Principal Engineer Contracts in England

Principal Engineer
UK > England

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in England is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 397 419 570
Rank change year-on-year +22 +151 +140
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 88 123 83
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.36% 0.33% 0.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.39% 0.36% 0.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 26 40
10th Percentile £425 £519 £413
25th Percentile £498 £525 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £725
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -17.24% +17.89%
75th Percentile £638 £738 £788
90th Percentile £725 £800 £925
UK median daily rate £540 £600 £725
% change year-on-year -10.00% -17.24% +20.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 83 17
10th Percentile £48.24 £45.90 £51.89
25th Percentile £56.87 £56.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £66.25 £67.50 £83.31
Median % change year-on-year -1.85% -18.98% +54.82%
75th Percentile £77.72 £80.00 £83.40
90th Percentile £82.96 - -
UK median hourly rate £67.83 £67.50 £83.31
% change year-on-year +0.49% -18.98% +56.95%

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 22,549 34,488 47,741
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 92.73% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,007 22,894 33,903
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £643 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 900 2,432 1,409
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.00 £14.35
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.60
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in England

Principal Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in England

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in England

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in England

Principal Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Principal Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Principal Engineer in England

Principal Engineer
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 Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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 +67 51 £540 -16.92% 127
South West +46 12 £575 - 39
North of England +18 9 £625 +19.05% 83
North West +17 9 £625 +19.05% 62
East of England +11 9 - - 57
South East +18 7 £500 -35.48% 94
Midlands +13 3 £75 -86.36% 23
East Midlands - 2 £75 - 6
West Midlands +3 1 - - 17
Principal Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, 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 across the England region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 24 (27.27%) Python
1 24 (27.27%) Azure
1 24 (27.27%) CI/CD
2 23 (26.14%) Social Skills
3 22 (25.00%) Security Cleared
4 21 (23.86%) Agile
5 20 (22.73%) SC Cleared
5 20 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
6 18 (20.45%) Cisco
6 18 (20.45%) AWS
7 17 (19.32%) DevOps
7 17 (19.32%) Software Engineering
8 15 (17.05%) Migration
8 15 (17.05%) VPN
8 15 (17.05%) Linux
8 15 (17.05%) Kubernetes
8 15 (17.05%) SolarWinds
8 15 (17.05%) Degree
9 14 (15.91%) Network Monitoring
10 12 (13.64%) Mentoring
10 12 (13.64%) Broadband
10 12 (13.64%) MPLS
10 12 (13.64%) Terraform
10 12 (13.64%) Systems Engineering
10 12 (13.64%) Project Delivery
11 11 (12.50%) OSPF
11 11 (12.50%) BGP
11 11 (12.50%) IPv6
11 11 (12.50%) CCIE
11 11 (12.50%) Cisco Certification

Principal Engineer 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:

Application Platforms
1 5 (5.68%) Confluence
1 5 (5.68%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.27%) Apache
2 2 (2.27%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.27%) BizTalk Server
3 1 (1.14%) WinCC
Applications
1 2 (2.27%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (5.68%) Teamcenter
2 2 (2.27%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 24 (27.27%) Azure
2 18 (20.45%) AWS
3 6 (6.82%) GitHub
4 5 (5.68%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.55%) GCP
5 4 (4.55%) Serverless
6 3 (3.41%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (3.41%) Azure AKS
6 3 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (2.27%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.27%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (2.27%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.27%) SaaS
8 1 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (1.14%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.14%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 15 (17.05%) VPN
2 12 (13.64%) Broadband
2 12 (13.64%) MPLS
3 11 (12.50%) BGP
3 11 (12.50%) IPv6
3 11 (12.50%) OSPF
4 9 (10.23%) Cisco Firepower
4 9 (10.23%) Firewall
5 8 (9.09%) Multicast
6 5 (5.68%) GPON
6 5 (5.68%) Network Security
7 3 (3.41%) Cisco ASA
7 3 (3.41%) Cisco ISE
7 3 (3.41%) IPsec
7 3 (3.41%) TACACS
7 3 (3.41%) TCP/IP
8 2 (2.27%) DHCP
8 2 (2.27%) DNS
8 2 (2.27%) Ethernet
8 2 (2.27%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.68%) NoSQL
2 4 (4.55%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.55%) SQL Server
3 3 (3.41%) Big Data
3 3 (3.41%) OLAP
3 3 (3.41%) OLTP
3 3 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.41%) SAP BW
3 3 (3.41%) SAP Data Services
3 3 (3.41%) SAP HANA
4 2 (2.27%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (2.27%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (2.27%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (2.27%) Delta Lake
4 2 (2.27%) MariaDB
5 1 (1.14%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.14%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 4 (4.55%) Git
2 3 (3.41%) Rational DOORS
3 2 (2.27%) GitLab
3 2 (2.27%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.14%) Eclipse
4 1 (1.14%) NetBeans
4 1 (1.14%) Visual Studio
General
1 23 (26.14%) Social Skills
2 9 (10.23%) Finance
3 7 (7.95%) Presentation Skills
4 6 (6.82%) Banking
5 5 (5.68%) Public Sector
6 4 (4.55%) Front Office
7 3 (3.41%) Aerospace
8 2 (2.27%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (2.27%) Electronics
8 2 (2.27%) Financial Institution
8 2 (2.27%) Telecoms
9 1 (1.14%) Automotive
9 1 (1.14%) Back Office
9 1 (1.14%) Games
9 1 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.14%) Manufacturing
9 1 (1.14%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.68%) Kafka
1 5 (5.68%) Web Services
2 4 (4.55%) .NET
2 4 (4.55%) AngularJS
2 4 (4.55%) RESTful
3 3 (3.41%) CSS
3 3 (3.41%) HTML
3 3 (3.41%) React
4 2 (2.27%) .NET Core
4 2 (2.27%) Blazor
4 2 (2.27%) CSS3
4 2 (2.27%) FHIR
4 2 (2.27%) GraphQL
4 2 (2.27%) HTML5
4 2 (2.27%) Jest
4 2 (2.27%) JSON
4 2 (2.27%) Node.js
4 2 (2.27%) OAuth
4 2 (2.27%) OAuth2
4 2 (2.27%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.95%) Algorithms
1 7 (7.95%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (5.68%) Management Information System
3 4 (4.55%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.41%) Educational Technology
4 3 (3.41%) Hedge funds
5 2 (2.27%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.27%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.27%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.27%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.27%) PACS
5 2 (2.27%) Private Cloud
5 2 (2.27%) Security Posture
5 2 (2.27%) TWAP
5 2 (2.27%) VWAP
6 1 (1.14%) Cloud Security Posture
6 1 (1.14%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 15 (17.05%) Linux
2 7 (7.95%) Windows
3 6 (6.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (4.55%) Windows Server
5 3 (3.41%) CentOS
5 3 (3.41%) Ubuntu
6 2 (2.27%) SUSE
7 1 (1.14%) Unix
7 1 (1.14%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (27.27%) CI/CD
2 21 (23.86%) Agile
3 20 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
4 17 (19.32%) DevOps
4 17 (19.32%) Software Engineering
5 15 (17.05%) Migration
6 14 (15.91%) Network Monitoring
7 12 (13.64%) Mentoring
7 12 (13.64%) Project Delivery
7 12 (13.64%) Systems Engineering
8 10 (11.36%) Validation
9 9 (10.23%) Containerisation
10 8 (9.09%) Design Patterns
10 8 (9.09%) Microservices
10 8 (9.09%) Test Automation
10 8 (9.09%) Verification and Validation
11 7 (7.95%) Artificial Intelligence
11 7 (7.95%) Infrastructure as Code
11 7 (7.95%) Low Latency
11 7 (7.95%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 24 (27.27%) Python
2 10 (11.36%) JavaScript
3 7 (7.95%) Rust
3 7 (7.95%) SQL
4 6 (6.82%) C#
4 6 (6.82%) C++
4 6 (6.82%) Java
5 5 (5.68%) TypeScript
6 4 (4.55%) C
6 4 (4.55%) Go
6 4 (4.55%) MATLAB
6 4 (4.55%) PowerShell
7 3 (3.41%) Kotlin
8 2 (2.27%) Bash
8 2 (2.27%) Perl
8 2 (2.27%) PL/SQL
8 2 (2.27%) T-SQL
9 1 (1.14%) SystemVerilog
9 1 (1.14%) Tcl
9 1 (1.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 22 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 20 (22.73%) SC Cleared
3 15 (17.05%) Degree
4 11 (12.50%) CCIE
4 11 (12.50%) Cisco Certification
5 5 (5.68%) CCIE Service Provider
6 2 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.27%) RIBA
7 1 (1.14%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.14%) CESG Certified Professional
7 1 (1.14%) Chartered Engineer
7 1 (1.14%) CISSP
7 1 (1.14%) HNC
7 1 (1.14%) HND
7 1 (1.14%) Master's Degree
7 1 (1.14%) RHCE
7 1 (1.14%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.55%) QA
1 4 (4.55%) SLA
2 2 (2.27%) DICOM
2 2 (2.27%) HL7
2 2 (2.27%) NCSC
2 2 (2.27%) NIST
2 2 (2.27%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.14%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.14%) AUTOSAR
3 1 (1.14%) DO-254
3 1 (1.14%) GDPR
3 1 (1.14%) IEC 61508
3 1 (1.14%) MISRA
3 1 (1.14%) MISRA C
3 1 (1.14%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 9 (10.23%) Docker
2 4 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.14%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 15 (17.05%) Kubernetes
2 12 (13.64%) Terraform
3 11 (12.50%) ZABBIX
4 9 (10.23%) Ansible
5 3 (3.41%) Nagios
5 3 (3.41%) Puppet
6 2 (2.27%) Failover Clustering
6 2 (2.27%) Progress Chef
6 2 (2.27%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (1.14%) Functional Safety
7 1 (1.14%) Graylog
7 1 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (20.45%) Cisco
2 15 (17.05%) SolarWinds
3 6 (6.82%) Red Hat
4 5 (5.68%) Nokia
4 5 (5.68%) VMware
5 4 (4.55%) Microsoft
5 4 (4.55%) Oracle
5 4 (4.55%) SAP
6 2 (2.27%) Databricks
6 2 (2.27%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.14%) Altera
7 1 (1.14%) Citrix
7 1 (1.14%) Confluent
7 1 (1.14%) Dynatrace
7 1 (1.14%) Intel
7 1 (1.14%) Microsemi
7 1 (1.14%) Ping Identity
7 1 (1.14%) QNX
7 1 (1.14%) Siemens
7 1 (1.14%) Xilinx