Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £616, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 September 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,087 2,945 3,834
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.26% 9.00% 10.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.19% 9.88% 10.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,039 1,887 2,424
10th Percentile £475 £468 £485
25th Percentile £525 £525 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £616 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -1.96% -1.92%
75th Percentile £700 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £779 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £637
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.73% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 18 73
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £66.83 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +3.57% -0.12%
75th Percentile £78.75 £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% -6.67%

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 49,947 29,816 35,657
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 91.16% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,790 18,788 22,381
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,636 1,547 1,786
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.63 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.00 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.91 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 6 September 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 6 September 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 6 September 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 +9 5,084 £620 -0.80% 2,780
London +7 2,601 £625 -2.72% 1,697
UK excluding London +8 2,553 £620 +3.33% 1,260
Work from Home +4 1,632 £600 - 1,156
South East +1 728 £625 +4.17% 370
North of England +5 711 £600 - 298
Midlands +1 424 £626 +9.11% 148
North West +6 416 £600 +4.35% 174
South West +3 332 £645 +0.39% 156
West Midlands +1 316 £647 +8.01% 91
Yorkshire +13 233 £588 -2.08% 99
Scotland +19 172 £625 - 133
East of England +12 154 £611 +10.52% 101
East Midlands +4 103 £600 +17.65% 57
North East -3 63 £600 -15.79% 25
Wales +1 42 £633 +1.20% 13
Channel Islands -2 6 £663 -10.77% 3
Northern Ireland +3 4 £488 -26.42% 48

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 6 September 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 1,894 (31.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,565 (25.71%) Azure
3 1,416 (23.26%) SC Cleared
4 1,315 (21.60%) AWS
5 1,040 (17.09%) Stakeholder Management
6 915 (15.03%) Roadmaps
7 866 (14.23%) Migration
8 835 (13.72%) Microsoft
9 767 (12.60%) Enterprise Architecture
10 766 (12.58%) AI
11 738 (12.12%) Technical Leadership
12 675 (11.09%) Agile
13 639 (10.50%) Data Modelling
14 636 (10.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 632 (10.38%) DevOps
16 617 (10.14%) CI/CD
17 597 (9.81%) Data Architecture
18 580 (9.53%) Integration Patterns
19 516 (8.48%) Analytics
20 492 (8.08%) Security Architecture
21 491 (8.07%) GCP
22 487 (8.00%) TOGAF
23 483 (7.93%) Architectural Patterns
24 410 (6.74%) Event-Driven
25 408 (6.70%) Data Governance
26 400 (6.57%) Microservices
27 380 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
28 367 (6.03%) DV Cleared
29 365 (6.00%) Decision-Making
30 361 (5.93%) 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 79 (1.30%) SAS
2 74 (1.22%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.03%) Confluence
4 46 (0.76%) Apache
5 41 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
9 22 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.11%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.11%) Documentum
12 6 (0.099%) Appian
12 6 (0.099%) Camunda
13 5 (0.082%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.066%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.066%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.066%) NetWeaver
14 4 (0.066%) SAP EP
15 3 (0.049%) Drupal
Applications
1 18 (0.30%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.11%) Revit
6 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.033%) Windchill
8 1 (0.016%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.016%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.016%) Notion
8 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 165 (2.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 35 (0.57%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 19 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 15 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.20%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.20%) SAP MDG
9 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
10 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
11 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
11 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.099%) Maximo
12 6 (0.099%) SAP CO
12 6 (0.099%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,565 (25.71%) Azure
2 1,315 (21.60%) AWS
3 491 (8.07%) GCP
4 305 (5.01%) Power Platform
5 231 (3.79%) SaaS
6 220 (3.61%) Entra ID
7 209 (3.43%) Serverless
8 149 (2.45%) Dynamics 365
9 146 (2.40%) GitHub
10 132 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
11 128 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
12 115 (1.89%) Snowflake
13 102 (1.68%) PaaS
14 97 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
15 87 (1.43%) Amazon S3
16 75 (1.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 68 (1.12%) IaaS
18 67 (1.10%) OCI
19 66 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
20 64 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 178 (2.92%) Firewall
2 164 (2.69%) Network Security
3 110 (1.81%) WAN
4 88 (1.45%) VPN
5 78 (1.28%) DNS
6 76 (1.25%) LAN
7 55 (0.90%) SD-WAN
8 46 (0.76%) BGP
9 40 (0.66%) DHCP
10 37 (0.61%) MPLS
10 37 (0.61%) TCP/IP
11 30 (0.49%) VLAN
12 28 (0.46%) SAN
13 26 (0.43%) VXLAN
14 22 (0.36%) NAS
14 22 (0.36%) OSPF
14 22 (0.36%) Wireless
15 20 (0.33%) NX-OS
15 20 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
16 19 (0.31%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 214 (3.52%) Metadata
2 205 (3.37%) Data Lake
3 197 (3.24%) Power BI
4 179 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.23%) NoSQL
6 52 (0.85%) SQL Server
7 50 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
8 47 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
8 47 (0.77%) BigQuery
9 42 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
9 42 (0.69%) Delta Lake
10 41 (0.67%) Big Data
10 41 (0.67%) Oracle Database
11 40 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
12 30 (0.49%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
13 25 (0.41%) Relational Database
14 24 (0.39%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.36%) GIS
15 22 (0.36%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 84 (1.38%) JIRA
2 78 (1.28%) Git
3 58 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 38 (0.62%) GitLab
5 18 (0.30%) ERwin
6 13 (0.21%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
7 9 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) MSI
8 8 (0.13%) RStudio
9 7 (0.11%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.11%) Postman
9 7 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.099%) Hudson
10 6 (0.099%) MLflow
10 6 (0.099%) Storybook
11 5 (0.082%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.082%) Maven
11 5 (0.082%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.066%) PowerDesigner
General
1 1,225 (20.12%) Social Skills
2 870 (14.29%) Finance
3 696 (11.43%) Public Sector
4 316 (5.19%) Banking
5 305 (5.01%) Analytical Skills
6 263 (4.32%) Retail
7 165 (2.71%) Influencing Skills
8 147 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.33%) Manufacturing
10 137 (2.25%) Telecoms
11 116 (1.91%) Legal
12 70 (1.15%) Marketing
13 66 (1.08%) Billing
14 57 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 52 (0.85%) Military
16 45 (0.74%) Aerospace
16 45 (0.74%) Law
17 39 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 37 (0.61%) Police
19 35 (0.57%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (4.96%) REST
2 257 (4.22%) Terraform
3 179 (2.94%) Middleware
4 148 (2.43%) Kafka
5 138 (2.27%) SOAP
6 124 (2.04%) OAuth
7 123 (2.02%) .NET
8 72 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
9 69 (1.13%) JSON
10 67 (1.10%) OpenID
11 65 (1.07%) SAML
12 59 (0.97%) OAuth2
13 49 (0.80%) LDAP
14 48 (0.79%) PySpark
15 47 (0.77%) RESTful
16 45 (0.74%) XML
17 40 (0.66%) SailPoint
18 39 (0.64%) React
19 37 (0.61%) .NET Framework
20 35 (0.57%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 527 (8.66%) Cloud Native
2 202 (3.32%) Data Centre
3 180 (2.96%) Management Information System
4 171 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 146 (2.40%) Product Ownership
6 144 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
7 142 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
8 140 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.28%) AI Agents
10 133 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
11 98 (1.61%) CMDB
12 94 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.49%) Operational Technology
14 86 (1.41%) Public Cloud
15 79 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
16 66 (1.08%) Security Posture
17 57 (0.94%) Data Structures
17 57 (0.94%) Private Cloud
18 48 (0.79%) IoT
18 48 (0.79%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 125 (2.05%) Windows
2 109 (1.79%) Linux
3 53 (0.87%) Windows Server
4 26 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.39%) Unix
6 14 (0.23%) Android
6 14 (0.23%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
8 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.11%) zOS
10 5 (0.082%) Solaris
10 5 (0.082%) VMS
11 4 (0.066%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.066%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.049%) CentOS
12 3 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.049%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,040 (17.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 915 (15.03%) Roadmaps
3 866 (14.23%) Migration
4 767 (12.60%) Enterprise Architecture
5 766 (12.58%) AI
6 738 (12.12%) Technical Leadership
7 675 (11.09%) Agile
8 639 (10.50%) Data Modelling
9 636 (10.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 632 (10.38%) DevOps
11 617 (10.14%) CI/CD
12 597 (9.81%) Data Architecture
13 580 (9.53%) Integration Patterns
14 516 (8.48%) Analytics
15 492 (8.08%) Security Architecture
16 487 (8.00%) TOGAF
17 483 (7.93%) Architectural Patterns
18 410 (6.74%) Event-Driven
19 408 (6.70%) Data Governance
20 400 (6.57%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 277 (4.55%) Python
2 276 (4.53%) SQL
3 267 (4.39%) Java
4 129 (2.12%) JavaScript
5 108 (1.77%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.85%) TypeScript
7 51 (0.84%) C#
8 50 (0.82%) Bash
9 46 (0.76%) Bicep
10 34 (0.56%) Apex Code
11 18 (0.30%) Ruby
12 16 (0.26%) ABAP
12 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.18%) C++
13 11 (0.18%) Groovy
13 11 (0.18%) R
14 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.16%) Scala
15 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,894 (31.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,416 (23.26%) SC Cleared
3 367 (6.03%) DV Cleared
4 169 (2.78%) Degree
5 156 (2.56%) CISSP
6 146 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 119 (1.95%) AWS Certification
8 118 (1.94%) Azure Certification
9 105 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
10 87 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
11 76 (1.25%) CISM
12 69 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 47 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
14 43 (0.71%) CCNP
15 41 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 35 (0.57%) CCSP
17 31 (0.51%) Master's Degree
18 23 (0.38%) CISA
19 22 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (4.16%) Data Quality
2 241 (3.96%) NIST
3 194 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 176 (2.89%) GDPR
5 122 (2.00%) NCSC
6 81 (1.33%) GRC
7 58 (0.95%) QA
8 41 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 40 (0.66%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.51%) NIST 800
12 25 (0.41%) SLA
13 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.36%) SEPA
15 21 (0.34%) IFRS
15 21 (0.34%) ISO 20022
16 19 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 18 (0.30%) JSP 440
18 16 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
19 15 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 183 (3.01%) Active Directory
2 114 (1.87%) Docker
3 82 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.74%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.39%) vSphere
7 22 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 6 (0.099%) NFS
11 4 (0.066%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 4 (0.066%) KVM
11 4 (0.066%) Postfix
11 4 (0.066%) Varnish
11 4 (0.066%) vCloud
12 3 (0.049%) Ceph
12 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.049%) SRDF
13 2 (0.033%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.033%) zsh
Systems Management
1 296 (4.86%) Kubernetes
2 104 (1.71%) Ansible
3 50 (0.82%) Grafana
3 50 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
4 42 (0.69%) Prometheus
5 28 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (0.31%) Argo
7 16 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
10 9 (0.15%) Istio
10 9 (0.15%) WMI
11 8 (0.13%) CASB
11 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 7 (0.11%) SCCM
13 6 (0.099%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.082%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.066%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.066%) Puppet
15 4 (0.066%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 835 (13.72%) Microsoft
2 351 (5.77%) SAP
3 307 (5.04%) Oracle
3 307 (5.04%) ServiceNow
4 292 (4.80%) Databricks
5 198 (3.25%) Salesforce
6 191 (3.14%) Google
7 149 (2.45%) Cisco
8 141 (2.32%) VMware
9 76 (1.25%) CyberArk
10 73 (1.20%) MuleSoft
11 61 (1.00%) IBM
12 54 (0.89%) Palo Alto
12 54 (0.89%) Workday
13 51 (0.84%) Foundry
14 43 (0.71%) Informatica
15 42 (0.69%) Ariba
16 41 (0.67%) Adobe
17 39 (0.64%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.61%) Splunk