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 28 April 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 16 11
Rank change year-on-year +5 -5 +6
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,146 2,879 4,440
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.95% 9.81% 10.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.86% 10.59% 11.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,376 1,898 2,844
10th Percentile £463 £479 £500
25th Percentile £513 £538 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -3.85% -1.52%
75th Percentile £725 £725 £738
90th Percentile £800 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £610 £608 £650
% change year-on-year +0.41% -6.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 38 75
10th Percentile £49.40 £54.60 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £69.00 £68.75 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.36% -8.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £83.00 £80.44 £87.46
90th Percentile £97.50 £85.58 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.44 £72.50 £75.40
% change year-on-year -4.22% -3.84% +7.71%

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 43,373 27,176 40,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.58% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,766 17,790 26,166
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.82% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £491
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.19% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,810 1,031 2,642
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.39 £29.25 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +48.35% -18.36% -20.38%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £28.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year +56.52% -23.33% -11.76%

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 28 April 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 28 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Top 17 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 28 April 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 +6 4,403 £625 - 985
UK excluding London +8 2,378 £610 +0.41% 671
London +5 2,045 £625 -3.85% 441
Work from Home +2 1,406 £600 -0.08% 485
South East +4 708 £625 - 182
North of England +5 628 £600 - 164
Midlands 0 411 £581 -3.17% 118
North West +9 367 £604 +0.63% 103
West Midlands -1 302 £605 +0.83% 89
South West +1 300 £693 +15.42% 97
Yorkshire +5 233 £558 -8.90% 36
East of England +18 201 £563 -6.25% 58
Scotland +7 137 £650 +4.00% 12
East Midlands -2 103 £525 -4.55% 27
North East 0 37 £575 -7.95% 25
Wales -10 25 £600 +17.65% 37
Northern Ireland +12 10 £488 -26.42% 17

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 28 April 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 1,602 (31.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,225 (23.80%) Azure
3 1,149 (22.33%) SC Cleared
4 1,082 (21.03%) AWS
5 721 (14.01%) Roadmaps
6 694 (13.49%) Microsoft
7 686 (13.33%) Migration
8 627 (12.18%) Agile
9 565 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
10 563 (10.94%) DevOps
11 538 (10.45%) CI/CD
12 525 (10.20%) Enterprise Architecture
13 471 (9.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 468 (9.09%) AI
15 465 (9.04%) Technical Leadership
16 464 (9.02%) Data Modelling
17 435 (8.45%) TOGAF
18 430 (8.36%) Integration Patterns
19 425 (8.26%) Analytics
20 392 (7.62%) GCP
21 387 (7.52%) Data Architecture
22 383 (7.44%) Architectural Patterns
23 376 (7.31%) Problem-Solving
24 374 (7.27%) Microservices
25 353 (6.86%) Python
26 335 (6.51%) Architectural Design
27 331 (6.43%) DV Cleared
28 315 (6.12%) ServiceNow
29 310 (6.02%) Infrastructure as Code
30 302 (5.87%) 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
1 123 (2.39%) SharePoint
2 107 (2.08%) Confluence
3 60 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 29 (0.56%) SAS
5 25 (0.49%) Apache
5 25 (0.49%) Apache Spark
6 20 (0.39%) CMS
7 18 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.31%) Anypoint
8 16 (0.31%) Appian
9 15 (0.29%) nginx
9 15 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.27%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.23%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 7 (0.14%) Camunda
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
14 7 (0.14%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 48 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
5 17 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 6 (0.12%) Revit
7 4 (0.078%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.058%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.039%) PlantUML
9 2 (0.039%) Windchill
10 1 (0.019%) ArchiCAD
10 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.019%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.019%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 127 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.89%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 23 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
4 21 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
5 20 (0.39%) Workday HCM
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 11 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.21%) SAP EWM
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
11 9 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.16%) SAP PP
13 7 (0.14%) Maximo
13 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
13 7 (0.14%) R3 Corda
13 7 (0.14%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP PM
13 7 (0.14%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,225 (23.80%) Azure
2 1,082 (21.03%) AWS
3 392 (7.62%) GCP
4 215 (4.18%) Power Platform
5 184 (3.58%) Serverless
6 181 (3.52%) Entra ID
7 167 (3.25%) SaaS
8 138 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
9 116 (2.25%) GitHub
10 109 (2.12%) PaaS
11 106 (2.06%) Dynamics 365
12 99 (1.92%) IaaS
13 98 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
14 91 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.55%) Amazon S3
15 80 (1.55%) OpenShift
16 75 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
16 75 (1.46%) Snowflake
17 68 (1.32%) Microsoft Purview
18 67 (1.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 222 (4.31%) Firewall
2 176 (3.42%) Network Security
3 135 (2.62%) WAN
4 120 (2.33%) VPN
5 115 (2.23%) DNS
6 88 (1.71%) LAN
7 74 (1.44%) SD-WAN
8 38 (0.74%) BGP
9 33 (0.64%) DHCP
10 29 (0.56%) OSPF
10 29 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
11 27 (0.52%) MPLS
11 27 (0.52%) TCP/IP
12 26 (0.51%) VLAN
13 24 (0.47%) SAN
14 21 (0.41%) BIG-IP
14 21 (0.41%) NAS
14 21 (0.41%) Wireless
15 20 (0.39%) VXLAN
16 18 (0.35%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (3.13%) Power BI
2 139 (2.70%) Metadata
3 134 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 127 (2.47%) Data Lake
5 80 (1.55%) SQL Server
6 65 (1.26%) NoSQL
7 60 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
8 53 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
9 48 (0.93%) Tableau
10 38 (0.74%) Big Data
11 37 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 37 (0.72%) Oracle Database
12 27 (0.52%) Delta Lake
13 25 (0.49%) BigQuery
13 25 (0.49%) Relational Database
14 23 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (0.45%) DynamoDB
15 22 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
15 22 (0.43%) GIS
15 22 (0.43%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 119 (2.31%) JIRA
2 90 (1.75%) Jenkins
3 56 (1.09%) Git
4 48 (0.93%) GitLab
5 21 (0.41%) ERwin
6 13 (0.25%) SonarQube
7 11 (0.21%) Bitbucket
7 11 (0.21%) MLflow
8 10 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 6 (0.12%) Postman
9 6 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 5 (0.097%) Cucumber
10 5 (0.097%) JUnit
10 5 (0.097%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (0.097%) Selenium
10 5 (0.097%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (0.078%) Snyk
11 4 (0.078%) Terragrunt
12 3 (0.058%) ER Studio
12 3 (0.058%) MSI
General
1 1,001 (19.45%) Social Skills
2 772 (15.00%) Finance
3 567 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 311 (6.04%) Analytical Skills
5 295 (5.73%) Banking
6 149 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 134 (2.60%) Retail
8 120 (2.33%) Legal
9 113 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.73%) Military
11 86 (1.67%) Telecoms
12 74 (1.44%) Manufacturing
13 69 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
14 63 (1.22%) Law
15 61 (1.19%) Marketing
16 44 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 43 (0.84%) Billing
18 35 (0.68%) Investment Banking
19 32 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 28 (0.54%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (4.84%) REST
2 185 (3.60%) Middleware
3 132 (2.57%) SOAP
4 117 (2.27%) .NET
5 111 (2.16%) Kafka
6 88 (1.71%) OpenID
7 85 (1.65%) LDAP
8 80 (1.55%) OAuth
9 63 (1.22%) SAML
10 51 (0.99%) JSON
10 51 (0.99%) React
11 47 (0.91%) OAuth2
12 43 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
12 43 (0.84%) RESTful
13 38 (0.74%) SailPoint
13 38 (0.74%) Web Services
14 37 (0.72%) AngularJS
15 32 (0.62%) Node.js
15 32 (0.62%) Spring
16 30 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 417 (8.10%) Cloud Native
2 165 (3.21%) Data Centre
3 146 (2.84%) Product Ownership
4 136 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 127 (2.47%) Management Information System
6 118 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
7 115 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
8 107 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
9 98 (1.90%) Public Cloud
10 97 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
11 82 (1.59%) Security Posture
12 75 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
13 73 (1.42%) CMDB
13 73 (1.42%) PKI
14 68 (1.32%) Operational Technology
15 52 (1.01%) AI Agents
16 44 (0.86%) Private Cloud
17 43 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 43 (0.84%) NHS
18 40 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 178 (3.46%) Windows
2 120 (2.33%) Linux
3 39 (0.76%) Windows Server
4 32 (0.62%) Android
4 32 (0.62%) Apple iOS
4 32 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.33%) Unix
6 14 (0.27%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.25%) VMS
8 12 (0.23%) Windows 7
8 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.21%) zOS
10 9 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.058%) CentOS
11 3 (0.058%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (0.058%) Solaris
11 3 (0.058%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.039%) AIX
12 2 (0.039%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 721 (14.01%) Roadmaps
2 686 (13.33%) Migration
3 627 (12.18%) Agile
4 565 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 563 (10.94%) DevOps
6 538 (10.45%) CI/CD
7 525 (10.20%) Enterprise Architecture
8 471 (9.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 468 (9.09%) AI
10 465 (9.04%) Technical Leadership
11 464 (9.02%) Data Modelling
12 435 (8.45%) TOGAF
13 430 (8.36%) Integration Patterns
14 425 (8.26%) Analytics
15 387 (7.52%) Data Architecture
16 383 (7.44%) Architectural Patterns
17 376 (7.31%) Problem-Solving
18 374 (7.27%) Microservices
19 335 (6.51%) Architectural Design
20 310 (6.02%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 353 (6.86%) Python
2 270 (5.25%) SQL
3 207 (4.02%) Java
4 180 (3.50%) PowerShell
5 83 (1.61%) JavaScript
6 67 (1.30%) C#
7 47 (0.91%) Bicep
8 37 (0.72%) Bash
9 33 (0.64%) TypeScript
10 22 (0.43%) Ruby
11 19 (0.37%) Apex Code
12 18 (0.35%) PL/SQL
13 16 (0.31%) Scala
14 13 (0.25%) Kotlin
14 13 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
15 10 (0.19%) R
15 10 (0.19%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.19%) T-SQL
16 9 (0.17%) ABAP
17 8 (0.16%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,602 (31.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,149 (22.33%) SC Cleared
3 331 (6.43%) DV Cleared
4 212 (4.12%) Degree
5 128 (2.49%) TOGAF Certification
6 125 (2.43%) Azure Certification
7 116 (2.25%) AWS Certification
7 116 (2.25%) CISSP
8 94 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 90 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
11 64 (1.24%) CISM
12 56 (1.09%) Master's Degree
13 53 (1.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 51 (0.99%) CCNP
15 47 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
16 36 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 33 (0.64%) ISEB
17 33 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.51%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 194 (3.77%) GDPR
2 189 (3.67%) NIST
3 150 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 148 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 106 (2.06%) NCSC
6 63 (1.22%) QA
7 50 (0.97%) PCI DSS
8 41 (0.80%) COBIT
9 34 (0.66%) GRC
10 32 (0.62%) ISO 20022
11 28 (0.54%) Accessibility
12 26 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 20 (0.39%) SEPA
14 18 (0.35%) HL7
14 18 (0.35%) NIST 800
14 18 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 16 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 15 (0.29%) JSP 440
17 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.25%) MiFID
System Software
1 195 (3.79%) Active Directory
2 114 (2.22%) Docker
3 103 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.42%) VMware NSX
5 33 (0.64%) vSphere
6 25 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.33%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) Varnish
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.19%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 8 (0.16%) NFS
14 7 (0.14%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.097%) Postfix
15 5 (0.097%) RACF
16 4 (0.078%) Firmware
17 3 (0.058%) IAG
17 3 (0.058%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 280 (5.44%) Terraform
2 240 (4.66%) Kubernetes
3 112 (2.18%) Ansible
4 52 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
5 42 (0.82%) Grafana
6 40 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 33 (0.64%) FortiGate
8 30 (0.58%) OPNET
8 30 (0.58%) vCenter Server
9 29 (0.56%) Prometheus
10 22 (0.43%) SCCM
11 17 (0.33%) Argo
12 14 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 12 (0.23%) Istio
14 11 (0.21%) WMI
15 8 (0.16%) Puppet
16 7 (0.14%) Consul
17 6 (0.12%) Kibana
18 5 (0.097%) Endace
18 5 (0.097%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 694 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 315 (6.12%) ServiceNow
3 302 (5.87%) SAP
4 219 (4.26%) Oracle
5 197 (3.83%) VMware
6 193 (3.75%) Salesforce
7 185 (3.60%) Databricks
8 135 (2.62%) Cisco
9 113 (2.20%) Google
10 85 (1.65%) CyberArk
11 69 (1.34%) MuleSoft
12 64 (1.24%) Splunk
13 57 (1.11%) Red Hat
14 55 (1.07%) Palo Alto
14 55 (1.07%) Workday
15 48 (0.93%) IBM
15 48 (0.93%) Remedy
15 48 (0.93%) Sparx
16 46 (0.89%) Ariba
17 44 (0.86%) Atlassian