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 17 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 264 337 333
Rank change year-on-year +73 -4 +68
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 149 71 175
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.78% 0.55% 0.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 0.61% 0.80%
Number of salaries quoted 113 38 138
10th Percentile £85,000 £60,000 £72,500
25th Percentile £90,000 £88,750 £82,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £110,000 £100,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £115,000 £125,000 £120,000
90th Percentile £140,000 £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 17,614 11,697 21,855
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.80% 90.61% 94.16%
Number of salaries quoted 11,812 7,551 16,691
10th Percentile £38,510 £41,250 £38,750
25th Percentile £52,500 £55,250 £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 £93,250
90th Percentile £105,000 £122,500 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -10.00%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 +30 38 £100,000 -9.09% 24
South London +7 6 £80,000 +33.33%
West London -19 1 £65,000 -
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 17 April 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 68 (45.64%) Software Engineering
2 57 (38.26%) AWS
3 44 (29.53%) CI/CD
4 42 (28.19%) Java
5 38 (25.50%) Python
6 36 (24.16%) Agile
7 32 (21.48%) Azure
7 32 (21.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 30 (20.13%) Microservices
9 28 (18.79%) Roadmaps
10 24 (16.11%) GCP
10 24 (16.11%) Infrastructure as Code
10 24 (16.11%) Mentoring
11 20 (13.42%) AI
12 19 (12.75%) Degree
12 19 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
13 18 (12.08%) DevOps
13 18 (12.08%) SQL
13 18 (12.08%) TDD
14 17 (11.41%) React
15 16 (10.74%) Full-Stack Development
15 16 (10.74%) Terraform
16 15 (10.07%) Analytics
17 14 (9.40%) Android
17 14 (9.40%) Android Development
17 14 (9.40%) Android Jetpack
17 14 (9.40%) Coaching
17 14 (9.40%) Digital Banking
17 14 (9.40%) Jetpack Compose
17 14 (9.40%) Kotlin

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 (3.36%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.67%) Camunda
2 1 (0.67%) Confluence
2 1 (0.67%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 57 (38.26%) AWS
2 32 (21.48%) Azure
3 24 (16.11%) GCP
4 13 (8.72%) Serverless
5 10 (6.71%) AWS CloudFormation
6 8 (5.37%) SaaS
7 7 (4.70%) Anthropic Claude
7 7 (4.70%) GitHub
7 7 (4.70%) GitHub Copilot
8 5 (3.36%) Amazon EMR
9 4 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (2.01%) Entra ID
11 2 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 2 (1.34%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (1.34%) Azure DevOps
11 2 (1.34%) CloudFront
11 2 (1.34%) dbt
11 2 (1.34%) Power Platform
11 2 (1.34%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.68%) Firewall
1 4 (2.68%) WAN
2 3 (2.01%) LAN
2 3 (2.01%) WLAN
3 2 (1.34%) Bluetooth
3 2 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (1.34%) Wireless
4 1 (0.67%) Broadband
4 1 (0.67%) Multicast
4 1 (0.67%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.67%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (8.05%) NoSQL
2 11 (7.38%) MySQL
3 10 (6.71%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (6.04%) BigQuery
5 8 (5.37%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (5.37%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (4.03%) Big Data
6 6 (4.03%) DynamoDB
7 5 (3.36%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (3.36%) DataStage
7 5 (3.36%) Hadoop
7 5 (3.36%) MongoDB
7 5 (3.36%) Neo4j
7 5 (3.36%) Pentaho
7 5 (3.36%) RDBMS
7 5 (3.36%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.36%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.34%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.34%) Power BI
8 2 (1.34%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 13 (8.72%) GitLab
2 7 (4.70%) Claude Code
2 7 (4.70%) Cucumber
3 3 (2.01%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.34%) JIRA
5 1 (0.67%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.67%) Git
5 1 (0.67%) Jaeger
5 1 (0.67%) Maven
5 1 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
5 1 (0.67%) Selenium
5 1 (0.67%) TeamCity
General
1 40 (26.85%) Finance
2 15 (10.07%) Banking
3 14 (9.40%) Law
4 11 (7.38%) Social Skills
5 9 (6.04%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (6.04%) Retail
6 5 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.01%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.34%) Electronics
8 2 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.34%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.67%) Advertising
9 1 (0.67%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (11.41%) React
2 14 (9.40%) Android Jetpack
2 14 (9.40%) Jetpack Compose
3 12 (8.05%) Spring
4 11 (7.38%) Kafka
4 11 (7.38%) Spring Boot
5 10 (6.71%) Django
6 8 (5.37%) .NET
7 6 (4.03%) .NET Core
8 3 (2.01%) Redux
8 3 (2.01%) REST
9 2 (1.34%) FastAPI
9 2 (1.34%) GraphQL
9 2 (1.34%) Node.js
9 2 (1.34%) WebSockets
10 1 (0.67%) AWS CDK
10 1 (0.67%) Flask
10 1 (0.67%) Jest
10 1 (0.67%) Playwright
10 1 (0.67%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 27 (18.12%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (9.40%) Mobile Banking
3 12 (8.05%) Cloud Native
4 10 (6.71%) Algorithms
4 10 (6.71%) Greenfield Project
5 9 (6.04%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (6.04%) Public Cloud
6 8 (5.37%) Data Structures
7 7 (4.70%) Data Centre
7 7 (4.70%) e-Learning
8 6 (4.03%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (3.36%) Management Information System
9 5 (3.36%) Product Ownership
10 3 (2.01%) Derivative
10 3 (2.01%) Fixed Income
11 2 (1.34%) Embedded Systems
12 1 (0.67%) Arduino
12 1 (0.67%) Blockchain
12 1 (0.67%) Over-the-Top Content
12 1 (0.67%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 14 (9.40%) Android
2 7 (4.70%) Linux
3 3 (2.01%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (45.64%) Software Engineering
2 44 (29.53%) CI/CD
3 36 (24.16%) Agile
4 32 (21.48%) Continuous Improvement
5 30 (20.13%) Microservices
6 28 (18.79%) Roadmaps
7 24 (16.11%) Infrastructure as Code
7 24 (16.11%) Mentoring
8 20 (13.42%) AI
9 19 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
10 18 (12.08%) DevOps
10 18 (12.08%) TDD
11 16 (10.74%) Full-Stack Development
12 15 (10.07%) Analytics
13 14 (9.40%) Android Development
13 14 (9.40%) Coaching
13 14 (9.40%) Digital Banking
14 12 (8.05%) Fintech
14 12 (8.05%) Open Source
15 11 (7.38%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 42 (28.19%) Java
2 38 (25.50%) Python
3 18 (12.08%) SQL
4 14 (9.40%) Kotlin
4 14 (9.40%) TypeScript
5 10 (6.71%) C#
6 5 (3.36%) Go
7 4 (2.68%) JavaScript
8 3 (2.01%) Rust
9 1 (0.67%) C++
9 1 (0.67%) PHP
9 1 (0.67%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.67%) Scala
Qualifications
1 19 (12.75%) Degree
2 14 (9.40%) Security Cleared
3 13 (8.72%) SC Cleared
4 10 (6.71%) AWS Certification
4 10 (6.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (4.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 7 (4.70%) PhD
6 5 (3.36%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.34%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.67%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.68%) QA
2 1 (0.67%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.67%) NCSC
System Software
1 11 (7.38%) Docker
2 3 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 16 (10.74%) Terraform
2 12 (8.05%) Kubernetes
3 6 (4.03%) Ansible
4 2 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.67%) Kibana
5 1 (0.67%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.67%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 11 (7.38%) Google
2 6 (4.03%) VMware
3 5 (3.36%) Informatica
3 5 (3.36%) Oracle
3 5 (3.36%) Talend
4 4 (2.68%) Microsoft
5 3 (2.01%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.34%) EMC
6 2 (1.34%) Zscaler
7 1 (0.67%) Cisco
7 1 (0.67%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.67%) Juniper
7 1 (0.67%) Palo Alto