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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 20 13
Rank change year-on-year -14 -7 +2
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 273 379 499
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.19% 7.49% 10.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 8.18% 11.82%
Number of salaries quoted 210 216 375
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £68,750 £60,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% +2.16%
75th Percentile £85,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £70,000

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 5,239 4,633 4,222
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 80.43% 91.56% 86.84%
Number of salaries quoted 2,590 2,266 3,307
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,298 £29,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.34%
75th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £59,556
% change year-on-year -8.33% +0.75% -4.71%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 -8 220 £67,500 +3.85% 153
Cheshire -17 33 £72,000 +44.00% 59
Merseyside -10 12 £55,000 -21.43% 26
Lancashire -14 8 £75,000 +49.84% 38
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 (2.56%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.83%) Apache
3 4 (1.47%) Apache Solr
4 2 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.73%) Confluence
4 2 (0.73%) nginx
5 1 (0.37%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.73%) Sketch
2 1 (0.37%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 10 (3.66%) Magento
2 1 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 84 (30.77%) Azure
2 82 (30.04%) AWS
3 29 (10.62%) SaaS
4 21 (7.69%) GCP
5 13 (4.76%) Serverless
6 9 (3.30%) IaaS
6 9 (3.30%) PaaS
7 7 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (2.56%) Azure AKS
7 7 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (2.56%) Power Platform
8 6 (2.20%) Figma
9 5 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (1.83%) GitHub
10 4 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.47%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.47%) OpenShift
11 3 (1.10%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.73%) AWS Step Functions
12 2 (0.73%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.47%) AMQP
2 2 (0.73%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.69%) NoSQL
2 10 (3.66%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.93%) MySQL
4 7 (2.56%) Big Data
4 7 (2.56%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (2.20%) Hadoop
5 6 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.20%) Power BI
5 6 (2.20%) Relational Database
5 6 (2.20%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.83%) Neo4j
7 4 (1.47%) Cloudera CDH
8 2 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.73%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.73%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.73%) DocumentDB
8 2 (0.73%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.73%) PostHog
8 2 (0.73%) Redis
9 1 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 9 (3.30%) Git
2 7 (2.56%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.47%) GitLab
3 4 (1.47%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.73%) JIRA
5 1 (0.37%) Gatling
5 1 (0.37%) JMeter
5 1 (0.37%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.37%) NUnit
5 1 (0.37%) Postman
5 1 (0.37%) Protractor
5 1 (0.37%) Selenium
General
1 40 (14.65%) Finance
2 37 (13.55%) Social Skills
3 24 (8.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 10 (3.66%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.93%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.56%) Banking
7 6 (2.20%) Marketing
8 5 (1.83%) Aerospace
8 5 (1.83%) Billing
8 5 (1.83%) Electronics
8 5 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.10%) Automotive
9 3 (1.10%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.10%) Games
9 3 (1.10%) Legal
9 3 (1.10%) Retail
10 2 (0.73%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.73%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.37%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 135 (49.45%) Software Engineer
2 63 (23.08%) Senior
3 48 (17.58%) Lead
4 36 (13.19%) Senior Software Engineer
5 35 (12.82%) Developer
6 17 (6.23%) Lead Software Engineer
7 13 (4.76%) Architect
8 12 (4.40%) Project Manager
9 11 (4.03%) Analyst
9 11 (4.03%) Business Analyst
10 10 (3.66%) AWS Engineer
10 10 (3.66%) Senior Developer
10 10 (3.66%) Software Developer
10 10 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.30%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
11 9 (3.30%) Python Engineer
12 8 (2.93%) Java Engineer
12 8 (2.93%) Principal Engineer
13 7 (2.56%) Lead Developer
13 7 (2.56%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (20.15%) .NET
2 50 (18.32%) React
3 22 (8.06%) AngularJS
4 20 (7.33%) RESTful
5 19 (6.96%) Node.js
6 16 (5.86%) REST
7 15 (5.49%) .NET Framework
8 13 (4.76%) Spring
8 13 (4.76%) Spring Boot
9 11 (4.03%) .NET Core
10 10 (3.66%) CSS
11 9 (3.30%) Flask
11 9 (3.30%) Vue
12 8 (2.93%) HTML
13 7 (2.56%) Next.js
13 7 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (2.20%) Django
14 6 (2.20%) Entity Framework
14 6 (2.20%) Jest
14 6 (2.20%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.92%) Cloud Native
2 17 (6.23%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (4.76%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (3.30%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.93%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.83%) Distributed Computing
6 5 (1.83%) SCADA
7 4 (1.47%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 4 (1.47%) IoT
8 3 (1.10%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 2 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (0.73%) Animation
9 2 (0.73%) Client/Server
9 2 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.73%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.73%) Online Banking
10 1 (0.37%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.37%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.37%) NVMe
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.56%) Linux
2 4 (1.47%) CentOS
2 4 (1.47%) Debian
2 4 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 4 (1.47%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.10%) Windows
4 2 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.37%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (29.30%) Agile
2 71 (26.01%) CI/CD
3 57 (20.88%) Mentoring
4 56 (20.51%) Microservices
5 45 (16.48%) DevOps
6 39 (14.29%) Coaching
7 34 (12.45%) Containerisation
8 33 (12.09%) TDD
9 28 (10.26%) Full-Stack Development
9 28 (10.26%) Problem-Solving
10 27 (9.89%) AI
11 25 (9.16%) Analytics
11 25 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 25 (9.16%) Scrum
12 24 (8.79%) Clean Code
13 23 (8.42%) Technical Leadership
14 21 (7.69%) Fintech
15 17 (6.23%) User Experience
16 15 (5.49%) Design Patterns
16 15 (5.49%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 56 (20.51%) C#
2 49 (17.95%) Java
3 38 (13.92%) Python
4 33 (12.09%) TypeScript
5 32 (11.72%) SQL
6 27 (9.89%) JavaScript
7 15 (5.49%) PHP
8 5 (1.83%) C
9 4 (1.47%) Scala
10 3 (1.10%) Rust
11 2 (0.73%) Go
11 2 (0.73%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.73%) Ruby
12 1 (0.37%) C++
12 1 (0.37%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 24 (8.79%) Security Cleared
2 16 (5.86%) DV Cleared
3 12 (4.40%) SC Cleared
4 8 (2.93%) Degree
5 7 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.37%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.40%) QA
2 6 (2.20%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.10%) ISO 20022
3 3 (1.10%) SEPA
3 3 (1.10%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.37%) Data Quality
System Software
1 36 (13.19%) Docker
2 2 (0.73%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.37%) Firmware
3 1 (0.37%) KVM
3 1 (0.37%) QEMU
3 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 33 (12.09%) Kubernetes
2 19 (6.96%) Terraform
3 7 (2.56%) Ansible
4 5 (1.83%) Grafana
5 4 (1.47%) Puppet
6 1 (0.37%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 35 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 27 (9.89%) Salesforce
3 23 (8.42%) Cisco
4 10 (3.66%) Adobe
5 9 (3.30%) BiZZdesign
6 5 (1.83%) Google
6 5 (1.83%) SaltStack
7 4 (1.47%) Red Hat
8 2 (0.73%) Concur
8 2 (0.73%) Databricks
8 2 (0.73%) Sage
8 2 (0.73%) SAP
9 1 (0.37%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.37%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle