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

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 20 12
Rank change year-on-year -17 -8 +3
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 236 392 432
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 3.81% 7.58% 11.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.60% 8.39% 12.26%
Number of salaries quoted 177 228 320
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £41,227
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £60,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -7.69% +6.24%
75th Percentile £85,000 £72,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £101,000 £82,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £72,500 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +3.57% - -

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 5,125 4,670 3,523
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 82.69% 90.29% 89.69%
Number of salaries quoted 2,471 2,293 2,702
10th Percentile £28,000 £32,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £40,988
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,389 £70,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £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 2 January 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 January 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 -10 188 £66,250 +6.00% 133
Cheshire -24 28 £70,000 +40.00% 20
Merseyside -9 12 £62,500 -10.71% 7
Lancashire -14 8 £75,000 +48.51% 41
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 (2.54%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.69%) Apache
2 4 (1.69%) Apache Solr
3 2 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.85%) Confluence
3 2 (0.85%) nginx
4 1 (0.42%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.85%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 6 (2.54%) Magento
2 1 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 78 (33.05%) Azure
2 69 (29.24%) AWS
3 22 (9.32%) SaaS
4 18 (7.63%) GCP
5 10 (4.24%) Serverless
6 9 (3.81%) IaaS
6 9 (3.81%) PaaS
7 8 (3.39%) Power Platform
8 6 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (2.54%) Azure AKS
8 6 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (2.54%) Figma
9 5 (2.12%) GitHub
10 4 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.27%) OpenShift
11 3 (1.27%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.85%) Amazon S3
12 2 (0.85%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.27%) AMQP
2 2 (0.85%) HTTP
3 1 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (8.47%) NoSQL
2 11 (4.66%) MySQL
3 10 (4.24%) MongoDB
4 7 (2.97%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (2.97%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.54%) Big Data
5 6 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.54%) Power BI
6 5 (2.12%) Hadoop
6 5 (2.12%) Neo4j
6 5 (2.12%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.69%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.27%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.85%) DocumentDB
9 2 (0.85%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.85%) PostHog
9 2 (0.85%) Redis
10 1 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 10 (4.24%) Git
2 7 (2.97%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.69%) GitLab
3 4 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.85%) JIRA
5 1 (0.42%) Gatling
5 1 (0.42%) JMeter
5 1 (0.42%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.42%) NUnit
5 1 (0.42%) Postman
5 1 (0.42%) Protractor
5 1 (0.42%) Selenium
General
1 38 (16.10%) Social Skills
2 35 (14.83%) Finance
3 21 (8.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 10 (4.24%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.39%) Marketing
5 8 (3.39%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.97%) Banking
7 5 (2.12%) Billing
7 5 (2.12%) Retail
8 4 (1.69%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.69%) Electronics
8 4 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.27%) Automotive
9 3 (1.27%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.27%) Games
9 3 (1.27%) Legal
10 2 (0.85%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.85%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.42%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 114 (48.31%) Software Engineer
2 59 (25.00%) Senior
3 41 (17.37%) Lead
4 35 (14.83%) Senior Software Engineer
5 25 (10.59%) Developer
6 17 (7.20%) Lead Software Engineer
7 13 (5.51%) Architect
8 10 (4.24%) Analyst
8 10 (4.24%) Business Analyst
8 10 (4.24%) Project Manager
8 10 (4.24%) Solutions Architect
9 8 (3.39%) Data Engineer
10 7 (2.97%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
10 7 (2.97%) Python Engineer
10 7 (2.97%) Senior Data Engineer
11 6 (2.54%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (2.54%) Azure Architect
11 6 (2.54%) Control Systems Engineer
11 6 (2.54%) Senior Developer
11 6 (2.54%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (22.03%) .NET
2 47 (19.92%) React
3 20 (8.47%) AngularJS
3 20 (8.47%) RESTful
4 16 (6.78%) Node.js
5 15 (6.36%) .NET Framework
6 12 (5.08%) REST
7 11 (4.66%) Spring
7 11 (4.66%) Spring Boot
8 10 (4.24%) .NET Core
8 10 (4.24%) CSS
9 9 (3.81%) HTML
10 8 (3.39%) Flask
10 8 (3.39%) Vue
11 7 (2.97%) Entity Framework
11 7 (2.97%) Next.js
11 7 (2.97%) RabbitMQ
12 6 (2.54%) Django
12 6 (2.54%) Jest
13 5 (2.12%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 34 (14.41%) Cloud Native
2 15 (6.36%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (6.36%) Greenfield Project
3 9 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 8 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (2.54%) SCADA
6 5 (2.12%) Distributed Computing
7 4 (1.69%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 3 (1.27%) IoT
8 3 (1.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 2 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (0.85%) Animation
9 2 (0.85%) BBC
9 2 (0.85%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.85%) Marketing Technology
9 2 (0.85%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.85%) Online Banking
10 1 (0.42%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.97%) Linux
2 3 (1.27%) CentOS
2 3 (1.27%) Debian
2 3 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.27%) Ubuntu
2 3 (1.27%) Windows
3 2 (0.85%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.42%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (30.51%) Agile
1 72 (30.51%) CI/CD
2 54 (22.88%) Mentoring
3 53 (22.46%) Microservices
4 43 (18.22%) DevOps
5 36 (15.25%) Coaching
6 31 (13.14%) Containerisation
6 31 (13.14%) TDD
7 28 (11.86%) Problem-Solving
8 27 (11.44%) AI
9 26 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (9.75%) Full-Stack Development
10 23 (9.75%) Scrum
11 22 (9.32%) Analytics
11 22 (9.32%) Clean Code
12 19 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
13 17 (7.20%) Technical Leadership
13 17 (7.20%) User Experience
14 14 (5.93%) Data Pipeline
14 14 (5.93%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 51 (21.61%) C#
2 44 (18.64%) Java
3 36 (15.25%) Python
4 34 (14.41%) SQL
5 30 (12.71%) TypeScript
6 26 (11.02%) JavaScript
7 11 (4.66%) PHP
8 5 (2.12%) C
9 4 (1.69%) Scala
10 3 (1.27%) Rust
11 2 (0.85%) C++
11 2 (0.85%) Go
11 2 (0.85%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.85%) Ruby
12 1 (0.42%) Embedded C++
12 1 (0.42%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.42%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 20 (8.47%) Security Cleared
2 13 (5.51%) DV Cleared
3 9 (3.81%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.39%) Degree
5 7 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.42%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.42%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.08%) QA
2 6 (2.54%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.27%) ISO 20022
3 3 (1.27%) SEPA
3 3 (1.27%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.42%) Data Quality
System Software
1 36 (15.25%) Docker
2 2 (0.85%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.42%) Firmware
3 1 (0.42%) KVM
3 1 (0.42%) QEMU
3 1 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 32 (13.56%) Kubernetes
2 15 (6.36%) Terraform
3 6 (2.54%) Ansible
4 5 (2.12%) Grafana
5 3 (1.27%) Puppet
6 1 (0.42%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 33 (13.98%) Microsoft
2 23 (9.75%) Salesforce
3 20 (8.47%) Cisco
4 9 (3.81%) BiZZdesign
5 6 (2.54%) Adobe
6 4 (1.69%) Google
6 4 (1.69%) SaltStack
7 3 (1.27%) Red Hat
8 2 (0.85%) Concur
8 2 (0.85%) Databricks
8 2 (0.85%) Sage
8 2 (0.85%) SAP
9 1 (0.42%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.42%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.42%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.42%) Oracle