Principal Engineer Job Trends in the North of England

Principal Engineer
England > North of England

The median Principal Engineer salary in the North of England is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 July 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 175 217 241
Rank change year-on-year +42 +24 +71
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 179 102 144
As % of all permanent jobs in the North of England 0.86% 1.08% 0.79%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.91% 1.23% 0.83%
Number of salaries quoted 131 50 49
10th Percentile £60,000 £47,000 £55,000
25th Percentile £73,750 £54,775 £62,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% - -18.75%
75th Percentile £100,000 £78,750 £73,750
90th Percentile £101,250 £87,500 £89,000
England median annual salary £87,500 £70,600 £75,000
% change year-on-year +23.94% -5.87% -14.29%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
North of England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the North of England. 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 the North of England with a recognized job title 19,743 8,302 17,367
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.75% 88.08% 95.11%
Number of salaries quoted 14,372 4,461 13,083
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £88,148 £81,250 £79,000
England median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% +3.77% -11.67%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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 the North of England.

Principal Engineer job vacancy trend in the North of England

Principal Engineer
Salary Trend in the North of England

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in the North of England.

Salary distribution trend for Principal Engineer job vacancies in the North of England

Principal Engineer
Salary Histogram in the North of England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer in the North of England over the 6 months to 13 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Principal Engineer in the North of England

Principal Engineer
Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the North of England region over the 6 months to 13 July 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
North West +21 109 £90,000 +38.46% 30
Yorkshire -7 49 £85,000 +30.77% 15
North East -39 21 £100,000 +66.67% 1
Principal Engineer
England

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 13 July 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 North of England region featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 73 (40.78%) Software Engineering
2 37 (20.67%) CI/CD
3 34 (18.99%) Degree
4 31 (17.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 30 (16.76%) Microservices
6 28 (15.64%) AI
6 28 (15.64%) AWS
7 26 (14.53%) DevOps
8 25 (13.97%) Technical Leadership
9 23 (12.85%) Kubernetes
9 23 (12.85%) Systems Engineering
10 22 (12.29%) Docker
10 22 (12.29%) Terraform
11 20 (11.17%) Event-Driven
11 20 (11.17%) Security Cleared
12 19 (10.61%) Linux
13 18 (10.06%) Mentoring
14 16 (8.94%) Requirements Management
14 16 (8.94%) SC Cleared
15 15 (8.38%) Infrastructure as Code
16 14 (7.82%) Ansible
16 14 (7.82%) Computer Science
16 14 (7.82%) DV Cleared
16 14 (7.82%) Platform Engineering
16 14 (7.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 13 (7.26%) C++
17 13 (7.26%) Continuous Improvement
18 12 (6.70%) Computer Science Degree
18 12 (6.70%) Mathematics
18 12 (6.70%) Physics

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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:

Applications
1 6 (3.35%) Abaqus
2 2 (1.12%) AutoCAD
2 2 (1.12%) SOLIDWORKS
Cloud Services
1 28 (15.64%) AWS
2 11 (6.15%) SaaS
3 10 (5.59%) Azure
3 10 (5.59%) GitHub
4 4 (2.23%) GCP
5 2 (1.12%) dbt
5 2 (1.12%) Serverless
6 1 (0.56%) Azure API Management
6 1 (0.56%) Azure Data Factory
6 1 (0.56%) Entra ID
6 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.35%) Wireless
2 5 (2.79%) VoIP
3 2 (1.12%) Bluetooth
3 2 (1.12%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (1.12%) ZigBee
4 1 (0.56%) Firewall
4 1 (0.56%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.68%) ClickHouse
1 3 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (1.12%) Data Lake
2 2 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (1.12%) Redis
2 2 (1.12%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (5.59%) Atlassian Bamboo
1 10 (5.59%) Git
1 10 (5.59%) GitLab
1 10 (5.59%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.12%) Rational DOORS
3 1 (0.56%) Selenium
General
1 19 (10.61%) Social Skills
2 14 (7.82%) Retail
3 10 (5.59%) Public Sector
4 6 (3.35%) Finance
5 5 (2.79%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.23%) Aerospace
6 4 (2.23%) Electronics
6 4 (2.23%) Military
7 3 (1.68%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.12%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.12%) Marketing
9 1 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (6.15%) React
2 7 (3.91%) .NET
3 5 (2.79%) Spring
3 5 (2.79%) Spring Boot
4 4 (2.23%) AngularJS
4 4 (2.23%) Next.js
4 4 (2.23%) Node.js
5 3 (1.68%) Lambda Expressions
6 2 (1.12%) PySpark
6 2 (1.12%) Vue
7 1 (0.56%) Express.js
7 1 (0.56%) GraphQL
7 1 (0.56%) koa
7 1 (0.56%) MACH
Miscellaneous
1 32 (17.88%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.70%) Product Ownership
3 10 (5.59%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (3.35%) Embedded Systems
5 5 (2.79%) Acoustics
6 3 (1.68%) Legacy Applications
6 3 (1.68%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.12%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.56%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 19 (10.61%) Linux
2 10 (5.59%) CentOS
2 10 (5.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (1.12%) Embedded Linux
3 2 (1.12%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (40.78%) Software Engineering
2 37 (20.67%) CI/CD
3 30 (16.76%) Microservices
4 28 (15.64%) AI
5 26 (14.53%) DevOps
6 25 (13.97%) Technical Leadership
7 23 (12.85%) Systems Engineering
8 20 (11.17%) Event-Driven
9 18 (10.06%) Mentoring
10 16 (8.94%) Requirements Management
11 15 (8.38%) Infrastructure as Code
12 14 (7.82%) Computer Science
12 14 (7.82%) Platform Engineering
12 14 (7.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 13 (7.26%) Continuous Improvement
14 12 (6.70%) Mathematics
14 12 (6.70%) Physics
14 12 (6.70%) Problem-Solving
14 12 (6.70%) Stakeholder Management
15 11 (6.15%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 13 (7.26%) C++
2 12 (6.70%) TypeScript
3 11 (6.15%) Rust
4 10 (5.59%) Python
5 8 (4.47%) C#
6 7 (3.91%) Java
7 6 (3.35%) C
7 6 (3.35%) SQL
8 5 (2.79%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.56%) Go
9 1 (0.56%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (18.99%) Degree
2 31 (17.32%) BPSS Clearance
3 20 (11.17%) Security Cleared
4 16 (8.94%) SC Cleared
5 14 (7.82%) DV Cleared
6 12 (6.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (6.15%) Chartered Engineer
8 5 (2.79%) Master's Degree
9 2 (1.12%) DBS Check
9 2 (1.12%) HNC
9 2 (1.12%) RIBA
10 1 (0.56%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.79%) QA
2 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 15288
System Software
1 22 (12.29%) Docker
2 1 (0.56%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 23 (12.85%) Kubernetes
2 22 (12.29%) Terraform
3 14 (7.82%) Ansible
Vendors
1 3 (1.68%) Databricks
2 2 (1.12%) Google
2 2 (1.12%) IBM
3 1 (0.56%) Microsoft