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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 22 14
Rank change year-on-year -4 -8 +10
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 585 519 848
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.56% 11.96% 9.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.56% 12.54% 11.13%
Number of salaries quoted 464 286 718
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,938 £52,500 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,037 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% +11.73% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £84,813 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £105,000 £86,250
England median annual salary £72,500 £72,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year - +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 7,736 4,139 7,616
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 73.56% 95.41% 82.19%
Number of salaries quoted 4,608 2,189 6,046
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £65,603
90th Percentile £89,500 £83,850 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -2 464 £70,000 +3.70% 113
Cheshire -20 60 £60,000 +20.00% 32
Merseyside -10 32 £70,000 +7.69% 7
Lancashire -25 27 £60,000 +22.78% 30
Cumbria -21 2 £50,000 +25.00% 6
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 (1.03%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.85%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (0.68%) Apache
3 4 (0.68%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.68%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.51%) Confluence
5 2 (0.34%) nginx
6 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.17%) CMS
6 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.34%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (1.71%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 114 (19.49%) AWS
2 85 (14.53%) Azure
3 47 (8.03%) SaaS
4 32 (5.47%) Serverless
5 18 (3.08%) GCP
6 13 (2.22%) Anthropic Claude
7 12 (2.05%) Azure AKS
8 10 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (1.37%) Figma
9 8 (1.37%) GitHub
10 6 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (0.85%) IaaS
11 5 (0.85%) PaaS
12 4 (0.68%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 4 (0.68%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.68%) OpenShift
12 4 (0.68%) Twilio
13 3 (0.51%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.68%) AMQP
2 2 (0.34%) RTP
3 1 (0.17%) HTTP
3 1 (0.17%) LTE
3 1 (0.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.44%) NoSQL
2 14 (2.39%) MongoDB
3 8 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (1.20%) MySQL
4 7 (1.20%) Neo4j
5 6 (1.03%) Big Data
5 6 (1.03%) Hadoop
5 6 (1.03%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.85%) FileMaker
7 4 (0.68%) Cloudera CDH
7 4 (0.68%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.68%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.68%) GIS
7 4 (0.68%) QGIS
7 4 (0.68%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.34%) PostHog
8 2 (0.34%) Power BI
8 2 (0.34%) Redis
9 1 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 14 (2.39%) Claude Code
2 8 (1.37%) Git
2 8 (1.37%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.68%) JIRA
3 4 (0.68%) NUnit
4 3 (0.51%) GitLab
5 2 (0.34%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.34%) Maven
5 2 (0.34%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.17%) GDB
6 1 (0.17%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.17%) JUnit
6 1 (0.17%) Postman
6 1 (0.17%) Selenium
6 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.17%) WinDbg
General
1 61 (10.43%) Finance
2 43 (7.35%) Social Skills
3 25 (4.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 20 (3.42%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.08%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (2.74%) Retail
7 14 (2.39%) Manufacturing
8 9 (1.54%) Electronics
9 8 (1.37%) Legal
10 7 (1.20%) Aerospace
11 5 (0.85%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.68%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.51%) Banking
13 3 (0.51%) French Language
13 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.51%) Portuguese Language
13 3 (0.51%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.34%) Automotive
14 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 385 (65.81%) Software Engineer
2 112 (19.15%) Senior
3 99 (16.92%) Lead
4 81 (13.85%) Senior Software Engineer
5 70 (11.97%) Developer
6 52 (8.89%) Lead Software Engineer
7 35 (5.98%) Java Engineer
8 31 (5.30%) Software Developer
9 29 (4.96%) Java Software Engineer
10 26 (4.44%) Principal Engineer
10 26 (4.44%) Principal Software Engineer
11 24 (4.10%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 24 (4.10%) PLC Software Engineer
12 23 (3.93%) Lead Developer
13 22 (3.76%) Senior Developer
14 20 (3.42%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
15 17 (2.91%) C# Software Engineer
16 16 (2.74%) Python Engineer
17 15 (2.56%) Senior Java Engineer
17 15 (2.56%) Software Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (15.04%) .NET
2 52 (8.89%) React
3 38 (6.50%) Node.js
4 28 (4.79%) RESTful
5 25 (4.27%) Spring
6 23 (3.93%) AngularJS
6 23 (3.93%) Spring Boot
7 22 (3.76%) REST
8 18 (3.08%) .NET Framework
9 12 (2.05%) CSS
9 12 (2.05%) Vue
10 11 (1.88%) .NET Core
11 8 (1.37%) Flask
11 8 (1.37%) HTML
12 7 (1.20%) Next.js
13 6 (1.03%) OpenAPI
13 6 (1.03%) RabbitMQ
13 6 (1.03%) Swagger
14 5 (0.85%) Django
14 5 (0.85%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 63 (10.77%) Cloud Native
2 22 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (3.08%) Product Ownership
4 12 (2.05%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (1.88%) IoT
6 9 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.54%) Industry 4.0
7 5 (0.85%) Management Information System
7 5 (0.85%) Mobile App
7 5 (0.85%) Onboarding
7 5 (0.85%) Robotics
8 4 (0.68%) AI Agents
8 4 (0.68%) Algorithms
9 3 (0.51%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.51%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (0.34%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.34%) Embedded Systems
10 2 (0.34%) Life Science
11 1 (0.17%) Data Structures
11 1 (0.17%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.88%) Linux
2 8 (1.37%) Android
3 7 (1.20%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.68%) CentOS
4 4 (0.68%) Debian
4 4 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.68%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.68%) Windows
5 1 (0.17%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (19.32%) Agile
2 90 (15.38%) DevOps
3 86 (14.70%) CI/CD
4 85 (14.53%) Full-Stack Development
5 65 (11.11%) Microservices
6 63 (10.77%) Mentoring
7 52 (8.89%) AI
8 47 (8.03%) TDD
9 46 (7.86%) Scrum
10 44 (7.52%) Coaching
11 43 (7.35%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (6.67%) Technical Leadership
13 33 (5.64%) Containerisation
13 33 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
13 33 (5.64%) Open Source
14 30 (5.13%) Analytics
15 29 (4.96%) Event-Driven
16 27 (4.62%) Clean Code
17 25 (4.27%) Infrastructure as Code
18 21 (3.59%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 98 (16.75%) Java
2 77 (13.16%) Python
3 67 (11.45%) C#
4 58 (9.91%) SQL
5 54 (9.23%) JavaScript
6 49 (8.38%) TypeScript
7 16 (2.74%) C++
8 15 (2.56%) PHP
9 12 (2.05%) C
9 12 (2.05%) Go
10 5 (0.85%) COBOL
11 4 (0.68%) Bash
11 4 (0.68%) Bicep
11 4 (0.68%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.51%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.34%) Scala
14 1 (0.17%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.17%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 44 (7.52%) Security Cleared
2 30 (5.13%) SC Cleared
3 29 (4.96%) DV Cleared
4 14 (2.39%) Degree
5 9 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.08%) QA
2 7 (1.20%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (5.47%) Docker
2 4 (0.68%) Firmware
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 40 (6.84%) Kubernetes
2 29 (4.96%) Terraform
3 5 (0.85%) Grafana
4 4 (0.68%) Ansible
4 4 (0.68%) Puppet
5 3 (0.51%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.34%) Packer
6 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 28 (4.79%) Salesforce
2 27 (4.62%) Microsoft
3 23 (3.93%) Cisco
4 11 (1.88%) Rockwell
5 10 (1.71%) Adobe
6 7 (1.20%) Google
7 6 (1.03%) Siemens
8 5 (0.85%) BiZZdesign
9 4 (0.68%) Red Hat
9 4 (0.68%) SaltStack
9 4 (0.68%) Xamarin
10 3 (0.51%) DevExpress
11 1 (0.17%) Databricks
11 1 (0.17%) OpenAI