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 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 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 6,025 2,920 3,816
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.23% 9.04% 10.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.15% 9.92% 10.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,996 1,871 2,414
10th Percentile £475 £468 £485
25th Percentile £525 £525 £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 £780 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £635
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.55% -1.36%
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% -0.12%
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% -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 49,584 29,450 35,463
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.15% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,603 18,569 22,312
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 3,590 1,537 1,792
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.60 £14.42
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.00 £20.21
Median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.50 £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 4 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 4 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 4 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 5,033 £620 -0.40% 3,306
London +6 2,580 £625 -2.84% 2,022
UK excluding London +8 2,523 £620 +3.33% 1,573
Work from Home +5 1,621 £600 - 1,511
South East +1 720 £625 +4.17% 402
North of England +5 705 £600 - 378
Midlands +2 421 £626 +9.11% 178
North West +7 413 £600 +4.35% 241
South West +2 324 £648 +0.78% 213
West Midlands +3 313 £650 +9.38% 115
Yorkshire +10 231 £588 -2.08% 105
Scotland +24 169 £625 - 183
East of England +14 152 £611 +10.52% 124
East Midlands +3 103 £600 +16.50% 63
North East -2 62 £588 -17.54% 32
Wales +4 42 £633 +1.20% 20
Channel Islands -2 6 £663 -10.77% 3
Northern Ireland +5 4 £488 -30.36% 84

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 4 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 1,874 (31.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,546 (25.66%) Azure
3 1,407 (23.35%) SC Cleared
4 1,303 (21.63%) AWS
5 1,022 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 905 (15.02%) Roadmaps
7 858 (14.24%) Migration
8 822 (13.64%) Microsoft
9 766 (12.71%) AI
10 764 (12.68%) Enterprise Architecture
11 724 (12.02%) Technical Leadership
12 668 (11.09%) Agile
13 633 (10.51%) Data Modelling
14 631 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 622 (10.32%) DevOps
16 608 (10.09%) CI/CD
17 592 (9.83%) Data Architecture
18 577 (9.58%) Integration Patterns
19 509 (8.45%) Analytics
20 488 (8.10%) GCP
21 483 (8.02%) Security Architecture
21 483 (8.02%) TOGAF
22 479 (7.95%) Architectural Patterns
23 404 (6.71%) Event-Driven
24 403 (6.69%) Data Governance
25 393 (6.52%) Microservices
26 376 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
27 363 (6.02%) Decision-Making
28 358 (5.94%) Infrastructure as Code
29 355 (5.89%) 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
2 74 (1.23%) SharePoint
3 62 (1.03%) Confluence
4 46 (0.76%) Apache
5 41 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
9 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 6 (0.100%) Appian
12 6 (0.100%) Camunda
13 5 (0.083%) 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 (0.050%) Drupal
Applications
1 18 (0.30%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) 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
1 165 (2.74%) 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
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 (0.17%) 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 1,546 (25.66%) Azure
2 1,303 (21.63%) AWS
3 488 (8.10%) GCP
4 299 (4.96%) Power Platform
5 228 (3.78%) SaaS
6 219 (3.63%) Entra ID
7 206 (3.42%) Serverless
8 146 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
9 145 (2.41%) GitHub
10 130 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
11 125 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
12 112 (1.86%) Snowflake
13 101 (1.68%) PaaS
14 97 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
15 87 (1.44%) Amazon S3
16 72 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 67 (1.11%) IaaS
18 65 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
18 65 (1.08%) OCI
19 64 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 178 (2.95%) Firewall
2 162 (2.69%) Network Security
3 107 (1.78%) WAN
4 87 (1.44%) VPN
5 78 (1.29%) DNS
6 74 (1.23%) LAN
7 52 (0.86%) SD-WAN
8 46 (0.76%) BGP
9 40 (0.66%) DHCP
10 37 (0.61%) TCP/IP
11 36 (0.60%) MPLS
12 30 (0.50%) VLAN
13 28 (0.46%) SAN
14 26 (0.43%) VXLAN
15 22 (0.37%) NAS
15 22 (0.37%) OSPF
15 22 (0.37%) Wireless
16 20 (0.33%) NX-OS
16 20 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
17 19 (0.32%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (3.49%) Metadata
2 203 (3.37%) Data Lake
3 196 (3.25%) Power BI
4 178 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.24%) 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%) Delta Lake
10 41 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
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 (0.41%) Relational Database
14 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.37%) GIS
15 22 (0.37%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 83 (1.38%) JIRA
2 78 (1.29%) Git
3 58 (0.96%) Jenkins
4 37 (0.61%) GitLab
5 18 (0.30%) ERwin
6 12 (0.20%) 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 (0.12%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.12%) Postman
9 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.100%) Hudson
10 6 (0.100%) MLflow
10 6 (0.100%) Storybook
11 5 (0.083%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.083%) Maven
11 5 (0.083%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.066%) PowerDesigner
General
1 1,211 (20.10%) Social Skills
2 866 (14.37%) Finance
3 688 (11.42%) Public Sector
4 313 (5.20%) Banking
5 304 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
6 260 (4.32%) Retail
7 164 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
8 146 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 141 (2.34%) Manufacturing
10 136 (2.26%) Telecoms
11 114 (1.89%) Legal
12 69 (1.15%) Marketing
13 63 (1.05%) Billing
14 57 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 50 (0.83%) Military
16 45 (0.75%) Law
17 44 (0.73%) Aerospace
18 39 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
19 37 (0.61%) Police
20 35 (0.58%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (4.96%) REST
2 257 (4.27%) Terraform
3 179 (2.97%) Middleware
4 145 (2.41%) Kafka
5 137 (2.27%) SOAP
6 124 (2.06%) OAuth
7 123 (2.04%) .NET
8 72 (1.20%) Oracle Fusion
9 69 (1.15%) JSON
10 67 (1.11%) OpenID
11 65 (1.08%) SAML
12 59 (0.98%) OAuth2
13 47 (0.78%) PySpark
13 47 (0.78%) RESTful
14 46 (0.76%) LDAP
15 45 (0.75%) XML
16 39 (0.65%) React
16 39 (0.65%) SailPoint
17 37 (0.61%) .NET Framework
18 34 (0.56%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 522 (8.66%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.34%) Data Centre
3 179 (2.97%) Management Information System
4 168 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 144 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
5 144 (2.39%) Product Ownership
6 142 (2.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 139 (2.31%) AI Agents
8 136 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 133 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
10 96 (1.59%) CMDB
11 94 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
12 88 (1.46%) Operational Technology
13 83 (1.38%) Public Cloud
14 79 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
15 66 (1.10%) Security Posture
16 56 (0.93%) Data Structures
17 54 (0.90%) Private Cloud
18 48 (0.80%) IoT
19 47 (0.78%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 124 (2.06%) Windows
2 108 (1.79%) 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 1,022 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
2 905 (15.02%) Roadmaps
3 858 (14.24%) Migration
4 766 (12.71%) AI
5 764 (12.68%) Enterprise Architecture
6 724 (12.02%) Technical Leadership
7 668 (11.09%) Agile
8 633 (10.51%) Data Modelling
9 631 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 622 (10.32%) DevOps
11 608 (10.09%) CI/CD
12 592 (9.83%) Data Architecture
13 577 (9.58%) Integration Patterns
14 509 (8.45%) Analytics
15 483 (8.02%) Security Architecture
15 483 (8.02%) TOGAF
16 479 (7.95%) Architectural Patterns
17 404 (6.71%) Event-Driven
18 403 (6.69%) Data Governance
19 393 (6.52%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 276 (4.58%) Python
2 272 (4.51%) SQL
3 264 (4.38%) Java
4 129 (2.14%) JavaScript
5 108 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.86%) TypeScript
7 51 (0.85%) C#
8 50 (0.83%) Bash
9 46 (0.76%) Bicep
10 34 (0.56%) Apex Code
11 18 (0.30%) Ruby
12 16 (0.27%) ABAP
12 16 (0.27%) Shell Script
13 15 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 11 (0.18%) C++
14 11 (0.18%) Groovy
14 11 (0.18%) R
15 10 (0.17%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.17%) Scala
16 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,874 (31.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,407 (23.35%) SC Cleared
3 355 (5.89%) DV Cleared
4 166 (2.76%) Degree
5 154 (2.56%) CISSP
6 141 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 119 (1.98%) AWS Certification
8 118 (1.96%) Azure Certification
9 103 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
11 75 (1.24%) CISM
12 69 (1.15%) 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 (0.51%) Master's Degree
19 22 (0.37%) CISA
19 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (4.08%) Data Quality
2 236 (3.92%) NIST
3 189 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 175 (2.90%) GDPR
5 121 (2.01%) NCSC
6 80 (1.33%) GRC
7 57 (0.95%) QA
8 40 (0.66%) Accessibility
8 40 (0.66%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.51%) NIST 800
11 25 (0.41%) SLA
12 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.37%) SEPA
14 21 (0.35%) IFRS
15 20 (0.33%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 17 (0.28%) JSP 440
18 16 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
19 15 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 178 (2.95%) Active Directory
2 113 (1.88%) Docker
3 80 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.73%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.38%) vSphere
7 22 (0.37%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 6 (0.100%) 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 (0.050%) Ceph
12 3 (0.050%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.050%) SRDF
13 2 (0.033%) IAG
13 2 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 291 (4.83%) Kubernetes
2 102 (1.69%) Ansible
3 50 (0.83%) Grafana
3 50 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
4 42 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 28 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (0.32%) Argo
7 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (0.22%) vCenter Server
10 9 (0.15%) Istio
10 9 (0.15%) WMI
11 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 7 (0.12%) CASB
12 7 (0.12%) SCCM
13 6 (0.100%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.083%) EMC VPLEX
15 4 (0.066%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.066%) QRadar
15 4 (0.066%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 822 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 351 (5.83%) SAP
3 306 (5.08%) Oracle
4 304 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 286 (4.75%) Databricks
6 197 (3.27%) Salesforce
7 188 (3.12%) Google
8 147 (2.44%) Cisco
9 137 (2.27%) VMware
10 72 (1.20%) CyberArk
10 72 (1.20%) MuleSoft
11 61 (1.01%) IBM
12 54 (0.90%) Palo Alto
12 54 (0.90%) Workday
13 50 (0.83%) Foundry
14 42 (0.70%) Ariba
15 41 (0.68%) Adobe
15 41 (0.68%) Informatica
16 39 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 37 (0.61%) Sparx