Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 August 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,941 3,047 3,924
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.13% 9.24% 10.08%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.03% 10.11% 10.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,933 1,967 2,550
10th Percentile £481 £470 £488
25th Percentile £525 £536 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £713 £703 £738
90th Percentile £788 £787 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 18 78
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £87.00 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.36 £100.00 £90.00
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 49,398 30,125 36,175
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.38% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,694 19,103 23,309
10th Percentile £328 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,473 1,514 2,025
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.12 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.68 £25.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year +70.20% -44.28% +27.66%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 +8 5,002 £625 - 3,453
London +8 2,577 £625 -3.85% 2,044
UK excluding London +6 2,468 £625 +4.17% 1,659
Work from Home +4 1,601 £600 - 1,456
South East 0 729 £630 +5.00% 431
North of England +4 687 £600 - 397
Midlands -1 415 £625 +8.70% 199
North West +5 392 £600 - 227
West Midlands -3 305 £627 +4.42% 141
South West -2 299 £625 -2.34% 240
Yorkshire +3 232 £600 0.00% 123
East of England +13 160 £600 +8.11% 133
Scotland +16 153 £650 +4.00% 166
East Midlands +8 103 £600 +16.50% 58
North East -4 65 £600 -15.79% 49
Wales +8 40 £640 +2.40% 26
Northern Ireland +10 6 £475 -32.14% 72
Channel Islands -1 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 12 August 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 1,824 (30.70%) Security Cleared
2 1,489 (25.06%) Azure
3 1,372 (23.09%) SC Cleared
4 1,286 (21.65%) AWS
5 863 (14.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 856 (14.41%) Roadmaps
7 829 (13.95%) Migration
8 755 (12.71%) Microsoft
9 735 (12.37%) AI
10 707 (11.90%) Enterprise Architecture
11 658 (11.08%) Agile
12 624 (10.50%) DevOps
13 618 (10.40%) Technical Leadership
14 613 (10.32%) Data Modelling
15 609 (10.25%) CI/CD
16 597 (10.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 578 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
18 576 (9.70%) Data Architecture
19 520 (8.75%) Analytics
20 491 (8.26%) TOGAF
21 467 (7.86%) Architectural Patterns
22 453 (7.62%) GCP
23 431 (7.25%) Security Architecture
24 408 (6.87%) Microservices
25 390 (6.56%) Event-Driven
26 362 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
27 360 (6.06%) Data Governance
28 358 (6.03%) Problem-Solving
29 357 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
30 342 (5.76%) DV Cleared

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 89 (1.50%) SharePoint
2 77 (1.30%) SAS
3 67 (1.13%) Confluence
4 44 (0.74%) Apache
5 40 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 31 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 26 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 17 (0.29%) CMS
9 17 (0.29%) OpenStack
10 9 (0.15%) Appian
10 9 (0.15%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 7 (0.12%) Camunda
11 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 5 (0.084%) NetWeaver
12 5 (0.084%) nginx
13 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.067%) SAP EP
14 3 (0.050%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 21 (0.35%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.12%) Revit
5 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.084%) Microsoft Office
7 3 (0.050%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.050%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 156 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.59%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 14 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.22%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.19%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 10 (0.17%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
12 8 (0.13%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,489 (25.06%) Azure
2 1,286 (21.65%) AWS
3 453 (7.62%) GCP
4 294 (4.95%) Power Platform
5 208 (3.50%) SaaS
6 204 (3.43%) Entra ID
7 191 (3.21%) Serverless
8 142 (2.39%) GitHub
9 129 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
10 121 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
11 119 (2.00%) PaaS
12 114 (1.92%) Azure DevOps
13 109 (1.83%) Snowflake
14 95 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
15 84 (1.41%) Amazon S3
15 84 (1.41%) IaaS
16 66 (1.11%) OCI
17 63 (1.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 62 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
19 61 (1.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 199 (3.35%) Firewall
2 178 (3.00%) Network Security
3 106 (1.78%) WAN
4 104 (1.75%) VPN
5 91 (1.53%) DNS
6 78 (1.31%) LAN
7 51 (0.86%) SD-WAN
8 47 (0.79%) BGP
9 42 (0.71%) DHCP
10 38 (0.64%) MPLS
10 38 (0.64%) TCP/IP
11 36 (0.61%) VLAN
12 32 (0.54%) SAN
13 29 (0.49%) Wireless
14 27 (0.45%) NAS
15 26 (0.44%) OSPF
15 26 (0.44%) VXLAN
16 25 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
17 23 (0.39%) NX-OS
18 22 (0.37%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (3.38%) Power BI
2 196 (3.30%) Data Lake
3 177 (2.98%) Metadata
4 176 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 77 (1.30%) NoSQL
6 50 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
6 50 (0.84%) SQL Server
7 45 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
7 45 (0.76%) Big Data
8 43 (0.72%) BigQuery
9 42 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
10 38 (0.64%) Delta Lake
11 37 (0.62%) Oracle Database
12 32 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
13 26 (0.44%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 25 (0.42%) GIS
14 25 (0.42%) Semantic Layer
15 24 (0.40%) MongoDB
16 23 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
17 22 (0.37%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 82 (1.38%) JIRA
2 78 (1.31%) Git
3 60 (1.01%) Jenkins
4 34 (0.57%) GitLab
5 23 (0.39%) ERwin
6 11 (0.19%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.13%) Artifactory
8 8 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.12%) Postman
9 7 (0.12%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) Maven
10 6 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.10%) Storybook
11 5 (0.084%) MLflow
11 5 (0.084%) MSI
12 4 (0.067%) ER Studio
12 4 (0.067%) Rational DOORS
General
1 1,125 (18.94%) Social Skills
2 867 (14.59%) Finance
3 668 (11.24%) Public Sector
4 326 (5.49%) Banking
5 302 (5.08%) Analytical Skills
6 254 (4.28%) Retail
7 151 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
8 133 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
8 133 (2.24%) Telecoms
9 129 (2.17%) Manufacturing
10 115 (1.94%) Legal
11 64 (1.08%) Marketing
12 56 (0.94%) Billing
13 51 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 49 (0.82%) Financial Institution
15 46 (0.77%) Law
15 46 (0.77%) Military
16 42 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 39 (0.66%) Aerospace
18 35 (0.59%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (4.81%) REST
2 202 (3.40%) Middleware
3 141 (2.37%) Kafka
4 129 (2.17%) .NET
5 125 (2.10%) SOAP
6 121 (2.04%) OAuth
7 74 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
8 66 (1.11%) OpenID
9 62 (1.04%) OAuth2
10 61 (1.03%) JSON
10 61 (1.03%) SAML
11 51 (0.86%) RESTful
12 46 (0.77%) React
13 39 (0.66%) SailPoint
14 38 (0.64%) PySpark
15 36 (0.61%) .NET Framework
15 36 (0.61%) XML
16 35 (0.59%) GraphQL
17 31 (0.52%) JWT
17 31 (0.52%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 501 (8.43%) Cloud Native
2 202 (3.40%) Data Centre
3 181 (3.05%) Management Information System
4 148 (2.49%) Product Ownership
5 147 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
5 147 (2.47%) Onboarding
6 142 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
6 142 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
7 132 (2.22%) AI Agents
8 126 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
9 99 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
10 91 (1.53%) Operational Technology
11 88 (1.48%) Public Cloud
12 82 (1.38%) CMDB
13 71 (1.20%) Enterprise Cloud
14 67 (1.13%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.04%) Data Structures
16 49 (0.82%) Private Cloud
17 45 (0.76%) IoT
17 45 (0.76%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 130 (2.19%) Windows
2 103 (1.73%) Linux
3 48 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 28 (0.47%) Android
4 28 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 21 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.35%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
6 9 (0.15%) zOS
7 7 (0.12%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.12%) VMS
8 5 (0.084%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (0.084%) Solaris
8 5 (0.084%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.067%) Alpine Linux
9 4 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.034%) CentOS
10 2 (0.034%) HPUX
10 2 (0.034%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.017%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 863 (14.53%) Stakeholder Management
2 856 (14.41%) Roadmaps
3 829 (13.95%) Migration
4 735 (12.37%) AI
5 707 (11.90%) Enterprise Architecture
6 658 (11.08%) Agile
7 624 (10.50%) DevOps
8 618 (10.40%) Technical Leadership
9 613 (10.32%) Data Modelling
10 609 (10.25%) CI/CD
11 597 (10.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 578 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
13 576 (9.70%) Data Architecture
14 520 (8.75%) Analytics
15 491 (8.26%) TOGAF
16 467 (7.86%) Architectural Patterns
17 431 (7.25%) Security Architecture
18 408 (6.87%) Microservices
19 390 (6.56%) Event-Driven
20 362 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 276 (4.65%) Python
2 273 (4.60%) Java
3 268 (4.51%) SQL
4 132 (2.22%) JavaScript
5 101 (1.70%) PowerShell
6 56 (0.94%) C#
7 53 (0.89%) Bicep
8 49 (0.82%) Bash
9 46 (0.77%) TypeScript
10 33 (0.56%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.35%) Ruby
12 17 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 17 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.22%) C++
13 13 (0.22%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.19%) ABAP
14 11 (0.19%) Groovy
15 10 (0.17%) Scala
16 9 (0.15%) PL/SQL
16 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,824 (30.70%) Security Cleared
2 1,372 (23.09%) SC Cleared
3 342 (5.76%) DV Cleared
4 168 (2.83%) Degree
5 147 (2.47%) CISSP
6 127 (2.14%) Azure Certification
7 125 (2.10%) AWS Certification
8 114 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
9 107 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
10 91 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
11 73 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 71 (1.20%) CISM
13 47 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 46 (0.77%) CCNP
15 41 (0.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 41 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
16 33 (0.56%) CCSP
17 30 (0.50%) Master's Degree
18 21 (0.35%) CCNA
18 21 (0.35%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (3.62%) Data Quality
2 207 (3.48%) NIST
3 184 (3.10%) GDPR
4 167 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 117 (1.97%) NCSC
6 76 (1.28%) GRC
7 60 (1.01%) QA
8 42 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 40 (0.67%) Accessibility
10 31 (0.52%) NIST 800
10 31 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
11 24 (0.40%) SEPA
12 22 (0.37%) IFRS
13 21 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
14 17 (0.29%) HL7
15 15 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
15 15 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 15 (0.25%) SLA
16 13 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 163 (2.74%) Active Directory
2 124 (2.09%) Docker
3 81 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.81%) VMware NSX
5 28 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 21 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 21 (0.35%) vSphere
7 18 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.13%) NFS
10 7 (0.12%) Varnish
11 6 (0.10%) Postfix
11 6 (0.10%) vCloud
12 4 (0.067%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 4 (0.067%) IAG
12 4 (0.067%) Sendmail
13 3 (0.050%) KVM
13 3 (0.050%) SRDF
14 2 (0.034%) Ceph
14 2 (0.034%) zsh
Systems Management
1 298 (5.02%) Kubernetes
2 267 (4.49%) Terraform
3 103 (1.73%) Ansible
4 51 (0.86%) Grafana
5 44 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 43 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
8 20 (0.34%) Argo
9 16 (0.27%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 11 (0.19%) FortiGate
12 11 (0.19%) Istio
13 7 (0.12%) SCCM
14 6 (0.10%) HAProxy
15 5 (0.084%) CASB
15 5 (0.084%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.084%) MOM
15 5 (0.084%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.084%) WMI
Vendors
1 755 (12.71%) Microsoft
2 341 (5.74%) SAP
3 303 (5.10%) ServiceNow
4 301 (5.07%) Oracle
5 257 (4.33%) Databricks
6 194 (3.27%) Salesforce
7 157 (2.64%) Google
8 147 (2.47%) VMware
9 138 (2.32%) Cisco
10 70 (1.18%) MuleSoft
11 62 (1.04%) IBM
12 57 (0.96%) CyberArk
13 53 (0.89%) Palo Alto
14 52 (0.88%) Workday
15 45 (0.76%) Ariba
16 44 (0.74%) Foundry
17 42 (0.71%) Splunk
18 39 (0.66%) Red Hat
19 37 (0.62%) Sparx
20 36 (0.61%) Adobe