Principal Engineer Salary in 2025

💰 The median Principal Engineer Salary in 2025 is USD 158,000

✏️ This salary info is based on 20 individual salaries reported during 2025

Submit your salary Download the data

Salary details

The average Principal Engineer salary lies between USD 126,582 and USD 204,500 globally. It represents the overall compensation/gross salary amount for the working year (before deductions like social security, taxes and other contributions), not including equity/stock options or similar benefits.

Job title
Principal Engineer
Experience
all levels
Region
global/worldwide
Salary year
2025
Sample size
20
Top 10%
$ 300,000
Top 25%
$ 204,500
Median
$ 158,000
Bottom 25%
$ 126,582
Bottom 10%
$ 110,300

All data shown are full-time equivalent (FTE) salaries. Part-time salary information has been extrapolated to its FTE value.

Last updated:

Top 20 Job Tags for Principal Engineer roles

The three most common job tag items assiciated with Principal Engineer job listings are Engineering, Python and Machine Learning. Below you find a list of the 20 most occuring job tags in 2025 and the number of open jobs that where associated with them during that period:

Engineering | 282 jobs Python | 233 jobs Machine Learning | 203 jobs Architecture | 202 jobs Computer Science | 177 jobs Security | 149 jobs AWS | 122 jobs Pipelines | 116 jobs Testing | 100 jobs Azure | 100 jobs GCP | 92 jobs Java | 92 jobs Generative AI | 91 jobs SQL | 81 jobs Kubernetes | 80 jobs Research | 77 jobs APIs | 77 jobs LLMs | 72 jobs CI/CD | 68 jobs Docker | 66 jobs

Top 20 Job Perks/Benefits for Principal Engineer roles

The three most common job benefits and perks assiciated with Principal Engineer job listings are Career development, Health care and Salary bonus. Below you find a list of the 20 most occuring job perks or benefits in 2025 and the number of open jobs that where offering them during that period:

Career development | 221 jobs Health care | 122 jobs Salary bonus | 76 jobs Medical leave | 74 jobs Flex hours | 72 jobs Insurance | 71 jobs Equity / stock options | 64 jobs Startup environment | 58 jobs Competitive pay | 49 jobs Team events | 43 jobs Flex vacation | 40 jobs Parental leave | 38 jobs 401(k) matching | 33 jobs Wellness | 29 jobs Relocation support | 24 jobs Transparency | 17 jobs Conferences | 14 jobs Fitness / gym | 11 jobs Fertility benefits | 10 jobs Home office stipend | 9 jobs

Related salaries

Principal Engineer @ $ 158,000 (global) - Senior-level / Expert Details
Principal Engineer @ $ 158,000 (United States) - Senior-level / Expert Details
Principal Engineer @ $ 158,000 (United States) Details

Want to contribute?

📝 Submit your salary info

Enter your own salary data for the current or past work year. It's quite simple and doesn't take more than a minute to fill out.

Go to salary survey

📢 Share our salary survey

Share our "in-less-than-a-minute survey" with others working in the field of AI, ML, Data Science. The more data we have the better for everyone.

💾 Download the data

All collected information will be updated into a public dataset regularly and provided as a download free for anyone to use.

Go to download page

🚀 Search for jobs & talent

If you're thinking about a career change or want to hire fresh talent quickly check out the jobs page.

Go to frontpage

About this project

We collect salary information anonymously from professionals and employers all over the world and make it publicly available for anyone to use, share and play around with.

Our goal is to have open salary data for everyone. So newbies, experienced pros, hiring managers, recruiters and also startup founders or people wanting to switch careers can make better decisions.