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 30 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 18 10 15
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 -2
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 489 778 434
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 10.08% 11.25% 10.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.75% 13.92% 11.27%
Number of salaries quoted 161 329 271
10th Percentile £47,500 £41,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £57,500 £64,000
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% -10.16% +6.67%
75th Percentile £87,500 £68,750 £76,875
90th Percentile £102,500 £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 4,160 5,591 3,851
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 85.74% 80.84% 94.48%
Number of salaries quoted 2,292 2,824 2,938
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £34,250 £40,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,042 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.92% -5.38% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £82,548
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 30 October 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 30 October 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 -5 270 £71,250 +18.75% 160
Cheshire +2 105 £65,000 +19.27% 46
Lancashire -16 97 £45,034 -10.82% 83
Merseyside -26 16 £70,000 +7.69% 9
Cumbria +9 1 £60,000 +4.35%
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 47 (9.61%) Confluence
2 3 (0.61%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.41%) Apache
3 2 (0.41%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.41%) IIS
3 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.20%) CMS
4 1 (0.20%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
1 4 (0.82%) Simulink
2 2 (0.41%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.41%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.41%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 1 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 361 (73.82%) AWS
2 340 (69.53%) Azure
3 228 (46.63%) GCP
4 21 (4.29%) SaaS
5 13 (2.66%) GitHub
6 12 (2.45%) Serverless
7 9 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
7 9 (1.84%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.64%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (1.23%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (0.82%) IaaS
10 4 (0.82%) PaaS
11 3 (0.61%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (0.61%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.61%) OpenShift
12 2 (0.41%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (0.41%) Figma
12 2 (0.41%) GitHub Actions
12 2 (0.41%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.41%) Workato
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.61%) Internet
2 1 (0.20%) AMQP
2 1 (0.20%) HTTP
2 1 (0.20%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.20%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (23.72%) SQL Server
2 21 (4.29%) MongoDB
3 18 (3.68%) NoSQL
4 14 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (2.45%) MySQL
6 6 (1.23%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (1.02%) Power BI
8 4 (0.82%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.82%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.61%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.41%) Big Data
10 2 (0.41%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.41%) SQL CLR
11 1 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
11 1 (0.20%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.20%) DocumentDB
11 1 (0.20%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.20%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 118 (24.13%) JIRA
2 116 (23.72%) GitLab
3 115 (23.52%) Cucumber
3 115 (23.52%) Selenium
4 109 (22.29%) Bitbucket
4 109 (22.29%) Maven
4 109 (22.29%) SonarQube
4 109 (22.29%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (1.64%) Cypress.io
5 8 (1.64%) Git
6 5 (1.02%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.41%) webpack
8 1 (0.20%) CMake
8 1 (0.20%) Gatling
8 1 (0.20%) Jasmine
8 1 (0.20%) JMeter
8 1 (0.20%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.20%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.20%) Protractor
General
1 282 (57.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 153 (31.29%) Finance
3 116 (23.72%) Banking
4 79 (16.16%) Retail
5 70 (14.31%) Corporate Banking
5 70 (14.31%) Investment Banking
6 33 (6.75%) Social Skills
7 9 (1.84%) Marketing
8 8 (1.64%) Public Sector
9 6 (1.23%) Analytical Skills
9 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.02%) Billing
10 5 (1.02%) Legal
11 4 (0.82%) Electronics
11 4 (0.82%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.61%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.61%) Games
13 2 (0.41%) Back Office
13 2 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 372 (76.07%) Software Engineer
2 237 (48.47%) Senior
3 206 (42.13%) Senior Software Engineer
4 32 (6.54%) Developer
5 27 (5.52%) Lead
6 14 (2.86%) Java Engineer
7 11 (2.25%) Java Software Engineer
7 11 (2.25%) Systems Engineer
8 10 (2.04%) Lead Software Engineer
8 10 (2.04%) Principal Engineer
8 10 (2.04%) Senior Developer
9 9 (1.84%) Architect
9 9 (1.84%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
9 9 (1.84%) Python Engineer
9 9 (1.84%) Python Software Engineer
10 8 (1.64%) AWS Engineer
10 8 (1.64%) Engineering Manager
11 7 (1.43%) Control Systems Engineer
11 7 (1.43%) Data Engineer
11 7 (1.43%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (43.56%) .NET
2 186 (38.04%) Node.js
3 156 (31.90%) React
4 132 (26.99%) Spring
4 132 (26.99%) Spring Boot
5 125 (25.56%) Kafka
6 120 (24.54%) CSS
6 120 (24.54%) HTML
7 112 (22.90%) Redux
8 109 (22.29%) JPA
9 85 (17.38%) RESTful
10 79 (16.16%) REST
11 78 (15.95%) Jest
12 74 (15.13%) CSS3
13 73 (14.93%) HTML5
14 71 (14.52%) Sass
15 43 (8.79%) Hibernate
16 18 (3.68%) AngularJS
17 11 (2.25%) .NET Core
18 8 (1.64%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 172 (35.17%) Cyberattack
1 172 (35.17%) Linux Command Line
1 172 (35.17%) Self-Motivation
2 127 (25.97%) Product Ownership
3 110 (22.49%) Enterprise Software
4 23 (4.70%) Cloud Native
5 16 (3.27%) Greenfield Project
6 15 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (1.84%) AI Agents
8 8 (1.64%) Wiki
9 7 (1.43%) SCADA
10 4 (0.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 3 (0.61%) BBC
11 3 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.61%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 2 (0.41%) Algorithms
12 2 (0.41%) Embedded Systems
12 2 (0.41%) Marketing Technology
12 2 (0.41%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 178 (36.40%) Linux
2 7 (1.43%) Windows
3 4 (0.82%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.20%) Android
4 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.20%) CentOS
4 1 (0.20%) Debian
4 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.20%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (73.62%) Agile
2 328 (67.08%) Microservices
3 276 (56.44%) Mentoring
4 257 (52.56%) User Experience
5 184 (37.63%) Scrum
6 181 (37.01%) CI/CD
6 181 (37.01%) Machine Learning
7 177 (36.20%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 175 (35.79%) Cloud Security
9 174 (35.58%) Data Engineering
10 166 (33.95%) DevOps
11 143 (29.24%) Containerisation
12 137 (28.02%) Full-Stack Development
13 128 (26.18%) Test Automation
14 123 (25.15%) SDLC
15 115 (23.52%) Front End Development
16 114 (23.31%) Performance Optimisation
17 80 (16.36%) TDD
18 75 (15.34%) Migration
19 72 (14.72%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 340 (69.53%) Java
2 310 (63.39%) JavaScript
3 208 (42.54%) Python
4 179 (36.61%) C++
5 175 (35.79%) Go
5 175 (35.79%) Rust
6 145 (29.65%) SQL
7 111 (22.70%) TypeScript
8 48 (9.82%) C#
9 5 (1.02%) PHP
9 5 (1.02%) Ruby
10 4 (0.82%) C
10 4 (0.82%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.61%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.41%) Bash
12 2 (0.41%) Embedded C++
12 2 (0.41%) Scala
13 1 (0.20%) Embedded C
13 1 (0.20%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.20%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 195 (39.88%) Security Cleared
2 188 (38.45%) DV Cleared
3 172 (35.17%) AWS Certification
3 172 (35.17%) AWS Certified Developer
3 172 (35.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 23 (4.70%) Degree
5 14 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.64%) SC Cleared
7 4 (0.82%) HNC
7 4 (0.82%) HND
8 2 (0.41%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 2 (0.41%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.41%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (23.52%) QA
2 73 (14.93%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.61%) ISO 20022
3 3 (0.61%) SEPA
3 3 (0.61%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.20%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.20%) GDPR
4 1 (0.20%) MISRA
4 1 (0.20%) MISRA C
4 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 151 (30.88%) Docker
2 2 (0.41%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.20%) KVM
3 1 (0.20%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 143 (29.24%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.48%) Terraform
3 6 (1.23%) Ansible
4 4 (0.82%) Grafana
5 2 (0.41%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.41%) Puppet
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (0.20%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 109 (22.29%) Solace
2 20 (4.09%) Microsoft
3 4 (0.82%) BiZZdesign
3 4 (0.82%) Google
3 4 (0.82%) Oracle
3 4 (0.82%) SAP
4 2 (0.41%) Avaya
4 2 (0.41%) Concur
4 2 (0.41%) Databricks
4 2 (0.41%) IBM
4 2 (0.41%) Ping Identity
4 2 (0.41%) Sage
4 2 (0.41%) SaltStack
4 2 (0.41%) VMware
5 1 (0.20%) Adobe
5 1 (0.20%) Dynatrace
5 1 (0.20%) ForgeRock
5 1 (0.20%) HubSpot
5 1 (0.20%) Red Hat
5 1 (0.20%) TOWER Software