Principal Engineer
UK

The median Principal Engineer salary in the UK is £80,000 per year according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 9 May 2024.

The first table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
9 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 283 499 408
Rank change year-on-year +216 -91 +122
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 1,026 577 1,399
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 1.04% 0.57% 0.89%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 0.62% 0.93%
Number of salaries quoted 419 427 437
10th Percentile £57,500 £56,700 £60,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £66,250 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £84,500 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -0.59% +21.43%
75th Percentile £96,250 £115,000 £98,750
90th Percentile £115,000 £150,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £72,500
% change year-on-year - -3.45% +7.41%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes 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 93,776 92,678 150,788
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.62% 91.45% 96.10%
Number of salaries quoted 67,209 58,362 84,200
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £38,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% - +9.09%
75th Percentile £71,250 £81,250 £78,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £100,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% +5.26%

Principal Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing Principal Engineer.

Salary trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 9 May 2024.

Salary histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 9 May 2024. 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 +202 872 £80,000 -5.88% 324
UK excluding London +235 780 £70,000 - 260
Work from Home +8 204 £85,000 -8.11% 126
London +43 185 £95,000 -11.63% 82
North of England +127 162 £65,000 -13.33% 57
South West +97 156 £70,000 -12.50% 46
South East +25 148 £75,000 +7.14% 67
Midlands +81 118 £75,000 -9.09% 21
Scotland +13 93 £70,000 -17.65% 10
East of England +90 84 £77,500 +6.90% 56
North West +62 84 £65,000 -8.77% 53
West Midlands +64 64 £70,000 -36.36% 13
Yorkshire +109 58 £65,000 -18.75% 4
East Midlands +24 54 £85,000 +3.03% 8
North East +6 20 - -
Wales +8 16 £60,000 +34.33% 4
Northern Ireland +29 3 £90,000 - 8

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 May 2024, Principal 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 featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 253 (24.66%) Problem-Solving
2 250 (24.37%) Agile
3 246 (23.98%) Google
4 240 (23.39%) Software Engineering
5 225 (21.93%) Data Science
6 218 (21.25%) Mentoring
7 216 (21.05%) GCP
8 193 (18.81%) Data Engineering
8 193 (18.81%) DevOps
9 186 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
10 178 (17.35%) Self-Motivation
11 177 (17.25%) Data Pipeline
12 176 (17.15%) Roadmaps
13 175 (17.06%) Platform Engineering
14 172 (16.76%) BigQuery
15 168 (16.37%) Looker
16 163 (15.89%) Technical Leadership
17 162 (15.79%) Change Management
18 161 (15.69%) GDPR
18 161 (15.69%) DataOps
19 154 (15.01%) Technology Roadmap
20 151 (14.72%) AWS
21 141 (13.74%) Degree
22 113 (11.01%) Systems Engineering
23 110 (10.72%) Social Skills
24 99 (9.65%) Security Cleared
25 98 (9.55%) Java
26 91 (8.87%) Python
27 61 (5.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
27 61 (5.95%) Customer Service

Principal Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 31 (3.02%) Apache Spark
2 10 (0.97%) Confluence
3 6 (0.58%) IIS
3 6 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.39%) Apache
5 2 (0.19%) JBoss
6 1 (0.097%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.097%) CMS
6 1 (0.097%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.29%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 216 (21.05%) GCP
2 151 (14.72%) AWS
3 58 (5.65%) Azure
4 44 (4.29%) SaaS
5 42 (4.09%) Dropbox
5 42 (4.09%) Google Drive
5 42 (4.09%) OneDrive
6 28 (2.73%) Amazon S3
7 26 (2.53%) Amazon SQS
8 23 (2.24%) Google Docs
8 23 (2.24%) Lucidchart
8 23 (2.24%) Miro
8 23 (2.24%) Slack
9 19 (1.85%) Serverless
10 18 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (0.58%) Datadog
13 5 (0.49%) Amazon SageMaker
13 5 (0.49%) Azure Machine Learning
14 4 (0.39%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.56%) Internet
1 16 (1.56%) LAN
1 16 (1.56%) WAN
2 14 (1.36%) Wireless
3 7 (0.68%) Firewall
4 6 (0.58%) TETRA
5 5 (0.49%) 4G
5 5 (0.49%) Bluetooth
5 5 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.39%) MPLS
6 4 (0.39%) Network Security
7 3 (0.29%) BGP
7 3 (0.29%) IGMP
7 3 (0.29%) IPv6
7 3 (0.29%) OSPF
7 3 (0.29%) RIP
7 3 (0.29%) SNMP
7 3 (0.29%) VLAN
7 3 (0.29%) VoIP
7 3 (0.29%) VRRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (16.76%) BigQuery
2 168 (16.37%) Looker
3 30 (2.92%) Big Data
4 29 (2.83%) Hadoop
5 26 (2.53%) Elasticsearch
5 26 (2.53%) Redis
6 23 (2.24%) Scylla
7 11 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (0.88%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.49%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.39%) Apache Hive
10 4 (0.39%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (0.29%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (0.19%) HBase
12 2 (0.19%) MySQL
12 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database
13 1 (0.097%) Amazon Redshift
13 1 (0.097%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (1.56%) Rational DOORS
2 10 (0.97%) JIRA
3 5 (0.49%) Cypress.io
3 5 (0.49%) Git
4 4 (0.39%) Selenium
5 3 (0.29%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.29%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.29%) Postman
5 3 (0.29%) Rational Rhapsody
5 3 (0.29%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.19%) Subversion
7 1 (0.097%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.097%) JUnit
7 1 (0.097%) MLflow
7 1 (0.097%) TeamCity
General
1 186 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
2 110 (10.72%) Social Skills
3 61 (5.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 58 (5.65%) Finance
5 44 (4.29%) Aerospace
6 39 (3.80%) Manufacturing
7 34 (3.31%) Marketing
8 33 (3.22%) Law
9 30 (2.92%) Electronics
10 29 (2.83%) Banking
11 27 (2.63%) Games
11 27 (2.63%) Telecoms
12 23 (2.24%) Financial Institution
13 21 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (1.95%) Investment Banking
15 19 (1.85%) Legal
16 13 (1.27%) Automotive
17 11 (1.07%) Public Sector
18 9 (0.88%) Military
19 8 (0.78%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.19%) Kafka
2 34 (3.31%) GraphQL
3 28 (2.73%) Spring Boot
4 27 (2.63%) Spring
5 23 (2.24%) .NET
6 20 (1.95%) React
7 18 (1.75%) Node.js
8 9 (0.88%) PyTorch
9 7 (0.68%) .NET Core
9 7 (0.68%) scikit-learn
9 7 (0.68%) TensorFlow
10 5 (0.49%) MXNet
11 4 (0.39%) RESTful
12 3 (0.29%) Apache NiFi
12 3 (0.29%) CSS
12 3 (0.29%) Playwright
12 3 (0.29%) WinForms
13 2 (0.19%) DPDK
13 2 (0.19%) eBPF
13 2 (0.19%) Micronaut
Miscellaneous
1 178 (17.35%) Self-Motivation
2 43 (4.19%) Cloud Native
3 42 (4.09%) iPad
4 41 (4.00%) Algorithms
5 32 (3.12%) Data Structures
6 19 (1.85%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.36%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.27%) FPGA
9 11 (1.07%) Virtual Team
10 10 (0.97%) IoT
11 9 (0.88%) Product Ownership
12 7 (0.68%) Embedded Systems
13 6 (0.58%) Mobile App
14 5 (0.49%) Hackathon
15 4 (0.39%) Distributed Systems
15 4 (0.39%) Renewable Energy
16 3 (0.29%) Greenfield Project
16 3 (0.29%) Smart City
16 3 (0.29%) VHDL
17 2 (0.19%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.22%) Linux
2 21 (2.05%) Windows
3 9 (0.88%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.68%) Android
5 5 (0.49%) Embedded Linux
5 5 (0.49%) Unix
6 4 (0.39%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.097%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.097%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (24.66%) Problem-Solving
2 250 (24.37%) Agile
3 240 (23.39%) Software Engineering
4 225 (21.93%) Data Science
5 218 (21.25%) Mentoring
6 193 (18.81%) Data Engineering
6 193 (18.81%) DevOps
7 177 (17.25%) Data Pipeline
8 176 (17.15%) Roadmaps
9 175 (17.06%) Platform Engineering
10 163 (15.89%) Technical Leadership
11 162 (15.79%) Change Management
12 161 (15.69%) DataOps
13 154 (15.01%) Technology Roadmap
14 113 (11.01%) Systems Engineering
15 61 (5.95%) Customer Service
16 59 (5.75%) Cybersecurity
17 58 (5.65%) Analytics
18 50 (4.87%) Computer Science
19 49 (4.78%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 98 (9.55%) Java
2 91 (8.87%) Python
3 37 (3.61%) Scala
4 32 (3.12%) Go
5 30 (2.92%) SQL
6 27 (2.63%) Kotlin
7 26 (2.53%) Bash
7 26 (2.53%) C
8 25 (2.44%) C#
9 24 (2.34%) TypeScript
10 16 (1.56%) C++
11 9 (0.88%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.58%) Embedded C
13 4 (0.39%) Assembly Language
13 4 (0.39%) Ruby
13 4 (0.39%) Swift
14 3 (0.29%) R
15 2 (0.19%) Perl
15 2 (0.19%) PHP
16 1 (0.097%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 141 (13.74%) Degree
2 99 (9.65%) Security Cleared
3 53 (5.17%) Master's Degree
4 39 (3.80%) Chartered Engineer
5 31 (3.02%) DV Cleared
6 30 (2.92%) SC Cleared
7 16 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.56%) HNC
8 8 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.29%) MCT
9 3 (0.29%) Sun Certification
10 2 (0.19%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.19%) HND
11 1 (0.097%) CCIE
11 1 (0.097%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.097%) JNCIA
11 1 (0.097%) JNCIS
11 1 (0.097%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (15.69%) GDPR
2 10 (0.97%) QA
3 9 (0.88%) Data Quality
4 7 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 4 (0.39%) IEC 62304
5 4 (0.39%) ISO 13485
6 2 (0.19%) Def Stans
6 2 (0.19%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.19%) SLA
7 1 (0.097%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.097%) TickIT
System Software
1 24 (2.34%) Firmware
2 13 (1.27%) Docker
3 8 (0.78%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.78%) Embedded Firmware
4 7 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.58%) Forefront TMG
5 6 (0.58%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
6 4 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.097%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 50 (4.87%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.56%) Terraform
3 6 (0.58%) SCOM
3 6 (0.58%) WSUS
4 2 (0.19%) Ansible
5 1 (0.097%) Puppet
5 1 (0.097%) Rancher
Vendors
1 246 (23.98%) Google
2 41 (4.00%) EMC
3 33 (3.22%) Dell
4 24 (2.34%) Microsoft
5 16 (1.56%) Fortinet
5 16 (1.56%) Juniper
5 16 (1.56%) Sandvine
6 14 (1.36%) Oracle
7 8 (0.78%) Databricks
8 7 (0.68%) QinetiQ
8 7 (0.68%) VMware
9 5 (0.49%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.29%) Progress
11 2 (0.19%) CheckPoint
11 2 (0.19%) Confluent
11 2 (0.19%) Forcepoint
11 2 (0.19%) ForgeRock
11 2 (0.19%) SAP
11 2 (0.19%) Sitecore
11 2 (0.19%) Temenos