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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 25 11
Rank change year-on-year +12 -14 +15
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 767 610 1,184
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 6.92% 12.47% 10.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.80% 13.38% 13.84%
Number of salaries quoted 649 272 778
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £56,250 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +12.50% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £70,938
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £85,000
England median annual salary £72,500 £75,000 £62,820
% change year-on-year -3.33% +19.39% -13.35%

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 7,823 4,558 8,553
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 70.56% 93.15% 79.15%
Number of salaries quoted 6,021 2,142 6,397
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,775 £27,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £51,564 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.66% +3.13% -9.09%
75th Percentile £73,750 £67,960 £65,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -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 30 June 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 30 June 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 +3 591 £73,750 +1.72% 108
Cheshire -4 85 £60,000 - 15
Lancashire +1 46 £60,000 +25.83% 18
Merseyside -4 38 £70,000 +5.66% 6
Cumbria - 7 £50,000 - 2
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 (0.78%) Apache Spark
1 6 (0.78%) SharePoint Server
2 5 (0.65%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.52%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.52%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.39%) Apache
5 2 (0.26%) Confluence
5 2 (0.26%) nginx
6 1 (0.13%) CMS
6 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.26%) EngageOne
2 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.65%) Magento
2 2 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 150 (19.56%) AWS
2 85 (11.08%) Azure
3 60 (7.82%) SaaS
4 40 (5.22%) Serverless
5 23 (3.00%) Anthropic Claude
6 22 (2.87%) GCP
7 16 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (1.43%) GitHub
9 10 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (1.30%) Firebase
10 8 (1.04%) Azure AKS
11 6 (0.78%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (0.78%) Power Platform
12 5 (0.65%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.65%) Amazon S3
12 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Copilot
13 4 (0.52%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (0.52%) Azure Key Vault
13 4 (0.52%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.52%) Vercel
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.39%) AMQP
2 2 (0.26%) RTP
3 1 (0.13%) Bluetooth
3 1 (0.13%) LTE
3 1 (0.13%) Network Security
3 1 (0.13%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (0.13%) Wireless
3 1 (0.13%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.78%) NoSQL
2 21 (2.74%) MongoDB
3 18 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.30%) MySQL
5 9 (1.17%) SQL Server
6 5 (0.65%) FileMaker
6 5 (0.65%) Pinecone
6 5 (0.65%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.52%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.52%) GIS
7 4 (0.52%) Neo4j
7 4 (0.52%) QGIS
8 3 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.39%) Big Data
8 3 (0.39%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (0.39%) Hadoop
8 3 (0.39%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.39%) Redis
Development Applications
1 22 (2.87%) Claude Code
2 14 (1.83%) Git
3 11 (1.43%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.65%) GitLab
4 5 (0.65%) JIRA
5 4 (0.52%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.39%) JUnit
6 3 (0.39%) NUnit
7 2 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.26%) Maven
7 2 (0.26%) Spock
7 2 (0.26%) Vagrant
7 2 (0.26%) Vite
8 1 (0.13%) GDB
8 1 (0.13%) Gemini Tracker
8 1 (0.13%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.13%) Mocha
8 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.13%) WinDbg
General
1 83 (10.82%) Finance
2 45 (5.87%) Social Skills
3 24 (3.13%) Public Sector
3 24 (3.13%) Retail
4 21 (2.74%) Electronics
5 15 (1.96%) Legal
5 15 (1.96%) Manufacturing
6 13 (1.69%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (0.78%) Aerospace
9 5 (0.65%) Billing
9 5 (0.65%) Health Technology
9 5 (0.65%) Marketing
10 4 (0.52%) Games
10 4 (0.52%) Italian Language
10 4 (0.52%) Law
11 3 (0.39%) Banking
11 3 (0.39%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.39%) Portuguese Language
11 3 (0.39%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 517 (67.41%) Software Engineer
2 191 (24.90%) Senior
3 144 (18.77%) Senior Software Engineer
4 112 (14.60%) Lead
5 97 (12.65%) Developer
6 64 (8.34%) Lead Software Engineer
7 45 (5.87%) Java Engineer
7 45 (5.87%) Software Developer
8 40 (5.22%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 40 (5.22%) Principal Engineer
9 39 (5.08%) Java Software Engineer
10 36 (4.69%) Software Manager
11 33 (4.30%) Principal Software Engineer
12 32 (4.17%) Lead Developer
13 31 (4.04%) Senior Developer
14 28 (3.65%) Engineering Manager
14 28 (3.65%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 27 (3.52%) PLC Software Engineer
16 25 (3.26%) Senior Java Engineer
17 24 (3.13%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (13.82%) .NET
2 67 (8.74%) React
3 47 (6.13%) Node.js
4 33 (4.30%) Next.js
5 30 (3.91%) Spring
6 28 (3.65%) RESTful
7 26 (3.39%) Spring Boot
8 25 (3.26%) AngularJS
9 24 (3.13%) REST
10 19 (2.48%) Vue
11 16 (2.09%) React Native
12 14 (1.83%) Ruby on Rails
13 12 (1.56%) .NET Framework
13 12 (1.56%) FastAPI
14 11 (1.43%) CSS
15 10 (1.30%) .NET Core
16 9 (1.17%) LangChain
17 6 (0.78%) HTML
18 5 (0.65%) Flask
18 5 (0.65%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 92 (11.99%) Cloud Native
2 40 (5.22%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (4.43%) Product Ownership
4 22 (2.87%) AI Agents
5 18 (2.35%) Mobile App
6 14 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.17%) Industry 4.0
8 9 (1.17%) IoT
9 6 (0.78%) Onboarding
10 5 (0.65%) Embedded Systems
10 5 (0.65%) Life Science
10 5 (0.65%) Robotics
11 4 (0.52%) Algorithms
11 4 (0.52%) Management Information System
11 4 (0.52%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.39%) Data Centre
12 3 (0.39%) Distributed Architecture
12 3 (0.39%) Legacy Applications
12 3 (0.39%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 15 (1.96%) Linux
2 9 (1.17%) Android
3 7 (0.91%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.52%) Windows
5 3 (0.39%) CentOS
5 3 (0.39%) Debian
5 3 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (17.99%) Full-Stack Development
2 122 (15.91%) Agile
3 118 (15.38%) DevOps
4 115 (14.99%) CI/CD
5 99 (12.91%) AI
6 85 (11.08%) Mentoring
7 81 (10.56%) Microservices
8 67 (8.74%) Problem-Solving
9 56 (7.30%) TDD
10 47 (6.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 45 (5.87%) Scrum
12 43 (5.61%) Test Automation
13 42 (5.48%) Coaching
14 41 (5.35%) Technical Leadership
15 38 (4.95%) Event-Driven
16 35 (4.56%) Open Source
17 34 (4.43%) Containerisation
18 33 (4.30%) Decision-Making
18 33 (4.30%) Infrastructure as Code
18 33 (4.30%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 115 (14.99%) Java
2 107 (13.95%) Python
3 89 (11.60%) C#
4 85 (11.08%) SQL
5 75 (9.78%) TypeScript
6 72 (9.39%) JavaScript
7 24 (3.13%) C++
8 23 (3.00%) Go
9 14 (1.83%) PHP
9 14 (1.83%) Ruby
10 13 (1.69%) C
11 6 (0.78%) Bash
12 5 (0.65%) COBOL
12 5 (0.65%) PowerShell
13 4 (0.52%) Bicep
13 4 (0.52%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.26%) Scala
15 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.13%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 56 (7.30%) Security Cleared
2 41 (5.35%) SC Cleared
3 39 (5.08%) DV Cleared
4 18 (2.35%) Degree
5 12 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.04%) DBS Check
7 3 (0.39%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.13%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.48%) QA
2 6 (0.78%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.13%) GDPR
4 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (5.48%) Docker
2 7 (0.91%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 43 (5.61%) Kubernetes
2 41 (5.35%) Terraform
3 9 (1.17%) Ansible
4 3 (0.39%) Grafana
4 3 (0.39%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.39%) Puppet
5 2 (0.26%) Argo
5 2 (0.26%) Packer
5 2 (0.26%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 19 (2.48%) Microsoft
2 11 (1.43%) Rockwell
3 9 (1.17%) Salesforce
4 8 (1.04%) Splunk
5 7 (0.91%) Cisco
6 6 (0.78%) Google
6 6 (0.78%) OpenAI
6 6 (0.78%) Siemens
7 5 (0.65%) Adobe
7 5 (0.65%) Xamarin
8 4 (0.52%) Databricks
9 3 (0.39%) DevExpress
9 3 (0.39%) Red Hat
9 3 (0.39%) SaltStack
10 2 (0.26%) AppDynamics