Principal Data Engineer Job Trends

Principal Data Engineer
UK

The median Principal Data Engineer salary in the UK is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 23 August 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 701 667 714
Rank change year-on-year -34 +47 +27
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Data Engineer 85 8 97
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.078% 0.016% 0.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.084% 0.018% 0.12%
Number of salaries quoted 52 8 27
10th Percentile £77,632 £74,875 £62,500
25th Percentile £85,000 £81,250 £65,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% -42.86%
75th Percentile £95,625 £120,000 £98,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £135,000 £104,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £87,000 £82,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +5.45% +17.86% -6.67%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 101,748 44,897 78,977
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.93% 89.88% 95.11%
Number of salaries quoted 69,683 26,626 51,954
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,150 £47,683 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.56% -4.63% -4.76%

Principal Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Principal Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Principal Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Principal Data Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Principal Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Principal Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Principal Data Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Data Engineer over the 6 months to 23 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Principal Data Engineer in the UK

Principal Data Engineer
Top 12 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Data Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 23 August 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
England -48 63 £92,500 +8.82% 10
London -3 34 £95,000 -20.83% 6
UK excluding London -88 31 £87,000 +5.45% 6
North of England -25 23 £88,500 +4.12% 2
Yorkshire - 15 £85,000 - 1
Work from Home -31 11 £87,500 +6.06% 3
North West -5 8 £100,000 +17.65% 1
South East -26 2 - - 4
South West -70 2 - -
Scotland - 2 £54,388 -
East Midlands - 2 £87,000 -
Midlands - 2 £87,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 23 August 2026, Principal Data 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 featuring Principal Data Engineer in the job title.

1 42 (49.41%) Data Engineering
1 42 (49.41%) Technical Leadership
2 32 (37.65%) CI/CD
3 29 (34.12%) SQL
4 28 (32.94%) Mentoring
5 26 (30.59%) GCP
5 26 (30.59%) Python
6 24 (28.24%) Data Modelling
6 24 (28.24%) Data Pipeline
7 22 (25.88%) Agile
8 20 (23.53%) Google
9 19 (22.35%) Data Governance
10 18 (21.18%) Coaching
10 18 (21.18%) Data Ingestion
10 18 (21.18%) Data Lake
11 17 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
12 16 (18.82%) BigQuery
12 16 (18.82%) Data Quality
13 15 (17.65%) Apache Airflow
13 15 (17.65%) Semantic Layer
14 14 (16.47%) Collaborative Working
14 14 (16.47%) Cost Control
15 13 (15.29%) AWS
15 13 (15.29%) Scrum
15 13 (15.29%) SDLC
16 12 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
16 12 (14.12%) DBS Check
16 12 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
16 12 (14.12%) Terraform
17 11 (12.94%) dbt

Principal Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 15 (17.65%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (4.71%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.18%) Apache Solr
Cloud Services
1 26 (30.59%) GCP
2 13 (15.29%) AWS
3 11 (12.94%) dbt
4 9 (10.59%) Azure
5 8 (9.41%) SaaS
5 8 (9.41%) Snowflake
6 5 (5.88%) PaaS
7 4 (4.71%) Cloud Composer
8 2 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (2.35%) Serverless
9 1 (1.18%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (1.18%) Amazon S3
9 1 (1.18%) AWS Step Functions
9 1 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (1.18%) Cloud Functions
9 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.18%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (21.18%) Data Lake
2 16 (18.82%) BigQuery
3 15 (17.65%) Semantic Layer
4 5 (5.88%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (4.71%) Big Data
6 3 (3.53%) OLAP
6 3 (3.53%) OLTP
7 2 (2.35%) Apache Iceberg
7 2 (2.35%) Hadoop
7 2 (2.35%) NoSQL
7 2 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (1.18%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (1.18%) Apache Hudi
8 1 (1.18%) Delta Lake
8 1 (1.18%) DynamoDB
8 1 (1.18%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.18%) Metadata
8 1 (1.18%) Redis
8 1 (1.18%) Trino
Development Applications
1 2 (2.35%) Jenkins
2 1 (1.18%) Git
2 1 (1.18%) GitLab
General
1 17 (20.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 14 (16.47%) Social Skills
3 8 (9.41%) Finance
4 3 (3.53%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (2.35%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.18%) Banking
6 1 (1.18%) Billing
6 1 (1.18%) Front Office
6 1 (1.18%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (14.12%) Terraform
2 2 (2.35%) Apache NiFi
2 2 (2.35%) PySpark
3 1 (1.18%) JSON
3 1 (1.18%) Kafka
3 1 (1.18%) Node.js
3 1 (1.18%) REST
3 1 (1.18%) Spring
3 1 (1.18%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 17 (20.00%) Cloud Native
2 12 (14.12%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (11.76%) Self-Motivation
4 3 (3.53%) Algorithms
4 3 (3.53%) Culture of Ownership
5 1 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.18%) IoT
5 1 (1.18%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.18%) Public Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (49.41%) Data Engineering
1 42 (49.41%) Technical Leadership
2 32 (37.65%) CI/CD
3 28 (32.94%) Mentoring
4 24 (28.24%) Data Modelling
4 24 (28.24%) Data Pipeline
5 22 (25.88%) Agile
6 19 (22.35%) Data Governance
7 18 (21.18%) Coaching
7 18 (21.18%) Data Ingestion
8 17 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
9 14 (16.47%) Collaborative Working
9 14 (16.47%) Cost Control
10 13 (15.29%) Scrum
10 13 (15.29%) SDLC
11 12 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
12 11 (12.94%) Domain-Driven Design
12 11 (12.94%) Product Thinking
13 10 (11.76%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 29 (34.12%) SQL
2 26 (30.59%) Python
3 1 (1.18%) Bicep
3 1 (1.18%) Java
3 1 (1.18%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (14.12%) DBS Check
2 7 (8.24%) Degree
3 3 (3.53%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.53%) Security Cleared
4 2 (2.35%) Azure Certification
4 2 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (2.35%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (18.82%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.35%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.18%) QA
System Software
1 6 (7.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (4.71%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.53%) Ansible
3 1 (1.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 20 (23.53%) Google
2 5 (5.88%) Databricks
3 1 (1.18%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.18%) Oracle