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 15 October 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,164 2,933 3,705
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.15% 8.83% 9.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.12% 9.72% 10.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,056 1,928 2,181
10th Percentile £482 £458 £475
25th Percentile £531 £525 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £625
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £715 £738
90th Percentile £780 £788 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £622 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +3.67% -4.00% -1.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 16 59
10th Percentile £40.00 £59.68 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £65.31 £61.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £77.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.97% +11.07% -5.30%
75th Percentile £86.13 £94.06 £82.79
90th Percentile £96.00 £97.50 £90.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.50 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -5.52% +3.57% -7.49%

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 50,841 30,184 35,017
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 90.90% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,834 19,073 21,148
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,158 1,652 1,437
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.80 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.30 £68.52 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +64.24% -41.18% -4.49%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 +7 5,097 £623 -0.40% 619
London +7 2,621 £625 -3.85% 270
UK excluding London +7 2,580 £622 +3.67% 431
Work from Home +6 1,663 £600 - 345
South East -1 733 £626 +4.33% 136
North of England +4 664 £600 - 79
Midlands +7 456 £627 +8.96% 69
South West +5 346 £625 -3.85% 83
North West -1 344 £598 +4.00% 36
West Midlands +10 339 £644 +7.40% 56
Yorkshire +10 244 £600 -1.03% 27
Scotland +18 203 £616 +3.10% 30
East of England +3 144 £618 +11.37% 25
East Midlands +4 112 £600 +20.00% 13
North East +7 79 £625 -15.25% 16
Wales +7 43 £633 +1.20% 11
Channel Islands +1 12 £700 -5.72%
Northern Ireland +4 3 - - 3

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 October 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 1,958 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 1,609 (26.10%) Azure
3 1,475 (23.93%) SC Cleared
4 1,282 (20.80%) AWS
5 1,243 (20.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,038 (16.84%) Roadmaps
7 906 (14.70%) Migration
8 854 (13.85%) Microsoft
9 832 (13.50%) Enterprise Architecture
10 797 (12.93%) AI
11 785 (12.74%) Technical Leadership
12 662 (10.74%) Agile
13 649 (10.53%) DevOps
14 642 (10.42%) Data Architecture
15 626 (10.16%) Data Modelling
16 624 (10.12%) CI/CD
17 618 (10.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 571 (9.26%) Integration Patterns
19 525 (8.52%) Analytics
20 499 (8.10%) GCP
21 498 (8.08%) Security Architecture
22 489 (7.93%) TOGAF
23 486 (7.88%) Architectural Patterns
24 446 (7.24%) Event-Driven
25 423 (6.86%) Data Governance
26 422 (6.85%) Architecture Governance
27 402 (6.52%) Decision-Making
28 397 (6.44%) Microservices
29 395 (6.41%) Cybersecurity
29 395 (6.41%) 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 76 (1.23%) SAS
2 66 (1.07%) SharePoint
3 60 (0.97%) Confluence
4 46 (0.75%) Apache
5 45 (0.73%) Apache Spark
6 36 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
9 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 16 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.11%) Documentum
11 7 (0.11%) IIS
11 7 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.097%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.097%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.097%) JBoss
13 5 (0.081%) Appian
13 5 (0.081%) nginx
13 5 (0.081%) SAP EP
14 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 28 (0.45%) MS Visio
2 21 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.15%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Revit
7 5 (0.081%) Navisworks
7 5 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.049%) Gliffy
9 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.016%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 195 (3.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.29%) SAP MM
5 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
8 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 14 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.19%) SAP CO
10 12 (0.19%) SAP FI
11 11 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
12 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
12 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
13 8 (0.13%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.13%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,609 (26.10%) Azure
2 1,282 (20.80%) AWS
3 499 (8.10%) GCP
4 296 (4.80%) Power Platform
5 241 (3.91%) SaaS
6 225 (3.65%) Entra ID
7 187 (3.03%) Serverless
8 156 (2.53%) GitHub
9 145 (2.35%) Microsoft 365
10 141 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
11 131 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
12 114 (1.85%) Snowflake
13 94 (1.52%) PaaS
14 84 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 76 (1.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 70 (1.14%) OCI
18 66 (1.07%) IaaS
19 65 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
19 65 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 159 (2.58%) Firewall
2 150 (2.43%) Network Security
3 101 (1.64%) WAN
4 79 (1.28%) VPN
5 72 (1.17%) DNS
6 62 (1.01%) LAN
7 49 (0.79%) BGP
8 48 (0.78%) SD-WAN
9 39 (0.63%) MPLS
10 34 (0.55%) DHCP
11 32 (0.52%) TCP/IP
12 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
13 25 (0.41%) VLAN
14 23 (0.37%) NX-OS
14 23 (0.37%) Wireless
15 21 (0.34%) Internet
16 20 (0.32%) SAN
17 19 (0.31%) NGFW
18 18 (0.29%) OSPF
18 18 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (4.01%) Metadata
2 208 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
3 206 (3.34%) Data Lake
4 175 (2.84%) Power BI
5 62 (1.01%) NoSQL
6 52 (0.84%) SQL Server
7 49 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 49 (0.79%) BigQuery
8 47 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
9 46 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
10 42 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 40 (0.65%) Delta Lake
12 34 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (0.52%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 31 (0.50%) Semantic Layer
15 28 (0.45%) Big Data
16 25 (0.41%) MongoDB
17 24 (0.39%) Relational Database
17 24 (0.39%) SAP HANA
18 23 (0.37%) GIS
Development Applications
1 90 (1.46%) JIRA
2 75 (1.22%) Git
3 65 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 48 (0.78%) GitLab
5 14 (0.23%) Claude Code
5 14 (0.23%) ERwin
5 14 (0.23%) Postman
6 11 (0.18%) MSI
7 10 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
7 10 (0.16%) RStudio
8 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.097%) Storybook
10 5 (0.081%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.081%) ER Studio
10 5 (0.081%) JMeter
10 5 (0.081%) Rational DOORS
10 5 (0.081%) Selenium
11 4 (0.065%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.065%) Maven
11 4 (0.065%) SonarQube
General
1 1,280 (20.77%) Social Skills
2 906 (14.70%) Finance
3 745 (12.09%) Public Sector
4 315 (5.11%) Banking
5 282 (4.57%) Analytical Skills
6 246 (3.99%) Retail
7 176 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
8 167 (2.71%) Manufacturing
9 144 (2.34%) Telecoms
10 138 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
11 110 (1.78%) Legal
12 78 (1.27%) Marketing
13 70 (1.14%) Aerospace
14 64 (1.04%) Billing
15 58 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 52 (0.84%) Military
17 46 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 42 (0.68%) Local Government
19 41 (0.67%) Police
20 35 (0.57%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (4.98%) REST
2 278 (4.51%) Terraform
3 181 (2.94%) Kafka
4 168 (2.73%) Middleware
5 134 (2.17%) SOAP
6 127 (2.06%) OAuth
7 117 (1.90%) .NET
8 79 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
9 72 (1.17%) OpenID
10 67 (1.09%) SAML
11 66 (1.07%) JSON
12 63 (1.02%) OAuth2
13 55 (0.89%) LDAP
14 49 (0.79%) RESTful
15 44 (0.71%) XML
16 43 (0.70%) JWT
16 43 (0.70%) PySpark
17 40 (0.65%) Swagger
18 39 (0.63%) SAP Fiori
19 37 (0.60%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 523 (8.48%) Cloud Native
2 197 (3.20%) Onboarding
3 194 (3.15%) Data Centre
4 170 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 153 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
5 153 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 149 (2.42%) AI Agents
7 147 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 145 (2.35%) Hybrid Cloud
9 143 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
10 97 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 97 (1.57%) Operational Technology
11 95 (1.54%) CMDB
12 92 (1.49%) Public Cloud
13 76 (1.23%) Enterprise Cloud
14 70 (1.14%) Private Cloud
15 66 (1.07%) Data Structures
16 60 (0.97%) Taxonomies
17 58 (0.94%) Security Posture
18 50 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 134 (2.17%) Windows
2 104 (1.69%) Linux
3 50 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 23 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (0.37%) Unix
5 9 (0.15%) Ubuntu
6 7 (0.11%) AIX
6 7 (0.11%) Android
6 7 (0.11%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.097%) zOS
8 5 (0.081%) Alpine Linux
9 4 (0.065%) VMS
10 3 (0.049%) CentOS
10 3 (0.049%) Solaris
10 3 (0.049%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.032%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.032%) HPUX
11 2 (0.032%) macOS
11 2 (0.032%) OpenWrt
12 1 (0.016%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,243 (20.17%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,038 (16.84%) Roadmaps
3 906 (14.70%) Migration
4 832 (13.50%) Enterprise Architecture
5 797 (12.93%) AI
6 785 (12.74%) Technical Leadership
7 662 (10.74%) Agile
8 649 (10.53%) DevOps
9 642 (10.42%) Data Architecture
10 626 (10.16%) Data Modelling
11 624 (10.12%) CI/CD
12 618 (10.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 571 (9.26%) Integration Patterns
14 525 (8.52%) Analytics
15 498 (8.08%) Security Architecture
16 489 (7.93%) TOGAF
17 486 (7.88%) Architectural Patterns
18 446 (7.24%) Event-Driven
19 423 (6.86%) Data Governance
20 422 (6.85%) Architecture Governance
Programming Languages
1 257 (4.17%) SQL
2 246 (3.99%) Java
3 237 (3.84%) Python
4 116 (1.88%) JavaScript
5 112 (1.82%) PowerShell
6 58 (0.94%) TypeScript
7 55 (0.89%) Bicep
7 55 (0.89%) C#
8 44 (0.71%) Bash
9 30 (0.49%) Apex Code
10 27 (0.44%) ABAP
11 15 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 14 (0.23%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.18%) Groovy
13 11 (0.18%) R
14 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.15%) C++
15 9 (0.15%) Go
15 9 (0.15%) Rust
16 8 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,958 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 1,475 (23.93%) SC Cleared
3 395 (6.41%) DV Cleared
4 205 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (2.64%) Degree
6 154 (2.50%) CISSP
7 128 (2.08%) AWS Certification
8 123 (2.00%) Azure Certification
9 105 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
10 97 (1.57%) TOGAF Certification
11 74 (1.20%) CISM
12 65 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 50 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
14 46 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 40 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 40 (0.65%) CCNP
16 37 (0.60%) CCSP
17 29 (0.47%) Master's Degree
18 27 (0.44%) CCIE
19 21 (0.34%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 283 (4.59%) Data Quality
2 220 (3.57%) NIST
3 196 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 154 (2.50%) GDPR
5 136 (2.21%) NCSC
6 77 (1.25%) GRC
7 49 (0.79%) QA
8 45 (0.73%) Accessibility
9 43 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.42%) SLA
12 25 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 25 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 23 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
14 20 (0.32%) SEPA
15 19 (0.31%) JSP 440
16 18 (0.29%) IFRS
16 18 (0.29%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 185 (3.00%) Active Directory
2 115 (1.87%) Docker
3 88 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.68%) VMware NSX
5 30 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 21 (0.34%) vSphere
7 20 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.28%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.081%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.065%) Ceph
11 4 (0.065%) KVM
12 3 (0.049%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.049%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.032%) IAG
13 2 (0.032%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.032%) SRDF
13 2 (0.032%) Varnish
13 2 (0.032%) zsh
Systems Management
1 310 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 101 (1.64%) Ansible
3 49 (0.79%) Grafana
4 48 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 35 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 34 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (0.26%) Argo
8 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (0.19%) WMI
11 11 (0.18%) CASB
11 11 (0.18%) FortiGate
12 10 (0.16%) Istio
13 8 (0.13%) SCCM
14 6 (0.097%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.097%) Puppet
14 6 (0.097%) vCenter Server
15 5 (0.081%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.081%) VxRail
16 4 (0.065%) Cisco CUCM
Vendors
1 854 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 367 (5.95%) SAP
3 305 (4.95%) Oracle
4 284 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 278 (4.51%) Databricks
6 219 (3.55%) Google
7 195 (3.16%) Salesforce
8 151 (2.45%) Cisco
9 137 (2.22%) VMware
10 83 (1.35%) CyberArk
11 77 (1.25%) MuleSoft
12 59 (0.96%) IBM
13 52 (0.84%) Palo Alto
13 52 (0.84%) Workday
14 46 (0.75%) Foundry
15 44 (0.71%) Splunk
16 42 (0.68%) OpenAI
17 40 (0.65%) Red Hat
18 38 (0.62%) Adobe
18 38 (0.62%) Ariba