vite
10 1 (0.11%) WinDbg
General
1 78 (8.59%) Finance
2 77 (8.48%) Social Skills
3 38 (4.19%) Retail
4 29 (3.19%) Public Sector
5 23 (2.53%) Legal
6 22 (2.42%) Electronics
7 18 (1.98%) Analytical Skills
8 16 (1.76%) Aviation
9 14 (1.54%) Law
10 12 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.21%) Aerospace
12 9 (0.99%) Publishing
13 7 (0.77%) Games
14 6 (0.66%) Billing
14 6 (0.66%) Manufacturing
15 5 (0.55%) Automotive
15 5 (0.55%) Marketing
16 4 (0.44%) Banking
17 3 (0.33%) iGaming
17 3 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 593 (65.31%) Software Engineer
2 267 (29.41%) Senior
3 195 (21.48%) Senior Software Engineer
4 119 (13.11%) Lead
5 85 (9.36%) Lead Software Engineer
6 84 (9.25%) Developer
7 60 (6.61%) Principal Engineer
8 51 (5.62%) Principal Software Engineer
9 48 (5.29%) Software Manager
10 46 (5.07%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 41 (4.52%) Java Engineer
12 40 (4.41%) Engineering Manager
13 38 (4.19%) Python Engineer
14 37 (4.07%) Embedded Engineer
15 33 (3.63%) Java Software Engineer
16 32 (3.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 30 (3.30%) Embedded Software Engineer
17 30 (3.30%) Senior Java Engineer
18 29 (3.19%) Software Engineering Manager
19 28 (3.08%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (8.48%) .NET
2 74 (8.15%) React
3 44 (4.85%) Spring
4 42 (4.63%) Node.js
5 39 (4.30%) Terraform
6 33 (3.63%) AngularJS
7 32 (3.52%) Next.js
8 30 (3.30%) Spring Boot
9 25 (2.75%) REST
10 22 (2.42%) React Native
11 21 (2.31%) Vue
12 20 (2.20%) RESTful
13 14 (1.54%) Ruby on Rails
14 11 (1.21%) CSS
14 11 (1.21%) FastAPI
14 11 (1.21%) Kafka
15 9 (0.99%) LangChain
16 8 (0.88%) Playwright
17 6 (0.66%) Model Context Protocol
17 6 (0.66%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 110 (12.11%) Cloud Native
2 50 (5.51%) Distributed Systems
3 40 (4.41%) Product Ownership
4 26 (2.86%) AI Agents
5 18 (1.98%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (0.99%) Private Cloud
9 8 (0.88%) Embedded Systems
10 7 (0.77%) Life Science
10 7 (0.77%) Onboarding
11 6 (0.66%) Management Information System
12 5 (0.55%) IoT
12 5 (0.55%) Media Streaming
12 5 (0.55%) Podcast
12 5 (0.55%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 4 (0.44%) Low-Code
13 4 (0.44%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.44%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 46 (5.07%) Linux
2 16 (1.76%) Windows
3 9 (0.99%) Embedded Linux
4 5 (0.55%) Android
4 5 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.44%) VMS
6 3 (0.33%) CentOS
6 3 (0.33%) Debian
6 3 (0.33%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.33%) Unix
7 2 (0.22%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.22%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (16.52%) Agile
2 149 (16.41%) AI
3 136 (14.98%) DevOps
4 134 (14.76%) CI/CD
5 127 (13.99%) Full-Stack Development
6 116 (12.78%) Mentoring
7 90 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
8 84 (9.25%) Continuous Improvement
9 80 (8.81%) Microservices
10 64 (7.05%) Test Automation
11 63 (6.94%) Observability
11 63 (6.94%) Technical Leadership
12 48 (5.29%) TDD
13 47 (5.18%) Code Quality
13 47 (5.18%) Stakeholder Management
14 46 (5.07%) Collaborative Culture
14 46 (5.07%) Roadmaps
15 42 (4.63%) Event-Driven
16 41 (4.52%) Infrastructure as Code
17 40 (4.41%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 138 (15.20%) Python
2 115 (12.67%) Java
3 105 (11.56%) TypeScript
4 85 (9.36%) SQL
5 81 (8.92%) C#
6 79 (8.70%) JavaScript
7 33 (3.63%) Go
8 31 (3.41%) C++
9 19 (2.09%) C
10 15 (1.65%) Ruby
11 12 (1.32%) PHP
12 10 (1.10%) Bash
13 6 (0.66%) PowerShell
14 5 (0.55%) COBOL
15 4 (0.44%) Groovy
15 4 (0.44%) Scala
16 2 (0.22%) Bicep
16 2 (0.22%) Shell Script
17 1 (0.11%) Objective-C
17 1 (0.11%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 75 (8.26%) Security Cleared
2 59 (6.50%) SC Cleared
3 41 (4.52%) DV Cleared
4 28 (3.08%) Degree
5 14 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (0.66%) DBS Check
6 6 (0.66%) PMI Certification
7 4 (0.44%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.44%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.44%) 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
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.52%) QA
2 18 (1.98%) Accessibility
3 7 (0.77%) Data Quality
4 6 (0.66%) WCAG
5 3 (0.33%) GDPR
5 3 (0.33%) IEC 61131
5 3 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.22%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 58 (6.39%) Docker
2 7 (0.77%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 51 (5.62%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.32%) Ansible
3 6 (0.66%) Grafana
3 6 (0.66%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.33%) Puppet
5 2 (0.22%) Argo
5 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (0.22%) Packer
5 2 (0.22%) Podman
5 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.11%) Functional Safety
6 1 (0.11%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 23 (2.53%) Microsoft
2 18 (1.98%) Splunk
3 15 (1.65%) Google
4 11 (1.21%) Rockwell
5 9 (0.99%) AppDynamics
5 9 (0.99%) Siemens
6 8 (0.88%) Databricks
7 7 (0.77%) OpenAI
8 5 (0.55%) New Relic
8 5 (0.55%) Red Hat
8 5 (0.55%) YouTube
9 4 (0.44%) Adobe
9 4 (0.44%) OneTrust
9 4 (0.44%) Xamarin
10 3 (0.33%) SaltStack
11 2 (0.22%) IBM
11 2 (0.22%) MEDITECH
11 2 (0.22%) Mistral
11 2 (0.22%) Thales
12 1 (0.11%) Alteryx