Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £618, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 July 2026.

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

6 months to
23 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 5,866 3,132 4,192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.12% 9.59% 10.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.02% 10.47% 10.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,833 2,036 2,717
10th Percentile £475 £465 £488
25th Percentile £525 £537 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £618 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.12% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £713 £708 £738
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 22 88
10th Percentile £46.00 £40.31 £59.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £68.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% -1.79% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £88.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -

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 48,822 29,919 38,227
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.60% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,449 19,032 24,743
10th Percentile £325 £285 £298
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.05%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,293 1,436 2,397
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +73.72% -37.63% -7.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% +6.78%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,926 £620 -0.80% 1,765
London +7 2,500 £620 -4.62% 1,037
UK excluding London +7 2,475 £625 +4.17% 810
Work from Home +5 1,615 £600 - 723
North of England +6 719 £600 - 214
South East 0 712 £638 +6.25% 241
Midlands -3 407 £623 +8.26% 109
North West +5 391 £605 +0.83% 110
West Midlands -5 299 £626 +4.33% 78
South West -2 284 £625 - 108
Yorkshire +7 259 £600 - 66
East of England +16 173 £600 +4.35% 64
Scotland +11 170 £650 +4.00% 58
East Midlands +4 102 £600 +20.00% 30
North East +1 77 £600 -15.79% 38
Wales -1 32 £600 +11.11% 17
Northern Ireland +9 7 £475 -32.14% 9
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -24.34% 1

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 23 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 1,770 (30.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,455 (24.80%) Azure
3 1,333 (22.72%) SC Cleared
4 1,296 (22.09%) AWS
5 875 (14.92%) Roadmaps
6 802 (13.67%) Migration
7 779 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
8 747 (12.73%) Microsoft
9 690 (11.76%) AI
10 686 (11.69%) Agile
11 669 (11.40%) Enterprise Architecture
12 629 (10.72%) DevOps
13 606 (10.33%) CI/CD
14 596 (10.16%) Data Modelling
15 574 (9.79%) Technical Leadership
16 567 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 555 (9.46%) Integration Patterns
18 552 (9.41%) Data Architecture
19 512 (8.73%) Analytics
20 495 (8.44%) TOGAF
21 490 (8.35%) Architectural Patterns
22 447 (7.62%) GCP
23 432 (7.36%) Microservices
24 400 (6.82%) Security Architecture
25 378 (6.44%) Event-Driven
26 370 (6.31%) Problem-Solving
27 357 (6.09%) Cybersecurity
27 357 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
28 351 (5.98%) Architectural Design
29 346 (5.90%) 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 96 (1.64%) SharePoint
2 71 (1.21%) SAS
3 67 (1.14%) Confluence
4 46 (0.78%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.77%) Apache
6 40 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.34%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) Appian
11 14 (0.24%) OpenStack
12 11 (0.19%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.17%) nginx
14 7 (0.12%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) Documentum
14 7 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 5 (0.085%) JBoss
16 5 (0.085%) SAP EP
Applications
1 20 (0.34%) MS Visio
2 12 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.19%) Chatbot
3 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
4 8 (0.14%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.12%) Revit
5 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.051%) PlantUML
6 3 (0.051%) Windchill
7 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 156 (2.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 34 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 22 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.27%) SAP ERP
5 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 14 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
7 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
8 10 (0.17%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
9 9 (0.15%) Oracle Retail
10 8 (0.14%) Maximo
10 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
10 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
11 7 (0.12%) SAP GRC
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,455 (24.80%) Azure
2 1,296 (22.09%) AWS
3 447 (7.62%) GCP
4 282 (4.81%) Power Platform
5 209 (3.56%) Entra ID
6 208 (3.55%) SaaS
7 193 (3.29%) Serverless
8 139 (2.37%) GitHub
9 126 (2.15%) PaaS
10 122 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
11 120 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
12 107 (1.82%) Azure DevOps
13 102 (1.74%) Snowflake
14 94 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.60%) IaaS
15 84 (1.43%) Amazon S3
16 68 (1.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 63 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
18 62 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
18 62 (1.06%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 208 (3.55%) Firewall
2 194 (3.31%) Network Security
3 107 (1.82%) WAN
4 106 (1.81%) VPN
5 101 (1.72%) DNS
6 79 (1.35%) LAN
7 53 (0.90%) SD-WAN
8 46 (0.78%) BGP
9 45 (0.77%) TCP/IP
10 43 (0.73%) DHCP
11 39 (0.66%) MPLS
12 36 (0.61%) VLAN
13 33 (0.56%) Wireless
14 31 (0.53%) SAN
15 29 (0.49%) OSPF
16 28 (0.48%) IPsec
17 27 (0.46%) NAS
18 25 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
19 24 (0.41%) VXLAN
20 22 (0.38%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (3.31%) Power BI
2 183 (3.12%) Data Lake
3 180 (3.07%) Metadata
4 172 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
5 74 (1.26%) NoSQL
6 62 (1.06%) PostgreSQL
7 61 (1.04%) SQL Server
8 53 (0.90%) Big Data
9 44 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
10 42 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
11 39 (0.66%) BigQuery
11 39 (0.66%) Oracle Database
12 31 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
12 31 (0.53%) Delta Lake
13 26 (0.44%) GIS
14 24 (0.41%) MongoDB
14 24 (0.41%) Relational Database
14 24 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
15 23 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
16 22 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 95 (1.62%) JIRA
2 75 (1.28%) Git
3 72 (1.23%) Jenkins
4 35 (0.60%) GitLab
5 26 (0.44%) ERwin
6 9 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.14%) Cypress.io
7 8 (0.14%) MLflow
7 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.12%) Postman
8 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.10%) Claude Code
9 6 (0.10%) Hudson
9 6 (0.10%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (0.085%) Maven
10 5 (0.085%) REST Assured
10 5 (0.085%) Storybook
11 4 (0.068%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.068%) Snyk
General
1 1,085 (18.50%) Social Skills
2 878 (14.97%) Finance
3 659 (11.23%) Public Sector
4 335 (5.71%) Banking
5 304 (5.18%) Analytical Skills
6 237 (4.04%) Retail
7 144 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
8 141 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 133 (2.27%) Telecoms
10 116 (1.98%) Legal
11 112 (1.91%) Manufacturing
12 62 (1.06%) Marketing
13 54 (0.92%) Billing
14 52 (0.89%) Financial Institution
15 48 (0.82%) Military
16 45 (0.77%) Law
17 44 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 42 (0.72%) Aerospace
19 41 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
20 30 (0.51%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (4.77%) REST
2 211 (3.60%) Middleware
3 140 (2.39%) Kafka
4 130 (2.22%) .NET
5 124 (2.11%) SOAP
6 109 (1.86%) OAuth
7 71 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
8 67 (1.14%) OpenID
9 60 (1.02%) SAML
10 58 (0.99%) OAuth2
11 55 (0.94%) React
12 53 (0.90%) JSON
13 51 (0.87%) RESTful
14 48 (0.82%) SailPoint
15 40 (0.68%) PySpark
16 38 (0.65%) Web Services
17 37 (0.63%) .NET Framework
17 37 (0.63%) LDAP
18 34 (0.58%) GraphQL
18 34 (0.58%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 491 (8.37%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.43%) Data Centre
3 171 (2.92%) Management Information System
4 153 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 147 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 146 (2.49%) Product Ownership
7 139 (2.37%) Hybrid Cloud
8 138 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
9 114 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
10 107 (1.82%) AI Agents
11 95 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
12 93 (1.59%) Operational Technology
13 90 (1.53%) Public Cloud
14 83 (1.41%) CMDB
15 66 (1.13%) Enterprise Cloud
16 63 (1.07%) Security Posture
17 56 (0.95%) Data Structures
18 50 (0.85%) Private Cloud
19 47 (0.80%) IoT
20 46 (0.78%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 132 (2.25%) Windows
2 103 (1.76%) Linux
3 44 (0.75%) Windows Server
4 33 (0.56%) Android
5 32 (0.55%) Apple iOS
6 24 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 22 (0.38%) Unix
8 12 (0.20%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) AIX
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.085%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.085%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.068%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.068%) Solaris
12 4 (0.068%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.051%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.034%) CentOS
15 1 (0.017%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.017%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 875 (14.92%) Roadmaps
2 802 (13.67%) Migration
3 779 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 690 (11.76%) AI
5 686 (11.69%) Agile
6 669 (11.40%) Enterprise Architecture
7 629 (10.72%) DevOps
8 606 (10.33%) CI/CD
9 596 (10.16%) Data Modelling
10 574 (9.79%) Technical Leadership
11 567 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 555 (9.46%) Integration Patterns
13 552 (9.41%) Data Architecture
14 512 (8.73%) Analytics
15 495 (8.44%) TOGAF
16 490 (8.35%) Architectural Patterns
17 432 (7.36%) Microservices
18 400 (6.82%) Security Architecture
19 378 (6.44%) Event-Driven
20 370 (6.31%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 294 (5.01%) Python
2 278 (4.74%) SQL
3 268 (4.57%) Java
4 128 (2.18%) JavaScript
5 101 (1.72%) PowerShell
6 63 (1.07%) C#
7 58 (0.99%) Bicep
8 49 (0.84%) Bash
9 46 (0.78%) TypeScript
10 32 (0.55%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.36%) Ruby
12 12 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 12 (0.20%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.19%) ABAP
13 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.19%) Scala
14 10 (0.17%) C++
15 9 (0.15%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.15%) R
16 8 (0.14%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,770 (30.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,333 (22.72%) SC Cleared
3 336 (5.73%) DV Cleared
4 197 (3.36%) Degree
5 149 (2.54%) CISSP
6 130 (2.22%) Azure Certification
7 126 (2.15%) AWS Certification
8 114 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
9 107 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
10 91 (1.55%) TOGAF Certification
11 81 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
12 72 (1.23%) CISM
13 52 (0.89%) CCNP
14 50 (0.85%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 45 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
17 43 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 35 (0.60%) CCSP
19 23 (0.39%) DBS Check
20 21 (0.36%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (3.39%) Data Quality
2 197 (3.36%) NIST
3 185 (3.15%) GDPR
4 148 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 121 (2.06%) NCSC
6 65 (1.11%) GRC
7 63 (1.07%) QA
8 42 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 41 (0.70%) Accessibility
10 30 (0.51%) NIST 800
10 30 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
12 23 (0.39%) SEPA
13 21 (0.36%) IFRS
14 20 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
15 19 (0.32%) HL7
16 14 (0.24%) COBIT
16 14 (0.24%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.20%) SLA
18 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 170 (2.90%) Active Directory
2 121 (2.06%) Docker
3 86 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 54 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 27 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 26 (0.44%) vSphere
7 20 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.14%) NFS
11 7 (0.12%) Varnish
12 6 (0.10%) Postfix
12 6 (0.10%) vCloud
13 5 (0.085%) IAG
13 5 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.068%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.068%) RACF
14 4 (0.068%) Sendmail
14 4 (0.068%) Squid
15 3 (0.051%) KVM
Systems Management
1 293 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 272 (4.64%) Terraform
3 108 (1.84%) Ansible
4 57 (0.97%) Grafana
5 47 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 47 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 43 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 22 (0.38%) Argo
7 22 (0.38%) vCenter Server
8 16 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
9 14 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 10 (0.17%) Istio
12 7 (0.12%) SCCM
13 6 (0.10%) CASB
13 6 (0.10%) EMC VPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) HAProxy
14 5 (0.085%) MOM
14 5 (0.085%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.068%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 747 (12.73%) Microsoft
2 346 (5.90%) SAP
3 306 (5.22%) ServiceNow
4 289 (4.93%) Oracle
5 250 (4.26%) Databricks
6 185 (3.15%) Salesforce
7 160 (2.73%) VMware
8 145 (2.47%) Google
9 132 (2.25%) Cisco
10 65 (1.11%) MuleSoft
11 61 (1.04%) IBM
12 59 (1.01%) CyberArk
13 55 (0.94%) Splunk
14 53 (0.90%) Palo Alto
15 50 (0.85%) Workday
16 48 (0.82%) Ariba
17 46 (0.78%) Red Hat
18 45 (0.77%) Foundry
19 40 (0.68%) OpenAI
20 38 (0.65%) Informatica