Principal Engineer Contracts

Principal Engineer
UK

The median Principal Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 April 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 433 449 609
Rank change year-on-year +16 +160 +179
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Engineer 95 140 101
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.32% 0.32% 0.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.35% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 26 52
10th Percentile £425 £519 £464
25th Percentile £500 £525 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £725
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -17.24% +20.83%
75th Percentile £638 £738 £788
90th Percentile £725 £800 £873
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £550 £608
% change year-on-year +4.55% -9.47% +5.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 101 17
10th Percentile £48.54 £48.75 £51.89
25th Percentile £59.81 £54.75 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.75 £67.50 £83.31
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -18.98% +57.68%
75th Percentile £78.15 £76.86 £83.40
90th Percentile £82.77 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £67.50 £83.31
% change year-on-year +1.85% -18.98% +55.88%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,361 40,554 57,044
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 92.76% 94.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,913 26,488 39,785
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,014 2,627 1,621
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.86 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.25 £19.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -22.22% +95.65%
75th Percentile £63.00 £60.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £37.18 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.67% -12.52% +117.95%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 23 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Principal Engineer over the 6 months to 23 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Principal Engineer in the UK

Principal Engineer
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 23 April 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +31 89 £540 -10.00% 624
London +85 52 £540 -25.52% 220
UK excluding London -9 39 £575 +4.55% 434
Work from Home +53 31 £513 -15.11% 267
South West +42 12 £575 - 63
East of England +9 10 - - 81
North West +12 8 £625 +19.05% 93
North of England +10 8 £625 +19.05% 122
South East +22 7 £500 -35.48% 90
Midlands +10 3 £75 -86.36% 59
Scotland +7 2 - - 22
East Midlands - 2 £75 - 16
West Midlands +2 1 - - 41
Wales - 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 23 April 2025, Principal Engineer contract 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 contract job ads featuring Principal Engineer in the job title.

1 27 (28.42%) Python
2 26 (27.37%) CI/CD
3 25 (26.32%) Social Skills
3 25 (26.32%) Azure
4 22 (23.16%) Security Cleared
4 22 (23.16%) Agile
4 22 (23.16%) Problem-Solving
5 21 (22.11%) Software Engineering
6 20 (21.05%) SC Cleared
6 20 (21.05%) DevOps
7 19 (20.00%) Cisco
8 18 (18.95%) AWS
9 17 (17.89%) Degree
10 16 (16.84%) SolarWinds
10 16 (16.84%) Migration
10 16 (16.84%) VPN
10 16 (16.84%) Linux
11 15 (15.79%) Kubernetes
11 15 (15.79%) Network Monitoring
12 12 (12.63%) Mentoring
12 12 (12.63%) ZABBIX
12 12 (12.63%) Broadband
12 12 (12.63%) CCIE
12 12 (12.63%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (12.63%) MPLS
12 12 (12.63%) Terraform
12 12 (12.63%) Systems Engineering
12 12 (12.63%) Project Delivery
13 11 (11.58%) OSPF
13 11 (11.58%) BGP

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 5 (5.26%) Confluence
1 5 (5.26%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.11%) Apache
2 2 (2.11%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.11%) BizTalk Server
3 1 (1.05%) WinCC
Applications
1 3 (3.16%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (5.26%) Teamcenter
2 2 (2.11%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 25 (26.32%) Azure
2 18 (18.95%) AWS
3 6 (6.32%) GitHub
4 5 (5.26%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (4.21%) AWS Lambda
5 4 (4.21%) GCP
5 4 (4.21%) Serverless
6 3 (3.16%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (3.16%) Azure AKS
6 3 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (2.11%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (2.11%) Entra ID
7 2 (2.11%) SaaS
8 1 (1.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (1.05%) Azure Storage
8 1 (1.05%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 16 (16.84%) VPN
2 12 (12.63%) Broadband
2 12 (12.63%) MPLS
3 11 (11.58%) BGP
3 11 (11.58%) IPv6
3 11 (11.58%) OSPF
4 10 (10.53%) Cisco Firepower
4 10 (10.53%) Firewall
5 8 (8.42%) Multicast
6 6 (6.32%) Network Security
7 5 (5.26%) GPON
8 4 (4.21%) Cisco ASA
8 4 (4.21%) Cisco ISE
8 4 (4.21%) IPsec
8 4 (4.21%) TACACS
9 3 (3.16%) Ethernet
9 3 (3.16%) TCP/IP
10 2 (2.11%) DHCP
10 2 (2.11%) DNS
10 2 (2.11%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.26%) NoSQL
2 4 (4.21%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 3 (3.16%) Big Data
3 3 (3.16%) OLAP
3 3 (3.16%) OLTP
3 3 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.16%) SAP BW
3 3 (3.16%) SAP Data Services
3 3 (3.16%) SAP HANA
4 2 (2.11%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (2.11%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (2.11%) Delta Lake
4 2 (2.11%) MariaDB
5 1 (1.05%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.05%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 4 (4.21%) Git
1 4 (4.21%) Rational DOORS
2 2 (2.11%) GitLab
2 2 (2.11%) Jenkins
2 2 (2.11%) Visual Studio
3 1 (1.05%) Eclipse
3 1 (1.05%) NetBeans
General
1 25 (26.32%) Social Skills
2 9 (9.47%) Finance
3 7 (7.37%) Presentation Skills
4 6 (6.32%) Banking
5 5 (5.26%) Public Sector
6 4 (4.21%) Aerospace
6 4 (4.21%) Front Office
6 4 (4.21%) Telecoms
7 3 (3.16%) Electronics
8 2 (2.11%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (2.11%) Back Office
8 2 (2.11%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.05%) Automotive
9 1 (1.05%) Games
9 1 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.05%) Manufacturing
9 1 (1.05%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.26%) Kafka
1 5 (5.26%) Web Services
2 4 (4.21%) .NET
2 4 (4.21%) AngularJS
2 4 (4.21%) RESTful
3 3 (3.16%) CSS
3 3 (3.16%) HTML
3 3 (3.16%) React
4 2 (2.11%) .NET Core
4 2 (2.11%) Blazor
4 2 (2.11%) CSS3
4 2 (2.11%) FHIR
4 2 (2.11%) GraphQL
4 2 (2.11%) HTML5
4 2 (2.11%) Jest
4 2 (2.11%) JSON
4 2 (2.11%) Node.js
4 2 (2.11%) OAuth
4 2 (2.11%) OAuth2
4 2 (2.11%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.37%) Algorithms
1 7 (7.37%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (5.26%) Management Information System
3 4 (4.21%) Hedge funds
3 4 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.16%) Educational Technology
5 2 (2.11%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.11%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.11%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.11%) FPGA
5 2 (2.11%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.11%) PCIe
5 2 (2.11%) Private Cloud
5 2 (2.11%) Security Posture
5 2 (2.11%) TWAP
5 2 (2.11%) Verilog
5 2 (2.11%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 16 (16.84%) Linux
2 8 (8.42%) Windows
3 6 (6.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (4.21%) Windows Server
5 3 (3.16%) CentOS
5 3 (3.16%) Ubuntu
6 2 (2.11%) SUSE
6 2 (2.11%) VxWorks
7 1 (1.05%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (27.37%) CI/CD
2 22 (23.16%) Agile
2 22 (23.16%) Problem-Solving
3 21 (22.11%) Software Engineering
4 20 (21.05%) DevOps
5 16 (16.84%) Migration
6 15 (15.79%) Network Monitoring
7 12 (12.63%) Mentoring
7 12 (12.63%) Project Delivery
7 12 (12.63%) Systems Engineering
8 10 (10.53%) Microservices
8 10 (10.53%) Validation
9 9 (9.47%) Containerisation
10 8 (8.42%) Design Patterns
10 8 (8.42%) Test Automation
10 8 (8.42%) Verification and Validation
11 7 (7.37%) Artificial Intelligence
11 7 (7.37%) Low Latency
11 7 (7.37%) Risk Management
11 7 (7.37%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 27 (28.42%) Python
2 10 (10.53%) JavaScript
3 8 (8.42%) SQL
4 7 (7.37%) C++
4 7 (7.37%) Rust
5 6 (6.32%) C#
5 6 (6.32%) Java
6 5 (5.26%) MATLAB
6 5 (5.26%) TypeScript
7 4 (4.21%) C
7 4 (4.21%) Go
7 4 (4.21%) PowerShell
8 3 (3.16%) Kotlin
8 3 (3.16%) T-SQL
9 2 (2.11%) Bash
9 2 (2.11%) Perl
9 2 (2.11%) PL/SQL
9 2 (2.11%) SystemVerilog
10 1 (1.05%) Tcl
10 1 (1.05%) VB
Qualifications
1 22 (23.16%) Security Cleared
2 20 (21.05%) SC Cleared
3 17 (17.89%) Degree
4 12 (12.63%) CCIE
4 12 (12.63%) Cisco Certification
5 5 (5.26%) CCIE Service Provider
6 2 (2.11%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.11%) RIBA
7 1 (1.05%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.05%) CCIE Security
7 1 (1.05%) CESG Certified Professional
7 1 (1.05%) Chartered Engineer
7 1 (1.05%) CISSP
7 1 (1.05%) HNC
7 1 (1.05%) HND
7 1 (1.05%) Master's Degree
7 1 (1.05%) RHCE
7 1 (1.05%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.21%) QA
1 4 (4.21%) SLA
2 2 (2.11%) DICOM
2 2 (2.11%) DO-254
2 2 (2.11%) HL7
2 2 (2.11%) NCSC
2 2 (2.11%) NIST
2 2 (2.11%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.05%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.05%) AUTOSAR
3 1 (1.05%) GDPR
3 1 (1.05%) IEC 61508
3 1 (1.05%) MISRA
3 1 (1.05%) MISRA C
3 1 (1.05%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 9 (9.47%) Docker
2 4 (4.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (2.11%) Firmware
4 1 (1.05%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 15 (15.79%) Kubernetes
2 12 (12.63%) Terraform
2 12 (12.63%) ZABBIX
3 9 (9.47%) Ansible
4 3 (3.16%) Nagios
4 3 (3.16%) Puppet
5 2 (2.11%) Failover Clustering
5 2 (2.11%) Progress Chef
5 2 (2.11%) Red Hat Satellite
6 1 (1.05%) Functional Safety
6 1 (1.05%) Graylog
6 1 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (20.00%) Cisco
2 16 (16.84%) SolarWinds
3 6 (6.32%) Red Hat
4 5 (5.26%) Microsoft
4 5 (5.26%) Nokia
4 5 (5.26%) VMware
5 4 (4.21%) Oracle
5 4 (4.21%) SAP
6 2 (2.11%) Altera
6 2 (2.11%) BT
6 2 (2.11%) Databricks
6 2 (2.11%) Microsemi
6 2 (2.11%) MuleSoft
6 2 (2.11%) Wind River
6 2 (2.11%) Xilinx
7 1 (1.05%) Actel
7 1 (1.05%) Confluent
7 1 (1.05%) Dynatrace
7 1 (1.05%) Ping Identity
7 1 (1.05%) Splunk