Principal Engineer Contracts

Principal Engineer
UK

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 April 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
5 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 446 469 631
Rank change year-on-year +23 +162 +128
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 86 132 96
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.29% 0.30% 0.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.32% 0.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 25 44
10th Percentile £425 £518 £433
25th Percentile £500 £525 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £688
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -12.73% +14.58%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £791
90th Percentile £725 £790 £868
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £550 £608
% change year-on-year +4.55% -9.47% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 93 17
10th Percentile £48.09 £46.47 £51.89
25th Percentile £54.24 £52.50 £70.00
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £83.31
Median % change year-on-year - -18.98% +55.88%
75th Percentile £77.93 £76.86 £83.40
90th Percentile £82.05 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £83.31
% change year-on-year - -18.98% +42.03%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 27,116 40,938 58,845
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.74% 92.78% 94.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,840 26,814 41,114
10th Percentile £300 £275 £310
25th Percentile £406 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.31% +3.43%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 956 2,534 1,657
10th Percentile £14.99 £12.86 £14.28
25th Percentile £20.26 £16.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £32.00 £33.78 £44.53
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -24.15% +96.34%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £71.60 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.29 £34.61 £42.37
% change year-on-year -9.58% -18.32% +117.26%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 5 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 5 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Top 15 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 5 April 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
England +27 80 £540 -10.00% 602
London +62 50 £535 -23.57% 209
UK excluding London -1 32 £575 +4.55% 428
Work from Home +64 31 £502 -16.94% 252
South West +27 12 £575 - 56
North of England +22 8 £625 +19.05% 118
South East +35 7 £500 -35.48% 97
North West +12 7 £625 +19.05% 81
Midlands +14 3 £75 -86.36% 52
East of England +9 3 - - 74
Scotland +3 2 - - 26
East Midlands - 2 £75 - 10
North East -1 1 - - 4
West Midlands -2 1 - - 42
Wales - 1 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 5 April 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 featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 25 (29.07%) Azure
2 24 (27.91%) CI/CD
3 23 (26.74%) Python
4 22 (25.58%) Software Engineering
5 20 (23.26%) DevOps
6 19 (22.09%) Security Cleared
6 19 (22.09%) Agile
6 19 (22.09%) Cisco
7 17 (19.77%) Degree
7 17 (19.77%) SC Cleared
7 17 (19.77%) AWS
7 17 (19.77%) Social Skills
8 16 (18.60%) Problem-Solving
8 16 (18.60%) SolarWinds
8 16 (18.60%) Migration
8 16 (18.60%) Linux
8 16 (18.60%) VPN
9 15 (17.44%) Kubernetes
9 15 (17.44%) Network Monitoring
10 12 (13.95%) ZABBIX
10 12 (13.95%) Broadband
10 12 (13.95%) CCIE
10 12 (13.95%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (13.95%) MPLS
10 12 (13.95%) Project Delivery
11 11 (12.79%) Terraform
11 11 (12.79%) OSPF
11 11 (12.79%) BGP
11 11 (12.79%) IPv6
12 10 (11.63%) Firewall

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 (2.33%) Apache
1 2 (2.33%) Apache Spark
1 2 (2.33%) BizTalk Server
2 1 (1.16%) WinCC
Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (2.33%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 25 (29.07%) Azure
2 17 (19.77%) AWS
3 6 (6.98%) GitHub
4 5 (5.81%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (4.65%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.65%) GCP
5 4 (4.65%) Serverless
6 3 (3.49%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (3.49%) Azure AKS
6 3 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (2.33%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.33%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (2.33%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.33%) SaaS
8 1 (1.16%) Azure Storage
8 1 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 16 (18.60%) VPN
2 12 (13.95%) Broadband
2 12 (13.95%) MPLS
3 11 (12.79%) BGP
3 11 (12.79%) IPv6
3 11 (12.79%) OSPF
4 10 (11.63%) Cisco Firepower
4 10 (11.63%) Firewall
5 8 (9.30%) Multicast
6 6 (6.98%) Network Security
7 5 (5.81%) GPON
8 4 (4.65%) Cisco ASA
8 4 (4.65%) Cisco ISE
8 4 (4.65%) IPsec
8 4 (4.65%) TACACS
9 3 (3.49%) TCP/IP
10 2 (2.33%) DHCP
10 2 (2.33%) DNS
10 2 (2.33%) Ethernet
10 2 (2.33%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.81%) NoSQL
2 4 (4.65%) Big Data
2 4 (4.65%) MongoDB
3 3 (3.49%) OLAP
3 3 (3.49%) OLTP
3 3 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.49%) SAP BW
3 3 (3.49%) SAP Data Services
3 3 (3.49%) SAP HANA
3 3 (3.49%) SQL Server
4 2 (2.33%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (2.33%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (2.33%) Delta Lake
4 2 (2.33%) MariaDB
5 1 (1.16%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.16%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (1.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 4 (4.65%) Rational DOORS
2 2 (2.33%) Git
2 2 (2.33%) GitLab
2 2 (2.33%) Jenkins
2 2 (2.33%) Visual Studio
3 1 (1.16%) Eclipse
3 1 (1.16%) NetBeans
3 1 (1.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 17 (19.77%) Social Skills
2 7 (8.14%) Finance
3 5 (5.81%) Banking
3 5 (5.81%) Public Sector
4 4 (4.65%) Telecoms
5 3 (3.49%) Front Office
6 2 (2.33%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.33%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (2.33%) Back Office
6 2 (2.33%) Electronics
6 2 (2.33%) Financial Institution
6 2 (2.33%) Military
6 2 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.16%) Automotive
7 1 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.16%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.16%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.81%) Web Services
2 4 (4.65%) .NET
2 4 (4.65%) AngularJS
2 4 (4.65%) Kafka
3 3 (3.49%) CSS
3 3 (3.49%) HTML
3 3 (3.49%) React
4 2 (2.33%) .NET Core
4 2 (2.33%) Blazor
4 2 (2.33%) CSS3
4 2 (2.33%) GraphQL
4 2 (2.33%) HTML5
4 2 (2.33%) Jest
4 2 (2.33%) Node.js
4 2 (2.33%) RESTful
5 1 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.16%) Kedro
5 1 (1.16%) Lambda Expressions
5 1 (1.16%) REST
5 1 (1.16%) RxJS
Miscellaneous
1 5 (5.81%) Algorithms
2 4 (4.65%) Hedge funds
2 4 (4.65%) Product Ownership
3 3 (3.49%) Management Information System
3 3 (3.49%) Private Cloud
4 2 (2.33%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.33%) Data Centre
4 2 (2.33%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.33%) Educational Technology
4 2 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (2.33%) IoT
4 2 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.33%) Replication
4 2 (2.33%) Security Posture
4 2 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
4 2 (2.33%) TWAP
4 2 (2.33%) VWAP
5 1 (1.16%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 16 (18.60%) Linux
2 8 (9.30%) Windows
3 6 (6.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (4.65%) Windows Server
5 3 (3.49%) CentOS
5 3 (3.49%) Ubuntu
6 2 (2.33%) SUSE
6 2 (2.33%) VxWorks
7 1 (1.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (27.91%) CI/CD
2 22 (25.58%) Software Engineering
3 20 (23.26%) DevOps
4 19 (22.09%) Agile
5 16 (18.60%) Migration
5 16 (18.60%) Problem-Solving
6 15 (17.44%) Network Monitoring
7 12 (13.95%) Project Delivery
8 9 (10.47%) Containerisation
9 8 (9.30%) Microservices
9 8 (9.30%) Test Automation
10 7 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
10 7 (8.14%) Mentoring
11 6 (6.98%) Design Patterns
11 6 (6.98%) Infrastructure Automation
11 6 (6.98%) Low Latency
11 6 (6.98%) Scrum
12 5 (5.81%) Analytics
12 5 (5.81%) Artificial Intelligence
12 5 (5.81%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 23 (26.74%) Python
2 8 (9.30%) JavaScript
2 8 (9.30%) SQL
3 7 (8.14%) C++
3 7 (8.14%) Rust
4 6 (6.98%) C#
4 6 (6.98%) TypeScript
5 4 (4.65%) C
5 4 (4.65%) Go
5 4 (4.65%) PowerShell
5 4 (4.65%) T-SQL
6 3 (3.49%) Java
7 2 (2.33%) Bash
7 2 (2.33%) Kotlin
7 2 (2.33%) MATLAB
7 2 (2.33%) Perl
7 2 (2.33%) PL/SQL
8 1 (1.16%) SystemVerilog
8 1 (1.16%) VB
Qualifications
1 19 (22.09%) Security Cleared
2 17 (19.77%) Degree
2 17 (19.77%) SC Cleared
3 12 (13.95%) CCIE
3 12 (13.95%) Cisco Certification
4 5 (5.81%) CCIE Service Provider
5 2 (2.33%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.33%) RIBA
6 1 (1.16%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.16%) CCIE Security
6 1 (1.16%) CESG Certified Professional
6 1 (1.16%) Chartered Engineer
6 1 (1.16%) CISSP
6 1 (1.16%) RHCE
6 1 (1.16%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.65%) SLA
2 3 (3.49%) QA
3 2 (2.33%) Def Stans
3 2 (2.33%) NCSC
3 2 (2.33%) NIST
3 2 (2.33%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.16%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.16%) AUTOSAR
4 1 (1.16%) DO-254
4 1 (1.16%) GDPR
4 1 (1.16%) IEC 61508
4 1 (1.16%) MISRA
4 1 (1.16%) MISRA C
4 1 (1.16%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 9 (10.47%) Docker
2 4 (4.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.16%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.16%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 15 (17.44%) Kubernetes
2 12 (13.95%) ZABBIX
3 11 (12.79%) Terraform
4 9 (10.47%) Ansible
5 3 (3.49%) Nagios
5 3 (3.49%) Puppet
6 2 (2.33%) Failover Clustering
6 2 (2.33%) Progress Chef
6 2 (2.33%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (1.16%) Functional Safety
7 1 (1.16%) Graylog
Vendors
1 19 (22.09%) Cisco
2 16 (18.60%) SolarWinds
3 6 (6.98%) Red Hat
4 5 (5.81%) Microsoft
4 5 (5.81%) Nokia
4 5 (5.81%) VMware
5 4 (4.65%) Oracle
5 4 (4.65%) SAP
6 2 (2.33%) BT
6 2 (2.33%) Databricks
6 2 (2.33%) Dynatrace
6 2 (2.33%) MuleSoft
6 2 (2.33%) Wind River
7 1 (1.16%) Altera
7 1 (1.16%) Confluent
7 1 (1.16%) Microsemi
7 1 (1.16%) Netlify
7 1 (1.16%) QNX
7 1 (1.16%) Splunk
7 1 (1.16%) Xilinx