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 4 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
4 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 285 501 406
Rank change year-on-year +216 -95 +115
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 1,000 601 1,379
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 1.02% 0.58% 0.88%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.07% 0.63% 0.92%
Number of salaries quoted 392 436 442
10th Percentile £57,750 £55,500 £60,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £66,250 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £83,500 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -1.76% +21.43%
75th Percentile £94,063 £115,000 £99,688
90th Percentile £115,000 £150,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £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 93,212 94,769 150,357
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.62% 91.51% 96.09%
Number of salaries quoted 66,814 59,630 85,382
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 £96,225
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 4 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 4 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 +176 847 £80,000 -5.33% 326
UK excluding London +206 763 £70,000 -3.45% 271
Work from Home +1 200 £85,000 -5.56% 114
London +54 178 £96,000 -10.70% 73
North of England +98 158 £65,000 -13.33% 68
South West +90 151 £70,000 -12.50% 46
South East +30 143 £75,000 +7.14% 73
Midlands +102 115 £75,000 -9.09% 17
Scotland +15 97 £67,500 -20.59% 11
East of England +89 82 £77,500 +6.90% 57
North West +57 82 £65,000 -7.14% 63
West Midlands +66 63 £70,000 -36.36% 11
Yorkshire +100 56 £65,000 -18.75% 5
East Midlands +24 52 £85,000 +3.03% 6
North East +6 20 - -
Wales +16 15 £60,000 +34.33% 2
Northern Ireland +25 2 £80,000 +14.29% 6

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 252 (25.20%) Problem-Solving
2 250 (25.00%) Agile
3 247 (24.70%) Google
4 227 (22.70%) Software Engineering
5 224 (22.40%) Data Science
6 218 (21.80%) Mentoring
7 217 (21.70%) GCP
8 193 (19.30%) Data Engineering
8 193 (19.30%) DevOps
9 186 (18.60%) Analytical Skills
10 178 (17.80%) Self-Motivation
11 177 (17.70%) Data Pipeline
11 177 (17.70%) Roadmaps
12 175 (17.50%) Platform Engineering
13 172 (17.20%) BigQuery
14 168 (16.80%) Looker
15 167 (16.70%) Change Management
16 164 (16.40%) Technical Leadership
17 161 (16.10%) DataOps
17 161 (16.10%) GDPR
18 155 (15.50%) Technology Roadmap
19 152 (15.20%) AWS
20 138 (13.80%) Degree
21 109 (10.90%) Social Skills
22 107 (10.70%) Systems Engineering
23 98 (9.80%) Java
24 91 (9.10%) Python
25 85 (8.50%) Security Cleared
26 62 (6.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
27 61 (6.10%) 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 (3.10%) Apache Spark
2 10 (1.00%) Confluence
3 6 (0.60%) IIS
3 6 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.60%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.40%) Apache
5 2 (0.20%) JBoss
6 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.10%) CMS
6 1 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.50%) Simulink
2 5 (0.50%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 3 (0.30%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 217 (21.70%) GCP
2 152 (15.20%) AWS
3 58 (5.80%) Azure
4 44 (4.40%) SaaS
5 42 (4.20%) Dropbox
5 42 (4.20%) Google Drive
5 42 (4.20%) OneDrive
6 28 (2.80%) Amazon S3
7 26 (2.60%) Amazon SQS
8 23 (2.30%) Google Docs
8 23 (2.30%) Lucidchart
8 23 (2.30%) Miro
8 23 (2.30%) Slack
9 19 (1.90%) Serverless
10 18 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (0.80%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (0.60%) Amazon SageMaker
12 6 (0.60%) Azure Machine Learning
12 6 (0.60%) Datadog
13 4 (0.40%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.60%) Internet
1 16 (1.60%) LAN
1 16 (1.60%) WAN
2 14 (1.40%) Wireless
3 7 (0.70%) Firewall
4 6 (0.60%) TETRA
5 5 (0.50%) 4G
5 5 (0.50%) Bluetooth
5 5 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.40%) MPLS
6 4 (0.40%) Network Security
7 3 (0.30%) BGP
7 3 (0.30%) IGMP
7 3 (0.30%) IPv6
7 3 (0.30%) OSPF
7 3 (0.30%) RIP
7 3 (0.30%) SNMP
7 3 (0.30%) VLAN
7 3 (0.30%) VoIP
7 3 (0.30%) VRRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (17.20%) BigQuery
2 168 (16.80%) Looker
3 30 (3.00%) Big Data
4 29 (2.90%) Hadoop
5 26 (2.60%) Elasticsearch
5 26 (2.60%) Redis
6 23 (2.30%) Scylla
7 11 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (0.90%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.50%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.40%) Apache Hive
10 4 (0.40%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.30%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (0.30%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (0.20%) HBase
12 2 (0.20%) MySQL
12 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
13 1 (0.10%) Amazon Redshift
13 1 (0.10%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (1.60%) Rational DOORS
2 10 (1.00%) JIRA
3 5 (0.50%) Cypress.io
3 5 (0.50%) Git
4 4 (0.40%) Selenium
5 3 (0.30%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.30%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.30%) Postman
5 3 (0.30%) Rational Rhapsody
5 3 (0.30%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.20%) Subversion
7 1 (0.10%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.10%) JUnit
7 1 (0.10%) MLflow
7 1 (0.10%) TeamCity
General
1 186 (18.60%) Analytical Skills
2 109 (10.90%) Social Skills
3 62 (6.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 58 (5.80%) Finance
5 41 (4.10%) Aerospace
6 39 (3.90%) Manufacturing
7 34 (3.40%) Marketing
8 30 (3.00%) Law
9 29 (2.90%) Banking
9 29 (2.90%) Electronics
10 27 (2.70%) Games
10 27 (2.70%) Telecoms
11 23 (2.30%) Financial Institution
12 21 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
13 20 (2.00%) Investment Banking
14 16 (1.60%) Legal
15 13 (1.30%) Automotive
16 12 (1.20%) Public Sector
17 9 (0.90%) Military
18 8 (0.80%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.30%) Kafka
2 34 (3.40%) GraphQL
3 28 (2.80%) Spring Boot
4 27 (2.70%) Spring
5 23 (2.30%) .NET
6 20 (2.00%) React
7 18 (1.80%) Node.js
8 10 (1.00%) PyTorch
9 8 (0.80%) scikit-learn
9 8 (0.80%) TensorFlow
10 7 (0.70%) .NET Core
11 6 (0.60%) MXNet
12 4 (0.40%) RESTful
13 3 (0.30%) Apache NiFi
13 3 (0.30%) CSS
13 3 (0.30%) Playwright
13 3 (0.30%) WinForms
14 2 (0.20%) DPDK
14 2 (0.20%) eBPF
14 2 (0.20%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 178 (17.80%) Self-Motivation
2 46 (4.60%) Algorithms
3 43 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 42 (4.20%) iPad
5 32 (3.20%) Data Structures
6 19 (1.90%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.40%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.30%) FPGA
9 11 (1.10%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.00%) IoT
11 9 (0.90%) Product Ownership
11 9 (0.90%) Renewable Energy
12 7 (0.70%) Embedded Systems
13 6 (0.60%) Mobile App
14 5 (0.50%) Hackathon
15 4 (0.40%) Distributed Systems
16 3 (0.30%) Greenfield Project
16 3 (0.30%) Smart City
16 3 (0.30%) VHDL
17 2 (0.20%) Digital Currency
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.30%) Linux
2 21 (2.10%) Windows
3 9 (0.90%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.70%) Android
5 5 (0.50%) Embedded Linux
5 5 (0.50%) Unix
6 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.10%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (25.20%) Problem-Solving
2 250 (25.00%) Agile
3 227 (22.70%) Software Engineering
4 224 (22.40%) Data Science
5 218 (21.80%) Mentoring
6 193 (19.30%) Data Engineering
6 193 (19.30%) DevOps
7 177 (17.70%) Data Pipeline
7 177 (17.70%) Roadmaps
8 175 (17.50%) Platform Engineering
9 167 (16.70%) Change Management
10 164 (16.40%) Technical Leadership
11 161 (16.10%) DataOps
12 155 (15.50%) Technology Roadmap
13 107 (10.70%) Systems Engineering
14 61 (6.10%) Customer Service
15 59 (5.90%) Analytics
15 59 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
16 49 (4.90%) Data Modelling
17 48 (4.80%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 98 (9.80%) Java
2 91 (9.10%) Python
3 37 (3.70%) Scala
4 32 (3.20%) Go
5 30 (3.00%) SQL
6 27 (2.70%) Kotlin
7 26 (2.60%) Bash
7 26 (2.60%) C
8 25 (2.50%) C#
9 24 (2.40%) TypeScript
10 16 (1.60%) C++
11 9 (0.90%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.60%) Embedded C
12 6 (0.60%) MATLAB
13 4 (0.40%) Assembly Language
13 4 (0.40%) Ruby
13 4 (0.40%) Swift
14 3 (0.30%) R
15 2 (0.20%) Perl
15 2 (0.20%) PHP
Qualifications
1 138 (13.80%) Degree
2 85 (8.50%) Security Cleared
3 51 (5.10%) Master's Degree
4 39 (3.90%) Chartered Engineer
5 29 (2.90%) SC Cleared
6 19 (1.90%) DV Cleared
7 16 (1.60%) HNC
8 14 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.30%) MCT
10 3 (0.30%) Sun Certification
11 2 (0.20%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.20%) HND
12 1 (0.10%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (16.10%) GDPR
2 10 (1.00%) QA
3 9 (0.90%) Data Quality
4 7 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 15288
5 4 (0.40%) IEC 62304
5 4 (0.40%) ISO 13485
6 2 (0.20%) Def Stans
6 2 (0.20%) IEC 61508
6 2 (0.20%) SLA
7 1 (0.10%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.10%) TickIT
System Software
1 24 (2.40%) Firmware
2 13 (1.30%) Docker
3 8 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.80%) Embedded Firmware
4 7 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.60%) Forefront TMG
5 6 (0.60%) Hyper-V
5 6 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
6 4 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.10%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 50 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.70%) Terraform
3 6 (0.60%) SCOM
3 6 (0.60%) WSUS
4 2 (0.20%) Ansible
5 1 (0.10%) Puppet
5 1 (0.10%) Rancher
Vendors
1 247 (24.70%) Google
2 41 (4.10%) EMC
3 33 (3.30%) Dell
4 24 (2.40%) Microsoft
5 16 (1.60%) Fortinet
5 16 (1.60%) Juniper
5 16 (1.60%) Sandvine
6 14 (1.40%) Oracle
7 9 (0.90%) Databricks
8 7 (0.70%) VMware
9 6 (0.60%) Dataiku
9 6 (0.60%) QinetiQ
10 3 (0.30%) Progress
11 2 (0.20%) CheckPoint
11 2 (0.20%) Confluent
11 2 (0.20%) Forcepoint
11 2 (0.20%) ForgeRock
11 2 (0.20%) SAP
11 2 (0.20%) Sitecore
11 2 (0.20%) Temenos