Principal Software Engineer Jobs in the UK excluding London

Principal Software Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Software Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 May 2025.

The table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 408 595 689
Rank change year-on-year +187 +94 -69
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Software Engineer 177 166 67
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.45% 0.23% 0.11%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.50% 0.25% 0.12%
Number of salaries quoted 100 88 54
10th Percentile - £65,000 £47,750
25th Percentile - £67,500 £55,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £77,250 £81,750
Median % change year-on-year -15.86% -5.50% -3.82%
75th Percentile £68,000 £85,625 £86,250
90th Percentile £77,500 £100,000 £94,250
UK median annual salary £67,000 £85,000 £84,500
% change year-on-year -21.18% +0.59% -3.43%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 35,491 67,312 53,678
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.61% 94.80% 89.23%
Number of salaries quoted 18,637 47,638 30,603
10th Percentile £27,250 £26,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £37,574 £35,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,645 £50,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -5.66% +6.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £63,750 £68,750
90th Percentile £77,500 £76,250 £81,250
UK median annual salary £56,500 £52,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +7.62% -12.50% -

Principal Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Principal Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Principal Software Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Software Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing Principal Software Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Salary trend for Principal Software Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Software Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Software Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 May 2025.

Salary histogram for Principal Software Engineer in the UK excluding London

Principal Software Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Software Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 May 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
South East +156 78 £65,000 -13.33% 28
Midlands +127 65 £76,250 -10.29% 4
West Midlands +88 43 £80,000 -13.51% 3
East Midlands +51 22 £72,500 -14.71% 1
Wales +47 11 £65,000 -35.00%
North of England +35 9 £75,000 +15.38% 15
East of England +39 8 £67,000 -13.55% 15
North West +8 8 £75,000 +11.11% 9
Scotland +66 6 £75,000 -25.00% 9
Yorkshire +61 1 - - 3
Principal Software Engineer
UK

Principal Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 13 May 2025, Principal Software Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Principal Software Engineer in the job title.

1 145 (81.92%) Agile
2 119 (67.23%) BPSS Clearance
3 114 (64.41%) Software Engineering
4 89 (50.28%) Degree
5 82 (46.33%) Computer Science
6 80 (45.20%) UML
7 77 (43.50%) Chartered Engineer
8 73 (41.24%) Waterfall
9 67 (37.85%) Aerospace
10 66 (37.29%) Validation
10 66 (37.29%) MATLAB
10 66 (37.29%) Simulink
11 64 (36.16%) Automotive
11 64 (36.16%) Software Testing
11 64 (36.16%) Systems Engineering
12 25 (14.12%) Ada
12 25 (14.12%) Ada 95
13 24 (13.56%) Configuration Management
14 21 (11.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
15 20 (11.30%) C
16 18 (10.17%) Python
17 16 (9.04%) Kubernetes
18 15 (8.47%) C++
19 12 (6.78%) React
19 12 (6.78%) Docker
19 12 (6.78%) Mentoring
19 12 (6.78%) AWS
20 11 (6.21%) Terraform
20 11 (6.21%) CI/CD
21 10 (5.65%) Microservices

Principal Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (0.56%) Confluence
Applications
1 66 (37.29%) Simulink
Cloud Services
1 12 (6.78%) AWS
2 6 (3.39%) Azure
3 3 (1.69%) GCP
4 1 (0.56%) Azure API Management
4 1 (0.56%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (0.56%) Azure Logic Apps
4 1 (0.56%) Cloud Computing
4 1 (0.56%) Firebase
4 1 (0.56%) GitHub
4 1 (0.56%) SaaS
4 1 (0.56%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.52%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (1.69%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (1.69%) Redis
2 3 (1.69%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.13%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.13%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.56%) MySQL
4 1 (0.56%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (3.39%) Git
2 3 (1.69%) Subversion
3 2 (1.13%) GitLab
3 2 (1.13%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.56%) CMake
4 1 (0.56%) JIRA
General
1 67 (37.85%) Aerospace
2 64 (36.16%) Automotive
3 6 (3.39%) Military
4 4 (2.26%) Games
4 4 (2.26%) Law
4 4 (2.26%) Retail
5 3 (1.69%) Electronics
6 1 (0.56%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.56%) Social Skills
6 1 (0.56%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (6.78%) React
2 7 (3.95%) Node.js
3 5 (2.82%) .NET
3 5 (2.82%) Flutter
4 4 (2.26%) Lambda Expressions
5 2 (1.13%) .NET Core
5 2 (1.13%) AngularJS
5 2 (1.13%) CSS
5 2 (1.13%) HTML
5 2 (1.13%) Jest
5 2 (1.13%) Kafka
5 2 (1.13%) React Native
6 1 (0.56%) .NET Framework
6 1 (0.56%) ASP.NET
6 1 (0.56%) CSS3
6 1 (0.56%) Entity Framework
6 1 (0.56%) HTML5
6 1 (0.56%) Redux
6 1 (0.56%) Sass
6 1 (0.56%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 5 (2.82%) Greenfield Project
1 5 (2.82%) Product Ownership
2 4 (2.26%) Cloud Native
3 3 (1.69%) Embedded Systems
4 2 (1.13%) Algorithms
5 1 (0.56%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (0.56%) FPGA
5 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
5 1 (0.56%) Robotics
5 1 (0.56%) Verilog
5 1 (0.56%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.26%) Apple iOS
2 3 (1.69%) Mac OS
3 2 (1.13%) Linux
4 1 (0.56%) Android
4 1 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.56%) VMS
4 1 (0.56%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (81.92%) Agile
2 114 (64.41%) Software Engineering
3 82 (46.33%) Computer Science
4 80 (45.20%) UML
5 73 (41.24%) Waterfall
6 66 (37.29%) Validation
7 64 (36.16%) Software Testing
7 64 (36.16%) Systems Engineering
8 24 (13.56%) Configuration Management
9 12 (6.78%) Mentoring
10 11 (6.21%) CI/CD
11 10 (5.65%) Microservices
12 7 (3.95%) Machine Learning
12 7 (3.95%) Mathematics
12 7 (3.95%) Physics
12 7 (3.95%) Roadmaps
13 6 (3.39%) Collaborative Working
13 6 (3.39%) Problem-Solving
13 6 (3.39%) Software Architecture
13 6 (3.39%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 66 (37.29%) MATLAB
2 25 (14.12%) Ada
2 25 (14.12%) Ada 95
3 20 (11.30%) C
4 18 (10.17%) Python
5 15 (8.47%) C++
6 9 (5.08%) Java
6 9 (5.08%) TypeScript
7 8 (4.52%) C#
8 7 (3.95%) Go
9 6 (3.39%) Perl
9 6 (3.39%) Rust
10 5 (2.82%) JavaScript
10 5 (2.82%) Ruby
11 4 (2.26%) Objective-C
11 4 (2.26%) SQL
12 1 (0.56%) PHP
12 1 (0.56%) R
Qualifications
1 119 (67.23%) BPSS Clearance
2 89 (50.28%) Degree
3 77 (43.50%) Chartered Engineer
4 2 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.56%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (0.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (11.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
2 3 (1.69%) Accessibility
System Software
1 12 (6.78%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (9.04%) Kubernetes
2 11 (6.21%) Terraform
3 2 (1.13%) Ansible
3 2 (1.13%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1 (0.56%) Apple
1 1 (0.56%) Atlassian
1 1 (0.56%) Microsoft
1 1 (0.56%) Red Hat