Principal Developer Contract Job Trends in England

Principal Developer
UK > England

The median Principal Developer daily rate in England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 508 528 591
Rank change year-on-year +20 +63 +186
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Developer 12 7 17
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.044% 0.021% 0.040%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.048% 0.023% 0.042%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 7 12
10th Percentile £395 - £676
25th Percentile £438 £575 £709
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £650 £768
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -15.31% +13.70%
75th Percentile £769 £769 £800
90th Percentile £953 £848 £830
UK median daily rate £550 £650 £800
% change year-on-year -15.38% -18.75% +18.52%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 25,187 30,511 40,033
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.33% 92.98% 94.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,216 19,002 27,957
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £401 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,371 1,457 1,375
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.56 £15.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £21.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%
75th Percentile £53.99 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £77.80
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%

Principal Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Developer in England

Principal Developer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Developer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Developer job vacancies in England

Principal Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Developer in England over the 6 months to 21 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Developer in England

Principal Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Developer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Developer job vacancies in England

Principal Developer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Developer within the England region over the 6 months to 21 September 2025. 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
London +22 8 £700 +7.69% 2
South East - 3 £575 -
North of England - 1 £388 - 8
Yorkshire - 1 £388 - 1
Principal Developer
UK

Principal Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 21 September 2025, Principal Developer 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 across the England region featuring Principal Developer in the job title.

1 10 (83.33%) Java
2 6 (50.00%) SQL
2 6 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 5 (41.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (41.67%) Spring
3 5 (41.67%) Degree
3 5 (41.67%) Computer Science
3 5 (41.67%) Azure
3 5 (41.67%) Git
3 5 (41.67%) UX Design
3 5 (41.67%) Relational Database
3 5 (41.67%) User Experience
3 5 (41.67%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (33.33%) REST
4 4 (33.33%) AWS
4 4 (33.33%) Agile
4 4 (33.33%) Terraform
4 4 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
5 3 (25.00%) Social Skills
5 3 (25.00%) Full-Stack Development
5 3 (25.00%) Roadmaps
5 3 (25.00%) Architectural Patterns
5 3 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (25.00%) Asynchronous Programming
5 3 (25.00%) Material Design
5 3 (25.00%) Continuous Delivery
5 3 (25.00%) Spring Boot
5 3 (25.00%) Swift
5 3 (25.00%) SDLC
5 3 (25.00%) Performance Tuning

Principal Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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:

Business Applications
1 1 (8.33%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 5 (41.67%) Azure
2 4 (33.33%) AWS
3 3 (25.00%) GCP
3 3 (25.00%) SaaS
4 1 (8.33%) Azure AKS
4 1 (8.33%) DigitalOcean
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (41.67%) Relational Database
2 2 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (8.33%) MySQL
3 1 (8.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (41.67%) Git
2 2 (16.67%) Eclipse
2 2 (16.67%) JIRA
General
1 5 (41.67%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 1 (8.33%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (41.67%) Spring
2 4 (33.33%) REST
3 3 (25.00%) Material Design
3 3 (25.00%) RESTful
3 3 (25.00%) Spring Boot
4 2 (16.67%) AngularJS
4 2 (16.67%) Bootstrap
4 2 (16.67%) CSS
4 2 (16.67%) HATEOAS
4 2 (16.67%) HTML
4 2 (16.67%) jQuery
4 2 (16.67%) Web Services
4 2 (16.67%) XHTML
5 1 (8.33%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 3 (25.00%) Mobile App
2 2 (16.67%) Greenfield Project
2 2 (16.67%) Legacy Systems
2 2 (16.67%) Life Science
2 2 (16.67%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 3 (25.00%) Android
1 3 (25.00%) Apple iOS
2 2 (16.67%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 5 (41.67%) Computer Science
2 5 (41.67%) User Experience
2 5 (41.67%) UX Design
3 4 (33.33%) Agile
3 4 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (25.00%) Android Development
4 3 (25.00%) Architectural Patterns
4 3 (25.00%) Asynchronous Programming
4 3 (25.00%) Continuous Delivery
4 3 (25.00%) Continuous Integration
4 3 (25.00%) Full-Stack Development
4 3 (25.00%) Microservices
4 3 (25.00%) Mobile Application Development
4 3 (25.00%) MVVM
4 3 (25.00%) Performance Tuning
4 3 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
4 3 (25.00%) Roadmaps
4 3 (25.00%) SDLC
5 2 (16.67%) Investment Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (83.33%) Java
2 6 (50.00%) SQL
3 3 (25.00%) Kotlin
3 3 (25.00%) Objective-C
3 3 (25.00%) Swift
4 2 (16.67%) C#
4 2 (16.67%) Groovy
4 2 (16.67%) JavaScript
4 2 (16.67%) TypeScript
5 1 (8.33%) Go
5 1 (8.33%) PHP
5 1 (8.33%) Python
Qualifications
1 5 (41.67%) Computer Science Degree
1 5 (41.67%) Degree
Systems Management
1 4 (33.33%) Terraform
2 1 (8.33%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (25.00%) Apple
2 1 (8.33%) Microsoft