Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £615, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 July 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,723 2,959 4,444
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.12% 9.56% 10.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.03% 10.38% 11.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,762 1,909 2,860
10th Percentile £468 £470 £495
25th Percentile £519 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £720 £719 £738
90th Percentile £790 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 22 94
10th Percentile £46.00 £40.31 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £89.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -9.72% +2.86% -

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 47,563 28,496 40,366
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 92.02% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,794 18,232 25,937
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £415 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,217 1,276 2,865
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.82 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.58
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.75 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.75% -28.67% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.30 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 +7 4,839 £616 -1.44% 1,549
UK excluding London +8 2,528 £620 +3.33% 963
London +7 2,362 £625 -3.85% 765
Work from Home +4 1,561 £600 - 702
North of England +7 726 £600 - 289
South East +3 713 £625 +4.17% 242
Midlands +2 436 £613 +6.52% 116
North West +5 389 £610 +1.67% 175
West Midlands +1 313 £625 +4.17% 91
South West +2 279 £635 +3.67% 140
Yorkshire +11 273 £575 -4.17% 67
East of England +26 199 £600 - 55
Scotland +12 167 £650 +4.00% 74
East Midlands +6 117 £575 +15.00% 25
North East +11 71 £575 -8.00% 50
Wales +4 35 £600 +25.00% 32
Northern Ireland +4 7 £475 -32.14% 28
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 July 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 1,706 (29.81%) Security Cleared
2 1,419 (24.79%) Azure
3 1,280 (22.37%) SC Cleared
4 1,248 (21.81%) AWS
5 811 (14.17%) Roadmaps
6 793 (13.86%) Migration
7 747 (13.05%) Microsoft
8 719 (12.56%) Stakeholder Management
9 674 (11.78%) Agile
10 638 (11.15%) DevOps
11 626 (10.94%) AI
12 602 (10.52%) CI/CD
13 600 (10.48%) Enterprise Architecture
14 555 (9.70%) Technical Leadership
15 549 (9.59%) Data Modelling
16 547 (9.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 520 (9.09%) Integration Patterns
18 507 (8.86%) Data Architecture
19 477 (8.33%) Architectural Patterns
20 468 (8.18%) Analytics
21 461 (8.06%) TOGAF
22 433 (7.57%) Microservices
23 426 (7.44%) GCP
24 377 (6.59%) Problem-Solving
25 365 (6.38%) Security Architecture
26 362 (6.33%) Architectural Design
27 360 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
28 345 (6.03%) Event-Driven
29 343 (5.99%) Cybersecurity
30 336 (5.87%) SAP

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
1 114 (1.99%) SharePoint
2 83 (1.45%) Confluence
3 52 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (0.84%) SAS
5 33 (0.58%) Apache
6 32 (0.56%) Apache Spark
7 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
8 20 (0.35%) Appian
8 20 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.33%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.17%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.16%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.10%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.10%) Documentum
15 6 (0.10%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 21 (0.37%) MS Visio
2 17 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.17%) Chatbot
5 9 (0.16%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.052%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.052%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 153 (2.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.65%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
6 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
9 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
11 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
12 7 (0.12%) SAP MDG
12 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.10%) Maximo
13 6 (0.10%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
13 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,419 (24.79%) Azure
2 1,248 (21.81%) AWS
3 426 (7.44%) GCP
4 277 (4.84%) Power Platform
5 204 (3.56%) Serverless
6 200 (3.49%) SaaS
7 199 (3.48%) Entra ID
8 137 (2.39%) GitHub
9 136 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
10 125 (2.18%) PaaS
11 114 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 112 (1.96%) Azure DevOps
13 99 (1.73%) Snowflake
14 98 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (1.64%) IaaS
16 86 (1.50%) Amazon S3
17 69 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
18 68 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 67 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 65 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 229 (4.00%) Firewall
2 195 (3.41%) Network Security
3 123 (2.15%) VPN
4 122 (2.13%) DNS
4 122 (2.13%) WAN
5 85 (1.49%) LAN
6 67 (1.17%) SD-WAN
7 48 (0.84%) DHCP
8 47 (0.82%) TCP/IP
9 45 (0.79%) BGP
10 40 (0.70%) VLAN
11 36 (0.63%) MPLS
12 34 (0.59%) OSPF
13 33 (0.58%) Wireless
14 29 (0.51%) SAN
15 27 (0.47%) NAS
16 26 (0.45%) IPsec
17 25 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.42%) BIG-IP
19 22 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (3.35%) Power BI
2 167 (2.92%) Metadata
3 164 (2.87%) Data Lake
4 155 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
5 72 (1.26%) NoSQL
6 65 (1.14%) SQL Server
7 63 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
8 46 (0.80%) Big Data
9 45 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
10 37 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
10 37 (0.65%) BigQuery
10 37 (0.65%) Oracle Database
11 28 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
11 28 (0.49%) Delta Lake
12 27 (0.47%) Relational Database
13 26 (0.45%) Tableau
14 24 (0.42%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.38%) Electronic Patient Records
16 21 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
16 21 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 109 (1.90%) JIRA
2 86 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 71 (1.24%) Git
4 37 (0.65%) GitLab
5 26 (0.45%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.16%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
8 8 (0.14%) MLflow
8 8 (0.14%) Postman
9 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Selenium
10 6 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.087%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.087%) JMeter
11 5 (0.087%) Maven
11 5 (0.087%) Oracle Forms
12 4 (0.070%) Snyk
General
1 1,068 (18.66%) Social Skills
2 892 (15.59%) Finance
3 650 (11.36%) Public Sector
4 327 (5.71%) Banking
5 302 (5.28%) Analytical Skills
6 220 (3.84%) Retail
7 159 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
8 137 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
9 131 (2.29%) Legal
10 105 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 101 (1.76%) Telecoms
12 55 (0.96%) Billing
13 53 (0.93%) Marketing
14 52 (0.91%) Military
15 51 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 49 (0.86%) Law
17 41 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
18 39 (0.68%) Aerospace
19 37 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.59%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (4.70%) REST
2 209 (3.65%) Middleware
3 135 (2.36%) .NET
4 124 (2.17%) SOAP
5 119 (2.08%) Kafka
6 97 (1.69%) OAuth
7 92 (1.61%) OpenID
8 75 (1.31%) SAML
9 68 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
10 59 (1.03%) LDAP
11 58 (1.01%) OAuth2
12 55 (0.96%) React
13 51 (0.89%) RESTful
14 50 (0.87%) SailPoint
15 46 (0.80%) JSON
16 38 (0.66%) Web Services
17 37 (0.65%) AngularJS
17 37 (0.65%) Node.js
18 33 (0.58%) .NET Framework
18 33 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 486 (8.49%) Cloud Native
2 205 (3.58%) Data Centre
3 166 (2.90%) Management Information System
4 155 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 146 (2.55%) Product Ownership
6 138 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
7 127 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
7 127 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
8 110 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
9 92 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 90 (1.57%) Public Cloud
11 87 (1.52%) Operational Technology
12 85 (1.49%) CMDB
13 84 (1.47%) AI Agents
14 70 (1.22%) Security Posture
15 55 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
16 48 (0.84%) Data Structures
16 48 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
17 46 (0.80%) NHS
18 44 (0.77%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 154 (2.69%) Windows
2 96 (1.68%) Linux
3 47 (0.82%) Windows Server
4 36 (0.63%) Android
5 35 (0.61%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.44%) Unix
7 17 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.17%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.087%) AIX
12 5 (0.087%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (0.087%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.087%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.070%) Solaris
13 4 (0.070%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 811 (14.17%) Roadmaps
2 793 (13.86%) Migration
3 719 (12.56%) Stakeholder Management
4 674 (11.78%) Agile
5 638 (11.15%) DevOps
6 626 (10.94%) AI
7 602 (10.52%) CI/CD
8 600 (10.48%) Enterprise Architecture
9 555 (9.70%) Technical Leadership
10 549 (9.59%) Data Modelling
11 547 (9.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 520 (9.09%) Integration Patterns
13 507 (8.86%) Data Architecture
14 477 (8.33%) Architectural Patterns
15 468 (8.18%) Analytics
16 461 (8.06%) TOGAF
17 433 (7.57%) Microservices
18 377 (6.59%) Problem-Solving
19 365 (6.38%) Security Architecture
20 362 (6.33%) Architectural Design
Programming Languages
1 318 (5.56%) Python
2 275 (4.81%) SQL
3 250 (4.37%) Java
4 123 (2.15%) PowerShell
5 108 (1.89%) JavaScript
6 66 (1.15%) C#
7 60 (1.05%) Bicep
8 46 (0.80%) Bash
9 45 (0.79%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
11 22 (0.38%) Ruby
12 13 (0.23%) Scala
13 12 (0.21%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.17%) ABAP
15 10 (0.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 9 (0.16%) C++
16 9 (0.16%) R
16 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
17 8 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,706 (29.81%) Security Cleared
2 1,280 (22.37%) SC Cleared
3 313 (5.47%) DV Cleared
4 201 (3.51%) Degree
5 128 (2.24%) CISSP
6 122 (2.13%) AWS Certification
7 121 (2.11%) Azure Certification
8 115 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
9 114 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
10 82 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 79 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
12 67 (1.17%) CISM
13 56 (0.98%) CCNP
14 49 (0.86%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 44 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
17 41 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 30 (0.52%) CCSP
19 23 (0.40%) CCIE
20 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (3.51%) NIST
2 182 (3.18%) GDPR
3 174 (3.04%) Data Quality
4 154 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 128 (2.24%) NCSC
6 67 (1.17%) QA
7 45 (0.79%) PCI DSS
8 42 (0.73%) GRC
9 37 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 29 (0.51%) NIST 800
11 28 (0.49%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.45%) SEPA
13 25 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.35%) IFRS
15 19 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
15 19 (0.33%) HL7
16 18 (0.31%) COBIT
17 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 11 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 172 (3.01%) Active Directory
2 109 (1.90%) Docker
3 91 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.05%) VMware NSX
5 28 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 25 (0.44%) vSphere
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) Varnish
10 9 (0.16%) Squid
10 9 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.14%) NFS
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.12%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) vCloud
13 4 (0.070%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.070%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.070%) IAG
13 4 (0.070%) RACF
13 4 (0.070%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 284 (4.96%) Terraform
2 269 (4.70%) Kubernetes
3 114 (1.99%) Ansible
4 54 (0.94%) Grafana
5 52 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
6 46 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 26 (0.45%) FortiGate
9 24 (0.42%) vCenter Server
10 22 (0.38%) Argo
11 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.24%) SCCM
13 12 (0.21%) Istio
14 8 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 7 (0.12%) Consul
15 7 (0.12%) HAProxy
15 7 (0.12%) Puppet
16 6 (0.10%) CASB
16 6 (0.10%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 747 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 336 (5.87%) SAP
3 304 (5.31%) ServiceNow
4 265 (4.63%) Oracle
5 237 (4.14%) Databricks
6 184 (3.22%) Salesforce
7 168 (2.94%) VMware
8 139 (2.43%) Cisco
9 137 (2.39%) Google
10 69 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 68 (1.19%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.12%) Splunk
13 56 (0.98%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.87%) Red Hat
15 49 (0.86%) IBM
16 45 (0.79%) OpenAI
17 44 (0.77%) Workday
18 42 (0.73%) Ariba
19 40 (0.70%) Foundry
20 39 (0.68%) F5