Principal Engineer Job Trends in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer salary in London is £100,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 342 321
Rank change year-on-year +113 -21 +59
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 184 54 187
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.91% 0.43% 0.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.99% 0.48% 0.85%
Number of salaries quoted 138 35 146
10th Percentile £84,625 £60,000 £72,500
25th Percentile £90,000 £91,875 £81,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £110,000 £95,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +15.79% -11.63%
75th Percentile £113,750 £125,000 £115,000
90th Percentile £130,000 £140,000 £125,000
England median annual salary £80,000 £70,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +14.29% -12.50% -5.33%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
London

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

Permanent vacancies in London with a recognized job title 18,650 11,324 22,043
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.16% 90.22% 94.12%
Number of salaries quoted 12,750 7,356 16,680
10th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £55,000 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year - +7.14% -3.45%
75th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £93,750
90th Percentile £101,250 £122,500 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £59,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -6.78% +9.26% -11.18%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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 London.

Principal Engineer job vacancy trend in London

Principal Engineer
Salary Trend in London

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in London.

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in London

Principal Engineer
Salary Histogram in London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in London over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Principal Engineer in London

Principal Engineer
Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the London region over the 6 months to 12 May 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
Central London +39 48 £100,000 -11.11% 18
South London +10 6 £80,000 +33.33%
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 12 May 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 London region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 83 (45.11%) Software Engineering
2 63 (34.24%) AWS
3 55 (29.89%) CI/CD
4 46 (25.00%) Java
5 43 (23.37%) Agile
6 42 (22.83%) Azure
7 40 (21.74%) Python
8 39 (21.20%) Infrastructure as Code
9 35 (19.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 34 (18.48%) Microservices
11 33 (17.93%) Roadmaps
12 32 (17.39%) Mentoring
12 32 (17.39%) Technical Leadership
13 31 (16.85%) AI
14 27 (14.67%) GCP
15 23 (12.50%) SQL
16 21 (11.41%) DevOps
16 21 (11.41%) Full-Stack Development
16 21 (11.41%) Terraform
17 19 (10.33%) React
17 19 (10.33%) Security Cleared
17 19 (10.33%) TypeScript
18 18 (9.78%) Degree
18 18 (9.78%) Kubernetes
18 18 (9.78%) SC Cleared
18 18 (9.78%) TDD
19 17 (9.24%) Coaching
20 16 (8.70%) Data Engineering
20 16 (8.70%) GitLab
21 15 (8.15%) Kafka

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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:

Application Platforms
1 5 (2.72%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.54%) Camunda
3 1 (0.54%) CMS
3 1 (0.54%) Confluence
3 1 (0.54%) Sitecore CMS
3 1 (0.54%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 63 (34.24%) AWS
2 42 (22.83%) Azure
3 27 (14.67%) GCP
4 14 (7.61%) AWS CloudFormation
5 13 (7.07%) Serverless
6 9 (4.89%) GitHub
6 9 (4.89%) GitHub Copilot
7 8 (4.35%) Anthropic Claude
7 8 (4.35%) SaaS
8 6 (3.26%) Entra ID
9 5 (2.72%) Amazon EMR
10 4 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
10 4 (2.17%) dbt
11 3 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.63%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.63%) Cloud Composer
12 2 (1.09%) Amazon ECS
12 2 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
12 2 (1.09%) CloudFront
12 2 (1.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.17%) Firewall
1 4 (2.17%) WAN
2 3 (1.63%) LAN
2 3 (1.63%) Multicast
2 3 (1.63%) WLAN
3 2 (1.09%) Bluetooth
3 2 (1.09%) Broadband
3 2 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (1.09%) Wireless
4 1 (0.54%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.54%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (8.15%) NoSQL
2 11 (5.98%) BigQuery
2 11 (5.98%) MySQL
3 7 (3.80%) Elasticsearch
3 7 (3.80%) MongoDB
3 7 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (3.26%) Big Data
4 6 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (3.26%) DynamoDB
5 5 (2.72%) Apache Cassandra
5 5 (2.72%) DataStage
5 5 (2.72%) Hadoop
5 5 (2.72%) Neo4j
5 5 (2.72%) Pentaho
5 5 (2.72%) RDBMS
5 5 (2.72%) Relational Database
5 5 (2.72%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.17%) Data Lake
6 4 (2.17%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 16 (8.70%) GitLab
2 10 (5.43%) Cucumber
3 9 (4.89%) Claude Code
4 4 (2.17%) JIRA
5 3 (1.63%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.54%) Git
6 1 (0.54%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.54%) Maven
6 1 (0.54%) Selenium
6 1 (0.54%) TeamCity
General
1 46 (25.00%) Finance
2 17 (9.24%) Banking
3 14 (7.61%) Law
3 14 (7.61%) Social Skills
4 12 (6.52%) Retail
5 11 (5.98%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.09%) Electronics
8 2 (1.09%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.09%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.54%) Billing
9 1 (0.54%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (10.33%) React
2 15 (8.15%) Kafka
2 15 (8.15%) Spring
2 15 (8.15%) Spring Boot
3 14 (7.61%) Android Jetpack
3 14 (7.61%) Jetpack Compose
4 12 (6.52%) .NET
5 7 (3.80%) .NET Core
5 7 (3.80%) Django
6 3 (1.63%) Boost C++ Libraries
6 3 (1.63%) FIX Protocol
6 3 (1.63%) Node.js
6 3 (1.63%) pytest
6 3 (1.63%) REST
7 2 (1.09%) .NET Framework
7 2 (1.09%) ASP.NET
7 2 (1.09%) ASP.NET Web API
7 2 (1.09%) Entity Framework
7 2 (1.09%) GraphQL
7 2 (1.09%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 34 (18.48%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (10.33%) Cloud Native
3 17 (9.24%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (7.61%) Mobile Banking
5 12 (6.52%) Public Cloud
6 11 (5.98%) Algorithms
7 10 (5.43%) Data Centre
7 10 (5.43%) e-Learning
8 8 (4.35%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (3.80%) Data Structures
10 6 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (3.26%) Management Information System
11 5 (2.72%) Product Ownership
12 3 (1.63%) Derivative
12 3 (1.63%) Equities
12 3 (1.63%) Fixed Income
13 2 (1.09%) Embedded Systems
14 1 (0.54%) Over-the-Top Content
14 1 (0.54%) Raspberry Pi
14 1 (0.54%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.61%) Android
2 12 (6.52%) Linux
3 3 (1.63%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.63%) Windows
4 1 (0.54%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (45.11%) Software Engineering
2 55 (29.89%) CI/CD
3 43 (23.37%) Agile
4 39 (21.20%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (19.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 34 (18.48%) Microservices
7 33 (17.93%) Roadmaps
8 32 (17.39%) Mentoring
8 32 (17.39%) Technical Leadership
9 31 (16.85%) AI
10 21 (11.41%) DevOps
10 21 (11.41%) Full-Stack Development
11 18 (9.78%) TDD
12 17 (9.24%) Coaching
13 16 (8.70%) Data Engineering
14 15 (8.15%) Test Automation
15 14 (7.61%) Analytics
15 14 (7.61%) Android Development
15 14 (7.61%) Architectural Patterns
15 14 (7.61%) Software Architecture
Programming Languages
1 46 (25.00%) Java
2 40 (21.74%) Python
3 23 (12.50%) SQL
4 19 (10.33%) TypeScript
5 14 (7.61%) Kotlin
6 13 (7.07%) C#
7 6 (3.26%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.72%) Go
9 3 (1.63%) C++
10 2 (1.09%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.54%) PHP
11 1 (0.54%) Rust
11 1 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 19 (10.33%) Security Cleared
2 18 (9.78%) Degree
2 18 (9.78%) SC Cleared
3 13 (7.07%) AWS Certification
4 10 (5.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 8 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (3.80%) PhD
7 5 (2.72%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.54%) CEH
9 1 (0.54%) CISSP
9 1 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
9 1 (0.54%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.26%) QA
2 4 (2.17%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.09%) NCSC
4 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.54%) NIST
System Software
1 13 (7.07%) Docker
2 6 (3.26%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 21 (11.41%) Terraform
2 18 (9.78%) Kubernetes
3 6 (3.26%) Ansible
4 3 (1.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (1.63%) SCCM
5 2 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.54%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.54%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 14 (7.61%) Google
2 11 (5.98%) Microsoft
3 9 (4.89%) VMware
4 5 (2.72%) Informatica
4 5 (2.72%) Oracle
4 5 (2.72%) Talend
5 3 (1.63%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.09%) EMC
6 2 (1.09%) Zscaler
7 1 (0.54%) Cisco
7 1 (0.54%) Darktrace
7 1 (0.54%) Databricks
7 1 (0.54%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.54%) Juniper
7 1 (0.54%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.54%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.54%) Sitecore