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 7 July 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,814 3,075 4,394
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.17% 9.66% 10.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.08% 10.50% 10.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,820 1,984 2,842
10th Percentile £470 £475 £490
25th Percentile £523 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £715 £720 £738
90th Percentile £788 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 22 94
10th Percentile £46.00 £40.31 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -9.72% +2.86% -

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 48,135 29,273 40,238
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.98% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,133 18,680 25,890
10th Percentile £325 £287 £285
25th Percentile £417 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,254 1,329 2,797
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.44 £16.65
Median hourly rate £42.59 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.03% -29.47% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -37.13% +1.14%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 4,901 £616 -1.44% 1,207
UK excluding London +9 2,547 £620 +3.33% 727
London +4 2,405 £620 -4.62% 598
Work from Home +5 1,591 £600 -0.50% 595
North of England +9 740 £600 - 177
South East +1 716 £625 +4.17% 217
Midlands +1 433 £614 +6.74% 89
North West +5 395 £610 +1.67% 111
West Midlands -1 311 £625 +4.17% 66
Yorkshire +10 280 £586 -2.42% 42
South West +1 278 £625 - 117
East of England +19 201 £600 - 49
Scotland +11 168 £650 +4.00% 51
East Midlands +6 115 £581 +16.25% 23
North East 0 73 £575 -8.00% 25
Wales +3 37 £600 +25.00% 25
Northern Ireland +8 7 £475 -32.14% 13
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 7 July 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 1,745 (30.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,445 (24.85%) Azure
3 1,307 (22.48%) SC Cleared
4 1,267 (21.79%) AWS
5 836 (14.38%) Roadmaps
6 802 (13.79%) Migration
7 753 (12.95%) Microsoft
8 740 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
9 695 (11.95%) Agile
10 655 (11.27%) AI
11 649 (11.16%) DevOps
12 620 (10.66%) Enterprise Architecture
13 615 (10.58%) CI/CD
14 563 (9.68%) Data Modelling
15 561 (9.65%) Technical Leadership
16 560 (9.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 525 (9.03%) Integration Patterns
18 516 (8.88%) Data Architecture
19 486 (8.36%) Architectural Patterns
20 484 (8.32%) Analytics
20 484 (8.32%) TOGAF
21 444 (7.64%) Microservices
22 432 (7.43%) GCP
23 380 (6.54%) Problem-Solving
24 379 (6.52%) Security Architecture
25 365 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
26 361 (6.21%) Architectural Design
27 357 (6.14%) Cybersecurity
28 356 (6.12%) Event-Driven
29 344 (5.92%) SAP

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
1 109 (1.87%) SharePoint
2 80 (1.38%) Confluence
3 51 (0.88%) SAS
4 49 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
5 35 (0.60%) Apache
6 33 (0.57%) Apache Spark
7 28 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
8 21 (0.36%) Appian
8 21 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.34%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.15%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Documentum
14 7 (0.12%) JBoss
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.17%) Chatbot
5 9 (0.15%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.052%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.052%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 153 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 32 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 20 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.26%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
10 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,445 (24.85%) Azure
2 1,267 (21.79%) AWS
3 432 (7.43%) GCP
4 282 (4.85%) Power Platform
5 209 (3.59%) Serverless
6 202 (3.47%) SaaS
7 201 (3.46%) Entra ID
8 141 (2.43%) GitHub
9 134 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
10 128 (2.20%) PaaS
11 118 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
12 117 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
13 100 (1.72%) Snowflake
14 98 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (1.65%) IaaS
16 85 (1.46%) Amazon S3
17 70 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
17 70 (1.20%) OpenShift
18 67 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 66 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 234 (4.02%) Firewall
2 194 (3.34%) Network Security
3 125 (2.15%) VPN
4 124 (2.13%) DNS
5 117 (2.01%) WAN
6 84 (1.44%) LAN
7 63 (1.08%) SD-WAN
8 49 (0.84%) TCP/IP
9 48 (0.83%) DHCP
10 46 (0.79%) BGP
11 40 (0.69%) VLAN
12 36 (0.62%) MPLS
13 33 (0.57%) OSPF
13 33 (0.57%) Wireless
14 29 (0.50%) SAN
15 27 (0.46%) IPsec
15 27 (0.46%) NAS
16 25 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.41%) BIG-IP
18 22 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (3.37%) Power BI
2 171 (2.94%) Data Lake
3 169 (2.91%) Metadata
4 159 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.29%) NoSQL
6 65 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
6 65 (1.12%) SQL Server
7 48 (0.83%) Big Data
8 47 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
9 40 (0.69%) Oracle Database
10 38 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
10 38 (0.65%) BigQuery
11 28 (0.48%) Delta Lake
12 27 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
12 27 (0.46%) Relational Database
13 25 (0.43%) Tableau
14 23 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
14 23 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
14 23 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 21 (0.36%) GIS
Development Applications
1 108 (1.86%) JIRA
2 84 (1.44%) Jenkins
3 74 (1.27%) Git
4 37 (0.64%) GitLab
5 26 (0.45%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.15%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.15%) Postman
8 8 (0.14%) MLflow
8 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Selenium
11 5 (0.086%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.086%) Cypress.io
11 5 (0.086%) JMeter
11 5 (0.086%) Maven
11 5 (0.086%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,091 (18.77%) Social Skills
2 894 (15.38%) Finance
3 661 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 337 (5.80%) Banking
5 307 (5.28%) Analytical Skills
6 229 (3.94%) Retail
7 159 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
8 140 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
9 127 (2.18%) Legal
10 109 (1.87%) Telecoms
11 106 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 59 (1.01%) Billing
13 56 (0.96%) Marketing
14 52 (0.89%) Military
15 51 (0.88%) Financial Institution
16 48 (0.83%) Law
17 42 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
18 39 (0.67%) Aerospace
19 37 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 33 (0.57%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (4.71%) REST
2 208 (3.58%) Middleware
3 137 (2.36%) .NET
4 122 (2.10%) Kafka
5 121 (2.08%) SOAP
6 102 (1.75%) OAuth
7 94 (1.62%) OpenID
8 75 (1.29%) SAML
9 68 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
10 61 (1.05%) OAuth2
11 56 (0.96%) React
12 55 (0.95%) LDAP
13 51 (0.88%) RESTful
13 51 (0.88%) SailPoint
14 47 (0.81%) JSON
15 39 (0.67%) Web Services
16 37 (0.64%) AngularJS
16 37 (0.64%) Node.js
17 35 (0.60%) .NET Framework
18 34 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 496 (8.53%) Cloud Native
2 204 (3.51%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.87%) Management Information System
4 165 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 143 (2.46%) Product Ownership
6 142 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 124 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
11 92 (1.58%) Public Cloud
12 91 (1.57%) Operational Technology
13 86 (1.48%) AI Agents
13 86 (1.48%) CMDB
14 66 (1.14%) Security Posture
15 60 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
16 49 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 48 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.81%) NHS
19 45 (0.77%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 151 (2.60%) Windows
2 101 (1.74%) Linux
3 47 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.60%) Android
5 34 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.43%) Unix
7 23 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.19%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.086%) AIX
11 5 (0.086%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.086%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.069%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.069%) Solaris
12 4 (0.069%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.052%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 836 (14.38%) Roadmaps
2 802 (13.79%) Migration
3 740 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 695 (11.95%) Agile
5 655 (11.27%) AI
6 649 (11.16%) DevOps
7 620 (10.66%) Enterprise Architecture
8 615 (10.58%) CI/CD
9 563 (9.68%) Data Modelling
10 561 (9.65%) Technical Leadership
11 560 (9.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 525 (9.03%) Integration Patterns
13 516 (8.88%) Data Architecture
14 486 (8.36%) Architectural Patterns
15 484 (8.32%) Analytics
15 484 (8.32%) TOGAF
16 444 (7.64%) Microservices
17 380 (6.54%) Problem-Solving
18 379 (6.52%) Security Architecture
19 365 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 309 (5.31%) Python
2 283 (4.87%) SQL
3 258 (4.44%) Java
4 117 (2.01%) JavaScript
5 114 (1.96%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.15%) C#
7 62 (1.07%) Bicep
8 46 (0.79%) Bash
8 46 (0.79%) TypeScript
9 28 (0.48%) Apex Code
10 21 (0.36%) Ruby
11 14 (0.24%) Scala
12 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.17%) ABAP
14 9 (0.15%) C++
14 9 (0.15%) R
14 9 (0.15%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,745 (30.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,307 (22.48%) SC Cleared
3 323 (5.56%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.49%) Degree
5 134 (2.30%) CISSP
6 127 (2.18%) AWS Certification
6 127 (2.18%) Azure Certification
7 117 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 113 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
9 85 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
10 83 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 67 (1.15%) CISM
12 55 (0.95%) CCNP
13 50 (0.86%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 44 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
16 43 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.52%) CCSP
18 23 (0.40%) CCIE
19 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (3.51%) NIST
2 184 (3.16%) GDPR
3 176 (3.03%) Data Quality
4 156 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 129 (2.22%) NCSC
6 68 (1.17%) QA
7 45 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 44 (0.76%) GRC
9 38 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 30 (0.52%) NIST 800
11 28 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 26 (0.45%) SEPA
13 20 (0.34%) IFRS
14 19 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
14 19 (0.33%) HL7
15 18 (0.31%) COBIT
16 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.21%) JSP 440
18 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 170 (2.92%) Active Directory
2 118 (2.03%) Docker
3 94 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.05%) VMware NSX
5 28 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 25 (0.43%) vSphere
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.17%) Varnish
11 9 (0.15%) Squid
12 8 (0.14%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) vCloud
14 4 (0.069%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.069%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.069%) IAG
14 4 (0.069%) RACF
14 4 (0.069%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 292 (5.02%) Terraform
2 287 (4.94%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.93%) Ansible
4 58 (1.00%) Grafana
5 55 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
6 47 (0.81%) Prometheus
7 46 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.40%) vCenter Server
9 22 (0.38%) Argo
9 22 (0.38%) FortiGate
10 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (0.24%) SCCM
12 12 (0.21%) Istio
13 8 (0.14%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.12%) Consul
14 7 (0.12%) HAProxy
14 7 (0.12%) Puppet
15 6 (0.10%) CASB
15 6 (0.10%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 753 (12.95%) Microsoft
2 344 (5.92%) SAP
3 311 (5.35%) ServiceNow
4 273 (4.70%) Oracle
5 243 (4.18%) Databricks
6 187 (3.22%) Salesforce
7 170 (2.92%) VMware
8 140 (2.41%) Google
9 137 (2.36%) Cisco
10 69 (1.19%) MuleSoft
11 65 (1.12%) Splunk
12 64 (1.10%) CyberArk
13 52 (0.89%) Palo Alto
13 52 (0.89%) Red Hat
14 50 (0.86%) IBM
15 44 (0.76%) Workday
16 42 (0.72%) Ariba
16 42 (0.72%) OpenAI
17 40 (0.69%) Foundry
18 39 (0.67%) F5