Principal Engineer Contracts in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in London 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 302 369 456
Rank change year-on-year +67 +87 +104
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 51 22 37
As % of all contract jobs advertised in London 0.41% 0.12% 0.14%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.13% 0.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 29 12 25
10th Percentile £445 - £518
25th Percentile £500 £575 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £650 £725
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% -10.34% +20.83%
75th Percentile £625 £756 £788
90th Percentile £703 £882 £970
England median daily rate £540 £600 £725
% change year-on-year -10.00% -17.24% +17.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 1
Median hourly rate - £48.65 £78.80
Median % change year-on-year - -38.26% +80.16%
England median hourly rate £66.25 £67.50 £83.31
% change year-on-year -1.85% -18.98% +54.82%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 11,726 16,625 25,758
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.45% 93.24% 95.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,034 12,022 18,663
10th Percentile £341 £325 £363
25th Percentile £431 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £800 £800 £800
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 143 336 290
10th Percentile £20.45 £16.01 £18.00
25th Percentile £23.90 £20.02 £22.53
Median hourly rate £34.00 £27.81 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.26% -20.54% -
75th Percentile £50.75 £43.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £64.75 £65.00 £76.03
England median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
% change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in London

Principal Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in London

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

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in London

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in London

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

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in London

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in London

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

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in London

Principal Engineer
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 Engineer within the London 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
Central London +9 10 £500 -47.02% 3
South London - 2 £600 -
Principal Engineer
England

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

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 London region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 22 (43.14%) Python
2 16 (31.37%) Azure
2 16 (31.37%) CI/CD
3 15 (29.41%) AWS
3 15 (29.41%) Kubernetes
4 13 (25.49%) SolarWinds
5 12 (23.53%) Migration
5 12 (23.53%) Cisco
5 12 (23.53%) VPN
5 12 (23.53%) DevOps
6 11 (21.57%) Network Monitoring
6 11 (21.57%) Linux
6 11 (21.57%) Agile
6 11 (21.57%) ZABBIX
7 9 (17.65%) Broadband
7 9 (17.65%) Firewall
7 9 (17.65%) Finance
7 9 (17.65%) Terraform
7 9 (17.65%) Docker
7 9 (17.65%) Mentoring
7 9 (17.65%) Containerisation
8 8 (15.69%) Project Delivery
8 8 (15.69%) Social Skills
8 8 (15.69%) Microservices
8 8 (15.69%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (15.69%) MPLS
8 8 (15.69%) OSPF
8 8 (15.69%) BGP
8 8 (15.69%) IPv6
8 8 (15.69%) CCIE

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London 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 (3.92%) BizTalk Server
2 1 (1.96%) WinCC
Business Applications
1 2 (3.92%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 16 (31.37%) Azure
2 15 (29.41%) AWS
3 6 (11.76%) GitHub
4 5 (9.80%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (7.84%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (7.84%) Serverless
6 3 (5.88%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (5.88%) Azure AKS
6 3 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (3.92%) Amazon S3
7 2 (3.92%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (3.92%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (3.92%) Entra ID
7 2 (3.92%) GCP
7 2 (3.92%) SaaS
8 1 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (1.96%) Amazon MSK
8 1 (1.96%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.96%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 12 (23.53%) VPN
2 9 (17.65%) Broadband
2 9 (17.65%) Firewall
3 8 (15.69%) BGP
3 8 (15.69%) IPv6
3 8 (15.69%) MPLS
3 8 (15.69%) OSPF
4 6 (11.76%) Cisco Firepower
4 6 (11.76%) Multicast
5 5 (9.80%) GPON
6 4 (7.84%) Network Security
7 3 (5.88%) Cisco ASA
7 3 (5.88%) Cisco ISE
7 3 (5.88%) IPsec
7 3 (5.88%) TACACS
8 2 (3.92%) DHCP
8 2 (3.92%) DNS
8 2 (3.92%) SSH
8 2 (3.92%) TCP/IP
9 1 (1.96%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (9.80%) NoSQL
2 4 (7.84%) MongoDB
2 4 (7.84%) SQL Server
3 3 (5.88%) Big Data
3 3 (5.88%) OLAP
3 3 (5.88%) OLTP
3 3 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (5.88%) SAP BW
3 3 (5.88%) SAP Data Services
3 3 (5.88%) SAP HANA
4 2 (3.92%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (3.92%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (3.92%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (3.92%) MariaDB
5 1 (1.96%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.96%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 4 (7.84%) Git
2 2 (3.92%) GitLab
2 2 (3.92%) Jenkins
General
1 9 (17.65%) Finance
2 8 (15.69%) Social Skills
3 5 (9.80%) Banking
3 5 (9.80%) Public Sector
4 4 (7.84%) Front Office
5 2 (3.92%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.96%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.96%) Back Office
6 1 (1.96%) Electronics
6 1 (1.96%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.96%) Marketing
6 1 (1.96%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (9.80%) Kafka
2 4 (7.84%) .NET
3 3 (5.88%) Web Services
4 2 (3.92%) .NET Core
4 2 (3.92%) Blazor
4 2 (3.92%) FHIR
4 2 (3.92%) GraphQL
4 2 (3.92%) Jest
4 2 (3.92%) JSON
4 2 (3.92%) Node.js
4 2 (3.92%) OAuth
4 2 (3.92%) OAuth2
4 2 (3.92%) React
4 2 (3.92%) RESTful
4 2 (3.92%) XML
5 1 (1.96%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.96%) Kedro
5 1 (1.96%) Lambda Expressions
5 1 (1.96%) RxJS
5 1 (1.96%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 5 (9.80%) Algorithms
2 3 (5.88%) Educational Technology
2 3 (5.88%) Hedge funds
3 2 (3.92%) Cloud Native
3 2 (3.92%) Data Centre
3 2 (3.92%) Data Structures
3 2 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (3.92%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.92%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (3.92%) PACS
3 2 (3.92%) Private Cloud
3 2 (3.92%) Security Posture
3 2 (3.92%) TWAP
3 2 (3.92%) VWAP
4 1 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.96%) Derivative
4 1 (1.96%) PKI
4 1 (1.96%) Replication
4 1 (1.96%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 11 (21.57%) Linux
2 6 (11.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (7.84%) Windows
4 3 (5.88%) CentOS
4 3 (5.88%) Ubuntu
5 2 (3.92%) SUSE
5 2 (3.92%) Windows Server
6 1 (1.96%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (31.37%) CI/CD
2 12 (23.53%) DevOps
2 12 (23.53%) Migration
3 11 (21.57%) Agile
3 11 (21.57%) Network Monitoring
4 9 (17.65%) Containerisation
4 9 (17.65%) Mentoring
5 8 (15.69%) Microservices
5 8 (15.69%) Project Delivery
5 8 (15.69%) Software Engineering
6 7 (13.73%) Low Latency
7 6 (11.76%) Design Patterns
8 5 (9.80%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (7.84%) Algorithmic Trading
9 4 (7.84%) Artificial Intelligence
9 4 (7.84%) Coaching
9 4 (7.84%) Infrastructure Automation
9 4 (7.84%) Infrastructure Management
9 4 (7.84%) ITIL
9 4 (7.84%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 22 (43.14%) Python
2 7 (13.73%) JavaScript
3 6 (11.76%) C#
3 6 (11.76%) Java
4 5 (9.80%) C++
4 5 (9.80%) SQL
5 4 (7.84%) Go
5 4 (7.84%) PowerShell
6 3 (5.88%) C
6 3 (5.88%) Kotlin
6 3 (5.88%) Rust
6 3 (5.88%) TypeScript
7 2 (3.92%) Bash
7 2 (3.92%) Perl
7 2 (3.92%) PL/SQL
7 2 (3.92%) T-SQL
8 1 (1.96%) VB
Qualifications
1 8 (15.69%) CCIE
1 8 (15.69%) Cisco Certification
2 5 (9.80%) CCIE Service Provider
3 4 (7.84%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.84%) Security Cleared
4 3 (5.88%) Degree
5 1 (1.96%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.96%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.96%) RHCE
5 1 (1.96%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.88%) QA
1 3 (5.88%) SLA
2 2 (3.92%) DICOM
2 2 (3.92%) HL7
2 2 (3.92%) NIST
2 2 (3.92%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 9 (17.65%) Docker
2 4 (7.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.96%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 15 (29.41%) Kubernetes
2 11 (21.57%) ZABBIX
3 9 (17.65%) Terraform
4 7 (13.73%) Ansible
5 3 (5.88%) Puppet
6 2 (3.92%) Failover Clustering
6 2 (3.92%) Progress Chef
6 2 (3.92%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (1.96%) Functional Safety
7 1 (1.96%) Graylog
7 1 (1.96%) Nagios
7 1 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (25.49%) SolarWinds
2 12 (23.53%) Cisco
3 6 (11.76%) Red Hat
4 5 (9.80%) Nokia
4 5 (9.80%) VMware
5 4 (7.84%) Oracle
5 4 (7.84%) SAP
6 2 (3.92%) Microsoft
6 2 (3.92%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.96%) Citrix
7 1 (1.96%) Confluent
7 1 (1.96%) Dynatrace
7 1 (1.96%) ForgeRock
7 1 (1.96%) Ping Identity
7 1 (1.96%) Siemens
7 1 (1.96%) Splunk