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 14 September 2026.

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

6 months to
14 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 6,085 2,932 3,852
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.24% 8.97% 10.03%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.17% 9.85% 10.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,044 1,885 2,390
10th Percentile £481 £463 £485
25th Percentile £525 £525 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £633
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -1.19% -2.69%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £738
90th Percentile £785 £787 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £622 £600 £630
% change year-on-year +3.67% -4.76% -1.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 15 71
10th Percentile £46.00 £33.64 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.88 £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.00 £70.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £78.75 £83.75 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.00 £100.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -8.77% +1.79% -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 49,990 29,768 35,726
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.07% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 18,799 22,146
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £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 3,750 1,555 1,711
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.72 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +8.43%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +8 5,085 £622 -0.48% 4,510
London +7 2,608 £625 -2.72% 2,693
UK excluding London +8 2,547 £622 +3.67% 2,012
Work from Home +5 1,634 £602 +0.33% 1,995
South East +3 731 £625 +4.17% 544
North of England +5 687 £600 - 502
Midlands +2 425 £626 +9.34% 262
North West +5 392 £600 +4.35% 298
South West +3 339 £638 -1.92% 220
West Midlands +2 316 £650 +8.51% 190
Yorkshire +15 233 £575 -4.17% 152
Scotland +24 175 £625 - 238
East of England +8 159 £622 +12.07% 149
East Midlands +2 104 £600 +20.00% 72
North East -4 63 £600 -15.79% 54
Wales +3 42 £633 +1.20% 16
Channel Islands -4 7 £700 -5.72% 4
Northern Ireland +2 2 - - 90

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 14 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 1,900 (31.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,544 (25.37%) Azure
3 1,426 (23.43%) SC Cleared
4 1,288 (21.17%) AWS
5 1,095 (18.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 930 (15.28%) Roadmaps
7 859 (14.12%) Migration
8 829 (13.62%) Microsoft
9 785 (12.90%) Enterprise Architecture
10 772 (12.69%) AI
11 759 (12.47%) Technical Leadership
12 660 (10.85%) Agile
13 631 (10.37%) DevOps
14 629 (10.34%) Data Modelling
15 623 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 603 (9.91%) CI/CD
17 599 (9.84%) Data Architecture
18 572 (9.40%) Integration Patterns
19 524 (8.61%) Analytics
20 492 (8.09%) TOGAF
21 490 (8.05%) Security Architecture
22 486 (7.99%) GCP
23 464 (7.63%) Architectural Patterns
24 406 (6.67%) Event-Driven
25 399 (6.56%) Data Governance
26 398 (6.54%) Microservices
27 378 (6.21%) Architecture Governance
28 375 (6.16%) DV Cleared
29 374 (6.15%) Cybersecurity
30 370 (6.08%) Decision-Making

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 70 (1.15%) SharePoint
3 60 (0.99%) Confluence
4 45 (0.74%) Apache
5 39 (0.64%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.38%) CMS
8 22 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
9 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
10 8 (0.13%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 6 (0.099%) Appian
12 6 (0.099%) SAP EP
13 5 (0.082%) Camunda
13 5 (0.082%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.066%) IIS
14 4 (0.066%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.066%) nginx
Applications
1 19 (0.31%) 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
5 8 (0.13%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
7 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.033%) Windchill
9 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.016%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.016%) Notion
9 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 168 (2.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
4 17 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 16 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 16 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.25%) SAP 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 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 FI
12 6 (0.099%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,544 (25.37%) Azure
2 1,288 (21.17%) AWS
3 486 (7.99%) GCP
4 305 (5.01%) Power Platform
5 233 (3.83%) SaaS
6 208 (3.42%) Entra ID
7 196 (3.22%) Serverless
8 148 (2.43%) Dynamics 365
9 141 (2.32%) GitHub
10 133 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
11 124 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
12 115 (1.89%) Snowflake
13 101 (1.66%) PaaS
14 92 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.31%) Amazon S3
16 73 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 69 (1.13%) IaaS
18 68 (1.12%) OCI
19 64 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
20 63 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 160 (2.63%) Firewall
2 149 (2.45%) Network Security
3 100 (1.64%) WAN
4 82 (1.35%) VPN
5 75 (1.23%) DNS
6 69 (1.13%) LAN
7 49 (0.81%) SD-WAN
8 44 (0.72%) BGP
9 40 (0.66%) MPLS
10 37 (0.61%) DHCP
11 36 (0.59%) TCP/IP
12 29 (0.48%) VLAN
13 26 (0.43%) SAN
14 25 (0.41%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.35%) Wireless
16 20 (0.33%) NAS
16 20 (0.33%) NX-OS
16 20 (0.33%) OSPF
17 19 (0.31%) BIG-IP
17 19 (0.31%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (3.53%) Metadata
2 208 (3.42%) Data Lake
3 195 (3.20%) Power BI
4 184 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 67 (1.10%) NoSQL
6 50 (0.82%) SQL Server
7 49 (0.81%) BigQuery
8 48 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
8 48 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
9 40 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
9 40 (0.66%) Delta Lake
10 39 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
11 37 (0.61%) Oracle Database
12 35 (0.58%) Big Data
13 31 (0.51%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
15 26 (0.43%) Relational Database
16 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
17 22 (0.36%) GIS
17 22 (0.36%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 83 (1.36%) JIRA
2 73 (1.20%) Git
3 61 (1.00%) Jenkins
4 39 (0.64%) GitLab
5 18 (0.30%) ERwin
6 14 (0.23%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
7 9 (0.15%) MSI
7 9 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) RStudio
9 7 (0.12%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.12%) Postman
9 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.099%) Hudson
10 6 (0.099%) Storybook
11 5 (0.082%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.082%) Maven
11 5 (0.082%) MLflow
11 5 (0.082%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.082%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,228 (20.18%) Social Skills
2 873 (14.35%) Finance
3 691 (11.36%) Public Sector
4 317 (5.21%) Banking
5 296 (4.86%) Analytical Skills
6 268 (4.40%) Retail
7 166 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
8 145 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 139 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
10 130 (2.14%) Telecoms
11 116 (1.91%) Legal
12 71 (1.17%) Marketing
13 64 (1.05%) Billing
14 58 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 53 (0.87%) Military
16 51 (0.84%) Aerospace
17 40 (0.66%) Law
17 40 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
18 37 (0.61%) Police
19 36 (0.59%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (4.85%) REST
2 256 (4.21%) Terraform
3 173 (2.84%) Middleware
4 153 (2.51%) Kafka
5 138 (2.27%) SOAP
6 127 (2.09%) .NET
7 120 (1.97%) OAuth
8 74 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
9 70 (1.15%) JSON
10 65 (1.07%) OpenID
11 63 (1.04%) SAML
12 58 (0.95%) OAuth2
13 54 (0.89%) LDAP
14 47 (0.77%) PySpark
15 46 (0.76%) XML
16 45 (0.74%) RESTful
17 40 (0.66%) .NET Framework
18 39 (0.64%) React
18 39 (0.64%) SailPoint
19 34 (0.56%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 511 (8.40%) Cloud Native
2 189 (3.11%) Data Centre
3 175 (2.88%) Management Information System
4 171 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 148 (2.43%) Product Ownership
6 143 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
7 140 (2.30%) AI Agents
7 140 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
8 137 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 96 (1.58%) CMDB
11 94 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
12 89 (1.46%) Operational Technology
13 87 (1.43%) Public Cloud
14 80 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
15 62 (1.02%) Private Cloud
16 60 (0.99%) Security Posture
17 57 (0.94%) Data Structures
18 47 (0.77%) Taxonomies
19 45 (0.74%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 124 (2.04%) Windows
2 103 (1.69%) Linux
3 51 (0.84%) Windows Server
4 25 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.39%) Unix
6 10 (0.16%) Android
6 10 (0.16%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
8 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.099%) zOS
10 5 (0.082%) Solaris
11 4 (0.066%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.066%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.066%) VMS
12 3 (0.049%) CentOS
13 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.033%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.033%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,095 (18.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 930 (15.28%) Roadmaps
3 859 (14.12%) Migration
4 785 (12.90%) Enterprise Architecture
5 772 (12.69%) AI
6 759 (12.47%) Technical Leadership
7 660 (10.85%) Agile
8 631 (10.37%) DevOps
9 629 (10.34%) Data Modelling
10 623 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 603 (9.91%) CI/CD
12 599 (9.84%) Data Architecture
13 572 (9.40%) Integration Patterns
14 524 (8.61%) Analytics
15 492 (8.09%) TOGAF
16 490 (8.05%) Security Architecture
17 464 (7.63%) Architectural Patterns
18 406 (6.67%) Event-Driven
19 399 (6.56%) Data Governance
20 398 (6.54%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 263 (4.32%) SQL
2 262 (4.31%) Python
3 261 (4.29%) Java
4 129 (2.12%) JavaScript
5 109 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 54 (0.89%) TypeScript
7 50 (0.82%) C#
8 47 (0.77%) Bash
9 43 (0.71%) Bicep
10 33 (0.54%) Apex Code
11 22 (0.36%) ABAP
12 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 16 (0.26%) Ruby
12 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.18%) Groovy
13 11 (0.18%) R
14 10 (0.16%) C++
14 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.15%) Rust
16 7 (0.12%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,900 (31.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,426 (23.43%) SC Cleared
3 375 (6.16%) DV Cleared
4 165 (2.71%) Degree
5 154 (2.53%) CISSP
6 152 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.82%) AWS Certification
9 105 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.41%) TOGAF Certification
11 72 (1.18%) CISM
12 66 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 47 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
15 42 (0.69%) CCNP
16 39 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 35 (0.58%) CCSP
18 32 (0.53%) Master's Degree
19 24 (0.39%) CISA
20 22 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (4.19%) Data Quality
2 231 (3.80%) NIST
3 194 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 161 (2.65%) GDPR
5 119 (1.96%) NCSC
6 82 (1.35%) GRC
7 61 (1.00%) QA
8 41 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 39 (0.64%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.51%) NIST 800
12 24 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
12 24 (0.39%) SLA
13 22 (0.36%) SEPA
14 21 (0.35%) IFRS
14 21 (0.35%) ISO 20022
15 18 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 18 (0.30%) JSP 440
16 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
16 14 (0.23%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 182 (2.99%) Active Directory
2 108 (1.77%) Docker
3 78 (1.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.72%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.36%) vSphere
7 20 (0.33%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.25%) 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
12 3 (0.049%) Ceph
12 3 (0.049%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.049%) SRDF
12 3 (0.049%) vCloud
13 2 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 294 (4.83%) Kubernetes
2 103 (1.69%) Ansible
3 48 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
4 46 (0.76%) Grafana
5 38 (0.62%) Prometheus
6 28 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (0.30%) Argo
8 14 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 11 (0.18%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.16%) WMI
11 9 (0.15%) CASB
11 9 (0.15%) Istio
12 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.12%) SCCM
14 6 (0.099%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.099%) Puppet
15 5 (0.082%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.082%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.066%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 829 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 354 (5.82%) SAP
3 306 (5.03%) Oracle
4 305 (5.01%) ServiceNow
5 287 (4.72%) Databricks
6 202 (3.32%) Salesforce
7 194 (3.19%) Google
8 148 (2.43%) Cisco
9 139 (2.28%) VMware
10 83 (1.36%) CyberArk
11 76 (1.25%) MuleSoft
12 61 (1.00%) IBM
13 55 (0.90%) Workday
14 53 (0.87%) Palo Alto
15 51 (0.84%) Foundry
16 41 (0.67%) Informatica
17 40 (0.66%) Adobe
18 39 (0.64%) Ariba
19 36 (0.59%) OpenAI
20 35 (0.58%) Red Hat