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 8 July 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 17 12
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +4
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,814 3,084 4,373
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.14% 9.65% 10.14%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.05% 10.50% 10.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,817 1,988 2,826
10th Percentile £472 £475 £490
25th Percentile £523 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -1.07%
75th Percentile £715 £720 £738
90th Percentile £788 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £650
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 22 94
10th Percentile £46.00 £40.31 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £73.25 £85.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £96.36 £99.86 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £72.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -9.72% +2.86% -

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 48,237 29,379 40,107
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.96% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,223 18,754 25,817
10th Percentile £325 £287 £285
25th Percentile £417 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,243 1,333 2,768
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.44 £16.62
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.57% -29.47% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.07%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 4,897 £617 -1.34% 1,236
UK excluding London +8 2,549 £620 +3.33% 704
London +5 2,400 £620 -4.62% 596
Work from Home +5 1,599 £600 -0.50% 769
North of England +8 743 £600 - 167
South East +1 720 £627 +4.50% 216
Midlands 0 432 £615 +6.96% 90
North West +5 399 £608 +1.33% 101
West Midlands -2 310 £625 +4.17% 71
Yorkshire +11 279 £580 -3.29% 42
South West -1 277 £625 - 103
East of England +18 197 £600 - 56
Scotland +11 169 £650 +4.00% 52
East Midlands +6 115 £581 +16.25% 19
North East 0 73 £575 -8.00% 24
Wales +5 37 £600 +25.00% 20
Northern Ireland +8 7 £475 -32.14% 11
Channel Islands 0 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 8 July 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 1,746 (30.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,451 (24.96%) Azure
3 1,305 (22.45%) SC Cleared
4 1,273 (21.90%) AWS
5 840 (14.45%) Roadmaps
6 806 (13.86%) Migration
7 756 (13.00%) Microsoft
8 748 (12.87%) Stakeholder Management
9 697 (11.99%) Agile
10 662 (11.39%) AI
11 650 (11.18%) DevOps
12 627 (10.78%) Enterprise Architecture
13 621 (10.68%) CI/CD
14 567 (9.75%) Data Modelling
15 564 (9.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 563 (9.68%) Technical Leadership
17 531 (9.13%) Integration Patterns
18 520 (8.94%) Data Architecture
19 487 (8.38%) TOGAF
20 486 (8.36%) Architectural Patterns
21 483 (8.31%) Analytics
22 447 (7.69%) Microservices
23 434 (7.46%) GCP
24 383 (6.59%) Security Architecture
25 381 (6.55%) Problem-Solving
26 367 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
27 361 (6.21%) Architectural Design
28 360 (6.19%) Event-Driven
29 358 (6.16%) Cybersecurity
30 341 (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
1 109 (1.87%) SharePoint
2 80 (1.38%) Confluence
3 53 (0.91%) SAS
4 50 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 36 (0.62%) Apache
6 34 (0.58%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
8 21 (0.36%) Appian
8 21 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.34%) CMS
10 15 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 10 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.15%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.15%) Camunda
14 7 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.12%) Documentum
14 7 (0.12%) JBoss
14 7 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 16 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.17%) Chatbot
5 9 (0.15%) Microsoft Excel
6 7 (0.12%) Navisworks
6 7 (0.12%) Revit
6 7 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.052%) PlantUML
7 3 (0.052%) Windchill
8 1 (0.017%) ArchiCAD
8 1 (0.017%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.017%) Notion
Business Applications
1 151 (2.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 32 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 20 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.31%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.26%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
10 10 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
11 9 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 8 (0.14%) SAP IBP
12 8 (0.14%) SAP MDG
13 7 (0.12%) Maximo
13 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
14 6 (0.10%) Endur
14 6 (0.10%) SAP GRC
14 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,451 (24.96%) Azure
2 1,273 (21.90%) AWS
3 434 (7.46%) GCP
4 283 (4.87%) Power Platform
5 209 (3.59%) Serverless
6 203 (3.49%) SaaS
7 202 (3.47%) Entra ID
8 142 (2.44%) GitHub
9 134 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
10 128 (2.20%) PaaS
11 118 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
12 117 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
13 101 (1.74%) Snowflake
14 98 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (1.65%) IaaS
16 85 (1.46%) Amazon S3
17 70 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
17 70 (1.20%) OpenShift
18 67 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 66 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 235 (4.04%) Firewall
2 195 (3.35%) Network Security
3 126 (2.17%) VPN
4 124 (2.13%) DNS
5 116 (2.00%) WAN
6 83 (1.43%) LAN
7 63 (1.08%) SD-WAN
8 49 (0.84%) TCP/IP
9 48 (0.83%) DHCP
10 46 (0.79%) BGP
11 40 (0.69%) VLAN
12 36 (0.62%) MPLS
13 33 (0.57%) OSPF
13 33 (0.57%) Wireless
14 29 (0.50%) SAN
15 28 (0.48%) IPsec
16 27 (0.46%) NAS
17 25 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
18 24 (0.41%) BIG-IP
19 22 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (3.39%) Power BI
2 171 (2.94%) Data Lake
3 169 (2.91%) Metadata
4 160 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
5 75 (1.29%) NoSQL
6 65 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
6 65 (1.12%) SQL Server
7 49 (0.84%) Big Data
8 47 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
9 40 (0.69%) Oracle Database
10 39 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
11 38 (0.65%) BigQuery
12 28 (0.48%) Delta Lake
12 28 (0.48%) Relational Database
13 27 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
14 25 (0.43%) Tableau
15 23 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
15 23 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
15 23 (0.40%) MongoDB
16 21 (0.36%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 108 (1.86%) JIRA
2 84 (1.44%) Jenkins
3 74 (1.27%) Git
4 37 (0.64%) GitLab
5 25 (0.43%) ERwin
6 12 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.15%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.15%) Postman
8 8 (0.14%) MLflow
8 8 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.10%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.10%) Hudson
10 6 (0.10%) PowerDesigner
10 6 (0.10%) Selenium
11 5 (0.086%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.086%) JMeter
11 5 (0.086%) Maven
11 5 (0.086%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,097 (18.87%) Social Skills
2 892 (15.34%) Finance
3 663 (11.40%) Public Sector
4 337 (5.80%) Banking
5 307 (5.28%) Analytical Skills
6 230 (3.96%) Retail
7 160 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
8 141 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
9 129 (2.22%) Legal
10 109 (1.87%) Telecoms
11 106 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 60 (1.03%) Billing
13 57 (0.98%) Marketing
14 51 (0.88%) Financial Institution
14 51 (0.88%) Military
15 48 (0.83%) Law
16 41 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 39 (0.67%) Aerospace
18 37 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 33 (0.57%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (4.75%) REST
2 206 (3.54%) Middleware
3 136 (2.34%) .NET
4 124 (2.13%) Kafka
5 121 (2.08%) SOAP
6 106 (1.82%) OAuth
7 96 (1.65%) OpenID
8 75 (1.29%) SAML
9 68 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
10 62 (1.07%) OAuth2
11 56 (0.96%) React
12 54 (0.93%) LDAP
13 52 (0.89%) RESTful
14 51 (0.88%) SailPoint
15 47 (0.81%) JSON
16 39 (0.67%) Web Services
17 37 (0.64%) Node.js
18 36 (0.62%) AngularJS
19 35 (0.60%) .NET Framework
20 34 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 500 (8.60%) Cloud Native
2 205 (3.53%) Data Centre
3 167 (2.87%) Management Information System
4 166 (2.86%) Onboarding
5 144 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 142 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 125 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
9 111 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
11 92 (1.58%) Public Cloud
12 90 (1.55%) Operational Technology
13 87 (1.50%) AI Agents
13 87 (1.50%) CMDB
14 66 (1.14%) Security Posture
15 60 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
16 48 (0.83%) Data Structures
16 48 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (0.81%) NHS
18 44 (0.76%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 153 (2.63%) Windows
2 102 (1.75%) Linux
3 48 (0.83%) Windows Server
4 35 (0.60%) Android
5 34 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 25 (0.43%) Unix
7 23 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.19%) zOS
9 8 (0.14%) VMS
10 6 (0.10%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
10 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.086%) AIX
11 5 (0.086%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.086%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.069%) Alpine Linux
12 4 (0.069%) Solaris
12 4 (0.069%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.052%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 840 (14.45%) Roadmaps
2 806 (13.86%) Migration
3 748 (12.87%) Stakeholder Management
4 697 (11.99%) Agile
5 662 (11.39%) AI
6 650 (11.18%) DevOps
7 627 (10.78%) Enterprise Architecture
8 621 (10.68%) CI/CD
9 567 (9.75%) Data Modelling
10 564 (9.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 563 (9.68%) Technical Leadership
12 531 (9.13%) Integration Patterns
13 520 (8.94%) Data Architecture
14 487 (8.38%) TOGAF
15 486 (8.36%) Architectural Patterns
16 483 (8.31%) Analytics
17 447 (7.69%) Microservices
18 383 (6.59%) Security Architecture
19 381 (6.55%) Problem-Solving
20 367 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 310 (5.33%) Python
2 285 (4.90%) SQL
3 258 (4.44%) Java
4 118 (2.03%) JavaScript
5 114 (1.96%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.15%) C#
7 62 (1.07%) Bicep
8 47 (0.81%) TypeScript
9 46 (0.79%) Bash
10 28 (0.48%) Apex Code
11 21 (0.36%) Ruby
12 14 (0.24%) Scala
13 11 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.19%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.17%) ABAP
15 9 (0.15%) C++
15 9 (0.15%) R
15 9 (0.15%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,746 (30.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (22.45%) SC Cleared
3 325 (5.59%) DV Cleared
4 203 (3.49%) Degree
5 136 (2.34%) CISSP
6 127 (2.18%) AWS Certification
7 126 (2.17%) Azure Certification
8 117 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
9 113 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
10 87 (1.50%) TOGAF Certification
11 83 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
12 67 (1.15%) CISM
13 55 (0.95%) CCNP
14 50 (0.86%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 44 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
17 43 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 30 (0.52%) CCSP
19 23 (0.40%) CCIE
20 22 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (3.51%) NIST
2 184 (3.16%) GDPR
3 179 (3.08%) Data Quality
4 156 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 128 (2.20%) NCSC
6 67 (1.15%) QA
7 45 (0.77%) GRC
7 45 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 38 (0.65%) Accessibility
9 30 (0.52%) NIST 800
10 28 (0.48%) ISO 20022
11 26 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.45%) SEPA
12 20 (0.34%) IFRS
13 19 (0.33%) HL7
14 18 (0.31%) COBIT
14 18 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.21%) JSP 440
17 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 171 (2.94%) Active Directory
2 120 (2.06%) Docker
3 94 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.05%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 25 (0.43%) vSphere
7 22 (0.38%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.17%) Varnish
11 9 (0.15%) Squid
12 8 (0.14%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) vCloud
14 4 (0.069%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.069%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.069%) IAG
14 4 (0.069%) RACF
14 4 (0.069%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 293 (5.04%) Terraform
2 289 (4.97%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.93%) Ansible
4 59 (1.01%) Grafana
5 55 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
6 48 (0.83%) Prometheus
7 47 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
8 23 (0.40%) vCenter Server
9 22 (0.38%) Argo
9 22 (0.38%) FortiGate
10 16 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.24%) SCCM
13 12 (0.21%) Istio
14 8 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 7 (0.12%) Consul
15 7 (0.12%) HAProxy
15 7 (0.12%) Puppet
16 6 (0.10%) CASB
16 6 (0.10%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 756 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 341 (5.87%) SAP
3 310 (5.33%) ServiceNow
4 274 (4.71%) Oracle
5 245 (4.21%) Databricks
6 185 (3.18%) Salesforce
7 169 (2.91%) VMware
8 143 (2.46%) Google
9 137 (2.36%) Cisco
10 69 (1.19%) MuleSoft
11 65 (1.12%) CyberArk
11 65 (1.12%) Splunk
12 52 (0.89%) Palo Alto
12 52 (0.89%) Red Hat
13 50 (0.86%) IBM
14 43 (0.74%) OpenAI
14 43 (0.74%) Workday
15 42 (0.72%) Ariba
15 42 (0.72%) Foundry
16 39 (0.67%) F5