Principal Developer Contract Job Trends in London

Principal Developer
England > London

The median Principal Developer daily rate in London is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 351 384
Rank change year-on-year -24 +33 +129
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Developer 6 4 9
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.041% 0.029% 0.048%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.044% 0.031% 0.052%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 4 7
10th Percentile £169 - £702
25th Percentile £326 £675 £818
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £788 £850
Median % change year-on-year -42.86% -7.35% +28.30%
75th Percentile £534 £913 £875
90th Percentile £619 - -
England median daily rate £425 £700 £735
% change year-on-year -39.29% -4.76% -2.00%

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. 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 London with a recognized job title 13,582 12,805 17,342
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 93.64% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,020 8,170 12,542
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £448 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -5.23%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £778
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 139 338
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.95 £15.98
25th Percentile £23.65 £24.66 £19.01
Median hourly rate £32.50 £35.00 £28.63
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +22.27% -17.03%
75th Percentile £63.10 £53.75 £49.68
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.15 £65.83
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £35.95
% change year-on-year -14.29% -2.64% +2.71%

Principal Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Principal Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Principal Developer job vacancy trend in London

Principal Developer
Daily Rate Trend in London

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

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

Principal Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Developer in London over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Developer in London

Principal Developer
Contract Job Locations in London

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 London region over the 6 months to 2 February 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London - 1 - -
Principal Developer
England

Principal Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 2 February 2026, Principal Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the London region featuring Principal Developer in the job title.

1 5 (83.33%) Java
1 5 (83.33%) Spring
1 5 (83.33%) SQL
2 4 (66.67%) Relational Database
2 4 (66.67%) REST
3 3 (50.00%) AWS
3 3 (50.00%) Computer Science
3 3 (50.00%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (50.00%) Spring Boot
4 2 (33.33%) AngularJS
4 2 (33.33%) Azure
4 2 (33.33%) Bootstrap
4 2 (33.33%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (33.33%) CSS
4 2 (33.33%) Degree
4 2 (33.33%) Eclipse
4 2 (33.33%) Full-Stack Development
4 2 (33.33%) GCP
4 2 (33.33%) Git
4 2 (33.33%) Groovy
4 2 (33.33%) Hibernate
4 2 (33.33%) HTML
4 2 (33.33%) JavaScript
4 2 (33.33%) JDBC
4 2 (33.33%) JIRA
4 2 (33.33%) JPA
4 2 (33.33%) jQuery
4 2 (33.33%) Linux
4 2 (33.33%) Microservices
4 2 (33.33%) OWASP

Principal Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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:

Cloud Services
1 3 (50.00%) AWS
2 2 (33.33%) Azure
2 2 (33.33%) GCP
2 2 (33.33%) SaaS
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon EMR
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon S3
3 1 (16.67%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (16.67%) Datadog
3 1 (16.67%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (66.67%) Relational Database
2 3 (50.00%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (16.67%) Apache Iceberg
3 1 (16.67%) NoSQL
3 1 (16.67%) RDBMS
3 1 (16.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (33.33%) Eclipse
1 2 (33.33%) Git
1 2 (33.33%) JIRA
General
1 2 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
1 2 (33.33%) Finance
2 1 (16.67%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (83.33%) Spring
2 4 (66.67%) REST
3 3 (50.00%) Spring Boot
4 2 (33.33%) AngularJS
4 2 (33.33%) Bootstrap
4 2 (33.33%) CSS
4 2 (33.33%) Hibernate
4 2 (33.33%) HTML
4 2 (33.33%) JDBC
4 2 (33.33%) JPA
4 2 (33.33%) jQuery
4 2 (33.33%) Web Services
4 2 (33.33%) XHTML
5 1 (16.67%) Kafka
5 1 (16.67%) RESTful
5 1 (16.67%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (33.33%) Life Science
2 1 (16.67%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (16.67%) Product Ownership
2 1 (16.67%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 2 (33.33%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (50.00%) Computer Science
2 2 (33.33%) Full-Stack Development
2 2 (33.33%) Microservices
2 2 (33.33%) OWASP
2 2 (33.33%) Performance Tuning
2 2 (33.33%) SDLC
2 2 (33.33%) Secure Coding
2 2 (33.33%) Translating Business Requirements
2 2 (33.33%) User Experience
2 2 (33.33%) UX Design
2 2 (33.33%) Web Application Development
3 1 (16.67%) Acceptance Criteria
3 1 (16.67%) API Design
3 1 (16.67%) Code Quality
3 1 (16.67%) Data Engineering
3 1 (16.67%) Epics
3 1 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 1 (16.67%) Observability
3 1 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
3 1 (16.67%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 5 (83.33%) Java
1 5 (83.33%) SQL
2 2 (33.33%) Groovy
2 2 (33.33%) JavaScript
2 2 (33.33%) TypeScript
3 1 (16.67%) Python
Qualifications
1 2 (33.33%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (33.33%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (16.67%) Data Quality
1 1 (16.67%) QA
System Software
1 1 (16.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (16.67%) Kubernetes
1 1 (16.67%) Terraform