Lead Architect Contract Job Trends in the South East

Lead Architect
England > South East

The median Lead Architect daily rate in the South East is £675, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 December 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 161 163 183
Rank change year-on-year +2 +20 +46
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Architect 16 8 20
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.36% 0.22% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.24% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 3 10
10th Percentile £618 £698 £591
25th Percentile £650 £736 £644
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £675 £800 £700
Median % change year-on-year -15.63% +14.29% -4.27%
75th Percentile £800 - -
90th Percentile £828 - £961
England median daily rate £700 £685 £700
% change year-on-year +2.19% -2.14% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 South East with a recognized job title 3,994 3,329 4,663
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.57% 92.76% 93.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,598 2,085 3,030
10th Percentile £221 £238 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £620 £610
90th Percentile £678 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -3.81% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 124 251
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.56 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.50 £24.18 £26.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -22.73% +46.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.59 £66.13
90th Percentile £84.59 £71.70 £76.53
England median hourly rate £27.00 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.86% -22.22% +37.32%

Lead Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Lead Architect job vacancy trend in the South East

Lead Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the South East

Lead Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Lead Architect in the South East over the 6 months to 29 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Lead Architect in the South East

Lead Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the South East

Lead Architect
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Architect within the South East region over the 6 months to 29 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
Hampshire -11 6 £800 +15.11% 4
Thames Valley -8 5 £650 - 11
Berkshire -15 5 £650 - 6
West Sussex -10 3 £700 -12.50% 3
Surrey -8 1 £625 - 5
Lead Architect
England

Lead Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 29 December 2025, Lead 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 South East region featuring Lead Architect in the job title.

1 7 (43.75%) ITIL
2 6 (37.50%) Digital Strategy
2 6 (37.50%) Security Cleared
3 5 (31.25%) COBIT
3 5 (31.25%) ISEB
3 5 (31.25%) IT4IT
3 5 (31.25%) Roadmaps
4 4 (25.00%) Customer Requirements
4 4 (25.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 4 (25.00%) ITIL Certification
4 4 (25.00%) JSP 440
4 4 (25.00%) Migration
5 3 (18.75%) Enterprise Architecture
5 3 (18.75%) Entra ID
5 3 (18.75%) Microsoft 365
5 3 (18.75%) SC Cleared
6 2 (12.50%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 2 (12.50%) Architectural Patterns
6 2 (12.50%) AWS
6 2 (12.50%) AWS Certification
6 2 (12.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (12.50%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (12.50%) AWS CloudTrail
6 2 (12.50%) AWS Control Tower
6 2 (12.50%) AWS KMS
6 2 (12.50%) Citrix
6 2 (12.50%) CloudEndure
6 2 (12.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (12.50%) Data Migration
6 2 (12.50%) ERP

Lead Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 (6.25%) SharePoint
1 1 (6.25%) ThingWorx
Business Applications
1 1 (6.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 3 (18.75%) Entra ID
1 3 (18.75%) Microsoft 365
2 2 (12.50%) Amazon GuardDuty
2 2 (12.50%) AWS
2 2 (12.50%) AWS CloudFormation
2 2 (12.50%) AWS CloudTrail
2 2 (12.50%) AWS Control Tower
2 2 (12.50%) AWS KMS
2 2 (12.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
3 1 (6.25%) Azure
3 1 (6.25%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (6.25%) 4G
1 1 (6.25%) ADSL
1 1 (6.25%) BIG-IP
1 1 (6.25%) DHCP
1 1 (6.25%) DNS
General
1 6 (37.50%) Public Sector
2 2 (12.50%) Finance
3 1 (6.25%) Social Skills
Miscellaneous
1 2 (12.50%) Onboarding
2 1 (6.25%) Cloud Native
2 1 (6.25%) Data Centre
2 1 (6.25%) Industrial Internet of Things
2 1 (6.25%) IoT
2 1 (6.25%) Operational Technology
2 1 (6.25%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 1 (6.25%) Windows
1 1 (6.25%) Windows Server
1 1 (6.25%) Windows Server 2012
1 1 (6.25%) Windows Server 2016
1 1 (6.25%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (43.75%) ITIL
2 6 (37.50%) Digital Strategy
3 5 (31.25%) IT4IT
3 5 (31.25%) Roadmaps
4 4 (25.00%) Customer Requirements
4 4 (25.00%) Migration
5 3 (18.75%) Enterprise Architecture
6 2 (12.50%) Architectural Patterns
6 2 (12.50%) Data Migration
6 2 (12.50%) ERP
6 2 (12.50%) FinOps
6 2 (12.50%) Network Segmentation
6 2 (12.50%) RBAC
6 2 (12.50%) Requirements Workshops
6 2 (12.50%) Runbook
6 2 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 2 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
6 2 (12.50%) Threat Detection
6 2 (12.50%) User Acceptance Testing
6 2 (12.50%) Validation
Qualifications
1 6 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 5 (31.25%) ISEB
3 4 (25.00%) ITIL Certification
4 3 (18.75%) SC Cleared
5 2 (12.50%) AWS Certification
5 2 (12.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (6.25%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (31.25%) COBIT
2 4 (25.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
2 4 (25.00%) JSP 440
3 2 (12.50%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (12.50%) NCSC
System Software
1 2 (12.50%) Virtual Desktop
2 1 (6.25%) Active Directory
2 1 (6.25%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (6.25%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (6.25%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) Terraform
2 1 (6.25%) Kubernetes
2 1 (6.25%) Microsoft Intune
2 1 (6.25%) SCCM
2 1 (6.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 2 (12.50%) Citrix
1 2 (12.50%) CloudEndure
1 2 (12.50%) Virgin Media
2 1 (6.25%) F5
2 1 (6.25%) Microsoft
2 1 (6.25%) Red Hat
2 1 (6.25%) Salesforce
2 1 (6.25%) Sparx
2 1 (6.25%) VMware