Lead Architect Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Lead Architect
South East > Thames Valley

The median Lead Architect daily rate in the Thames Valley is £650, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 108 136
Rank change year-on-year -11 +28 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Lead Architect 6 4 13
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 0.27% 0.24% 0.48%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.30% 0.26% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 1 4
10th Percentile - - £673
25th Percentile - - £763
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £625 £863
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -27.54% +21.05%
75th Percentile £669 - £978
90th Percentile £680 - £1,029
South East median daily rate £688 £775 £825
% change year-on-year -11.29% -6.06% +15.79%

All Contract IT Job Roles
Thames Valley

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the Thames Valley. 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 Thames Valley with a recognized job title 1,978 1,540 2,566
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.20% 91.72% 94.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,339 906 1,574
10th Percentile £270 £250 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% +0.10% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £650 £663 £675
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 41 174
10th Percentile £15.91 £19.30 £15.91
25th Percentile £19.34 £41.25 £19.44
Median hourly rate £27.50 £56.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -51.54% +26.10% +65.14%
75th Percentile £80.00 £64.73 £62.50
90th Percentile £96.25 £74.87 £74.67
South East median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -40.82% -5.99% +0.47%

Lead Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Lead Architect job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Lead Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the Thames Valley.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the Thames Valley

Lead Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the Thames Valley.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Lead Architect job vacancies in the Thames Valley

Lead Architect
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 2 February 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
Berkshire -15 6 £650 +4.00% 2
Lead Architect
South East

Lead Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley

For the 6 months to 2 February 2026, 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 Thames Valley region featuring Lead Architect in the job title.

1 3 (50.00%) Roadmaps
2 2 (33.33%) Agile
2 2 (33.33%) Amazon GuardDuty
2 2 (33.33%) AWS
2 2 (33.33%) AWS Certification
2 2 (33.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 2 (33.33%) AWS CloudFormation
2 2 (33.33%) AWS CloudTrail
2 2 (33.33%) AWS Control Tower
2 2 (33.33%) AWS KMS
2 2 (33.33%) Citrix
2 2 (33.33%) CloudEndure
2 2 (33.33%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (33.33%) Entra ID
2 2 (33.33%) FinOps
2 2 (33.33%) ITIL
2 2 (33.33%) Migration
2 2 (33.33%) NCSC
2 2 (33.33%) Network Segmentation
2 2 (33.33%) RBAC
2 2 (33.33%) Requirements Workshops
2 2 (33.33%) Runbook
2 2 (33.33%) Terraform
2 2 (33.33%) Threat Detection
2 2 (33.33%) User Acceptance Testing
2 2 (33.33%) Validation
2 2 (33.33%) Virgin Media
2 2 (33.33%) Virtual Desktop
2 2 (33.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
3 1 (16.67%) Appian

Lead Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 (16.67%) Appian
1 1 (16.67%) IIS
1 1 (16.67%) JBoss
1 1 (16.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
1 1 (16.67%) Tomcat
1 1 (16.67%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 2 (33.33%) Amazon GuardDuty
1 2 (33.33%) AWS
1 2 (33.33%) AWS CloudFormation
1 2 (33.33%) AWS CloudTrail
1 2 (33.33%) AWS Control Tower
1 2 (33.33%) AWS KMS
1 2 (33.33%) Entra ID
1 2 (33.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
2 1 (16.67%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (16.67%) Oracle Database
1 1 (16.67%) Relational Database
General
1 4 (66.67%) Public Sector
2 2 (33.33%) Finance
3 1 (16.67%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (16.67%) REST
1 1 (16.67%) SOAP
1 1 (16.67%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 2 (33.33%) Onboarding
2 1 (16.67%) Client/Server
2 1 (16.67%) Cloud Native
2 1 (16.67%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (16.67%) N-Tier
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (50.00%) Roadmaps
2 2 (33.33%) Agile
2 2 (33.33%) FinOps
2 2 (33.33%) ITIL
2 2 (33.33%) Migration
2 2 (33.33%) Network Segmentation
2 2 (33.33%) RBAC
2 2 (33.33%) Requirements Workshops
2 2 (33.33%) Runbook
2 2 (33.33%) Threat Detection
2 2 (33.33%) User Acceptance Testing
2 2 (33.33%) Validation
3 1 (16.67%) Architectural Design
3 1 (16.67%) Business Process Modelling
3 1 (16.67%) Data Governance
3 1 (16.67%) Data Modelling
3 1 (16.67%) Network Architecture
3 1 (16.67%) SOA
3 1 (16.67%) Technical Architecture
3 1 (16.67%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 1 (16.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (33.33%) AWS Certification
1 2 (33.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (33.33%) Cyber Essentials
1 2 (33.33%) NCSC
System Software
1 2 (33.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 2 (33.33%) Terraform
2 1 (16.67%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (33.33%) Citrix
1 2 (33.33%) CloudEndure
1 2 (33.33%) Virgin Media
2 1 (16.67%) Oracle
2 1 (16.67%) Red Hat