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 5 July 2026.

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

6 months to
5 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 5,770 3,069 4,408
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.15% 9.67% 10.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.06% 10.50% 10.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,787 1,979 2,854
10th Percentile £469 £475 £490
25th Percentile £522 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £716 £720 £738
90th Percentile £788 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 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 £74.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £88.00
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 47,830 29,215 40,312
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 92.02% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,937 18,656 25,939
10th Percentile £325 £287 £285
25th Percentile £417 £400 £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 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,242 1,317 2,814
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.44 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.45 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.57% -31.30% -10.47%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £63.31
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.95 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.14%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 4,864 £616 -1.42% 1,430
UK excluding London +8 2,531 £620 +3.33% 923
London +5 2,386 £620 -4.62% 665
Work from Home +4 1,572 £600 -0.50% 683
North of England +7 731 £600 - 278
South East +1 708 £626 +4.33% 235
Midlands +1 433 £613 +6.52% 113
North West +5 390 £610 +1.67% 162
West Midlands -2 311 £625 +4.17% 90
South West +3 279 £625 +0.81% 126
Yorkshire +9 277 £580 -3.29% 65
East of England +19 200 £600 - 51
Scotland +11 170 £650 +4.00% 75
East Midlands +6 115 £581 +16.25% 22
North East 0 72 £575 -8.00% 54
Wales +3 36 £600 +25.00% 32
Northern Ireland +5 7 £475 -32.14% 24
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 5 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 1,729 (29.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,433 (24.84%) Azure
3 1,295 (22.44%) SC Cleared
4 1,259 (21.82%) AWS
5 821 (14.23%) Roadmaps
6 798 (13.83%) Migration
7 750 (13.00%) Microsoft
8 734 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
9 687 (11.91%) Agile
10 643 (11.14%) DevOps
11 640 (11.09%) AI
12 611 (10.59%) Enterprise Architecture
13 604 (10.47%) CI/CD
14 557 (9.65%) Data Modelling
15 552 (9.57%) Technical Leadership
16 547 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 525 (9.10%) Integration Patterns
18 510 (8.84%) Data Architecture
19 479 (8.30%) Architectural Patterns
20 476 (8.25%) Analytics
21 471 (8.16%) TOGAF
22 438 (7.59%) Microservices
23 427 (7.40%) GCP
24 380 (6.59%) Problem-Solving
25 370 (6.41%) Security Architecture
26 363 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
27 360 (6.24%) Architectural Design
28 351 (6.08%) Event-Driven
29 349 (6.05%) Cybersecurity
30 341 (5.91%) 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
1 110 (1.91%) SharePoint
2 80 (1.39%) Confluence
3 51 (0.88%) SAS
4 50 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 34 (0.59%) Apache
6 32 (0.55%) Apache Spark
7 27 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
8 21 (0.36%) Appian
8 21 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.35%) 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%) Documentum
14 7 (0.12%) JBoss
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.10%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 21 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.28%) 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 (2.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 20 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
10 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,433 (24.84%) Azure
2 1,259 (21.82%) AWS
3 427 (7.40%) GCP
4 279 (4.84%) Power Platform
5 206 (3.57%) Serverless
6 203 (3.52%) SaaS
7 199 (3.45%) Entra ID
8 140 (2.43%) GitHub
9 135 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
10 127 (2.20%) PaaS
11 117 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
13 99 (1.72%) Snowflake
14 98 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
15 95 (1.65%) IaaS
16 85 (1.47%) Amazon S3
17 70 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
17 70 (1.21%) OpenShift
18 67 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 65 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 232 (4.02%) Firewall
2 195 (3.38%) Network Security
3 123 (2.13%) VPN
4 122 (2.11%) DNS
4 122 (2.11%) WAN
5 85 (1.47%) LAN
6 67 (1.16%) SD-WAN
7 48 (0.83%) DHCP
7 48 (0.83%) TCP/IP
8 45 (0.78%) BGP
9 40 (0.69%) VLAN
10 36 (0.62%) MPLS
11 34 (0.59%) OSPF
12 33 (0.57%) Wireless
13 29 (0.50%) SAN
14 27 (0.47%) IPsec
14 27 (0.47%) NAS
15 25 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
16 24 (0.42%) BIG-IP
17 22 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (3.34%) Power BI
2 168 (2.91%) Data Lake
3 167 (2.89%) Metadata
4 158 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
5 73 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 65 (1.13%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (1.11%) SQL Server
8 47 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 47 (0.81%) Big Data
9 39 (0.68%) Oracle Database
10 38 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
10 38 (0.66%) BigQuery
11 28 (0.49%) Delta Lake
12 27 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
12 27 (0.47%) Relational Database
13 25 (0.43%) Tableau
14 23 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
14 23 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
16 21 (0.36%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 108 (1.87%) JIRA
2 84 (1.46%) Jenkins
3 74 (1.28%) Git
4 37 (0.64%) GitLab
5 26 (0.45%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.16%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.16%) Postman
8 8 (0.14%) MLflow
8 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Selenium
11 5 (0.087%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.087%) JMeter
11 5 (0.087%) Maven
11 5 (0.087%) Oracle Forms
12 4 (0.069%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,084 (18.79%) Social Skills
2 895 (15.51%) Finance
3 656 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 336 (5.82%) Banking
5 308 (5.34%) Analytical Skills
6 227 (3.93%) Retail
7 159 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
8 139 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
9 129 (2.24%) Legal
10 106 (1.84%) Telecoms
11 105 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 56 (0.97%) Billing
13 54 (0.94%) Marketing
14 53 (0.92%) Military
15 51 (0.88%) Financial Institution
16 48 (0.83%) Law
17 41 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
18 39 (0.68%) Aerospace
19 37 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.59%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (4.71%) REST
2 207 (3.59%) Middleware
3 135 (2.34%) .NET
4 121 (2.10%) Kafka
4 121 (2.10%) SOAP
5 101 (1.75%) OAuth
6 94 (1.63%) OpenID
7 75 (1.30%) SAML
8 68 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
9 60 (1.04%) OAuth2
10 55 (0.95%) LDAP
11 54 (0.94%) React
12 51 (0.88%) SailPoint
13 50 (0.87%) RESTful
14 47 (0.81%) JSON
15 39 (0.68%) Web Services
16 37 (0.64%) AngularJS
16 37 (0.64%) Node.js
17 34 (0.59%) PySpark
18 33 (0.57%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 492 (8.53%) Cloud Native
2 207 (3.59%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.89%) Management Information System
4 159 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 129 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 124 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
11 91 (1.58%) Public Cloud
12 89 (1.54%) Operational Technology
13 86 (1.49%) CMDB
14 85 (1.47%) AI Agents
15 66 (1.14%) Security Posture
16 56 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
17 49 (0.85%) Data Structures
18 48 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.81%) NHS
20 44 (0.76%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 153 (2.65%) Windows
2 98 (1.70%) Linux
3 47 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.61%) Android
5 34 (0.59%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.43%) Unix
7 20 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.19%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.087%) AIX
11 5 (0.087%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.087%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.069%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.069%) Solaris
12 4 (0.069%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.052%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 821 (14.23%) Roadmaps
2 798 (13.83%) Migration
3 734 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
4 687 (11.91%) Agile
5 643 (11.14%) DevOps
6 640 (11.09%) AI
7 611 (10.59%) Enterprise Architecture
8 604 (10.47%) CI/CD
9 557 (9.65%) Data Modelling
10 552 (9.57%) Technical Leadership
11 547 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 525 (9.10%) Integration Patterns
13 510 (8.84%) Data Architecture
14 479 (8.30%) Architectural Patterns
15 476 (8.25%) Analytics
16 471 (8.16%) TOGAF
17 438 (7.59%) Microservices
18 380 (6.59%) Problem-Solving
19 370 (6.41%) Security Architecture
20 363 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 309 (5.36%) Python
2 280 (4.85%) SQL
3 256 (4.44%) Java
4 114 (1.98%) JavaScript
4 114 (1.98%) PowerShell
5 66 (1.14%) C#
6 61 (1.06%) Bicep
7 46 (0.80%) Bash
8 44 (0.76%) TypeScript
9 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
10 21 (0.36%) Ruby
11 14 (0.24%) Scala
12 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.17%) ABAP
14 9 (0.16%) C++
14 9 (0.16%) R
14 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,729 (29.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,295 (22.44%) SC Cleared
3 320 (5.55%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.52%) Degree
5 129 (2.24%) CISSP
6 125 (2.17%) AWS Certification
6 125 (2.17%) Azure Certification
7 117 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
8 113 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 80 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
11 67 (1.16%) CISM
12 55 (0.95%) CCNP
13 50 (0.87%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 44 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
16 42 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.52%) CCSP
18 23 (0.40%) CCIE
19 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (3.52%) NIST
2 182 (3.15%) GDPR
3 176 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 156 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 129 (2.24%) NCSC
6 68 (1.18%) QA
7 45 (0.78%) PCI DSS
8 44 (0.76%) GRC
9 38 (0.66%) Accessibility
10 29 (0.50%) NIST 800
11 28 (0.49%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 26 (0.45%) SEPA
13 20 (0.35%) IFRS
14 19 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
14 19 (0.33%) HL7
15 18 (0.31%) COBIT
16 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.21%) JSP 440
18 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 169 (2.93%) Active Directory
2 115 (1.99%) Docker
3 91 (1.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.04%) VMware NSX
5 28 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.42%) vSphere
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 10 (0.17%) 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 (0.069%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.069%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.069%) IAG
13 4 (0.069%) RACF
13 4 (0.069%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 290 (5.03%) Terraform
2 277 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.94%) Ansible
4 55 (0.95%) Grafana
5 54 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
6 46 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 26 (0.45%) FortiGate
9 23 (0.40%) 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
1 750 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 341 (5.91%) SAP
3 310 (5.37%) ServiceNow
4 271 (4.70%) Oracle
5 238 (4.12%) Databricks
6 187 (3.24%) Salesforce
7 167 (2.89%) VMware
8 141 (2.44%) Cisco
9 140 (2.43%) Google
10 70 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 65 (1.13%) Splunk
12 63 (1.09%) CyberArk
13 56 (0.97%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.87%) IBM
14 50 (0.87%) Red Hat
15 44 (0.76%) Workday
16 42 (0.73%) Ariba
16 42 (0.73%) OpenAI
17 40 (0.69%) Foundry
18 39 (0.68%) F5