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 2 February 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 17 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 -3 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 3,771 3,190 4,404
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.81% 10.27% 9.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.73% 11.05% 10.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,541 1,915 2,863
10th Percentile £461 £481 £500
25th Percentile £514 £550 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -
75th Percentile £725 £738 £738
90th Percentile £788 £799 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £625 £650
% change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 33 49
10th Percentile £49.40 £60.30 £59.45
25th Percentile £60.00 £66.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -10.26% +11.43%
75th Percentile £90.09 £80.59 £87.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.16 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.50 £71.25 £80.00
% change year-on-year +1.75% -10.94% +14.29%

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 35,158 28,873 41,963
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.49% 92.93% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,167 17,619 27,765
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £405 £408 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £495
% change year-on-year -0.84% -3.23% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,109 850 2,268
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.92 £13.23
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £16.86
Median hourly rate £29.61 £33.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year -10.27% -8.21% +2.71%
75th Percentile £61.25 £62.50 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.77 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £36.50
% change year-on-year -13.41% -12.99% +15.54%

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 February 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 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Top 17 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 February 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 -3 3,249 £625 - 954
UK excluding London +1 1,835 £600 -4.00% 719
London -1 1,439 £630 -3.08% 432
Work from Home -5 1,079 £625 - 539
South East +10 565 £614 -1.76% 255
North of England -3 455 £575 -4.17% 168
Midlands -3 319 £573 -4.50% 86
North West -5 272 £575 -4.17% 98
South West -1 247 £708 +13.20% 70
West Midlands -4 232 £600 -1.15% 64
Yorkshire -7 169 £554 -5.70% 49
East of England +11 134 £550 -12.00% 52
Scotland +11 118 £650 +4.00% 74
East Midlands -5 85 £468 -18.70% 22
Wales +6 32 £613 - 18
North East -20 14 £575 -11.54% 21
Northern Ireland -5 5 £500 -26.47% 10

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 February 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 1,153 (30.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,002 (26.57%) Azure
3 826 (21.90%) SC Cleared
4 789 (20.92%) AWS
5 553 (14.66%) Microsoft
6 541 (14.35%) Roadmaps
7 513 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
8 495 (13.13%) Agile
9 473 (12.54%) Migration
10 423 (11.22%) DevOps
11 419 (11.11%) Enterprise Architecture
12 390 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 377 (10.00%) Data Modelling
14 376 (9.97%) TOGAF
15 375 (9.94%) Technical Leadership
16 362 (9.60%) CI/CD
17 343 (9.10%) Problem-Solving
18 320 (8.49%) AI
19 312 (8.27%) Analytics
20 309 (8.19%) GCP
21 302 (8.01%) Python
22 289 (7.66%) Data Architecture
23 266 (7.05%) Microservices
24 257 (6.82%) Integration Patterns
25 241 (6.39%) DV Cleared
26 239 (6.34%) Terraform
27 232 (6.15%) Architectural Design
28 225 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
29 219 (5.81%) Mentoring
30 215 (5.70%) Architectural Patterns

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
1 105 (2.78%) Confluence
2 87 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 58 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 31 (0.82%) SAS
5 24 (0.64%) CMS
6 19 (0.50%) Apache
6 19 (0.50%) OpenStack
7 18 (0.48%) Apache Spark
8 16 (0.42%) Anypoint
8 16 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.29%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.27%) Appian
12 9 (0.24%) Smallworld
13 7 (0.19%) Ethereum
13 7 (0.19%) GeoServer
13 7 (0.19%) Hyperledger
13 7 (0.19%) nginx
13 7 (0.19%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 49 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
3 30 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 30 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.027%) ArchiCAD
7 1 (0.027%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.027%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.027%) OrCAD
7 1 (0.027%) Revit
7 1 (0.027%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.027%) Trello
Business Applications
1 100 (2.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (1.09%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.58%) Workday HCM
5 16 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
6 15 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
7 14 (0.37%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.27%) SAP EWM
9 9 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
9 9 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.24%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.24%) SAP PM
10 8 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.21%) SAP CO
10 8 (0.21%) SAP PP
11 7 (0.19%) Distributed Ledger
11 7 (0.19%) R3 Corda
11 7 (0.19%) SAP FI
12 6 (0.16%) Oracle SCM
12 6 (0.16%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,002 (26.57%) Azure
2 789 (20.92%) AWS
3 309 (8.19%) GCP
4 146 (3.87%) Power Platform
4 146 (3.87%) Serverless
5 140 (3.71%) SaaS
6 126 (3.34%) Microsoft 365
7 117 (3.10%) Entra ID
8 88 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
9 85 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
10 78 (2.07%) GitHub
10 78 (2.07%) IaaS
11 74 (1.96%) Microsoft Purview
12 73 (1.94%) Amazon S3
13 69 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
14 66 (1.75%) PaaS
15 65 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 64 (1.70%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 60 (1.59%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 197 (5.22%) Firewall
2 127 (3.37%) WAN
3 117 (3.10%) Network Security
4 97 (2.57%) VPN
5 94 (2.49%) DNS
6 77 (2.04%) LAN
7 70 (1.86%) SD-WAN
8 38 (1.01%) BGP
9 30 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
10 29 (0.77%) MPLS
11 26 (0.69%) DHCP
12 22 (0.58%) OSPF
13 21 (0.56%) Internet
13 21 (0.56%) SAN
13 21 (0.56%) TCP/IP
13 21 (0.56%) VSAN
14 18 (0.48%) IPsec
14 18 (0.48%) Kerberos
15 17 (0.45%) VLAN
16 16 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (3.58%) Data Warehouse
2 111 (2.94%) Metadata
3 100 (2.65%) Power BI
4 82 (2.17%) Data Lake
5 64 (1.70%) SQL Server
6 62 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (1.33%) Tableau
8 43 (1.14%) NoSQL
9 41 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
10 39 (1.03%) DynamoDB
11 38 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
12 34 (0.90%) Oracle Database
13 27 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
13 27 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
14 26 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
14 26 (0.69%) Redis
14 26 (0.69%) Relational Database
15 21 (0.56%) BigQuery
16 20 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 20 (0.53%) GIS
Development Applications
1 121 (3.21%) JIRA
2 89 (2.36%) Jenkins
3 40 (1.06%) GitLab
4 38 (1.01%) Git
5 21 (0.56%) ERwin
6 14 (0.37%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.24%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.24%) Bitbucket
8 6 (0.16%) Maven
8 6 (0.16%) Postman
9 5 (0.13%) Gradle
9 5 (0.13%) MSI
9 5 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 5 (0.13%) SonarLint
10 4 (0.11%) MLflow
10 4 (0.11%) Rational DOORS
10 4 (0.11%) Selenium
10 4 (0.11%) Terragrunt
11 3 (0.080%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.080%) REST Assured
General
1 918 (24.34%) Social Skills
2 590 (15.65%) Finance
3 451 (11.96%) Public Sector
4 272 (7.21%) Analytical Skills
5 210 (5.57%) Banking
6 121 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (2.76%) Legal
8 90 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
9 77 (2.04%) Telecoms
10 74 (1.96%) Military
10 74 (1.96%) Retail
11 73 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
12 72 (1.91%) Marketing
13 57 (1.51%) Manufacturing
14 38 (1.01%) Billing
14 38 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 27 (0.72%) Law
16 26 (0.69%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.58%) Back Office
18 20 (0.53%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 196 (5.20%) REST
2 114 (3.02%) SOAP
3 107 (2.84%) Middleware
4 89 (2.36%) .NET
5 73 (1.94%) LDAP
6 68 (1.80%) OpenID
7 67 (1.78%) Kafka
8 61 (1.62%) OAuth
9 60 (1.59%) SAML
10 48 (1.27%) JSON
11 46 (1.22%) RESTful
12 35 (0.93%) OAuth2
13 33 (0.88%) AngularJS
14 32 (0.85%) React
15 29 (0.77%) PySpark
16 28 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
17 27 (0.72%) SailPoint
17 27 (0.72%) Spring Boot
18 25 (0.66%) Node.js
19 22 (0.58%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 276 (7.32%) Cloud Native
2 140 (3.71%) Product Ownership
3 121 (3.21%) Data Centre
4 114 (3.02%) Onboarding
5 103 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
6 89 (2.36%) PKI
7 88 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
8 72 (1.91%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (1.75%) Security Posture
10 64 (1.70%) Management Information System
11 62 (1.64%) Public Cloud
12 60 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
13 57 (1.51%) Operational Technology
14 47 (1.25%) CMDB
15 44 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
16 43 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
17 40 (1.06%) NHS
18 34 (0.90%) Data Structures
19 30 (0.80%) AI Agents
19 30 (0.80%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 165 (4.38%) Windows
2 105 (2.78%) Linux
3 43 (1.14%) Windows Server
4 31 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.48%) Windows 10
5 18 (0.48%) Windows 7
6 15 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.34%) Unix
7 13 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.27%) Android
8 10 (0.27%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.24%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.24%) VMS
10 6 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.11%) CentOS
11 4 (0.11%) zOS
12 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.027%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (14.35%) Roadmaps
2 513 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
3 495 (13.13%) Agile
4 473 (12.54%) Migration
5 423 (11.22%) DevOps
6 419 (11.11%) Enterprise Architecture
7 390 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 377 (10.00%) Data Modelling
9 376 (9.97%) TOGAF
10 375 (9.94%) Technical Leadership
11 362 (9.60%) CI/CD
12 343 (9.10%) Problem-Solving
13 320 (8.49%) AI
14 312 (8.27%) Analytics
15 289 (7.66%) Data Architecture
16 266 (7.05%) Microservices
17 257 (6.82%) Integration Patterns
18 232 (6.15%) Architectural Design
19 225 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
20 219 (5.81%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 302 (8.01%) Python
2 196 (5.20%) SQL
3 173 (4.59%) PowerShell
4 134 (3.55%) Java
5 54 (1.43%) JavaScript
6 51 (1.35%) C#
7 33 (0.88%) TypeScript
8 31 (0.82%) Bicep
9 30 (0.80%) Bash
10 20 (0.53%) PL/SQL
11 16 (0.42%) Apex Code
12 13 (0.34%) R
13 12 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
14 10 (0.27%) Ruby
14 10 (0.27%) T-SQL
15 8 (0.21%) PHP
15 8 (0.21%) Scala
15 8 (0.21%) VB
16 7 (0.19%) Korn
16 7 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,153 (30.58%) Security Cleared
2 826 (21.90%) SC Cleared
3 241 (6.39%) DV Cleared
4 184 (4.88%) Degree
5 104 (2.76%) AWS Certification
6 102 (2.70%) CISSP
7 100 (2.65%) TOGAF Certification
8 94 (2.49%) Azure Certification
9 67 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
10 66 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
11 59 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
12 58 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
13 56 (1.49%) CISM
14 53 (1.41%) Master's Degree
15 50 (1.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 34 (0.90%) CCNP
17 31 (0.82%) CCIE
18 30 (0.80%) ISEB
18 30 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
19 18 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 171 (4.53%) GDPR
2 147 (3.90%) NIST
3 131 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 113 (3.00%) Data Quality
5 85 (2.25%) NCSC
6 57 (1.51%) QA
7 50 (1.33%) PCI DSS
8 34 (0.90%) COBIT
9 31 (0.82%) GRC
10 30 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 23 (0.61%) HIPAA
13 21 (0.56%) ISO 20022
14 19 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
15 18 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 17 (0.45%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 14 (0.37%) MiFID
18 12 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
19 11 (0.29%) FINRA
20 10 (0.27%) SLA
System Software
1 162 (4.30%) Active Directory
2 122 (3.24%) Docker
3 86 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (1.38%) VMware NSX
5 31 (0.82%) vSphere
6 23 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 13 (0.34%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 7 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.16%) Varnish
13 5 (0.13%) Lustre
13 5 (0.13%) Squid
14 4 (0.11%) NFS
14 4 (0.11%) vCloud
15 3 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 3 (0.080%) Ceph
15 3 (0.080%) Firmware
15 3 (0.080%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 239 (6.34%) Terraform
2 186 (4.93%) Kubernetes
3 99 (2.63%) Ansible
4 59 (1.56%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.88%) OPNET
6 28 (0.74%) FortiGate
7 25 (0.66%) vCenter Server
8 24 (0.64%) SCCM
9 23 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 18 (0.48%) Prometheus
10 18 (0.48%) WMI
11 17 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (0.42%) Grafana
13 11 (0.29%) Argo
14 8 (0.21%) Istio
15 6 (0.16%) Kibana
16 5 (0.13%) Consul
16 5 (0.13%) Puppet
17 4 (0.11%) Data Guard
17 4 (0.11%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 553 (14.66%) Microsoft
2 213 (5.65%) ServiceNow
3 208 (5.52%) SAP
4 180 (4.77%) Oracle
5 179 (4.75%) Salesforce
6 146 (3.87%) VMware
7 116 (3.08%) Databricks
8 112 (2.97%) Cisco
9 101 (2.68%) Google
10 94 (2.49%) CyberArk
11 64 (1.70%) Splunk
12 63 (1.67%) Palo Alto
13 59 (1.56%) MuleSoft
14 49 (1.30%) Centrify
15 47 (1.25%) Atlassian
16 45 (1.19%) Remedy
17 42 (1.11%) OpenAI
18 41 (1.09%) Workday
19 40 (1.06%) Sparx
20 39 (1.03%) Red Hat