Architect Contract Job Trends in England

Architect
UK > England

The median Architect daily rate in England is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 October 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 19 15
Rank change year-on-year +8 -4 +1
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,112 2,470 3,180
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.98% 8.84% 9.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.91% 9.69% 10.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,414 1,652 1,923
10th Percentile £481 £463 £475
25th Percentile £525 £525 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £625
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £706 £713 £738
90th Percentile £788 £788 £812
UK median daily rate £620 £625 £627
% change year-on-year -0.80% -0.32% -3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 11 65
10th Percentile £40.00 £61.25 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £64.38 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.17 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% +3.57% -3.34%
75th Percentile £79.69 £93.75 £85.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £100.00 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £68.17 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -4.33% +1.79% -2.78%

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 42,912 25,497 30,028
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.18% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,400 16,457 18,407
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.11%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £727 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,611 1,389 1,358
10th Percentile £14.65 £13.80 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.33 £21.37
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% -0.46%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -2.82%

Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Architect job vacancy trend in England

Architect
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in England

Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Architect in England over the 6 months to 1 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Architect in England

Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in England

Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Architect in England over the 6 months to 1 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in England

Architect
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Architect within the England region over the 6 months to 1 October 2026. 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
London +7 2,632 £625 -2.72% 2,695
South East +4 725 £625 +4.17% 570
North of England +3 681 £600 - 506
Midlands +3 447 £627 +8.96% 280
North West +6 373 £597 +3.74% 279
South West +4 345 £638 -1.92% 250
West Midlands +5 336 £650 +8.33% 201
Yorkshire +15 243 £600 -2.04% 168
East of England +3 154 £622 +11.32% 189
East Midlands +6 106 £600 +20.00% 79
North East +3 68 £625 -13.79% 59
Architect
UK

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 October 2026, Architect contract 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 contract job ads across the England region featuring Architect in the job title.

1 1,600 (31.30%) Security Cleared
2 1,329 (26.00%) Azure
3 1,163 (22.75%) SC Cleared
4 997 (19.50%) AWS
5 981 (19.19%) Stakeholder Management
6 852 (16.67%) Roadmaps
7 759 (14.85%) Migration
8 710 (13.89%) Microsoft
9 694 (13.58%) Enterprise Architecture
10 686 (13.42%) AI
11 654 (12.79%) Technical Leadership
12 570 (11.15%) DevOps
13 535 (10.47%) Data Architecture
14 531 (10.39%) CI/CD
15 530 (10.37%) Agile
16 529 (10.35%) Data Modelling
17 499 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 463 (9.06%) Integration Patterns
19 445 (8.71%) Analytics
20 410 (8.02%) Security Architecture
21 405 (7.92%) TOGAF
22 402 (7.86%) GCP
23 385 (7.53%) Architectural Patterns
24 367 (7.18%) DV Cleared
25 352 (6.89%) Architecture Governance
26 340 (6.65%) Event-Driven
27 336 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
28 328 (6.42%) Decision-Making
29 323 (6.32%) Data Governance
30 314 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code

Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 74 (1.45%) SAS
2 60 (1.17%) SharePoint
3 46 (0.90%) Confluence
4 42 (0.82%) Apache
5 38 (0.74%) Apache Spark
6 35 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (0.41%) CMS
9 20 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
10 14 (0.27%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.14%) Documentum
11 7 (0.14%) IIS
11 7 (0.14%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.12%) Appian
12 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.12%) Headless CMS
13 5 (0.098%) SAP EP
14 4 (0.078%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.078%) Camunda
14 4 (0.078%) JBoss
Applications
1 22 (0.43%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.18%) Chatbot
4 9 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.18%) Revit
5 7 (0.14%) Navisworks
6 5 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.039%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.039%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.020%) Notion
8 1 (0.020%) PlantUML
8 1 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 144 (2.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.61%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 15 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 15 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 13 (0.25%) NetSuite
5 13 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
6 12 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
7 11 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
8 10 (0.20%) SAP MM
9 9 (0.18%) SAP MDG
9 9 (0.18%) Workday HCM
10 8 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
10 8 (0.16%) SAP ERP
11 7 (0.14%) Maximo
11 7 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle Retail
12 6 (0.12%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,329 (26.00%) Azure
2 997 (19.50%) AWS
3 402 (7.86%) GCP
4 253 (4.95%) Power Platform
5 190 (3.72%) SaaS
6 187 (3.66%) Entra ID
7 153 (2.99%) Serverless
8 120 (2.35%) GitHub
9 119 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
10 115 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
11 112 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
12 109 (2.13%) Snowflake
13 75 (1.47%) PaaS
14 64 (1.25%) OCI
15 63 (1.23%) Amazon S3
16 62 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
17 56 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 56 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
18 54 (1.06%) dbt
19 53 (1.04%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 128 (2.50%) Network Security
2 122 (2.39%) Firewall
3 92 (1.80%) WAN
4 64 (1.25%) DNS
5 57 (1.12%) LAN
6 54 (1.06%) VPN
7 45 (0.88%) BGP
8 43 (0.84%) SD-WAN
9 38 (0.74%) MPLS
10 33 (0.65%) DHCP
11 32 (0.63%) TCP/IP
12 27 (0.53%) VXLAN
13 25 (0.49%) VLAN
14 24 (0.47%) NX-OS
15 23 (0.45%) SAN
16 19 (0.37%) Wireless
17 18 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
17 18 (0.35%) NAS
18 16 (0.31%) BIG-IP
18 16 (0.31%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 204 (3.99%) Metadata
2 170 (3.33%) Data Lake
3 161 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.99%) Power BI
5 53 (1.04%) NoSQL
6 47 (0.92%) SQL Server
7 38 (0.74%) BigQuery
8 37 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 36 (0.70%) Delta Lake
10 35 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
11 33 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
11 33 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
12 30 (0.59%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 30 (0.59%) Oracle Database
13 28 (0.55%) Big Data
14 24 (0.47%) Semantic Layer
15 23 (0.45%) GIS
16 21 (0.41%) SAP HANA
16 21 (0.41%) Tableau
17 20 (0.39%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 69 (1.35%) JIRA
2 63 (1.23%) Git
3 53 (1.04%) Jenkins
4 46 (0.90%) GitLab
5 12 (0.23%) ERwin
6 11 (0.22%) Claude Code
6 11 (0.22%) MSI
7 10 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
7 10 (0.20%) RStudio
8 9 (0.18%) Cypress.io
9 7 (0.14%) Postman
10 6 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.12%) Storybook
11 5 (0.098%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.098%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.098%) Selenium
12 4 (0.078%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.078%) Maven
12 4 (0.078%) MLflow
13 3 (0.059%) IBM UrbanCode
General
1 1,066 (20.85%) Social Skills
2 733 (14.34%) Finance
3 564 (11.03%) Public Sector
4 273 (5.34%) Banking
5 261 (5.11%) Retail
6 248 (4.85%) Analytical Skills
7 159 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
8 136 (2.66%) Manufacturing
9 123 (2.41%) Telecoms
10 114 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
11 73 (1.43%) Marketing
12 69 (1.35%) Legal
13 61 (1.19%) Aerospace
13 61 (1.19%) Billing
14 52 (1.02%) Military
15 49 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 39 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
17 27 (0.53%) Aviation
17 27 (0.53%) Local Government
18 25 (0.49%) Automotive
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (5.20%) REST
2 214 (4.19%) Terraform
3 135 (2.64%) Kafka
4 130 (2.54%) SOAP
5 128 (2.50%) Middleware
6 112 (2.19%) .NET
7 100 (1.96%) OAuth
8 71 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
9 56 (1.10%) JSON
10 55 (1.08%) SAML
11 54 (1.06%) OpenID
12 51 (1.00%) LDAP
13 50 (0.98%) OAuth2
14 43 (0.84%) PySpark
15 41 (0.80%) .NET Framework
16 40 (0.78%) XML
17 36 (0.70%) SailPoint
18 34 (0.67%) SAP Fiori
19 33 (0.65%) JWT
19 33 (0.65%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 422 (8.26%) Cloud Native
2 160 (3.13%) Data Centre
3 159 (3.11%) Onboarding
4 127 (2.48%) Product Ownership
5 124 (2.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 124 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
6 119 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
6 119 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
7 112 (2.19%) AI Agents
8 104 (2.03%) Management Information System
9 98 (1.92%) CMDB
10 80 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
11 78 (1.53%) Operational Technology
12 73 (1.43%) Public Cloud
13 69 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
14 64 (1.25%) Private Cloud
15 58 (1.13%) Data Structures
16 55 (1.08%) Security Posture
17 43 (0.84%) Taxonomies
18 42 (0.82%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 108 (2.11%) Windows
2 83 (1.62%) Linux
3 42 (0.82%) Windows Server
4 21 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (0.39%) Unix
6 9 (0.18%) AIX
7 8 (0.16%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.14%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.12%) Android
9 6 (0.12%) zOS
10 5 (0.098%) Solaris
10 5 (0.098%) VMS
11 4 (0.078%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.078%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.059%) CentOS
13 2 (0.039%) HPUX
13 2 (0.039%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.039%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.039%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.020%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 981 (19.19%) Stakeholder Management
2 852 (16.67%) Roadmaps
3 759 (14.85%) Migration
4 694 (13.58%) Enterprise Architecture
5 686 (13.42%) AI
6 654 (12.79%) Technical Leadership
7 570 (11.15%) DevOps
8 535 (10.47%) Data Architecture
9 531 (10.39%) CI/CD
10 530 (10.37%) Agile
11 529 (10.35%) Data Modelling
12 499 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 463 (9.06%) Integration Patterns
14 445 (8.71%) Analytics
15 410 (8.02%) Security Architecture
16 405 (7.92%) TOGAF
17 385 (7.53%) Architectural Patterns
18 352 (6.89%) Architecture Governance
19 340 (6.65%) Event-Driven
20 336 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 217 (4.24%) SQL
2 207 (4.05%) Python
3 192 (3.76%) Java
4 102 (2.00%) JavaScript
5 89 (1.74%) PowerShell
6 50 (0.98%) C#
7 44 (0.86%) TypeScript
8 39 (0.76%) Bash
9 36 (0.70%) Bicep
10 29 (0.57%) Apex Code
11 27 (0.53%) ABAP
12 15 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 15 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.22%) Groovy
14 10 (0.20%) R
15 9 (0.18%) C++
16 8 (0.16%) PL/SQL
17 7 (0.14%) BeanShell
17 7 (0.14%) Rust
18 6 (0.12%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 1,600 (31.30%) Security Cleared
2 1,163 (22.75%) SC Cleared
3 367 (7.18%) DV Cleared
4 155 (3.03%) Degree
5 130 (2.54%) CISSP
6 120 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 106 (2.07%) Azure Certification
8 100 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 89 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.68%) TOGAF Certification
11 61 (1.19%) CISM
12 60 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
13 44 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
14 40 (0.78%) CCNP
15 34 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 33 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 26 (0.51%) CCSP
18 23 (0.45%) Master's Degree
19 22 (0.43%) CCIE
20 19 (0.37%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (4.28%) Data Quality
2 186 (3.64%) NIST
3 154 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 128 (2.50%) GDPR
5 105 (2.05%) NCSC
6 70 (1.37%) GRC
7 50 (0.98%) QA
8 39 (0.76%) Accessibility
9 34 (0.67%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.55%) NIST 800
11 24 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 22 (0.43%) SLA
13 20 (0.39%) JSP 440
14 18 (0.35%) SEPA
15 17 (0.33%) IFRS
16 16 (0.31%) ISO 19650
17 15 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
17 15 (0.29%) ISO 20022
18 13 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 169 (3.31%) Active Directory
2 83 (1.62%) Docker
3 63 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.74%) VMware NSX
5 26 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (0.31%) vSphere
7 14 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.098%) ISA Server
9 5 (0.098%) NFS
10 4 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 4 (0.078%) KVM
10 4 (0.078%) Postfix
10 4 (0.078%) Varnish
11 3 (0.059%) Ceph
11 3 (0.059%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 3 (0.059%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.059%) SRDF
11 3 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 232 (4.54%) Kubernetes
2 90 (1.76%) Ansible
3 39 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
4 37 (0.72%) Grafana
5 29 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
8 13 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 13 (0.25%) Argo
9 12 (0.23%) WMI
10 11 (0.22%) FortiGate
11 10 (0.20%) CASB
12 8 (0.16%) vCenter Server
13 7 (0.14%) SCCM
14 6 (0.12%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.12%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.12%) Puppet
15 5 (0.098%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.098%) Istio
16 4 (0.078%) VxRail
Vendors
1 710 (13.89%) Microsoft
2 290 (5.67%) SAP
3 260 (5.09%) Oracle
4 250 (4.89%) ServiceNow
5 242 (4.73%) Databricks
6 179 (3.50%) Google
7 172 (3.36%) Salesforce
8 131 (2.56%) Cisco
9 111 (2.17%) VMware
10 83 (1.62%) CyberArk
11 61 (1.19%) MuleSoft
12 52 (1.02%) IBM
12 52 (1.02%) Workday
13 47 (0.92%) Palo Alto
14 46 (0.90%) Foundry
15 34 (0.67%) Informatica
15 34 (0.67%) Splunk
16 33 (0.65%) Adobe
16 33 (0.65%) Fortinet
16 33 (0.65%) Sparx