Architect Contract Job Trends in England

Architect
UK > England

The median Architect daily rate in England is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 11
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +6
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 4,414 2,375 3,821
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.95% 9.76% 10.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.85% 10.54% 11.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,973 1,573 2,495
10th Percentile £463 £478 £500
25th Percentile £513 £545 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £725 £725 £750
90th Percentile £800 £799 £825
UK median daily rate £620 £625 £650
% change year-on-year -0.80% -3.85% -1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 33 77
10th Percentile £49.40 £53.10 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £83.50 £80.59 £87.46
90th Percentile £97.50 £85.72 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £69.00 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -3.16% +1.79% -

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 37,244 22,538 34,519
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.37% 92.63% 92.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,300 15,012 22,927
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,527 898 2,426
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.20 £12.96
25th Percentile £20.90 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £31.64 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +48.55% -12.01% -20.09%
75th Percentile £67.50 £64.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £44.00 £29.07 £36.00
% change year-on-year +51.36% -19.25% -20.00%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 +4 2,055 £625 -3.85% 326
South East +4 714 £625 - 155
North of England +1 617 £600 - 117
Midlands +3 414 £588 -2.08% 80
North West +4 358 £610 +1.67% 74
West Midlands -3 305 £610 +1.71% 54
South West 0 303 £698 +16.25% 75
Yorkshire +6 231 £558 -8.90% 25
East of England +17 202 £563 -6.25% 50
East Midlands -3 103 £525 -4.55% 26
North East +3 37 £575 -7.95% 18
Architect
UK

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

For the 6 months to 30 April 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 1,357 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 1,009 (22.86%) Azure
3 931 (21.09%) SC Cleared
4 847 (19.19%) AWS
5 622 (14.09%) Roadmaps
6 612 (13.86%) Microsoft
7 591 (13.39%) Migration
8 562 (12.73%) Agile
9 491 (11.12%) DevOps
10 460 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
11 458 (10.38%) CI/CD
12 441 (9.99%) Enterprise Architecture
13 398 (9.02%) AI
14 397 (8.99%) Data Modelling
15 387 (8.77%) Integration Patterns
16 382 (8.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 382 (8.65%) Technical Leadership
17 359 (8.13%) TOGAF
18 352 (7.97%) Analytics
19 338 (7.66%) Data Architecture
19 338 (7.66%) GCP
20 337 (7.63%) Problem-Solving
21 326 (7.39%) Architectural Patterns
22 318 (7.20%) DV Cleared
23 308 (6.98%) Architectural Design
24 302 (6.84%) Microservices
25 295 (6.68%) Python
26 277 (6.28%) ServiceNow
27 267 (6.05%) SAP
28 252 (5.71%) 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
1 105 (2.38%) SharePoint
2 96 (2.17%) Confluence
3 58 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (0.52%) Apache
5 22 (0.50%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.43%) SAS
7 18 (0.41%) CMS
8 16 (0.36%) Anypoint
8 16 (0.36%) Appian
9 14 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
10 13 (0.29%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.29%) nginx
11 11 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.18%) Camunda
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.16%) Skype for Business
16 6 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 48 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
3 18 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.16%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.16%) Revit
7 4 (0.091%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.045%) PlantUML
8 2 (0.045%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.023%) ArchiCAD
9 1 (0.023%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.023%) OrCAD
9 1 (0.023%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.023%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 110 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (1.06%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 21 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.45%) Workday HCM
5 15 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
6 14 (0.32%) SAP ERP
7 13 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.29%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
10 9 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.20%) SAP EWM
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.18%) SAP PP
12 7 (0.16%) Maximo
12 7 (0.16%) SAP PM
12 7 (0.16%) SAP QM
13 6 (0.14%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 6 (0.14%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,009 (22.86%) Azure
2 847 (19.19%) AWS
3 338 (7.66%) GCP
4 193 (4.37%) Power Platform
5 166 (3.76%) Entra ID
6 153 (3.47%) Serverless
7 142 (3.22%) SaaS
8 126 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
9 100 (2.27%) GitHub
10 99 (2.24%) Dynamics 365
11 96 (2.17%) PaaS
12 89 (2.02%) IaaS
13 83 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
14 74 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
15 71 (1.61%) Amazon S3
16 68 (1.54%) OpenShift
16 68 (1.54%) Snowflake
17 59 (1.34%) Microsoft Purview
18 55 (1.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 54 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 164 (3.72%) Firewall
2 146 (3.31%) Network Security
3 119 (2.70%) WAN
4 107 (2.42%) DNS
5 102 (2.31%) VPN
6 84 (1.90%) LAN
7 60 (1.36%) SD-WAN
8 34 (0.77%) BGP
9 30 (0.68%) DHCP
10 29 (0.66%) OSPF
11 27 (0.61%) MPLS
11 27 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
12 25 (0.57%) TCP/IP
13 24 (0.54%) VLAN
14 19 (0.43%) SAN
15 18 (0.41%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.41%) NAS
15 18 (0.41%) VXLAN
16 16 (0.36%) VSAN
16 16 (0.36%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (3.26%) Power BI
2 109 (2.47%) Metadata
3 100 (2.27%) Data Lake
4 96 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
5 70 (1.59%) SQL Server
6 57 (1.29%) NoSQL
7 50 (1.13%) PostgreSQL
8 40 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
9 38 (0.86%) Tableau
10 29 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
10 29 (0.66%) Big Data
11 26 (0.59%) Delta Lake
11 26 (0.59%) Oracle Database
12 24 (0.54%) BigQuery
13 22 (0.50%) GIS
14 21 (0.48%) Electronic Patient Records
15 18 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
16 17 (0.39%) MongoDB
16 17 (0.39%) Relational Database
17 16 (0.36%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 109 (2.47%) JIRA
2 81 (1.84%) Jenkins
3 54 (1.22%) Git
4 42 (0.95%) GitLab
5 18 (0.41%) ERwin
6 13 (0.29%) SonarQube
7 11 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 11 (0.25%) MLflow
8 10 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 6 (0.14%) Postman
10 5 (0.11%) JUnit
10 5 (0.11%) MSI
10 5 (0.11%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (0.11%) REST Assured
10 5 (0.11%) Selenium
11 4 (0.091%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.091%) Snyk
11 4 (0.091%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (0.091%) Terragrunt
12 3 (0.068%) Claude Code
General
1 837 (18.96%) Social Skills
2 696 (15.77%) Finance
3 465 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 266 (6.03%) Analytical Skills
5 265 (6.00%) Banking
6 132 (2.99%) Retail
7 131 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
8 96 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
9 90 (2.04%) Legal
10 87 (1.97%) Military
11 77 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 64 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 62 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
14 61 (1.38%) Law
15 54 (1.22%) Marketing
16 47 (1.06%) Billing
17 42 (0.95%) Financial Institution
18 35 (0.79%) Investment Banking
19 28 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 26 (0.59%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (5.03%) REST
2 165 (3.74%) Middleware
3 118 (2.67%) SOAP
4 98 (2.22%) .NET
5 81 (1.84%) OpenID
6 80 (1.81%) LDAP
7 71 (1.61%) OAuth
8 66 (1.50%) Kafka
9 57 (1.29%) SAML
10 48 (1.09%) JSON
11 43 (0.97%) OAuth2
12 40 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
13 36 (0.82%) React
14 35 (0.79%) SailPoint
15 32 (0.72%) AngularJS
15 32 (0.72%) RESTful
16 29 (0.66%) Web Services
17 27 (0.61%) Spring
18 25 (0.57%) PySpark
19 23 (0.52%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 361 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 129 (2.92%) Product Ownership
3 115 (2.61%) Onboarding
4 114 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 108 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 106 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
7 92 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
8 87 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
9 84 (1.90%) Management Information System
10 73 (1.65%) Public Cloud
11 71 (1.61%) Security Posture
12 67 (1.52%) Operational Technology
13 65 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
13 65 (1.47%) PKI
14 62 (1.40%) CMDB
15 44 (1.00%) AI Agents
16 40 (0.91%) Private Cloud
17 38 (0.86%) Data Structures
18 37 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
19 30 (0.68%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 153 (3.47%) Windows
2 91 (2.06%) Linux
3 31 (0.70%) Windows Server
4 26 (0.59%) Android
4 26 (0.59%) Apple iOS
5 16 (0.36%) Unix
6 14 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.32%) Windows 10
7 12 (0.27%) Windows 7
8 11 (0.25%) zOS
9 9 (0.20%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
10 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.068%) CentOS
12 3 (0.068%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.068%) Solaris
12 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.045%) AIX
13 2 (0.045%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 622 (14.09%) Roadmaps
2 591 (13.39%) Migration
3 562 (12.73%) Agile
4 491 (11.12%) DevOps
5 460 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
6 458 (10.38%) CI/CD
7 441 (9.99%) Enterprise Architecture
8 398 (9.02%) AI
9 397 (8.99%) Data Modelling
10 387 (8.77%) Integration Patterns
11 382 (8.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 382 (8.65%) Technical Leadership
12 359 (8.13%) TOGAF
13 352 (7.97%) Analytics
14 338 (7.66%) Data Architecture
15 337 (7.63%) Problem-Solving
16 326 (7.39%) Architectural Patterns
17 308 (6.98%) Architectural Design
18 302 (6.84%) Microservices
19 252 (5.71%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 295 (6.68%) Python
2 226 (5.12%) SQL
3 169 (3.83%) PowerShell
4 166 (3.76%) Java
5 77 (1.74%) JavaScript
6 53 (1.20%) C#
7 42 (0.95%) Bicep
8 33 (0.75%) Bash
9 32 (0.72%) TypeScript
10 17 (0.39%) Apex Code
10 17 (0.39%) Ruby
11 16 (0.36%) Scala
12 14 (0.32%) PL/SQL
13 13 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
14 9 (0.20%) Kotlin
14 9 (0.20%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.20%) T-SQL
15 8 (0.18%) R
15 8 (0.18%) VB
16 7 (0.16%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,357 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 931 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 318 (7.20%) DV Cleared
4 182 (4.12%) Degree
5 119 (2.70%) TOGAF Certification
6 109 (2.47%) Azure Certification
7 93 (2.11%) CISSP
8 90 (2.04%) AWS Certification
9 76 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
10 74 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
11 63 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
12 46 (1.04%) CISM
13 45 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
14 44 (1.00%) CCNP
15 38 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 38 (0.86%) Master's Degree
16 32 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
17 31 (0.70%) ISEB
18 24 (0.54%) CCIE
19 23 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 158 (3.58%) GDPR
2 157 (3.56%) NIST
3 123 (2.79%) Data Quality
4 119 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 90 (2.04%) NCSC
6 58 (1.31%) QA
7 39 (0.88%) PCI DSS
8 38 (0.86%) COBIT
9 27 (0.61%) GRC
9 27 (0.61%) ISO 20022
10 26 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
11 18 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 17 (0.39%) HL7
12 17 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 17 (0.39%) SEPA
13 16 (0.36%) Accessibility
14 14 (0.32%) JSP 440
15 13 (0.29%) FINRA
15 13 (0.29%) MiFID
16 10 (0.23%) PSD2
System Software
1 178 (4.03%) Active Directory
2 99 (2.24%) Docker
3 87 (1.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.45%) VMware NSX
5 26 (0.59%) vSphere
6 22 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.39%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.23%) vCloud
11 9 (0.20%) Squid
12 8 (0.18%) NFS
13 7 (0.16%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.16%) Varnish
14 5 (0.11%) Postfix
14 5 (0.11%) RACF
15 4 (0.091%) Firmware
15 4 (0.091%) Oracle RAC
16 3 (0.068%) IAG
16 3 (0.068%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 227 (5.14%) Terraform
2 205 (4.64%) Kubernetes
3 94 (2.13%) Ansible
4 47 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
5 40 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
6 37 (0.84%) Grafana
7 30 (0.68%) OPNET
8 28 (0.63%) vCenter Server
9 24 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 24 (0.54%) SCCM
10 22 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 14 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.29%) Argo
13 11 (0.25%) WMI
14 10 (0.23%) Istio
15 8 (0.18%) Puppet
16 7 (0.16%) Consul
17 5 (0.11%) Endace
17 5 (0.11%) Kibana
17 5 (0.11%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 612 (13.86%) Microsoft
2 277 (6.28%) ServiceNow
3 267 (6.05%) SAP
4 180 (4.08%) Oracle
5 179 (4.06%) VMware
6 162 (3.67%) Salesforce
7 158 (3.58%) Databricks
8 105 (2.38%) Cisco
9 92 (2.08%) Google
10 82 (1.86%) CyberArk
11 62 (1.40%) MuleSoft
12 54 (1.22%) Splunk
13 50 (1.13%) Workday
14 49 (1.11%) Sparx
15 48 (1.09%) Remedy
16 44 (1.00%) IBM
17 43 (0.97%) Atlassian
17 43 (0.97%) Red Hat
18 41 (0.93%) Palo Alto
19 39 (0.88%) BeyondTrust