Architect Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Architect
UK > UK excluding London

The median Architect daily rate in the UK excluding London is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 August 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 21 13
Rank change year-on-year +8 -8 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 2,524 1,246 1,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 9.12% 8.08% 9.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 9.95% 8.97% 10.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,697 849 1,102
10th Percentile £469 £462 £480
25th Percentile £525 £519 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £600 £638
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.88% -1.92%
75th Percentile £700 £688 £725
90th Percentile £775 £759 £788
UK median daily rate £615 £625 £640
% change year-on-year -1.60% -2.27% -1.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 15 70
10th Percentile £46.00 £33.64 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £64.38 £61.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -4.00%
75th Percentile £71.91 £86.50 £85.00
90th Percentile £95.10 £99.42 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £66.50 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -8.28% +3.57% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 25,361 13,894 16,642
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.62% 90.07% 92.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,227 8,511 9,919
10th Percentile £304 £213 £220
25th Percentile £413 £362 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,094 1,261 1,563
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.46 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.30 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.04
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -42.89% +13.95%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.99 £66.16
90th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.96%

Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Architect job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Architect in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Architect in the UK excluding London

Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Architect job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Architect in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in the UK excluding London

Architect
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Architect within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 August 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
South East +1 735 £625 +4.17% 286
North of England +5 702 £600 - 245
Midlands +2 415 £626 +8.87% 127
North West +5 413 £600 +4.35% 143
South West +2 322 £645 +0.58% 131
West Midlands +2 304 £647 +7.83% 83
Yorkshire +10 226 £588 -4.08% 82
Scotland +24 168 £625 +0.60% 104
East of England +16 151 £605 +9.16% 74
East Midlands +3 104 £600 +16.50% 44
North East -3 65 £600 -14.29% 20
Wales +6 43 £633 +1.20% 11
Channel Islands -3 5 £625 -15.82% 2
Northern Ireland +4 4 £488 -30.36% 34
Architect
UK

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 31 August 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 UK excluding London region featuring Architect in the job title.

1 852 (33.76%) Security Cleared
2 575 (22.78%) Azure
3 553 (21.91%) SC Cleared
4 450 (17.83%) AWS
5 392 (15.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 364 (14.42%) Roadmaps
7 348 (13.79%) Microsoft
8 312 (12.36%) Agile
9 305 (12.08%) Technical Leadership
10 295 (11.69%) Enterprise Architecture
10 295 (11.69%) Migration
11 259 (10.26%) DV Cleared
12 242 (9.59%) DevOps
13 241 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 231 (9.15%) AI
15 228 (9.03%) Integration Patterns
16 225 (8.91%) Data Architecture
17 220 (8.72%) CI/CD
18 208 (8.24%) Architectural Patterns
19 206 (8.16%) Data Modelling
20 198 (7.84%) Cybersecurity
21 196 (7.77%) Security Architecture
22 187 (7.41%) TOGAF
23 180 (7.13%) GCP
24 168 (6.66%) Architecture Governance
25 161 (6.38%) Microservices
26 153 (6.06%) Continuous Improvement
26 153 (6.06%) Event-Driven
27 147 (5.82%) Decision-Making
28 141 (5.59%) Architectural Design

Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 34 (1.35%) SharePoint
2 32 (1.27%) Confluence
2 32 (1.27%) SAS
3 14 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 12 (0.48%) OpenStack
5 10 (0.40%) Apache
5 10 (0.40%) Apache Spark
5 10 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
6 9 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (0.28%) Documentum
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.12%) CMS
8 3 (0.12%) JBoss
8 3 (0.12%) NetWeaver
8 3 (0.12%) SAP EP
9 2 (0.079%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.079%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.040%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.040%) Predix
10 1 (0.040%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 12 (0.48%) MS Visio
2 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.28%) Navisworks
4 7 (0.28%) Revit
5 6 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 70 (2.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
2 12 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (0.48%) Teamcenter
3 8 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.28%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.24%) Maximo
5 6 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.20%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.16%) NetSuite
7 4 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.16%) Oracle Retail
8 3 (0.12%) Adobe Campaign
8 3 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
8 3 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.12%) Remedy AR System
8 3 (0.12%) SAP CRM
8 3 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
8 3 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 575 (22.78%) Azure
2 450 (17.83%) AWS
3 180 (7.13%) GCP
4 94 (3.72%) Power Platform
5 89 (3.53%) SaaS
6 80 (3.17%) Serverless
7 76 (3.01%) Entra ID
8 54 (2.14%) Microsoft 365
9 46 (1.82%) Dynamics 365
10 45 (1.78%) Azure DevOps
11 44 (1.74%) GitHub
12 39 (1.55%) PaaS
13 37 (1.47%) AWS Lambda
14 34 (1.35%) IaaS
15 30 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (1.15%) OpenShift
17 28 (1.11%) Amazon S3
18 27 (1.07%) Snowflake
19 23 (0.91%) Azure Data Factory
20 21 (0.83%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 89 (3.53%) Firewall
2 63 (2.50%) WAN
3 56 (2.22%) DNS
4 51 (2.02%) Network Security
5 49 (1.94%) LAN
6 38 (1.51%) VPN
7 35 (1.39%) BGP
8 32 (1.27%) DHCP
8 32 (1.27%) SD-WAN
9 27 (1.07%) TCP/IP
10 26 (1.03%) VLAN
11 25 (0.99%) MPLS
12 23 (0.91%) SAN
13 20 (0.79%) NAS
14 17 (0.67%) BIG-IP
14 17 (0.67%) OSPF
14 17 (0.67%) Structured Cabling
15 14 (0.55%) Wireless
16 12 (0.48%) Cisco Nexus
16 12 (0.48%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (3.01%) Metadata
2 71 (2.81%) Data Lake
3 65 (2.58%) Power BI
4 61 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
5 37 (1.47%) NoSQL
6 21 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
7 20 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
8 19 (0.75%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 19 (0.75%) Oracle Database
9 17 (0.67%) SQL Server
10 16 (0.63%) Base SAS
11 14 (0.55%) BigQuery
11 14 (0.55%) PostgreSQL
12 13 (0.52%) Delta Lake
13 11 (0.44%) GIS
14 10 (0.40%) MySQL
15 9 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
15 9 (0.36%) Big Data
15 9 (0.36%) Electronic Patient Records
15 9 (0.36%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 37 (1.47%) JIRA
2 29 (1.15%) Git
3 22 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 14 (0.55%) GitLab
5 7 (0.28%) ERwin
6 6 (0.24%) Claude Code
6 6 (0.24%) MSI
7 5 (0.20%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (0.16%) Hudson
9 3 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
9 3 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.079%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.079%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.079%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.079%) JUnit
10 2 (0.079%) Oracle APEX
10 2 (0.079%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.079%) Rational Rhapsody
10 2 (0.079%) Selenium
General
1 491 (19.45%) Social Skills
2 311 (12.32%) Finance
3 259 (10.26%) Public Sector
4 129 (5.11%) Banking
5 119 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
6 105 (4.16%) Retail
7 92 (3.65%) Manufacturing
8 61 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 59 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
10 39 (1.55%) Aerospace
11 37 (1.47%) Legal
12 30 (1.19%) Military
13 29 (1.15%) Telecoms
14 22 (0.87%) Aviation
15 21 (0.83%) Marketing
16 20 (0.79%) Back Office
16 20 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 19 (0.75%) Financial Institution
17 19 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 18 (0.71%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (3.92%) REST
2 90 (3.57%) Terraform
3 74 (2.93%) Middleware
4 54 (2.14%) OAuth
5 45 (1.78%) SOAP
6 38 (1.51%) Oracle Fusion
7 35 (1.39%) .NET
7 35 (1.39%) SAML
8 34 (1.35%) Kafka
9 33 (1.31%) OpenID
10 25 (0.99%) LDAP
11 24 (0.95%) JSON
12 23 (0.91%) OAuth2
13 21 (0.83%) SailPoint
14 17 (0.67%) Node.js
15 16 (0.63%) GraphQL
16 15 (0.59%) RESTful
17 14 (0.55%) JWT
17 14 (0.55%) Swagger
18 12 (0.48%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 204 (8.08%) Cloud Native
2 82 (3.25%) Data Centre
3 80 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 63 (2.50%) Operational Technology
5 61 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
6 59 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
7 58 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
8 56 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
9 54 (2.14%) Product Ownership
10 53 (2.10%) Onboarding
11 51 (2.02%) Management Information System
12 41 (1.62%) Public Cloud
13 40 (1.58%) AI Agents
14 32 (1.27%) Private Cloud
15 30 (1.19%) CMDB
16 27 (1.07%) Security Posture
17 26 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
17 26 (1.03%) IVR
18 22 (0.87%) SCADA
19 21 (0.83%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 82 (3.25%) Windows
2 56 (2.22%) Linux
3 33 (1.31%) Windows Server
4 16 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (0.36%) Unix
6 6 (0.24%) AIX
7 4 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.079%) Android
8 2 (0.079%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.079%) HPUX
8 2 (0.079%) Solaris
8 2 (0.079%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.040%) CatOS
9 1 (0.040%) CentOS
9 1 (0.040%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.040%) VMS
9 1 (0.040%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.040%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 392 (15.53%) Stakeholder Management
2 364 (14.42%) Roadmaps
3 312 (12.36%) Agile
4 305 (12.08%) Technical Leadership
5 295 (11.69%) Enterprise Architecture
5 295 (11.69%) Migration
6 242 (9.59%) DevOps
7 241 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 231 (9.15%) AI
9 228 (9.03%) Integration Patterns
10 225 (8.91%) Data Architecture
11 220 (8.72%) CI/CD
12 208 (8.24%) Architectural Patterns
13 206 (8.16%) Data Modelling
14 198 (7.84%) Cybersecurity
15 196 (7.77%) Security Architecture
16 187 (7.41%) TOGAF
17 168 (6.66%) Architecture Governance
18 161 (6.38%) Microservices
19 153 (6.06%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 98 (3.88%) Java
2 93 (3.68%) SQL
3 88 (3.49%) Python
4 48 (1.90%) JavaScript
5 45 (1.78%) PowerShell
6 23 (0.91%) Bash
7 15 (0.59%) Bicep
8 12 (0.48%) TypeScript
9 10 (0.40%) Shell Script
10 9 (0.36%) ABAP
10 9 (0.36%) C#
11 7 (0.28%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.24%) PL/SQL
12 6 (0.24%) VBA
13 5 (0.20%) Groovy
14 4 (0.16%) Kotlin
15 3 (0.12%) R
16 2 (0.079%) BeanShell
16 2 (0.079%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.079%) Scala
Qualifications
1 852 (33.76%) Security Cleared
2 553 (21.91%) SC Cleared
3 259 (10.26%) DV Cleared
4 68 (2.69%) Degree
5 57 (2.26%) CISSP
6 55 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
7 48 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 44 (1.74%) AWS Certification
9 43 (1.70%) Azure Certification
10 42 (1.66%) TOGAF Certification
11 31 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 27 (1.07%) CCNP
13 22 (0.87%) CISM
14 19 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.63%) CCIE
16 15 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 12 (0.48%) CCNA
18 11 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 11 (0.44%) JNCIE
18 11 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (3.88%) NIST
2 84 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 66 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 62 (2.46%) NCSC
5 53 (2.10%) GDPR
6 22 (0.87%) QA
7 18 (0.71%) Accessibility
7 18 (0.71%) NIST 800
8 17 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.63%) JSP 440
10 15 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 13 (0.52%) ISO 19650
12 11 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.44%) GRC
12 11 (0.44%) IFRS
12 11 (0.44%) SLA
13 9 (0.36%) HL7
13 9 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 94 (3.72%) Active Directory
2 47 (1.86%) Docker
3 46 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
4 26 (1.03%) VMware NSX
5 18 (0.71%) Hyper-V
6 12 (0.48%) vSphere
7 11 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (0.20%) vCloud
10 4 (0.16%) KVM
11 3 (0.12%) Ceph
11 3 (0.12%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (0.12%) NFS
11 3 (0.12%) SRDF
12 2 (0.079%) zsh
13 1 (0.040%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.040%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.040%) Snort
13 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 127 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 52 (2.06%) Ansible
3 18 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
3 18 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
4 15 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 15 (0.59%) Grafana
5 13 (0.52%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
6 12 (0.48%) vCenter Server
7 9 (0.36%) WMI
8 7 (0.28%) Argo
8 7 (0.28%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.24%) Istio
10 5 (0.20%) CASB
10 5 (0.20%) MOM
10 5 (0.20%) NetBackup
11 4 (0.16%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (0.16%) EMC VPLEX
11 4 (0.16%) SnapMirror
12 3 (0.12%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 348 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 141 (5.59%) SAP
3 111 (4.40%) Oracle
4 96 (3.80%) ServiceNow
5 94 (3.72%) Google
6 85 (3.37%) VMware
7 80 (3.17%) Cisco
7 80 (3.17%) Databricks
8 50 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 29 (1.15%) CyberArk
10 28 (1.11%) F5
10 28 (1.11%) MuleSoft
11 24 (0.95%) Informatica
12 23 (0.91%) Palo Alto
12 23 (0.91%) Red Hat
13 22 (0.87%) IBM
14 17 (0.67%) Infoblox
14 17 (0.67%) Workday
15 16 (0.63%) Juniper
16 14 (0.55%) Adobe