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 26 August 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,994 2,966 3,950
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.17% 9.07% 10.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.09% 9.93% 10.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,975 1,911 2,546
10th Percentile £481 £468 £486
25th Percentile £525 £536 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £647
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.36% -0.50%
75th Percentile £705 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £788 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £640
% change year-on-year +3.33% -6.21% -1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 18 74
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.75 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.31% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £77.31 £87.00 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.36 £100.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -3.89%

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 49,591 29,856 36,116
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,677 18,858 22,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,535 1,578 1,930
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.08 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +7.50%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 5,019 £620 -0.80% 1,329
London +7 2,585 £625 -2.72% 725
UK excluding London +8 2,494 £620 +3.33% 731
Work from Home +4 1,599 £600 - 674
South East +1 730 £625 +4.17% 155
North of England +3 697 £600 - 206
Midlands 0 411 £625 +8.70% 86
North West +6 406 £600 +1.27% 124
South West +1 314 £650 +1.56% 130
West Midlands -1 298 £644 +7.33% 61
Yorkshire +5 227 £600 -2.04% 61
Scotland +21 163 £625 - 68
East of England +13 150 £604 +9.07% 44
East Midlands +3 106 £600 +16.50% 25
North East -4 66 £588 -16.07% 22
Wales +4 43 £633 +1.20% 14
Northern Ireland +3 5 £475 -32.14% 34
Channel Islands -4 3 £575 -22.56% 3

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 26 August 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 1,852 (30.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,552 (25.89%) Azure
3 1,392 (23.22%) SC Cleared
4 1,318 (21.99%) AWS
5 961 (16.03%) Stakeholder Management
6 898 (14.98%) Roadmaps
7 856 (14.28%) Migration
8 811 (13.53%) Microsoft
9 753 (12.56%) AI
10 749 (12.50%) Enterprise Architecture
11 675 (11.26%) Technical Leadership
12 670 (11.18%) Agile
13 633 (10.56%) DevOps
14 623 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 622 (10.38%) CI/CD
16 617 (10.29%) Data Modelling
17 583 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
18 571 (9.53%) Data Architecture
19 521 (8.69%) Analytics
20 485 (8.09%) GCP
21 474 (7.91%) Architectural Patterns
22 472 (7.87%) TOGAF
23 456 (7.61%) Security Architecture
24 415 (6.92%) Event-Driven
25 399 (6.66%) Microservices
26 382 (6.37%) Data Governance
27 377 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
28 371 (6.19%) Cybersecurity
29 363 (6.06%) Decision-Making
30 352 (5.87%) 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 80 (1.33%) SharePoint
2 79 (1.32%) SAS
3 67 (1.12%) Confluence
4 45 (0.75%) Apache
5 43 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 33 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 29 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.32%) CMS
10 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
11 7 (0.12%) Camunda
11 7 (0.12%) Documentum
12 6 (0.10%) Appian
13 5 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.067%) NetWeaver
14 4 (0.067%) SAP EP
15 3 (0.050%) Drupal
15 3 (0.050%) nginx
Applications
1 21 (0.35%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.050%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
8 1 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 163 (2.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 21 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.23%) Teamcenter
6 13 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
7 12 (0.20%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
9 9 (0.15%) SAP IBP
9 9 (0.15%) SAP MDG
10 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
11 7 (0.12%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
12 6 (0.10%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,552 (25.89%) Azure
2 1,318 (21.99%) AWS
3 485 (8.09%) GCP
4 308 (5.14%) Power Platform
5 223 (3.72%) SaaS
6 222 (3.70%) Entra ID
7 209 (3.49%) Serverless
8 145 (2.42%) GitHub
9 143 (2.39%) Dynamics 365
10 121 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
10 121 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
11 114 (1.90%) Snowflake
12 111 (1.85%) PaaS
13 100 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (1.45%) Amazon S3
15 77 (1.28%) IaaS
16 76 (1.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 69 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
18 65 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
19 64 (1.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 182 (3.04%) Firewall
2 161 (2.69%) Network Security
3 107 (1.79%) WAN
4 94 (1.57%) VPN
5 82 (1.37%) DNS
6 74 (1.23%) LAN
7 51 (0.85%) SD-WAN
8 48 (0.80%) BGP
9 40 (0.67%) DHCP
10 37 (0.62%) MPLS
10 37 (0.62%) TCP/IP
11 29 (0.48%) VLAN
12 28 (0.47%) VXLAN
13 27 (0.45%) SAN
14 24 (0.40%) OSPF
15 22 (0.37%) NAS
16 21 (0.35%) NX-OS
16 21 (0.35%) Radio Access Network
17 20 (0.33%) Structured Cabling
17 20 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (3.50%) Power BI
2 206 (3.44%) Data Lake
3 186 (3.10%) Metadata
4 181 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 78 (1.30%) NoSQL
6 53 (0.88%) SQL Server
7 52 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
8 49 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
9 46 (0.77%) Delta Lake
10 45 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
10 45 (0.75%) BigQuery
11 43 (0.72%) Big Data
12 39 (0.65%) Oracle Database
13 38 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
14 29 (0.48%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
15 26 (0.43%) Relational Database
16 25 (0.42%) Semantic Layer
17 23 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.38%) GIS
17 23 (0.38%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 83 (1.38%) JIRA
2 81 (1.35%) Git
3 57 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 36 (0.60%) GitLab
5 19 (0.32%) ERwin
6 12 (0.20%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 7 (0.12%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.12%) MLflow
9 7 (0.12%) MSI
9 7 (0.12%) Postman
9 7 (0.12%) RStudio
9 7 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.10%) Storybook
11 5 (0.083%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.083%) Maven
11 5 (0.083%) PowerDesigner
General
1 1,166 (19.45%) Social Skills
2 866 (14.45%) Finance
3 690 (11.51%) Public Sector
4 310 (5.17%) Banking
5 306 (5.11%) Analytical Skills
6 259 (4.32%) Retail
7 154 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
8 138 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (2.29%) Telecoms
10 135 (2.25%) Manufacturing
11 112 (1.87%) Legal
12 68 (1.13%) Marketing
13 64 (1.07%) Billing
14 58 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 46 (0.77%) Law
16 45 (0.75%) Aerospace
16 45 (0.75%) Military
17 39 (0.65%) Financial Institution
17 39 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
18 37 (0.62%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (4.94%) REST
2 266 (4.44%) Terraform
3 190 (3.17%) Middleware
4 144 (2.40%) Kafka
5 132 (2.20%) SOAP
6 130 (2.17%) OAuth
7 128 (2.14%) .NET
8 70 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
9 69 (1.15%) OpenID
10 68 (1.13%) SAML
11 66 (1.10%) JSON
12 63 (1.05%) OAuth2
13 47 (0.78%) PySpark
13 47 (0.78%) RESTful
14 41 (0.68%) React
14 41 (0.68%) XML
15 38 (0.63%) LDAP
15 38 (0.63%) SailPoint
16 37 (0.62%) .NET Framework
17 35 (0.58%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 528 (8.81%) Cloud Native
2 202 (3.37%) Data Centre
3 176 (2.94%) Management Information System
4 161 (2.69%) Onboarding
5 146 (2.44%) Product Ownership
6 145 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 143 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
8 139 (2.32%) AI Agents
8 139 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
8 139 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
9 102 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
10 96 (1.60%) CMDB
11 89 (1.48%) Public Cloud
12 82 (1.37%) Operational Technology
13 80 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
14 65 (1.08%) Security Posture
15 57 (0.95%) Data Structures
16 51 (0.85%) Private Cloud
17 48 (0.80%) IoT
18 43 (0.72%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 123 (2.05%) Windows
2 110 (1.84%) Linux
3 47 (0.78%) Windows Server
4 25 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (0.37%) Unix
6 19 (0.32%) Android
6 19 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
8 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.12%) VMS
9 7 (0.12%) zOS
10 5 (0.083%) Solaris
11 4 (0.067%) Alpine Linux
11 4 (0.067%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.050%) CentOS
13 2 (0.033%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.033%) OpenWrt
13 2 (0.033%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 961 (16.03%) Stakeholder Management
2 898 (14.98%) Roadmaps
3 856 (14.28%) Migration
4 753 (12.56%) AI
5 749 (12.50%) Enterprise Architecture
6 675 (11.26%) Technical Leadership
7 670 (11.18%) Agile
8 633 (10.56%) DevOps
9 623 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 622 (10.38%) CI/CD
11 617 (10.29%) Data Modelling
12 583 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
13 571 (9.53%) Data Architecture
14 521 (8.69%) Analytics
15 474 (7.91%) Architectural Patterns
16 472 (7.87%) TOGAF
17 456 (7.61%) Security Architecture
18 415 (6.92%) Event-Driven
19 399 (6.66%) Microservices
20 382 (6.37%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 284 (4.74%) Python
2 279 (4.65%) SQL
3 273 (4.55%) Java
4 127 (2.12%) JavaScript
5 106 (1.77%) PowerShell
6 53 (0.88%) Bicep
7 49 (0.82%) C#
8 48 (0.80%) Bash
9 47 (0.78%) TypeScript
10 30 (0.50%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.35%) Ruby
12 17 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 17 (0.28%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.22%) ABAP
13 13 (0.22%) Kotlin
14 12 (0.20%) C++
15 11 (0.18%) Groovy
15 11 (0.18%) R
16 10 (0.17%) PL/SQL
16 10 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,852 (30.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,392 (23.22%) SC Cleared
3 348 (5.81%) DV Cleared
4 165 (2.75%) Degree
5 148 (2.47%) CISSP
6 129 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 128 (2.14%) Azure Certification
8 121 (2.02%) AWS Certification
9 101 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
10 81 (1.35%) TOGAF Certification
11 72 (1.20%) CISM
12 70 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
13 46 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 46 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
14 42 (0.70%) CCNP
15 41 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 33 (0.55%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.53%) CCSP
18 22 (0.37%) CISA
18 22 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (3.97%) Data Quality
2 226 (3.77%) NIST
3 180 (3.00%) GDPR
4 178 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 119 (1.99%) NCSC
6 78 (1.30%) GRC
7 55 (0.92%) QA
8 41 (0.68%) PCI DSS
9 39 (0.65%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 30 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.35%) SEPA
12 21 (0.35%) SLA
13 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
13 20 (0.33%) IFRS
13 20 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
14 16 (0.27%) JSP 440
15 15 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 14 (0.23%) HL7
System Software
1 174 (2.90%) Active Directory
2 117 (1.95%) Docker
3 80 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.70%) VMware NSX
5 32 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.37%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.33%) vSphere
8 19 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.13%) NFS
11 7 (0.12%) Varnish
12 6 (0.10%) Postfix
13 5 (0.083%) vCloud
14 4 (0.067%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.067%) KVM
14 4 (0.067%) Sendmail
15 3 (0.050%) Ceph
15 3 (0.050%) IAG
15 3 (0.050%) SRDF
16 2 (0.033%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 295 (4.92%) Kubernetes
2 104 (1.74%) Ansible
3 52 (0.87%) Grafana
4 44 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
5 43 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 28 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (0.32%) Argo
8 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
9 14 (0.23%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.17%) Istio
11 8 (0.13%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.13%) SCCM
11 8 (0.13%) WMI
12 6 (0.10%) CASB
12 6 (0.10%) HAProxy
12 6 (0.10%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.083%) EMC VPLEX
13 5 (0.083%) MOM
14 4 (0.067%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 811 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 352 (5.87%) SAP
3 304 (5.07%) Oracle
4 298 (4.97%) ServiceNow
5 287 (4.79%) Databricks
6 195 (3.25%) Salesforce
7 180 (3.00%) Google
8 143 (2.39%) Cisco
9 137 (2.29%) VMware
10 72 (1.20%) MuleSoft
11 64 (1.07%) CyberArk
11 64 (1.07%) IBM
12 53 (0.88%) Workday
13 52 (0.87%) Palo Alto
14 46 (0.77%) Foundry
15 43 (0.72%) Ariba
16 41 (0.68%) Adobe
17 40 (0.67%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.62%) Informatica
18 37 (0.62%) Sparx