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 15 August 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 19 14
Rank change year-on-year +8 -5 +2
Contract jobs requiring an Architect 5,949 3,042 3,920
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.09% 9.23% 10.09%
As % of the Job Titles category 11.98% 10.11% 10.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,933 1,956 2,561
10th Percentile £481 £473 £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 £713 £706 £738
90th Percentile £788 £787 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £620 £600 £648
% change year-on-year +3.33% -7.41% -0.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 18 77
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 49,650 30,089 36,083
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.30% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,817 19,016 23,243
10th Percentile £326 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,489 1,535 2,025
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.25
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.28 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +2.00%
75th Percentile £67.89 £53.81 £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% +20.00%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 5,014 £620 -0.80% 3,157
London +7 2,556 £625 -3.85% 1,941
UK excluding London +7 2,491 £620 +3.33% 1,405
Work from Home +4 1,604 £600 - 1,199
South East +1 736 £625 +4.17% 381
North of England +2 698 £600 - 332
Midlands +1 417 £625 +7.57% 166
North West +4 401 £600 - 186
South West -5 311 £625 -2.34% 207
West Midlands -2 304 £627 +4.42% 118
Yorkshire +4 234 £600 0.00% 112
East of England +12 157 £600 +8.11% 116
Scotland +17 147 £648 +3.60% 116
East Midlands +5 106 £600 +16.50% 48
North East -6 65 £600 -14.29% 34
Wales +5 41 £640 +2.40% 31
Northern Ireland +6 5 £475 -32.14% 62
Channel Islands -1 3 £575 -22.56%

Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 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 1,835 (30.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,513 (25.43%) Azure
3 1,367 (22.98%) SC Cleared
4 1,299 (21.84%) AWS
5 887 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
6 872 (14.66%) Roadmaps
7 833 (14.00%) Migration
8 786 (13.21%) Microsoft
9 729 (12.25%) AI
10 728 (12.24%) Enterprise Architecture
11 662 (11.13%) Agile
12 639 (10.74%) Technical Leadership
13 622 (10.46%) DevOps
14 614 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 612 (10.29%) Data Modelling
16 611 (10.27%) CI/CD
17 579 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
18 575 (9.67%) Data Architecture
19 520 (8.74%) Analytics
20 491 (8.25%) TOGAF
21 471 (7.92%) GCP
22 464 (7.80%) Architectural Patterns
23 440 (7.40%) Security Architecture
24 404 (6.79%) Microservices
25 391 (6.57%) Event-Driven
26 368 (6.19%) Infrastructure as Code
27 367 (6.17%) Cybersecurity
28 365 (6.14%) Data Governance
29 360 (6.05%) Problem-Solving
30 352 (5.92%) DV Cleared

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 88 (1.48%) SharePoint
2 77 (1.29%) SAS
3 68 (1.14%) Confluence
4 44 (0.74%) Apache
5 42 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 31 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 27 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
8 22 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.32%) CMS
10 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
11 9 (0.15%) 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
13 5 (0.084%) nginx
14 4 (0.067%) Jupyter
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
1 160 (2.69%) 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 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.24%) 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%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) SAP CO
14 6 (0.10%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,513 (25.43%) Azure
2 1,299 (21.84%) AWS
3 471 (7.92%) GCP
4 299 (5.03%) Power Platform
5 213 (3.58%) SaaS
6 205 (3.45%) Entra ID
7 198 (3.33%) Serverless
8 144 (2.42%) GitHub
9 131 (2.20%) 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 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
15 87 (1.46%) 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 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 192 (3.23%) Firewall
2 171 (2.87%) Network Security
3 106 (1.78%) WAN
4 103 (1.73%) VPN
5 92 (1.55%) DNS
6 79 (1.33%) LAN
7 51 (0.86%) SD-WAN
8 47 (0.79%) BGP
9 43 (0.72%) DHCP
10 38 (0.64%) MPLS
10 38 (0.64%) TCP/IP
11 34 (0.57%) VLAN
12 30 (0.50%) SAN
13 27 (0.45%) VXLAN
14 26 (0.44%) OSPF
14 26 (0.44%) Wireless
15 25 (0.42%) NAS
16 23 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
17 22 (0.37%) NX-OS
18 19 (0.32%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 205 (3.45%) Power BI
2 199 (3.35%) Data Lake
3 180 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 178 (2.99%) Metadata
5 76 (1.28%) NoSQL
6 54 (0.91%) SQL Server
7 50 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
8 47 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
9 46 (0.77%) BigQuery
10 45 (0.76%) Big Data
11 43 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
12 39 (0.66%) Delta Lake
13 38 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 37 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
15 28 (0.47%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
16 25 (0.42%) GIS
17 23 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
17 23 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
17 23 (0.39%) Semantic Layer
18 22 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 85 (1.43%) JIRA
2 79 (1.33%) Git
3 60 (1.01%) Jenkins
4 36 (0.61%) GitLab
5 23 (0.39%) ERwin
6 11 (0.18%) Claude Code
7 9 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.13%) Artifactory
8 8 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 8 (0.13%) Postman
8 8 (0.13%) SonarQube
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 1,140 (19.16%) Social Skills
2 867 (14.57%) Finance
3 672 (11.30%) Public Sector
4 321 (5.40%) Banking
5 307 (5.16%) Analytical Skills
6 253 (4.25%) Retail
7 152 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
8 140 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.25%) Telecoms
10 130 (2.19%) Manufacturing
11 112 (1.88%) Legal
12 67 (1.13%) 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 (0.61%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (4.84%) REST
2 201 (3.38%) Middleware
3 141 (2.37%) Kafka
4 128 (2.15%) .NET
5 126 (2.12%) SOAP
6 124 (2.08%) OAuth
7 71 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
8 65 (1.09%) SAML
9 64 (1.08%) OpenID
10 63 (1.06%) JSON
11 61 (1.03%) OAuth2
12 49 (0.82%) RESTful
13 45 (0.76%) React
14 39 (0.66%) PySpark
14 39 (0.66%) SailPoint
15 37 (0.62%) XML
16 36 (0.61%) .NET Framework
17 35 (0.59%) GraphQL
18 34 (0.57%) LDAP
19 33 (0.55%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 507 (8.52%) Cloud Native
2 205 (3.45%) Data Centre
3 179 (3.01%) Management Information System
4 152 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 148 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 144 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
7 142 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (2.22%) AI Agents
9 129 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
10 107 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
11 89 (1.50%) CMDB
12 88 (1.48%) Operational Technology
13 87 (1.46%) Public Cloud
14 76 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
15 67 (1.13%) Security Posture
16 61 (1.03%) Data Structures
17 51 (0.86%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.76%) IoT
18 45 (0.76%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 133 (2.24%) Windows
2 106 (1.78%) Linux
3 48 (0.81%) Windows Server
4 28 (0.47%) Android
4 28 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 22 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.35%) Unix
7 9 (0.15%) AIX
7 9 (0.15%) 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
1 887 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
2 872 (14.66%) Roadmaps
3 833 (14.00%) Migration
4 729 (12.25%) AI
5 728 (12.24%) Enterprise Architecture
6 662 (11.13%) Agile
7 639 (10.74%) Technical Leadership
8 622 (10.46%) DevOps
9 614 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 612 (10.29%) Data Modelling
11 611 (10.27%) CI/CD
12 579 (9.73%) Integration Patterns
13 575 (9.67%) Data Architecture
14 520 (8.74%) Analytics
15 491 (8.25%) TOGAF
16 464 (7.80%) Architectural Patterns
17 440 (7.40%) Security Architecture
18 404 (6.79%) Microservices
19 391 (6.57%) Event-Driven
20 368 (6.19%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 276 (4.64%) Python
1 276 (4.64%) SQL
2 274 (4.61%) Java
3 132 (2.22%) JavaScript
4 107 (1.80%) PowerShell
5 54 (0.91%) Bicep
6 53 (0.89%) C#
7 50 (0.84%) Bash
8 46 (0.77%) TypeScript
9 30 (0.50%) Apex Code
10 21 (0.35%) Ruby
11 17 (0.29%) Shell Script
12 16 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.22%) C++
13 13 (0.22%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.18%) ABAP
14 11 (0.18%) Groovy
14 11 (0.18%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.17%) Scala
16 9 (0.15%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,835 (30.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,367 (22.98%) SC Cleared
3 352 (5.92%) DV Cleared
4 171 (2.87%) Degree
5 151 (2.54%) CISSP
6 129 (2.17%) Azure Certification
7 122 (2.05%) AWS Certification
8 120 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
9 104 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
10 88 (1.48%) TOGAF Certification
11 75 (1.26%) CISM
12 72 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 43 (0.72%) CCNP
14 43 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
15 42 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 33 (0.55%) 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 (3.60%) NIST
3 184 (3.09%) GDPR
4 168 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 123 (2.07%) NCSC
6 77 (1.29%) GRC
7 61 (1.03%) QA
8 42 (0.71%) 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 (2.91%) Active Directory
2 118 (1.98%) Docker
3 83 (1.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 47 (0.79%) 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 (0.24%) 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%) Squid
Systems Management
1 296 (4.98%) Kubernetes
2 269 (4.52%) 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 (0.66%) 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
1 786 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 347 (5.83%) SAP
3 306 (5.14%) Oracle
3 306 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 263 (4.42%) Databricks
5 194 (3.26%) Salesforce
6 172 (2.89%) Google
7 150 (2.52%) VMware
8 139 (2.34%) Cisco
9 69 (1.16%) MuleSoft
10 63 (1.06%) IBM
11 61 (1.03%) CyberArk
12 53 (0.89%) Workday
13 52 (0.87%) Palo Alto
14 45 (0.76%) Foundry
15 43 (0.72%) Ariba
16 40 (0.67%) Splunk
17 39 (0.66%) Adobe
17 39 (0.66%) Red Hat
18 37 (0.62%) Sparx