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 16 August 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +8 -5 +3
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,963 3,051 3,917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.10% 9.22% 10.10%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.00% 10.10% 10.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,942 1,964 2,561
10th Percentile £481 £472 £488
25th Percentile £525 £537 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £712 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £787 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £649
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.55% -0.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 18 75
10th Percentile £46.00 £36.30 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £72.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £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 49,690 30,209 36,033
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.30% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,849 19,090 23,214
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,486 1,544 2,018
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.23
25th Percentile £20.62 £17.29 £20.12
Median hourly rate £41.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.84% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.96 £53.89 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +21.62%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 5,026 £620 -0.80% 2,744
London +7 2,557 £625 -3.85% 1,622
UK excluding London +6 2,502 £620 +3.33% 1,277
Work from Home +5 1,609 £600 - 1,085
South East +1 740 £625 +4.17% 351
North of England +5 703 £600 - 304
Midlands 0 418 £625 +7.57% 153
North West +6 404 £600 - 167
South West -4 311 £625 -2.34% 196
West Midlands -2 304 £627 +4.42% 104
Yorkshire +6 236 £594 -1.04% 103
East of England +14 158 £600 +8.11% 96
Scotland +16 147 £648 +3.60% 99
East Midlands +4 107 £600 +16.50% 49
North East -3 65 £600 -14.29% 34
Wales +4 41 £640 +2.40% 32
Northern Ireland +7 5 £475 -32.14% 52
Channel Islands -1 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 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 1,839 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,518 (25.46%) Azure
3 1,371 (22.99%) SC Cleared
4 1,298 (21.77%) AWS
5 889 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
6 871 (14.61%) Roadmaps
7 834 (13.99%) Migration
8 791 (13.27%) Microsoft
9 732 (12.28%) AI
10 729 (12.23%) Enterprise Architecture
11 661 (11.09%) Agile
12 641 (10.75%) Technical Leadership
13 622 (10.43%) DevOps
14 613 (10.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 612 (10.26%) CI/CD
16 611 (10.25%) Data Modelling
17 579 (9.71%) Integration Patterns
18 576 (9.66%) Data Architecture
19 522 (8.75%) Analytics
20 490 (8.22%) TOGAF
21 471 (7.90%) GCP
22 467 (7.83%) Architectural Patterns
23 443 (7.43%) Security Architecture
24 404 (6.78%) Microservices
25 391 (6.56%) Event-Driven
26 370 (6.20%) Infrastructure as Code
27 368 (6.17%) Cybersecurity
28 364 (6.10%) Data Governance
29 360 (6.04%) Problem-Solving
30 352 (5.90%) Decision-Making

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 87 (1.46%) SharePoint
2 77 (1.29%) SAS
3 67 (1.12%) Confluence
4 45 (0.75%) Apache
5 43 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 31 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 28 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.32%) CMS
10 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
11 8 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.12%) Appian
12 7 (0.12%) Camunda
12 7 (0.12%) Documentum
13 5 (0.084%) NetWeaver
14 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.067%) nginx
14 4 (0.067%) SAP EP
15 3 (0.050%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 21 (0.35%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 7 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
5 7 (0.12%) Revit
5 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.050%) PlantUML
6 3 (0.050%) Windchill
7 1 (0.017%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 159 (2.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.59%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 15 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.22%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 10 (0.17%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
12 8 (0.13%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,518 (25.46%) Azure
2 1,298 (21.77%) AWS
3 471 (7.90%) GCP
4 301 (5.05%) Power Platform
5 214 (3.59%) SaaS
6 205 (3.44%) Entra ID
7 198 (3.32%) Serverless
8 145 (2.43%) GitHub
9 132 (2.21%) Dynamics 365
10 125 (2.10%) Microsoft 365
11 118 (1.98%) PaaS
12 115 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
13 112 (1.88%) Snowflake
14 98 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
15 86 (1.44%) Amazon S3
16 84 (1.41%) IaaS
17 69 (1.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 66 (1.11%) OCI
19 65 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
20 64 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.20%) Firewall
2 171 (2.87%) Network Security
3 105 (1.76%) WAN
4 102 (1.71%) VPN
5 91 (1.53%) DNS
6 78 (1.31%) LAN
7 50 (0.84%) SD-WAN
8 47 (0.79%) BGP
9 43 (0.72%) DHCP
10 39 (0.65%) MPLS
11 38 (0.64%) TCP/IP
12 33 (0.55%) VLAN
13 30 (0.50%) SAN
14 28 (0.47%) VXLAN
15 26 (0.44%) Wireless
16 25 (0.42%) NAS
16 25 (0.42%) OSPF
17 23 (0.39%) NX-OS
17 23 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
18 20 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 205 (3.44%) Power BI
2 199 (3.34%) Data Lake
3 180 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
4 177 (2.97%) Metadata
5 76 (1.27%) NoSQL
6 54 (0.91%) SQL Server
7 50 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
8 47 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
9 46 (0.77%) Big Data
9 46 (0.77%) BigQuery
10 43 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
11 39 (0.65%) Delta Lake
12 38 (0.64%) Oracle Database
13 37 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
14 28 (0.47%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
15 24 (0.40%) GIS
16 23 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
16 23 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
16 23 (0.39%) Semantic Layer
17 22 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 84 (1.41%) JIRA
2 79 (1.32%) Git
3 59 (0.99%) Jenkins
4 36 (0.60%) GitLab
5 22 (0.37%) ERwin
6 11 (0.18%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) Postman
8 8 (0.13%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.12%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.12%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) Maven
10 6 (0.10%) MSI
10 6 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.10%) Storybook
11 5 (0.084%) MLflow
12 4 (0.067%) ER Studio
12 4 (0.067%) Snyk
General
1 1,142 (19.15%) Social Skills
2 866 (14.52%) Finance
3 674 (11.30%) Public Sector
4 321 (5.38%) Banking
5 306 (5.13%) Analytical Skills
6 253 (4.24%) Retail
7 152 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
8 140 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.25%) Telecoms
10 131 (2.20%) Manufacturing
11 112 (1.88%) Legal
12 68 (1.14%) Marketing
13 58 (0.97%) Billing
14 55 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 49 (0.82%) Financial Institution
16 47 (0.79%) Military
17 46 (0.77%) Aerospace
17 46 (0.77%) Law
18 41 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
19 36 (0.60%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 289 (4.85%) REST
2 201 (3.37%) Middleware
3 141 (2.36%) Kafka
4 128 (2.15%) .NET
5 126 (2.11%) SOAP
6 124 (2.08%) OAuth
7 71 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
8 65 (1.09%) SAML
9 64 (1.07%) JSON
9 64 (1.07%) OpenID
10 61 (1.02%) OAuth2
11 48 (0.80%) RESTful
12 45 (0.75%) React
13 39 (0.65%) PySpark
13 39 (0.65%) SailPoint
14 37 (0.62%) XML
15 36 (0.60%) .NET Framework
16 35 (0.59%) GraphQL
17 34 (0.57%) LDAP
18 33 (0.55%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 509 (8.54%) Cloud Native
2 207 (3.47%) Data Centre
3 179 (3.00%) Management Information System
4 153 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 148 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 145 (2.43%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
7 142 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (2.21%) AI Agents
9 129 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
10 107 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 89 (1.49%) CMDB
12 88 (1.48%) Operational Technology
13 87 (1.46%) Public Cloud
14 76 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
15 67 (1.12%) Security Posture
16 61 (1.02%) Data Structures
17 51 (0.86%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.75%) IoT
19 44 (0.74%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 133 (2.23%) Windows
2 105 (1.76%) Linux
3 48 (0.80%) Windows Server
4 28 (0.47%) Android
4 28 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 21 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.35%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
7 8 (0.13%) zOS
8 7 (0.12%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.12%) VMS
9 5 (0.084%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (0.084%) Solaris
9 5 (0.084%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.067%) Alpine Linux
10 4 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.034%) CentOS
11 2 (0.034%) HPUX
11 2 (0.034%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.034%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 889 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
2 871 (14.61%) Roadmaps
3 834 (13.99%) Migration
4 732 (12.28%) AI
5 729 (12.23%) Enterprise Architecture
6 661 (11.09%) Agile
7 641 (10.75%) Technical Leadership
8 622 (10.43%) DevOps
9 613 (10.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 612 (10.26%) CI/CD
11 611 (10.25%) Data Modelling
12 579 (9.71%) Integration Patterns
13 576 (9.66%) Data Architecture
14 522 (8.75%) Analytics
15 490 (8.22%) TOGAF
16 467 (7.83%) Architectural Patterns
17 443 (7.43%) Security Architecture
18 404 (6.78%) Microservices
19 391 (6.56%) Event-Driven
20 370 (6.20%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 277 (4.65%) Python
2 276 (4.63%) SQL
3 274 (4.60%) Java
4 132 (2.21%) JavaScript
5 107 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 54 (0.91%) Bicep
7 53 (0.89%) C#
8 50 (0.84%) Bash
9 46 (0.77%) TypeScript
10 30 (0.50%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.35%) Ruby
12 17 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.22%) C++
14 13 (0.22%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.18%) ABAP
15 11 (0.18%) Groovy
15 11 (0.18%) PL/SQL
16 10 (0.17%) Scala
17 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,839 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,371 (22.99%) SC Cleared
3 352 (5.90%) DV Cleared
4 171 (2.87%) Degree
5 151 (2.53%) CISSP
6 129 (2.16%) Azure Certification
7 123 (2.06%) AWS Certification
8 120 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
9 104 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 89 (1.49%) TOGAF Certification
11 74 (1.24%) CISM
12 72 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 43 (0.72%) CCNP
14 43 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
15 42 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 34 (0.57%) CCSP
17 32 (0.54%) Master's Degree
18 21 (0.35%) CISA
18 21 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (3.66%) Data Quality
2 214 (3.59%) NIST
3 184 (3.09%) GDPR
4 168 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 123 (2.06%) NCSC
6 77 (1.29%) GRC
7 60 (1.01%) QA
8 42 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 38 (0.64%) Accessibility
10 31 (0.52%) NIST 800
10 31 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
11 22 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 22 (0.37%) SEPA
12 21 (0.35%) IFRS
13 17 (0.29%) HL7
14 16 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
14 16 (0.27%) JSP 440
15 15 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 15 (0.25%) SLA
System Software
1 173 (2.90%) Active Directory
2 119 (2.00%) Docker
3 84 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.80%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.37%) Hyper-V
6 22 (0.37%) vSphere
7 18 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.13%) NFS
10 7 (0.12%) Varnish
11 6 (0.10%) Postfix
11 6 (0.10%) vCloud
12 4 (0.067%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 4 (0.067%) IAG
12 4 (0.067%) KVM
12 4 (0.067%) Sendmail
13 3 (0.050%) Ceph
13 3 (0.050%) SRDF
14 2 (0.034%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 295 (4.95%) Kubernetes
2 268 (4.49%) Terraform
3 106 (1.78%) Ansible
4 51 (0.86%) Grafana
5 44 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 43 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
7 39 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 20 (0.34%) Argo
9 16 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 16 (0.27%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
11 11 (0.18%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.18%) Istio
12 7 (0.12%) SCCM
13 6 (0.10%) HAProxy
13 6 (0.10%) WMI
14 5 (0.084%) CASB
14 5 (0.084%) EMC VPLEX
14 5 (0.084%) MOM
14 5 (0.084%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 791 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 346 (5.80%) SAP
3 307 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 305 (5.11%) Oracle
5 263 (4.41%) Databricks
6 193 (3.24%) Salesforce
7 172 (2.88%) Google
8 151 (2.53%) VMware
9 143 (2.40%) Cisco
10 69 (1.16%) MuleSoft
11 62 (1.04%) IBM
12 61 (1.02%) CyberArk
13 53 (0.89%) Workday
14 52 (0.87%) Palo Alto
15 45 (0.75%) Foundry
16 43 (0.72%) Ariba
17 40 (0.67%) Red Hat
17 40 (0.67%) Splunk
18 39 (0.65%) Adobe
19 37 (0.62%) Sparx