Principal Engineer Job Trends in Cheltenham

Principal Engineer
Gloucestershire > Cheltenham

The median Principal Engineer salary in Cheltenham is £100,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 27 December 2025.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 26 - 60
Rank change year-on-year - - 0
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 5 0 10
As % of all permanent jobs in Cheltenham 2.69% - 2.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.75% - 2.83%
Number of salaries quoted 5 0 3
10th Percentile £74,000 - £72,250
25th Percentile £76,250 - £75,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 - £87,500
Median % change year-on-year - - +12.90%
75th Percentile - - £96,750
90th Percentile - - £98,550
Gloucestershire median annual salary £97,500 £58,000 £87,500
% change year-on-year +68.10% -33.71% +12.90%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
Cheltenham

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in Cheltenham. 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in Cheltenham with a recognized job title 182 147 353
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 97.85% 96.08% 96.19%
Number of salaries quoted 144 73 213
10th Percentile £32,000 £27,800 £35,100
25th Percentile £40,000 £46,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,250 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £68,750
90th Percentile £94,625 £90,000 £82,500
Gloucestershire median annual salary £50,000 £52,600 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.94% +5.20% -4.76%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheltenham

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Principal Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in Cheltenham.

Principal Engineer job vacancy trend in Cheltenham

Principal Engineer
Salary Trend in Cheltenham

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in Cheltenham.

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in Cheltenham

Principal Engineer
Salary Histogram in Cheltenham

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in Cheltenham over the 6 months to 27 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Principal Engineer in Cheltenham

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheltenham

For the 6 months to 27 December 2025, Principal Engineer 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 permanent job ads across the Cheltenham region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 5 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 2 (40.00%) Agile
2 2 (40.00%) AWS
2 2 (40.00%) Coaching
2 2 (40.00%) DV Cleared
2 2 (40.00%) Microservices
2 2 (40.00%) React
2 2 (40.00%) Security Cleared
3 1 (20.00%) .NET
3 1 (20.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (20.00%) Amazon EKS
3 1 (20.00%) Amazon MSK
3 1 (20.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
3 1 (20.00%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (20.00%) Azure
3 1 (20.00%) C#
3 1 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 1 (20.00%) Conflict Resolution
3 1 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 1 (20.00%) Cypress.io
3 1 (20.00%) Design Patterns
3 1 (20.00%) DevOps
3 1 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
3 1 (20.00%) Java
3 1 (20.00%) Jenkins
3 1 (20.00%) Jest
3 1 (20.00%) Kafka
3 1 (20.00%) Kibana
3 1 (20.00%) Mentoring
3 1 (20.00%) PostgreSQL

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheltenham 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 2 (40.00%) AWS
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon EKS
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon MSK
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
2 1 (20.00%) Azure
2 1 (20.00%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (20.00%) Cypress.io
1 1 (20.00%) Jenkins
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) React
2 1 (20.00%) .NET
2 1 (20.00%) Jest
2 1 (20.00%) Kafka
2 1 (20.00%) Redux
2 1 (20.00%) RESTful
2 1 (20.00%) Spring
2 1 (20.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
1 1 (20.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 2 (40.00%) Agile
2 2 (40.00%) Coaching
2 2 (40.00%) Microservices
3 1 (20.00%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 1 (20.00%) Conflict Resolution
3 1 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 1 (20.00%) Design Patterns
3 1 (20.00%) DevOps
3 1 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
3 1 (20.00%) Mentoring
3 1 (20.00%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1 (20.00%) C#
1 1 (20.00%) Java
1 1 (20.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 2 (40.00%) DV Cleared
1 2 (40.00%) Security Cleared
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Kibana