Principal Engineer Contracts in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £550 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 10 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
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 282 404 477
Rank change year-on-year +122 +73 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 112 47 30
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.55% 0.20% 0.099%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.59% 0.21% 0.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 16 12
10th Percentile £514 £447 £425
25th Percentile £525 £502 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £608 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.47% +5.65% +15.00%
75th Percentile £591 £626 £688
90th Percentile £784 £800 £699
UK median daily rate £600 £725 £608
% change year-on-year -17.24% +19.34% +10.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 16 13
10th Percentile £50.00 £58.10 £50.30
25th Percentile £58.02 £68.75 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £83.31 £53.81
Median % change year-on-year -18.98% +54.82% +14.49%
75th Percentile £77.50 £83.40 £75.14
90th Percentile £80.00 - £80.79
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £83.31 £53.08
% change year-on-year -18.98% +56.95% -1.90%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 18,943 22,066 29,076
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.50% 94.30% 95.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,549 15,423 20,326
10th Percentile £213 £225 £200
25th Percentile £363 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
75th Percentile £598 £600 £575
90th Percentile £688 £688 £650
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £525
% change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,262 1,138 1,451
10th Percentile £12.50 £13.41 £12.25
25th Percentile £15.75 £18.08 £14.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £61.60 £65.00 £43.99
90th Percentile £73.98 £75.00 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £37.34 £45.00 £23.91
% change year-on-year -17.02% +88.21% +6.27%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding 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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 10 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
South East +47 35 £775 +26.02% 71
East of England +43 30 - - 56
North of England +38 12 £550 - 56
Midlands +35 12 £550 -17.76% 21
West Midlands +28 12 £550 -17.76% 14
South West +13 12 - - 40
Scotland +45 11 - - 11
North West +30 11 £550 - 54
North East - 1 - -
Principal Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 10 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 across the UK excluding London region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 33 (29.46%) Systems Engineering
2 27 (24.11%) Software Engineering
3 22 (19.64%) Validation
3 22 (19.64%) Security Cleared
4 20 (17.86%) Verification and Validation
5 15 (13.39%) Degree
6 14 (12.50%) MATLAB
7 12 (10.71%) Aerospace
7 12 (10.71%) DV Cleared
8 10 (8.93%) SC Cleared
8 10 (8.93%) Electronics
8 10 (8.93%) C
9 9 (8.04%) Algorithms
10 7 (6.25%) DevOps
10 7 (6.25%) Cybersecurity
10 7 (6.25%) Integration Testing
10 7 (6.25%) Java
10 7 (6.25%) Management Information System
10 7 (6.25%) Automotive
10 7 (6.25%) Simulink
10 7 (6.25%) Agile
10 7 (6.25%) Military
10 7 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
11 6 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 6 (5.36%) Customer Requirements
11 6 (5.36%) Virtual Environments
11 6 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (5.36%) Project Management
11 6 (5.36%) Unix
11 6 (5.36%) Windows

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 (1.79%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (6.25%) Simulink
2 5 (4.46%) Stateflow
2 5 (4.46%) TargetLink
3 1 (0.89%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.89%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.89%) Revit
Cloud Services
1 6 (5.36%) Azure
1 6 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
2 3 (2.68%) AWS
3 1 (0.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (0.89%) Amazon EC2
3 1 (0.89%) Amazon Kinesis
3 1 (0.89%) Amazon Macie
3 1 (0.89%) Amazon S3
3 1 (0.89%) AWS CodeBuild
3 1 (0.89%) AWS CodeCommit
3 1 (0.89%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (0.89%) AWS Step Functions
3 1 (0.89%) Azure App Service
3 1 (0.89%) Azure Cosmos DB
3 1 (0.89%) Azure Key Vault
3 1 (0.89%) Azure Logic Apps
3 1 (0.89%) Entra ID
3 1 (0.89%) GitHub
3 1 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (0.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 6 (5.36%) DHCP
1 6 (5.36%) DNS
1 6 (5.36%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.89%) Network Security
2 1 (0.89%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
1 1 (0.89%) Data Lake
1 1 (0.89%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 5 (4.46%) Bitbucket
1 5 (4.46%) Git
1 5 (4.46%) Subversion
2 2 (1.79%) JIRA
3 1 (0.89%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.89%) Rational DOORS
General
1 12 (10.71%) Aerospace
2 10 (8.93%) Electronics
3 7 (6.25%) Automotive
3 7 (6.25%) Military
4 4 (3.57%) Social Skills
5 2 (1.79%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (0.89%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (1.79%) React
2 1 (0.89%) ARM Templates
2 1 (0.89%) AWS CDK
2 1 (0.89%) JSON
2 1 (0.89%) LangChain
2 1 (0.89%) Node.js
2 1 (0.89%) REST
2 1 (0.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (8.04%) Algorithms
2 7 (6.25%) Management Information System
3 5 (4.46%) Analogue Electronics
4 4 (3.57%) Clustering
5 1 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (0.89%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.36%) Linux
1 6 (5.36%) Unix
1 6 (5.36%) Windows
2 5 (4.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 5 (4.46%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (29.46%) Systems Engineering
2 27 (24.11%) Software Engineering
3 22 (19.64%) Validation
4 20 (17.86%) Verification and Validation
5 7 (6.25%) Agile
5 7 (6.25%) Cybersecurity
5 7 (6.25%) DevOps
5 7 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
5 7 (6.25%) Integration Testing
6 6 (5.36%) Customer Requirements
6 6 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 6 (5.36%) Line Management
6 6 (5.36%) Project Management
6 6 (5.36%) Virtual Environments
6 6 (5.36%) Visualisation
7 5 (4.46%) Model-Based Systems Engineering
7 5 (4.46%) Security Hardening
7 5 (4.46%) Security Monitoring
7 5 (4.46%) Software Audit
7 5 (4.46%) White-Box Testing
Programming Languages
1 14 (12.50%) MATLAB
2 10 (8.93%) C
3 7 (6.25%) Java
4 6 (5.36%) C#
5 5 (4.46%) Embedded C
6 1 (0.89%) Bicep
6 1 (0.89%) JavaScript
6 1 (0.89%) Python
6 1 (0.89%) SQL
6 1 (0.89%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 22 (19.64%) Security Cleared
2 15 (13.39%) Degree
3 12 (10.71%) DV Cleared
4 10 (8.93%) SC Cleared
5 5 (4.46%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.79%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.89%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.89%) Chartered Engineer
7 1 (0.89%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (4.46%) AUTOSAR
1 5 (4.46%) ISO 26262
1 5 (4.46%) MISRA
1 5 (4.46%) MISRA C
1 5 (4.46%) NIST
2 2 (1.79%) Def Stans
3 1 (0.89%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (4.46%) VMware ESXi
1 5 (4.46%) VMware Infrastructure
1 5 (4.46%) VMware NSX
2 1 (0.89%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.89%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (5.36%) SCCM
2 5 (4.46%) vCenter Server
3 1 (0.89%) Ansible
3 1 (0.89%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (4.46%) Veeam
1 5 (4.46%) VMware
2 3 (2.68%) Keysight
3 1 (0.89%) Mentor Graphics
3 1 (0.89%) Microsoft