Principal Engineer Job Trends in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer salary in London is £102,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 February 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 259 320 319
Rank change year-on-year +61 -1 +103
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 120 101 160
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.78% 0.67% 0.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 0.73% 0.80%
Number of salaries quoted 92 61 135
10th Percentile £80,475 £60,000 £72,500
25th Percentile £90,000 £97,500 £86,649
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £102,500 £112,500 £100,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% +12.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £120,625 £125,000 £118,750
90th Percentile £150,000 £140,000 £125,000
England median annual salary £80,000 £75,000 £82,500
% change year-on-year +6.67% -9.09% +0.70%

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 14,069 13,799 20,036
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.35% 91.60% 94.54%
Number of salaries quoted 9,379 7,978 16,176
10th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £39,420
25th Percentile £50,000 £56,250 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +3.45% -1.36%
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £93,750
90th Percentile £111,250 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 13 February 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 13 February 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 +31 26 £107,500 -2.27% 10
South London +25 9 £75,000 +23.97%
West London -7 1 £65,000 - 2
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 13 February 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 62 (51.67%) AWS
2 52 (43.33%) Software Engineering
3 45 (37.50%) CI/CD
3 45 (37.50%) Python
4 35 (29.17%) Agile
5 33 (27.50%) Java
6 32 (26.67%) Azure
7 24 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 24 (20.00%) Roadmaps
7 24 (20.00%) SQL
8 23 (19.17%) GCP
9 20 (16.67%) Microservices
9 20 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
10 19 (15.83%) Fintech
11 18 (15.00%) DevOps
11 18 (15.00%) React
11 18 (15.00%) Technical Leadership
12 17 (14.17%) Mentoring
13 16 (13.33%) Analytics
13 16 (13.33%) NoSQL
14 15 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
14 15 (12.50%) MySQL
15 14 (11.67%) Django
15 14 (11.67%) Full-Stack Development
15 14 (11.67%) TDD
16 13 (10.83%) Data Engineering
16 13 (10.83%) Data Warehouse
16 13 (10.83%) Degree
16 13 (10.83%) Docker
16 13 (10.83%) Event-Driven

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 12 (10.00%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.50%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.67%) Apache
4 1 (0.83%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.83%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 62 (51.67%) AWS
2 32 (26.67%) Azure
3 23 (19.17%) GCP
4 13 (10.83%) Serverless
5 9 (7.50%) Amazon EMR
6 8 (6.67%) SaaS
7 7 (5.83%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (5.00%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (3.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (2.50%) Amazon MSK
10 3 (2.50%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 3 (2.50%) Cloudflare
10 3 (2.50%) GitHub
10 3 (2.50%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.50%) Snowflake
11 2 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
11 2 (1.67%) Google Gemini
11 2 (1.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.67%) DNS
2 1 (0.83%) Bluetooth
2 1 (0.83%) Broadband
2 1 (0.83%) VPN
2 1 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.83%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (16.67%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (13.33%) NoSQL
3 15 (12.50%) MySQL
4 13 (10.83%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (8.33%) DynamoDB
6 9 (7.50%) Apache Cassandra
6 9 (7.50%) Big Data
6 9 (7.50%) DataStage
6 9 (7.50%) Hadoop
6 9 (7.50%) MongoDB
6 9 (7.50%) Neo4j
6 9 (7.50%) Pentaho
6 9 (7.50%) RDBMS
6 9 (7.50%) Relational Database
6 9 (7.50%) SQL Server
7 6 (5.00%) BigQuery
7 6 (5.00%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (2.50%) Data Lake
8 3 (2.50%) Power BI
8 3 (2.50%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (7.50%) GitLab
2 5 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 4 (3.33%) Cucumber
4 3 (2.50%) Cypress.io
5 2 (1.67%) Burp Suite
5 2 (1.67%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.83%) Git
6 1 (0.83%) Maven
6 1 (0.83%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (0.83%) TeamCity
General
1 35 (29.17%) Finance
2 17 (14.17%) Social Skills
3 13 (10.83%) Law
4 11 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (9.17%) Banking
5 3 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (2.50%) Military
5 3 (2.50%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.67%) Legal
6 2 (1.67%) Retail
6 2 (1.67%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.83%) Advertising
7 1 (0.83%) Back Office
7 1 (0.83%) Electronics
7 1 (0.83%) Front Office
7 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.83%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (15.00%) React
2 14 (11.67%) Django
3 11 (9.17%) Kafka
4 10 (8.33%) .NET
4 10 (8.33%) Android Jetpack
4 10 (8.33%) Jetpack Compose
4 10 (8.33%) Spring
5 8 (6.67%) FastAPI
5 8 (6.67%) Spring Boot
6 7 (5.83%) .NET Core
7 5 (4.17%) Redux
8 4 (3.33%) REST
9 3 (2.50%) Jest
9 3 (2.50%) RESTful
9 3 (2.50%) XML
10 2 (1.67%) ASP.NET
10 2 (1.67%) GraphQL
10 2 (1.67%) JSON
10 2 (1.67%) WebSockets
11 1 (0.83%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 24 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
2 13 (10.83%) Cloud Native
3 10 (8.33%) Mobile Banking
4 9 (7.50%) Hybrid Cloud
4 9 (7.50%) Management Information System
4 9 (7.50%) Product Ownership
5 8 (6.67%) Greenfield Project
6 7 (5.83%) Data Structures
7 6 (5.00%) Algorithms
8 4 (3.33%) e-Learning
8 4 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (3.33%) Public Cloud
9 3 (2.50%) Derivative
9 3 (2.50%) Fixed Income
10 2 (1.67%) Cloud Security Posture
10 2 (1.67%) Security Posture
11 1 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
11 1 (0.83%) Over-the-Top Content
11 1 (0.83%) Video\Live Streaming
11 1 (0.83%) Web3
Operating Systems
1 10 (8.33%) Android
2 2 (1.67%) Linux
2 2 (1.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (43.33%) Software Engineering
2 45 (37.50%) CI/CD
3 35 (29.17%) Agile
4 24 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 24 (20.00%) Roadmaps
5 20 (16.67%) Microservices
6 19 (15.83%) Fintech
7 18 (15.00%) DevOps
7 18 (15.00%) Technical Leadership
8 17 (14.17%) Mentoring
9 16 (13.33%) Analytics
10 15 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
11 14 (11.67%) Full-Stack Development
11 14 (11.67%) TDD
12 13 (10.83%) Data Engineering
12 13 (10.83%) Event-Driven
13 12 (10.00%) Collaborative Culture
13 12 (10.00%) Data Pipeline
13 12 (10.00%) Data Science
13 12 (10.00%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 45 (37.50%) Python
2 33 (27.50%) Java
3 24 (20.00%) SQL
4 13 (10.83%) TypeScript
5 12 (10.00%) C#
6 10 (8.33%) Kotlin
7 9 (7.50%) Rust
8 8 (6.67%) JavaScript
9 3 (2.50%) Go
9 3 (2.50%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.67%) Bash
11 1 (0.83%) PHP
11 1 (0.83%) Scala
Qualifications
1 13 (10.83%) Degree
2 9 (7.50%) Computer Science Degree
3 7 (5.83%) AWS Certification
4 6 (5.00%) Security Cleared
5 5 (4.17%) SC Cleared
6 4 (3.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 2 (1.67%) CCSP
7 2 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.67%) CISSP
7 2 (1.67%) GCIH
8 1 (0.83%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.83%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.50%) IEC 61508
2 2 (1.67%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.67%) GDPR
2 2 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.83%) QA
System Software
1 13 (10.83%) Docker
2 3 (2.50%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 13 (10.83%) Terraform
2 10 (8.33%) Kubernetes
3 3 (2.50%) Ansible
3 3 (2.50%) Functional Safety
3 3 (2.50%) Kibana
4 2 (1.67%) Nmap
4 2 (1.67%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.83%) Grafana
5 1 (0.83%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 9 (7.50%) Informatica
1 9 (7.50%) Oracle
1 9 (7.50%) Talend
2 8 (6.67%) Google
3 3 (2.50%) Microsoft
4 2 (1.67%) Databricks
4 2 (1.67%) OpenAI
4 2 (1.67%) Rapid7
5 1 (0.83%) EMC
5 1 (0.83%) ForgeRock
5 1 (0.83%) Okta
5 1 (0.83%) Ping Identity