Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £617, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 June 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,687 2,910 4,422
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.08% 9.51% 10.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.99% 10.33% 11.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,739 1,872 2,844
10th Percentile £469 £468 £490
25th Percentile £520 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £617 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.28% -3.85% -0.38%
75th Percentile £725 £721 £738
90th Percentile £792 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 21 96
10th Percentile £46.00 £38.96 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £77.25 £85.50 £85.99
90th Percentile £96.36 £100.00 £90.00
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 47,423 28,164 40,143
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.05% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,738 18,025 25,769
10th Percentile £325 £288 £283
25th Percentile £415 £401 £410
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 3,196 1,261 2,867
10th Percentile £15.61 £13.78 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.23 £17.33 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.26% -28.00% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 4,819 £618 -1.20% 960
UK excluding London +9 2,502 £620 +3.33% 615
London +6 2,361 £625 -3.85% 486
Work from Home +4 1,548 £600 -0.25% 454
North of England +7 716 £600 - 152
South East +3 707 £625 +4.08% 180
Midlands +2 433 £613 +3.90% 91
North West +4 383 £610 +1.67% 91
West Midlands +2 310 £625 +4.17% 75
South West +2 279 £640 +5.57% 84
Yorkshire +9 271 £575 -4.17% 37
East of England +23 198 £600 - 43
Scotland +7 163 £650 +4.00% 42
East Midlands +8 117 £575 +15.00% 15
North East +9 69 £575 -8.00% 27
Wales +4 34 £620 +29.17% 22
Northern Ireland +5 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 30 June 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 1,696 (29.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,411 (24.81%) Azure
3 1,274 (22.40%) SC Cleared
4 1,237 (21.75%) AWS
5 807 (14.19%) Roadmaps
6 791 (13.91%) Migration
7 746 (13.12%) Microsoft
8 711 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
9 663 (11.66%) Agile
10 634 (11.15%) DevOps
11 615 (10.81%) AI
12 602 (10.59%) CI/CD
13 592 (10.41%) Enterprise Architecture
14 548 (9.64%) Data Modelling
15 544 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 538 (9.46%) Technical Leadership
17 522 (9.18%) Integration Patterns
18 496 (8.72%) Data Architecture
19 470 (8.26%) Architectural Patterns
20 463 (8.14%) Analytics
21 448 (7.88%) TOGAF
22 432 (7.60%) Microservices
23 428 (7.53%) GCP
24 379 (6.66%) Problem-Solving
25 360 (6.33%) Architectural Design
26 359 (6.31%) Security Architecture
27 358 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
28 344 (6.05%) Event-Driven
29 341 (6.00%) Cybersecurity
30 330 (5.80%) 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
1 115 (2.02%) SharePoint
2 85 (1.49%) Confluence
3 51 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 47 (0.83%) SAS
5 33 (0.58%) Apache
6 32 (0.56%) Apache Spark
7 26 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
8 20 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
9 18 (0.32%) Appian
9 18 (0.32%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.18%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.16%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 21 (0.37%) MS Visio
2 20 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.21%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 10 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.053%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.053%) Windchill
8 1 (0.018%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.018%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.018%) Notion
8 1 (0.018%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 151 (2.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.67%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.32%) SAP ERP
6 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Retail
9 10 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
10 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
11 7 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.12%) SAP MDG
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.11%) Maximo
12 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 6 (0.11%) SAP GRC
13 5 (0.088%) SAP Convergent Charging
13 5 (0.088%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 1,411 (24.81%) Azure
2 1,237 (21.75%) AWS
3 428 (7.53%) GCP
4 273 (4.80%) Power Platform
5 209 (3.68%) Serverless
6 200 (3.52%) SaaS
7 195 (3.43%) Entra ID
8 139 (2.44%) GitHub
9 135 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
10 124 (2.18%) PaaS
11 113 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 112 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
13 102 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 97 (1.71%) Snowflake
15 94 (1.65%) IaaS
16 91 (1.60%) Amazon S3
17 70 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
17 70 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 68 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
19 66 (1.16%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 230 (4.04%) Firewall
2 196 (3.45%) Network Security
3 126 (2.22%) DNS
3 126 (2.22%) WAN
4 124 (2.18%) VPN
5 86 (1.51%) LAN
6 70 (1.23%) SD-WAN
7 48 (0.84%) DHCP
7 48 (0.84%) TCP/IP
8 45 (0.79%) BGP
9 40 (0.70%) VLAN
10 36 (0.63%) MPLS
11 34 (0.60%) OSPF
12 33 (0.58%) Wireless
13 29 (0.51%) SAN
14 27 (0.47%) NAS
15 26 (0.46%) IPsec
16 25 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.42%) BIG-IP
18 22 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (3.36%) Power BI
2 164 (2.88%) Metadata
3 161 (2.83%) Data Lake
4 155 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.32%) NoSQL
6 67 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (1.13%) SQL Server
8 46 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 46 (0.81%) Big Data
9 40 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
10 37 (0.65%) BigQuery
11 36 (0.63%) Oracle Database
12 29 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
12 29 (0.51%) Delta Lake
12 29 (0.51%) Tableau
13 27 (0.47%) Relational Database
14 24 (0.42%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
16 21 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
16 21 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 110 (1.93%) JIRA
2 88 (1.55%) Jenkins
3 68 (1.20%) Git
4 39 (0.69%) GitLab
5 26 (0.46%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 10 (0.18%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.14%) MLflow
9 8 (0.14%) Postman
10 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.11%) Hudson
11 6 (0.11%) PowerDesigner
11 6 (0.11%) Selenium
11 6 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.088%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.088%) JMeter
12 5 (0.088%) Maven
12 5 (0.088%) Oracle Forms
13 4 (0.070%) ER Studio
General
1 1,063 (18.69%) Social Skills
2 888 (15.61%) Finance
3 648 (11.39%) Public Sector
4 327 (5.75%) Banking
5 299 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
6 214 (3.76%) Retail
7 156 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
8 137 (2.41%) Legal
9 132 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
10 103 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 100 (1.76%) Telecoms
12 53 (0.93%) Law
13 52 (0.91%) Military
14 51 (0.90%) Billing
14 51 (0.90%) Marketing
15 50 (0.88%) Financial Institution
16 42 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
17 40 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 39 (0.69%) Aerospace
19 34 (0.60%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (4.75%) REST
2 208 (3.66%) Middleware
3 135 (2.37%) .NET
4 124 (2.18%) SOAP
5 118 (2.07%) Kafka
6 100 (1.76%) OAuth
7 95 (1.67%) OpenID
8 76 (1.34%) SAML
9 67 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
10 62 (1.09%) LDAP
11 60 (1.06%) OAuth2
12 54 (0.95%) React
13 52 (0.91%) RESTful
14 49 (0.86%) SailPoint
15 46 (0.81%) JSON
16 38 (0.67%) Web Services
17 37 (0.65%) AngularJS
18 36 (0.63%) Node.js
19 33 (0.58%) .NET Framework
19 33 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 484 (8.51%) Cloud Native
2 203 (3.57%) Data Centre
3 166 (2.92%) Management Information System
4 154 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 148 (2.60%) Product Ownership
6 136 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
8 127 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
9 107 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
10 92 (1.62%) Public Cloud
11 91 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
12 87 (1.53%) Operational Technology
13 84 (1.48%) CMDB
14 82 (1.44%) AI Agents
15 72 (1.27%) Security Posture
16 53 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
17 49 (0.86%) Data Structures
18 47 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
19 45 (0.79%) NHS
19 45 (0.79%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 156 (2.74%) Windows
2 96 (1.69%) Linux
3 45 (0.79%) Windows Server
4 36 (0.63%) Android
5 35 (0.62%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.44%) Unix
7 16 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.18%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.088%) AIX
12 5 (0.088%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (0.088%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.088%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.088%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.088%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.070%) Solaris
14 2 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 807 (14.19%) Roadmaps
2 791 (13.91%) Migration
3 711 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 663 (11.66%) Agile
5 634 (11.15%) DevOps
6 615 (10.81%) AI
7 602 (10.59%) CI/CD
8 592 (10.41%) Enterprise Architecture
9 548 (9.64%) Data Modelling
10 544 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 538 (9.46%) Technical Leadership
12 522 (9.18%) Integration Patterns
13 496 (8.72%) Data Architecture
14 470 (8.26%) Architectural Patterns
15 463 (8.14%) Analytics
16 448 (7.88%) TOGAF
17 432 (7.60%) Microservices
18 379 (6.66%) Problem-Solving
19 360 (6.33%) Architectural Design
20 359 (6.31%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 318 (5.59%) Python
2 280 (4.92%) SQL
3 252 (4.43%) Java
4 126 (2.22%) PowerShell
5 107 (1.88%) JavaScript
6 66 (1.16%) C#
7 60 (1.06%) Bicep
8 46 (0.81%) Bash
9 43 (0.76%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
11 22 (0.39%) Ruby
12 13 (0.23%) Scala
13 12 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.18%) ABAP
15 9 (0.16%) C++
15 9 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 9 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.14%) R
Qualifications
1 1,696 (29.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,274 (22.40%) SC Cleared
3 307 (5.40%) DV Cleared
4 200 (3.52%) Degree
5 124 (2.18%) CISSP
6 121 (2.13%) Azure Certification
7 120 (2.11%) AWS Certification
8 112 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 112 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 79 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
11 64 (1.13%) CISM
12 56 (0.98%) CCNP
13 49 (0.86%) Master's Degree
14 45 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 43 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
16 41 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.53%) CCSP
18 23 (0.40%) CCIE
19 22 (0.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (3.53%) NIST
2 183 (3.22%) GDPR
3 172 (3.02%) Data Quality
4 154 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 127 (2.23%) NCSC
6 70 (1.23%) QA
7 46 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 40 (0.70%) GRC
9 37 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 27 (0.47%) ISO 20022
10 27 (0.47%) NIST 800
11 24 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.42%) SEPA
12 19 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
12 19 (0.33%) HL7
12 19 (0.33%) IFRS
13 18 (0.32%) COBIT
14 14 (0.25%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 11 (0.19%) PSD2
System Software
1 171 (3.01%) Active Directory
2 110 (1.93%) Docker
3 93 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.13%) VMware NSX
5 27 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.47%) vSphere
6 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.19%) Varnish
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
9 9 (0.16%) Squid
9 9 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.14%) NFS
11 7 (0.12%) Postfix
11 7 (0.12%) vCloud
12 4 (0.070%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.070%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 4 (0.070%) IAG
12 4 (0.070%) RACF
12 4 (0.070%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 286 (5.03%) Terraform
2 267 (4.69%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.97%) Ansible
4 52 (0.91%) Grafana
4 52 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
5 44 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 42 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 30 (0.53%) FortiGate
8 24 (0.42%) vCenter Server
9 21 (0.37%) Argo
10 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (0.25%) SCCM
12 12 (0.21%) Istio
12 12 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.14%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.12%) Consul
14 7 (0.12%) HAProxy
14 7 (0.12%) Puppet
15 6 (0.11%) CASB
15 6 (0.11%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 746 (13.12%) Microsoft
2 330 (5.80%) SAP
3 302 (5.31%) ServiceNow
4 260 (4.57%) Oracle
5 237 (4.17%) Databricks
6 187 (3.29%) Salesforce
7 173 (3.04%) VMware
8 142 (2.50%) Cisco
9 138 (2.43%) Google
10 69 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 67 (1.18%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.13%) Splunk
13 60 (1.06%) Palo Alto
14 49 (0.86%) IBM
15 48 (0.84%) Red Hat
16 44 (0.77%) OpenAI
16 44 (0.77%) Workday
17 41 (0.72%) Ariba
18 40 (0.70%) Foundry
18 40 (0.70%) Sparx