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 21 August 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,983 2,984 3,969
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.17% 9.10% 10.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.08% 9.98% 10.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,965 1,917 2,574
10th Percentile £481 £470 £488
25th Percentile £525 £537 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £649
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -3.70% -0.15%
75th Percentile £710 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £787 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £648
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.41% -0.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 18 74
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £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% -3.34%

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 49,522 29,914 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.26% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,686 18,901 23,122
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 £620 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,509 1,556 1,977
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £19.59
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +14.67%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 5,023 £620 -0.80% 763
London +7 2,580 £625 -2.61% 328
UK excluding London +7 2,496 £620 +3.33% 524
Work from Home +4 1,597 £600 - 364
South East +1 736 £625 +4.17% 175
North of England +5 695 £600 - 156
Midlands +1 410 £625 +8.70% 58
North West +6 405 £600 - 76
South West -3 316 £640 - 77
West Midlands -1 295 £640 +6.58% 42
Yorkshire +7 226 £594 -3.06% 58
Scotland +19 156 £625 +0.60% 23
East of England +16 155 £602 +8.47% 21
East Midlands +6 108 £600 +18.23% 16
North East -3 66 £588 -16.07% 22
Wales +4 42 £633 +1.20% 12
Northern Ireland +4 5 £475 -32.14% 9
Channel Islands -3 3 £575 -22.56% 2

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 August 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 1,846 (30.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,534 (25.64%) Azure
3 1,382 (23.10%) SC Cleared
4 1,307 (21.85%) AWS
5 931 (15.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 894 (14.94%) Roadmaps
7 856 (14.31%) Migration
8 792 (13.24%) Microsoft
9 739 (12.35%) Enterprise Architecture
10 735 (12.28%) AI
11 664 (11.10%) Agile
12 663 (11.08%) Technical Leadership
13 630 (10.53%) DevOps
14 624 (10.43%) CI/CD
15 620 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 617 (10.31%) Data Modelling
17 585 (9.78%) Integration Patterns
18 570 (9.53%) Data Architecture
19 525 (8.77%) Analytics
20 481 (8.04%) GCP
21 472 (7.89%) TOGAF
22 468 (7.82%) Architectural Patterns
23 447 (7.47%) Security Architecture
24 406 (6.79%) Event-Driven
25 401 (6.70%) Microservices
26 378 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
27 373 (6.23%) Data Governance
28 365 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
29 360 (6.02%) Decision-Making
30 355 (5.93%) 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 83 (1.39%) SharePoint
2 78 (1.30%) SAS
3 64 (1.07%) Confluence
4 45 (0.75%) Apache
5 43 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 33 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 29 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.33%) CMS
10 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 7 (0.12%) Appian
11 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.12%) Camunda
11 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.067%) NetWeaver
12 4 (0.067%) nginx
12 4 (0.067%) SAP EP
13 3 (0.050%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 21 (0.35%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
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 3 (0.050%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
8 1 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 159 (2.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 23 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 15 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
5 15 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 14 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 12 (0.20%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
9 9 (0.15%) Oracle Retail
9 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
10 8 (0.13%) SAP MDG
11 7 (0.12%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
12 6 (0.10%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,534 (25.64%) Azure
2 1,307 (21.85%) AWS
3 481 (8.04%) GCP
4 307 (5.13%) Power Platform
5 218 (3.64%) SaaS
6 213 (3.56%) Entra ID
7 207 (3.46%) Serverless
8 146 (2.44%) GitHub
9 138 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
10 119 (1.99%) Microsoft 365
11 118 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
12 116 (1.94%) PaaS
12 116 (1.94%) Snowflake
13 99 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.45%) Amazon S3
15 81 (1.35%) IaaS
16 76 (1.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 69 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
18 67 (1.12%) OCI
19 65 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 187 (3.13%) Firewall
2 164 (2.74%) Network Security
3 108 (1.81%) WAN
4 96 (1.60%) VPN
5 89 (1.49%) DNS
6 77 (1.29%) LAN
7 52 (0.87%) SD-WAN
8 49 (0.82%) BGP
9 42 (0.70%) DHCP
10 38 (0.64%) TCP/IP
11 37 (0.62%) MPLS
12 31 (0.52%) VLAN
13 30 (0.50%) SAN
13 30 (0.50%) VXLAN
14 25 (0.42%) NAS
14 25 (0.42%) NX-OS
15 24 (0.40%) OSPF
15 24 (0.40%) Wireless
16 23 (0.38%) Structured Cabling
17 21 (0.35%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (3.51%) Power BI
2 205 (3.43%) Data Lake
3 184 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 180 (3.01%) Metadata
5 76 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 61 (1.02%) SQL Server
7 52 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
8 51 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
9 45 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
9 45 (0.75%) BigQuery
9 45 (0.75%) Delta Lake
10 43 (0.72%) Big Data
11 38 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
12 37 (0.62%) Oracle Database
13 28 (0.47%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 23 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (0.38%) GIS
14 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
14 23 (0.38%) Relational Database
14 23 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 81 (1.35%) Git
2 80 (1.34%) JIRA
3 57 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 35 (0.58%) GitLab
5 20 (0.33%) ERwin
6 12 (0.20%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.12%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.12%) MLflow
9 7 (0.12%) Postman
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) MSI
10 6 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.10%) Storybook
11 5 (0.084%) Maven
11 5 (0.084%) PowerDesigner
11 5 (0.084%) RStudio
12 4 (0.067%) ER Studio
General
1 1,159 (19.37%) Social Skills
2 867 (14.49%) Finance
3 687 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 312 (5.21%) Analytical Skills
4 312 (5.21%) Banking
5 261 (4.36%) Retail
6 151 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
7 140 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
8 134 (2.24%) Telecoms
9 131 (2.19%) Manufacturing
10 113 (1.89%) Legal
11 68 (1.14%) Marketing
12 63 (1.05%) Billing
13 59 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 47 (0.79%) Law
15 46 (0.77%) Aerospace
16 45 (0.75%) Military
17 43 (0.72%) Financial Institution
18 40 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
19 37 (0.62%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (4.98%) REST
2 273 (4.56%) Terraform
3 190 (3.18%) Middleware
4 143 (2.39%) Kafka
5 129 (2.16%) SOAP
6 127 (2.12%) .NET
6 127 (2.12%) OAuth
7 71 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
8 68 (1.14%) SAML
9 67 (1.12%) OpenID
10 65 (1.09%) JSON
11 63 (1.05%) OAuth2
12 47 (0.79%) RESTful
13 45 (0.75%) PySpark
14 42 (0.70%) React
15 38 (0.64%) SailPoint
15 38 (0.64%) XML
16 37 (0.62%) LDAP
17 36 (0.60%) .NET Framework
18 35 (0.58%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 522 (8.72%) Cloud Native
2 205 (3.43%) Data Centre
3 177 (2.96%) Management Information System
4 158 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 149 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 144 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
7 142 (2.37%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
8 137 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
9 132 (2.21%) AI Agents
10 103 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
11 88 (1.47%) CMDB
12 84 (1.40%) Public Cloud
13 81 (1.35%) Operational Technology
14 76 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
15 67 (1.12%) Security Posture
16 60 (1.00%) Data Structures
17 51 (0.85%) Private Cloud
18 47 (0.79%) IoT
19 44 (0.74%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 129 (2.16%) Windows
2 104 (1.74%) Linux
3 49 (0.82%) Windows Server
4 24 (0.40%) Android
4 24 (0.40%) Apple iOS
5 22 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (0.37%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
7 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
7 8 (0.13%) zOS
8 7 (0.12%) VMS
9 5 (0.084%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (0.084%) Solaris
9 5 (0.084%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.067%) Alpine Linux
10 4 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.050%) CentOS
12 2 (0.033%) HPUX
12 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 931 (15.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 894 (14.94%) Roadmaps
3 856 (14.31%) Migration
4 739 (12.35%) Enterprise Architecture
5 735 (12.28%) AI
6 664 (11.10%) Agile
7 663 (11.08%) Technical Leadership
8 630 (10.53%) DevOps
9 624 (10.43%) CI/CD
10 620 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 617 (10.31%) Data Modelling
12 585 (9.78%) Integration Patterns
13 570 (9.53%) Data Architecture
14 525 (8.77%) Analytics
15 472 (7.89%) TOGAF
16 468 (7.82%) Architectural Patterns
17 447 (7.47%) Security Architecture
18 406 (6.79%) Event-Driven
19 401 (6.70%) Microservices
20 378 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 289 (4.83%) SQL
2 280 (4.68%) Python
3 270 (4.51%) Java
4 129 (2.16%) JavaScript
5 111 (1.86%) PowerShell
6 53 (0.89%) Bicep
7 51 (0.85%) C#
8 48 (0.80%) Bash
9 46 (0.77%) TypeScript
10 31 (0.52%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.35%) Ruby
12 17 (0.28%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.22%) ABAP
14 13 (0.22%) Kotlin
15 12 (0.20%) C++
16 11 (0.18%) Groovy
16 11 (0.18%) PL/SQL
17 10 (0.17%) R
17 10 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,846 (30.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,382 (23.10%) SC Cleared
3 355 (5.93%) DV Cleared
4 166 (2.77%) Degree
5 148 (2.47%) CISSP
6 127 (2.12%) Azure Certification
7 122 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (2.01%) AWS Certification
9 104 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 81 (1.35%) TOGAF Certification
11 73 (1.22%) CISM
12 69 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
13 46 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 46 (0.77%) CCNP
14 44 (0.74%) Microsoft Certification
15 41 (0.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 33 (0.55%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.53%) CCSP
18 22 (0.37%) CISA
18 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 234 (3.91%) Data Quality
2 221 (3.69%) NIST
3 180 (3.01%) GDPR
4 174 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 120 (2.01%) NCSC
6 79 (1.32%) GRC
7 56 (0.94%) QA
8 42 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 39 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 33 (0.55%) NIST 800
11 30 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.35%) IFRS
12 21 (0.35%) SEPA
13 20 (0.33%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.33%) SLA
14 18 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
15 16 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
15 16 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 15 (0.25%) JSP 440
17 14 (0.23%) HL7
System Software
1 173 (2.89%) Active Directory
2 118 (1.97%) Docker
3 81 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.72%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.37%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.35%) vSphere
8 19 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.13%) NFS
11 7 (0.12%) Varnish
12 6 (0.10%) Postfix
12 6 (0.10%) vCloud
13 4 (0.067%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.067%) KVM
13 4 (0.067%) Sendmail
14 3 (0.050%) Ceph
14 3 (0.050%) IAG
14 3 (0.050%) SRDF
15 2 (0.033%) zsh
Systems Management
1 294 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 105 (1.75%) Ansible
3 53 (0.89%) Grafana
4 45 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
5 44 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 33 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (0.32%) Argo
8 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 15 (0.25%) vCenter Server
10 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.17%) Istio
12 9 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.12%) SCCM
13 7 (0.12%) WMI
14 6 (0.10%) CASB
14 6 (0.10%) HAProxy
14 6 (0.10%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.084%) EMC VPLEX
15 5 (0.084%) MOM
15 5 (0.084%) Puppet
Vendors
1 792 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 345 (5.77%) SAP
3 305 (5.10%) Oracle
4 298 (4.98%) ServiceNow
5 279 (4.66%) Databricks
6 193 (3.23%) Salesforce
7 178 (2.98%) Google
8 146 (2.44%) Cisco
9 144 (2.41%) VMware
10 70 (1.17%) MuleSoft
11 62 (1.04%) CyberArk
11 62 (1.04%) IBM
12 53 (0.89%) Palo Alto
12 53 (0.89%) Workday
13 45 (0.75%) Foundry
14 42 (0.70%) Adobe
14 42 (0.70%) Ariba
15 40 (0.67%) Red Hat
16 38 (0.64%) Informatica
17 37 (0.62%) Sparx