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 20 May 2026.

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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 219 349 323
Rank change year-on-year +130 -26 +51
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 196 46 189
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.95% 0.37% 0.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.03% 0.41% 0.86%
Number of salaries quoted 146 34 146
10th Percentile £81,250 £60,000 £70,000
25th Percentile £90,000 £90,313 £81,250
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 £128,750 £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 19,089 11,122 22,098
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 90.10% 94.21%
Number of salaries quoted 13,045 7,232 16,650
10th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £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 £53,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +7.48% -12.01%

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 20 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 20 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 +38 54 £100,000 -11.11% 9
South London +17 7 £80,000 +33.33% 6
West London - 1 - - 6
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 20 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 (41.84%) Software Engineering
2 64 (32.65%) AWS
3 62 (31.63%) CI/CD
4 48 (24.49%) Agile
5 46 (23.47%) Java
6 44 (22.45%) Azure
6 44 (22.45%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (22.45%) Python
7 39 (19.90%) Technical Leadership
8 38 (19.39%) AI
8 38 (19.39%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (18.88%) Mentoring
10 36 (18.37%) Microservices
11 35 (17.86%) Roadmaps
12 29 (14.80%) SQL
13 27 (13.78%) GCP
14 26 (13.27%) DevOps
15 24 (12.24%) Terraform
16 21 (10.71%) TypeScript
17 20 (10.20%) Data Engineering
17 20 (10.20%) Full-Stack Development
17 20 (10.20%) Kubernetes
17 20 (10.20%) Security Cleared
18 19 (9.69%) Degree
18 19 (9.69%) SC Cleared
18 19 (9.69%) Test Automation
19 18 (9.18%) Coaching
19 18 (9.18%) React
20 17 (8.67%) GitLab
20 17 (8.67%) Kafka

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 (2.55%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.51%) Camunda
3 1 (0.51%) CMS
3 1 (0.51%) Confluence
3 1 (0.51%) Sitecore CMS
3 1 (0.51%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 64 (32.65%) AWS
2 44 (22.45%) Azure
3 27 (13.78%) GCP
4 15 (7.65%) AWS CloudFormation
5 13 (6.63%) Serverless
6 9 (4.59%) GitHub
6 9 (4.59%) GitHub Copilot
6 9 (4.59%) SaaS
7 8 (4.08%) Anthropic Claude
8 6 (3.06%) dbt
8 6 (3.06%) Entra ID
9 5 (2.55%) Amazon EMR
9 5 (2.55%) Azure Sentinel
10 4 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.04%) Cloud Composer
11 3 (1.53%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (1.02%) Amazon ECS
12 2 (1.02%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 2 (1.02%) Azure Key Vault
12 2 (1.02%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.04%) Broadband
1 4 (2.04%) Firewall
1 4 (2.04%) WAN
2 3 (1.53%) LAN
2 3 (1.53%) Multicast
2 3 (1.53%) WLAN
3 2 (1.02%) Bluetooth
3 2 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (1.02%) Wireless
4 1 (0.51%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.51%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.16%) NoSQL
2 14 (7.14%) BigQuery
3 11 (5.61%) MySQL
4 9 (4.59%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.57%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (3.57%) Semantic Layer
6 6 (3.06%) Big Data
6 6 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (3.06%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.55%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (2.55%) Data Lake
7 5 (2.55%) DataStage
7 5 (2.55%) Hadoop
7 5 (2.55%) Neo4j
7 5 (2.55%) Pentaho
7 5 (2.55%) RDBMS
7 5 (2.55%) Relational Database
7 5 (2.55%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 17 (8.67%) GitLab
2 11 (5.61%) Cucumber
3 9 (4.59%) Claude Code
4 5 (2.55%) Jenkins
5 4 (2.04%) JIRA
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 49 (25.00%) Finance
2 17 (8.67%) Banking
3 15 (7.65%) Social Skills
4 14 (7.14%) Law
5 12 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (6.12%) Retail
6 6 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.02%) Electronics
8 2 (1.02%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.02%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.51%) Billing
9 1 (0.51%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (9.18%) React
2 17 (8.67%) Kafka
2 17 (8.67%) Spring
2 17 (8.67%) Spring Boot
3 14 (7.14%) .NET
3 14 (7.14%) Android Jetpack
3 14 (7.14%) Jetpack Compose
4 7 (3.57%) .NET Core
4 7 (3.57%) Django
5 5 (2.55%) Node.js
6 4 (2.04%) .NET Framework
6 4 (2.04%) ASP.NET
6 4 (2.04%) ASP.NET Core
6 4 (2.04%) ASP.NET Web API
6 4 (2.04%) Entity Framework
7 3 (1.53%) Boost C++ Libraries
7 3 (1.53%) FIX Protocol
7 3 (1.53%) pytest
7 3 (1.53%) REST
8 2 (1.02%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (19.39%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (13.78%) Cloud Native
3 18 (9.18%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (7.14%) Mobile Banking
5 13 (6.63%) Public Cloud
6 11 (5.61%) Algorithms
6 11 (5.61%) e-Learning
7 10 (5.10%) Data Centre
8 7 (3.57%) Data Structures
8 7 (3.57%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (3.57%) Management Information System
9 6 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (2.55%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.53%) Derivative
11 3 (1.53%) Equities
11 3 (1.53%) Fixed Income
12 2 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (1.02%) Embedded Systems
12 2 (1.02%) Security Operations Centre
13 1 (0.51%) Blockchain
Operating Systems
1 14 (7.14%) Android
2 12 (6.12%) Linux
3 3 (1.53%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.53%) Windows
4 2 (1.02%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (41.84%) Software Engineering
2 62 (31.63%) CI/CD
3 48 (24.49%) Agile
4 44 (22.45%) Infrastructure as Code
5 39 (19.90%) Technical Leadership
6 38 (19.39%) AI
6 38 (19.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 37 (18.88%) Mentoring
8 36 (18.37%) Microservices
9 35 (17.86%) Roadmaps
10 26 (13.27%) DevOps
11 20 (10.20%) Data Engineering
11 20 (10.20%) Full-Stack Development
12 19 (9.69%) Test Automation
13 18 (9.18%) Coaching
14 17 (8.67%) Software Architecture
15 16 (8.16%) Analytics
15 16 (8.16%) TDD
16 15 (7.65%) Architectural Patterns
17 14 (7.14%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 46 (23.47%) Java
2 44 (22.45%) Python
3 29 (14.80%) SQL
4 21 (10.71%) TypeScript
5 14 (7.14%) Kotlin
6 13 (6.63%) C#
7 8 (4.08%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.55%) Go
9 3 (1.53%) C++
9 3 (1.53%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.51%) PHP
10 1 (0.51%) Rust
10 1 (0.51%) Scala
Qualifications
1 20 (10.20%) Security Cleared
2 19 (9.69%) Degree
2 19 (9.69%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.14%) AWS Certification
4 11 (5.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 7 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (3.57%) PhD
6 5 (2.55%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.02%) CEH
7 2 (1.02%) CISSP
7 2 (1.02%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (1.02%) GIAC
7 2 (1.02%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.57%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.06%) QA
3 3 (1.53%) NCSC
4 2 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.02%) NIST
System Software
1 14 (7.14%) Docker
2 6 (3.06%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 24 (12.24%) Terraform
2 20 (10.20%) Kubernetes
3 6 (3.06%) Ansible
4 3 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (1.53%) SCCM
5 2 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.51%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (7.65%) Google
2 14 (7.14%) Microsoft
3 9 (4.59%) VMware
4 5 (2.55%) Informatica
4 5 (2.55%) Oracle
4 5 (2.55%) Talend
5 3 (1.53%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.02%) Darktrace
6 2 (1.02%) EMC
6 2 (1.02%) 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