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 1 July 2026.

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

6 months to
1 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 5,704 2,941 4,422
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.10% 9.56% 10.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.01% 10.39% 11.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,751 1,896 2,846
10th Percentile £468 £468 £490
25th Percentile £519 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -0.76%
75th Percentile £720 £719 £738
90th Percentile £790 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £617 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +2.83% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 22 95
10th Percentile £46.34 £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 £76.25 £85.50 £86.32
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £90.00
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 47,495 28,303 40,138
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.03% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,760 18,119 25,771
10th Percentile £325 £288 £283
25th Percentile £415 £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 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,210 1,268 2,866
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.77 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £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 1 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 1 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 1 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 4,831 £616 -1.44% 1,173
UK excluding London +9 2,517 £617 +2.83% 785
London +5 2,363 £625 -3.85% 568
Work from Home +4 1,549 £600 - 571
North of England +5 725 £600 - 214
South East +5 708 £625 +4.17% 207
Midlands +3 436 £613 +6.52% 103
North West +5 388 £610 +1.67% 134
West Midlands +1 312 £625 +4.17% 82
South West +2 279 £635 +3.67% 99
Yorkshire +10 274 £575 -4.17% 45
East of England +25 197 £600 - 50
Scotland +12 166 £650 +4.00% 55
East Midlands +6 118 £575 +15.00% 21
North East +10 70 £575 -8.00% 38
Wales +3 34 £620 +29.17% 52
Northern Ireland +5 7 £475 -32.14% 18
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 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 1,702 (29.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,417 (24.84%) Azure
3 1,276 (22.37%) SC Cleared
4 1,245 (21.83%) AWS
5 806 (14.13%) Roadmaps
6 793 (13.90%) Migration
7 750 (13.15%) Microsoft
8 718 (12.59%) Stakeholder Management
9 670 (11.75%) Agile
10 638 (11.19%) DevOps
11 623 (10.92%) AI
12 604 (10.59%) CI/CD
13 592 (10.38%) Enterprise Architecture
14 548 (9.61%) Data Modelling
14 548 (9.61%) Technical Leadership
15 544 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 514 (9.01%) Integration Patterns
17 503 (8.82%) Data Architecture
18 473 (8.29%) Architectural Patterns
19 467 (8.19%) Analytics
20 454 (7.96%) TOGAF
21 430 (7.54%) Microservices
22 428 (7.50%) GCP
23 380 (6.66%) Problem-Solving
24 362 (6.35%) Architectural Design
24 362 (6.35%) Security Architecture
25 358 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
26 343 (6.01%) Event-Driven
27 341 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
28 331 (5.80%) 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
1 115 (2.02%) SharePoint
2 86 (1.51%) Confluence
3 53 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (0.84%) SAS
5 33 (0.58%) Apache
6 32 (0.56%) Apache Spark
7 26 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
8 20 (0.35%) Appian
8 20 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
9 18 (0.32%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.18%) Anypoint
12 10 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.16%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) Documentum
15 6 (0.11%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 21 (0.37%) MS Visio
2 20 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.21%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 10 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.053%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.053%) Windchill
8 1 (0.018%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.018%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.018%) Notion
Business Applications
1 150 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.65%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.32%) SAP ERP
6 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Retail
9 10 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
11 7 (0.12%) SAP MDG
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.11%) Maximo
12 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 6 (0.11%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,417 (24.84%) Azure
2 1,245 (21.83%) AWS
3 428 (7.50%) GCP
4 276 (4.84%) Power Platform
5 205 (3.59%) Serverless
6 201 (3.52%) SaaS
7 197 (3.45%) Entra ID
8 138 (2.42%) GitHub
8 138 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
9 125 (2.19%) PaaS
10 114 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
11 113 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
12 99 (1.74%) Snowflake
13 98 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
14 94 (1.65%) IaaS
15 87 (1.53%) Amazon S3
16 69 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
17 68 (1.19%) OpenShift
18 67 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 65 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 229 (4.01%) Firewall
2 197 (3.45%) Network Security
3 123 (2.16%) DNS
3 123 (2.16%) WAN
4 122 (2.14%) VPN
5 85 (1.49%) LAN
6 68 (1.19%) SD-WAN
7 48 (0.84%) DHCP
8 47 (0.82%) TCP/IP
9 45 (0.79%) BGP
10 40 (0.70%) VLAN
11 36 (0.63%) MPLS
12 34 (0.60%) OSPF
13 33 (0.58%) Wireless
14 29 (0.51%) SAN
15 27 (0.47%) NAS
16 26 (0.46%) IPsec
17 25 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.42%) BIG-IP
19 22 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (3.37%) Power BI
2 167 (2.93%) Metadata
3 162 (2.84%) Data Lake
4 155 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
5 72 (1.26%) NoSQL
6 65 (1.14%) SQL Server
7 63 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
8 46 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 46 (0.81%) Big Data
9 37 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
9 37 (0.65%) BigQuery
10 36 (0.63%) Oracle Database
11 29 (0.51%) Delta Lake
11 29 (0.51%) Tableau
12 28 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
13 27 (0.47%) Relational Database
14 24 (0.42%) MongoDB
15 22 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
16 21 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
16 21 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 111 (1.95%) JIRA
2 85 (1.49%) Jenkins
3 70 (1.23%) Git
4 37 (0.65%) GitLab
5 25 (0.44%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 10 (0.18%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.14%) MLflow
9 8 (0.14%) Postman
10 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
11 6 (0.11%) Hudson
11 6 (0.11%) PowerDesigner
11 6 (0.11%) Selenium
11 6 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.088%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.088%) JMeter
12 5 (0.088%) Maven
12 5 (0.088%) Oracle Forms
13 4 (0.070%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,068 (18.72%) Social Skills
2 893 (15.66%) Finance
3 649 (11.38%) Public Sector
4 326 (5.72%) Banking
5 301 (5.28%) Analytical Skills
6 216 (3.79%) Retail
7 157 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
8 134 (2.35%) Legal
9 133 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
10 104 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 100 (1.75%) Telecoms
12 53 (0.93%) Billing
12 53 (0.93%) Law
12 53 (0.93%) Marketing
12 53 (0.93%) Military
13 51 (0.89%) Financial Institution
14 42 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
15 38 (0.67%) Aerospace
16 36 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 34 (0.60%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (4.72%) REST
2 208 (3.65%) Middleware
3 134 (2.35%) .NET
4 124 (2.17%) SOAP
5 117 (2.05%) Kafka
6 97 (1.70%) OAuth
7 92 (1.61%) OpenID
8 75 (1.31%) SAML
9 68 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
10 60 (1.05%) LDAP
11 58 (1.02%) OAuth2
12 55 (0.96%) React
13 50 (0.88%) RESTful
14 49 (0.86%) SailPoint
15 46 (0.81%) JSON
16 38 (0.67%) Web Services
17 37 (0.65%) AngularJS
18 36 (0.63%) Node.js
19 33 (0.58%) .NET Framework
19 33 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 485 (8.50%) Cloud Native
2 203 (3.56%) Data Centre
3 166 (2.91%) Management Information System
4 155 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 148 (2.59%) Product Ownership
6 137 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 126 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 92 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 92 (1.61%) Public Cloud
11 87 (1.53%) Operational Technology
12 84 (1.47%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.47%) CMDB
13 71 (1.24%) Security Posture
14 53 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
15 48 (0.84%) Data Structures
16 47 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
17 46 (0.81%) NHS
18 45 (0.79%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 157 (2.75%) Windows
2 96 (1.68%) Linux
3 46 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 36 (0.63%) Android
5 35 (0.61%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.44%) Unix
7 17 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (0.18%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.088%) AIX
12 5 (0.088%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (0.088%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.088%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.088%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.088%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.070%) Solaris
14 2 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 806 (14.13%) Roadmaps
2 793 (13.90%) Migration
3 718 (12.59%) Stakeholder Management
4 670 (11.75%) Agile
5 638 (11.19%) DevOps
6 623 (10.92%) AI
7 604 (10.59%) CI/CD
8 592 (10.38%) Enterprise Architecture
9 548 (9.61%) Data Modelling
9 548 (9.61%) Technical Leadership
10 544 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 514 (9.01%) Integration Patterns
12 503 (8.82%) Data Architecture
13 473 (8.29%) Architectural Patterns
14 467 (8.19%) Analytics
15 454 (7.96%) TOGAF
16 430 (7.54%) Microservices
17 380 (6.66%) Problem-Solving
18 362 (6.35%) Architectural Design
18 362 (6.35%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 319 (5.59%) Python
2 278 (4.87%) SQL
3 249 (4.37%) Java
4 125 (2.19%) PowerShell
5 108 (1.89%) JavaScript
6 66 (1.16%) C#
7 60 (1.05%) Bicep
8 46 (0.81%) Bash
9 45 (0.79%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.47%) Apex Code
11 22 (0.39%) Ruby
12 13 (0.23%) Scala
13 12 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.18%) ABAP
14 10 (0.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 9 (0.16%) C++
15 9 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.16%) R
15 9 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,702 (29.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,276 (22.37%) SC Cleared
3 311 (5.45%) DV Cleared
4 202 (3.54%) Degree
5 126 (2.21%) CISSP
6 120 (2.10%) AWS Certification
6 120 (2.10%) Azure Certification
7 113 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 113 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
8 83 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 79 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
10 64 (1.12%) CISM
11 56 (0.98%) CCNP
12 50 (0.88%) Master's Degree
13 45 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 44 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
15 41 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 30 (0.53%) CCSP
17 23 (0.40%) CCIE
18 22 (0.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (3.49%) NIST
2 183 (3.21%) GDPR
3 175 (3.07%) Data Quality
4 152 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 127 (2.23%) NCSC
6 67 (1.17%) QA
7 44 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 42 (0.74%) GRC
9 37 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 27 (0.47%) ISO 20022
10 27 (0.47%) NIST 800
11 25 (0.44%) SEPA
12 24 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 19 (0.33%) HL7
13 19 (0.33%) IFRS
14 18 (0.32%) COBIT
14 18 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
15 14 (0.25%) HIPAA
16 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
17 10 (0.18%) JSP 440
System Software
1 172 (3.02%) Active Directory
2 109 (1.91%) Docker
3 92 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.07%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 25 (0.44%) vSphere
7 22 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) Varnish
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
10 9 (0.16%) Squid
10 9 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.14%) NFS
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
1 284 (4.98%) Terraform
2 268 (4.70%) Kubernetes
3 113 (1.98%) Ansible
4 54 (0.95%) Grafana
5 52 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
6 46 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 28 (0.49%) FortiGate
9 24 (0.42%) vCenter Server
10 22 (0.39%) Argo
11 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.25%) SCCM
13 12 (0.21%) Istio
14 8 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 7 (0.12%) Consul
15 7 (0.12%) HAProxy
15 7 (0.12%) Puppet
16 6 (0.11%) CASB
16 6 (0.11%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 750 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 331 (5.80%) SAP
3 302 (5.29%) ServiceNow
4 264 (4.63%) Oracle
5 238 (4.17%) Databricks
6 185 (3.24%) Salesforce
7 169 (2.96%) VMware
8 141 (2.47%) Cisco
9 138 (2.42%) Google
10 69 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 68 (1.19%) CyberArk
12 64 (1.12%) Splunk
13 58 (1.02%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.88%) Red Hat
15 49 (0.86%) IBM
16 45 (0.79%) OpenAI
17 43 (0.75%) Workday
18 41 (0.72%) Ariba
19 40 (0.70%) Foundry
20 39 (0.68%) F5