Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £615, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 September 2026.

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

6 months to
3 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 6,018 2,932 3,853
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.22% 9.02% 10.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.14% 9.89% 10.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,987 1,879 2,450
10th Percentile £475 £474 £485
25th Percentile £525 £531 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -1.92%
75th Percentile £700 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £787 £805
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £638
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.88% -1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 18 73
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £66.66 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.06% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £78.63 £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% -4.00%

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 49,563 29,654 35,643
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 91.23% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,606 18,697 22,460
10th Percentile £325 £280 £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 3,581 1,558 1,825
10th Percentile £14.90 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.02 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £71.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 5,028 £620 -0.80% 3,188
London +7 2,580 £622 -4.31% 1,946
UK excluding London +7 2,524 £620 +3.33% 1,539
Work from Home +5 1,612 £600 - 1,459
South East +1 723 £625 +4.17% 395
North of England +6 704 £600 - 366
Midlands +2 416 £625 +8.70% 174
North West +6 414 £600 +0.84% 228
South West +2 324 £648 +0.97% 207
West Midlands +2 309 £640 +6.76% 114
Yorkshire +12 229 £575 -6.12% 107
Scotland +24 172 £625 - 177
East of England +14 152 £611 +10.52% 121
East Midlands +1 102 £600 +16.50% 60
North East -5 63 £575 -19.30% 31
Wales +5 43 £633 +1.20% 16
Channel Islands -2 6 £663 -10.77% 3
Northern Ireland +4 4 £488 -30.36% 92

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 3 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 1,864 (30.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,550 (25.76%) Azure
3 1,398 (23.23%) SC Cleared
4 1,307 (21.72%) AWS
5 1,020 (16.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 919 (15.27%) Roadmaps
7 860 (14.29%) Migration
8 821 (13.64%) Microsoft
9 767 (12.75%) AI
10 766 (12.73%) Enterprise Architecture
11 713 (11.85%) Technical Leadership
12 673 (11.18%) Agile
13 632 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 630 (10.47%) Data Modelling
15 628 (10.44%) DevOps
16 609 (10.12%) CI/CD
17 590 (9.80%) Data Architecture
18 574 (9.54%) Integration Patterns
19 512 (8.51%) Analytics
20 489 (8.13%) GCP
21 486 (8.08%) Architectural Patterns
22 482 (8.01%) TOGAF
23 481 (7.99%) Security Architecture
24 405 (6.73%) Event-Driven
25 402 (6.68%) Data Governance
26 394 (6.55%) Microservices
27 375 (6.23%) Cybersecurity
28 364 (6.05%) Decision-Making
29 358 (5.95%) Infrastructure as Code
30 353 (5.87%) 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 79 (1.31%) SAS
1 79 (1.31%) SharePoint
2 67 (1.11%) Confluence
3 46 (0.76%) Apache
4 41 (0.68%) Apache Spark
5 34 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
6 31 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.40%) CMS
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
10 7 (0.12%) Documentum
11 6 (0.100%) Appian
11 6 (0.100%) Camunda
12 5 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 5 (0.083%) Headless CMS
13 4 (0.066%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.066%) NetWeaver
13 4 (0.066%) SAP EP
14 3 (0.050%) JBoss
Applications
1 18 (0.30%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.033%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
8 1 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 164 (2.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 35 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 19 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 14 (0.23%) 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 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
10 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
11 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
11 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.100%) Maximo
12 6 (0.100%) SAP CO
12 6 (0.100%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,550 (25.76%) Azure
2 1,307 (21.72%) AWS
3 489 (8.13%) GCP
4 303 (5.03%) Power Platform
5 228 (3.79%) SaaS
6 221 (3.67%) Entra ID
7 206 (3.42%) Serverless
8 147 (2.44%) Dynamics 365
9 144 (2.39%) GitHub
10 128 (2.13%) Microsoft 365
11 124 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
12 112 (1.86%) Snowflake
13 100 (1.66%) PaaS
14 97 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
15 87 (1.45%) Amazon S3
16 72 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 68 (1.13%) IaaS
18 65 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
19 64 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
20 63 (1.05%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 178 (2.96%) Firewall
2 163 (2.71%) Network Security
3 109 (1.81%) WAN
4 91 (1.51%) VPN
5 80 (1.33%) DNS
6 75 (1.25%) LAN
7 53 (0.88%) SD-WAN
8 47 (0.78%) BGP
9 40 (0.66%) DHCP
10 37 (0.61%) MPLS
10 37 (0.61%) TCP/IP
11 30 (0.50%) VLAN
12 28 (0.47%) SAN
13 26 (0.43%) VXLAN
14 23 (0.38%) OSPF
15 22 (0.37%) NAS
15 22 (0.37%) Wireless
16 21 (0.35%) NX-OS
17 20 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
18 19 (0.32%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 209 (3.47%) Metadata
2 203 (3.37%) Data Lake
3 200 (3.32%) Power BI
4 179 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.25%) NoSQL
6 50 (0.83%) SQL Server
7 47 (0.78%) BigQuery
7 47 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
8 46 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
9 42 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
9 42 (0.70%) Delta Lake
10 41 (0.68%) Big Data
10 41 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 38 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (0.48%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 29 (0.48%) Semantic Layer
13 25 (0.42%) Relational Database
14 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
14 23 (0.38%) Tableau
15 22 (0.37%) GIS
Development Applications
1 84 (1.40%) JIRA
2 79 (1.31%) Git
3 57 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 36 (0.60%) GitLab
5 18 (0.30%) ERwin
6 12 (0.20%) Claude Code
7 10 (0.17%) Cypress.io
8 9 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.13%) MSI
9 8 (0.13%) RStudio
10 7 (0.12%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.12%) Postman
10 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.100%) Hudson
11 6 (0.100%) MLflow
11 6 (0.100%) Storybook
12 5 (0.083%) ER Studio
12 5 (0.083%) Maven
12 5 (0.083%) Sonatype Nexus
13 4 (0.066%) Selenium
General
1 1,208 (20.07%) Social Skills
2 872 (14.49%) Finance
3 691 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 315 (5.23%) Banking
5 303 (5.03%) Analytical Skills
6 255 (4.24%) Retail
7 165 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
8 150 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.31%) Manufacturing
10 136 (2.26%) Telecoms
11 115 (1.91%) Legal
12 69 (1.15%) Marketing
13 63 (1.05%) Billing
14 58 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 49 (0.81%) Military
16 45 (0.75%) Law
17 44 (0.73%) Aerospace
18 37 (0.61%) Police
18 37 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
19 35 (0.58%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (4.94%) REST
2 259 (4.30%) Terraform
3 180 (2.99%) Middleware
4 143 (2.38%) Kafka
5 135 (2.24%) SOAP
6 124 (2.06%) .NET
7 123 (2.04%) OAuth
8 70 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
9 68 (1.13%) JSON
10 65 (1.08%) OpenID
10 65 (1.08%) SAML
11 59 (0.98%) OAuth2
12 48 (0.80%) RESTful
13 47 (0.78%) PySpark
14 45 (0.75%) LDAP
15 44 (0.73%) XML
16 39 (0.65%) SailPoint
17 38 (0.63%) React
18 37 (0.61%) .NET Framework
19 35 (0.58%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 525 (8.72%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.34%) Data Centre
3 177 (2.94%) Management Information System
4 166 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 145 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
6 144 (2.39%) Product Ownership
7 141 (2.34%) Hybrid Cloud
8 140 (2.33%) AI Agents
9 137 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
10 133 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
11 96 (1.60%) CMDB
12 95 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
13 88 (1.46%) Operational Technology
14 87 (1.45%) Public Cloud
15 80 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
16 66 (1.10%) Security Posture
17 54 (0.90%) Data Structures
18 53 (0.88%) Private Cloud
19 48 (0.80%) IoT
20 46 (0.76%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 126 (2.09%) Windows
2 110 (1.83%) Linux
3 52 (0.86%) Windows Server
4 26 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.40%) Unix
6 14 (0.23%) Android
6 14 (0.23%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
8 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.12%) zOS
10 5 (0.083%) Solaris
10 5 (0.083%) VMS
11 4 (0.066%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.066%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.050%) CentOS
12 3 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.050%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.033%) HPUX
13 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,020 (16.95%) Stakeholder Management
2 919 (15.27%) Roadmaps
3 860 (14.29%) Migration
4 767 (12.75%) AI
5 766 (12.73%) Enterprise Architecture
6 713 (11.85%) Technical Leadership
7 673 (11.18%) Agile
8 632 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 630 (10.47%) Data Modelling
10 628 (10.44%) DevOps
11 609 (10.12%) CI/CD
12 590 (9.80%) Data Architecture
13 574 (9.54%) Integration Patterns
14 512 (8.51%) Analytics
15 486 (8.08%) Architectural Patterns
16 482 (8.01%) TOGAF
17 481 (7.99%) Security Architecture
18 405 (6.73%) Event-Driven
19 402 (6.68%) Data Governance
20 394 (6.55%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 281 (4.67%) Python
2 274 (4.55%) SQL
3 268 (4.45%) Java
4 129 (2.14%) JavaScript
5 108 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.86%) C#
7 50 (0.83%) Bash
7 50 (0.83%) TypeScript
8 47 (0.78%) Bicep
9 32 (0.53%) Apex Code
10 18 (0.30%) Ruby
11 16 (0.27%) ABAP
11 16 (0.27%) Shell Script
12 15 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.18%) C++
13 11 (0.18%) Groovy
13 11 (0.18%) R
14 10 (0.17%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.17%) Scala
15 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,864 (30.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,398 (23.23%) SC Cleared
3 353 (5.87%) DV Cleared
4 165 (2.74%) Degree
5 154 (2.56%) CISSP
6 140 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 122 (2.03%) AWS Certification
8 119 (1.98%) Azure Certification
9 103 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
10 85 (1.41%) TOGAF Certification
11 75 (1.25%) CISM
12 70 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
14 46 (0.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 42 (0.70%) CCNP
16 41 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 34 (0.56%) CCSP
18 31 (0.52%) Master's Degree
19 22 (0.37%) CISA
19 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (4.10%) Data Quality
2 235 (3.90%) NIST
3 186 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 177 (2.94%) GDPR
5 120 (1.99%) NCSC
6 79 (1.31%) GRC
7 57 (0.95%) QA
8 42 (0.70%) Accessibility
9 41 (0.68%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.52%) NIST 800
10 31 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.42%) SLA
12 22 (0.37%) SEPA
13 21 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
14 20 (0.33%) IFRS
14 20 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 18 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 17 (0.28%) JSP 440
17 16 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
18 15 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 178 (2.96%) Active Directory
2 114 (1.89%) Docker
3 80 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.71%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.38%) Hyper-V
7 22 (0.37%) vSphere
8 19 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.12%) NFS
11 5 (0.083%) Postfix
11 5 (0.083%) Varnish
12 4 (0.066%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 4 (0.066%) KVM
12 4 (0.066%) vCloud
13 3 (0.050%) Ceph
13 3 (0.050%) Sendmail
13 3 (0.050%) SRDF
14 2 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
14 2 (0.033%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 290 (4.82%) Kubernetes
2 104 (1.73%) Ansible
3 50 (0.83%) Grafana
4 48 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 42 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 28 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (0.32%) Argo
8 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
10 13 (0.22%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.15%) Istio
11 9 (0.15%) WMI
12 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.12%) CASB
13 7 (0.12%) SCCM
14 6 (0.100%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.083%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.083%) HAProxy
16 4 (0.066%) QRadar
16 4 (0.066%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 821 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 349 (5.80%) SAP
3 303 (5.03%) Oracle
4 301 (5.00%) ServiceNow
5 287 (4.77%) Databricks
6 196 (3.26%) Salesforce
7 188 (3.12%) Google
8 147 (2.44%) Cisco
9 137 (2.28%) VMware
10 73 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 71 (1.18%) CyberArk
12 61 (1.01%) IBM
13 53 (0.88%) Palo Alto
13 53 (0.88%) Workday
14 51 (0.85%) Foundry
15 43 (0.71%) Adobe
15 43 (0.71%) Ariba
16 41 (0.68%) Informatica
17 39 (0.65%) OpenAI
17 39 (0.65%) Red Hat