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 4 July 2026.

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

6 months to
4 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 5,758 3,051 4,414
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.16% 9.67% 10.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.07% 10.51% 10.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,778 1,967 2,853
10th Percentile £469 £475 £490
25th Percentile £520 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £716 £725 £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 £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 47,708 29,033 40,392
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 92.03% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,866 18,550 25,972
10th Percentile £325 £288 £287
25th Percentile £416 £401 £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 3,233 1,310 2,837
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.78 £12.87
25th Percentile £21.15 £17.44 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.75
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.80% -12.21%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.01%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 4,855 £616 -1.40% 1,430
UK excluding London +9 2,528 £620 +3.33% 923
London +5 2,379 £621 -4.50% 665
Work from Home +4 1,571 £600 -0.41% 683
North of England +7 729 £600 - 278
South East +1 709 £625 +4.17% 235
Midlands +1 432 £613 +6.52% 113
North West +5 389 £610 +1.67% 162
West Midlands -2 311 £625 +4.17% 90
South West +1 279 £625 +1.83% 126
Yorkshire +10 276 £575 -4.17% 65
East of England +21 200 £600 - 51
Scotland +9 169 £650 +4.00% 75
East Midlands +6 114 £581 +16.25% 22
North East +2 71 £575 -8.00% 54
Wales +4 36 £600 +25.00% 32
Northern Ireland +4 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 4 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 1,724 (29.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,432 (24.87%) Azure
3 1,292 (22.44%) SC Cleared
4 1,258 (21.85%) AWS
5 819 (14.22%) Roadmaps
6 797 (13.84%) Migration
7 751 (13.04%) Microsoft
8 733 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
9 686 (11.91%) Agile
10 642 (11.15%) DevOps
11 640 (11.11%) AI
12 610 (10.59%) Enterprise Architecture
13 604 (10.49%) CI/CD
14 556 (9.66%) Data Modelling
15 553 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
16 548 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 526 (9.14%) Integration Patterns
18 509 (8.84%) Data Architecture
19 477 (8.28%) Architectural Patterns
20 475 (8.25%) Analytics
21 471 (8.18%) TOGAF
22 438 (7.61%) Microservices
23 428 (7.43%) GCP
24 380 (6.60%) Problem-Solving
25 370 (6.43%) Security Architecture
26 363 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
27 360 (6.25%) Architectural Design
28 350 (6.08%) Event-Driven
29 349 (6.06%) Cybersecurity
30 342 (5.94%) 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 50 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 50 (0.87%) SAS
4 34 (0.59%) Apache
5 32 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.36%) Appian
7 21 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
8 20 (0.35%) CMS
9 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.24%) nginx
11 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 10 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.16%) Camunda
13 7 (0.12%) Documentum
13 7 (0.12%) JBoss
13 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
14 6 (0.10%) NetWeaver
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
1 154 (2.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.63%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.52%) 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 1,432 (24.87%) Azure
2 1,258 (21.85%) AWS
3 428 (7.43%) GCP
4 280 (4.86%) Power Platform
5 206 (3.58%) Serverless
6 203 (3.53%) SaaS
7 199 (3.46%) Entra ID
8 140 (2.43%) GitHub
9 135 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
10 126 (2.19%) PaaS
11 116 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (2.01%) Dynamics 365
12 99 (1.72%) Snowflake
13 98 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.63%) IaaS
15 85 (1.48%) Amazon S3
16 70 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
16 70 (1.22%) OpenShift
17 67 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 65 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 232 (4.03%) Firewall
2 195 (3.39%) Network Security
3 123 (2.14%) VPN
4 122 (2.12%) DNS
4 122 (2.12%) WAN
5 85 (1.48%) 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 (0.63%) 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
1 194 (3.37%) Power BI
2 168 (2.92%) Data Lake
3 167 (2.90%) 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 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
8 47 (0.82%) 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 (1.88%) JIRA
2 84 (1.46%) Jenkins
3 74 (1.29%) 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%) Snyk
General
1 1,084 (18.83%) Social Skills
2 895 (15.54%) Finance
3 652 (11.32%) Public Sector
4 335 (5.82%) Banking
5 308 (5.35%) Analytical Skills
6 225 (3.91%) Retail
7 158 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
8 138 (2.40%) 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 (0.89%) 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
1 273 (4.74%) REST
2 208 (3.61%) Middleware
3 134 (2.33%) .NET
4 122 (2.12%) SOAP
5 121 (2.10%) Kafka
6 100 (1.74%) OAuth
7 93 (1.62%) OpenID
8 75 (1.30%) SAML
9 68 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
10 60 (1.04%) OAuth2
11 56 (0.97%) LDAP
12 54 (0.94%) React
13 51 (0.89%) SailPoint
14 50 (0.87%) RESTful
15 47 (0.82%) JSON
16 39 (0.68%) Web Services
17 37 (0.64%) AngularJS
17 37 (0.64%) Node.js
18 34 (0.59%) PySpark
19 33 (0.57%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 492 (8.54%) Cloud Native
2 207 (3.59%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.90%) Management Information System
4 159 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 129 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 123 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
11 90 (1.56%) Public Cloud
12 89 (1.55%) Operational Technology
13 86 (1.49%) CMDB
14 85 (1.48%) AI Agents
15 67 (1.16%) Security Posture
16 56 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
17 49 (0.85%) Data Structures
18 48 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.82%) NHS
20 44 (0.76%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 153 (2.66%) Windows
2 98 (1.70%) Linux
3 47 (0.82%) 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
1 819 (14.22%) Roadmaps
2 797 (13.84%) Migration
3 733 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 686 (11.91%) Agile
5 642 (11.15%) DevOps
6 640 (11.11%) AI
7 610 (10.59%) Enterprise Architecture
8 604 (10.49%) CI/CD
9 556 (9.66%) Data Modelling
10 553 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
11 548 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 526 (9.14%) Integration Patterns
13 509 (8.84%) Data Architecture
14 477 (8.28%) Architectural Patterns
15 475 (8.25%) Analytics
16 471 (8.18%) TOGAF
17 438 (7.61%) Microservices
18 380 (6.60%) Problem-Solving
19 370 (6.43%) Security Architecture
20 363 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 310 (5.38%) Python
2 280 (4.86%) SQL
3 255 (4.43%) Java
4 115 (2.00%) PowerShell
5 113 (1.96%) JavaScript
6 66 (1.15%) C#
7 61 (1.06%) Bicep
8 46 (0.80%) Bash
9 44 (0.76%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.36%) Ruby
12 14 (0.24%) Scala
13 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.17%) ABAP
15 9 (0.16%) C++
15 9 (0.16%) R
15 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,724 (29.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,292 (22.44%) SC Cleared
3 317 (5.51%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.53%) Degree
5 129 (2.24%) CISSP
6 125 (2.17%) Azure Certification
7 124 (2.15%) AWS Certification
8 116 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
9 113 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
10 83 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 80 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
12 67 (1.16%) CISM
13 55 (0.96%) CCNP
14 50 (0.87%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 44 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
17 41 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 30 (0.52%) CCSP
19 23 (0.40%) CCIE
20 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (3.53%) NIST
2 182 (3.16%) GDPR
3 176 (3.06%) Data Quality
4 156 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 129 (2.24%) NCSC
6 68 (1.18%) QA
7 45 (0.78%) PCI DSS
8 43 (0.75%) 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
1 170 (2.95%) Active Directory
2 115 (2.00%) 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 (5.04%) Terraform
2 277 (4.81%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.95%) Ansible
4 55 (0.96%) 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
1 751 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 342 (5.94%) SAP
3 309 (5.37%) ServiceNow
4 269 (4.67%) Oracle
5 238 (4.13%) Databricks
6 187 (3.25%) Salesforce
7 167 (2.90%) VMware
8 140 (2.43%) Cisco
8 140 (2.43%) Google
9 70 (1.22%) MuleSoft
10 65 (1.13%) Splunk
11 64 (1.11%) CyberArk
12 56 (0.97%) Palo Alto
13 50 (0.87%) IBM
13 50 (0.87%) Red Hat
14 44 (0.76%) Workday
15 42 (0.73%) Ariba
15 42 (0.73%) OpenAI
16 40 (0.69%) Foundry
17 39 (0.68%) F5