Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £615, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,737 3,004 4,441
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.14% 9.61% 10.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.05% 10.44% 10.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,765 1,937 2,864
10th Percentile £468 £475 £490
25th Percentile £520 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.88%
75th Percentile £720 £720 £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 168 22 94
10th Percentile £46.00 £40.31 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £74.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £89.40
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 47,626 28,777 40,436
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 92.02% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,832 18,386 25,995
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £416 £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 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,230 1,296 2,846
10th Percentile £15.70 £13.93 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.49 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.31 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.50 £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 3 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 3 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 3 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 4,840 £617 -1.28% 1,430
UK excluding London +9 2,526 £620 +3.33% 923
London +5 2,364 £622 -4.38% 665
Work from Home +4 1,566 £600 -0.08% 683
North of England +8 724 £600 - 278
South East +4 713 £625 +4.17% 235
Midlands 0 434 £613 +6.52% 113
North West +4 387 £611 +1.83% 162
West Midlands 0 312 £625 +4.17% 90
South West +1 278 £630 +2.65% 126
Yorkshire +9 273 £575 -4.17% 65
East of England +23 199 £600 - 51
Scotland +13 168 £650 +4.00% 75
East Midlands +6 115 £575 +15.00% 22
North East +3 71 £575 -8.00% 54
Wales 0 36 £600 +25.00% 32
Northern Ireland +6 7 £475 -32.14% 24
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 3 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 1,716 (29.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,423 (24.80%) Azure
3 1,289 (22.47%) SC Cleared
4 1,253 (21.84%) AWS
5 814 (14.19%) Roadmaps
6 797 (13.89%) Migration
7 747 (13.02%) Microsoft
8 725 (12.64%) Stakeholder Management
9 682 (11.89%) Agile
10 636 (11.09%) DevOps
11 632 (11.02%) AI
12 602 (10.49%) CI/CD
13 601 (10.48%) Enterprise Architecture
14 555 (9.67%) Data Modelling
15 551 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
16 547 (9.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 522 (9.10%) Integration Patterns
18 508 (8.85%) Data Architecture
19 475 (8.28%) Architectural Patterns
20 470 (8.19%) Analytics
21 466 (8.12%) TOGAF
22 438 (7.63%) Microservices
23 426 (7.43%) GCP
24 379 (6.61%) Problem-Solving
25 367 (6.40%) Security Architecture
26 359 (6.26%) Architectural Design
26 359 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
27 347 (6.05%) Event-Driven
28 345 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
29 340 (5.93%) 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
1 111 (1.93%) SharePoint
2 80 (1.39%) Confluence
3 50 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 50 (0.87%) SAS
4 34 (0.59%) Apache
5 32 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.35%) Appian
7 20 (0.35%) CMS
7 20 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.24%) nginx
10 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 10 (0.17%) Anypoint
10 10 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 9 (0.16%) Camunda
12 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 7 (0.12%) JBoss
12 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 6 (0.10%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 21 (0.37%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.17%) Chatbot
5 9 (0.16%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.052%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.052%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 154 (2.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.64%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
10 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
13 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,423 (24.80%) Azure
2 1,253 (21.84%) AWS
3 426 (7.43%) GCP
4 280 (4.88%) Power Platform
5 207 (3.61%) Serverless
6 201 (3.50%) SaaS
7 198 (3.45%) Entra ID
8 139 (2.42%) GitHub
9 133 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
10 125 (2.18%) PaaS
11 115 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
11 115 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
12 99 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
12 99 (1.73%) Snowflake
13 94 (1.64%) IaaS
14 85 (1.48%) Amazon S3
15 70 (1.22%) OpenShift
16 69 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
17 67 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 65 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 232 (4.04%) Firewall
2 195 (3.40%) Network Security
3 124 (2.16%) VPN
4 122 (2.13%) DNS
4 122 (2.13%) WAN
5 85 (1.48%) LAN
6 67 (1.17%) SD-WAN
7 48 (0.84%) DHCP
8 47 (0.82%) TCP/IP
9 45 (0.78%) BGP
10 40 (0.70%) VLAN
11 36 (0.63%) MPLS
12 34 (0.59%) OSPF
13 33 (0.58%) Wireless
14 29 (0.51%) SAN
15 27 (0.47%) IPsec
15 27 (0.47%) NAS
16 25 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
17 24 (0.42%) BIG-IP
18 22 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (3.38%) Power BI
2 167 (2.91%) Data Lake
3 166 (2.89%) Metadata
4 158 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
5 73 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 66 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
7 64 (1.12%) SQL Server
8 47 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
8 47 (0.82%) Big Data
9 38 (0.66%) Oracle Database
10 37 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
10 37 (0.64%) BigQuery
11 28 (0.49%) Delta Lake
11 28 (0.49%) Relational Database
12 27 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (0.44%) Tableau
14 23 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
14 23 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.38%) Electronic Patient Records
16 20 (0.35%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 108 (1.88%) JIRA
2 86 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 73 (1.27%) Git
4 38 (0.66%) GitLab
5 26 (0.45%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.16%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.16%) Postman
8 8 (0.14%) MLflow
8 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Selenium
11 5 (0.087%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.087%) JMeter
11 5 (0.087%) Maven
11 5 (0.087%) Oracle Forms
12 4 (0.070%) Snyk
General
1 1,077 (18.77%) Social Skills
2 892 (15.55%) Finance
3 650 (11.33%) Public Sector
4 331 (5.77%) Banking
5 304 (5.30%) Analytical Skills
6 223 (3.89%) Retail
7 158 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
8 136 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
9 129 (2.25%) Legal
10 105 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 102 (1.78%) Telecoms
12 55 (0.96%) Billing
13 54 (0.94%) Marketing
14 52 (0.91%) Military
15 51 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 48 (0.84%) Law
17 41 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
18 39 (0.68%) Aerospace
19 37 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.59%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (4.74%) REST
2 208 (3.63%) Middleware
3 135 (2.35%) .NET
4 123 (2.14%) SOAP
5 121 (2.11%) Kafka
6 98 (1.71%) OAuth
7 92 (1.60%) OpenID
8 75 (1.31%) SAML
9 68 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
10 59 (1.03%) OAuth2
11 58 (1.01%) LDAP
12 54 (0.94%) React
13 50 (0.87%) RESTful
13 50 (0.87%) SailPoint
14 47 (0.82%) JSON
15 38 (0.66%) Node.js
15 38 (0.66%) Web Services
16 37 (0.64%) AngularJS
17 34 (0.59%) PySpark
18 33 (0.58%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 492 (8.58%) Cloud Native
2 207 (3.61%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.91%) Management Information System
4 157 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 142 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
8 124 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
11 90 (1.57%) Public Cloud
12 88 (1.53%) Operational Technology
13 85 (1.48%) CMDB
14 84 (1.46%) AI Agents
15 69 (1.20%) Security Posture
16 55 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
17 48 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 48 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.82%) NHS
19 44 (0.77%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 152 (2.65%) Windows
2 97 (1.69%) Linux
3 46 (0.80%) Windows Server
4 36 (0.63%) Android
5 35 (0.61%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.44%) Unix
7 19 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.19%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.087%) AIX
11 5 (0.087%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.087%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.087%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.070%) Solaris
12 4 (0.070%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 814 (14.19%) Roadmaps
2 797 (13.89%) Migration
3 725 (12.64%) Stakeholder Management
4 682 (11.89%) Agile
5 636 (11.09%) DevOps
6 632 (11.02%) AI
7 602 (10.49%) CI/CD
8 601 (10.48%) Enterprise Architecture
9 555 (9.67%) Data Modelling
10 551 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
11 547 (9.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 522 (9.10%) Integration Patterns
13 508 (8.85%) Data Architecture
14 475 (8.28%) Architectural Patterns
15 470 (8.19%) Analytics
16 466 (8.12%) TOGAF
17 438 (7.63%) Microservices
18 379 (6.61%) Problem-Solving
19 367 (6.40%) Security Architecture
20 359 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 312 (5.44%) Python
2 278 (4.85%) SQL
3 254 (4.43%) Java
4 117 (2.04%) PowerShell
5 112 (1.95%) JavaScript
6 66 (1.15%) C#
7 61 (1.06%) Bicep
8 46 (0.80%) Bash
9 45 (0.78%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.37%) Ruby
12 14 (0.24%) Scala
13 12 (0.21%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.17%) ABAP
16 9 (0.16%) C++
16 9 (0.16%) R
16 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
17 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,716 (29.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,289 (22.47%) SC Cleared
3 316 (5.51%) DV Cleared
4 202 (3.52%) Degree
5 129 (2.25%) CISSP
6 123 (2.14%) AWS Certification
7 122 (2.13%) Azure Certification
8 115 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
9 113 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
10 82 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 79 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
12 67 (1.17%) CISM
13 55 (0.96%) CCNP
14 49 (0.85%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 44 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
17 41 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 30 (0.52%) CCSP
19 23 (0.40%) CCIE
20 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (3.52%) NIST
2 181 (3.15%) GDPR
3 175 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 155 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 130 (2.27%) NCSC
6 67 (1.17%) QA
7 45 (0.78%) PCI DSS
8 42 (0.73%) GRC
9 37 (0.64%) Accessibility
10 29 (0.51%) NIST 800
11 28 (0.49%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.45%) SEPA
13 25 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.35%) IFRS
15 19 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
15 19 (0.33%) HL7
16 18 (0.31%) COBIT
17 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.21%) JSP 440
19 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 170 (2.96%) Active Directory
2 115 (2.00%) Docker
3 91 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.05%) VMware NSX
5 28 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.42%) vSphere
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) Varnish
10 9 (0.16%) Squid
10 9 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.14%) NFS
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.12%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) vCloud
13 4 (0.070%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.070%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.070%) IAG
13 4 (0.070%) RACF
13 4 (0.070%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 287 (5.00%) Terraform
2 274 (4.78%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.95%) Ansible
4 54 (0.94%) Grafana
4 54 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 46 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 43 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 26 (0.45%) FortiGate
8 23 (0.40%) vCenter Server
9 22 (0.38%) Argo
10 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (0.24%) SCCM
12 12 (0.21%) Istio
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
1 747 (13.02%) Microsoft
2 340 (5.93%) SAP
3 307 (5.35%) ServiceNow
4 267 (4.65%) Oracle
5 237 (4.13%) Databricks
6 186 (3.24%) Salesforce
7 167 (2.91%) VMware
8 140 (2.44%) Cisco
9 138 (2.41%) Google
10 70 (1.22%) MuleSoft
11 66 (1.15%) CyberArk
12 65 (1.13%) Splunk
13 56 (0.98%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.87%) IBM
14 50 (0.87%) Red Hat
15 44 (0.77%) Workday
16 42 (0.73%) Ariba
16 42 (0.73%) OpenAI
17 40 (0.70%) Foundry
18 39 (0.68%) F5