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 13 October 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 20 13
Rank change year-on-year +9 -7 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,134 2,921 3,686
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.17% 8.87% 9.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.14% 9.76% 10.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,045 1,920 2,170
10th Percentile £481 £460 £475
25th Percentile £531 £525 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £625
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £738
90th Percentile £780 £788 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £622 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +3.67% -4.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 16 59
10th Percentile £40.00 £59.68 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £65.31 £61.88
Median hourly rate £69.50 £77.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.61% +11.07% -5.30%
75th Percentile £82.50 £94.06 £82.79
90th Percentile £96.00 £97.50 £90.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.33 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -5.75% +3.57% -7.49%

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 50,528 29,913 34,877
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.00% 90.84% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,639 18,895 21,041
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% -0.47%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,102 1,645 1,439
10th Percentile £14.36 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.43 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.90 £68.15 £73.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 5,083 £622 -0.48% 3,875
London +7 2,607 £625 -3.85% 2,233
UK excluding London +7 2,565 £622 +3.67% 1,767
Work from Home +6 1,662 £600 - 1,563
South East 0 731 £625 +4.17% 455
North of England +3 660 £600 - 449
Midlands +8 454 £628 +9.26% 241
South West +6 349 £625 -3.85% 185
North West -1 346 £598 +4.00% 231
West Midlands +7 336 £650 +8.33% 192
Yorkshire +9 241 £600 - 159
Scotland +21 189 £625 +4.38% 209
East of England +5 148 £616 +11.04% 138
East Midlands +6 113 £600 +20.00% 49
North East +2 76 £625 -15.25% 59
Wales +4 43 £633 +1.20% 47
Channel Islands +1 12 £700 -5.72%
Northern Ireland +5 3 - - 50

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 13 October 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 1,954 (31.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,589 (25.90%) Azure
3 1,473 (24.01%) SC Cleared
4 1,279 (20.85%) AWS
5 1,224 (19.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,022 (16.66%) Roadmaps
7 898 (14.64%) Migration
8 842 (13.73%) Microsoft
9 824 (13.43%) Enterprise Architecture
10 790 (12.88%) AI
11 778 (12.68%) Technical Leadership
12 654 (10.66%) Agile
13 646 (10.53%) DevOps
14 633 (10.32%) Data Architecture
15 622 (10.14%) CI/CD
16 621 (10.12%) Data Modelling
17 612 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 560 (9.13%) Integration Patterns
19 518 (8.44%) Analytics
20 498 (8.12%) Security Architecture
21 494 (8.05%) GCP
22 487 (7.94%) TOGAF
23 476 (7.76%) Architectural Patterns
24 430 (7.01%) Event-Driven
25 416 (6.78%) Architecture Governance
26 414 (6.75%) Data Governance
27 397 (6.47%) Decision-Making
28 392 (6.39%) DV Cleared
29 391 (6.37%) Cybersecurity
30 390 (6.36%) Microservices

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 78 (1.27%) SAS
2 65 (1.06%) SharePoint
3 60 (0.98%) Confluence
4 46 (0.75%) Apache
5 45 (0.73%) Apache Spark
6 35 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
6 35 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 25 (0.41%) CMS
8 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
9 16 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
10 7 (0.11%) Documentum
10 7 (0.11%) IIS
10 7 (0.11%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.098%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.098%) Headless CMS
11 6 (0.098%) JBoss
12 5 (0.082%) Appian
12 5 (0.082%) nginx
12 5 (0.082%) SAP EP
13 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 27 (0.44%) MS Visio
2 20 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.15%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Revit
7 5 (0.082%) Navisworks
7 5 (0.082%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.049%) Gliffy
9 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.016%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 195 (3.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.29%) SAP MM
5 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
8 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
8 14 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.20%) SAP CO
10 12 (0.20%) SAP FI
11 11 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
12 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
12 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
13 8 (0.13%) Maximo
13 8 (0.13%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,589 (25.90%) Azure
2 1,279 (20.85%) AWS
3 494 (8.05%) GCP
4 294 (4.79%) Power Platform
5 237 (3.86%) SaaS
6 224 (3.65%) Entra ID
7 188 (3.06%) Serverless
8 156 (2.54%) GitHub
9 144 (2.35%) Microsoft 365
10 141 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
11 131 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
12 112 (1.83%) Snowflake
13 93 (1.52%) PaaS
14 85 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
15 81 (1.32%) Amazon S3
16 76 (1.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 71 (1.16%) OCI
18 66 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
18 66 (1.08%) IaaS
19 64 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 159 (2.59%) Firewall
2 150 (2.45%) Network Security
3 99 (1.61%) WAN
4 78 (1.27%) VPN
5 72 (1.17%) DNS
6 60 (0.98%) LAN
7 49 (0.80%) SD-WAN
8 48 (0.78%) BGP
9 40 (0.65%) MPLS
10 34 (0.55%) DHCP
11 32 (0.52%) TCP/IP
12 28 (0.46%) VXLAN
13 25 (0.41%) VLAN
14 23 (0.37%) NX-OS
15 20 (0.33%) SAN
15 20 (0.33%) Wireless
16 19 (0.31%) Internet
16 19 (0.31%) NGFW
16 19 (0.31%) VoIP
17 18 (0.29%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (4.04%) Metadata
2 206 (3.36%) Data Lake
3 202 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
4 172 (2.80%) Power BI
5 64 (1.04%) NoSQL
6 51 (0.83%) SQL Server
7 49 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
8 48 (0.78%) BigQuery
9 47 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
10 46 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
11 42 (0.68%) Oracle Database
12 40 (0.65%) Delta Lake
13 35 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (0.52%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
15 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
16 28 (0.46%) Big Data
17 24 (0.39%) MongoDB
17 24 (0.39%) Relational Database
17 24 (0.39%) SAP HANA
18 23 (0.37%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 88 (1.43%) JIRA
2 76 (1.24%) Git
3 66 (1.08%) Jenkins
4 49 (0.80%) GitLab
5 14 (0.23%) Claude Code
5 14 (0.23%) ERwin
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%) Storybook
11 5 (0.082%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.082%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.082%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (0.082%) Selenium
12 4 (0.065%) JMeter
12 4 (0.065%) Maven
12 4 (0.065%) MLflow
12 4 (0.065%) SonarQube
General
1 1,262 (20.57%) Social Skills
2 887 (14.46%) Finance
3 742 (12.10%) Public Sector
4 308 (5.02%) Banking
5 279 (4.55%) Analytical Skills
6 247 (4.03%) Retail
7 175 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
8 168 (2.74%) Manufacturing
9 144 (2.35%) Telecoms
10 136 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
11 110 (1.79%) Legal
12 77 (1.26%) Marketing
13 70 (1.14%) Aerospace
14 64 (1.04%) Billing
15 58 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 51 (0.83%) Military
17 46 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 41 (0.67%) Local Government
18 41 (0.67%) Police
19 36 (0.59%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (4.97%) REST
2 274 (4.47%) Terraform
3 181 (2.95%) Kafka
4 163 (2.66%) Middleware
5 133 (2.17%) SOAP
6 127 (2.07%) OAuth
7 115 (1.87%) .NET
8 80 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 71 (1.16%) OpenID
10 66 (1.08%) JSON
10 66 (1.08%) SAML
11 63 (1.03%) OAuth2
12 55 (0.90%) LDAP
13 48 (0.78%) RESTful
14 44 (0.72%) PySpark
14 44 (0.72%) XML
15 43 (0.70%) JWT
16 40 (0.65%) Swagger
17 39 (0.64%) SAP Fiori
18 37 (0.60%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 516 (8.41%) Cloud Native
2 193 (3.15%) Data Centre
3 189 (3.08%) Onboarding
4 169 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 153 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
6 152 (2.48%) Product Ownership
7 145 (2.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
8 143 (2.33%) AI Agents
9 140 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
10 97 (1.58%) Operational Technology
11 96 (1.57%) CMDB
11 96 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.48%) Public Cloud
13 76 (1.24%) Enterprise Cloud
14 70 (1.14%) Private Cloud
15 64 (1.04%) Data Structures
16 58 (0.95%) Taxonomies
17 57 (0.93%) Security Posture
18 51 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 132 (2.15%) Windows
2 103 (1.68%) Linux
3 49 (0.80%) Windows Server
4 23 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (0.37%) Unix
5 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
6 7 (0.11%) AIX
6 7 (0.11%) Android
6 7 (0.11%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.098%) zOS
8 4 (0.065%) Alpine Linux
8 4 (0.065%) VMS
9 3 (0.049%) CentOS
9 3 (0.049%) Solaris
9 3 (0.049%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.033%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.033%) HPUX
10 2 (0.033%) macOS
10 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
11 1 (0.016%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,224 (19.95%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,022 (16.66%) Roadmaps
3 898 (14.64%) Migration
4 824 (13.43%) Enterprise Architecture
5 790 (12.88%) AI
6 778 (12.68%) Technical Leadership
7 654 (10.66%) Agile
8 646 (10.53%) DevOps
9 633 (10.32%) Data Architecture
10 622 (10.14%) CI/CD
11 621 (10.12%) Data Modelling
12 612 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 560 (9.13%) Integration Patterns
14 518 (8.44%) Analytics
15 498 (8.12%) Security Architecture
16 487 (7.94%) TOGAF
17 476 (7.76%) Architectural Patterns
18 430 (7.01%) Event-Driven
19 416 (6.78%) Architecture Governance
20 414 (6.75%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 256 (4.17%) SQL
2 249 (4.06%) Java
3 235 (3.83%) Python
4 115 (1.87%) JavaScript
5 111 (1.81%) PowerShell
6 57 (0.93%) TypeScript
7 53 (0.86%) Bicep
7 53 (0.86%) C#
8 44 (0.72%) Bash
9 30 (0.49%) Apex Code
10 27 (0.44%) ABAP
11 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 14 (0.23%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.18%) Groovy
13 11 (0.18%) R
14 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.15%) C++
15 9 (0.15%) Rust
16 8 (0.13%) Go
16 8 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,954 (31.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,473 (24.01%) SC Cleared
3 392 (6.39%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (2.66%) Degree
6 152 (2.48%) CISSP
7 125 (2.04%) AWS Certification
8 123 (2.01%) Azure Certification
9 103 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
10 95 (1.55%) TOGAF Certification
11 73 (1.19%) CISM
12 65 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
13 49 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
14 47 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 40 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 40 (0.65%) CCNP
16 38 (0.62%) CCSP
17 29 (0.47%) Master's Degree
18 24 (0.39%) CCIE
19 22 (0.36%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 278 (4.53%) Data Quality
2 220 (3.59%) NIST
3 197 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 154 (2.51%) GDPR
5 138 (2.25%) NCSC
6 79 (1.29%) GRC
7 49 (0.80%) QA
8 45 (0.73%) Accessibility
9 43 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 25 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 24 (0.39%) SLA
14 23 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
15 20 (0.33%) SEPA
16 19 (0.31%) JSP 440
17 18 (0.29%) IFRS
17 18 (0.29%) ISO 20022
18 15 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 14 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 185 (3.02%) Active Directory
2 114 (1.86%) Docker
3 87 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.68%) VMware NSX
5 30 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 20 (0.33%) vSphere
7 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.28%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.082%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.065%) Ceph
11 4 (0.065%) KVM
12 3 (0.049%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.049%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.033%) IAG
13 2 (0.033%) NFS
13 2 (0.033%) Postfix
13 2 (0.033%) SRDF
13 2 (0.033%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 306 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 100 (1.63%) Ansible
3 50 (0.82%) Grafana
4 48 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 36 (0.59%) Prometheus
6 34 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.24%) Argo
8 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (0.20%) WMI
11 11 (0.18%) CASB
11 11 (0.18%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.13%) Istio
12 8 (0.13%) SCCM
13 6 (0.098%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.098%) Puppet
13 6 (0.098%) vCenter Server
14 5 (0.082%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.082%) VxRail
15 4 (0.065%) Cisco CUCM
Vendors
1 842 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 363 (5.92%) SAP
3 302 (4.92%) Oracle
4 283 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 275 (4.48%) Databricks
6 216 (3.52%) Google
7 193 (3.15%) Salesforce
8 149 (2.43%) Cisco
9 136 (2.22%) VMware
10 82 (1.34%) CyberArk
11 76 (1.24%) MuleSoft
12 59 (0.96%) IBM
13 52 (0.85%) Palo Alto
14 51 (0.83%) Workday
15 46 (0.75%) Foundry
16 42 (0.68%) Splunk
17 41 (0.67%) OpenAI
18 39 (0.64%) Ariba
18 39 (0.64%) Red Hat
19 38 (0.62%) Adobe