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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 34 13
Rank change year-on-year +8 -21 +13
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 553 331 858
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 5.55% 8.13% 9.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.48% 8.57% 11.43%
Number of salaries quoted 435 281 722
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% -1.93%
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 7,394 3,863 7,506
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 74.20% 94.89% 82.47%
Number of salaries quoted 4,339 2,156 5,990
10th Percentile £29,342 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £39,938 £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 £66,000
90th Percentile £86,253 £83,750 £80,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +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 21 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 21 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 -1 434 £70,000 +3.70% 120
Cheshire +8 59 £60,000 +17.07% 14
Merseyside +2 32 £65,000 -1.89% 6
Lancashire -9 28 £60,000 +19.87% 21
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 (1.08%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.90%) Apache Solr
3 4 (0.72%) Apache
3 4 (0.72%) GeoServer
4 3 (0.54%) Confluence
4 3 (0.54%) FactoryTalk
5 2 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.36%) nginx
6 1 (0.18%) CMS
6 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.36%) EngageOne
1 2 (0.36%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (1.81%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 113 (20.43%) AWS
2 91 (16.46%) Azure
3 45 (8.14%) SaaS
4 32 (5.79%) Serverless
5 20 (3.62%) GCP
6 12 (2.17%) Azure AKS
7 10 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (1.81%) Figma
8 9 (1.63%) Anthropic Claude
9 8 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (1.27%) GitHub
11 6 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.90%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (0.90%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 5 (0.90%) IaaS
12 5 (0.90%) PaaS
13 4 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Copilot
13 4 (0.72%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.72%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.72%) AMQP
2 2 (0.36%) RTP
3 1 (0.18%) HTTP
3 1 (0.18%) LTE
3 1 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.97%) NoSQL
2 17 (3.07%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
3 9 (1.63%) Neo4j
3 9 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.27%) MySQL
5 6 (1.08%) Big Data
5 6 (1.08%) Hadoop
5 6 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.90%) DocumentDB
6 5 (0.90%) FileMaker
6 5 (0.90%) SQL Server
7 4 (0.72%) Cloudera CDH
7 4 (0.72%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.72%) GIS
7 4 (0.72%) QGIS
8 3 (0.54%) Power BI
9 2 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.36%) PostHog
9 2 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (1.81%) Claude Code
2 9 (1.63%) Git
3 8 (1.45%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.72%) JIRA
4 4 (0.72%) NUnit
5 3 (0.54%) Cypress.io
5 3 (0.54%) GitLab
6 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.36%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.18%) GDB
7 1 (0.18%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.18%) JUnit
7 1 (0.18%) Maven
7 1 (0.18%) Postman
7 1 (0.18%) Selenium
7 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.18%) WinDbg
General
1 52 (9.40%) Finance
2 47 (8.50%) Social Skills
3 26 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 19 (3.44%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (3.44%) Public Sector
5 14 (2.53%) Manufacturing
5 14 (2.53%) Retail
6 8 (1.45%) Legal
7 7 (1.27%) Electronics
8 5 (0.90%) Aerospace
8 5 (0.90%) Health Technology
9 4 (0.72%) Italian Language
10 3 (0.54%) Banking
10 3 (0.54%) French Language
10 3 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
10 3 (0.54%) Portuguese Language
10 3 (0.54%) Spanish Language
11 2 (0.36%) Automotive
11 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 365 (66.00%) Software Engineer
2 110 (19.89%) Senior
3 96 (17.36%) Lead
4 80 (14.47%) Senior Software Engineer
5 61 (11.03%) Developer
6 50 (9.04%) Lead Software Engineer
7 30 (5.42%) Java Engineer
8 26 (4.70%) Software Developer
9 24 (4.34%) Java Software Engineer
9 24 (4.34%) Principal Engineer
10 23 (4.16%) Principal Software Engineer
11 22 (3.98%) Lead Developer
12 21 (3.80%) PLC Software Engineer
13 17 (3.07%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 17 (3.07%) Senior Developer
14 15 (2.71%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
14 15 (2.71%) Python Engineer
15 14 (2.53%) Embedded Engineer
15 14 (2.53%) Embedded Software Engineer
15 14 (2.53%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (15.91%) .NET
2 54 (9.76%) React
3 37 (6.69%) Node.js
4 27 (4.88%) RESTful
5 24 (4.34%) AngularJS
6 20 (3.62%) REST
6 20 (3.62%) Spring
7 19 (3.44%) .NET Framework
8 18 (3.25%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.35%) CSS
10 12 (2.17%) .NET Core
10 12 (2.17%) Vue
11 10 (1.81%) Flask
12 9 (1.63%) HTML
12 9 (1.63%) Next.js
13 7 (1.27%) Django
14 6 (1.08%) OpenAPI
14 6 (1.08%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (1.08%) Swagger
15 5 (0.90%) Celery
Miscellaneous
1 65 (11.75%) Cloud Native
2 22 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.35%) Greenfield Project
5 11 (1.99%) IoT
6 9 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.63%) Industry 4.0
7 6 (1.08%) Onboarding
8 5 (0.90%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (0.90%) Management Information System
8 5 (0.90%) Robotics
9 4 (0.72%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.72%) SCADA
10 3 (0.54%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.54%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.36%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.36%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.36%) Animation
11 2 (0.36%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.36%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.81%) Linux
2 7 (1.27%) Apple iOS
3 6 (1.08%) Android
4 4 (0.72%) CentOS
4 4 (0.72%) Debian
4 4 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.72%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.54%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (20.07%) Agile
2 92 (16.64%) CI/CD
3 85 (15.37%) DevOps
4 68 (12.30%) Full-Stack Development
4 68 (12.30%) Mentoring
5 61 (11.03%) Microservices
6 47 (8.50%) AI
6 47 (8.50%) Coaching
7 46 (8.32%) Scrum
8 43 (7.78%) TDD
9 41 (7.41%) Problem-Solving
9 41 (7.41%) Technical Leadership
10 35 (6.33%) Containerisation
11 34 (6.15%) Open Source
12 33 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
13 32 (5.79%) Analytics
14 29 (5.24%) Clean Code
15 25 (4.52%) Infrastructure as Code
16 23 (4.16%) Event-Driven
17 22 (3.98%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 89 (16.09%) Java
2 67 (12.12%) Python
3 63 (11.39%) C#
4 59 (10.67%) SQL
5 52 (9.40%) JavaScript
6 50 (9.04%) TypeScript
7 16 (2.89%) PHP
8 13 (2.35%) C++
9 10 (1.81%) C
10 9 (1.63%) Go
11 5 (0.90%) COBOL
12 4 (0.72%) Bash
12 4 (0.72%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.54%) Bicep
13 3 (0.54%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.36%) Scala
15 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.18%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 41 (7.41%) Security Cleared
2 26 (4.70%) DV Cleared
3 22 (3.98%) SC Cleared
4 15 (2.71%) Degree
5 10 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.54%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.18%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.18%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.71%) QA
2 9 (1.63%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.18%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 38 (6.87%) Docker
2 3 (0.54%) Firmware
3 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 45 (8.14%) Kubernetes
2 30 (5.42%) Terraform
3 5 (0.90%) Grafana
4 4 (0.72%) Ansible
4 4 (0.72%) Puppet
5 3 (0.54%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.36%) Packer
6 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 30 (5.42%) Microsoft
1 30 (5.42%) Salesforce
2 25 (4.52%) Cisco
3 10 (1.81%) Adobe
4 8 (1.45%) Rockwell
5 7 (1.27%) Google
6 5 (0.90%) BiZZdesign
6 5 (0.90%) Siemens
7 4 (0.72%) Red Hat
7 4 (0.72%) SaltStack
8 3 (0.54%) DevExpress
9 2 (0.36%) Xamarin
10 1 (0.18%) Databricks