Principal Architect Contracts in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Architect daily rate in the UK excluding London is £722, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 326 395 452
Rank change year-on-year +69 +57 +50
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Architect 10 4 10
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.078% 0.019% 0.042%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.085% 0.021% 0.044%
Number of daily rates quoted 8 4 10
10th Percentile £458 £493 -
25th Percentile £601 £594 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £722 £700 £659
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +6.18% +9.88%
75th Percentile £743 £794 £763
90th Percentile - £873 £813
UK median daily rate £663 £675 £800
% change year-on-year -1.85% -15.63% +23.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £68.26 - -
Median hourly rate £73.31 - -
75th Percentile £78.36 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £73.31 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 11,767 19,240 22,667
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 92.63% 94.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,552 11,748 15,893
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £595
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 829 2,243 1,165
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.50 £13.45
25th Percentile £17.61 £15.75 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%
75th Percentile £64.50 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Principal Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Principal Architect in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Principal Architect in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Principal Architect in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Principal Architect in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Architect in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Architect in the UK excluding London

Principal Architect
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Principal Architect in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Principal Architect in the UK excluding London

Principal 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 Principal Architect within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
South East - 6 £743 - 17
Wales - 2 £461 - 13
North of England +17 1 £700 - 36
North West +15 1 £700 - 23
East of England - 1 - - 18
Scotland - 1 £700 - 5
Principal Architect
UK

Principal Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Principal Architect contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Principal Architect in the job title.

1 8 (80.00%) Azure
2 7 (70.00%) AWS
2 7 (70.00%) Enterprise Architecture
2 7 (70.00%) ITIL
2 7 (70.00%) Agile
2 7 (70.00%) TOGAF
2 7 (70.00%) IT Strategy
3 6 (60.00%) SC Cleared
3 6 (60.00%) Security Cleared
4 5 (50.00%) VMware
4 5 (50.00%) NCSC
4 5 (50.00%) Public Cloud
4 5 (50.00%) User Experience
4 5 (50.00%) CI/CD
4 5 (50.00%) Technology Strategy
5 4 (40.00%) Containerisation
5 4 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 4 (40.00%) Microservices
5 4 (40.00%) Continuous Delivery
5 4 (40.00%) Matrix Organization
5 4 (40.00%) NIST
5 4 (40.00%) Prototyping
5 4 (40.00%) Zachman Framework
5 4 (40.00%) MCSE
5 4 (40.00%) CCNP
5 4 (40.00%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (40.00%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (40.00%) DevOps
5 4 (40.00%) Continuous Integration
6 3 (30.00%) Degree

Principal Architect Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 8 (80.00%) Azure
2 7 (70.00%) AWS
3 2 (20.00%) GCP
4 1 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 1 (10.00%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (20.00%) Data Lake
2 1 (10.00%) Big Data
2 1 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (10.00%) Metadata
2 1 (10.00%) NoSQL
2 1 (10.00%) RDBMS
2 1 (10.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (10.00%) ER Studio
1 1 (10.00%) ERwin
General
1 3 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Digital Health
2 2 (20.00%) Public Sector
3 1 (10.00%) Influencing Skills
3 1 (10.00%) Pharmaceutical
Miscellaneous
1 5 (50.00%) Public Cloud
2 3 (30.00%) Cloud Native
3 2 (20.00%) NHS
4 1 (10.00%) Cyber Defence
4 1 (10.00%) Data Fabric
4 1 (10.00%) Data Structures
4 1 (10.00%) Management Information System
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (70.00%) Agile
1 7 (70.00%) Enterprise Architecture
1 7 (70.00%) IT Strategy
1 7 (70.00%) ITIL
1 7 (70.00%) TOGAF
2 5 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 5 (50.00%) Technology Strategy
2 5 (50.00%) User Experience
3 4 (40.00%) Containerisation
3 4 (40.00%) Continuous Delivery
3 4 (40.00%) Continuous Integration
3 4 (40.00%) DevOps
3 4 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 4 (40.00%) Matrix Organization
3 4 (40.00%) Microservices
3 4 (40.00%) Prototyping
3 4 (40.00%) Zachman Framework
4 3 (30.00%) Data Privacy
4 3 (30.00%) DevSecOps
4 3 (30.00%) Risk Management
Qualifications
1 6 (60.00%) SC Cleared
1 6 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (40.00%) CCNP
2 4 (40.00%) Cisco Certification
2 4 (40.00%) MCSE
2 4 (40.00%) Microsoft Certification
3 3 (30.00%) AWS Certification
3 3 (30.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 3 (30.00%) Degree
4 2 (20.00%) Azure Certification
4 2 (20.00%) CITP
4 2 (20.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (20.00%) Master's Degree
5 1 (10.00%) CESG Certified Professional
5 1 (10.00%) CISSP
5 1 (10.00%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (50.00%) NCSC
2 4 (40.00%) NIST
3 1 (10.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (10.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (10.00%) VMware Infrastructure
1 1 (10.00%) VMware NSX
Vendors
1 5 (50.00%) VMware
2 3 (30.00%) Microsoft
3 2 (20.00%) Google
4 1 (10.00%) Cisco
4 1 (10.00%) Databricks
4 1 (10.00%) Hitachi
4 1 (10.00%) Palo Alto
4 1 (10.00%) Pega
4 1 (10.00%) SAP