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 26 May 2026.

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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 212 334 321
Rank change year-on-year +122 -13 +51
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 198 45 195
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.95% 0.38% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.03% 0.42% 0.88%
Number of salaries quoted 146 29 151
10th Percentile £82,500 £60,000 £70,000
25th Percentile £90,000 £88,750 £80,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £110,000 £92,500
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +18.92% -13.95%
75th Percentile £113,750 £125,000 £115,000
90th Percentile £129,375 £140,000 £125,000
England median annual salary £85,000 £70,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +21.43% -12.50% -5.88%

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 19,214 10,700 22,216
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 89.95% 94.35%
Number of salaries quoted 13,172 6,811 16,718
10th Percentile £40,000 £41,000 £37,500
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 £100,000 £122,500 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £52,777
% change year-on-year -4.35% +8.95% -13.20%

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 26 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 26 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 +42 53 £100,000 -11.11% 9
South London +10 6 - - 2
West London - 1 - - 1
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 26 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 82 (41.41%) Software Engineering
2 63 (31.82%) AWS
2 63 (31.82%) CI/CD
3 49 (24.75%) Agile
4 46 (23.23%) Java
5 45 (22.73%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (22.22%) Azure
7 42 (21.21%) Python
8 41 (20.71%) Technical Leadership
9 38 (19.19%) Mentoring
10 37 (18.69%) AI
11 36 (18.18%) Microservices
12 35 (17.68%) Continuous Improvement
13 33 (16.67%) Roadmaps
14 31 (15.66%) SQL
15 26 (13.13%) GCP
16 24 (12.12%) DevOps
17 23 (11.62%) Terraform
18 22 (11.11%) TypeScript
19 21 (10.61%) Test Automation
20 20 (10.10%) Full-Stack Development
20 20 (10.10%) Kubernetes
20 20 (10.10%) Security Cleared
21 19 (9.60%) Coaching
21 19 (9.60%) Data Engineering
21 19 (9.60%) Degree
21 19 (9.60%) SC Cleared
22 18 (9.09%) Kafka
22 18 (9.09%) React
22 18 (9.09%) Spring

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 4 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (2.02%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.51%) Camunda
2 1 (0.51%) CMS
2 1 (0.51%) Confluence
2 1 (0.51%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 2 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 63 (31.82%) AWS
2 44 (22.22%) Azure
3 26 (13.13%) GCP
4 15 (7.58%) AWS CloudFormation
5 12 (6.06%) Serverless
6 10 (5.05%) SaaS
7 9 (4.55%) GitHub
7 9 (4.55%) GitHub Copilot
8 8 (4.04%) Anthropic Claude
9 7 (3.54%) dbt
10 6 (3.03%) Entra ID
11 5 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (2.53%) Azure Sentinel
12 4 (2.02%) Amazon EMR
12 4 (2.02%) Cloud Composer
13 3 (1.52%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 3 (1.52%) Azure Key Vault
13 3 (1.52%) Azure Monitor
13 3 (1.52%) Azure Service Bus
14 2 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.02%) Broadband
1 4 (2.02%) Firewall
1 4 (2.02%) Multicast
1 4 (2.02%) WAN
2 3 (1.52%) LAN
2 3 (1.52%) WLAN
3 2 (1.01%) Bluetooth
3 2 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (1.01%) Wireless
4 1 (0.51%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.51%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.08%) NoSQL
2 13 (6.57%) BigQuery
3 10 (5.05%) MySQL
4 8 (4.04%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.54%) Semantic Layer
6 6 (3.03%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (2.53%) Big Data
7 5 (2.53%) Data Lake
7 5 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (2.53%) DynamoDB
8 4 (2.02%) Apache Cassandra
8 4 (2.02%) DataStage
8 4 (2.02%) Hadoop
8 4 (2.02%) Neo4j
8 4 (2.02%) Pentaho
8 4 (2.02%) RDBMS
8 4 (2.02%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.02%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 17 (8.59%) GitLab
2 12 (6.06%) Cucumber
3 9 (4.55%) Claude Code
4 5 (2.53%) JIRA
5 4 (2.02%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.51%) Git
6 1 (0.51%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.51%) Maven
6 1 (0.51%) Selenium
6 1 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 51 (25.76%) Finance
2 18 (9.09%) Banking
3 13 (6.57%) Law
3 13 (6.57%) Social Skills
4 12 (6.06%) Retail
5 10 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (3.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.01%) Electronics
8 2 (1.01%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.01%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.51%) Billing
9 1 (0.51%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (9.09%) Kafka
1 18 (9.09%) React
1 18 (9.09%) Spring
1 18 (9.09%) Spring Boot
2 14 (7.07%) .NET
2 14 (7.07%) Android Jetpack
2 14 (7.07%) Jetpack Compose
3 7 (3.54%) .NET Core
4 6 (3.03%) Django
5 5 (2.53%) Node.js
6 4 (2.02%) .NET Framework
6 4 (2.02%) ASP.NET
6 4 (2.02%) ASP.NET Core
6 4 (2.02%) ASP.NET Web API
6 4 (2.02%) Boost C++ Libraries
6 4 (2.02%) Entity Framework
6 4 (2.02%) FIX Protocol
6 4 (2.02%) pytest
7 3 (1.52%) ADO
7 3 (1.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (18.69%) Distributed Systems
2 29 (14.65%) Cloud Native
3 19 (9.60%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (7.07%) Mobile Banking
4 14 (7.07%) Public Cloud
5 12 (6.06%) e-Learning
6 11 (5.56%) Algorithms
7 10 (5.05%) Data Centre
8 6 (3.03%) Data Structures
8 6 (3.03%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (3.03%) Management Information System
9 5 (2.53%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (2.02%) Derivative
10 4 (2.02%) Equities
10 4 (2.02%) Fixed Income
10 4 (2.02%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (1.01%) Embedded Systems
11 2 (1.01%) Security Operations Centre
12 1 (0.51%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.07%) Android
2 13 (6.57%) Linux
3 3 (1.52%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.52%) VMS
3 3 (1.52%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (41.41%) Software Engineering
2 63 (31.82%) CI/CD
3 49 (24.75%) Agile
4 45 (22.73%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (20.71%) Technical Leadership
6 38 (19.19%) Mentoring
7 37 (18.69%) AI
8 36 (18.18%) Microservices
9 35 (17.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 33 (16.67%) Roadmaps
11 24 (12.12%) DevOps
12 21 (10.61%) Test Automation
13 20 (10.10%) Full-Stack Development
14 19 (9.60%) Coaching
14 19 (9.60%) Data Engineering
15 16 (8.08%) Analytics
15 16 (8.08%) Architectural Patterns
15 16 (8.08%) Software Architecture
16 15 (7.58%) TDD
17 14 (7.07%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 46 (23.23%) Java
2 42 (21.21%) Python
3 31 (15.66%) SQL
4 22 (11.11%) TypeScript
5 14 (7.07%) Kotlin
6 13 (6.57%) C#
7 8 (4.04%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.53%) Go
9 4 (2.02%) C++
9 4 (2.02%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.51%) Rust
10 1 (0.51%) Scala
Qualifications
1 20 (10.10%) Security Cleared
2 19 (9.60%) Degree
2 19 (9.60%) SC Cleared
3 15 (7.58%) AWS Certification
4 12 (6.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 7 (3.54%) PhD
6 6 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.53%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.01%) CEH
8 2 (1.01%) CISSP
8 2 (1.01%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (1.01%) GIAC
8 2 (1.01%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.54%) Data Quality
1 7 (3.54%) QA
2 3 (1.52%) NCSC
3 2 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.01%) NIST
System Software
1 13 (6.57%) Docker
2 6 (3.03%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (11.62%) Terraform
2 20 (10.10%) Kubernetes
3 6 (3.03%) Ansible
4 3 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (1.52%) SCCM
5 2 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.51%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (7.58%) Google
2 13 (6.57%) Microsoft
3 9 (4.55%) VMware
4 4 (2.02%) Informatica
4 4 (2.02%) Oracle
4 4 (2.02%) Talend
5 3 (1.52%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.01%) Darktrace
6 2 (1.01%) EMC
6 2 (1.01%) Zscaler
7 1 (0.51%) Cisco
7 1 (0.51%) Databricks
7 1 (0.51%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.51%) Juniper
7 1 (0.51%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.51%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.51%) Sitecore