Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 January 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 17 15
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 3,467 3,245 4,126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.35% 9.88% 9.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 10.25% 10.66% 10.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,352 1,946 2,712
10th Percentile £461 £480 £500
25th Percentile £519 £550 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -
75th Percentile £720 £734 £725
90th Percentile £788 £799 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £625 £649
% change year-on-year -4.00% -3.70% -0.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 31 37
10th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £59.65
25th Percentile £66.25 £63.75 £72.00
Median hourly rate £83.82 £72.50 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year +15.61% -5.27% +9.33%
75th Percentile £94.52 £82.25 £84.65
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.50 £94.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.82 £70.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year +19.74% -10.26% +11.43%

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 33,832 30,446 40,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.22% 92.70% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,457 18,648 27,012
10th Percentile £300 £291 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,952 945 1,577
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.51 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.22 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.11 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.66% -27.78% +41.02%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £46.09
% change year-on-year -20.81% -31.09% +78.99%

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 2 January 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 2 January 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 2 January 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 -2 3,007 £625 - 859
UK excluding London -3 1,645 £600 -4.00% 609
London -1 1,371 £650 - 354
Work from Home -3 1,046 £625 - 421
South East +7 545 £600 -4.00% 224
North of England -10 387 £575 -4.17% 141
Midlands -4 271 £574 -4.38% 80
South West +1 244 £706 +12.96% 54
North West -5 234 £575 -4.17% 85
West Midlands -8 203 £585 -3.33% 50
Yorkshire -13 142 £588 -5.24% 43
East of England 0 100 £551 -11.80% 73
Scotland -6 97 £626 +0.08% 36
East Midlands -2 68 £496 -13.74% 29
Wales -2 25 £625 +0.40% 19
North East -15 12 £625 +4.23% 14
Northern Ireland -13 5 £500 -16.67% 2
Channel Islands - 2 £625 -

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 January 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 1,096 (31.61%) Security Cleared
2 959 (27.66%) Azure
3 780 (22.50%) SC Cleared
4 750 (21.63%) AWS
5 526 (15.17%) Roadmaps
6 514 (14.83%) Microsoft
7 467 (13.47%) Agile
8 456 (13.15%) Stakeholder Management
9 422 (12.17%) Migration
10 386 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 380 (10.96%) DevOps
12 379 (10.93%) Enterprise Architecture
13 370 (10.67%) TOGAF
14 368 (10.61%) Data Modelling
15 343 (9.89%) Technical Leadership
16 340 (9.81%) CI/CD
17 338 (9.75%) Problem-Solving
18 278 (8.02%) AI
19 275 (7.93%) Python
20 273 (7.87%) Analytics
20 273 (7.87%) GCP
21 258 (7.44%) Data Architecture
22 252 (7.27%) Terraform
23 251 (7.24%) Microservices
24 244 (7.04%) Integration Patterns
25 230 (6.63%) DV Cleared
26 225 (6.49%) Mentoring
27 211 (6.09%) Architectural Design
28 207 (5.97%) Data Governance
29 205 (5.91%) ITIL

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
1 100 (2.88%) Confluence
2 71 (2.05%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.72%) SAS
5 20 (0.58%) OpenStack
6 19 (0.55%) CMS
7 18 (0.52%) ArcGIS
8 15 (0.43%) Apache Spark
9 14 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
10 13 (0.37%) Apache
10 13 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.35%) Anypoint
12 9 (0.26%) Smallworld
13 7 (0.20%) GeoServer
14 5 (0.14%) Ethereum
14 5 (0.14%) Hyperledger
14 5 (0.14%) Mule
14 5 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 4 (0.12%) Oracle Coherence
15 4 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 45 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 29 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
4 26 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 11 (0.32%) Siemens NX
7 3 (0.087%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.029%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.029%) FrameMaker
8 1 (0.029%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.029%) Revit
8 1 (0.029%) Trello
Business Applications
1 93 (2.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (1.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 34 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.63%) Workday HCM
5 18 (0.52%) Maximo
6 17 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
7 16 (0.46%) SAP PM
8 14 (0.40%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.37%) SAP CO
9 13 (0.37%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.35%) SAP FI
11 11 (0.32%) SAP FI/CO
12 10 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
14 8 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
14 8 (0.23%) SAP EWM
14 8 (0.23%) SAP PP
15 7 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
15 7 (0.20%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 959 (27.66%) Azure
2 750 (21.63%) AWS
3 273 (7.87%) GCP
4 141 (4.07%) Power Platform
5 137 (3.95%) SaaS
6 131 (3.78%) Serverless
7 114 (3.29%) Microsoft 365
8 108 (3.12%) Entra ID
9 94 (2.71%) GitHub
10 84 (2.42%) AWS Lambda
11 80 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
12 76 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
12 76 (2.19%) IaaS
13 69 (1.99%) Amazon S3
14 68 (1.96%) Microsoft Purview
15 62 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
16 61 (1.76%) PaaS
17 59 (1.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 58 (1.67%) Azure Data Factory
19 51 (1.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 202 (5.83%) Firewall
2 124 (3.58%) WAN
3 105 (3.03%) Network Security
4 92 (2.65%) LAN
5 91 (2.62%) VPN
6 73 (2.11%) DNS
7 72 (2.08%) SD-WAN
8 38 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
9 35 (1.01%) BGP
10 27 (0.78%) MPLS
11 24 (0.69%) Internet
12 22 (0.63%) DHCP
12 22 (0.63%) SAN
12 22 (0.63%) VSAN
13 20 (0.58%) SSL
14 18 (0.52%) Cisco Nexus
14 18 (0.52%) OSPF
15 14 (0.40%) IPsec
15 14 (0.40%) Kerberos
15 14 (0.40%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
2 98 (2.83%) Power BI
3 90 (2.60%) Metadata
4 82 (2.37%) Data Lake
5 67 (1.93%) SQL Server
6 62 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
7 43 (1.24%) Tableau
8 42 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
9 36 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 34 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
10 34 (0.98%) DynamoDB
11 32 (0.92%) Oracle Database
12 28 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
13 25 (0.72%) Delta Lake
14 24 (0.69%) Relational Database
15 23 (0.66%) GIS
16 21 (0.61%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (0.61%) Redis
17 20 (0.58%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 118 (3.40%) JIRA
2 74 (2.13%) Jenkins
3 45 (1.30%) Git
4 40 (1.15%) GitLab
5 20 (0.58%) ERwin
6 14 (0.40%) Oracle Forms
7 12 (0.35%) CircleCI
8 9 (0.26%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.26%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 6 (0.17%) Maven
10 5 (0.14%) Gradle
10 5 (0.14%) MLflow
10 5 (0.14%) MSI
10 5 (0.14%) SonarLint
10 5 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (0.12%) Postman
11 4 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
11 4 (0.12%) Terragrunt
12 3 (0.087%) PowerDesigner
General
1 909 (26.22%) Social Skills
2 541 (15.60%) Finance
3 437 (12.60%) Public Sector
4 269 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
5 186 (5.36%) Banking
6 93 (2.68%) Telecoms
7 90 (2.60%) Legal
8 88 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 80 (2.31%) Retail
10 74 (2.13%) Marketing
11 72 (2.08%) Military
11 72 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
12 71 (2.05%) Manufacturing
13 68 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
14 45 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 33 (0.95%) Financial Institution
16 30 (0.87%) Billing
17 26 (0.75%) Back Office
18 23 (0.66%) Aerospace
19 20 (0.58%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (5.05%) REST
2 109 (3.14%) SOAP
3 100 (2.88%) Middleware
4 77 (2.22%) .NET
5 60 (1.73%) Kafka
6 58 (1.67%) JSON
7 53 (1.53%) OAuth
8 49 (1.41%) LDAP
9 45 (1.30%) RESTful
10 43 (1.24%) SAML
11 34 (0.98%) React
12 33 (0.95%) Lightning Web Components
13 32 (0.92%) AngularJS
14 31 (0.89%) Node.js
14 31 (0.89%) OpenID
14 31 (0.89%) PySpark
15 30 (0.87%) OAuth2
16 28 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
16 28 (0.81%) Spring Boot
17 27 (0.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 255 (7.36%) Cloud Native
2 144 (4.15%) Product Ownership
3 120 (3.46%) Legacy Systems
4 115 (3.32%) Data Centre
5 88 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 84 (2.42%) PKI
7 81 (2.34%) Hybrid Cloud
8 77 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
9 63 (1.82%) Security Posture
10 58 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
11 56 (1.62%) Operational Technology
12 55 (1.59%) Management Information System
13 49 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 41 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
14 41 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
15 38 (1.10%) CMDB
16 35 (1.01%) NHS
17 34 (0.98%) Data Structures
17 34 (0.98%) SCADA
18 31 (0.89%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 150 (4.33%) Windows
2 103 (2.97%) Linux
3 45 (1.30%) Windows Server
4 33 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
6 14 (0.40%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.37%) Windows 7
8 11 (0.32%) Unix
8 11 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.29%) VMS
10 6 (0.17%) Android
10 6 (0.17%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.087%) CentOS
11 3 (0.087%) Solaris
11 3 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.087%) zOS
12 1 (0.029%) MVS
12 1 (0.029%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 526 (15.17%) Roadmaps
2 467 (13.47%) Agile
3 456 (13.15%) Stakeholder Management
4 422 (12.17%) Migration
5 386 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 380 (10.96%) DevOps
7 379 (10.93%) Enterprise Architecture
8 370 (10.67%) TOGAF
9 368 (10.61%) Data Modelling
10 343 (9.89%) Technical Leadership
11 340 (9.81%) CI/CD
12 338 (9.75%) Problem-Solving
13 278 (8.02%) AI
14 273 (7.87%) Analytics
15 258 (7.44%) Data Architecture
16 251 (7.24%) Microservices
17 244 (7.04%) Integration Patterns
18 225 (6.49%) Mentoring
19 211 (6.09%) Architectural Design
20 207 (5.97%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 275 (7.93%) Python
2 168 (4.85%) SQL
3 153 (4.41%) PowerShell
4 133 (3.84%) Java
5 60 (1.73%) JavaScript
6 50 (1.44%) TypeScript
7 47 (1.36%) C#
8 30 (0.87%) Bash
9 29 (0.84%) Apex Code
9 29 (0.84%) Bicep
10 18 (0.52%) PL/SQL
11 11 (0.32%) R
12 10 (0.29%) Ruby
13 9 (0.26%) ABAP
13 9 (0.26%) T-SQL
14 8 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
15 7 (0.20%) Korn
16 6 (0.17%) C
16 6 (0.17%) C++
17 5 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,096 (31.61%) Security Cleared
2 780 (22.50%) SC Cleared
3 230 (6.63%) DV Cleared
4 186 (5.36%) Degree
5 113 (3.26%) CISSP
6 103 (2.97%) AWS Certification
7 100 (2.88%) Azure Certification
8 99 (2.86%) TOGAF Certification
9 68 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 53 (1.53%) CISM
13 51 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
14 47 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 47 (1.36%) Master's Degree
15 37 (1.07%) CCNP
16 31 (0.89%) CCIE
17 25 (0.72%) ISEB
17 25 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
18 20 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 168 (4.85%) GDPR
2 135 (3.89%) NIST
3 129 (3.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 106 (3.06%) Data Quality
5 67 (1.93%) NCSC
6 60 (1.73%) QA
7 48 (1.38%) PCI DSS
8 31 (0.89%) COBIT
9 30 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 27 (0.78%) Accessibility
11 23 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
11 23 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 21 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 21 (0.61%) GRC
12 21 (0.61%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 14 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 13 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 12 (0.35%) SLA
17 11 (0.32%) MiFID
System Software
1 148 (4.27%) Active Directory
2 120 (3.46%) Docker
3 95 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (1.21%) VMware NSX
5 34 (0.98%) vSphere
6 20 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
9 13 (0.37%) Hyper-V
10 9 (0.26%) NFS
11 5 (0.14%) Lustre
11 5 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.12%) Dovecot
12 4 (0.12%) Postfix
13 3 (0.087%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.087%) Ceph
13 3 (0.087%) Firmware
13 3 (0.087%) GPFS
13 3 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 3 (0.087%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 252 (7.27%) Terraform
2 179 (5.16%) Kubernetes
3 105 (3.03%) Ansible
4 50 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.95%) OPNET
6 25 (0.72%) Prometheus
7 24 (0.69%) Grafana
8 22 (0.63%) vCenter Server
9 21 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 18 (0.52%) SCCM
11 15 (0.43%) WMI
12 14 (0.40%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 10 (0.29%) Argo
15 6 (0.17%) Kibana
16 4 (0.12%) Istio
16 4 (0.12%) Oracle RMAN
17 3 (0.087%) Data Guard
17 3 (0.087%) Puppet
17 3 (0.087%) Rancher
Vendors
1 514 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 203 (5.86%) SAP
3 194 (5.60%) ServiceNow
4 185 (5.34%) Salesforce
5 172 (4.96%) Oracle
6 152 (4.38%) VMware
7 125 (3.61%) Cisco
8 108 (3.12%) Databricks
9 80 (2.31%) Google
10 77 (2.22%) CyberArk
11 59 (1.70%) Palo Alto
12 52 (1.50%) MuleSoft
13 48 (1.38%) Remedy
14 47 (1.36%) Splunk
14 47 (1.36%) Workday
15 46 (1.33%) Centrify
15 46 (1.33%) Fortinet
16 40 (1.15%) Atlassian
17 39 (1.12%) IBM
18 38 (1.10%) Pega