Principal Engineer Job Trends in London

Principal Engineer
England > London

The median Principal Engineer salary in London is £110,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 4 December 2025.

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

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 277 275 347
Rank change year-on-year -2 +72 +96
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 103 180 109
As % of all permanent jobs in London 0.77% 1.06% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 1.12% 0.63%
Number of salaries quoted 82 116 89
10th Percentile £77,750 £70,000 £70,000
25th Percentile £85,500 £90,000 £88,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £110,000 £107,500 £105,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% +2.38% +5.00%
75th Percentile £120,000 £125,000 £122,500
90th Percentile £150,000 £147,500 £134,000
England median annual salary £80,000 £80,000 £90,000
% change year-on-year - -11.11% +11.16%

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 12,077 16,100 17,236
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.76% 94.48% 94.88%
Number of salaries quoted 7,913 9,764 14,054
10th Percentile £36,000 £41,250 £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 £117,500 £120,000 £115,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £59,430 £60,000
% change year-on-year -7.45% -0.95% -

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 4 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 4 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 +35 21 £112,500 +4.65% 6
South London +28 8 £80,000 +31.15% 2
West London +1 1 £65,000 - 1
Principal Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 4 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 54 (52.43%) AWS
2 52 (50.49%) Python
3 47 (45.63%) Software Engineering
4 39 (37.86%) CI/CD
5 34 (33.01%) Azure
6 31 (30.10%) Agile
7 29 (28.16%) Java
8 24 (23.30%) SQL
9 23 (22.33%) GCP
9 23 (22.33%) Roadmaps
10 22 (21.36%) PostgreSQL
11 21 (20.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 21 (20.39%) Fintech
11 21 (20.39%) React
11 21 (20.39%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (19.42%) DevOps
12 20 (19.42%) Kubernetes
13 19 (18.45%) Mentoring
14 18 (17.48%) Analytics
14 18 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
15 17 (16.50%) AI
15 17 (16.50%) Collaborative Culture
15 17 (16.50%) Data Engineering
15 17 (16.50%) Microservices
15 17 (16.50%) NoSQL
16 16 (15.53%) .NET
16 16 (15.53%) C#
17 15 (14.56%) Data Modelling
17 15 (14.56%) Kafka
17 15 (14.56%) MongoDB

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 (13.59%) Apache Spark
2 3 (2.91%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (2.91%) Confluence
3 2 (1.94%) Apache
3 2 (1.94%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.97%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 54 (52.43%) AWS
2 34 (33.01%) Azure
3 23 (22.33%) GCP
4 11 (10.68%) Amazon EMR
5 8 (7.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 7 (6.80%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 7 (6.80%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (6.80%) GitHub
7 6 (5.83%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (4.85%) Serverless
9 4 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (3.88%) Cloudflare
9 4 (3.88%) Google Gemini
10 3 (2.91%) Amazon MSK
10 3 (2.91%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.91%) Snowflake
11 2 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (1.94%) Datadog
11 2 (1.94%) SaaS
12 1 (0.97%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.91%) DNS
2 2 (1.94%) Multicast
3 1 (0.97%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.97%) Modbus
3 1 (0.97%) Profibus
3 1 (0.97%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (21.36%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (16.50%) NoSQL
3 15 (14.56%) MongoDB
4 14 (13.59%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (11.65%) DynamoDB
5 12 (11.65%) MySQL
6 11 (10.68%) Apache Cassandra
6 11 (10.68%) Big Data
6 11 (10.68%) DataStage
6 11 (10.68%) Hadoop
6 11 (10.68%) Neo4j
6 11 (10.68%) Pentaho
6 11 (10.68%) RDBMS
6 11 (10.68%) Relational Database
6 11 (10.68%) SQL Server
7 3 (2.91%) Power BI
7 3 (2.91%) Tableau
8 2 (1.94%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.94%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.94%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 10 (9.71%) Git
2 9 (8.74%) GitLab
3 8 (7.77%) Jenkins
4 5 (4.85%) JIRA
5 4 (3.88%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (2.91%) Burp Suite
6 3 (2.91%) Cypress.io
6 3 (2.91%) Metasploit
7 2 (1.94%) Ant
7 2 (1.94%) Plastic SCM
7 2 (1.94%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.94%) TeamCity
7 2 (1.94%) webpack
8 1 (0.97%) Rational DOORS
General
1 40 (38.83%) Finance
2 19 (18.45%) Social Skills
3 17 (16.50%) Law
4 13 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (6.80%) Military
6 6 (5.83%) Banking
6 6 (5.83%) Public Sector
7 4 (3.88%) Aerospace
7 4 (3.88%) Legal
8 3 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (2.91%) Publishing
8 3 (2.91%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.97%) Advertising
9 1 (0.97%) Back Office
9 1 (0.97%) Front Office
9 1 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.97%) Local Government
9 1 (0.97%) Marketing
9 1 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (20.39%) React
2 16 (15.53%) .NET
3 15 (14.56%) Kafka
4 10 (9.71%) Django
5 8 (7.77%) FastAPI
6 6 (5.83%) GraphQL
6 6 (5.83%) Node.js
6 6 (5.83%) REST
7 5 (4.85%) Jest
7 5 (4.85%) Redux
8 4 (3.88%) .NET Framework
8 4 (3.88%) ASP.NET
8 4 (3.88%) JSON
8 4 (3.88%) RESTful
8 4 (3.88%) Spring
8 4 (3.88%) Spring Boot
8 4 (3.88%) XML
9 2 (1.94%) CSS
9 2 (1.94%) FIX Protocol
9 2 (1.94%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (23.30%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (18.45%) Cloud Native
3 12 (11.65%) Product Ownership
4 11 (10.68%) Hybrid Cloud
4 11 (10.68%) Management Information System
5 7 (6.80%) Greenfield Project
6 6 (5.83%) Algorithms
7 5 (4.85%) Data Structures
7 5 (4.85%) Derivative
7 5 (4.85%) Fixed Income
8 3 (2.91%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (2.91%) SCADA
8 3 (2.91%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.94%) Equities
9 2 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.97%) Clustering
10 1 (0.97%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.97%) Mobile Banking
10 1 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 5 (4.85%) Linux
2 3 (2.91%) Windows
3 1 (0.97%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (45.63%) Software Engineering
2 39 (37.86%) CI/CD
3 31 (30.10%) Agile
4 23 (22.33%) Roadmaps
5 21 (20.39%) Continuous Improvement
5 21 (20.39%) Fintech
5 21 (20.39%) Technical Leadership
6 20 (19.42%) DevOps
7 19 (18.45%) Mentoring
8 18 (17.48%) Analytics
8 18 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
9 17 (16.50%) AI
9 17 (16.50%) Collaborative Culture
9 17 (16.50%) Data Engineering
9 17 (16.50%) Microservices
10 15 (14.56%) Data Modelling
11 14 (13.59%) Business Intelligence
11 14 (13.59%) Data Science
11 14 (13.59%) Information Security
11 14 (13.59%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 52 (50.49%) Python
2 29 (28.16%) Java
3 24 (23.30%) SQL
4 16 (15.53%) C#
5 14 (13.59%) JavaScript
5 14 (13.59%) TypeScript
6 8 (7.77%) C++
6 8 (7.77%) PowerShell
6 8 (7.77%) Rust
7 7 (6.80%) Bash
8 5 (4.85%) Go
9 3 (2.91%) Groovy
9 3 (2.91%) Kotlin
9 3 (2.91%) Ruby
10 1 (0.97%) Perl
10 1 (0.97%) PHP
Qualifications
1 14 (13.59%) Degree
2 6 (5.83%) Computer Science Degree
2 6 (5.83%) Security Cleared
3 4 (3.88%) SC Cleared
4 3 (2.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
4 3 (2.91%) CCSP
4 3 (2.91%) Cisco Certification
4 3 (2.91%) CISSP
4 3 (2.91%) GCIH
5 2 (1.94%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.94%) PhD
6 1 (0.97%) HNC
6 1 (0.97%) HND
6 1 (0.97%) MCP
6 1 (0.97%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.88%) QA
2 3 (2.91%) GDPR
2 3 (2.91%) IEC 61508
2 3 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.94%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.97%) Accessibility
System Software
1 12 (11.65%) Docker
2 4 (3.88%) Firmware
3 1 (0.97%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 20 (19.42%) Kubernetes
2 13 (12.62%) Terraform
3 6 (5.83%) Grafana
3 6 (5.83%) Prometheus
4 4 (3.88%) Functional Safety
5 3 (2.91%) Ansible
5 3 (2.91%) Kibana
5 3 (2.91%) Nmap
6 1 (0.97%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 11 (10.68%) Informatica
1 11 (10.68%) Oracle
1 11 (10.68%) Talend
2 7 (6.80%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.88%) OpenAI
4 3 (2.91%) Cribl.io
4 3 (2.91%) Foundry
4 3 (2.91%) Palantir
4 3 (2.91%) Rapid7
4 3 (2.91%) Sonatype
5 2 (1.94%) Databricks
5 2 (1.94%) Google
6 1 (0.97%) ForgeRock
6 1 (0.97%) Okta
6 1 (0.97%) Ping Identity
6 1 (0.97%) Siemens
6 1 (0.97%) VMware