Principal Architect Contract Job Trends in London

Principal Architect
England > London

The median Principal Architect daily rate in London is £674, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 December 2025.

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

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 377 359 383
Rank change year-on-year -18 +24 +151
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Architect 12 10 22
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.084% 0.066% 0.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.091% 0.071% 0.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 6 17
10th Percentile £580 £582 £588
25th Percentile £637 £703 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £674 £750 £675
Median % change year-on-year -10.20% +11.11% -9.58%
75th Percentile £734 £808 £775
90th Percentile £750 £826 £821
England median daily rate £674 £743 £700
% change year-on-year -9.26% +6.15% -1.75%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. 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 London with a recognized job title 13,145 14,173 17,825
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 93.50% 93.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,721 9,174 12,891
10th Percentile £340 £338 £329
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% -2.22% -3.02%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £683
90th Percentile £763 £800 £788
England median daily rate £510 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -2.86% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 152 209
10th Percentile £17.50 £18.19 £17.95
25th Percentile £21.46 £23.80 £21.50
Median hourly rate £27.71 £35.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.49% +2.14% -
75th Percentile £56.63 £54.06 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £72.50
England median hourly rate £26.40 £36.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year -26.83% -19.82% +38.46%

Principal Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Principal Architect job vacancy trend in London

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Architect job vacancies in London

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Architect in London over the 6 months to 15 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Architect in London

Principal Architect
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Architect within the London region over the 6 months to 15 December 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
Central London - 4 £750 - 1
Principal Architect
England

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

For the 6 months to 15 December 2025, Principal 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 London region featuring Principal Architect in the job title.

1 5 (41.67%) Security Cleared
2 4 (33.33%) AWS
2 4 (33.33%) Azure
2 4 (33.33%) Cybersecurity
2 4 (33.33%) Migration
2 4 (33.33%) Roadmaps
2 4 (33.33%) SC Cleared
2 4 (33.33%) TOGAF
3 3 (25.00%) Risk Management
3 3 (25.00%) SABSA
3 3 (25.00%) Security Architecture
3 3 (25.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 3 (25.00%) Strategic Roadmap
4 2 (16.67%) Business Continuity
4 2 (16.67%) CI/CD
4 2 (16.67%) CISSP
4 2 (16.67%) Coaching
4 2 (16.67%) Cyber Resilience
4 2 (16.67%) Decision-Making
4 2 (16.67%) DevOps
4 2 (16.67%) Enterprise Architecture
4 2 (16.67%) GAP Analysis
4 2 (16.67%) Mentoring
4 2 (16.67%) Microsoft
4 2 (16.67%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (16.67%) Risk Assessment
4 2 (16.67%) Structured Cabling
4 2 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
4 2 (16.67%) Threat Modelling
4 2 (16.67%) Use Case

Principal Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 1 (8.33%) OpenStack
Business Applications
1 1 (8.33%) SAP CO
1 1 (8.33%) SAP FI
1 1 (8.33%) SAP FI/CO
1 1 (8.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 4 (33.33%) AWS
1 4 (33.33%) Azure
2 2 (16.67%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon EMR
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon Kinesis
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon S3
3 1 (8.33%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (8.33%) Azure Key Vault
3 1 (8.33%) Azure Sentinel
3 1 (8.33%) GCP
3 1 (8.33%) OpenShift
3 1 (8.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (16.67%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (8.33%) Calico
2 1 (8.33%) Network Security
2 1 (8.33%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (8.33%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 1 (8.33%) GitLab
General
1 4 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 2 (16.67%) Finance
2 2 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 1 (8.33%) Banking
3 1 (8.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (8.33%) Telecoms
Miscellaneous
1 4 (33.33%) Data Centre
2 2 (16.67%) Private Cloud
3 1 (8.33%) Augmented Reality
3 1 (8.33%) Cloud Native
3 1 (8.33%) Cyber Defence
3 1 (8.33%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (8.33%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (33.33%) Cybersecurity
1 4 (33.33%) Migration
1 4 (33.33%) Roadmaps
1 4 (33.33%) TOGAF
2 3 (25.00%) Risk Management
2 3 (25.00%) SABSA
2 3 (25.00%) Security Architecture
2 3 (25.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
2 3 (25.00%) Strategic Roadmap
3 2 (16.67%) Business Continuity
3 2 (16.67%) Coaching
3 2 (16.67%) Cyber Resilience
3 2 (16.67%) DevOps
3 2 (16.67%) Enterprise Architecture
3 2 (16.67%) GAP Analysis
3 2 (16.67%) Mentoring
3 2 (16.67%) Risk Assessment
3 2 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
3 2 (16.67%) Threat Modelling
3 2 (16.67%) Use Case
Qualifications
1 5 (41.67%) Security Cleared
2 4 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 2 (16.67%) CISSP
4 1 (8.33%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (8.33%) Accessibility
1 1 (8.33%) GDPR
1 1 (8.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (8.33%) NIST
1 1 (8.33%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (8.33%) VMware Infrastructure
1 1 (8.33%) VMware NSX
1 1 (8.33%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 1 (8.33%) Istio
1 1 (8.33%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (16.67%) Microsoft
2 1 (8.33%) Arista
2 1 (8.33%) Cisco
2 1 (8.33%) Red Hat
2 1 (8.33%) SAP
2 1 (8.33%) VMware
2 1 (8.33%) Wind River