Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £616, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 June 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 11
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +5
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,439 2,869 4,520
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.95% 9.80% 10.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.86% 10.61% 11.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,591 1,845 2,882
10th Percentile £463 £463 £497
25th Percentile £513 £537 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £616 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £725 £719 £738
90th Percentile £800 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +2.08% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 30 96
10th Percentile £46.00 £51.15 £58.75
25th Percentile £60.00 £63.38 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £78.75 £82.25 £85.99
90th Percentile £97.63 £88.61 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £73.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -11.26% +4.64% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 45,859 27,036 40,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.35% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 17,399 25,887
10th Percentile £325 £287 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,063 1,119 2,897
10th Percentile £15.15 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.84 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.61 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.73% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.47 £61.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -5.88%

Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Architect job vacancy trend in the UK

Architect
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Architect over the 6 months to 9 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Architect over the 6 months to 9 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 9 June 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
England +8 4,625 £620 -0.80% 868
UK excluding London +10 2,421 £613 +2.08% 643
London +4 2,247 £625 -3.85% 332
Work from Home +4 1,470 £600 - 458
North of England +5 687 £600 - 224
South East +4 687 £625 +0.40% 171
Midlands +2 436 £600 +2.17% 78
North West +5 372 £608 +1.97% 108
West Midlands -2 310 £620 +3.33% 64
Yorkshire +9 262 £552 -7.96% 65
South West -1 245 £650 +6.12% 66
East of England +18 207 £575 -4.17% 42
Scotland +16 156 £650 +4.00% 29
East Midlands +1 120 £573 +12.86% 14
North East +6 60 £575 -4.17% 52
Wales +3 33 £600 +25.65% 31
Northern Ireland +7 7 £475 -28.30% 8
Channel Islands - 3 £575 -

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 June 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 featuring Architect in the job title.

1 1,650 (30.34%) Security Cleared
2 1,347 (24.77%) Azure
3 1,235 (22.71%) SC Cleared
4 1,180 (21.70%) AWS
5 761 (13.99%) Migration
6 749 (13.77%) Roadmaps
7 711 (13.07%) Microsoft
8 635 (11.67%) Stakeholder Management
9 628 (11.55%) Agile
10 623 (11.45%) DevOps
11 588 (10.81%) CI/CD
12 544 (10.00%) Enterprise Architecture
13 522 (9.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 521 (9.58%) AI
15 512 (9.41%) Technical Leadership
16 501 (9.21%) Data Modelling
17 482 (8.86%) Integration Patterns
18 446 (8.20%) Data Architecture
19 439 (8.07%) Architectural Patterns
20 430 (7.91%) Analytics
21 417 (7.67%) GCP
22 415 (7.63%) Microservices
23 413 (7.59%) TOGAF
24 365 (6.71%) Problem-Solving
25 355 (6.53%) Architectural Design
26 339 (6.23%) Infrastructure as Code
27 332 (6.10%) Python
28 325 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
28 325 (5.98%) Security Architecture
29 318 (5.85%) Event-Driven

Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 119 (2.19%) SharePoint
2 82 (1.51%) Confluence
3 52 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 37 (0.68%) SAS
5 31 (0.57%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.53%) Apache
7 21 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
8 18 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 17 (0.31%) Anypoint
10 16 (0.29%) Appian
10 16 (0.29%) CMS
11 15 (0.28%) nginx
11 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.17%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 6 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 23 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 18 (0.33%) MS Visio
3 13 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.13%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.13%) Revit
5 7 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.074%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.055%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.055%) Windchill
8 1 (0.018%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.018%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.018%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 138 (2.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 25 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 17 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.31%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 13 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
8 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.17%) SAP MDG
11 8 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
11 8 (0.15%) SAP IBP
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.11%) Maximo
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
13 6 (0.11%) SAP GRC
13 6 (0.11%) SAP SD
14 5 (0.092%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,347 (24.77%) Azure
2 1,180 (21.70%) AWS
3 417 (7.67%) GCP
4 246 (4.52%) Power Platform
5 204 (3.75%) Serverless
6 186 (3.42%) Entra ID
7 185 (3.40%) SaaS
8 134 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 129 (2.37%) GitHub
10 122 (2.24%) PaaS
11 109 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
12 103 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
13 102 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 93 (1.71%) IaaS
15 87 (1.60%) Amazon S3
16 86 (1.58%) Snowflake
17 73 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
18 71 (1.31%) OpenShift
19 67 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 66 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 212 (3.90%) Firewall
2 183 (3.36%) Network Security
3 121 (2.22%) WAN
4 120 (2.21%) VPN
5 116 (2.13%) DNS
6 84 (1.54%) LAN
7 66 (1.21%) SD-WAN
8 41 (0.75%) DHCP
9 39 (0.72%) BGP
10 32 (0.59%) SAN
10 32 (0.59%) VLAN
11 31 (0.57%) OSPF
11 31 (0.57%) Wireless
12 30 (0.55%) MPLS
12 30 (0.55%) TCP/IP
13 29 (0.53%) NAS
14 25 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
15 24 (0.44%) VXLAN
16 22 (0.40%) IPsec
16 22 (0.40%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (3.25%) Power BI
2 142 (2.61%) Data Lake
2 142 (2.61%) Metadata
3 136 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 73 (1.34%) SQL Server
5 72 (1.32%) NoSQL
6 70 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
7 44 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 40 (0.74%) Big Data
9 38 (0.70%) Tableau
10 37 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 34 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
12 32 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
13 28 (0.51%) BigQuery
14 24 (0.44%) Delta Lake
15 23 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
15 23 (0.42%) MongoDB
16 22 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
17 21 (0.39%) Relational Database
18 20 (0.37%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 99 (1.82%) JIRA
2 91 (1.67%) Jenkins
3 61 (1.12%) Git
4 46 (0.85%) GitLab
5 22 (0.40%) ERwin
6 12 (0.22%) SonarQube
7 10 (0.18%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.17%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.17%) Postman
9 8 (0.15%) MLflow
10 7 (0.13%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.11%) Hudson
11 6 (0.11%) Selenium
12 5 (0.092%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.092%) JMeter
12 5 (0.092%) JUnit
12 5 (0.092%) Maven
12 5 (0.092%) PowerDesigner
13 4 (0.074%) Snyk
13 4 (0.074%) Terragrunt
General
1 1,021 (18.77%) Social Skills
2 812 (14.93%) Finance
3 600 (11.03%) Public Sector
4 306 (5.63%) Banking
5 265 (4.87%) Analytical Skills
6 179 (3.29%) Retail
7 152 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
8 132 (2.43%) Legal
9 116 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
10 95 (1.75%) Manufacturing
10 95 (1.75%) Telecoms
11 60 (1.10%) Law
12 51 (0.94%) Military
12 51 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
13 49 (0.90%) Marketing
14 48 (0.88%) Billing
15 46 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 40 (0.74%) Aerospace
17 38 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 35 (0.64%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (4.96%) REST
2 206 (3.79%) Middleware
3 140 (2.57%) SOAP
4 137 (2.52%) .NET
5 112 (2.06%) Kafka
6 98 (1.80%) OAuth
7 95 (1.75%) OpenID
8 92 (1.69%) LDAP
9 75 (1.38%) SAML
10 59 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
11 58 (1.07%) OAuth2
12 57 (1.05%) React
13 53 (0.97%) RESTful
14 43 (0.79%) JSON
14 43 (0.79%) SailPoint
15 39 (0.72%) AngularJS
16 38 (0.70%) Web Services
17 33 (0.61%) Node.js
18 30 (0.55%) PySpark
19 28 (0.51%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 455 (8.37%) Cloud Native
2 190 (3.49%) Data Centre
3 151 (2.78%) Management Information System
4 143 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 136 (2.50%) Product Ownership
6 125 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
6 125 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
7 122 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
8 109 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
9 92 (1.69%) Public Cloud
9 92 (1.69%) Security Posture
10 88 (1.62%) Operational Technology
11 87 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
12 80 (1.47%) CMDB
13 69 (1.27%) AI Agents
14 45 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 44 (0.81%) Enterprise Cloud
15 44 (0.81%) Private Cloud
16 43 (0.79%) NHS
17 41 (0.75%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 156 (2.87%) Windows
2 103 (1.89%) Linux
3 42 (0.77%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.64%) Android
4 35 (0.64%) Apple iOS
5 23 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (0.40%) Unix
7 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.18%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.18%) zOS
9 9 (0.17%) VMS
10 8 (0.15%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.11%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.092%) Data ONTAP
13 4 (0.074%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.074%) Solaris
14 3 (0.055%) AIX
14 3 (0.055%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (13.99%) Migration
2 749 (13.77%) Roadmaps
3 635 (11.67%) Stakeholder Management
4 628 (11.55%) Agile
5 623 (11.45%) DevOps
6 588 (10.81%) CI/CD
7 544 (10.00%) Enterprise Architecture
8 522 (9.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 521 (9.58%) AI
10 512 (9.41%) Technical Leadership
11 501 (9.21%) Data Modelling
12 482 (8.86%) Integration Patterns
13 446 (8.20%) Data Architecture
14 439 (8.07%) Architectural Patterns
15 430 (7.91%) Analytics
16 415 (7.63%) Microservices
17 413 (7.59%) TOGAF
18 365 (6.71%) Problem-Solving
19 355 (6.53%) Architectural Design
20 339 (6.23%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 332 (6.10%) Python
2 276 (5.07%) SQL
3 231 (4.25%) Java
4 165 (3.03%) PowerShell
5 100 (1.84%) JavaScript
6 65 (1.20%) C#
7 58 (1.07%) Bicep
8 43 (0.79%) TypeScript
9 38 (0.70%) Bash
10 22 (0.40%) Apex Code
10 22 (0.40%) Ruby
11 18 (0.33%) PL/SQL
12 15 (0.28%) Scala
13 13 (0.24%) Kotlin
14 12 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
15 11 (0.20%) T-SQL
16 8 (0.15%) VBA
17 7 (0.13%) ABAP
17 7 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.13%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,650 (30.34%) Security Cleared
2 1,235 (22.71%) SC Cleared
3 295 (5.42%) DV Cleared
4 193 (3.55%) Degree
5 119 (2.19%) Azure Certification
6 118 (2.17%) CISSP
7 111 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
8 108 (1.99%) AWS Certification
9 104 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
10 83 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
11 82 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
12 65 (1.20%) CISM
13 53 (0.97%) CCNP
14 50 (0.92%) Master's Degree
15 44 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
16 42 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 36 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 27 (0.50%) CCSP
19 20 (0.37%) DBS Check
20 19 (0.35%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (3.73%) NIST
2 174 (3.20%) GDPR
3 156 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 148 (2.72%) Data Quality
5 113 (2.08%) NCSC
6 71 (1.31%) QA
7 42 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 40 (0.74%) GRC
9 32 (0.59%) Accessibility
10 30 (0.55%) ISO 20022
11 23 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
12 22 (0.40%) SEPA
13 19 (0.35%) COBIT
14 18 (0.33%) HL7
14 18 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
15 14 (0.26%) IFRS
16 13 (0.24%) FINRA
16 13 (0.24%) MiFID
System Software
1 195 (3.59%) Active Directory
2 108 (1.99%) Docker
3 104 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 31 (0.57%) vSphere
6 23 (0.42%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (0.22%) Varnish
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.17%) NFS
10 9 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
10 9 (0.17%) Squid
10 9 (0.17%) vCloud
11 7 (0.13%) Postfix
12 5 (0.092%) RACF
13 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.074%) Sendmail
14 3 (0.055%) IAG
14 3 (0.055%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 269 (4.95%) Terraform
2 252 (4.63%) Kubernetes
3 112 (2.06%) Ansible
4 51 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 50 (0.92%) Grafana
6 40 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
6 40 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 32 (0.59%) FortiGate
8 28 (0.51%) vCenter Server
9 19 (0.35%) Argo
10 18 (0.33%) SCCM
11 15 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 12 (0.22%) Istio
13 8 (0.15%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.15%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.13%) Consul
14 7 (0.13%) HAProxy
14 7 (0.13%) Puppet
15 5 (0.092%) Endace
15 5 (0.092%) WMI
Vendors
1 711 (13.07%) Microsoft
2 310 (5.70%) SAP
3 287 (5.28%) ServiceNow
4 247 (4.54%) Oracle
5 226 (4.16%) Databricks
6 187 (3.44%) VMware
7 177 (3.25%) Salesforce
8 140 (2.57%) Cisco
9 125 (2.30%) Google
10 86 (1.58%) CyberArk
11 79 (1.45%) MuleSoft
12 69 (1.27%) Splunk
13 55 (1.01%) Palo Alto
14 51 (0.94%) Red Hat
15 43 (0.79%) Workday
16 42 (0.77%) IBM
16 42 (0.77%) OpenAI
17 41 (0.75%) Sparx
18 40 (0.74%) Juniper
19 39 (0.72%) BeyondTrust