Principal Engineer Contracts

Principal Engineer
UK

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in the UK is £600 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

 6 months to
5 May 2024		 Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 457 615 780
Rank change year-on-year +158 +165 -112
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 144 101 83
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.33% 0.17% 0.094%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.18% 0.098%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 52 50
10th Percentile - £464 £459
25th Percentile £525 £588 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £725 £600
Median % change year-on-year -17.24% +20.83% +9.09%
75th Percentile £725 £788 £656
90th Percentile £800 £871 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £608 £550
% change year-on-year -9.47% +10.45% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 18 15
10th Percentile £50.00 £51.19 £49.55
25th Percentile £54.75 £65.00 £50.66
Median hourly rate £67.50 £83.31 £53.08
Median % change year-on-year -18.98% +56.95% -1.90%
75th Percentile £77.00 £83.40 £69.95
90th Percentile £80.00 - £80.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £83.31 £53.81
% change year-on-year -17.48% +54.82% +14.49%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 40,029 55,895 84,701
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.75% 94.62% 95.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,060 39,048 59,505
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £409 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,566 2,078
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.11 £15.72
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.60
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +90.68% +4.89%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £76.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.00 £19.52
% change year-on-year -4.76% +115.16% +2.74%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Principal Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Principal Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Principal Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 5 May 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
England +159 125 £600 -17.24% 384
UK excluding London +116 108 £550 -9.47% 308
South East +48 35 £775 +26.02% 79
East of England +44 29 - - 65
London +99 24 £600 -17.24% 98
Work from Home +108 17 £604 -16.72% 139
Midlands +38 12 £550 -17.76% 23
West Midlands +33 12 £550 -17.76% 15
South West +17 12 - - 51
Scotland +46 11 - - 11
North of England +32 9 £538 -2.27% 76
North West +30 8 £538 - 70
North East - 1 - -

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 5 May 2024, Principal Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 37 (25.69%) Software Engineering
2 34 (23.61%) Systems Engineering
3 27 (18.75%) Security Cleared
4 22 (15.28%) Validation
5 20 (13.89%) Verification and Validation
6 16 (11.11%) Degree
7 15 (10.42%) Aerospace
8 14 (9.72%) Agile
8 14 (9.72%) MATLAB
8 14 (9.72%) AWS
9 13 (9.03%) DV Cleared
10 12 (8.33%) C#
10 12 (8.33%) Java
10 12 (8.33%) Azure
11 11 (7.64%) SC Cleared
11 11 (7.64%) DevOps
12 10 (6.94%) C
12 10 (6.94%) Electronics
13 9 (6.25%) Algorithms
13 9 (6.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 9 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
14 8 (5.56%) Social Skills
14 8 (5.56%) .NET
15 7 (4.86%) Simulink
15 7 (4.86%) JavaScript
15 7 (4.86%) Military
15 7 (4.86%) Management Information System
15 7 (4.86%) Automotive
15 7 (4.86%) Information Management
15 7 (4.86%) Integration Testing

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (1.39%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (4.86%) Simulink
2 5 (3.47%) Stateflow
2 5 (3.47%) TargetLink
3 1 (0.69%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.69%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.69%) Revit
Cloud Services
1 14 (9.72%) AWS
2 12 (8.33%) Azure
3 5 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
4 3 (2.08%) Serverless
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon ECS
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon EventBridge
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon Kinesis
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon Macie
5 2 (1.39%) Amazon S3
5 2 (1.39%) AWS CodeBuild
5 2 (1.39%) AWS CodeCommit
5 2 (1.39%) AWS CodePipeline
5 2 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (1.39%) AWS Step Functions
5 2 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 1 (0.69%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (0.69%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 6 (4.17%) DHCP
1 6 (4.17%) DNS
1 6 (4.17%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.69%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.39%) Amazon Athena
1 2 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
1 2 (1.39%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.39%) Parquet
2 1 (0.69%) DynamoDB
2 1 (0.69%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 6 (4.17%) Git
2 5 (3.47%) Bitbucket
2 5 (3.47%) Subversion
3 2 (1.39%) JIRA
4 1 (0.69%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.69%) Rational DOORS
General
1 15 (10.42%) Aerospace
2 10 (6.94%) Electronics
3 8 (5.56%) Social Skills
4 7 (4.86%) Automotive
4 7 (4.86%) Military
5 4 (2.78%) Finance
6 3 (2.08%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.08%) Banking
7 2 (1.39%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.69%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.69%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (5.56%) .NET
2 6 (4.17%) React
3 5 (3.47%) .NET Core
4 3 (2.08%) CSS
5 2 (1.39%) .NET Framework
5 2 (1.39%) JSON
5 2 (1.39%) REST
5 2 (1.39%) YAML
6 1 (0.69%) AWS CDK
6 1 (0.69%) Flutter
6 1 (0.69%) Kafka
6 1 (0.69%) LangChain
6 1 (0.69%) Node.js
6 1 (0.69%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.25%) Algorithms
2 7 (4.86%) Management Information System
3 5 (3.47%) Analogue Electronics
4 4 (2.78%) Clustering
5 1 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (0.69%) Driving Licence
5 1 (0.69%) Legacy Code
5 1 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.69%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 6 (4.17%) Linux
1 6 (4.17%) Unix
1 6 (4.17%) Windows
2 5 (3.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 5 (3.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (25.69%) Software Engineering
2 34 (23.61%) Systems Engineering
3 22 (15.28%) Validation
4 20 (13.89%) Verification and Validation
5 14 (9.72%) Agile
6 11 (7.64%) DevOps
7 9 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
7 9 (6.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 7 (4.86%) Cybersecurity
8 7 (4.86%) Information Management
8 7 (4.86%) Integration Testing
9 6 (4.17%) Customer Requirements
9 6 (4.17%) Line Management
9 6 (4.17%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
9 6 (4.17%) Project Management
9 6 (4.17%) Virtual Environments
9 6 (4.17%) Visualisation
10 5 (3.47%) Problem-Solving
10 5 (3.47%) Security Monitoring
10 5 (3.47%) Software Audit
Programming Languages
1 14 (9.72%) MATLAB
2 12 (8.33%) C#
2 12 (8.33%) Java
3 10 (6.94%) C
4 7 (4.86%) JavaScript
4 7 (4.86%) TypeScript
5 5 (3.47%) Embedded C
5 5 (3.47%) Python
6 3 (2.08%) SQL
6 3 (2.08%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.69%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.69%) Scala
Qualifications
1 27 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 16 (11.11%) Degree
3 13 (9.03%) DV Cleared
4 11 (7.64%) SC Cleared
5 5 (3.47%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.39%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.39%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.69%) Chartered Engineer
7 1 (0.69%) CISM
7 1 (0.69%) CISSP
7 1 (0.69%) CSSLP
7 1 (0.69%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (4.17%) NIST
2 5 (3.47%) AUTOSAR
2 5 (3.47%) ISO 26262
2 5 (3.47%) MISRA
2 5 (3.47%) MISRA C
3 2 (1.39%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.39%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 5 (3.47%) VMware ESXi
1 5 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
1 5 (3.47%) VMware NSX
2 2 (1.39%) Docker
3 1 (0.69%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 6 (4.17%) SCCM
2 5 (3.47%) vCenter Server
3 2 (1.39%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.69%) Ansible
4 1 (0.69%) Argo
Vendors
1 5 (3.47%) Veeam
1 5 (3.47%) VMware
2 3 (2.08%) Keysight
3 1 (0.69%) Mentor Graphics
3 1 (0.69%) Virgin Media
418 Principal Engineer jobs Nationwide