Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £618, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 September 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +10 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,140 2,887 3,735
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.29% 8.80% 9.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.24% 9.67% 10.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,068 1,878 2,249
10th Percentile £481 £463 £480
25th Percentile £525 £525 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £618 £625 £627
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -0.32% -3.54%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £738
90th Percentile £775 £781 £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 189 12 66
10th Percentile £40.00 £58.43 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.19 £61.56
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 50,147 29,864 35,507
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 91.01% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,583 18,880 21,565
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 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,922 1,610 1,584
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.72 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.57 £74.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.27%

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 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 28 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 28 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 5,101 £620 -0.80% 4,149
London +7 2,625 £625 -2.34% 2,396
UK excluding London +7 2,568 £620 +3.33% 1,830
Work from Home +6 1,648 £600 - 1,646
South East +4 720 £625 +4.17% 460
North of England +4 685 £600 - 479
Midlands +3 445 £627 +8.96% 253
North West +8 377 £599 +4.25% 264
South West +4 344 £631 -2.88% 219
West Midlands +4 334 £650 +8.33% 193
Yorkshire +17 244 £581 -3.13% 161
Scotland +19 189 £625 +2.67% 192
East of England +8 155 £622 +11.32% 139
East Midlands +5 106 £600 +20.00% 60
North East +3 67 £625 -13.79% 54
Wales +3 44 £640 +2.40% 32
Channel Islands 0 10 £700 -5.72% 4
Northern Ireland +3 2 - - 67

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 28 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 1,932 (31.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,575 (25.65%) Azure
3 1,450 (23.62%) SC Cleared
4 1,274 (20.75%) AWS
5 1,173 (19.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 965 (15.72%) Roadmaps
7 891 (14.51%) Migration
8 828 (13.49%) Microsoft
9 790 (12.87%) Enterprise Architecture
10 784 (12.77%) Technical Leadership
11 775 (12.62%) AI
12 669 (10.90%) Agile
13 639 (10.41%) DevOps
14 628 (10.23%) Data Modelling
15 627 (10.21%) Data Architecture
16 615 (10.02%) CI/CD
17 611 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 573 (9.33%) Integration Patterns
19 523 (8.52%) Analytics
20 492 (8.01%) Security Architecture
21 488 (7.95%) GCP
22 480 (7.82%) TOGAF
23 456 (7.43%) Architectural Patterns
24 421 (6.86%) Event-Driven
25 401 (6.53%) Data Governance
26 394 (6.42%) Decision-Making
27 391 (6.37%) DV Cleared
28 390 (6.35%) Microservices
29 389 (6.34%) Architecture Governance
30 378 (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 (1.11%) SharePoint
3 61 (0.99%) Confluence
4 45 (0.73%) Apache
5 43 (0.70%) Apache Spark
6 36 (0.59%) 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%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.098%) Appian
12 6 (0.098%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.098%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.098%) IIS
12 6 (0.098%) 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 (0.033%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.033%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.016%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 175 (2.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.52%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.18%) SAP ERP
11 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.11%) Maximo
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
13 7 (0.11%) SAP HCM
14 6 (0.098%) SAP CO
14 6 (0.098%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,575 (25.65%) Azure
2 1,274 (20.75%) AWS
3 488 (7.95%) GCP
4 292 (4.76%) Power Platform
5 233 (3.79%) SaaS
6 214 (3.49%) Entra ID
7 188 (3.06%) Serverless
8 142 (2.31%) GitHub
9 135 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
10 134 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
11 127 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
12 117 (1.91%) Snowflake
13 95 (1.55%) PaaS
14 85 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 74 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 71 (1.16%) OCI
18 68 (1.11%) IaaS
19 63 (1.03%) Azure Data Factory
20 62 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 161 (2.62%) Firewall
2 145 (2.36%) Network Security
3 98 (1.60%) WAN
4 75 (1.22%) VPN
5 71 (1.16%) DNS
6 62 (1.01%) LAN
7 48 (0.78%) BGP
8 47 (0.77%) SD-WAN
9 40 (0.65%) MPLS
10 38 (0.62%) DHCP
11 34 (0.55%) TCP/IP
12 28 (0.46%) 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
17 18 (0.29%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (3.84%) Metadata
2 211 (3.44%) Data Lake
3 196 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
4 175 (2.85%) Power BI
5 66 (1.07%) NoSQL
6 48 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
6 48 (0.78%) BigQuery
6 48 (0.78%) SQL Server
7 47 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
8 42 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
9 39 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
9 39 (0.64%) Delta Lake
10 37 (0.60%) Oracle Database
11 33 (0.54%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
13 29 (0.47%) Big Data
14 25 (0.41%) MongoDB
15 24 (0.39%) Relational Database
16 23 (0.37%) Star Schema
16 23 (0.37%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 85 (1.38%) JIRA
2 77 (1.25%) Git
3 62 (1.01%) Jenkins
4 49 (0.80%) 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 (0.098%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.098%) 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 1,249 (20.34%) Social Skills
2 854 (13.91%) Finance
3 727 (11.84%) Public Sector
4 311 (5.07%) Banking
5 278 (4.53%) Analytical Skills
6 270 (4.40%) Retail
7 176 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
8 159 (2.59%) Manufacturing
9 137 (2.23%) Telecoms
10 136 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
11 109 (1.78%) Legal
12 76 (1.24%) Marketing
13 63 (1.03%) Billing
14 62 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 60 (0.98%) Aerospace
16 52 (0.85%) Military
17 45 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
18 38 (0.62%) Aviation
18 38 (0.62%) Local Government
19 35 (0.57%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (4.87%) REST
2 260 (4.23%) Terraform
3 174 (2.83%) Middleware
4 173 (2.82%) Kafka
5 137 (2.23%) SOAP
6 125 (2.04%) OAuth
7 120 (1.95%) .NET
8 80 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 70 (1.14%) JSON
10 66 (1.07%) OpenID
11 65 (1.06%) SAML
12 63 (1.03%) OAuth2
13 55 (0.90%) LDAP
14 49 (0.80%) RESTful
15 46 (0.75%) PySpark
15 46 (0.75%) XML
16 40 (0.65%) .NET Framework
17 38 (0.62%) SailPoint
18 37 (0.60%) Swagger
19 36 (0.59%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 512 (8.34%) Cloud Native
2 199 (3.24%) Data Centre
3 185 (3.01%) Onboarding
4 171 (2.79%) Management Information System
5 147 (2.39%) Product Ownership
6 146 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 146 (2.38%) Hybrid Cloud
7 140 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
8 139 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.18%) AI Agents
10 102 (1.66%) CMDB
11 92 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.48%) Public Cloud
13 89 (1.45%) Operational Technology
14 79 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
15 67 (1.09%) Private Cloud
16 65 (1.06%) Data Structures
17 60 (0.98%) Security Posture
18 53 (0.86%) Taxonomies
19 50 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 127 (2.07%) Windows
2 100 (1.63%) Linux
3 50 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 23 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.34%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
6 9 (0.15%) Android
6 9 (0.15%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.098%) 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 (0.033%) HPUX
12 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.016%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,173 (19.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 965 (15.72%) Roadmaps
3 891 (14.51%) Migration
4 790 (12.87%) Enterprise Architecture
5 784 (12.77%) Technical Leadership
6 775 (12.62%) AI
7 669 (10.90%) Agile
8 639 (10.41%) DevOps
9 628 (10.23%) Data Modelling
10 627 (10.21%) Data Architecture
11 615 (10.02%) CI/CD
12 611 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 573 (9.33%) Integration Patterns
14 523 (8.52%) Analytics
15 492 (8.01%) Security Architecture
16 480 (7.82%) TOGAF
17 456 (7.43%) Architectural Patterns
18 421 (6.86%) Event-Driven
19 401 (6.53%) Data Governance
20 394 (6.42%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 258 (4.20%) SQL
2 251 (4.09%) Java
3 242 (3.94%) Python
4 124 (2.02%) JavaScript
5 110 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 52 (0.85%) C#
7 50 (0.81%) 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 1,932 (31.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,450 (23.62%) SC Cleared
3 391 (6.37%) DV Cleared
4 183 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 156 (2.54%) Degree
6 150 (2.44%) CISSP
7 121 (1.97%) AWS Certification
8 120 (1.95%) Azure Certification
9 107 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 88 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
11 72 (1.17%) CISM
12 61 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 47 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
14 44 (0.72%) CCNP
15 41 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 38 (0.62%) CCSP
17 26 (0.42%) Master's Degree
18 23 (0.37%) CCIE
18 23 (0.37%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 267 (4.35%) Data Quality
2 224 (3.65%) NIST
3 189 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 157 (2.56%) GDPR
5 131 (2.13%) NCSC
6 83 (1.35%) GRC
7 56 (0.91%) QA
8 40 (0.65%) Accessibility
9 38 (0.62%) 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 (0.33%) IFRS
15 20 (0.33%) JSP 440
15 20 (0.33%) SEPA
16 18 (0.29%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.24%) ISO 19650
18 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 191 (3.11%) Active Directory
2 108 (1.76%) Docker
3 84 (1.37%) 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%) NFS
11 4 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 4 (0.065%) ISA Server
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
1 296 (4.82%) Kubernetes
2 105 (1.71%) Ansible
3 47 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
4 44 (0.72%) 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 (0.20%) WMI
11 10 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 9 (0.15%) CASB
12 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.13%) Istio
13 8 (0.13%) SCCM
14 7 (0.11%) NetBackup
15 6 (0.098%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.098%) Puppet
16 5 (0.081%) EMC VPLEX
16 5 (0.081%) VxRail
Vendors
1 828 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 347 (5.65%) SAP
3 305 (4.97%) ServiceNow
4 296 (4.82%) Oracle
5 281 (4.58%) Databricks
6 206 (3.36%) Google
7 205 (3.34%) Salesforce
8 147 (2.39%) Cisco
9 137 (2.23%) VMware
10 83 (1.35%) CyberArk
11 77 (1.25%) MuleSoft
12 56 (0.91%) IBM
13 51 (0.83%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.81%) Workday
15 48 (0.78%) Foundry
16 40 (0.65%) Informatica
16 40 (0.65%) Splunk
17 38 (0.62%) Pega
17 38 (0.62%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.60%) Adobe