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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 21 13
Rank change year-on-year -9 -8 +5
Permanent jobs citing Software Engineering 392 330 731
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 4.97% 7.92% 10.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.45% 8.40% 11.82%
Number of salaries quoted 310 225 592
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% +8.33% -
75th Percentile £85,000 £77,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £94,511 £86,250
England median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +11.54% -7.14%

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 6,078 3,927 6,183
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 77.03% 94.20% 85.40%
Number of salaries quoted 3,286 2,059 5,007
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £36,250 £40,620 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £67,750 £66,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,550 £81,250
England median annual salary £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -9 302 £70,000 +7.69% 104
Cheshire -11 51 £60,000 +14.29% 13
Merseyside -1 22 £65,000 -3.70% 4
Lancashire -22 17 £60,163 +18.22% 22
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 (1.53%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.02%) Apache
2 4 (1.02%) Apache Solr
3 3 (0.77%) Confluence
3 3 (0.77%) GeoServer
4 2 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.51%) nginx
5 1 (0.26%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.51%) Adobe XD
1 2 (0.51%) EngageOne
1 2 (0.51%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (2.55%) Magento
2 1 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 97 (24.74%) AWS
2 92 (23.47%) Azure
3 32 (8.16%) SaaS
4 23 (5.87%) Serverless
5 21 (5.36%) GCP
6 11 (2.81%) Azure AKS
7 9 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (2.04%) IaaS
8 8 (2.04%) PaaS
9 7 (1.79%) Figma
10 6 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (1.28%) Power Platform
12 4 (1.02%) Anthropic Claude
12 4 (1.02%) Cloud Computing
12 4 (1.02%) GitHub
12 4 (1.02%) Microsoft Copilot
12 4 (1.02%) OpenShift
12 4 (1.02%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.02%) AMQP
2 2 (0.51%) HTTP
2 2 (0.51%) RTP
3 1 (0.26%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (7.65%) NoSQL
2 14 (3.57%) MongoDB
3 10 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
4 8 (2.04%) MySQL
5 7 (1.79%) Neo4j
6 6 (1.53%) Big Data
6 6 (1.53%) Hadoop
7 5 (1.28%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.28%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.02%) Cloudera CDH
8 4 (1.02%) Power BI
9 3 (0.77%) DocumentDB
9 3 (0.77%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (0.77%) GIS
9 3 (0.77%) QGIS
10 2 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.51%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.51%) Redis
Development Applications
1 9 (2.30%) Git
2 6 (1.53%) Cypress.io
2 6 (1.53%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.02%) Claude Code
3 4 (1.02%) GitLab
3 4 (1.02%) JIRA
4 2 (0.51%) Vagrant
5 1 (0.26%) NUnit
5 1 (0.26%) Postman
5 1 (0.26%) Protractor
5 1 (0.26%) Selenium
General
1 54 (13.78%) Finance
2 46 (11.73%) Social Skills
3 25 (6.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 16 (4.08%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (3.83%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.57%) Manufacturing
7 9 (2.30%) Retail
8 7 (1.79%) Banking
9 6 (1.53%) Electronics
10 5 (1.28%) Aerospace
10 5 (1.28%) Billing
10 5 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.28%) Marketing
11 4 (1.02%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.77%) Automotive
12 3 (0.77%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.77%) French Language
12 3 (0.77%) Games
12 3 (0.77%) Portuguese Language
12 3 (0.77%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 223 (56.89%) Software Engineer
2 79 (20.15%) Lead
3 74 (18.88%) Senior
4 56 (14.29%) Developer
5 45 (11.48%) Senior Software Engineer
6 33 (8.42%) Lead Software Engineer
7 23 (5.87%) Software Developer
8 20 (5.10%) Java Engineer
9 17 (4.34%) Java Software Engineer
9 17 (4.34%) Lead Developer
10 15 (3.83%) Senior Developer
11 14 (3.57%) Project Manager
12 13 (3.32%) Principal Engineer
13 12 (3.06%) Architect
13 12 (3.06%) Principal Software Engineer
13 12 (3.06%) Python Engineer
14 11 (2.81%) .NET Software Engineer
14 11 (2.81%) Analyst
14 11 (2.81%) Business Analyst
15 10 (2.55%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (19.13%) .NET
2 50 (12.76%) React
3 29 (7.40%) Node.js
4 26 (6.63%) RESTful
5 20 (5.10%) AngularJS
6 17 (4.34%) .NET Framework
7 16 (4.08%) Spring
7 16 (4.08%) Spring Boot
8 15 (3.83%) REST
9 12 (3.06%) CSS
10 11 (2.81%) .NET Core
11 10 (2.55%) Flask
11 10 (2.55%) HTML
12 9 (2.30%) Next.js
12 9 (2.30%) Vue
13 7 (1.79%) Django
14 6 (1.53%) FastAPI
14 6 (1.53%) RabbitMQ
15 5 (1.28%) Celery
15 5 (1.28%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 48 (12.24%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.57%) Greenfield Project
4 12 (3.06%) Product Ownership
5 9 (2.30%) Industry 4.0
6 8 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (1.79%) IoT
8 5 (1.28%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (1.28%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.02%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 4 (1.02%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.02%) SCADA
10 3 (0.77%) Data Centre
10 3 (0.77%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 2 (0.51%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.51%) Animation
11 2 (0.51%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.51%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.79%) Linux
2 6 (1.53%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.02%) Android
3 4 (1.02%) CentOS
3 4 (1.02%) Debian
3 4 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (1.02%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.51%) Windows
5 1 (0.26%) Unix
5 1 (0.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (26.79%) Agile
2 82 (20.92%) CI/CD
3 64 (16.33%) Mentoring
4 61 (15.56%) Microservices
5 54 (13.78%) DevOps
6 49 (12.50%) Coaching
6 49 (12.50%) Full-Stack Development
7 44 (11.22%) Scrum
8 43 (10.97%) TDD
9 36 (9.18%) AI
10 35 (8.93%) Problem-Solving
11 34 (8.67%) Containerisation
12 33 (8.42%) Technical Leadership
13 29 (7.40%) Analytics
14 27 (6.89%) Clean Code
14 27 (6.89%) Open Source
15 26 (6.63%) Continuous Improvement
16 21 (5.36%) Fintech
17 19 (4.85%) Stakeholder Management
17 19 (4.85%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 75 (19.13%) Java
2 61 (15.56%) C#
3 53 (13.52%) Python
4 50 (12.76%) SQL
5 41 (10.46%) JavaScript
6 39 (9.95%) TypeScript
7 16 (4.08%) PHP
8 6 (1.53%) C
8 6 (1.53%) Go
9 5 (1.28%) Kotlin
10 4 (1.02%) Scala
11 3 (0.77%) C++
12 2 (0.51%) Ruby
12 2 (0.51%) Rust
13 1 (0.26%) Bash
13 1 (0.26%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 25 (6.38%) Security Cleared
2 17 (4.34%) DV Cleared
3 11 (2.81%) Degree
4 10 (2.55%) SC Cleared
5 8 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.77%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.26%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.26%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.57%) QA
2 7 (1.79%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.77%) ISO 20022
3 3 (0.77%) SEPA
3 3 (0.77%) TARGET2
4 1 (0.26%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 33 (8.42%) Docker
2 2 (0.51%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.26%) Firmware
3 1 (0.26%) KVM
3 1 (0.26%) QEMU
3 1 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 39 (9.95%) Kubernetes
2 19 (4.85%) Terraform
3 6 (1.53%) Ansible
4 4 (1.02%) Puppet
5 3 (0.77%) Grafana
6 2 (0.51%) Packer
6 2 (0.51%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 32 (8.16%) Microsoft
2 29 (7.40%) Salesforce
3 25 (6.38%) Cisco
4 10 (2.55%) Adobe
5 8 (2.04%) BiZZdesign
6 5 (1.28%) Google
6 5 (1.28%) SaltStack
7 4 (1.02%) Red Hat
8 1 (0.26%) Atlassian
8 1 (0.26%) Databricks
8 1 (0.26%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.26%) HubSpot
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle
8 1 (0.26%) SAP
8 1 (0.26%) Xamarin