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 10 September 2026.

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

6 months to
10 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 6,115 2,967 3,835
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.22% 8.99% 10.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.15% 9.88% 10.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,059 1,905 2,388
10th Percentile £476 £463 £485
25th Percentile £525 £525 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -1.96% -1.92%
75th Percentile £700 £707 £738
90th Percentile £788 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £622 £600 £630
% change year-on-year +3.67% -4.76% -1.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 18 71
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £66.83 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.82% +3.57% -0.12%
75th Percentile £78.75 £87.00 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.25 £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 50,324 30,039 35,625
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 91.06% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,923 18,938 22,148
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.32%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £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 3,732 1,556 1,742
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.67 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.06 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.90 £70.16 £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 10 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 10 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 10 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 5,103 £620 -0.80% 3,225
London +7 2,601 £625 -2.72% 1,999
UK excluding London +8 2,571 £622 +3.67% 1,494
Work from Home +5 1,639 £600 - 1,474
South East +2 736 £625 +4.17% 418
North of England +5 709 £600 - 345
Midlands +1 423 £626 +8.87% 168
North West +8 416 £600 +4.35% 208
South West +4 338 £640 -0.51% 189
West Midlands +1 315 £650 +8.42% 113
Yorkshire +11 231 £575 -4.17% 107
Scotland +15 176 £625 +0.60% 175
East of England +10 157 £616 +11.29% 116
East Midlands +1 103 £600 +17.65% 55
North East -6 63 £600 -15.79% 31
Wales +4 42 £633 +1.20% 12
Channel Islands -3 6 £663 -10.77% 3
Northern Ireland +4 4 £488 -26.42% 79

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 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 1,898 (31.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,575 (25.76%) Azure
3 1,416 (23.16%) SC Cleared
4 1,320 (21.59%) AWS
5 1,066 (17.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 934 (15.27%) Roadmaps
7 867 (14.18%) Migration
8 834 (13.64%) Microsoft
9 778 (12.72%) Enterprise Architecture
10 772 (12.62%) AI
11 744 (12.17%) Technical Leadership
12 680 (11.12%) Agile
13 643 (10.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 641 (10.48%) Data Modelling
15 634 (10.37%) DevOps
16 610 (9.98%) CI/CD
17 597 (9.76%) Data Architecture
18 586 (9.58%) Integration Patterns
19 521 (8.52%) Analytics
20 500 (8.18%) Security Architecture
21 495 (8.09%) GCP
22 493 (8.06%) TOGAF
23 479 (7.83%) Architectural Patterns
24 417 (6.82%) Event-Driven
25 406 (6.64%) Microservices
26 398 (6.51%) Data Governance
27 380 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
28 376 (6.15%) Decision-Making
29 375 (6.13%) DV Cleared
30 369 (6.03%) Architecture Governance

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 (1.29%) SAS
2 74 (1.21%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.03%) Confluence
4 46 (0.75%) Apache
5 41 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
9 22 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.11%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.11%) Documentum
12 6 (0.098%) Appian
13 5 (0.082%) Camunda
13 5 (0.082%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.065%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.065%) NetWeaver
14 4 (0.065%) SAP EP
15 3 (0.049%) Drupal
Applications
1 18 (0.29%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.13%) Revit
6 7 (0.11%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.033%) Windchill
8 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.016%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.016%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.016%) Notion
8 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 165 (2.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 35 (0.57%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 19 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 17 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
7 15 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.20%) NetSuite
9 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.20%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.20%) SAP MDG
10 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
12 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.098%) Maximo
13 6 (0.098%) SAP CO
13 6 (0.098%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,575 (25.76%) Azure
2 1,320 (21.59%) AWS
3 495 (8.09%) GCP
4 306 (5.00%) Power Platform
5 236 (3.86%) SaaS
6 221 (3.61%) Entra ID
7 207 (3.39%) Serverless
8 151 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
9 143 (2.34%) GitHub
10 132 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
11 123 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
12 116 (1.90%) Snowflake
13 105 (1.72%) PaaS
14 95 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
15 85 (1.39%) Amazon S3
16 73 (1.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 70 (1.14%) IaaS
18 67 (1.10%) OCI
19 64 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
20 63 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 176 (2.88%) Firewall
2 162 (2.65%) Network Security
3 109 (1.78%) WAN
4 88 (1.44%) VPN
5 78 (1.28%) DNS
6 75 (1.23%) LAN
7 54 (0.88%) SD-WAN
8 46 (0.75%) BGP
9 40 (0.65%) DHCP
10 38 (0.62%) MPLS
11 37 (0.61%) TCP/IP
12 30 (0.49%) VLAN
13 28 (0.46%) SAN
14 26 (0.43%) VXLAN
15 22 (0.36%) NAS
15 22 (0.36%) OSPF
15 22 (0.36%) Wireless
16 20 (0.33%) NX-OS
16 20 (0.33%) Radio Access Network
17 19 (0.31%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (3.52%) Metadata
2 204 (3.34%) Data Lake
3 198 (3.24%) Power BI
4 181 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 70 (1.14%) NoSQL
6 51 (0.83%) SQL Server
7 48 (0.78%) BigQuery
7 48 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
8 47 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
9 40 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
9 40 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
10 39 (0.64%) Delta Lake
10 39 (0.64%) Oracle Database
11 36 (0.59%) Big Data
12 30 (0.49%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
13 25 (0.41%) Relational Database
14 24 (0.39%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.36%) GIS
15 22 (0.36%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 84 (1.37%) JIRA
2 75 (1.23%) Git
3 59 (0.96%) Jenkins
4 38 (0.62%) GitLab
5 18 (0.29%) ERwin
6 14 (0.23%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
7 9 (0.15%) MSI
7 9 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) RStudio
9 7 (0.11%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.11%) Postman
9 7 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.098%) Hudson
10 6 (0.098%) Storybook
11 5 (0.082%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.082%) Maven
11 5 (0.082%) MLflow
11 5 (0.082%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.065%) PowerDesigner
General
1 1,236 (20.21%) Social Skills
2 883 (14.44%) Finance
3 698 (11.41%) Public Sector
4 320 (5.23%) Banking
5 303 (4.96%) Analytical Skills
6 266 (4.35%) Retail
7 164 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
8 145 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
9 144 (2.35%) Manufacturing
10 133 (2.17%) Telecoms
11 117 (1.91%) Legal
12 73 (1.19%) Marketing
13 66 (1.08%) Billing
14 58 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 56 (0.92%) Military
16 48 (0.78%) Aerospace
17 45 (0.74%) Law
18 39 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
19 37 (0.61%) Police
20 36 (0.59%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (4.96%) REST
2 254 (4.15%) Terraform
3 177 (2.89%) Middleware
4 150 (2.45%) Kafka
5 139 (2.27%) SOAP
6 126 (2.06%) OAuth
7 124 (2.03%) .NET
8 73 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
9 70 (1.14%) JSON
10 67 (1.10%) OpenID
11 66 (1.08%) SAML
12 60 (0.98%) OAuth2
13 51 (0.83%) LDAP
14 48 (0.78%) PySpark
15 47 (0.77%) RESTful
16 46 (0.75%) XML
17 39 (0.64%) React
17 39 (0.64%) SailPoint
18 38 (0.62%) .NET Framework
19 35 (0.57%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 532 (8.70%) Cloud Native
2 197 (3.22%) Data Centre
3 179 (2.93%) Management Information System
4 168 (2.75%) Onboarding
5 146 (2.39%) Product Ownership
6 144 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
7 142 (2.32%) Hybrid Cloud
8 140 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.27%) AI Agents
10 133 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
11 100 (1.64%) CMDB
12 92 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 92 (1.50%) Operational Technology
13 86 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 79 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
15 66 (1.08%) Security Posture
16 58 (0.95%) Private Cloud
17 57 (0.93%) Data Structures
18 48 (0.78%) Taxonomies
19 46 (0.75%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 127 (2.08%) Windows
2 108 (1.77%) Linux
3 53 (0.87%) Windows Server
4 26 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.39%) Unix
6 13 (0.21%) Android
6 13 (0.21%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
8 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.098%) zOS
10 5 (0.082%) Solaris
10 5 (0.082%) VMS
11 4 (0.065%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.065%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.049%) CentOS
12 3 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.049%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.033%) HPUX
13 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,066 (17.43%) Stakeholder Management
2 934 (15.27%) Roadmaps
3 867 (14.18%) Migration
4 778 (12.72%) Enterprise Architecture
5 772 (12.62%) AI
6 744 (12.17%) Technical Leadership
7 680 (11.12%) Agile
8 643 (10.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 641 (10.48%) Data Modelling
10 634 (10.37%) DevOps
11 610 (9.98%) CI/CD
12 597 (9.76%) Data Architecture
13 586 (9.58%) Integration Patterns
14 521 (8.52%) Analytics
15 500 (8.18%) Security Architecture
16 493 (8.06%) TOGAF
17 479 (7.83%) Architectural Patterns
18 417 (6.82%) Event-Driven
19 406 (6.64%) Microservices
20 398 (6.51%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 274 (4.48%) Python
2 270 (4.42%) SQL
3 265 (4.33%) Java
4 129 (2.11%) JavaScript
5 109 (1.78%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.85%) C#
6 52 (0.85%) TypeScript
7 50 (0.82%) Bash
8 44 (0.72%) Bicep
9 34 (0.56%) Apex Code
10 18 (0.29%) Ruby
11 17 (0.28%) ABAP
12 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
13 12 (0.20%) C++
14 11 (0.18%) Groovy
14 11 (0.18%) R
15 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.16%) Scala
16 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,898 (31.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,416 (23.16%) SC Cleared
3 375 (6.13%) DV Cleared
4 164 (2.68%) Degree
5 159 (2.60%) CISSP
6 150 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (1.90%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.86%) AWS Certification
9 106 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 87 (1.42%) TOGAF Certification
11 77 (1.26%) CISM
12 64 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 47 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
15 43 (0.70%) CCNP
16 40 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 35 (0.57%) CCSP
18 31 (0.51%) Master's Degree
19 23 (0.38%) CISA
20 22 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (4.15%) Data Quality
2 239 (3.91%) NIST
3 192 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 169 (2.76%) GDPR
5 124 (2.03%) NCSC
6 82 (1.34%) GRC
7 60 (0.98%) QA
8 40 (0.65%) Accessibility
8 40 (0.65%) PCI DSS
9 32 (0.52%) NIST 800
9 32 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 25 (0.41%) SLA
11 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
12 21 (0.34%) IFRS
12 21 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 21 (0.34%) SEPA
13 19 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 18 (0.29%) JSP 440
15 16 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
16 15 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 186 (3.04%) Active Directory
2 111 (1.82%) Docker
3 82 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.74%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.39%) vSphere
7 22 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 6 (0.098%) NFS
11 4 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 4 (0.065%) KVM
11 4 (0.065%) Postfix
11 4 (0.065%) Varnish
11 4 (0.065%) vCloud
12 3 (0.049%) Ceph
12 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.049%) SRDF
13 2 (0.033%) IAG
13 2 (0.033%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 295 (4.82%) Kubernetes
2 104 (1.70%) Ansible
3 50 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
4 45 (0.74%) Grafana
5 37 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 28 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (0.31%) Argo
8 16 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
10 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.16%) WMI
12 9 (0.15%) Istio
13 8 (0.13%) CASB
13 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 7 (0.11%) SCCM
15 6 (0.098%) NetBackup
16 5 (0.082%) EMC VPLEX
17 4 (0.065%) HAProxy
17 4 (0.065%) QRadar
17 4 (0.065%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 834 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 348 (5.69%) SAP
3 310 (5.07%) ServiceNow
4 307 (5.02%) Oracle
5 288 (4.71%) Databricks
6 202 (3.30%) Salesforce
7 188 (3.07%) Google
8 149 (2.44%) Cisco
9 142 (2.32%) VMware
10 78 (1.28%) CyberArk
11 77 (1.26%) MuleSoft
12 61 (1.00%) IBM
13 54 (0.88%) Palo Alto
14 53 (0.87%) Workday
15 52 (0.85%) Foundry
16 42 (0.69%) Ariba
16 42 (0.69%) Informatica
17 41 (0.67%) Adobe
18 37 (0.61%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.61%) Sparx