Architect Contracts

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 June 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 17 11 16
Rank change year-on-year -6 +5 -2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 2,886 4,572 5,259
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 10.41% 9.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.45% 11.21% 10.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,849 2,939 3,645
10th Percentile £463 £490 £510
25th Percentile £538 £550 £575
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £719 £738 £748
90th Percentile £799 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £650 £650
% change year-on-year -7.69% - +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 97 67
10th Percentile £49.79 - £35.15
25th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £62.00
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% - +6.06%
75th Percentile £82.25 £87.00 £75.25
90th Percentile £89.71 £90.00 £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.25 £70.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.64% - +14.90%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 27,617 40,796 52,414
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.16% 92.91% 94.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,719 26,125 36,530
10th Percentile £289 £281 £313
25th Percentile £402 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +2.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.36% -1.70% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,193 3,003 1,492
10th Percentile £13.88 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.45 £19.06
Median hourly rate £27.40 £37.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.93% -16.67% +80.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.00 £76.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £40.59
% change year-on-year -37.13% -1.45% +102.95%

Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Architect in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Architect in the UK

Architect
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Architect.

Daily rate trend for Architect in the UK

Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Architect over the 6 months to 21 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Architect.

Hourly rate trend for Architect in the UK

Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Architect over the 6 months to 21 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Architect in the UK

Architect
Top 18 Contract 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 21 June 2025. 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 2,402 £625 -3.85% 7,103
London -2 1,313 £650 - 3,122
UK excluding London -8 1,083 £600 -7.69% 4,394
Work from Home -3 1,031 £600 -7.12% 2,944
South East -5 299 £601 -7.62% 1,288
North of England -12 295 £600 -4.00% 913
North West -7 193 £593 -5.20% 515
Midlands -6 184 £590 -5.68% 627
South West -11 147 £613 -5.77% 594
West Midlands -6 116 £600 -7.69% 374
Scotland 0 96 £625 -7.41% 294
Yorkshire -12 92 £600 +0.88% 324
East Midlands -1 66 £500 -11.82% 246
East of England -18 64 £600 - 525
Wales +10 18 £475 -19.15% 104
North East -1 11 £625 -0.99% 74
Channel Islands - 4 £743 -
Northern Ireland -12 3 £663 +1.92% 72

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 June 2025, Architect contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Architect in the job title.

1 850 (29.45%) Azure
2 795 (27.55%) Social Skills
3 787 (27.27%) Security Cleared
4 736 (25.50%) AWS
5 585 (20.27%) SC Cleared
6 538 (18.64%) Finance
7 461 (15.97%) Microsoft
8 430 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
9 429 (14.86%) Agile
10 423 (14.66%) Roadmaps
11 387 (13.41%) Migration
12 361 (12.51%) Stakeholder Management
13 333 (11.54%) Public Sector
14 325 (11.26%) DevOps
15 303 (10.50%) GCP
16 300 (10.40%) Enterprise Architecture
17 280 (9.70%) CI/CD
18 274 (9.49%) TOGAF
19 256 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
20 254 (8.80%) Data Modelling
21 242 (8.39%) Technical Leadership
22 232 (8.04%) Microservices
23 228 (7.90%) Banking
24 218 (7.55%) SAP
25 208 (7.21%) Cybersecurity
26 204 (7.07%) Analytics
26 204 (7.07%) Data Architecture
26 204 (7.07%) Java
27 200 (6.93%) SQL
27 200 (6.93%) Python

Architect Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 48 (1.66%) SharePoint
2 43 (1.49%) Confluence
3 33 (1.14%) Apache Spark
4 24 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (0.66%) SAS
6 13 (0.45%) Apache
7 12 (0.42%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 10 (0.35%) OpenStack
9 10 (0.35%) WebSphere
10 8 (0.28%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.24%) Camunda
11 7 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 7 (0.24%) SAP EP
12 6 (0.21%) JBoss
13 5 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 5 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.17%) Smallworld
14 4 (0.14%) Jupyter
15 3 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 37 (1.28%) MS Visio
2 21 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 18 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (0.52%) Microsoft Excel
5 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.17%) Trello
7 4 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.14%) Fusion 360
7 4 (0.14%) Siemens NX
8 3 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 3 (0.10%) Revit
8 3 (0.10%) SketchUp
9 2 (0.069%) Adobe Captivate
9 2 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
10 1 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 92 (3.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 16 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
4 14 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
5 10 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.31%) Endur
7 8 (0.28%) Primavera
7 8 (0.28%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.24%) Maximo
8 7 (0.24%) SAP CRM
8 7 (0.24%) SAP PS
8 7 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.24%) Workday HCM
9 6 (0.21%) Aladdin
9 6 (0.21%) Magento
9 6 (0.21%) SAP GTS
10 5 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.14%) SAP FSCM
Cloud Services
1 850 (29.45%) Azure
2 736 (25.50%) AWS
3 303 (10.50%) GCP
4 165 (5.72%) SaaS
5 150 (5.20%) Serverless
6 138 (4.78%) Power Platform
7 111 (3.85%) PaaS
8 106 (3.67%) Microsoft 365
9 104 (3.60%) Entra ID
10 93 (3.22%) Amazon S3
11 92 (3.19%) IaaS
12 84 (2.91%) GitHub
13 73 (2.53%) Dynamics 365
14 70 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
15 66 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
16 63 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
17 60 (2.08%) Snowflake
18 52 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
19 47 (1.63%) Cloud Computing
20 43 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 175 (6.06%) Firewall
2 99 (3.43%) Network Security
3 72 (2.49%) WAN
4 66 (2.29%) DNS
5 58 (2.01%) VPN
6 51 (1.77%) LAN
7 44 (1.52%) BGP
8 33 (1.14%) HTTP
8 33 (1.14%) SD-WAN
9 32 (1.11%) OSPF
9 32 (1.11%) TCP/IP
10 31 (1.07%) DHCP
11 30 (1.04%) HTTPS
12 27 (0.94%) SSL
13 15 (0.52%) IPsec
13 15 (0.52%) MPLS
14 14 (0.49%) VoIP
15 13 (0.45%) SAN
15 13 (0.45%) Software-Defined Networking
16 12 (0.42%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (3.81%) Data Warehouse
2 85 (2.95%) Power BI
3 72 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 69 (2.39%) Big Data
5 67 (2.32%) Data Lake
6 64 (2.22%) NoSQL
7 60 (2.08%) Metadata
8 40 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
9 36 (1.25%) BigQuery
10 35 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
11 33 (1.14%) MongoDB
12 30 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
13 29 (1.00%) SAP HANA
14 25 (0.87%) Hadoop
15 22 (0.76%) Relational Database
16 21 (0.73%) GIS
16 21 (0.73%) Oracle Database
17 18 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
17 18 (0.62%) DynamoDB
18 16 (0.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 67 (2.32%) Jenkins
2 58 (2.01%) JIRA
3 37 (1.28%) GitLab
4 29 (1.00%) Git
5 18 (0.62%) CircleCI
6 17 (0.59%) ERwin
7 10 (0.35%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.35%) Maven
8 8 (0.28%) ER Studio
8 8 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
10 5 (0.17%) Storybook
10 5 (0.17%) Terragrunt
11 4 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 4 (0.14%) Liquibase
11 4 (0.14%) MSI
11 4 (0.14%) Selenium
11 4 (0.14%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.10%) JUnit
General
1 795 (27.55%) Social Skills
2 538 (18.64%) Finance
3 333 (11.54%) Public Sector
4 256 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 228 (7.90%) Banking
6 93 (3.22%) Telecoms
7 80 (2.77%) Retail
8 71 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
9 69 (2.39%) Marketing
10 65 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
11 61 (2.11%) Manufacturing
12 55 (1.91%) Legal
13 53 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
14 29 (1.00%) Electronics
14 29 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 28 (0.97%) Law
15 28 (0.97%) Military
16 21 (0.73%) Financial Institution
17 20 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
18 18 (0.62%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (3.81%) Kafka
2 94 (3.26%) REST
3 92 (3.19%) Middleware
4 79 (2.74%) .NET
5 75 (2.60%) Web Services
6 53 (1.84%) OAuth
7 49 (1.70%) SAML
8 48 (1.66%) SOAP
9 38 (1.32%) HTML
10 37 (1.28%) OpenID
10 37 (1.28%) RESTful
11 36 (1.25%) React
12 35 (1.21%) CSS
13 33 (1.14%) JSON
13 33 (1.14%) XML
14 30 (1.04%) LDAP
14 30 (1.04%) Spring Boot
15 28 (0.97%) Spring
16 27 (0.94%) AngularJS
17 24 (0.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 170 (5.89%) Cloud Native
2 107 (3.71%) Data Centre
3 97 (3.36%) Onboarding
4 89 (3.08%) Public Cloud
5 81 (2.81%) Management Information System
6 72 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 60 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
8 59 (2.04%) Product Ownership
9 52 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
10 49 (1.70%) Security Posture
11 42 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 35 (1.21%) Private Cloud
13 33 (1.14%) Data Structures
14 32 (1.11%) CMDB
15 31 (1.07%) Operational Technology
16 28 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
16 28 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
17 27 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
17 27 (0.94%) PKI
18 25 (0.87%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 170 (5.89%) Windows
2 129 (4.47%) Linux
3 46 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.00%) Unix
5 25 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.62%) Apple iOS
7 16 (0.55%) Android
8 13 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.28%) HPUX
9 8 (0.28%) Solaris
9 8 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.17%) VMS
11 4 (0.14%) CentOS
11 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.10%) AIX
12 3 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.069%) Debian
13 2 (0.069%) zOS
14 1 (0.035%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 430 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
2 429 (14.86%) Agile
3 423 (14.66%) Roadmaps
4 387 (13.41%) Migration
5 361 (12.51%) Stakeholder Management
6 325 (11.26%) DevOps
7 300 (10.40%) Enterprise Architecture
8 280 (9.70%) CI/CD
9 274 (9.49%) TOGAF
10 254 (8.80%) Data Modelling
11 242 (8.39%) Technical Leadership
12 232 (8.04%) Microservices
13 208 (7.21%) Cybersecurity
14 204 (7.07%) Analytics
14 204 (7.07%) Data Architecture
15 198 (6.86%) Security Architecture
16 185 (6.41%) Cloud Security
17 183 (6.34%) Identity Access Management
18 178 (6.17%) Data Governance
19 160 (5.54%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 204 (7.07%) Java
2 200 (6.93%) Python
2 200 (6.93%) SQL
3 111 (3.85%) PowerShell
4 89 (3.08%) JavaScript
5 63 (2.18%) C#
6 53 (1.84%) Bicep
7 36 (1.25%) TypeScript
8 25 (0.87%) Bash
9 19 (0.66%) Apex Code
10 18 (0.62%) Scala
11 16 (0.55%) C++
11 16 (0.55%) Kotlin
12 13 (0.45%) Go
12 13 (0.45%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.31%) ABAP
13 9 (0.31%) T-SQL
14 7 (0.24%) C
14 7 (0.24%) COBOL
14 7 (0.24%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 787 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 585 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 159 (5.51%) Degree
4 149 (5.16%) DV Cleared
5 110 (3.81%) AWS Certification
6 105 (3.64%) Azure Certification
7 88 (3.05%) CISSP
8 80 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 74 (2.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 68 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
11 53 (1.84%) TOGAF Certification
12 50 (1.73%) Microsoft Certification
13 46 (1.59%) CISM
14 43 (1.49%) CCNP
15 36 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
16 28 (0.97%) Master's Degree
17 21 (0.73%) CCNA
18 17 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
19 15 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 15 (0.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 136 (4.71%) NIST
2 115 (3.98%) GDPR
3 99 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 75 (2.60%) Data Quality
5 49 (1.70%) QA
6 43 (1.49%) PCI DSS
7 34 (1.18%) NCSC
8 31 (1.07%) GRC
9 25 (0.87%) Accessibility
10 20 (0.69%) HIPAA
11 18 (0.62%) NIST 800
12 17 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 15 (0.52%) SLA
14 14 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 12 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 12 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 9 (0.31%) ISO 20022
17 8 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 8 (0.28%) PMO
17 8 (0.28%) SEPA
System Software
1 165 (5.72%) Active Directory
2 79 (2.74%) Docker
3 76 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.83%) vSphere
6 17 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 11 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.38%) NFS
9 10 (0.35%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 3 (0.10%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 3 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.10%) RACF
11 3 (0.10%) vCloud
11 3 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.069%) Firmware
12 2 (0.069%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.069%) OpenIDM
12 2 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 184 (6.38%) Terraform
2 172 (5.96%) Kubernetes
3 69 (2.39%) Ansible
4 54 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
6 29 (1.00%) Prometheus
7 26 (0.90%) Grafana
8 15 (0.52%) Puppet
9 9 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.24%) Data Guard
10 7 (0.24%) SCCM
11 6 (0.21%) Kibana
12 5 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.14%) CASB
13 4 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.14%) Jamf Pro
14 3 (0.10%) Control-M
14 3 (0.10%) Packer
14 3 (0.10%) SCOM
14 3 (0.10%) WMI
Vendors
1 461 (15.97%) Microsoft
2 218 (7.55%) SAP
3 174 (6.03%) Oracle
4 141 (4.89%) Google
5 125 (4.33%) Salesforce
6 123 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 118 (4.09%) Cisco
8 106 (3.67%) VMware
9 94 (3.26%) Databricks
10 68 (2.36%) Splunk
11 53 (1.84%) Fortinet
12 50 (1.73%) IBM
13 46 (1.59%) MuleSoft
14 39 (1.35%) Palo Alto
15 33 (1.14%) Ariba
16 31 (1.07%) Informatica
17 29 (1.00%) Juniper
18 24 (0.83%) CheckPoint
19 22 (0.76%) CyberArk
20 21 (0.73%) OpenAI