Solutions Architect Contract Job Trends in the South West

Solution Architect
England > South West

The median Solution Architect daily rate in the South West is £638, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 September 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 86 78
Rank change year-on-year +9 -8 -21
Contract jobs requiring a Solutions Architect 81 32 65
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 2.16% 1.66% 2.50%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.31% 1.85% 2.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 20 46
10th Percentile - £519 £469
25th Percentile £525 £525 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £638 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £688 £675 £700
90th Percentile £708 £730 £790
England median daily rate £638 £625 £625
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -3.85%

All Contract IT Job Roles
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South West. 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 West with a recognized job title 3,504 1,726 2,409
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.54% 89.29% 92.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,892 990 1,452
10th Percentile £331 £222 £225
25th Percentile £450 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% -4.19%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £623
90th Percentile £725 £715 £700
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 216 249
10th Percentile £16.91 £13.50 £14.41
25th Percentile £29.75 £18.13 £42.50
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -62.74% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £77.75 £68.00 £74.55
England median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £46.18
% change year-on-year +73.38% -45.54% +2.62%

Solutions Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Solutions Architect job vacancy trend in the South West

Solutions Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Solutions Architect job vacancies in the South West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Solutions Architect job vacancies in the South West

Solutions Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Solutions Architect in the South West over the 6 months to 22 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Solutions Architect in the South West

Solutions Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Solutions Architect job vacancies in the South West.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Solutions Architect job vacancies in the South West

Solutions Architect
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Solutions Architect within the South West region over the 6 months to 22 September 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
Wiltshire -3 29 £675 +10.20% 12
Bristol -5 26 £638 +2.00% 40
Gloucestershire +7 9 £550 - 28
Dorset - 4 - - 2
Somerset -30 3 £600 -4.00% 16
Solutions Architect
England

Solutions Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West

For the 6 months to 22 September 2026, Solutions 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 West region featuring Solutions Architect in the job title.

1 35 (43.21%) Security Cleared
2 29 (35.80%) SC Cleared
3 22 (27.16%) Azure
4 20 (24.69%) Microsoft
5 16 (19.75%) DV Cleared
6 15 (18.52%) Technical Leadership
7 13 (16.05%) Stakeholder Management
8 12 (14.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 10 (12.35%) TOGAF
10 9 (11.11%) AWS
10 9 (11.11%) DevOps
10 9 (11.11%) ERP
10 9 (11.11%) Roadmaps
11 8 (9.88%) Agile
11 8 (9.88%) Business Continuity
11 8 (9.88%) Disaster Recovery
11 8 (9.88%) Enterprise Architecture
11 8 (9.88%) Migration
11 8 (9.88%) SQL
12 7 (8.64%) Architectural Patterns
12 7 (8.64%) Project Delivery
13 6 (7.41%) CI/CD
13 6 (7.41%) Data Governance
13 6 (7.41%) Firewall
13 6 (7.41%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (7.41%) Technology Strategy
14 5 (6.17%) Architecture Governance
14 5 (6.17%) Cisco
14 5 (6.17%) Continuous Improvement
14 5 (6.17%) Decision-Making

Solutions Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 3 (3.70%) Confluence
2 2 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.23%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 1 (1.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (3.70%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Cash Management
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
2 1 (1.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 1 (1.23%) SAP CO
2 1 (1.23%) SAP FI
2 1 (1.23%) SAP FI/CO
2 1 (1.23%) SAP GRC
2 1 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 22 (27.16%) Azure
2 9 (11.11%) AWS
3 6 (7.41%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (6.17%) Dynamics 365
5 4 (4.94%) PaaS
6 3 (3.70%) Entra ID
6 3 (3.70%) iPaaS
6 3 (3.70%) OpenShift
7 2 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (2.47%) Azure Key Vault
7 2 (2.47%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
7 2 (2.47%) Boomi
7 2 (2.47%) GCP
7 2 (2.47%) IaaS
7 2 (2.47%) SaaS
7 2 (2.47%) Serverless
8 1 (1.23%) Cloud Composer
8 1 (1.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (1.23%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (7.41%) Firewall
2 3 (3.70%) DNS
2 3 (3.70%) Wireless
3 2 (2.47%) Asterisk PBX
3 2 (2.47%) Cisco ASA
3 2 (2.47%) Cisco IOS
3 2 (2.47%) DHCP
3 2 (2.47%) Network Security
3 2 (2.47%) NX-OS
3 2 (2.47%) PABX
4 1 (1.23%) BGP
4 1 (1.23%) BIG-IP
4 1 (1.23%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (1.23%) EIGRP
4 1 (1.23%) OSPF
4 1 (1.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.94%) Metadata
2 3 (3.70%) EDRMS
3 2 (2.47%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (2.47%) Geospatial Data
3 2 (2.47%) MongoDB
3 2 (2.47%) NoSQL
3 2 (2.47%) SQL Server
3 2 (2.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (1.23%) BigQuery
4 1 (1.23%) Data Lake
4 1 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.23%) Oracle Database
4 1 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 1 (1.23%) JIRA
General
1 20 (24.69%) Social Skills
2 12 (14.81%) Finance
3 5 (6.17%) Military
3 5 (6.17%) Public Sector
4 4 (4.94%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (4.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (3.70%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.47%) Aviation
6 2 (2.47%) Banking
6 2 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.23%) General Ledger
7 1 (1.23%) Legal
7 1 (1.23%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.23%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (4.94%) Symfony
2 3 (3.70%) Middleware
2 3 (3.70%) Swagger
2 3 (3.70%) Terraform
3 2 (2.47%) .NET
3 2 (2.47%) GeoJSON
3 2 (2.47%) OpenAPI
3 2 (2.47%) REST
3 2 (2.47%) RESTful
3 2 (2.47%) WebSockets
4 1 (1.23%) EDI
4 1 (1.23%) Node.js
4 1 (1.23%) OAuth2
4 1 (1.23%) OpenID
4 1 (1.23%) React Native
4 1 (1.23%) SAML
4 1 (1.23%) SOAP
4 1 (1.23%) Spring Boot
4 1 (1.23%) Web Services
4 1 (1.23%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 8 (9.88%) Cloud Native
2 6 (7.41%) Product Ownership
3 5 (6.17%) PKI
4 3 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.47%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.47%) EPoS
5 2 (2.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (2.47%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.47%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.23%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.23%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.23%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.70%) Windows
1 3 (3.70%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (18.52%) Technical Leadership
2 13 (16.05%) Stakeholder Management
3 12 (14.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 10 (12.35%) TOGAF
5 9 (11.11%) DevOps
5 9 (11.11%) ERP
5 9 (11.11%) Roadmaps
6 8 (9.88%) Agile
6 8 (9.88%) Business Continuity
6 8 (9.88%) Disaster Recovery
6 8 (9.88%) Enterprise Architecture
6 8 (9.88%) Migration
7 7 (8.64%) Architectural Patterns
7 7 (8.64%) Project Delivery
8 6 (7.41%) CI/CD
8 6 (7.41%) Data Governance
8 6 (7.41%) Technology Strategy
9 5 (6.17%) Architecture Governance
9 5 (6.17%) Continuous Improvement
9 5 (6.17%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 8 (9.88%) SQL
2 4 (4.94%) PHP
3 2 (2.47%) Bicep
3 2 (2.47%) Java
3 2 (2.47%) Python
4 1 (1.23%) Bash
4 1 (1.23%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 35 (43.21%) Security Cleared
2 29 (35.80%) SC Cleared
3 16 (19.75%) DV Cleared
4 3 (3.70%) TOGAF Certification
5 2 (2.47%) CCNA
5 2 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (2.47%) CISSP
5 2 (2.47%) MCSE
5 2 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.23%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.23%) BC Cleared
6 1 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.47%) NCSC
2 1 (1.23%) Accessibility
2 1 (1.23%) GRC
2 1 (1.23%) IFRS
2 1 (1.23%) ISO 22301
2 1 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.23%) QA
System Software
1 5 (6.17%) Docker
2 4 (4.94%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (4.94%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 1 (1.23%) Ansible
2 1 (1.23%) Argo
2 1 (1.23%) CASB
2 1 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (24.69%) Microsoft
2 5 (6.17%) Cisco
3 4 (4.94%) Oracle
4 3 (3.70%) Databricks
4 3 (3.70%) MuleSoft
4 3 (3.70%) Red Hat
5 2 (2.47%) SnapLogic
6 1 (1.23%) BiZZdesign
6 1 (1.23%) CheckPoint
6 1 (1.23%) Civica
6 1 (1.23%) F5
6 1 (1.23%) Foundry
6 1 (1.23%) Google
6 1 (1.23%) IBM
6 1 (1.23%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.23%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.23%) SAP
6 1 (1.23%) webMethods