Principal Engineer Job Trends in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer salary in London is £110,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 21 November 2025.

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

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 286 250 354
Rank change year-on-year -36 +104 +95
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 100 206 117
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.77% 1.19% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 1.25% 0.65%
Number of salaries quoted 78 134 94
10th Percentile £76,750 £70,000 £70,000
25th Percentile £85,500 £80,000 £87,049
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £110,000 £100,000 £101,250
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -1.23% +1.25%
75th Percentile £123,750 £120,000 £122,500
90th Percentile £150,000 £147,500 £132,625
England median annual salary £80,000 £75,000 £87,500
% change year-on-year +6.67% -14.29% +6.80%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 11,825 16,458 17,881
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.81% 94.79% 95.07%
Number of salaries quoted 7,602 10,018 14,586
10th Percentile £35,750 £41,250 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £75,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £95,000
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,750 £115,000
England median annual salary £54,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -6.09% -4.17% -

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 21 November 2025.

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 21 November 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London +49 19 £112,500 +4.65% 37
South London +21 8 £80,000 +31.15% 3
West London -3 1 £65,000 - 3
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 21 November 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 London region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 50 (50.00%) AWS
2 47 (47.00%) Python
3 44 (44.00%) Software Engineering
4 33 (33.00%) CI/CD
5 29 (29.00%) Azure
6 28 (28.00%) Java
7 27 (27.00%) Agile
8 23 (23.00%) Technical Leadership
9 22 (22.00%) Kubernetes
9 22 (22.00%) Mentoring
10 21 (21.00%) GCP
11 20 (20.00%) Fintech
11 20 (20.00%) React
11 20 (20.00%) SQL
12 19 (19.00%) Microservices
13 18 (18.00%) DevOps
13 18 (18.00%) PostgreSQL
13 18 (18.00%) Roadmaps
14 17 (17.00%) AI
14 17 (17.00%) Kafka
14 17 (17.00%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (16.00%) Analytics
15 16 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
16 15 (15.00%) .NET
16 15 (15.00%) C#
16 15 (15.00%) NoSQL
17 14 (14.00%) Coaching
17 14 (14.00%) JavaScript
18 13 (13.00%) Collaborative Culture
18 13 (13.00%) Data Engineering

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 10 (10.00%) Apache Spark
2 3 (3.00%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (3.00%) Confluence
3 2 (2.00%) Apache
3 2 (2.00%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.00%) WordPress
Cloud Services
1 50 (50.00%) AWS
2 29 (29.00%) Azure
3 21 (21.00%) GCP
4 7 (7.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 7 (7.00%) Amazon EMR
4 7 (7.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
4 7 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (7.00%) GitHub
5 6 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (4.00%) Cloudflare
6 4 (4.00%) Google Gemini
7 3 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (3.00%) Amazon MSK
7 3 (3.00%) Power Platform
7 3 (3.00%) Serverless
7 3 (3.00%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.00%) Datadog
9 1 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (1.00%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (1.00%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.00%) DNS
2 2 (2.00%) Multicast
3 1 (1.00%) Ethernet
3 1 (1.00%) Modbus
3 1 (1.00%) Profibus
3 1 (1.00%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (18.00%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (15.00%) NoSQL
3 13 (13.00%) MongoDB
4 10 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (8.00%) DynamoDB
6 7 (7.00%) Apache Cassandra
6 7 (7.00%) Big Data
6 7 (7.00%) DataStage
6 7 (7.00%) Hadoop
6 7 (7.00%) MySQL
6 7 (7.00%) Neo4j
6 7 (7.00%) Pentaho
6 7 (7.00%) RDBMS
6 7 (7.00%) Relational Database
6 7 (7.00%) SQL Server
7 3 (3.00%) Power BI
7 3 (3.00%) Tableau
8 2 (2.00%) Data Lake
8 2 (2.00%) Delta Lake
9 1 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 10 (10.00%) Git
2 8 (8.00%) GitLab
3 7 (7.00%) Jenkins
4 5 (5.00%) JIRA
5 4 (4.00%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (3.00%) Burp Suite
6 3 (3.00%) Cypress.io
6 3 (3.00%) Metasploit
7 2 (2.00%) Ant
7 2 (2.00%) Plastic SCM
7 2 (2.00%) SonarQube
7 2 (2.00%) TeamCity
7 2 (2.00%) webpack
8 1 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
General
1 42 (42.00%) Finance
2 16 (16.00%) Law
3 15 (15.00%) Social Skills
4 9 (9.00%) Public Sector
5 8 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (7.00%) Military
7 5 (5.00%) Banking
7 5 (5.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (5.00%) Legal
8 4 (4.00%) Aerospace
8 4 (4.00%) Marketing
8 4 (4.00%) Publishing
9 3 (3.00%) Local Government
9 3 (3.00%) Telecoms
10 2 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (1.00%) Advertising
11 1 (1.00%) Back Office
11 1 (1.00%) Front Office
11 1 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (1.00%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (20.00%) React
2 17 (17.00%) Kafka
3 15 (15.00%) .NET
4 9 (9.00%) Django
5 8 (8.00%) FastAPI
6 7 (7.00%) RESTful
6 7 (7.00%) Spring
6 7 (7.00%) Spring Boot
7 6 (6.00%) GraphQL
7 6 (6.00%) Node.js
7 6 (6.00%) REST
8 5 (5.00%) Jest
8 5 (5.00%) Redux
9 4 (4.00%) .NET Framework
9 4 (4.00%) ASP.NET
9 4 (4.00%) JSON
9 4 (4.00%) Micronaut
9 4 (4.00%) Quarkus
9 4 (4.00%) XML
10 3 (3.00%) Drools
Miscellaneous
1 23 (23.00%) Distributed Systems
2 22 (22.00%) Cloud Native
3 8 (8.00%) Product Ownership
4 7 (7.00%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (7.00%) Management Information System
5 6 (6.00%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (5.00%) Algorithms
6 5 (5.00%) Derivative
6 5 (5.00%) Fixed Income
7 4 (4.00%) Data Structures
8 3 (3.00%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (3.00%) SCADA
8 3 (3.00%) Security Posture
9 2 (2.00%) Equities
9 2 (2.00%) NHS
9 2 (2.00%) Public Cloud
10 1 (1.00%) Clustering
10 1 (1.00%) Data Centre
10 1 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (1.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.00%) Linux
2 3 (3.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (44.00%) Software Engineering
2 33 (33.00%) CI/CD
3 27 (27.00%) Agile
4 23 (23.00%) Technical Leadership
5 22 (22.00%) Mentoring
6 20 (20.00%) Fintech
7 19 (19.00%) Microservices
8 18 (18.00%) DevOps
8 18 (18.00%) Roadmaps
9 17 (17.00%) AI
9 17 (17.00%) Problem-Solving
10 16 (16.00%) Analytics
10 16 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 14 (14.00%) Coaching
12 13 (13.00%) Collaborative Culture
12 13 (13.00%) Data Engineering
12 13 (13.00%) Data Modelling
13 12 (12.00%) Containerisation
13 12 (12.00%) Event-Driven
14 11 (11.00%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 47 (47.00%) Python
2 28 (28.00%) Java
3 20 (20.00%) SQL
4 15 (15.00%) C#
5 14 (14.00%) JavaScript
6 13 (13.00%) TypeScript
7 9 (9.00%) C++
8 8 (8.00%) PowerShell
8 8 (8.00%) Rust
9 7 (7.00%) Bash
10 5 (5.00%) Go
11 3 (3.00%) Groovy
11 3 (3.00%) Ruby
12 2 (2.00%) Kotlin
13 1 (1.00%) Perl
13 1 (1.00%) PHP
Qualifications
1 13 (13.00%) Degree
2 6 (6.00%) Security Cleared
3 5 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (4.00%) SC Cleared
5 3 (3.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 3 (3.00%) CCSP
5 3 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (3.00%) CISSP
5 3 (3.00%) GCIH
6 2 (2.00%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.00%) PhD
6 2 (2.00%) Postgraduate
7 1 (1.00%) HNC
7 1 (1.00%) HND
7 1 (1.00%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.00%) QA
2 3 (3.00%) Accessibility
2 3 (3.00%) GDPR
2 3 (3.00%) IEC 61508
2 3 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 13 (13.00%) Docker
2 4 (4.00%) Firmware
3 1 (1.00%) Hyper-V
3 1 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 22 (22.00%) Kubernetes
2 12 (12.00%) Terraform
3 6 (6.00%) Grafana
3 6 (6.00%) Prometheus
4 4 (4.00%) Functional Safety
5 3 (3.00%) Ansible
5 3 (3.00%) Kibana
5 3 (3.00%) Nmap
6 1 (1.00%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 7 (7.00%) Informatica
1 7 (7.00%) Oracle
1 7 (7.00%) Talend
2 6 (6.00%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.00%) Foundry
3 4 (4.00%) OpenAI
3 4 (4.00%) Palantir
4 3 (3.00%) Cribl.io
4 3 (3.00%) Rapid7
4 3 (3.00%) Sonatype
5 2 (2.00%) Databricks
6 1 (1.00%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.00%) Google
6 1 (1.00%) Okta
6 1 (1.00%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.00%) Siemens
6 1 (1.00%) VMware