Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +10 -5 +1
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,148 2,933 3,812
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.26% 8.91% 9.89%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.21% 9.79% 10.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,083 1,891 2,344
10th Percentile £480 £463 £485
25th Percentile £525 £525 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £627
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -0.32% -3.54%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £738
90th Percentile £775 £787 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +3.33% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 15 71
10th Percentile £46.00 £33.64 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.88 £61.88
Median hourly rate £68.17 £70.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.62% - -1.53%
75th Percentile £78.75 £83.75 £85.13
90th Percentile £96.00 £100.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.66 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -6.44% +1.79% -6.67%

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 50,359 29,970 35,820
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.09% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,785 18,920 22,014
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,867 1,585 1,673
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.29 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.16 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.68%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 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
England +8 5,128 £620 -0.80% 4,695
London +7 2,630 £625 -3.85% 2,717
UK excluding London +7 2,578 £620 +3.33% 2,103
Work from Home +6 1,653 £600 - 1,879
South East +1 737 £625 +4.17% 608
North of England +3 682 £598 -0.33% 498
Midlands +3 436 £626 +8.87% 297
North West +7 378 £600 +1.27% 288
South West +3 350 £638 -1.92% 222
West Midlands 0 323 £650 +8.33% 220
Yorkshire +14 240 £559 -6.88% 156
Scotland +23 183 £625 - 230
East of England +12 161 £619 +11.55% 156
East Midlands +4 108 £600 +19.40% 77
North East -2 63 £600 -17.24% 54
Wales +2 42 £633 +1.20% 26
Channel Islands -4 7 £700 -5.72% 4
Northern Ireland +5 2 - - 75

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 September 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 1,933 (31.44%) Security Cleared
2 1,576 (25.63%) Azure
3 1,446 (23.52%) SC Cleared
4 1,292 (21.01%) AWS
5 1,137 (18.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 951 (15.47%) Roadmaps
7 882 (14.35%) Migration
8 842 (13.70%) Microsoft
9 794 (12.91%) Enterprise Architecture
10 780 (12.69%) AI
11 775 (12.61%) Technical Leadership
12 672 (10.93%) Agile
13 644 (10.47%) DevOps
14 623 (10.13%) Data Modelling
15 621 (10.10%) CI/CD
16 620 (10.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 608 (9.89%) Data Architecture
18 574 (9.34%) Integration Patterns
19 531 (8.64%) Analytics
20 500 (8.13%) TOGAF
21 493 (8.02%) Security Architecture
22 491 (7.99%) GCP
23 472 (7.68%) Architectural Patterns
24 414 (6.73%) Event-Driven
25 403 (6.55%) Microservices
26 401 (6.52%) Data Governance
27 391 (6.36%) DV Cleared
28 383 (6.23%) Decision-Making
29 380 (6.18%) Architecture Governance
30 377 (6.13%) Infrastructure as Code

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 79 (1.28%) SAS
2 71 (1.15%) SharePoint
3 62 (1.01%) Confluence
4 45 (0.73%) Apache
5 41 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.37%) CMS
8 21 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
10 7 (0.11%) Documentum
11 6 (0.098%) Appian
11 6 (0.098%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.098%) JBoss
11 6 (0.098%) NetWeaver
12 5 (0.081%) Headless CMS
12 5 (0.081%) IIS
13 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.065%) Camunda
13 4 (0.065%) Jupyter
Applications
1 22 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.15%) Revit
6 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Navisworks
8 6 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.033%) Windchill
10 1 (0.016%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 171 (2.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 17 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
6 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.23%) SAP ERP
7 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
10 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
11 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
12 7 (0.11%) Maximo
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
13 6 (0.098%) SAP CO
13 6 (0.098%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,576 (25.63%) Azure
2 1,292 (21.01%) AWS
3 491 (7.99%) GCP
4 305 (4.96%) Power Platform
5 239 (3.89%) SaaS
6 222 (3.61%) Entra ID
7 196 (3.19%) Serverless
8 149 (2.42%) GitHub
9 148 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
10 134 (2.18%) Microsoft 365
11 131 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
12 117 (1.90%) Snowflake
13 103 (1.68%) PaaS
14 91 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
15 82 (1.33%) Amazon S3
16 74 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 73 (1.19%) IaaS
18 70 (1.14%) OCI
19 66 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
20 64 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 161 (2.62%) Firewall
2 147 (2.39%) Network Security
3 100 (1.63%) WAN
4 76 (1.24%) VPN
5 74 (1.20%) DNS
6 67 (1.09%) LAN
7 48 (0.78%) SD-WAN
8 46 (0.75%) BGP
9 41 (0.67%) MPLS
10 39 (0.63%) DHCP
11 35 (0.57%) TCP/IP
12 29 (0.47%) VLAN
13 27 (0.44%) VXLAN
14 25 (0.41%) SAN
15 24 (0.39%) NX-OS
16 21 (0.34%) Wireless
17 20 (0.33%) BIG-IP
18 19 (0.31%) NAS
18 19 (0.31%) NGFW
18 19 (0.31%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 226 (3.68%) Metadata
2 215 (3.50%) Data Lake
3 192 (3.12%) Power BI
4 191 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
5 66 (1.07%) NoSQL
6 52 (0.85%) BigQuery
7 49 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
7 49 (0.80%) SQL Server
8 46 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
9 41 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
10 40 (0.65%) Delta Lake
11 37 (0.60%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.54%) Big Data
13 32 (0.52%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
15 27 (0.44%) Relational Database
16 22 (0.36%) GIS
16 22 (0.36%) Star Schema
16 22 (0.36%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 87 (1.42%) JIRA
2 79 (1.28%) Git
3 63 (1.02%) Jenkins
4 46 (0.75%) GitLab
5 15 (0.24%) ERwin
6 14 (0.23%) Claude Code
7 13 (0.21%) Postman
8 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 9 (0.15%) MSI
8 9 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 9 (0.15%) RStudio
9 7 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.098%) Artifactory
10 6 (0.098%) Hudson
10 6 (0.098%) Storybook
11 5 (0.081%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.081%) MLflow
11 5 (0.081%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.081%) Selenium
11 5 (0.081%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,244 (20.23%) Social Skills
2 882 (14.35%) Finance
3 707 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 314 (5.11%) Banking
5 288 (4.68%) Analytical Skills
6 271 (4.41%) Retail
7 171 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
8 151 (2.46%) Manufacturing
9 141 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
10 131 (2.13%) Telecoms
11 115 (1.87%) Legal
12 73 (1.19%) Marketing
13 64 (1.04%) Billing
14 60 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 57 (0.93%) Aerospace
16 53 (0.86%) Military
17 42 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
18 37 (0.60%) Police
19 36 (0.59%) Aviation
19 36 (0.59%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (4.83%) REST
2 261 (4.25%) Terraform
3 177 (2.88%) Middleware
4 165 (2.68%) Kafka
5 137 (2.23%) SOAP
6 127 (2.07%) OAuth
7 124 (2.02%) .NET
8 77 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
9 73 (1.19%) JSON
10 66 (1.07%) SAML
11 65 (1.06%) OpenID
12 63 (1.02%) OAuth2
13 55 (0.89%) LDAP
14 48 (0.78%) PySpark
15 47 (0.76%) XML
16 46 (0.75%) RESTful
17 40 (0.65%) .NET Framework
17 40 (0.65%) SailPoint
18 37 (0.60%) JWT
18 37 (0.60%) React
Miscellaneous
1 514 (8.36%) Cloud Native
2 199 (3.24%) Data Centre
3 182 (2.96%) Onboarding
4 179 (2.91%) Management Information System
5 148 (2.41%) Product Ownership
6 143 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
7 139 (2.26%) AI Agents
7 139 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
8 138 (2.24%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
10 101 (1.64%) CMDB
11 95 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.48%) Public Cloud
13 89 (1.45%) Operational Technology
14 82 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
15 65 (1.06%) Private Cloud
16 63 (1.02%) Security Posture
17 60 (0.98%) Data Structures
18 49 (0.80%) Taxonomies
19 46 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 129 (2.10%) Windows
2 106 (1.72%) Linux
3 52 (0.85%) Windows Server
4 24 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (0.39%) Unix
5 9 (0.15%) AIX
5 9 (0.15%) Android
5 9 (0.15%) Apple iOS
6 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.098%) zOS
8 5 (0.081%) Solaris
9 4 (0.065%) Alpine Linux
9 4 (0.065%) Data ONTAP
9 4 (0.065%) VMS
10 3 (0.049%) CentOS
11 2 (0.033%) HPUX
11 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
11 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.016%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,137 (18.49%) Stakeholder Management
2 951 (15.47%) Roadmaps
3 882 (14.35%) Migration
4 794 (12.91%) Enterprise Architecture
5 780 (12.69%) AI
6 775 (12.61%) Technical Leadership
7 672 (10.93%) Agile
8 644 (10.47%) DevOps
9 623 (10.13%) Data Modelling
10 621 (10.10%) CI/CD
11 620 (10.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 608 (9.89%) Data Architecture
13 574 (9.34%) Integration Patterns
14 531 (8.64%) Analytics
15 500 (8.13%) TOGAF
16 493 (8.02%) Security Architecture
17 472 (7.68%) Architectural Patterns
18 414 (6.73%) Event-Driven
19 403 (6.55%) Microservices
20 401 (6.52%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 261 (4.25%) SQL
2 260 (4.23%) Python
3 259 (4.21%) Java
4 128 (2.08%) JavaScript
5 112 (1.82%) PowerShell
6 56 (0.91%) TypeScript
7 52 (0.85%) C#
8 46 (0.75%) Bash
9 44 (0.72%) Bicep
10 31 (0.50%) Apex Code
11 20 (0.33%) ABAP
12 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
13 14 (0.23%) Ruby
14 11 (0.18%) Groovy
14 11 (0.18%) R
15 10 (0.16%) C++
15 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
16 9 (0.15%) Rust
17 8 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,933 (31.44%) Security Cleared
2 1,446 (23.52%) SC Cleared
3 391 (6.36%) DV Cleared
4 165 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
4 165 (2.68%) Degree
5 158 (2.57%) CISSP
6 120 (1.95%) AWS Certification
6 120 (1.95%) Azure Certification
7 109 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
8 91 (1.48%) TOGAF Certification
9 74 (1.20%) CISM
10 66 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
11 50 (0.81%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 48 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
13 44 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 43 (0.70%) CCNP
15 38 (0.62%) CCSP
16 31 (0.50%) Master's Degree
17 24 (0.39%) CISA
18 22 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 260 (4.23%) Data Quality
2 231 (3.76%) NIST
3 193 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 164 (2.67%) GDPR
5 125 (2.03%) NCSC
6 84 (1.37%) GRC
7 60 (0.98%) QA
8 40 (0.65%) Accessibility
8 40 (0.65%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.52%) NIST 800
9 32 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (0.39%) SLA
11 23 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
12 21 (0.34%) IFRS
12 21 (0.34%) SEPA
13 20 (0.33%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 19 (0.31%) JSP 440
15 15 (0.24%) ISO 19650
16 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 195 (3.17%) Active Directory
2 111 (1.81%) Docker
3 83 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.75%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.37%) vSphere
7 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
8 18 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.081%) NFS
11 4 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 4 (0.065%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.065%) KVM
11 4 (0.065%) Postfix
11 4 (0.065%) Varnish
12 3 (0.049%) Ceph
12 3 (0.049%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.049%) vCloud
12 3 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 298 (4.85%) Kubernetes
2 106 (1.72%) Ansible
3 50 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
4 46 (0.75%) Grafana
5 38 (0.62%) Prometheus
6 30 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (0.28%) Argo
8 15 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.16%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.16%) WMI
11 9 (0.15%) CASB
11 9 (0.15%) Istio
12 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.11%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.11%) Puppet
13 7 (0.11%) SCCM
14 6 (0.098%) Progress Chef
15 5 (0.081%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.081%) vRealize
Vendors
1 842 (13.70%) Microsoft
2 353 (5.74%) SAP
3 316 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 304 (4.94%) Oracle
5 290 (4.72%) Databricks
6 206 (3.35%) Salesforce
7 203 (3.30%) Google
8 150 (2.44%) Cisco
9 143 (2.33%) VMware
10 88 (1.43%) CyberArk
11 80 (1.30%) MuleSoft
12 60 (0.98%) IBM
13 56 (0.91%) Workday
14 50 (0.81%) Palo Alto
15 49 (0.80%) Foundry
16 42 (0.68%) Splunk
17 41 (0.67%) Informatica
18 38 (0.62%) Adobe
19 37 (0.60%) Red Hat
20 36 (0.59%) F5