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 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 38 20 13
Rank change year-on-year -18 -7 -1
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 233 413 425
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 3.74% 7.85% 11.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.49% 8.71% 12.26%
Number of salaries quoted 173 235 306
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £49,813
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £59,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.41% -9.23% +7.00%
75th Percentile £86,250 £71,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £102,000 £77,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £72,500 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +3.57% - -

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 5,186 4,740 3,467
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 83.31% 90.13% 90.52%
Number of salaries quoted 2,516 2,361 2,647
10th Percentile £28,000 £32,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% +0.22%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,775 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 26 December 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 26 December 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 -12 183 £67,500 +11.11% 267
Cheshire -23 29 £72,000 +47.69% 116
Merseyside -14 12 £62,500 -10.71% 53
Lancashire -15 8 £75,000 +48.51% 79
Cumbria -4 1 £60,000 +39.53% 5
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 (2.58%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.72%) Apache
2 4 (1.72%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.86%) Confluence
3 2 (0.86%) nginx
4 1 (0.43%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.86%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.86%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 5 (2.15%) Magento
2 1 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 79 (33.91%) Azure
2 69 (29.61%) AWS
3 23 (9.87%) SaaS
4 19 (8.15%) GCP
5 10 (4.29%) Serverless
6 9 (3.86%) IaaS
6 9 (3.86%) PaaS
7 8 (3.43%) Power Platform
8 6 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (2.58%) Azure AKS
8 6 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (2.58%) Figma
9 5 (2.15%) GitHub
10 4 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.29%) OpenShift
11 3 (1.29%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.86%) Amazon ECS
12 2 (0.86%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.29%) AMQP
2 2 (0.86%) HTTP
3 1 (0.43%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (8.58%) NoSQL
2 11 (4.72%) MySQL
3 10 (4.29%) MongoDB
4 7 (3.00%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (3.00%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.58%) Big Data
5 6 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.58%) Power BI
6 5 (2.15%) Hadoop
6 5 (2.15%) Neo4j
6 5 (2.15%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.72%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.29%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.86%) DocumentDB
9 2 (0.86%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.86%) PostHog
9 2 (0.86%) Redis
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 10 (4.29%) Git
2 7 (3.00%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.72%) GitLab
3 4 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.86%) JIRA
5 1 (0.43%) Gatling
5 1 (0.43%) JMeter
5 1 (0.43%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.43%) NUnit
5 1 (0.43%) Postman
5 1 (0.43%) Protractor
5 1 (0.43%) Selenium
General
1 39 (16.74%) Social Skills
2 35 (15.02%) Finance
3 19 (8.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 10 (4.29%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.43%) Marketing
5 8 (3.43%) Public Sector
6 7 (3.00%) Banking
7 5 (2.15%) Billing
7 5 (2.15%) Retail
8 4 (1.72%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.29%) Automotive
9 3 (1.29%) Electronics
9 3 (1.29%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.29%) Games
9 3 (1.29%) Legal
10 2 (0.86%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.86%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.43%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 112 (48.07%) Software Engineer
2 57 (24.46%) Senior
3 40 (17.17%) Lead
4 32 (13.73%) Senior Software Engineer
5 26 (11.16%) Developer
6 17 (7.30%) Lead Software Engineer
7 13 (5.58%) Architect
8 10 (4.29%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
8 10 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
9 9 (3.86%) Analyst
9 9 (3.86%) Business Analyst
9 9 (3.86%) Project Manager
10 8 (3.43%) Data Engineer
11 7 (3.00%) Python Engineer
11 7 (3.00%) Senior Data Engineer
11 7 (3.00%) Senior Developer
12 6 (2.58%) Control Systems Engineer
12 6 (2.58%) Engineering Manager
12 6 (2.58%) Senior Systems Engineer
12 6 (2.58%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (22.32%) .NET
2 46 (19.74%) React
3 20 (8.58%) AngularJS
3 20 (8.58%) RESTful
4 15 (6.44%) .NET Framework
4 15 (6.44%) Node.js
5 12 (5.15%) Spring
5 12 (5.15%) Spring Boot
6 11 (4.72%) REST
7 10 (4.29%) CSS
8 9 (3.86%) .NET Core
8 9 (3.86%) HTML
9 8 (3.43%) Vue
10 7 (3.00%) Entity Framework
10 7 (3.00%) Flask
10 7 (3.00%) Next.js
10 7 (3.00%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (2.58%) Django
11 6 (2.58%) Jest
12 5 (2.15%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 34 (14.59%) Cloud Native
2 17 (7.30%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (6.44%) Greenfield Project
4 10 (4.29%) Product Ownership
5 8 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.58%) SCADA
7 5 (2.15%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (1.72%) AI Agents
8 4 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.29%) BBC
9 3 (1.29%) IoT
9 3 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.86%) Animation
10 2 (0.86%) Client/Server
10 2 (0.86%) Embedded Systems
10 2 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.86%) Marketing Technology
10 2 (0.86%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.86%) Online Banking
Operating Systems
1 8 (3.43%) Linux
2 3 (1.29%) CentOS
2 3 (1.29%) Debian
2 3 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.29%) Ubuntu
2 3 (1.29%) Windows
3 2 (0.86%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.43%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (31.33%) Agile
2 72 (30.90%) CI/CD
3 53 (22.75%) Mentoring
3 53 (22.75%) Microservices
4 44 (18.88%) DevOps
5 35 (15.02%) Coaching
6 32 (13.73%) Containerisation
7 31 (13.30%) TDD
8 29 (12.45%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (12.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (11.59%) AI
11 24 (10.30%) Full-Stack Development
12 23 (9.87%) Scrum
13 22 (9.44%) Clean Code
14 20 (8.58%) Analytics
15 19 (8.15%) Stakeholder Management
16 18 (7.73%) Technical Leadership
17 17 (7.30%) User Experience
18 14 (6.01%) Data Pipeline
18 14 (6.01%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 50 (21.46%) C#
2 46 (19.74%) Java
3 35 (15.02%) Python
3 35 (15.02%) SQL
4 30 (12.88%) TypeScript
5 25 (10.73%) JavaScript
6 10 (4.29%) PHP
7 6 (2.58%) C
8 4 (1.72%) Scala
9 3 (1.29%) C++
9 3 (1.29%) Rust
10 2 (0.86%) Embedded C++
10 2 (0.86%) Go
10 2 (0.86%) Kotlin
10 2 (0.86%) Ruby
11 1 (0.43%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.43%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.43%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 25 (10.73%) Security Cleared
2 18 (7.73%) DV Cleared
3 9 (3.86%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.43%) Degree
5 7 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.43%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.43%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.15%) QA
2 6 (2.58%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.29%) ISO 20022
3 3 (1.29%) SEPA
3 3 (1.29%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.43%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.43%) MISRA
4 1 (0.43%) MISRA C
System Software
1 36 (15.45%) Docker
2 2 (0.86%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.43%) Firmware
3 1 (0.43%) KVM
3 1 (0.43%) QEMU
3 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 33 (14.16%) Kubernetes
2 13 (5.58%) Terraform
3 6 (2.58%) Ansible
4 5 (2.15%) Grafana
5 3 (1.29%) Puppet
6 1 (0.43%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 31 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 21 (9.01%) Salesforce
3 18 (7.73%) Cisco
4 9 (3.86%) BiZZdesign
5 5 (2.15%) Adobe
6 4 (1.72%) Google
6 4 (1.72%) SaltStack
7 3 (1.29%) Red Hat
8 2 (0.86%) Concur
8 2 (0.86%) Databricks
8 2 (0.86%) Sage
8 2 (0.86%) SAP
9 1 (0.43%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.43%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.43%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.43%) Oracle