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 28 May 2026.

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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 219 330 317
Rank change year-on-year +111 -13 +52
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 206 44 196
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.98% 0.37% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.07% 0.41% 0.88%
Number of salaries quoted 150 29 152
10th Percentile £81,250 £60,000 £70,000
25th Percentile £90,000 £88,750 £79,375
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 £128,875 £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 19,330 10,668 22,233
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 89.99% 94.38%
Number of salaries quoted 13,252 6,815 16,734
10th Percentile £40,000 £41,000 £37,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £55,000 £51,143
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 £52,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -13.65%

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 28 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 28 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 +37 52 £100,000 -11.11% 12
South London +7 6 - - 2
West London - 2 - - 1
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 28 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 84 (40.78%) Software Engineering
2 68 (33.01%) CI/CD
3 65 (31.55%) AWS
4 54 (26.21%) Agile
5 49 (23.79%) Java
6 47 (22.82%) Infrastructure as Code
7 46 (22.33%) Azure
8 44 (21.36%) Technical Leadership
9 43 (20.87%) Python
10 42 (20.39%) Mentoring
11 40 (19.42%) AI
12 39 (18.93%) Microservices
13 37 (17.96%) Continuous Improvement
14 35 (16.99%) SQL
15 34 (16.50%) Roadmaps
16 28 (13.59%) GCP
17 26 (12.62%) Test Automation
18 24 (11.65%) DevOps
18 24 (11.65%) Terraform
19 22 (10.68%) Data Engineering
20 21 (10.19%) Coaching
20 21 (10.19%) Kafka
20 21 (10.19%) Kubernetes
20 21 (10.19%) Security Cleared
20 21 (10.19%) TypeScript
21 20 (9.71%) Degree
21 20 (9.71%) SC Cleared
21 20 (9.71%) Spring
22 19 (9.22%) Full-Stack Development
22 19 (9.22%) Spring Boot

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 (1.94%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (1.94%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.97%) Camunda
3 1 (0.49%) CMS
3 1 (0.49%) Confluence
3 1 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 65 (31.55%) AWS
2 46 (22.33%) Azure
3 28 (13.59%) GCP
4 16 (7.77%) AWS CloudFormation
5 11 (5.34%) Serverless
6 10 (4.85%) SaaS
7 9 (4.37%) GitHub
7 9 (4.37%) GitHub Copilot
8 8 (3.88%) Anthropic Claude
8 8 (3.88%) dbt
9 6 (2.91%) Entra ID
10 5 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (2.43%) Azure Sentinel
11 4 (1.94%) Amazon EMR
11 4 (1.94%) Cloud Composer
12 3 (1.46%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 3 (1.46%) Azure Key Vault
12 3 (1.46%) Azure Monitor
12 3 (1.46%) PaaS
12 3 (1.46%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.43%) Broadband
2 4 (1.94%) Firewall
2 4 (1.94%) Multicast
2 4 (1.94%) WAN
3 3 (1.46%) LAN
3 3 (1.46%) WLAN
4 2 (0.97%) Bluetooth
4 2 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.97%) Wireless
5 1 (0.49%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.49%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (8.25%) NoSQL
2 14 (6.80%) BigQuery
3 9 (4.37%) MySQL
4 8 (3.88%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.88%) Semantic Layer
5 6 (2.91%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (2.91%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (2.43%) Big Data
6 5 (2.43%) Data Lake
6 5 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.43%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.94%) Apache Cassandra
7 4 (1.94%) DataStage
7 4 (1.94%) Hadoop
7 4 (1.94%) Neo4j
7 4 (1.94%) Pentaho
7 4 (1.94%) RDBMS
7 4 (1.94%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.94%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 18 (8.74%) GitLab
2 13 (6.31%) Cucumber
3 9 (4.37%) Claude Code
4 5 (2.43%) Jenkins
4 5 (2.43%) JIRA
5 1 (0.49%) Git
5 1 (0.49%) Jaeger
5 1 (0.49%) Maven
5 1 (0.49%) Selenium
5 1 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 52 (25.24%) Finance
2 18 (8.74%) Banking
3 14 (6.80%) Social Skills
4 13 (6.31%) Law
5 12 (5.83%) Retail
6 10 (4.85%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (4.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.46%) Public Sector
10 2 (0.97%) Electronics
10 2 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.49%) Billing
11 1 (0.49%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (10.19%) Kafka
2 20 (9.71%) Spring
3 19 (9.22%) Spring Boot
4 17 (8.25%) React
5 14 (6.80%) .NET
5 14 (6.80%) Android Jetpack
5 14 (6.80%) Jetpack Compose
6 6 (2.91%) .NET Core
6 6 (2.91%) Django
6 6 (2.91%) Node.js
7 4 (1.94%) .NET Framework
7 4 (1.94%) ASP.NET
7 4 (1.94%) ASP.NET Core
7 4 (1.94%) ASP.NET Web API
7 4 (1.94%) Boost C++ Libraries
7 4 (1.94%) Entity Framework
7 4 (1.94%) FIX Protocol
7 4 (1.94%) pytest
7 4 (1.94%) REST
8 3 (1.46%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 40 (19.42%) Distributed Systems
2 32 (15.53%) Cloud Native
3 20 (9.71%) Enterprise Software
4 15 (7.28%) Public Cloud
5 14 (6.80%) Mobile Banking
6 13 (6.31%) e-Learning
7 11 (5.34%) Algorithms
8 10 (4.85%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.91%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.91%) Greenfield Project
9 6 (2.91%) Management Information System
10 5 (2.43%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.94%) Derivative
11 4 (1.94%) Equities
11 4 (1.94%) Fixed Income
11 4 (1.94%) Product Ownership
12 2 (0.97%) AI Agents
12 2 (0.97%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (0.97%) Embedded Systems
12 2 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 14 (6.80%) Android
2 13 (6.31%) Linux
3 3 (1.46%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.46%) VMS
3 3 (1.46%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (40.78%) Software Engineering
2 68 (33.01%) CI/CD
3 54 (26.21%) Agile
4 47 (22.82%) Infrastructure as Code
5 44 (21.36%) Technical Leadership
6 42 (20.39%) Mentoring
7 40 (19.42%) AI
8 39 (18.93%) Microservices
9 37 (17.96%) Continuous Improvement
10 34 (16.50%) Roadmaps
11 26 (12.62%) Test Automation
12 24 (11.65%) DevOps
13 22 (10.68%) Data Engineering
14 21 (10.19%) Coaching
15 19 (9.22%) Full-Stack Development
16 18 (8.74%) Analytics
17 17 (8.25%) Architectural Patterns
17 17 (8.25%) Event-Driven
18 16 (7.77%) Software Architecture
19 15 (7.28%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 49 (23.79%) Java
2 43 (20.87%) Python
3 35 (16.99%) SQL
4 21 (10.19%) TypeScript
5 14 (6.80%) Kotlin
6 13 (6.31%) C#
7 10 (4.85%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.43%) Go
9 4 (1.94%) C++
9 4 (1.94%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.49%) Rust
10 1 (0.49%) Scala
Qualifications
1 21 (10.19%) Security Cleared
2 20 (9.71%) Degree
2 20 (9.71%) SC Cleared
3 16 (7.77%) AWS Certification
4 13 (6.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 7 (3.40%) PhD
6 6 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.91%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.97%) CEH
7 2 (0.97%) CISSP
7 2 (0.97%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (0.97%) GIAC
7 2 (0.97%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.88%) Data Quality
1 8 (3.88%) QA
2 3 (1.46%) NCSC
3 2 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.97%) NIST
4 1 (0.49%) Accessibility
System Software
1 14 (6.80%) Docker
2 6 (2.91%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 24 (11.65%) Terraform
2 21 (10.19%) Kubernetes
3 6 (2.91%) Ansible
4 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (1.46%) SCCM
5 2 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.49%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.49%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 15 (7.28%) Google
2 13 (6.31%) Microsoft
3 9 (4.37%) VMware
4 4 (1.94%) Informatica
4 4 (1.94%) Oracle
4 4 (1.94%) Talend
5 3 (1.46%) Red Hat
6 2 (0.97%) Darktrace
6 2 (0.97%) EMC
6 2 (0.97%) Zscaler
7 1 (0.49%) Cisco
7 1 (0.49%) Databricks
7 1 (0.49%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.49%) Juniper
7 1 (0.49%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.49%) Palantir
7 1 (0.49%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.49%) Sitecore