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 17 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 43 11 14
Rank change year-on-year -32 +3 -1
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 228 755 425
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.54% 10.99% 10.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.37% 13.42% 11.60%
Number of salaries quoted 174 318 280
10th Percentile £46,625 £40,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £57,500 £63,250
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% -9.09% +5.42%
75th Percentile £87,188 £67,500 £75,313
90th Percentile £100,000 £75,000 £86,250
England median annual salary £75,000 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +7.14% - -

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 4,249 5,627 3,664
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 84.62% 81.93% 94.24%
Number of salaries quoted 2,432 2,773 2,771
10th Percentile £27,000 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £41,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £83,750
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -0.83%

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 17 November 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 17 November 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 -13 178 £71,250 +18.75% 249
Cheshire -25 31 £60,000 +11.11% 33
Merseyside -27 10 £62,500 -3.85% 9
Lancashire -43 8 £55,000 +8.91% 83
Cumbria +5 1 £60,000 +4.35% 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 7 (3.07%) Confluence
2 3 (1.32%) Apache
2 3 (1.32%) Apache Solr
2 3 (1.32%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.88%) IIS
3 2 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.44%) CMS
4 1 (0.44%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.88%) Adobe XD
2 2 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.88%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.88%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 78 (34.21%) AWS
2 65 (28.51%) Azure
3 23 (10.09%) SaaS
4 17 (7.46%) GCP
5 14 (6.14%) Serverless
6 12 (5.26%) GitHub
7 10 (4.39%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (3.95%) Power Platform
9 7 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (2.63%) IaaS
10 6 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (2.63%) PaaS
11 4 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.32%) Amazon S3
13 2 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
13 2 (0.88%) AWS Step Functions
13 2 (0.88%) Azure Service Bus
13 2 (0.88%) Figma
13 2 (0.88%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.32%) Internet
2 2 (0.88%) AMQP
2 2 (0.88%) HTTP
3 1 (0.44%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (10.96%) NoSQL
2 20 (8.77%) MongoDB
3 13 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (4.82%) MySQL
5 7 (3.07%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.63%) Relational Database
7 5 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (2.19%) Power BI
8 4 (1.75%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 4 (1.75%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.32%) Big Data
9 3 (1.32%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.88%) Cloudera CDH
10 2 (0.88%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.88%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.88%) SQL CLR
11 1 (0.44%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 11 (4.82%) Git
2 9 (3.95%) Cypress.io
3 8 (3.51%) JIRA
4 7 (3.07%) GitLab
5 5 (2.19%) Cucumber
5 5 (2.19%) Selenium
6 4 (1.75%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.88%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.88%) webpack
8 1 (0.44%) Gatling
8 1 (0.44%) Jasmine
8 1 (0.44%) JMeter
8 1 (0.44%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.44%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.44%) NUnit
8 1 (0.44%) Protractor
General
1 48 (21.05%) Finance
2 39 (17.11%) Social Skills
3 9 (3.95%) Marketing
3 9 (3.95%) Public Sector
4 8 (3.51%) Retail
5 7 (3.07%) Banking
5 7 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.63%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (2.63%) Legal
6 6 (2.63%) Manufacturing
6 6 (2.63%) Telecoms
7 5 (2.19%) Billing
8 4 (1.75%) Electronics
8 4 (1.75%) Games
8 4 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.32%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.88%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.88%) Automotive
10 2 (0.88%) Back Office
10 2 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 108 (47.37%) Software Engineer
2 67 (29.39%) Senior
3 35 (15.35%) Senior Software Engineer
4 32 (14.04%) Developer
5 29 (12.72%) Lead
6 13 (5.70%) Java Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) Lead Software Engineer
8 11 (4.82%) Architect
8 11 (4.82%) Python Engineer
9 10 (4.39%) Java Software Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) AWS Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Control Systems Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Python Software Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Senior Developer
10 9 (3.95%) Senior Systems Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Systems Engineer
11 8 (3.51%) Principal Engineer
11 8 (3.51%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (21.49%) React
2 48 (21.05%) .NET
3 22 (9.65%) Spring
3 22 (9.65%) Spring Boot
4 20 (8.77%) AngularJS
5 18 (7.89%) RESTful
6 15 (6.58%) Kafka
6 15 (6.58%) Node.js
7 14 (6.14%) .NET Core
7 14 (6.14%) CSS
8 13 (5.70%) HTML
9 12 (5.26%) .NET Framework
10 9 (3.95%) Jest
10 9 (3.95%) Vue
11 8 (3.51%) Next.js
11 8 (3.51%) REST
12 7 (3.07%) Entity Framework
12 7 (3.07%) FastAPI
13 6 (2.63%) RabbitMQ
14 5 (2.19%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 33 (14.47%) Cloud Native
2 18 (7.89%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (7.46%) Greenfield Project
4 15 (6.58%) Product Ownership
5 9 (3.95%) SCADA
6 7 (3.07%) Wiki
7 6 (2.63%) AI Agents
8 4 (1.75%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.32%) BBC
9 3 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (1.32%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.32%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.88%) Animation
10 2 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.88%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.88%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 2 (0.88%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.63%) Linux
1 6 (2.63%) Windows
2 4 (1.75%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.88%) CentOS
3 2 (0.88%) Debian
3 2 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.88%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.44%) Android
4 1 (0.44%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.44%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (35.96%) CI/CD
2 77 (33.77%) Agile
3 58 (25.44%) DevOps
4 54 (23.68%) Microservices
5 42 (18.42%) TDD
6 41 (17.98%) Mentoring
7 39 (17.11%) Containerisation
8 32 (14.04%) Problem-Solving
9 31 (13.60%) Full-Stack Development
10 29 (12.72%) Continuous Improvement
11 25 (10.96%) AI
12 22 (9.65%) Coaching
13 20 (8.77%) Clean Code
13 20 (8.77%) Stakeholder Management
14 19 (8.33%) Event-Driven
15 18 (7.89%) Fintech
15 18 (7.89%) Technical Leadership
15 18 (7.89%) Test Automation
16 16 (7.02%) Computer Science
16 16 (7.02%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 54 (23.68%) C#
2 53 (23.25%) Java
3 42 (18.42%) SQL
4 40 (17.54%) TypeScript
5 33 (14.47%) Python
6 30 (13.16%) JavaScript
7 6 (2.63%) C++
8 5 (2.19%) PHP
9 4 (1.75%) C
9 4 (1.75%) Ruby
10 3 (1.32%) Go
10 3 (1.32%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.32%) Rust
11 2 (0.88%) Bash
11 2 (0.88%) Embedded C++
11 2 (0.88%) Scala
12 1 (0.44%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.44%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.44%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.44%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 27 (11.84%) Security Cleared
2 18 (7.89%) DV Cleared
3 16 (7.02%) Degree
4 12 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.39%) SC Cleared
6 2 (0.88%) DBS Check
6 2 (0.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 2 (0.88%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.44%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.44%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.51%) QA
2 3 (1.32%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.32%) ISO 20022
2 3 (1.32%) SEPA
2 3 (1.32%) TARGET2
3 1 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.44%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.44%) GDPR
3 1 (0.44%) MISRA
3 1 (0.44%) MISRA C
System Software
1 46 (20.18%) Docker
2 2 (0.88%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.44%) KVM
3 1 (0.44%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 38 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 19 (8.33%) Terraform
3 7 (3.07%) Ansible
4 4 (1.75%) Grafana
5 3 (1.32%) Puppet
6 2 (0.88%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.44%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 1 (0.44%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (11.40%) Microsoft
2 6 (2.63%) BiZZdesign
2 6 (2.63%) Cisco
2 6 (2.63%) Salesforce
3 4 (1.75%) Google
3 4 (1.75%) Oracle
3 4 (1.75%) SAP
4 3 (1.32%) Databricks
4 3 (1.32%) SaltStack
5 2 (0.88%) Avaya
5 2 (0.88%) Concur
5 2 (0.88%) Red Hat
5 2 (0.88%) Sage
5 2 (0.88%) VMware
6 1 (0.44%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.44%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.44%) HubSpot
6 1 (0.44%) TOWER Software