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 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,172 2,861 3,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.30% 8.78% 9.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.25% 9.64% 10.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,090 1,863 2,228
10th Percentile £481 £463 £480
25th Percentile £525 £525 £543
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £626
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -0.16% -3.69%
75th Percentile £700 £714 £738
90th Percentile £776 £787 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +3.33% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 12 65
10th Percentile £40.00 £58.43 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.19 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.17 £71.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.33% +1.79% -2.78%
75th Percentile £80.00 £90.63 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.00 £100.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.17 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -4.33% +1.79% -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 50,372 29,667 35,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 91.00% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,736 18,751 21,351
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,923 1,598 1,565
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.61 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.82%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 5,124 £620 -0.80% 4,191
London +7 2,638 £625 -2.34% 2,394
UK excluding London +8 2,579 £620 +3.33% 1,854
Work from Home +6 1,655 £600 - 1,643
South East +4 723 £625 +4.17% 464
North of England +5 687 £600 - 488
Midlands +5 448 £627 +8.96% 263
North West +9 379 £600 +4.35% 268
South West +5 344 £631 -2.88% 224
West Midlands +5 337 £650 +8.33% 198
Yorkshire +18 243 £575 -4.17% 162
Scotland +17 191 £625 +2.67% 186
East of England +9 156 £621 +11.14% 143
East Midlands +7 106 £600 +20.00% 65
North East +2 68 £625 -13.79% 58
Wales +2 44 £640 +2.40% 33
Channel Islands 0 10 £700 -5.72% 4
Northern Ireland +3 2 - - 63

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 29 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 1,944 (31.50%) Security Cleared
2 1,581 (25.62%) Azure
3 1,459 (23.64%) SC Cleared
4 1,281 (20.76%) AWS
5 1,185 (19.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 978 (15.85%) Roadmaps
7 901 (14.60%) Migration
8 831 (13.46%) Microsoft
9 799 (12.95%) Enterprise Architecture
10 787 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
11 782 (12.67%) AI
12 671 (10.87%) Agile
13 641 (10.39%) DevOps
14 632 (10.24%) Data Modelling
15 629 (10.19%) Data Architecture
16 618 (10.01%) CI/CD
17 612 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 575 (9.32%) Integration Patterns
19 526 (8.52%) Analytics
20 494 (8.00%) Security Architecture
21 493 (7.99%) GCP
22 481 (7.79%) TOGAF
23 458 (7.42%) Architectural Patterns
24 423 (6.85%) Event-Driven
25 403 (6.53%) Data Governance
26 400 (6.48%) Decision-Making
27 397 (6.43%) Architecture Governance
28 393 (6.37%) DV Cleared
29 391 (6.34%) Microservices
30 380 (6.16%) Cybersecurity

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 77 (1.25%) SAS
2 68 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 61 (0.99%) Confluence
4 45 (0.73%) Apache
5 44 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 36 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
8 24 (0.39%) CMS
9 21 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.11%) Documentum
11 7 (0.11%) IIS
11 7 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.097%) Appian
12 6 (0.097%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.097%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.097%) JBoss
13 5 (0.081%) SAP EP
14 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.065%) Camunda
Applications
1 22 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.15%) Revit
6 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Navisworks
8 5 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.032%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.016%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 181 (2.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.52%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 17 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
6 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
7 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.15%) SAP CO
11 9 (0.15%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 8 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
12 8 (0.13%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 1,581 (25.62%) Azure
2 1,281 (20.76%) AWS
3 493 (7.99%) GCP
4 293 (4.75%) Power Platform
5 233 (3.78%) SaaS
6 215 (3.48%) Entra ID
7 189 (3.06%) Serverless
8 143 (2.32%) GitHub
9 135 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
10 133 (2.15%) Dynamics 365
11 127 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
12 117 (1.90%) Snowflake
13 95 (1.54%) PaaS
14 86 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
15 81 (1.31%) Amazon S3
16 75 (1.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 71 (1.15%) OCI
18 68 (1.10%) IaaS
19 64 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
20 62 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 162 (2.62%) Firewall
2 147 (2.38%) Network Security
3 100 (1.62%) WAN
4 75 (1.22%) VPN
5 71 (1.15%) DNS
6 62 (1.00%) LAN
7 48 (0.78%) BGP
8 47 (0.76%) SD-WAN
9 41 (0.66%) MPLS
10 38 (0.62%) DHCP
11 34 (0.55%) TCP/IP
12 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
13 27 (0.44%) VLAN
14 25 (0.41%) NX-OS
14 25 (0.41%) SAN
15 21 (0.34%) Wireless
16 19 (0.31%) BIG-IP
16 19 (0.31%) NAS
16 19 (0.31%) NGFW
16 19 (0.31%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (3.82%) Metadata
2 213 (3.45%) Data Lake
3 198 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
4 176 (2.85%) Power BI
5 66 (1.07%) NoSQL
6 49 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
6 49 (0.79%) SQL Server
7 48 (0.78%) BigQuery
8 47 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
9 43 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
10 39 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 39 (0.63%) Delta Lake
11 37 (0.60%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.53%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
14 29 (0.47%) Big Data
15 25 (0.41%) MongoDB
16 24 (0.39%) Relational Database
17 23 (0.37%) GIS
17 23 (0.37%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 85 (1.38%) JIRA
2 77 (1.25%) Git
3 62 (1.00%) Jenkins
4 50 (0.81%) GitLab
5 14 (0.23%) ERwin
6 13 (0.21%) Claude Code
6 13 (0.21%) Postman
7 11 (0.18%) MSI
8 10 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
8 10 (0.16%) RStudio
9 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.097%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.097%) Storybook
11 5 (0.081%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.081%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.081%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.081%) Selenium
12 4 (0.065%) Hudson
12 4 (0.065%) Maven
12 4 (0.065%) MLflow
General
1 1,255 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 860 (13.93%) Finance
3 728 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 311 (5.04%) Banking
5 280 (4.54%) Analytical Skills
6 270 (4.37%) Retail
7 176 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
8 163 (2.64%) Manufacturing
9 138 (2.24%) Telecoms
10 137 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
11 112 (1.81%) Legal
12 76 (1.23%) Marketing
13 63 (1.02%) Billing
14 62 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 61 (0.99%) Aerospace
16 52 (0.84%) Military
17 46 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 38 (0.62%) Aviation
18 38 (0.62%) Local Government
19 35 (0.57%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (4.84%) REST
2 261 (4.23%) Terraform
3 174 (2.82%) Middleware
4 173 (2.80%) Kafka
5 137 (2.22%) SOAP
6 125 (2.03%) OAuth
7 120 (1.94%) .NET
8 80 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 69 (1.12%) JSON
10 66 (1.07%) OpenID
11 65 (1.05%) SAML
12 63 (1.02%) OAuth2
13 55 (0.89%) LDAP
14 49 (0.79%) RESTful
15 46 (0.75%) PySpark
16 45 (0.73%) XML
17 40 (0.65%) .NET Framework
18 39 (0.63%) SailPoint
19 37 (0.60%) Swagger
20 36 (0.58%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 515 (8.34%) Cloud Native
2 202 (3.27%) Data Centre
3 185 (3.00%) Onboarding
4 173 (2.80%) Management Information System
5 148 (2.40%) Product Ownership
6 147 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 147 (2.38%) Hybrid Cloud
7 141 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.17%) AI Agents
10 101 (1.64%) CMDB
11 92 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 92 (1.49%) Public Cloud
12 91 (1.47%) Operational Technology
13 79 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
14 71 (1.15%) Private Cloud
15 65 (1.05%) Data Structures
16 60 (0.97%) Security Posture
17 53 (0.86%) Taxonomies
18 50 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 128 (2.07%) Windows
2 102 (1.65%) Linux
3 51 (0.83%) Windows Server
4 23 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.34%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
7 8 (0.13%) Android
7 8 (0.13%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.097%) zOS
9 5 (0.081%) Solaris
10 4 (0.065%) Alpine Linux
10 4 (0.065%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.065%) VMS
11 3 (0.049%) CentOS
12 2 (0.032%) HPUX
12 2 (0.032%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.032%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.032%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.016%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,185 (19.20%) Stakeholder Management
2 978 (15.85%) Roadmaps
3 901 (14.60%) Migration
4 799 (12.95%) Enterprise Architecture
5 787 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
6 782 (12.67%) AI
7 671 (10.87%) Agile
8 641 (10.39%) DevOps
9 632 (10.24%) Data Modelling
10 629 (10.19%) Data Architecture
11 618 (10.01%) CI/CD
12 612 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 575 (9.32%) Integration Patterns
14 526 (8.52%) Analytics
15 494 (8.00%) Security Architecture
16 481 (7.79%) TOGAF
17 458 (7.42%) Architectural Patterns
18 423 (6.85%) Event-Driven
19 403 (6.53%) Data Governance
20 400 (6.48%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 259 (4.20%) SQL
2 251 (4.07%) Java
3 243 (3.94%) Python
4 124 (2.01%) JavaScript
5 110 (1.78%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.84%) C#
7 51 (0.83%) TypeScript
8 46 (0.75%) Bash
8 46 (0.75%) Bicep
9 31 (0.50%) Apex Code
10 26 (0.42%) ABAP
11 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
12 11 (0.18%) Groovy
12 11 (0.18%) R
13 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
14 9 (0.15%) C++
14 9 (0.15%) Ruby
14 9 (0.15%) Rust
15 8 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,944 (31.50%) Security Cleared
2 1,459 (23.64%) SC Cleared
3 393 (6.37%) DV Cleared
4 186 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 158 (2.56%) Degree
6 150 (2.43%) CISSP
7 122 (1.98%) AWS Certification
8 120 (1.94%) Azure Certification
9 108 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
10 89 (1.44%) TOGAF Certification
11 73 (1.18%) CISM
12 61 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 47 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
15 44 (0.71%) CCNP
16 41 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 39 (0.63%) CCSP
18 26 (0.42%) Master's Degree
19 24 (0.39%) CISA
20 23 (0.37%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (4.34%) Data Quality
2 227 (3.68%) NIST
3 190 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 158 (2.56%) GDPR
5 131 (2.12%) NCSC
6 84 (1.36%) GRC
7 56 (0.91%) QA
8 40 (0.65%) Accessibility
9 39 (0.63%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.49%) NIST 800
11 27 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.39%) SLA
13 22 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
15 20 (0.32%) IFRS
15 20 (0.32%) JSP 440
15 20 (0.32%) SEPA
16 18 (0.29%) ISO 20022
17 16 (0.26%) ISO 19650
18 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 192 (3.11%) Active Directory
2 110 (1.78%) Docker
3 84 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (0.75%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.36%) vSphere
7 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.29%) Hyper-V
9 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.081%) ISA Server
10 5 (0.081%) NFS
11 4 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 4 (0.065%) KVM
11 4 (0.065%) Postfix
11 4 (0.065%) Varnish
12 3 (0.049%) Ceph
12 3 (0.049%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.049%) SRDF
12 3 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 298 (4.83%) Kubernetes
2 105 (1.70%) Ansible
3 47 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
4 44 (0.71%) Grafana
5 37 (0.60%) Prometheus
6 30 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (0.29%) Argo
8 15 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
10 12 (0.19%) WMI
11 11 (0.18%) FortiGate
12 10 (0.16%) CASB
13 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
14 8 (0.13%) Istio
14 8 (0.13%) SCCM
15 7 (0.11%) NetBackup
16 6 (0.097%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.097%) Puppet
17 5 (0.081%) EMC VPLEX
17 5 (0.081%) VxRail
Vendors
1 831 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 354 (5.74%) SAP
3 303 (4.91%) ServiceNow
4 295 (4.78%) Oracle
5 281 (4.55%) Databricks
6 210 (3.40%) Google
7 204 (3.31%) Salesforce
8 148 (2.40%) Cisco
9 137 (2.22%) VMware
10 84 (1.36%) CyberArk
11 77 (1.25%) MuleSoft
12 56 (0.91%) IBM
13 52 (0.84%) Palo Alto
14 51 (0.83%) Workday
15 49 (0.79%) Foundry
16 41 (0.66%) Splunk
17 40 (0.65%) Informatica
18 38 (0.62%) Pega
18 38 (0.62%) Red Hat
19 37 (0.60%) Adobe