Principal Engineer Job Trends in Hertfordshire

Principal Engineer
East of England > Hertfordshire

The median Principal Engineer salary in Hertfordshire is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 January 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 82 70
Rank change year-on-year +28 -12 +43
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 36 17 2
As % of all permanent jobs in Hertfordshire 2.14% 1.42% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.35% 1.67% 0.26%
Number of salaries quoted 29 0 2
10th Percentile £50,000 - £78,000
25th Percentile - - £78,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 - £82,500
Median % change year-on-year - - +13.79%
75th Percentile £60,000 - £86,250
90th Percentile £90,000 - £87,000
East of England median annual salary £60,000 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year -14.29% -3.45% -

All Permanent IT Job Roles
Hertfordshire

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in Hertfordshire. 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 Hertfordshire with a recognized job title 1,529 1,019 770
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.69% 85.20% 94.71%
Number of salaries quoted 892 469 587
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,370
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £77,500 £87,500 £77,500
East of England median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -3.23%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in Hertfordshire

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 Hertfordshire.

Principal Engineer job vacancy trend in Hertfordshire

Principal Engineer
Salary Trend in Hertfordshire

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in Hertfordshire.

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in Hertfordshire

Principal Engineer
Salary Histogram in Hertfordshire

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in Hertfordshire over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Principal Engineer in Hertfordshire

Principal Engineer
Job Locations in Hertfordshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the Hertfordshire region over the 6 months to 13 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Stevenage - 28 £55,000 - 12
St Albans - 4 £85,000 -
Hemel Hempstead - 2 £100,000 - 5
Watford - 2 £90,000 - 5
Principal Engineer
East of England

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

For the 6 months to 13 January 2026, 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 Hertfordshire region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 9 (25.00%) Software Engineering
2 7 (19.44%) QA
2 7 (19.44%) Systems Engineering
3 6 (16.67%) Architectural Patterns
3 6 (16.67%) CI/CD
3 6 (16.67%) Event-Driven
3 6 (16.67%) Microservices
4 4 (11.11%) Decision-Making
4 4 (11.11%) Design Patterns
4 4 (11.11%) High Availability
4 4 (11.11%) Mentoring
4 4 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (11.11%) Product Roadmap
4 4 (11.11%) Roadmaps
4 4 (11.11%) Security Cleared
4 4 (11.11%) Test Automation
5 3 (8.33%) Azure
5 3 (8.33%) C#
5 3 (8.33%) Software Architecture
6 2 (5.56%) AI
6 2 (5.56%) Amazon Bedrock
6 2 (5.56%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (5.56%) Amazon EventBridge
6 2 (5.56%) Amazon Kinesis
6 2 (5.56%) Amazon SQS
6 2 (5.56%) Analytics
6 2 (5.56%) AngularJS
6 2 (5.56%) API Integration
6 2 (5.56%) AWS
6 2 (5.56%) AWS Certification

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Hertfordshire 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 (8.33%) Azure
2 2 (5.56%) Amazon Bedrock
2 2 (5.56%) Amazon EKS
2 2 (5.56%) Amazon EventBridge
2 2 (5.56%) Amazon Kinesis
2 2 (5.56%) Amazon SQS
2 2 (5.56%) AWS
2 2 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
2 2 (5.56%) AWS Step Functions
2 2 (5.56%) Azure AKS
2 2 (5.56%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.56%) DynamoDB
General
1 4 (11.11%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.56%) AngularJS
1 2 (5.56%) Hugging Face
1 2 (5.56%) Kafka
1 2 (5.56%) Node.js
1 2 (5.56%) Nuxt
1 2 (5.56%) RabbitMQ
1 2 (5.56%) React
1 2 (5.56%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 6 (16.67%) Cloud Native
1 6 (16.67%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (2.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (25.00%) Software Engineering
2 7 (19.44%) Systems Engineering
3 6 (16.67%) Architectural Patterns
3 6 (16.67%) CI/CD
3 6 (16.67%) Event-Driven
3 6 (16.67%) Microservices
4 4 (11.11%) Decision-Making
4 4 (11.11%) Design Patterns
4 4 (11.11%) High Availability
4 4 (11.11%) Mentoring
4 4 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (11.11%) Product Roadmap
4 4 (11.11%) Roadmaps
4 4 (11.11%) Test Automation
5 3 (8.33%) Software Architecture
6 2 (5.56%) API Integration
6 2 (5.56%) Data Analytics
6 2 (5.56%) Data Science
6 2 (5.56%) Machine Learning
6 2 (5.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 3 (8.33%) C#
2 2 (5.56%) Python
Qualifications
1 4 (11.11%) Security Cleared
2 2 (5.56%) AWS Certification
2 2 (5.56%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (19.44%) QA
2 2 (5.56%) GDPR
2 2 (5.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (5.56%) PCI DSS
2 2 (5.56%) SOC 2
Systems Management
1 2 (5.56%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (5.56%) OpenAI