Principal Engineer Job Trends in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer salary in London is £107,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 19 December 2025.

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

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 278 291 326
Rank change year-on-year +13 +35 +122
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 100 151 111
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.74% 0.94% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.82% 1.00% 0.66%
Number of salaries quoted 81 96 93
10th Percentile £77,500 £76,371 £72,500
25th Percentile £85,000 £97,500 £88,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £107,500 £108,750 £105,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.15% +3.57% +2.53%
75th Percentile £120,000 £125,000 £122,500
90th Percentile £150,000 £147,500 £137,000
England median annual salary £79,000 £80,000 £92,169
% change year-on-year -1.25% -13.20% +14.50%

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 12,250 15,090 16,911
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.76% 93.55% 95.00%
Number of salaries quoted 8,133 8,950 13,672
10th Percentile £35,750 £42,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £95,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -

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 19 December 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 19 December 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 +46 21 £112,500 +2.27% 8
South London +25 8 £80,000 +31.15% 2
West London -2 1 £65,000 - 6
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 19 December 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 51 (51.00%) AWS
2 48 (48.00%) Python
3 45 (45.00%) Software Engineering
4 37 (37.00%) CI/CD
5 33 (33.00%) Azure
6 29 (29.00%) Agile
7 26 (26.00%) Java
8 23 (23.00%) SQL
9 22 (22.00%) PostgreSQL
9 22 (22.00%) Roadmaps
10 21 (21.00%) GCP
11 20 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (20.00%) Fintech
12 19 (19.00%) DevOps
12 19 (19.00%) React
13 18 (18.00%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (17.00%) Analytics
14 17 (17.00%) Collaborative Culture
15 16 (16.00%) C#
15 16 (16.00%) NoSQL
16 15 (15.00%) .NET
16 15 (15.00%) AI
16 15 (15.00%) Data Engineering
16 15 (15.00%) Kubernetes
16 15 (15.00%) Microservices
17 14 (14.00%) Apache Spark
17 14 (14.00%) Business Intelligence
17 14 (14.00%) Data Modelling
17 14 (14.00%) Data Science
17 14 (14.00%) Data Warehouse

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 14 (14.00%) Apache Spark
2 3 (3.00%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (2.00%) Apache
3 2 (2.00%) Confluence
3 2 (2.00%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.00%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 51 (51.00%) AWS
2 33 (33.00%) Azure
3 21 (21.00%) GCP
4 11 (11.00%) Amazon EMR
5 7 (7.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 7 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (6.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 6 (6.00%) GitHub
7 5 (5.00%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (4.00%) Cloudflare
8 4 (4.00%) Google Gemini
8 4 (4.00%) SaaS
8 4 (4.00%) Serverless
9 3 (3.00%) Amazon MSK
9 3 (3.00%) Power Platform
9 3 (3.00%) Snowflake
10 2 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
11 1 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (1.00%) Datadog
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 22 (22.00%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (16.00%) NoSQL
3 14 (14.00%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (13.00%) MongoDB
4 13 (13.00%) MySQL
5 12 (12.00%) DynamoDB
6 11 (11.00%) Apache Cassandra
6 11 (11.00%) Big Data
6 11 (11.00%) DataStage
6 11 (11.00%) Hadoop
6 11 (11.00%) Neo4j
6 11 (11.00%) Pentaho
6 11 (11.00%) RDBMS
6 11 (11.00%) Relational Database
6 11 (11.00%) SQL Server
7 3 (3.00%) BigQuery
7 3 (3.00%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (3.00%) Power BI
7 3 (3.00%) Tableau
8 2 (2.00%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 8 (8.00%) GitLab
2 7 (7.00%) Git
2 7 (7.00%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.00%) JIRA
4 3 (3.00%) Burp Suite
4 3 (3.00%) Cypress.io
4 3 (3.00%) Metasploit
4 3 (3.00%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (2.00%) Plastic SCM
6 1 (1.00%) Ant
6 1 (1.00%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (1.00%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.00%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.00%) webpack
General
1 33 (33.00%) Finance
2 18 (18.00%) Social Skills
3 16 (16.00%) Law
4 12 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (7.00%) Banking
5 7 (7.00%) Military
6 4 (4.00%) Aerospace
7 3 (3.00%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (3.00%) Legal
7 3 (3.00%) Public Sector
7 3 (3.00%) Telecoms
8 1 (1.00%) Advertising
8 1 (1.00%) Back Office
8 1 (1.00%) Front Office
8 1 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.00%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (19.00%) React
2 15 (15.00%) .NET
3 11 (11.00%) Django
3 11 (11.00%) Kafka
4 8 (8.00%) FastAPI
5 6 (6.00%) REST
6 5 (5.00%) Node.js
6 5 (5.00%) Redux
7 4 (4.00%) ASP.NET
7 4 (4.00%) GraphQL
7 4 (4.00%) Jest
7 4 (4.00%) JSON
7 4 (4.00%) XML
8 3 (3.00%) .NET Core
8 3 (3.00%) .NET Framework
8 3 (3.00%) Android Jetpack
8 3 (3.00%) Jetpack Compose
8 3 (3.00%) RESTful
8 3 (3.00%) Spring
8 3 (3.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 20 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (14.00%) Cloud Native
3 11 (11.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 11 (11.00%) Management Information System
3 11 (11.00%) Product Ownership
4 7 (7.00%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (6.00%) Algorithms
6 5 (5.00%) Data Structures
6 5 (5.00%) Derivative
6 5 (5.00%) Fixed Income
7 3 (3.00%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (3.00%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (3.00%) SCADA
7 3 (3.00%) Security Posture
8 2 (2.00%) Equities
9 1 (1.00%) Blockchain
9 1 (1.00%) Clustering
9 1 (1.00%) Data Centre
9 1 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.00%) Linux
2 3 (3.00%) Android
2 3 (3.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (45.00%) Software Engineering
2 37 (37.00%) CI/CD
3 29 (29.00%) Agile
4 22 (22.00%) Roadmaps
5 20 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 20 (20.00%) Fintech
6 19 (19.00%) DevOps
7 18 (18.00%) Technical Leadership
8 17 (17.00%) Analytics
8 17 (17.00%) Collaborative Culture
9 15 (15.00%) AI
9 15 (15.00%) Data Engineering
9 15 (15.00%) Microservices
10 14 (14.00%) Business Intelligence
10 14 (14.00%) Data Modelling
10 14 (14.00%) Data Science
10 14 (14.00%) Full-Stack Development
10 14 (14.00%) Information Security
10 14 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
10 14 (14.00%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 48 (48.00%) Python
2 26 (26.00%) Java
3 23 (23.00%) SQL
4 16 (16.00%) C#
5 13 (13.00%) JavaScript
6 12 (12.00%) TypeScript
7 9 (9.00%) Rust
8 7 (7.00%) PowerShell
9 6 (6.00%) Bash
9 6 (6.00%) C++
10 4 (4.00%) Go
10 4 (4.00%) Kotlin
11 3 (3.00%) Groovy
11 3 (3.00%) Ruby
12 1 (1.00%) Perl
12 1 (1.00%) PHP
Qualifications
1 13 (13.00%) Degree
2 6 (6.00%) Computer Science Degree
2 6 (6.00%) Security Cleared
3 4 (4.00%) SC Cleared
4 3 (3.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
4 3 (3.00%) CCSP
4 3 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
4 3 (3.00%) CISSP
4 3 (3.00%) GCIH
5 1 (1.00%) HNC
5 1 (1.00%) HND
5 1 (1.00%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.00%) MCP
5 1 (1.00%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.00%) GDPR
1 3 (3.00%) IEC 61508
1 3 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (2.00%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.00%) QA
System Software
1 9 (9.00%) 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 15 (15.00%) Kubernetes
2 12 (12.00%) Terraform
3 5 (5.00%) Grafana
3 5 (5.00%) 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 11 (11.00%) Informatica
1 11 (11.00%) Oracle
1 11 (11.00%) Talend
2 6 (6.00%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.00%) OpenAI
4 3 (3.00%) Cribl.io
4 3 (3.00%) Google
4 3 (3.00%) Rapid7
4 3 (3.00%) Sonatype
5 2 (2.00%) Databricks
6 1 (1.00%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.00%) Foundry
6 1 (1.00%) Okta
6 1 (1.00%) Palantir
6 1 (1.00%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.00%) Siemens
6 1 (1.00%) VMware