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 5 May 2026.

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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 16 11
Rank change year-on-year +5 -5 +5
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,206 2,857 4,419
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.95% 9.75% 10.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.87% 10.55% 11.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,422 1,868 2,820
10th Percentile £463 £474 £500
25th Percentile £513 £538 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £725 £716 £738
90th Percentile £788 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +2.08% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 35 83
10th Percentile £49.40 £53.70 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.90% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £79.69 £81.42 £87.46
90th Percentile £97.50 £85.67 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £73.31 £70.00
% change year-on-year -11.34% +4.73% -

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 43,868 27,092 40,027
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.49% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,987 17,695 26,061
10th Percentile £316 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,833 1,048 2,666
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.18 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.29
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.70% -30.00% -5.35%

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 May 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 May 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 5 May 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 +6 4,445 £625 - 1,185
UK excluding London +8 2,386 £613 +2.08% 807
London +5 2,085 £625 -2.61% 493
Work from Home +3 1,408 £600 - 553
South East +4 709 £625 - 185
North of England +4 618 £600 - 199
Midlands +1 428 £600 - 131
North West +4 354 £610 +1.67% 111
West Midlands -1 312 £613 +2.08% 77
South West 0 298 £693 +15.42% 120
Yorkshire +6 232 £553 -9.80% 49
East of England +20 201 £563 -6.25% 85
Scotland +7 141 £650 +4.00% 32
East Midlands -1 110 £525 -4.55% 54
North East +4 40 £575 -7.95% 39
Wales -8 24 £600 +25.00% 44
Northern Ireland +6 10 £488 -26.42% 18

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 5 May 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 1,594 (30.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,243 (23.88%) Azure
3 1,146 (22.01%) SC Cleared
4 1,090 (20.94%) AWS
5 724 (13.91%) Roadmaps
6 697 (13.39%) Microsoft
7 686 (13.18%) Migration
8 625 (12.01%) Agile
9 572 (10.99%) DevOps
9 572 (10.99%) Stakeholder Management
10 551 (10.58%) CI/CD
11 523 (10.05%) Enterprise Architecture
12 487 (9.35%) AI
13 465 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 461 (8.86%) Technical Leadership
15 459 (8.82%) Data Modelling
16 441 (8.47%) TOGAF
17 438 (8.41%) Integration Patterns
18 431 (8.28%) Analytics
19 398 (7.65%) Architectural Patterns
20 397 (7.63%) Data Architecture
21 396 (7.61%) GCP
22 377 (7.24%) Microservices
23 366 (7.03%) Problem-Solving
24 352 (6.76%) Python
25 334 (6.42%) Architectural Design
26 332 (6.38%) DV Cleared
27 315 (6.05%) ServiceNow
28 311 (5.97%) SAP
29 307 (5.90%) Infrastructure as Code

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
1 124 (2.38%) SharePoint
2 108 (2.07%) Confluence
3 57 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
4 29 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 28 (0.54%) Apache
6 25 (0.48%) SAS
7 19 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.36%) CMS
8 16 (0.31%) Anypoint
8 16 (0.31%) Appian
9 15 (0.29%) nginx
9 15 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.25%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.23%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) Ethereum
14 7 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 45 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
3 20 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.13%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.13%) Revit
7 4 (0.077%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.058%) PlantUML
8 3 (0.058%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.038%) Windchill
10 1 (0.019%) ArchiCAD
10 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.019%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 137 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.94%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 21 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
4 19 (0.36%) Workday HCM
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.29%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 11 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.21%) SAP EWM
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 9 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.15%) SAP PP
11 8 (0.15%) SAP QM
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 7 (0.13%) R3 Corda
12 7 (0.13%) SAP MDG
12 7 (0.13%) SAP PM
13 6 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,243 (23.88%) Azure
2 1,090 (20.94%) AWS
3 396 (7.61%) GCP
4 224 (4.30%) Power Platform
5 187 (3.59%) Serverless
6 181 (3.48%) Entra ID
7 168 (3.23%) SaaS
8 139 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
9 118 (2.27%) GitHub
10 111 (2.13%) PaaS
11 102 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
12 100 (1.92%) Azure DevOps
13 92 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.75%) IaaS
15 80 (1.54%) Amazon S3
16 79 (1.52%) Snowflake
17 76 (1.46%) OpenShift
18 73 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (1.33%) Microsoft Purview
20 66 (1.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 214 (4.11%) Firewall
2 174 (3.34%) Network Security
3 126 (2.42%) WAN
4 114 (2.19%) VPN
5 111 (2.13%) DNS
6 84 (1.61%) LAN
7 68 (1.31%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.75%) BGP
9 30 (0.58%) DHCP
10 29 (0.56%) OSPF
11 28 (0.54%) TCP/IP
12 26 (0.50%) MPLS
13 24 (0.46%) Wi-Fi
14 23 (0.44%) SAN
14 23 (0.44%) VLAN
15 21 (0.40%) Wireless
16 20 (0.38%) BIG-IP
16 20 (0.38%) NAS
16 20 (0.38%) VXLAN
17 18 (0.35%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 168 (3.23%) Power BI
2 137 (2.63%) Metadata
3 133 (2.55%) Data Lake
4 131 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.44%) SQL Server
6 65 (1.25%) NoSQL
7 63 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
8 53 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
9 42 (0.81%) Tableau
10 39 (0.75%) Big Data
11 35 (0.67%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
13 30 (0.58%) Delta Lake
14 27 (0.52%) BigQuery
15 25 (0.48%) Relational Database
16 23 (0.44%) DynamoDB
16 23 (0.44%) GIS
17 22 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
17 22 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
17 22 (0.42%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 123 (2.36%) JIRA
2 89 (1.71%) Jenkins
3 61 (1.17%) Git
4 50 (0.96%) GitLab
5 21 (0.40%) ERwin
6 14 (0.27%) SonarQube
7 13 (0.25%) Artifactory
8 11 (0.21%) Bitbucket
8 11 (0.21%) MLflow
9 8 (0.15%) Postman
10 6 (0.12%) REST Assured
11 5 (0.096%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.096%) JUnit
11 5 (0.096%) MSI
11 5 (0.096%) PowerDesigner
11 5 (0.096%) Selenium
11 5 (0.096%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.077%) Hudson
12 4 (0.077%) Maven
12 4 (0.077%) Terragrunt
General
1 996 (19.13%) Social Skills
2 774 (14.87%) Finance
3 552 (10.60%) Public Sector
4 292 (5.61%) Analytical Skills
5 289 (5.55%) Banking
6 147 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 139 (2.67%) Retail
8 126 (2.42%) Legal
9 112 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.71%) Telecoms
11 87 (1.67%) Military
12 80 (1.54%) Manufacturing
13 67 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 63 (1.21%) Law
15 62 (1.19%) Marketing
16 49 (0.94%) Billing
17 43 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 35 (0.67%) Investment Banking
19 32 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 29 (0.56%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (4.65%) REST
2 195 (3.75%) Middleware
3 127 (2.44%) SOAP
4 116 (2.23%) .NET
5 109 (2.09%) Kafka
6 87 (1.67%) OpenID
7 85 (1.63%) LDAP
8 81 (1.56%) OAuth
9 62 (1.19%) SAML
10 51 (0.98%) React
11 48 (0.92%) OAuth2
12 47 (0.90%) JSON
13 44 (0.85%) RESTful
14 43 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
15 41 (0.79%) SailPoint
16 38 (0.73%) AngularJS
17 36 (0.69%) Web Services
18 32 (0.61%) Node.js
19 31 (0.60%) PySpark
20 29 (0.56%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 422 (8.11%) Cloud Native
2 169 (3.25%) Data Centre
3 146 (2.80%) Product Ownership
4 137 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 133 (2.55%) Management Information System
6 115 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
7 111 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
9 100 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
10 98 (1.88%) Public Cloud
11 88 (1.69%) Security Posture
12 76 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
13 74 (1.42%) Operational Technology
14 67 (1.29%) CMDB
15 61 (1.17%) PKI
16 57 (1.09%) AI Agents
17 45 (0.86%) NHS
18 44 (0.85%) Data Structures
18 44 (0.85%) Private Cloud
19 41 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 174 (3.34%) Windows
2 117 (2.25%) Linux
3 38 (0.73%) Windows Server
4 33 (0.63%) Android
4 33 (0.63%) Apple iOS
5 30 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.38%) Unix
7 13 (0.25%) VMS
8 11 (0.21%) Windows 10
8 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.21%) zOS
9 9 (0.17%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
10 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.058%) CentOS
11 3 (0.058%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (0.058%) Solaris
11 3 (0.058%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.038%) AIX
12 2 (0.038%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 724 (13.91%) Roadmaps
2 686 (13.18%) Migration
3 625 (12.01%) Agile
4 572 (10.99%) DevOps
4 572 (10.99%) Stakeholder Management
5 551 (10.58%) CI/CD
6 523 (10.05%) Enterprise Architecture
7 487 (9.35%) AI
8 465 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 461 (8.86%) Technical Leadership
10 459 (8.82%) Data Modelling
11 441 (8.47%) TOGAF
12 438 (8.41%) Integration Patterns
13 431 (8.28%) Analytics
14 398 (7.65%) Architectural Patterns
15 397 (7.63%) Data Architecture
16 377 (7.24%) Microservices
17 366 (7.03%) Problem-Solving
18 334 (6.42%) Architectural Design
19 307 (5.90%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 352 (6.76%) Python
2 276 (5.30%) SQL
3 207 (3.98%) Java
4 171 (3.28%) PowerShell
5 77 (1.48%) JavaScript
6 65 (1.25%) C#
7 49 (0.94%) Bicep
8 37 (0.71%) Bash
9 35 (0.67%) TypeScript
10 22 (0.42%) Ruby
11 21 (0.40%) PL/SQL
12 19 (0.36%) Apex Code
13 17 (0.33%) Scala
14 13 (0.25%) Kotlin
14 13 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
15 10 (0.19%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.19%) T-SQL
16 9 (0.17%) ABAP
17 8 (0.15%) PHP
17 8 (0.15%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,594 (30.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,146 (22.01%) SC Cleared
3 332 (6.38%) DV Cleared
4 220 (4.23%) Degree
5 129 (2.48%) TOGAF Certification
6 121 (2.32%) Azure Certification
7 116 (2.23%) CISSP
8 109 (2.09%) AWS Certification
9 93 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
9 93 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
10 88 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
11 63 (1.21%) CISM
12 58 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 49 (0.94%) CCNP
14 48 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
15 47 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 37 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.46%) CCIE
18 23 (0.44%) CCSP
18 23 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 191 (3.67%) NIST
2 188 (3.61%) GDPR
3 150 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 148 (2.84%) Data Quality
5 108 (2.07%) NCSC
6 64 (1.23%) QA
7 48 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 33 (0.63%) GRC
9 29 (0.56%) ISO 20022
10 28 (0.54%) Accessibility
10 28 (0.54%) COBIT
10 28 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
11 20 (0.38%) SEPA
12 18 (0.35%) HL7
12 18 (0.35%) NIST 800
13 17 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.25%) FINRA
14 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.25%) MiFID
15 12 (0.23%) SLA
System Software
1 198 (3.80%) Active Directory
2 110 (2.11%) Docker
3 97 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.40%) VMware NSX
5 31 (0.60%) vSphere
6 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.35%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) Varnish
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.19%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) NFS
14 5 (0.096%) Postfix
14 5 (0.096%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.077%) Firmware
16 3 (0.058%) Ceph
16 3 (0.058%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 278 (5.34%) Terraform
2 238 (4.57%) Kubernetes
3 108 (2.07%) Ansible
4 51 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
5 43 (0.83%) Grafana
6 41 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 33 (0.63%) FortiGate
8 30 (0.58%) OPNET
8 30 (0.58%) Prometheus
9 29 (0.56%) vCenter Server
10 21 (0.40%) SCCM
11 17 (0.33%) Argo
12 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 12 (0.23%) Istio
14 11 (0.21%) WMI
15 8 (0.15%) Puppet
16 7 (0.13%) Consul
17 6 (0.12%) Kibana
18 5 (0.096%) HAProxy
18 5 (0.096%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 697 (13.39%) Microsoft
2 315 (6.05%) ServiceNow
3 311 (5.97%) SAP
4 218 (4.19%) Oracle
5 196 (3.76%) Salesforce
6 195 (3.75%) Databricks
7 193 (3.71%) VMware
8 130 (2.50%) Cisco
9 112 (2.15%) Google
10 87 (1.67%) CyberArk
11 73 (1.40%) MuleSoft
12 67 (1.29%) Splunk
13 54 (1.04%) Workday
14 53 (1.02%) Red Hat
15 52 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 51 (0.98%) Sparx
17 48 (0.92%) Remedy
18 45 (0.86%) OpenAI
19 44 (0.85%) Ariba
19 44 (0.85%) IBM