Architect Contract Job Trends

Architect
UK

The median Architect daily rate in the UK is £618, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 26 September 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 20 15
Rank change year-on-year +9 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 6,174 2,926 3,747
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.25% 8.85% 9.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 12.20% 9.72% 10.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,091 1,898 2,266
10th Percentile £481 £463 £481
25th Percentile £525 £525 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £618 £625 £627
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -0.32% -3.54%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £738
90th Percentile £775 £776 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +3.33% -4.00% -1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 14 67
10th Percentile £40.00 £44.71 £60.00
25th Percentile £60.00 £61.56 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.17 £71.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.33% +1.79% -0.25%
75th Percentile £80.00 £85.63 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.00 £100.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.17 £71.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -4.33% +1.79% -6.67%

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 50,596 30,108 35,619
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 91.02% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,877 19,013 21,671
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% -0.62%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,928 1,616 1,603
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £69.20 £74.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -0.38%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 5,131 £620 -0.80% 4,598
London +7 2,646 £625 -2.34% 2,668
UK excluding London +8 2,576 £620 +3.33% 2,091
Work from Home +6 1,663 £600 - 1,848
South East +4 727 £625 +4.17% 569
North of England +6 682 £597 -0.58% 520
Midlands +2 440 £627 +8.96% 290
North West +7 377 £599 +4.25% 289
South West +3 344 £625 -3.85% 252
West Midlands +4 329 £650 +8.33% 220
Yorkshire +13 242 £561 -8.45% 174
Scotland +19 191 £625 +2.67% 208
East of England +7 157 £622 +11.32% 159
East Midlands +3 106 £600 +20.00% 70
North East -3 61 £602 -16.97% 57
Wales +6 45 £645 +3.20% 31
Channel Islands 0 10 £700 -5.72% 4
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 74

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 26 September 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 1,944 (31.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,589 (25.74%) Azure
3 1,460 (23.65%) SC Cleared
4 1,293 (20.94%) AWS
5 1,178 (19.08%) Stakeholder Management
6 968 (15.68%) Roadmaps
7 895 (14.50%) Migration
8 837 (13.56%) Microsoft
9 792 (12.83%) Enterprise Architecture
10 788 (12.76%) Technical Leadership
11 782 (12.67%) AI
12 677 (10.97%) Agile
13 646 (10.46%) DevOps
14 632 (10.24%) Data Modelling
15 628 (10.17%) Data Architecture
16 622 (10.07%) CI/CD
17 618 (10.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 580 (9.39%) Integration Patterns
19 529 (8.57%) Analytics
20 498 (8.07%) Security Architecture
21 492 (7.97%) GCP
22 485 (7.86%) TOGAF
23 467 (7.56%) Architectural Patterns
24 426 (6.90%) Event-Driven
25 407 (6.59%) Data Governance
26 396 (6.41%) Microservices
27 395 (6.40%) Decision-Making
28 391 (6.33%) DV Cleared
29 388 (6.28%) Architecture Governance
30 383 (6.20%) Cybersecurity

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 (1.26%) SAS
2 69 (1.12%) SharePoint
3 62 (1.00%) Confluence
4 46 (0.75%) Apache
5 44 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 36 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
8 25 (0.40%) CMS
9 21 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.11%) Documentum
11 7 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.097%) Appian
12 6 (0.097%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.097%) Headless CMS
12 6 (0.097%) IIS
12 6 (0.097%) JBoss
13 5 (0.081%) SAP EP
14 4 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.065%) Camunda
Applications
1 22 (0.36%) MS Visio
2 15 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.15%) Revit
6 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Navisworks
8 5 (0.081%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.032%) Gliffy
10 1 (0.016%) Notion
10 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.016%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 175 (2.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.52%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 15 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
6 15 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.21%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.18%) SAP ERP
11 10 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.11%) Maximo
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
13 7 (0.11%) SAP HCM
14 6 (0.097%) SAP CO
14 6 (0.097%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,589 (25.74%) Azure
2 1,293 (20.94%) AWS
3 492 (7.97%) GCP
4 299 (4.84%) Power Platform
5 235 (3.81%) SaaS
6 215 (3.48%) Entra ID
7 192 (3.11%) Serverless
8 147 (2.38%) GitHub
9 137 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
10 135 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
11 129 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
12 118 (1.91%) Snowflake
13 98 (1.59%) PaaS
14 88 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 74 (1.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 71 (1.15%) IaaS
17 71 (1.15%) OCI
18 66 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
19 64 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 162 (2.62%) Firewall
2 147 (2.38%) Network Security
3 98 (1.59%) WAN
4 75 (1.21%) VPN
5 71 (1.15%) DNS
6 63 (1.02%) LAN
7 48 (0.78%) BGP
8 47 (0.76%) SD-WAN
9 40 (0.65%) MPLS
10 38 (0.62%) DHCP
11 34 (0.55%) TCP/IP
12 28 (0.45%) VLAN
12 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
13 26 (0.42%) SAN
14 25 (0.40%) NX-OS
15 21 (0.34%) Wireless
16 20 (0.32%) NAS
17 19 (0.31%) BIG-IP
17 19 (0.31%) NGFW
18 18 (0.29%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 238 (3.85%) Metadata
2 211 (3.42%) Data Lake
3 195 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
4 181 (2.93%) Power BI
5 67 (1.09%) NoSQL
6 49 (0.79%) SQL Server
7 48 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
7 48 (0.78%) BigQuery
8 47 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
9 42 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
10 39 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 39 (0.63%) Delta Lake
11 38 (0.62%) Oracle Database
12 33 (0.53%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 30 (0.49%) Big Data
13 30 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
14 27 (0.44%) Relational Database
15 25 (0.40%) MongoDB
16 23 (0.37%) Star Schema
16 23 (0.37%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 85 (1.38%) JIRA
2 77 (1.25%) Git
3 63 (1.02%) Jenkins
4 49 (0.79%) GitLab
5 14 (0.23%) ERwin
6 13 (0.21%) Claude Code
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 (0.097%) Rational DOORS
10 6 (0.097%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.097%) Storybook
11 5 (0.081%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.081%) ER Studio
11 5 (0.081%) Hudson
11 5 (0.081%) MLflow
11 5 (0.081%) Selenium
12 4 (0.065%) Maven
General
1 1,259 (20.39%) Social Skills
2 863 (13.98%) Finance
3 725 (11.74%) Public Sector
4 313 (5.07%) Banking
5 280 (4.54%) Analytical Skills
6 272 (4.41%) Retail
7 177 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
8 159 (2.58%) Manufacturing
9 140 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
10 135 (2.19%) Telecoms
11 111 (1.80%) Legal
12 77 (1.25%) Marketing
13 64 (1.04%) Billing
14 62 (1.00%) Aerospace
14 62 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 52 (0.84%) Military
16 45 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 38 (0.62%) Aviation
17 38 (0.62%) Local Government
18 37 (0.60%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (4.92%) REST
2 264 (4.28%) Terraform
3 176 (2.85%) Middleware
4 174 (2.82%) Kafka
5 138 (2.24%) SOAP
6 126 (2.04%) OAuth
7 123 (1.99%) .NET
8 80 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 70 (1.13%) JSON
10 66 (1.07%) OpenID
11 65 (1.05%) SAML
12 63 (1.02%) OAuth2
13 55 (0.89%) LDAP
14 52 (0.84%) RESTful
15 47 (0.76%) PySpark
16 46 (0.75%) XML
17 41 (0.66%) .NET Framework
18 38 (0.62%) SailPoint
19 37 (0.60%) Swagger
20 36 (0.58%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 518 (8.39%) Cloud Native
2 199 (3.22%) Data Centre
3 185 (3.00%) Onboarding
4 176 (2.85%) Management Information System
5 151 (2.45%) Product Ownership
6 146 (2.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
8 140 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
10 136 (2.20%) AI Agents
11 102 (1.65%) CMDB
12 93 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
13 92 (1.49%) Public Cloud
14 89 (1.44%) Operational Technology
15 80 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
16 68 (1.10%) Private Cloud
17 66 (1.07%) Data Structures
18 60 (0.97%) Security Posture
19 53 (0.86%) Taxonomies
20 51 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 127 (2.06%) Windows
2 100 (1.62%) Linux
3 50 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 23 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.34%) Unix
6 9 (0.15%) AIX
6 9 (0.15%) Android
6 9 (0.15%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.097%) zOS
9 5 (0.081%) Solaris
10 4 (0.065%) Alpine Linux
10 4 (0.065%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.065%) VMS
11 3 (0.049%) CentOS
12 2 (0.032%) HPUX
12 2 (0.032%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.032%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.032%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.016%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,178 (19.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 968 (15.68%) Roadmaps
3 895 (14.50%) Migration
4 792 (12.83%) Enterprise Architecture
5 788 (12.76%) Technical Leadership
6 782 (12.67%) AI
7 677 (10.97%) Agile
8 646 (10.46%) DevOps
9 632 (10.24%) Data Modelling
10 628 (10.17%) Data Architecture
11 622 (10.07%) CI/CD
12 618 (10.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 580 (9.39%) Integration Patterns
14 529 (8.57%) Analytics
15 498 (8.07%) Security Architecture
16 485 (7.86%) TOGAF
17 467 (7.56%) Architectural Patterns
18 426 (6.90%) Event-Driven
19 407 (6.59%) Data Governance
20 396 (6.41%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 260 (4.21%) SQL
2 253 (4.10%) Java
3 247 (4.00%) Python
4 124 (2.01%) JavaScript
5 110 (1.78%) PowerShell
6 53 (0.86%) TypeScript
7 52 (0.84%) C#
8 46 (0.75%) Bash
8 46 (0.75%) Bicep
9 31 (0.50%) Apex Code
10 26 (0.42%) ABAP
11 16 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
12 11 (0.18%) Groovy
12 11 (0.18%) R
13 10 (0.16%) PL/SQL
14 9 (0.15%) C++
14 9 (0.15%) Ruby
14 9 (0.15%) Rust
15 8 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,944 (31.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,460 (23.65%) SC Cleared
3 391 (6.33%) DV Cleared
4 175 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 162 (2.62%) Degree
6 153 (2.48%) CISSP
7 122 (1.98%) AWS Certification
8 120 (1.94%) Azure Certification
9 107 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 91 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 74 (1.20%) CISM
12 64 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 47 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
15 44 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 43 (0.70%) CCNP
17 39 (0.63%) CCSP
18 29 (0.47%) Master's Degree
19 23 (0.37%) CISA
20 22 (0.36%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (4.34%) Data Quality
2 226 (3.66%) NIST
3 191 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 158 (2.56%) GDPR
5 132 (2.14%) NCSC
6 83 (1.34%) GRC
7 56 (0.91%) QA
8 40 (0.65%) Accessibility
9 39 (0.63%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.50%) NIST 800
11 27 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.39%) SLA
13 22 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
15 20 (0.32%) IFRS
15 20 (0.32%) JSP 440
15 20 (0.32%) SEPA
16 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.24%) ISO 19650
18 14 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 192 (3.11%) Active Directory
2 111 (1.80%) Docker
3 85 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.76%) VMware NSX
5 29 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.37%) vSphere
7 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.081%) NFS
10 4 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 4 (0.065%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.065%) KVM
10 4 (0.065%) Postfix
10 4 (0.065%) Varnish
11 3 (0.049%) Ceph
11 3 (0.049%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 3 (0.049%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.049%) SRDF
11 3 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 298 (4.83%) Kubernetes
2 105 (1.70%) Ansible
3 47 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
4 44 (0.71%) Grafana
5 37 (0.60%) Prometheus
6 31 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (0.29%) Argo
8 15 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
10 12 (0.19%) WMI
11 10 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 9 (0.15%) CASB
12 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.13%) Istio
13 8 (0.13%) SCCM
14 7 (0.11%) NetBackup
15 6 (0.097%) Progress Chef
15 6 (0.097%) Puppet
16 5 (0.081%) EMC VPLEX
16 5 (0.081%) VxRail
Vendors
1 837 (13.56%) Microsoft
2 348 (5.64%) SAP
3 305 (4.94%) ServiceNow
4 298 (4.83%) Oracle
5 288 (4.66%) Databricks
6 208 (3.37%) Salesforce
7 207 (3.35%) Google
8 148 (2.40%) Cisco
9 141 (2.28%) VMware
10 83 (1.34%) CyberArk
11 77 (1.25%) MuleSoft
12 57 (0.92%) IBM
13 51 (0.83%) Palo Alto
14 50 (0.81%) Workday
15 49 (0.79%) Foundry
16 40 (0.65%) Informatica
16 40 (0.65%) Splunk
17 38 (0.62%) Pega
17 38 (0.62%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.60%) Adobe