Architectural Design Contract Job Trends

Architectural Design
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Architectural Design skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 301 289 269
Rank change year-on-year -12 -20 +62
Contract jobs citing Architectural Design 324 281 384
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.88% 0.83% 0.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.99% 0.94% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 154 256
10th Percentile £422 £445 £413
25th Percentile £479 £481 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £688 £699 £691
90th Percentile £750 £788 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £525 £575
% change year-on-year +9.52% -8.70% +0.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 13
10th Percentile £54.75 £71.25 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £73.13 £68.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £77.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.68% +6.90% +38.10%
75th Percentile - £83.13 £77.50
90th Percentile £72.56 £85.75 £81.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year - -3.45% +11.11%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Architectural Design falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,672 29,808 38,411
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.28% 88.28% 88.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,566 18,179 25,645
10th Percentile £300 £307 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £616 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,089 966 1,478
10th Percentile £14.60 £15.62 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.97% +25.43%
75th Percentile £51.02 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.88 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £31.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -25.40% -30.00% +40.63%

Architectural Design
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Architectural Design relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Architectural Design job vacancy trend in the UK

Architectural Design
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Architectural Design.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Architectural Design

Architectural Design
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Architectural Design over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Architectural Design in the UK

Architectural Design
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Architectural Design.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Architectural Design

Architectural Design
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Architectural Design over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Architectural Design in the UK

Architectural Design
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Architectural Design within the UK over the 6 months to 23 December 2025. 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 +4 296 £586 -2.29% 139
UK excluding London +17 174 £575 +9.52% 108
London -20 127 £625 - 45
Work from Home +8 84 £575 - 55
South East +20 66 £523 -4.91% 36
North of England -19 52 £579 +20.63% 27
North West -17 33 £638 +33.51% 11
Midlands -23 27 £575 +7.08% 13
West Midlands -16 22 £569 -9.00% 6
Yorkshire - 17 £525 - 11
South West -10 15 £636 +21.14% 9
Scotland +5 8 £450 -9.46% 4
Wales +1 6 £675 +8.00% 4
East Midlands -14 5 £700 +57.30% 6
East of England -21 4 £650 +44.44% 18
North East -9 2 £550 -11.90% 5

Architectural Design
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 18 (5.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (5.25%) SharePoint
3 11 (3.40%) Confluence
4 7 (2.16%) Exchange Server 2003
4 7 (2.16%) Exchange Server 2007
4 7 (2.16%) Exchange Server 2010
4 7 (2.16%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.16%) Office Communications Server
4 7 (2.16%) SharePoint Server
4 7 (2.16%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.54%) Apache Spark
6 4 (1.23%) Apache
7 3 (0.93%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.93%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.62%) CMS
8 2 (0.62%) IIS
9 1 (0.31%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.31%) CICS
9 1 (0.31%) Mule
Applications
1 8 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
1 8 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.31%) Adobe XD
3 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) Revit
3 1 (0.31%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 10 (3.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.54%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (1.23%) Endur
3 4 (1.23%) SAP PM
4 3 (0.93%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.62%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.31%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.31%) Maximo
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.31%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 103 (31.79%) Azure
2 65 (20.06%) AWS
3 29 (8.95%) GCP
4 25 (7.72%) SaaS
5 19 (5.86%) GitHub
6 17 (5.25%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (4.94%) Entra ID
8 13 (4.01%) Microsoft 365
9 12 (3.70%) OpenShift
10 11 (3.40%) Power Platform
11 10 (3.09%) Dynamics 365
11 10 (3.09%) Serverless
12 9 (2.78%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (2.78%) PaaS
13 8 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (2.16%) AWS Lambda
14 7 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (1.85%) Datadog
15 6 (1.85%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 25 (7.72%) Firewall
2 12 (3.70%) DNS
2 12 (3.70%) VPN
2 12 (3.70%) WAN
3 11 (3.40%) Network Security
4 9 (2.78%) SD-WAN
5 8 (2.47%) DHCP
5 8 (2.47%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (2.16%) DDNS
6 7 (2.16%) LAN
6 7 (2.16%) SAN
7 4 (1.23%) 5G
8 3 (0.93%) IPsec
9 2 (0.62%) 2G
9 2 (0.62%) 4G
9 2 (0.62%) EIGRP
9 2 (0.62%) InfiniBand
9 2 (0.62%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.62%) S/MIME
9 2 (0.62%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (4.01%) NoSQL
1 13 (4.01%) Redis
2 12 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (2.78%) MySQL
3 9 (2.78%) Tableau
4 8 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (2.47%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.16%) Metadata
6 6 (1.85%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (1.85%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.85%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (1.54%) Oracle Database
8 4 (1.23%) BigQuery
8 4 (1.23%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.23%) Power BI
8 4 (1.23%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.93%) Delta Lake
9 3 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (7.10%) Git
2 20 (6.17%) Jenkins
3 16 (4.94%) JIRA
4 10 (3.09%) SonarQube
5 9 (2.78%) Maven
6 7 (2.16%) Visual Studio
7 6 (1.85%) JMeter
7 6 (1.85%) MSTest
7 6 (1.85%) Selenium
7 6 (1.85%) Xcode
8 5 (1.54%) GitLab
8 5 (1.54%) Gradle
9 4 (1.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (1.23%) JUnit
9 4 (1.23%) Mockito
9 4 (1.23%) Postman
9 4 (1.23%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.23%) SoapUI
9 4 (1.23%) SonarLint
9 4 (1.23%) Subversion
General
1 111 (34.26%) Social Skills
2 74 (22.84%) Finance
3 53 (16.36%) Banking
4 38 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (9.57%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.01%) Telecoms
7 12 (3.70%) Presentation Skills
8 10 (3.09%) Legal
9 9 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.78%) Manufacturing
9 9 (2.78%) Retail
10 6 (1.85%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.54%) Automotive
11 5 (1.54%) Investment Banking
11 5 (1.54%) Marketing
11 5 (1.54%) Military
12 4 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (1.23%) Financial Institution
12 4 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.23%) Law
Job Titles
1 203 (62.65%) Architect
2 88 (27.16%) Solutions Architect
3 27 (8.33%) Lead
4 26 (8.02%) Developer
5 20 (6.17%) Technical Architect
6 19 (5.86%) Senior
7 18 (5.56%) Enterprise Architect
8 14 (4.32%) Security Architect
9 13 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 13 (4.01%) Lead Architect
9 13 (4.01%) Support Engineer
10 12 (3.70%) Network Architect
11 11 (3.40%) Cloud Architect
12 9 (2.78%) Integration Architect
13 8 (2.47%) Analyst
13 8 (2.47%) Consultant
13 8 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 8 (2.47%) Lead Solutions Architect
14 7 (2.16%) Exchange Engineer
14 7 (2.16%) Salesforce Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.25%) REST
2 16 (4.94%) Web Services
3 13 (4.01%) React
4 12 (3.70%) Kafka
4 12 (3.70%) SOAP
5 11 (3.40%) Spring Boot
6 10 (3.09%) .NET
6 10 (3.09%) Spring
7 9 (2.78%) AngularJS
7 9 (2.78%) J2EE
7 9 (2.78%) Middleware
8 8 (2.47%) OAuth
8 8 (2.47%) RESTful
8 8 (2.47%) SAML
9 7 (2.16%) HTML
9 7 (2.16%) Swagger
10 6 (1.85%) OpenID
11 5 (1.54%) Bootstrap
11 5 (1.54%) HTML5
11 5 (1.54%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.33%) Product Ownership
2 24 (7.41%) Cloud Native
3 18 (5.56%) Data Centre
4 10 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.78%) Management Information System
5 9 (2.78%) Replication
6 8 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.47%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.16%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.16%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.85%) Cloud Security Posture
8 6 (1.85%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.85%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.23%) Algorithms
10 4 (1.23%) CMDB
10 4 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.23%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 30 (9.26%) Linux
2 25 (7.72%) Windows
3 13 (4.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (2.78%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.47%) Unix
6 7 (2.16%) Windows Server 2003
7 5 (1.54%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.54%) VMS
8 2 (0.62%) Android
9 1 (0.31%) Debian
9 1 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
9 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (29.63%) Agile
2 78 (24.07%) Problem-Solving
3 74 (22.84%) Roadmaps
4 66 (20.37%) DevOps
5 55 (16.98%) CI/CD
6 47 (14.51%) Technical Leadership
7 46 (14.20%) Microservices
7 46 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
8 42 (12.96%) Design Patterns
8 42 (12.96%) TOGAF
9 41 (12.65%) Mentoring
10 40 (12.35%) Architectural Patterns
10 40 (12.35%) Enterprise Architecture
11 39 (12.04%) Integration Patterns
12 38 (11.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 34 (10.49%) ITIL
14 33 (10.19%) Continuous Improvement
15 30 (9.26%) AI
16 28 (8.64%) Data Modelling
16 28 (8.64%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 38 (11.73%) Python
2 37 (11.42%) SQL
3 33 (10.19%) Java
4 22 (6.79%) JavaScript
5 18 (5.56%) C#
6 6 (1.85%) Bash
6 6 (1.85%) PowerShell
6 6 (1.85%) TypeScript
7 5 (1.54%) Go
7 5 (1.54%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.54%) Swift
8 4 (1.23%) Groovy
9 3 (0.93%) ABAP
9 3 (0.93%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.93%) Objective-C
9 3 (0.93%) R
10 2 (0.62%) Bicep
10 2 (0.62%) C++
10 2 (0.62%) PHP
10 2 (0.62%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 74 (22.84%) Security Cleared
2 50 (15.43%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.19%) Degree
4 22 (6.79%) DV Cleared
5 20 (6.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (5.25%) AWS Certification
6 17 (5.25%) Azure Certification
7 14 (4.32%) CISSP
8 10 (3.09%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (2.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 8 (2.47%) CCSP
10 8 (2.47%) Master's Degree
11 7 (2.16%) ISEB
11 7 (2.16%) ITIL Certification
12 6 (1.85%) CISM
13 5 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
14 4 (1.23%) ISTQB
14 4 (1.23%) PMI Certification
14 4 (1.23%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (4.32%) GDPR
3 11 (3.40%) QA
4 10 (3.09%) NIST
4 10 (3.09%) PCI DSS
5 7 (2.16%) COBIT
6 6 (1.85%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 6 (1.85%) PSD2
6 6 (1.85%) SLA
7 4 (1.23%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.23%) Data Quality
7 4 (1.23%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.93%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.93%) NCSC
9 2 (0.62%) Def Stans
9 2 (0.62%) GRC
9 2 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.31%) EMIR
10 1 (0.31%) MiFID
10 1 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 38 (11.73%) Docker
2 22 (6.79%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (2.16%) Brightmail
4 7 (2.16%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.62%) Ceph
5 2 (0.62%) Firmware
5 2 (0.62%) Lustre
5 2 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 41 (12.65%) Kubernetes
2 21 (6.48%) Terraform
3 19 (5.86%) Ansible
4 14 (4.32%) Single Sign-On
5 12 (3.70%) Red Hat Satellite
6 7 (2.16%) Microsoft Clustering
7 6 (1.85%) CASB
7 6 (1.85%) SCCM
7 6 (1.85%) SCOrch
8 2 (0.62%) Grafana
8 2 (0.62%) rkt
9 1 (0.31%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.31%) Control-M
9 1 (0.31%) Kibana
9 1 (0.31%) QRadar
9 1 (0.31%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.31%) Suricata
Vendors
1 46 (14.20%) Microsoft
2 22 (6.79%) SAP
3 17 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 16 (4.94%) Oracle
5 14 (4.32%) Red Hat
5 14 (4.32%) VMware
6 13 (4.01%) Salesforce
7 10 (3.09%) Cisco
8 8 (2.47%) Splunk
9 7 (2.16%) CyberArk
9 7 (2.16%) Juniper
10 6 (1.85%) Databricks
10 6 (1.85%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.85%) Google
10 6 (1.85%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.54%) Software AG
12 4 (1.23%) CA Agile Central
12 4 (1.23%) Gigya
12 4 (1.23%) Temenos
13 3 (0.93%) Palo Alto