Principal Software Engineer Job Trends

Principal Software Engineer
UK

The median Principal Software Engineer salary in the UK is £97,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 October 2025.

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

6 months to
20 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 604 565 684
Rank change year-on-year -39 +119 +128
Permanent jobs requiring a Principal Software Engineer 57 188 62
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.27% 0.11%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.29% 0.12%
Number of salaries quoted 42 133 42
10th Percentile £68,075 £67,500 £63,000
25th Percentile £72,500 £75,000 £70,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £97,500 £95,000 £78,750
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% +20.63% -1.56%
75th Percentile £113,438 £116,250 £95,938
90th Percentile £124,375 £147,500 £114,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £80,000 £77,000
% change year-on-year - +3.90% +9.82%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 43,834 65,924 53,780
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.78% 95.35% 95.62%
Number of salaries quoted 25,839 37,667 41,567
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £32,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,254 £43,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £56,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% -6.67% -
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £93,750 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £45,000 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -10.00% -4.76% -

Principal Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Principal Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Principal Software Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

Principal Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Principal Software Engineer over the 6 months to 20 October 2025.

Salary histogram for Principal Software Engineer in the UK

Principal Software Engineer
Top 13 Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 20 October 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
England -26 52 £100,000 +5.26% 51
UK excluding London +2 36 £80,000 - 47
London +16 21 £112,500 +4.65% 19
Work from Home -9 15 £95,000 -11.63% 27
South East +18 11 £68,000 -9.33% 17
South West +32 9 £100,000 +25.00% 9
East of England +6 5 £100,000 +60.00% 2
North West +15 4 £90,000 +12.50% 8
North of England +6 4 £90,000 +20.00% 11
Wales +18 3 £75,900 -24.10%
East Midlands +17 2 £75,000 -21.05%
Midlands +16 2 £75,000 +3.45% 1
Scotland -13 2 £75,000 - 8

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

For the 6 months to 20 October 2025, Principal Software 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 Software Engineer in the job title.

1 56 (98.25%) Software Engineering
2 22 (38.60%) Agile
2 22 (38.60%) AWS
2 22 (38.60%) Microservices
3 17 (29.82%) Computer Science
3 17 (29.82%) Kubernetes
3 17 (29.82%) React
4 15 (26.32%) CI/CD
4 15 (26.32%) Degree
4 15 (26.32%) Kafka
5 13 (22.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (22.81%) Java
5 13 (22.81%) Mentoring
6 12 (21.05%) Ada
6 12 (21.05%) Ada 95
6 12 (21.05%) Chartered Engineer
6 12 (21.05%) Configuration Management
6 12 (21.05%) ISO/IEC 12207
6 12 (21.05%) TypeScript
6 12 (21.05%) UML
6 12 (21.05%) Waterfall
7 10 (17.54%) Coaching
7 10 (17.54%) Containerisation
7 10 (17.54%) Docker
7 10 (17.54%) Event-Driven
8 9 (15.79%) Architectural Patterns
8 9 (15.79%) JavaScript
8 9 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
8 9 (15.79%) Python
8 9 (15.79%) Security Cleared

Principal Software 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 3 (5.26%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.75%) Simulink
Cloud Services
1 22 (38.60%) AWS
2 7 (12.28%) GCP
3 6 (10.53%) Amazon EKS
4 4 (7.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 4 (7.02%) Amazon MSK
4 4 (7.02%) Amazon OpenSearch
4 4 (7.02%) Azure
5 2 (3.51%) Amazon Bedrock
5 2 (3.51%) Amazon EventBridge
5 2 (3.51%) Amazon Kinesis
5 2 (3.51%) Amazon SQS
5 2 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (3.51%) AWS Step Functions
5 2 (3.51%) Azure AKS
5 2 (3.51%) Cloud Computing
5 2 (3.51%) Serverless
6 1 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (1.75%) Cloudflare
6 1 (1.75%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.51%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (10.53%) MongoDB
2 4 (7.02%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (5.26%) NoSQL
4 2 (3.51%) DynamoDB
5 1 (1.75%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 8 (14.04%) Git
2 5 (8.77%) JIRA
3 4 (7.02%) Cypress.io
3 4 (7.02%) Jenkins
4 2 (3.51%) Ant
4 2 (3.51%) Plastic SCM
4 2 (3.51%) SonarQube
4 2 (3.51%) webpack
5 1 (1.75%) GitLab
General
1 8 (14.04%) Finance
2 6 (10.53%) Banking
3 4 (7.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4 (7.02%) Law
3 4 (7.02%) Marketing
4 2 (3.51%) Retail
5 1 (1.75%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.75%) Automotive
5 1 (1.75%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.75%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (29.82%) React
2 15 (26.32%) Kafka
3 9 (15.79%) Spring
3 9 (15.79%) Spring Boot
4 8 (14.04%) RESTful
5 6 (10.53%) Jest
6 5 (8.77%) Micronaut
6 5 (8.77%) Node.js
7 4 (7.02%) .NET
7 4 (7.02%) Quarkus
7 4 (7.02%) Redux
8 3 (5.26%) Drools
8 3 (5.26%) GraphQL
8 3 (5.26%) OAuth
8 3 (5.26%) OAuth2
8 3 (5.26%) OpenID
9 2 (3.51%) HTML5
9 2 (3.51%) LESS
9 2 (3.51%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (3.51%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 22 (38.60%) Cloud Native
2 15 (26.32%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (7.02%) Algorithms
3 4 (7.02%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (3.51%) Data Structures
4 2 (3.51%) Derivative
4 2 (3.51%) Equities
4 2 (3.51%) Fixed Income
4 2 (3.51%) Product Ownership
4 2 (3.51%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.75%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.75%) PKI
5 1 (1.75%) Renewable Energy
5 1 (1.75%) Self-Driving Car
Operating Systems
1 2 (3.51%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (98.25%) Software Engineering
2 22 (38.60%) Agile
2 22 (38.60%) Microservices
3 17 (29.82%) Computer Science
4 15 (26.32%) CI/CD
5 13 (22.81%) Mentoring
6 12 (21.05%) Configuration Management
6 12 (21.05%) UML
6 12 (21.05%) Waterfall
7 10 (17.54%) Coaching
7 10 (17.54%) Containerisation
7 10 (17.54%) Event-Driven
8 9 (15.79%) Architectural Patterns
8 9 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
9 8 (14.04%) AI
9 8 (14.04%) Collaborative Culture
9 8 (14.04%) DevOps
10 6 (10.53%) Fintech
10 6 (10.53%) Full-Stack Development
10 6 (10.53%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 13 (22.81%) Java
2 12 (21.05%) Ada
2 12 (21.05%) Ada 95
2 12 (21.05%) TypeScript
3 9 (15.79%) JavaScript
3 9 (15.79%) Python
4 4 (7.02%) C#
4 4 (7.02%) C++
5 2 (3.51%) SQL
6 1 (1.75%) C
6 1 (1.75%) MATLAB
6 1 (1.75%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 15 (26.32%) Degree
2 13 (22.81%) BPSS Clearance
3 12 (21.05%) Chartered Engineer
4 9 (15.79%) Security Cleared
5 5 (8.77%) DV Cleared
6 4 (7.02%) SC Cleared
7 2 (3.51%) AWS Certification
7 2 (3.51%) AWS Certified Developer
7 2 (3.51%) Master's Degree
7 2 (3.51%) PhD
8 1 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (21.05%) ISO/IEC 12207
2 2 (3.51%) GDPR
2 2 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (3.51%) PCI DSS
2 2 (3.51%) QA
2 2 (3.51%) SOC 2
System Software
1 10 (17.54%) Docker
Systems Management
1 17 (29.82%) Kubernetes
2 4 (7.02%) Kibana
2 4 (7.02%) Terraform
3 2 (3.51%) Ansible
3 2 (3.51%) Progress Chef
3 2 (3.51%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (1.75%) Istio
Vendors
1 2 (3.51%) ForgeRock
1 2 (3.51%) Okta
1 2 (3.51%) OpenAI
1 2 (3.51%) Ping Identity