Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £614, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 September 2026.

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

6 months to
2 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 6,005 2,939 3,886
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.21% 9.04% 10.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.12% 9.90% 10.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,978 1,889 2,476
10th Percentile £475 £475 £485
25th Percentile £525 £531 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £614 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% -1.96% -1.92%
75th Percentile £700 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £788 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £637
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.73% -1.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 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 £78.75 £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 49,539 29,677 35,948
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.24% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,564 18,735 22,669
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 3,586 1,552 1,836
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £53.89 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.16 £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 2 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 2 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 2 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 5,019 £620 -0.80% 3,219
London +7 2,578 £625 -3.85% 1,982
UK excluding London +8 2,516 £620 +3.33% 1,515
Work from Home +4 1,609 £600 - 1,413
South East -1 723 £625 +4.17% 398
North of England +6 700 £600 - 368
Midlands +1 415 £625 +8.70% 176
North West +6 412 £600 +0.84% 233
South West +2 322 £645 +0.39% 205
West Midlands +3 307 £644 +7.51% 112
Yorkshire +10 227 £581 -5.10% 105
Scotland +25 172 £625 - 163
East of England +17 153 £611 +10.27% 118
East Midlands +4 103 £600 +16.50% 64
North East -8 63 £575 -19.30% 30
Wales +5 43 £633 +1.20% 17
Channel Islands -3 5 £625 -15.82% 3
Northern Ireland +4 4 £488 -30.36% 81

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 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 1,857 (30.92%) Security Cleared
2 1,543 (25.70%) Azure
3 1,398 (23.28%) SC Cleared
4 1,304 (21.72%) AWS
5 1,006 (16.75%) Stakeholder Management
6 917 (15.27%) Roadmaps
7 860 (14.32%) Migration
8 813 (13.54%) Microsoft
9 765 (12.74%) Enterprise Architecture
10 762 (12.69%) AI
11 707 (11.77%) Technical Leadership
12 671 (11.17%) Agile
13 631 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 627 (10.44%) DevOps
15 626 (10.42%) Data Modelling
16 609 (10.14%) CI/CD
17 587 (9.78%) Data Architecture
18 576 (9.59%) Integration Patterns
19 509 (8.48%) Analytics
20 487 (8.11%) GCP
21 483 (8.04%) Architectural Patterns
22 482 (8.03%) TOGAF
23 475 (7.91%) Security Architecture
24 406 (6.76%) Event-Driven
25 399 (6.64%) Data Governance
26 393 (6.54%) Microservices
27 373 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
28 362 (6.03%) Decision-Making
29 360 (6.00%) Infrastructure as Code
30 349 (5.81%) 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 80 (1.33%) SharePoint
2 79 (1.32%) SAS
3 70 (1.17%) Confluence
4 43 (0.72%) Apache
5 41 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 33 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 30 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
8 24 (0.40%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 5 (0.083%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.067%) NetWeaver
14 4 (0.067%) SAP EP
15 3 (0.050%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (0.33%) 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 1,543 (25.70%) Azure
2 1,304 (21.72%) AWS
3 487 (8.11%) GCP
4 301 (5.01%) Power Platform
5 227 (3.78%) SaaS
6 221 (3.68%) Entra ID
7 206 (3.43%) Serverless
8 146 (2.43%) GitHub
9 145 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
10 126 (2.10%) Microsoft 365
11 124 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
12 112 (1.87%) Snowflake
13 100 (1.67%) PaaS
14 97 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
15 87 (1.45%) Amazon S3
16 72 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 68 (1.13%) IaaS
18 66 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
19 65 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
20 63 (1.05%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 179 (2.98%) Firewall
2 161 (2.68%) Network Security
3 109 (1.82%) WAN
4 93 (1.55%) VPN
5 79 (1.32%) DNS
6 75 (1.25%) LAN
7 52 (0.87%) SD-WAN
8 48 (0.80%) BGP
9 39 (0.65%) DHCP
10 37 (0.62%) MPLS
10 37 (0.62%) 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
16 21 (0.35%) Wireless
17 20 (0.33%) NX-OS
17 20 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
18 19 (0.32%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 208 (3.46%) Metadata
2 201 (3.35%) Data Lake
3 200 (3.33%) Power BI
4 179 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
5 76 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 50 (0.83%) SQL Server
7 47 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
8 46 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
8 46 (0.77%) BigQuery
9 43 (0.72%) Delta Lake
10 42 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
11 41 (0.68%) Big Data
12 40 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 38 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
14 29 (0.48%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
14 29 (0.48%) Semantic Layer
15 25 (0.42%) Relational Database
16 23 (0.38%) GIS
16 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
16 23 (0.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 86 (1.43%) JIRA
2 78 (1.30%) Git
3 58 (0.97%) Jenkins
4 38 (0.63%) 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%) MLflow
10 7 (0.12%) Postman
10 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
11 6 (0.100%) Hudson
11 6 (0.100%) Storybook
12 5 (0.083%) ER Studio
12 5 (0.083%) Maven
12 5 (0.083%) Sonatype Nexus
13 4 (0.067%) PowerDesigner
General
1 1,199 (19.97%) Social Skills
2 871 (14.50%) Finance
3 683 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 312 (5.20%) Banking
5 304 (5.06%) Analytical Skills
6 258 (4.30%) Retail
7 166 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
8 148 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.31%) Manufacturing
10 137 (2.28%) Telecoms
11 113 (1.88%) Legal
12 69 (1.15%) Marketing
13 63 (1.05%) Billing
14 56 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 48 (0.80%) Military
16 44 (0.73%) Aerospace
17 43 (0.72%) Law
18 37 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
19 36 (0.60%) Police
20 35 (0.58%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (4.93%) REST
2 261 (4.35%) Terraform
3 182 (3.03%) Middleware
4 144 (2.40%) Kafka
5 132 (2.20%) SOAP
6 125 (2.08%) .NET
7 124 (2.06%) OAuth
8 70 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
9 67 (1.12%) JSON
10 66 (1.10%) OpenID
10 66 (1.10%) SAML
11 59 (0.98%) OAuth2
12 47 (0.78%) PySpark
12 47 (0.78%) RESTful
13 45 (0.75%) LDAP
14 43 (0.72%) XML
15 39 (0.65%) SailPoint
16 38 (0.63%) React
17 37 (0.62%) .NET Framework
18 36 (0.60%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 527 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.35%) Data Centre
3 179 (2.98%) Management Information System
4 165 (2.75%) Onboarding
5 145 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
6 144 (2.40%) Product Ownership
7 143 (2.38%) Hybrid Cloud
8 138 (2.30%) AI Agents
8 138 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
10 98 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
11 96 (1.60%) CMDB
12 88 (1.47%) Operational Technology
13 85 (1.42%) Public Cloud
14 79 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
15 66 (1.10%) Security Posture
16 54 (0.90%) Data Structures
17 53 (0.88%) Private Cloud
18 48 (0.80%) IoT
19 46 (0.77%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 125 (2.08%) Windows
2 110 (1.83%) Linux
3 50 (0.83%) Windows Server
4 25 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.40%) Unix
6 15 (0.25%) Android
6 15 (0.25%) 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 (0.067%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.067%) 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%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,006 (16.75%) Stakeholder Management
2 917 (15.27%) Roadmaps
3 860 (14.32%) Migration
4 765 (12.74%) Enterprise Architecture
5 762 (12.69%) AI
6 707 (11.77%) Technical Leadership
7 671 (11.17%) Agile
8 631 (10.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 627 (10.44%) DevOps
10 626 (10.42%) Data Modelling
11 609 (10.14%) CI/CD
12 587 (9.78%) Data Architecture
13 576 (9.59%) Integration Patterns
14 509 (8.48%) Analytics
15 483 (8.04%) Architectural Patterns
16 482 (8.03%) TOGAF
17 475 (7.91%) Security Architecture
18 406 (6.76%) Event-Driven
19 399 (6.64%) Data Governance
20 393 (6.54%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 281 (4.68%) Python
2 273 (4.55%) SQL
3 269 (4.48%) Java
4 128 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 109 (1.82%) PowerShell
6 53 (0.88%) C#
7 50 (0.83%) Bash
8 49 (0.82%) TypeScript
9 48 (0.80%) Bicep
10 32 (0.53%) 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%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.18%) R
15 10 (0.17%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,857 (30.92%) Security Cleared
2 1,398 (23.28%) SC Cleared
3 349 (5.81%) DV Cleared
4 166 (2.76%) Degree
5 153 (2.55%) CISSP
6 139 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 121 (2.01%) AWS Certification
8 120 (2.00%) Azure Certification
9 103 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
10 83 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
11 76 (1.27%) CISM
12 71 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 47 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
14 42 (0.70%) CCNP
15 40 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 34 (0.57%) CCSP
17 31 (0.52%) Master's Degree
18 23 (0.38%) CISA
19 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (4.06%) Data Quality
2 234 (3.90%) NIST
3 186 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 177 (2.95%) GDPR
5 116 (1.93%) NCSC
6 78 (1.30%) GRC
7 57 (0.95%) QA
8 43 (0.72%) Accessibility
9 42 (0.70%) 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
2 115 (1.92%) Docker
3 80 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.72%) 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 6 (0.100%) Varnish
12 5 (0.083%) Postfix
13 4 (0.067%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.067%) KVM
13 4 (0.067%) vCloud
14 3 (0.050%) Ceph
14 3 (0.050%) Sendmail
14 3 (0.050%) SRDF
15 2 (0.033%) Microsoft App-V
15 2 (0.033%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 290 (4.83%) 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 10 (0.17%) Istio
12 9 (0.15%) WMI
13 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 7 (0.12%) CASB
14 7 (0.12%) SCCM
15 6 (0.100%) NetBackup
16 5 (0.083%) EMC VPLEX
16 5 (0.083%) HAProxy
16 5 (0.083%) MOM
17 4 (0.067%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 813 (13.54%) Microsoft
2 348 (5.80%) SAP
3 304 (5.06%) Oracle
4 300 (5.00%) ServiceNow
5 287 (4.78%) Databricks
6 197 (3.28%) Salesforce
7 187 (3.11%) Google
8 146 (2.43%) Cisco
9 137 (2.28%) VMware
10 73 (1.22%) MuleSoft
11 71 (1.18%) CyberArk
12 62 (1.03%) IBM
13 53 (0.88%) Palo Alto
13 53 (0.88%) Workday
14 49 (0.82%) Foundry
15 43 (0.72%) Adobe
16 42 (0.70%) Ariba
17 40 (0.67%) Informatica
17 40 (0.67%) Red Hat
18 38 (0.63%) OpenAI