Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 January 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 17 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 -3 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 3,605 3,140 4,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.57% 9.97% 9.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.47% 10.74% 10.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,428 1,880 2,773
10th Percentile £460 £485 £500
25th Percentile £515 £550 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -
75th Percentile £725 £738 £725
90th Percentile £800 £799 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £625 £650
% change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 30 38
10th Percentile £49.40 £59.83 £59.18
25th Percentile £65.00 £66.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £80.00 £72.50 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year +10.34% -5.27% +9.33%
75th Percentile £91.92 £81.83 £85.64
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.50 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.82 £72.50 £77.27
% change year-on-year +15.61% -6.17% +10.38%

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 34,444 29,232 40,404
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.42% 92.85% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,829 17,869 26,812
10th Percentile £300 £290 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,030 877 1,934
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -18.75% +17.65%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £63.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £74.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +36.13%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -1 3,136 £625 - 900
UK excluding London 0 1,755 £600 -4.00% 771
London -3 1,388 £645 -0.77% 294
Work from Home -5 1,043 £615 -1.60% 468
South East +9 565 £600 -4.00% 256
North of England -4 431 £570 -5.00% 170
Midlands -2 308 £575 -4.17% 85
North West -3 260 £575 -4.17% 86
South West -1 238 £710 +13.60% 95
West Midlands -3 226 £590 -4.90% 43
Yorkshire -9 162 £551 -8.17% 51
East of England +5 114 £525 -17.65% 91
Scotland -1 95 £650 +4.00% 60
East Midlands -4 80 £505 -12.17% 40
Wales +3 31 £625 +2.04% 34
North East -26 9 £625 +4.23% 33
Northern Ireland -7 5 £500 -16.67% 8
Channel Islands - 2 £625 -

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 January 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 1,118 (31.01%) Security Cleared
2 963 (26.71%) Azure
3 797 (22.11%) SC Cleared
4 742 (20.58%) AWS
5 528 (14.65%) Microsoft
6 512 (14.20%) Roadmaps
7 476 (13.20%) Stakeholder Management
8 472 (13.09%) Agile
9 442 (12.26%) Migration
10 392 (10.87%) Enterprise Architecture
11 388 (10.76%) DevOps
12 384 (10.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 362 (10.04%) TOGAF
14 361 (10.01%) Technical Leadership
15 358 (9.93%) Data Modelling
16 338 (9.38%) CI/CD
17 332 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
18 295 (8.18%) AI
19 293 (8.13%) Analytics
20 290 (8.04%) Python
21 282 (7.82%) GCP
22 256 (7.10%) Data Architecture
23 246 (6.82%) Microservices
24 244 (6.77%) Integration Patterns
25 243 (6.74%) DV Cleared
26 231 (6.41%) Terraform
27 222 (6.16%) Mentoring
28 221 (6.13%) Architectural Design
29 217 (6.02%) SAP
30 204 (5.66%) ServiceNow

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
1 103 (2.86%) Confluence
2 85 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 52 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.69%) SAS
5 21 (0.58%) OpenStack
6 20 (0.55%) CMS
7 16 (0.44%) Anypoint
8 15 (0.42%) Apache
9 14 (0.39%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
10 13 (0.36%) ArcGIS
11 9 (0.25%) Smallworld
12 7 (0.19%) Ethereum
12 7 (0.19%) GeoServer
12 7 (0.19%) Hyperledger
12 7 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.17%) Mule
13 6 (0.17%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 48 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 32 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
3 31 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.11%) Siemens NX
6 3 (0.083%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.028%) ArchiCAD
7 1 (0.028%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.028%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.028%) OrCAD
7 1 (0.028%) Revit
7 1 (0.028%) Trello
Business Applications
1 110 (3.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (1.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 32 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.64%) Workday HCM
5 18 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
6 15 (0.42%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.36%) SAP CO
7 13 (0.36%) SAP PM
8 12 (0.33%) Maximo
8 12 (0.33%) SAP FI
9 11 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
10 9 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
10 9 (0.25%) SAP EWM
11 8 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.22%) SAP PP
12 7 (0.19%) Distributed Ledger
12 7 (0.19%) R3 Corda
12 7 (0.19%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 963 (26.71%) Azure
2 742 (20.58%) AWS
3 282 (7.82%) GCP
4 140 (3.88%) SaaS
5 137 (3.80%) Serverless
6 136 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 123 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
8 112 (3.11%) Entra ID
9 83 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
10 81 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
10 81 (2.25%) GitHub
11 76 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
11 76 (2.11%) IaaS
12 71 (1.97%) Microsoft Purview
13 68 (1.89%) Amazon S3
14 62 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
14 62 (1.72%) PaaS
15 59 (1.64%) Azure Data Factory
16 58 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 55 (1.53%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 196 (5.44%) Firewall
2 138 (3.83%) WAN
3 109 (3.02%) Network Security
4 94 (2.61%) VPN
5 90 (2.50%) LAN
6 87 (2.41%) DNS
7 73 (2.02%) SD-WAN
8 42 (1.17%) BGP
9 31 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
10 28 (0.78%) MPLS
11 26 (0.72%) Internet
12 25 (0.69%) DHCP
13 24 (0.67%) OSPF
14 22 (0.61%) SAN
15 21 (0.58%) VSAN
16 17 (0.47%) VLAN
17 15 (0.42%) IPsec
17 15 (0.42%) SSL
17 15 (0.42%) TCP/IP
18 14 (0.39%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
2 96 (2.66%) Power BI
3 88 (2.44%) Metadata
4 78 (2.16%) Data Lake
5 64 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
6 55 (1.53%) SQL Server
7 46 (1.28%) Tableau
8 42 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
9 38 (1.05%) DynamoDB
9 38 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 33 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
11 28 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
11 28 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 26 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (0.72%) Redis
12 26 (0.72%) Relational Database
13 25 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
14 21 (0.58%) Delta Lake
14 21 (0.58%) GIS
15 18 (0.50%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 117 (3.25%) JIRA
2 82 (2.27%) Jenkins
3 42 (1.17%) GitLab
4 40 (1.11%) Git
5 19 (0.53%) ERwin
6 9 (0.25%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.25%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.17%) Maven
7 6 (0.17%) MSI
7 6 (0.17%) Postman
8 5 (0.14%) Gradle
8 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 5 (0.14%) SonarLint
9 4 (0.11%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.11%) MLflow
9 4 (0.11%) Rational DOORS
9 4 (0.11%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.083%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.083%) Selenium
10 3 (0.083%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 903 (25.05%) Social Skills
2 571 (15.84%) Finance
3 439 (12.18%) Public Sector
4 264 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
5 204 (5.66%) Banking
6 101 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 97 (2.69%) Legal
8 80 (2.22%) Telecoms
9 78 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
10 76 (2.11%) Retail
11 73 (2.02%) Military
12 69 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
13 68 (1.89%) Marketing
14 62 (1.72%) Manufacturing
15 42 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 35 (0.97%) Billing
17 31 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.67%) Law
19 22 (0.61%) Back Office
20 21 (0.58%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (5.10%) REST
2 107 (2.97%) Middleware
3 106 (2.94%) SOAP
4 77 (2.14%) .NET
5 65 (1.80%) Kafka
6 57 (1.58%) OAuth
7 56 (1.55%) LDAP
8 49 (1.36%) JSON
9 48 (1.33%) OpenID
10 46 (1.28%) SAML
11 42 (1.17%) RESTful
12 34 (0.94%) OAuth2
13 31 (0.86%) PySpark
14 30 (0.83%) AngularJS
15 28 (0.78%) React
16 27 (0.75%) Oracle Fusion
16 27 (0.75%) Spring Boot
17 26 (0.72%) SailPoint
18 23 (0.64%) Lightning Web Components
18 23 (0.64%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 267 (7.41%) Cloud Native
2 132 (3.66%) Product Ownership
3 119 (3.30%) Data Centre
4 101 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
5 98 (2.72%) Onboarding
6 89 (2.47%) PKI
7 87 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
8 78 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (1.83%) Security Posture
10 60 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
11 59 (1.64%) Public Cloud
12 57 (1.58%) Management Information System
13 54 (1.50%) Operational Technology
14 44 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 41 (1.14%) CMDB
15 41 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
16 38 (1.05%) NHS
17 37 (1.03%) Data Structures
18 35 (0.97%) SCADA
19 31 (0.86%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 167 (4.63%) Windows
2 109 (3.02%) Linux
3 45 (1.25%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.50%) Windows 10
5 18 (0.50%) Windows 7
6 17 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 12 (0.33%) Unix
9 9 (0.25%) VMS
10 7 (0.19%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.17%) Android
11 6 (0.17%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.17%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.14%) zOS
13 4 (0.11%) CentOS
14 3 (0.083%) Solaris
14 3 (0.083%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.055%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.028%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 512 (14.20%) Roadmaps
2 476 (13.20%) Stakeholder Management
3 472 (13.09%) Agile
4 442 (12.26%) Migration
5 392 (10.87%) Enterprise Architecture
6 388 (10.76%) DevOps
7 384 (10.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 362 (10.04%) TOGAF
9 361 (10.01%) Technical Leadership
10 358 (9.93%) Data Modelling
11 338 (9.38%) CI/CD
12 332 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
13 295 (8.18%) AI
14 293 (8.13%) Analytics
15 256 (7.10%) Data Architecture
16 246 (6.82%) Microservices
17 244 (6.77%) Integration Patterns
18 222 (6.16%) Mentoring
19 221 (6.13%) Architectural Design
20 203 (5.63%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 290 (8.04%) Python
2 177 (4.91%) SQL
3 169 (4.69%) PowerShell
4 126 (3.50%) Java
5 53 (1.47%) JavaScript
6 43 (1.19%) C#
7 32 (0.89%) TypeScript
8 29 (0.80%) Bash
8 29 (0.80%) Bicep
9 21 (0.58%) Apex Code
10 19 (0.53%) PL/SQL
11 12 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 11 (0.31%) R
13 10 (0.28%) T-SQL
14 9 (0.25%) ABAP
14 9 (0.25%) Ruby
15 8 (0.22%) PHP
15 8 (0.22%) VB
16 7 (0.19%) Scala
16 7 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,118 (31.01%) Security Cleared
2 797 (22.11%) SC Cleared
3 243 (6.74%) DV Cleared
4 175 (4.85%) Degree
5 104 (2.88%) CISSP
6 102 (2.83%) AWS Certification
7 100 (2.77%) TOGAF Certification
8 91 (2.52%) Azure Certification
9 65 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
10 63 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 63 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
11 59 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
12 53 (1.47%) CISM
13 48 (1.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 45 (1.25%) Master's Degree
15 37 (1.03%) CCNP
16 35 (0.97%) CCIE
17 26 (0.72%) ISEB
17 26 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
18 20 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 165 (4.58%) GDPR
2 141 (3.91%) NIST
3 126 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 105 (2.91%) Data Quality
5 72 (2.00%) NCSC
6 56 (1.55%) QA
7 53 (1.47%) PCI DSS
8 30 (0.83%) COBIT
9 27 (0.75%) Accessibility
10 24 (0.67%) GRC
10 24 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 22 (0.61%) HIPAA
12 21 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 19 (0.53%) ISO 20022
14 18 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 16 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 16 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 12 (0.33%) MiFID
16 12 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 11 (0.31%) SLA
System Software
1 160 (4.44%) Active Directory
2 117 (3.25%) Docker
3 100 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (1.30%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.89%) vSphere
6 22 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.44%) Hyper-V
9 14 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 7 (0.19%) NFS
11 6 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 6 (0.17%) Varnish
12 5 (0.14%) Lustre
12 5 (0.14%) Postfix
13 4 (0.11%) Dovecot
13 4 (0.11%) vCloud
14 3 (0.083%) Ceph
14 3 (0.083%) GPFS
14 3 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 231 (6.41%) Terraform
2 173 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 106 (2.94%) Ansible
4 48 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.92%) OPNET
6 25 (0.69%) SCCM
7 24 (0.67%) vCenter Server
8 22 (0.61%) FortiGate
9 19 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
10 18 (0.50%) WMI
11 17 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 10 (0.28%) Argo
12 10 (0.28%) Prometheus
13 9 (0.25%) Grafana
14 6 (0.17%) Istio
14 6 (0.17%) Kibana
14 6 (0.17%) Puppet
15 4 (0.11%) Data Guard
15 4 (0.11%) Oracle RMAN
16 3 (0.083%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 528 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 217 (6.02%) SAP
3 204 (5.66%) ServiceNow
4 181 (5.02%) Salesforce
5 167 (4.63%) Oracle
6 161 (4.47%) VMware
7 120 (3.33%) Cisco
8 109 (3.02%) Databricks
9 86 (2.39%) CyberArk
10 82 (2.27%) Google
11 65 (1.80%) Palo Alto
12 59 (1.64%) MuleSoft
13 52 (1.44%) Splunk
14 49 (1.36%) Centrify
15 45 (1.25%) Remedy
16 44 (1.22%) Workday
17 42 (1.17%) Atlassian
18 40 (1.11%) OpenAI
18 40 (1.11%) Sparx
19 37 (1.03%) Red Hat