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 9 April 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 671 632 665
Rank change year-on-year -39 +33 +212
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Data Engineer 28 4 199
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.034% 0.010% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.037% 0.011% 0.23%
Number of salaries quoted 18 4 14
10th Percentile £74,500 £68,250 £62,500
25th Percentile £82,438 £91,875 £66,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £120,000 £96,250
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% +24.68% -19.79%
75th Percentile £96,250 £135,000 £110,313
90th Percentile £100,000 - £114,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £55,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +63.64% -15.38% -3.70%

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 76,620 36,654 87,216
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 89.66% 94.54%
Number of salaries quoted 49,282 23,303 65,248
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,734
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -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 9 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Principal Data Engineer in the UK

Principal Data Engineer
Top 10 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 9 April 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 -42 20 £90,000 -25.00% 8
UK excluding London -54 16 £90,000 +63.64% 7
North of England -64 11 £90,000 +63.64% 2
Work from Home +17 8 £90,000 -30.77% 1
North West -27 6 £91,250 +65.91% 1
London -7 5 £90,000 -30.77% 3
Yorkshire - 5 £79,000 -
South East - 2 - - 2
South West - 2 £100,000 -
Scotland - 1 £100,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 9 April 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 23 (82.14%) Python
2 22 (78.57%) SQL
3 21 (75.00%) Data Engineering
4 17 (60.71%) Mentoring
5 16 (57.14%) Data Lake
5 16 (57.14%) Data Pipeline
6 15 (53.57%) GCP
6 15 (53.57%) Google
7 14 (50.00%) Technical Leadership
8 13 (46.43%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (42.86%) BigQuery
9 12 (42.86%) CI/CD
9 12 (42.86%) Cost Control
9 12 (42.86%) Data Governance
9 12 (42.86%) Data Quality
9 12 (42.86%) Semantic Layer
10 11 (39.29%) Batch Management
10 11 (39.29%) Coaching
10 11 (39.29%) Data Modelling
11 10 (35.71%) Agile
11 10 (35.71%) Azure
12 9 (32.14%) Data Ingestion
12 9 (32.14%) DBS Check
12 9 (32.14%) Scrum
12 9 (32.14%) SDLC
13 8 (28.57%) Analytics
13 8 (28.57%) Platform Engineering
14 7 (25.00%) Collaborative Working
14 7 (25.00%) Databricks
14 7 (25.00%) Domain-Driven Design

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 13 (46.43%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (7.14%) Apache Spark
3 1 (3.57%) Apache
Cloud Services
1 15 (53.57%) GCP
2 10 (35.71%) Azure
3 5 (17.86%) AWS
3 5 (17.86%) Azure Data Factory
4 4 (14.29%) dbt
4 4 (14.29%) Microsoft Purview
5 2 (7.14%) Power Platform
6 1 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (3.57%) AWS Step Functions
6 1 (3.57%) Azure Stack
6 1 (3.57%) Cloud Composer
6 1 (3.57%) Serverless
6 1 (3.57%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (57.14%) Data Lake
2 12 (42.86%) BigQuery
2 12 (42.86%) Semantic Layer
3 5 (17.86%) Metadata
4 3 (10.71%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (7.14%) Big Data
5 2 (7.14%) Power BI
6 1 (3.57%) Airbyte
6 1 (3.57%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (3.57%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (3.57%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (3.57%) Data Hub
6 1 (3.57%) Delta Lake
6 1 (3.57%) DynamoDB
6 1 (3.57%) NoSQL
6 1 (3.57%) Parquet
6 1 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (3.57%) Presto
6 1 (3.57%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 2 (7.14%) GitLab
2 1 (3.57%) Git
General
1 10 (35.71%) Social Skills
2 7 (25.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3 (10.71%) Public Sector
4 2 (7.14%) Finance
5 1 (3.57%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (14.29%) PySpark
2 1 (3.57%) JSON
2 1 (3.57%) Kafka
2 1 (3.57%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 7 (25.00%) Distributed Systems
1 7 (25.00%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (14.29%) Cloud Native
3 1 (3.57%) Algorithms
3 1 (3.57%) Public Cloud
3 1 (3.57%) Replication
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (75.00%) Data Engineering
2 17 (60.71%) Mentoring
3 16 (57.14%) Data Pipeline
4 14 (50.00%) Technical Leadership
5 12 (42.86%) CI/CD
5 12 (42.86%) Cost Control
5 12 (42.86%) Data Governance
6 11 (39.29%) Batch Management
6 11 (39.29%) Coaching
6 11 (39.29%) Data Modelling
7 10 (35.71%) Agile
8 9 (32.14%) Data Ingestion
8 9 (32.14%) Scrum
8 9 (32.14%) SDLC
9 8 (28.57%) Analytics
9 8 (28.57%) Platform Engineering
10 7 (25.00%) Machine Learning
10 7 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
10 7 (25.00%) Process Improvement
10 7 (25.00%) Product Thinking
Programming Languages
1 23 (82.14%) Python
2 22 (78.57%) SQL
3 4 (14.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (32.14%) DBS Check
2 1 (3.57%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (42.86%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (14.29%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (14.29%) Kubernetes
1 4 (14.29%) Terraform
Vendors
1 15 (53.57%) Google
2 7 (25.00%) Databricks
3 5 (17.86%) Microsoft