Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £616, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 July 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,876 3,176 4,379
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.15% 9.72% 10.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.06% 10.58% 11.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,846 2,051 2,837
10th Percentile £473 £470 £488
25th Percentile £525 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £616 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £715 £719 £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 175 24 94
10th Percentile £46.00 £43.02 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £68.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% -1.79% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.57 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -

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 48,729 30,023 39,779
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.87% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,502 19,148 25,568
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,285 1,392 2,719
10th Percentile £15.90 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.69 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -33.75% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.25 £63.20
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +6.67%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 4,939 £617 -1.28% 1,376
UK excluding London +9 2,555 £620 +3.33% 751
London +5 2,441 £620 -4.62% 757
Work from Home +5 1,622 £600 -0.41% 614
North of England +7 748 £600 - 196
South East +1 715 £628 +4.67% 198
Midlands +1 433 £620 +7.83% 91
North West +4 402 £608 +1.33% 111
West Midlands -2 310 £625 +4.17% 72
South West -3 282 £625 - 142
Yorkshire +10 280 £593 -1.21% 48
East of England +13 190 £600 - 52
Scotland +6 175 £650 +4.00% 52
East Midlands +7 115 £588 +17.50% 19
North East +2 74 £575 -13.21% 37
Wales +6 38 £600 +25.00% 17
Northern Ireland +5 7 £475 -32.14% 14
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 13 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 1,757 (29.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,452 (24.71%) Azure
3 1,318 (22.43%) SC Cleared
4 1,288 (21.92%) AWS
5 855 (14.55%) Roadmaps
6 814 (13.85%) Migration
7 760 (12.93%) Microsoft
8 754 (12.83%) Stakeholder Management
9 692 (11.78%) Agile
10 670 (11.40%) AI
11 650 (11.06%) DevOps
12 637 (10.84%) Enterprise Architecture
13 624 (10.62%) CI/CD
14 580 (9.87%) Data Modelling
15 567 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 566 (9.63%) Technical Leadership
17 537 (9.14%) Integration Patterns
18 529 (9.00%) Data Architecture
19 492 (8.37%) TOGAF
20 490 (8.34%) Analytics
21 489 (8.32%) Architectural Patterns
22 452 (7.69%) Microservices
23 437 (7.44%) GCP
24 386 (6.57%) Security Architecture
25 383 (6.52%) Problem-Solving
26 369 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
27 367 (6.25%) Architectural Design
28 363 (6.18%) Cybersecurity
28 363 (6.18%) Event-Driven
29 340 (5.79%) 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
1 106 (1.80%) SharePoint
2 81 (1.38%) Confluence
3 58 (0.99%) SAS
4 50 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 36 (0.61%) Apache
6 35 (0.60%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 21 (0.36%) Appian
9 21 (0.36%) CMS
10 14 (0.24%) nginx
11 13 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.15%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.15%) Camunda
15 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 7 (0.12%) Documentum
16 7 (0.12%) JBoss
16 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 22 (0.37%) MS Visio
2 17 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
4 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
5 10 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.051%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.051%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 152 (2.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.60%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 21 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.26%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle Retail
13 8 (0.14%) Maximo
13 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
13 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
13 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
14 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,452 (24.71%) Azure
2 1,288 (21.92%) AWS
3 437 (7.44%) GCP
4 286 (4.87%) Power Platform
5 208 (3.54%) Serverless
6 207 (3.52%) Entra ID
7 206 (3.51%) SaaS
8 142 (2.42%) GitHub
9 132 (2.25%) Microsoft 365
10 127 (2.16%) PaaS
11 120 (2.04%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
13 102 (1.74%) Snowflake
14 97 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (1.63%) IaaS
16 84 (1.43%) Amazon S3
17 72 (1.23%) OpenShift
18 69 (1.17%) Amazon EKS
19 66 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
19 66 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 231 (3.93%) Firewall
2 196 (3.34%) Network Security
3 121 (2.06%) DNS
3 121 (2.06%) VPN
4 118 (2.01%) WAN
5 83 (1.41%) LAN
6 63 (1.07%) SD-WAN
7 51 (0.87%) TCP/IP
8 50 (0.85%) BGP
9 48 (0.82%) DHCP
10 40 (0.68%) VLAN
11 39 (0.66%) MPLS
12 33 (0.56%) OSPF
12 33 (0.56%) Wireless
13 29 (0.49%) IPsec
13 29 (0.49%) SAN
14 27 (0.46%) NAS
15 25 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
16 23 (0.39%) BIG-IP
16 23 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (3.32%) Power BI
2 172 (2.93%) Data Lake
2 172 (2.93%) Metadata
3 164 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
4 75 (1.28%) NoSQL
5 64 (1.09%) SQL Server
6 63 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (0.85%) Big Data
8 47 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
9 41 (0.70%) Oracle Database
10 39 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
11 38 (0.65%) BigQuery
12 28 (0.48%) Delta Lake
13 27 (0.46%) Relational Database
14 26 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
15 24 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
15 24 (0.41%) Tableau
16 23 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
16 23 (0.39%) GIS
16 23 (0.39%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 110 (1.87%) JIRA
2 82 (1.40%) Jenkins
3 75 (1.28%) Git
4 36 (0.61%) GitLab
5 25 (0.43%) ERwin
6 12 (0.20%) SonarQube
7 10 (0.17%) Postman
8 9 (0.15%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.15%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.14%) MLflow
9 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.10%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) REST Assured
11 5 (0.085%) Claude Code
11 5 (0.085%) JMeter
11 5 (0.085%) Maven
11 5 (0.085%) Selenium
General
1 1,102 (18.75%) Social Skills
2 902 (15.35%) Finance
3 668 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 342 (5.82%) Banking
5 312 (5.31%) Analytical Skills
6 231 (3.93%) Retail
7 162 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
8 142 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
9 129 (2.20%) Legal
10 116 (1.97%) Telecoms
11 110 (1.87%) Manufacturing
12 61 (1.04%) Billing
13 60 (1.02%) Marketing
14 51 (0.87%) Financial Institution
14 51 (0.87%) Military
15 45 (0.77%) Law
16 40 (0.68%) Aerospace
17 38 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 38 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
18 32 (0.54%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (4.73%) REST
2 209 (3.56%) Middleware
3 136 (2.31%) .NET
4 125 (2.13%) Kafka
5 122 (2.08%) SOAP
6 113 (1.92%) OAuth
7 94 (1.60%) OpenID
8 75 (1.28%) SAML
9 68 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
10 62 (1.06%) OAuth2
11 56 (0.95%) React
12 53 (0.90%) LDAP
13 51 (0.87%) RESTful
14 50 (0.85%) SailPoint
15 49 (0.83%) JSON
16 39 (0.66%) Web Services
17 37 (0.63%) Node.js
18 36 (0.61%) AngularJS
19 35 (0.60%) .NET Framework
20 34 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 498 (8.48%) Cloud Native
2 208 (3.54%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.84%) Management Information System
4 165 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 151 (2.57%) Product Ownership
6 146 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 131 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
7 131 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
8 112 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
9 96 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
10 94 (1.60%) Operational Technology
11 92 (1.57%) AI Agents
12 91 (1.55%) Public Cloud
13 85 (1.45%) CMDB
14 66 (1.12%) Security Posture
15 61 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
16 49 (0.83%) Data Structures
17 48 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.80%) IoT
18 47 (0.80%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 146 (2.48%) Windows
2 99 (1.68%) Linux
3 47 (0.80%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.60%) Android
5 34 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 24 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (0.39%) Unix
8 12 (0.20%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.085%) AIX
11 5 (0.085%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.085%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.085%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.085%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.068%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.068%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.051%) CentOS
13 3 (0.051%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 855 (14.55%) Roadmaps
2 814 (13.85%) Migration
3 754 (12.83%) Stakeholder Management
4 692 (11.78%) Agile
5 670 (11.40%) AI
6 650 (11.06%) DevOps
7 637 (10.84%) Enterprise Architecture
8 624 (10.62%) CI/CD
9 580 (9.87%) Data Modelling
10 567 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 566 (9.63%) Technical Leadership
12 537 (9.14%) Integration Patterns
13 529 (9.00%) Data Architecture
14 492 (8.37%) TOGAF
15 490 (8.34%) Analytics
16 489 (8.32%) Architectural Patterns
17 452 (7.69%) Microservices
18 386 (6.57%) Security Architecture
19 383 (6.52%) Problem-Solving
20 369 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 310 (5.28%) Python
2 282 (4.80%) SQL
3 266 (4.53%) Java
4 118 (2.01%) JavaScript
5 109 (1.86%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.14%) C#
7 62 (1.06%) Bicep
8 47 (0.80%) TypeScript
9 46 (0.78%) Bash
10 29 (0.49%) Apex Code
11 22 (0.37%) Ruby
12 14 (0.24%) Scala
13 11 (0.19%) ABAP
13 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.17%) Shell Script
15 9 (0.15%) C++
15 9 (0.15%) R
16 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,757 (29.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,318 (22.43%) SC Cleared
3 327 (5.57%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.45%) Degree
5 139 (2.37%) CISSP
6 132 (2.25%) AWS Certification
7 127 (2.16%) Azure Certification
8 118 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
9 112 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
10 90 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
11 84 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
12 67 (1.14%) CISM
13 53 (0.90%) CCNP
14 51 (0.87%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 45 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 43 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
18 30 (0.51%) CCSP
19 23 (0.39%) CCIE
20 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (3.45%) NIST
2 186 (3.17%) GDPR
3 179 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 154 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 127 (2.16%) NCSC
6 64 (1.09%) QA
7 50 (0.85%) GRC
8 44 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 39 (0.66%) Accessibility
10 31 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 28 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 27 (0.46%) SEPA
13 26 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.34%) IFRS
15 19 (0.32%) HL7
16 18 (0.31%) COBIT
16 18 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
17 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.20%) JSP 440
19 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 172 (2.93%) Active Directory
2 127 (2.16%) Docker
3 91 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 59 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.39%) vSphere
7 20 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.15%) Squid
10 9 (0.15%) Varnish
11 8 (0.14%) NFS
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.12%) Postfix
13 6 (0.10%) vCloud
14 4 (0.068%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.068%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.068%) IAG
14 4 (0.068%) RACF
14 4 (0.068%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 296 (5.04%) Kubernetes
2 291 (4.95%) Terraform
3 113 (1.92%) Ansible
4 59 (1.00%) Grafana
5 55 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
6 48 (0.82%) Prometheus
7 47 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (0.37%) Argo
8 22 (0.37%) FortiGate
9 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 12 (0.20%) Istio
12 12 (0.20%) SCCM
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
1 760 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 340 (5.79%) SAP
3 308 (5.24%) ServiceNow
4 277 (4.71%) Oracle
5 243 (4.14%) Databricks
6 186 (3.17%) Salesforce
7 162 (2.76%) VMware
8 143 (2.43%) Google
9 137 (2.33%) Cisco
10 69 (1.17%) MuleSoft
11 65 (1.11%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.09%) Splunk
13 53 (0.90%) IBM
14 52 (0.88%) Palo Alto
14 52 (0.88%) Red Hat
15 44 (0.75%) Ariba
15 44 (0.75%) Foundry
16 43 (0.73%) Workday
17 42 (0.71%) OpenAI
18 40 (0.68%) F5