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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 38 14
Rank change year-on-year +13 -24 +8
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 570 329 859
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.55% 7.91% 9.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.51% 8.32% 11.30%
Number of salaries quoted 448 281 727
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £83,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.45% +16.00% -13.79%

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 7,591 3,952 7,601
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 73.89% 94.98% 82.33%
Number of salaries quoted 4,483 2,152 6,044
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £54,793 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.18% +9.59% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £65,603
90th Percentile £87,500 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £59,450 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.92% +9.09% -12.00%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -1 446 £70,000 +3.70% 128
Cheshire +8 59 £60,000 +20.00% 16
Merseyside -1 34 £65,000 - 5
Lancashire -2 30 £60,000 +19.87% 32
Cumbria -19 1 £50,000 +25.00% 4
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 (1.05%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.70%) Apache
2 4 (0.70%) Apache Solr
2 4 (0.70%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (0.70%) GeoServer
3 3 (0.53%) Confluence
4 2 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.35%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) CMS
5 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.35%) EngageOne
2 1 (0.18%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.18%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (1.75%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 116 (20.35%) AWS
2 87 (15.26%) Azure
3 47 (8.25%) SaaS
4 33 (5.79%) Serverless
5 19 (3.33%) GCP
6 12 (2.11%) Azure AKS
7 10 (1.75%) Anthropic Claude
7 10 (1.75%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (1.58%) Figma
9 8 (1.40%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (1.23%) GitHub
11 6 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (0.88%) IaaS
12 5 (0.88%) PaaS
13 4 (0.70%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 4 (0.70%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.70%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.70%) Twilio
14 3 (0.53%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.70%) AMQP
2 2 (0.35%) RTP
3 1 (0.18%) HTTP
3 1 (0.18%) LTE
3 1 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.44%) NoSQL
2 15 (2.63%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
4 8 (1.40%) Neo4j
5 7 (1.23%) MySQL
6 6 (1.05%) Big Data
6 6 (1.05%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.05%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.88%) FileMaker
8 4 (0.70%) Cloudera CDH
8 4 (0.70%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.70%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.70%) GIS
8 4 (0.70%) QGIS
8 4 (0.70%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.35%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.35%) PostHog
9 2 (0.35%) Power BI
9 2 (0.35%) Redis
Development Applications
1 11 (1.93%) Claude Code
2 9 (1.58%) Git
3 8 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.70%) GitLab
4 4 (0.70%) JIRA
4 4 (0.70%) NUnit
5 2 (0.35%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.35%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.35%) Maven
5 2 (0.35%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.18%) GDB
6 1 (0.18%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.18%) JUnit
6 1 (0.18%) Postman
6 1 (0.18%) Selenium
6 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.18%) WinDbg
General
1 54 (9.47%) Finance
2 45 (7.89%) Social Skills
3 26 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 19 (3.33%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.16%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (2.46%) Manufacturing
6 14 (2.46%) Retail
7 9 (1.58%) Legal
8 8 (1.40%) Electronics
9 7 (1.23%) Aerospace
10 5 (0.88%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.70%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.53%) Banking
12 3 (0.53%) French Language
12 3 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.53%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (0.53%) Spanish Language
13 2 (0.35%) Automotive
13 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 377 (66.14%) Software Engineer
2 112 (19.65%) Senior
3 98 (17.19%) Lead
4 81 (14.21%) Senior Software Engineer
5 65 (11.40%) Developer
6 52 (9.12%) Lead Software Engineer
7 31 (5.44%) Java Engineer
8 29 (5.09%) Software Developer
9 25 (4.39%) Java Software Engineer
10 24 (4.21%) Principal Engineer
10 24 (4.21%) Principal Software Engineer
11 23 (4.04%) PLC Software Engineer
12 22 (3.86%) Lead Developer
13 20 (3.51%) Senior Developer
14 19 (3.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 16 (2.81%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 16 (2.81%) Python Engineer
16 14 (2.46%) C# Software Engineer
16 14 (2.46%) Embedded Engineer
16 14 (2.46%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (15.09%) .NET
2 55 (9.65%) React
3 38 (6.67%) Node.js
4 28 (4.91%) RESTful
5 25 (4.39%) AngularJS
6 22 (3.86%) Spring
7 21 (3.68%) REST
8 20 (3.51%) Spring Boot
9 19 (3.33%) .NET Framework
10 13 (2.28%) CSS
10 13 (2.28%) Vue
11 12 (2.11%) .NET Core
12 9 (1.58%) Flask
12 9 (1.58%) HTML
13 8 (1.40%) Next.js
14 6 (1.05%) Django
14 6 (1.05%) OpenAPI
14 6 (1.05%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (1.05%) Swagger
15 5 (0.88%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 66 (11.58%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (2.81%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.28%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (1.93%) IoT
6 9 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.58%) Industry 4.0
7 6 (1.05%) Onboarding
8 5 (0.88%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (0.88%) Management Information System
8 5 (0.88%) Robotics
9 4 (0.70%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.70%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.53%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.53%) SCADA
11 2 (0.35%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.35%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.35%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.35%) Embedded Systems
12 1 (0.18%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.75%) Linux
2 7 (1.23%) Android
2 7 (1.23%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.70%) CentOS
3 4 (0.70%) Debian
3 4 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (0.70%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.53%) Windows
5 1 (0.18%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (19.47%) Agile
2 91 (15.96%) CI/CD
3 88 (15.44%) DevOps
4 74 (12.98%) Full-Stack Development
5 66 (11.58%) Mentoring
6 62 (10.88%) Microservices
7 47 (8.25%) AI
7 47 (8.25%) Scrum
7 47 (8.25%) TDD
8 46 (8.07%) Coaching
9 40 (7.02%) Problem-Solving
9 40 (7.02%) Technical Leadership
10 36 (6.32%) Containerisation
11 34 (5.96%) Continuous Improvement
11 34 (5.96%) Open Source
12 32 (5.61%) Analytics
13 29 (5.09%) Clean Code
14 25 (4.39%) Infrastructure as Code
15 23 (4.04%) Event-Driven
16 21 (3.68%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 95 (16.67%) Java
2 73 (12.81%) Python
3 64 (11.23%) C#
4 60 (10.53%) SQL
5 54 (9.47%) JavaScript
6 51 (8.95%) TypeScript
7 15 (2.63%) C++
7 15 (2.63%) PHP
8 13 (2.28%) C
9 11 (1.93%) Go
10 5 (0.88%) COBOL
11 4 (0.70%) Bash
11 4 (0.70%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.53%) Bicep
12 3 (0.53%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.35%) Scala
14 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.18%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 42 (7.37%) Security Cleared
2 27 (4.74%) DV Cleared
3 25 (4.39%) SC Cleared
4 14 (2.46%) Degree
5 9 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (0.53%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.18%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.98%) QA
2 8 (1.40%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 37 (6.49%) Docker
2 3 (0.53%) Firmware
3 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 44 (7.72%) Kubernetes
2 30 (5.26%) Terraform
3 5 (0.88%) Grafana
4 4 (0.70%) Ansible
4 4 (0.70%) Puppet
5 3 (0.53%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.35%) Packer
6 2 (0.35%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 30 (5.26%) Salesforce
2 29 (5.09%) Microsoft
3 25 (4.39%) Cisco
4 10 (1.75%) Adobe
4 10 (1.75%) Rockwell
5 7 (1.23%) Google
6 6 (1.05%) Siemens
7 5 (0.88%) BiZZdesign
8 4 (0.70%) Red Hat
8 4 (0.70%) SaltStack
9 3 (0.53%) DevExpress
9 3 (0.53%) Xamarin
10 1 (0.18%) Databricks