Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 January 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 244 242
Rank change year-on-year -50 -2 +6
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 326 320 454
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.87% 1.02% 1.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.95% 1.09% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 213 335
10th Percentile £450 £475 £475
25th Percentile £506 £519 £564
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £613 £675
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -9.26% +1.89%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £738
90th Percentile £775 £799 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £561 £620 £650
% change year-on-year -9.60% -4.62% +3.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 6
10th Percentile - £75.75 £45.64
25th Percentile £81.50 £76.88 £48.82
Median hourly rate £83.00 £80.50 £61.53
Median % change year-on-year +3.11% +30.84% -12.10%
75th Percentile £84.50 £83.63 £72.00
90th Percentile - £84.45 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £80.50 £61.53
% change year-on-year +3.11% +30.84% -12.10%

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 34,444 29,232 40,404
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.42% 92.85% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,829 17,869 26,812
10th Percentile £300 £290 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,030 877 1,934
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -18.75% +17.65%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £63.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £74.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +36.13%

Data Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Data Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Architect job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Architect
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Architect job vacancies in the UK

Data Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Architect over the 6 months to 21 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Architect in the UK

Data Architect
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Architect job vacancies in the UK

Data Architect
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 21 January 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 -67 268 £600 -3.61% 88
London -40 153 £600 -4.00% 41
UK excluding London -48 111 £561 -9.60% 81
Work from Home -24 99 £600 -2.04% 47
North of England -65 27 £575 - 13
North West -34 24 £550 - 9
Midlands -31 23 £581 -3.57% 10
South West -7 21 £613 -2.00% 6
West Midlands -20 21 £581 -5.14% 9
South East -29 20 £575 -4.17% 25
Scotland +19 13 £525 -25.00% 17
East of England -17 10 £505 -25.19% 6
Yorkshire -58 3 £675 -3.57% 2
Wales +1 2 £768 - 5
East Midlands -31 2 £501 +10.60% 1

Data Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 January 2026, Data 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 Data Architect in the job title.

1 189 (57.98%) Data Modelling
2 172 (52.76%) Data Architecture
3 118 (36.20%) Azure
4 113 (34.66%) Analytics
4 113 (34.66%) Data Governance
5 87 (26.69%) AWS
6 76 (23.31%) Data Warehouse
7 68 (20.86%) Data Quality
7 68 (20.86%) ETL
7 68 (20.86%) SQL
8 65 (19.94%) Databricks
9 64 (19.63%) Python
10 63 (19.33%) Metadata
11 59 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
12 57 (17.48%) Data Strategy
13 55 (16.87%) Security Cleared
14 53 (16.26%) Microsoft
15 52 (15.95%) Migration
16 50 (15.34%) Power Platform
17 48 (14.72%) AI
18 46 (14.11%) Power BI
19 45 (13.80%) Data Integration
19 45 (13.80%) Data Lake
20 43 (13.19%) Metadata Management
20 43 (13.19%) Physical Data Model
20 43 (13.19%) SC Cleared
21 42 (12.88%) Logical Data Model
22 41 (12.58%) Roadmaps
23 40 (12.27%) Data Pipeline
23 40 (12.27%) DevOps

Data 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 10 (3.07%) Apache Spark
2 9 (2.76%) SAS
3 8 (2.45%) Apache
3 8 (2.45%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.23%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.61%) Luigi
6 1 (0.31%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.31%) Hyperledger
6 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (3.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 5 (1.53%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.61%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.31%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.31%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.31%) iTrent
5 1 (0.31%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.31%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.31%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.31%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 118 (36.20%) Azure
2 87 (26.69%) AWS
3 50 (15.34%) Power Platform
4 37 (11.35%) Azure Data Factory
5 36 (11.04%) Serverless
6 35 (10.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 28 (8.59%) Amazon S3
8 27 (8.28%) Microsoft Purview
9 26 (7.98%) Snowflake
10 21 (6.44%) GCP
11 19 (5.83%) AWS Lambda
12 16 (4.91%) Amazon Kinesis
13 13 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
14 12 (3.68%) dbt
15 11 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 11 (3.37%) Azure Functions
15 11 (3.37%) Collibra
16 8 (2.45%) AWS Step Functions
17 7 (2.15%) Amazon EventBridge
17 7 (2.15%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.61%) Hyperconnected
2 1 (0.31%) DWDM
2 1 (0.31%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (23.31%) Data Warehouse
2 63 (19.33%) Metadata
3 46 (14.11%) Power BI
4 45 (13.80%) Data Lake
5 31 (9.51%) Amazon Redshift
6 29 (8.90%) PostgreSQL
7 21 (6.44%) SQL Server
8 20 (6.13%) Amazon Athena
9 17 (5.21%) Data Vault
10 16 (4.91%) Tableau
11 15 (4.60%) Delta Lake
12 14 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
13 13 (3.99%) Apache Iceberg
13 13 (3.99%) Big Data
13 13 (3.99%) NoSQL
14 12 (3.68%) OLTP
14 12 (3.68%) Relational Database
15 11 (3.37%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (3.07%) Oracle Database
16 10 (3.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 17 (5.21%) ERwin
2 6 (1.84%) Git
3 5 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.92%) ER Studio
5 2 (0.61%) GitLab
6 1 (0.31%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.31%) PowerDesigner
6 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 86 (26.38%) Social Skills
2 56 (17.18%) Finance
3 43 (13.19%) Public Sector
4 32 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (3.07%) Banking
6 8 (2.45%) Retail
7 7 (2.15%) Local Government
8 5 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.23%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.23%) Legal
10 3 (0.92%) Corporate Banking
10 3 (0.92%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.61%) Back Office
11 2 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.61%) Front Office
11 2 (0.61%) Law
11 2 (0.61%) Marketing
11 2 (0.61%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (6.13%) PySpark
2 17 (5.21%) Kafka
3 7 (2.15%) Apache Avro
3 7 (2.15%) Protocol Buffers
4 4 (1.23%) SOAP
5 3 (0.92%) AWS CDK
5 3 (0.92%) Node.js
5 3 (0.92%) REST
6 2 (0.61%) .NET
6 2 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
7 1 (0.31%) .NET Core
7 1 (0.31%) ADO
7 1 (0.31%) Apache NiFi
7 1 (0.31%) ARM Templates
7 1 (0.31%) FHIR
7 1 (0.31%) JSON
7 1 (0.31%) Lightning Web Components
7 1 (0.31%) Smart Contracts
7 1 (0.31%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.28%) Data Structures
2 24 (7.36%) Cloud Native
3 12 (3.68%) NHS
4 11 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
5 9 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
6 8 (2.45%) Data Fabric
6 8 (2.45%) FMCG
7 7 (2.15%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.15%) Reference Data
7 7 (2.15%) Reinsurance
8 6 (1.84%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.23%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.23%) PACS
9 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 4 (1.23%) Taxonomies
10 3 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.92%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (0.92%) IoT
10 3 (0.92%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.61%) zOS
2 1 (0.31%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (57.98%) Data Modelling
2 172 (52.76%) Data Architecture
3 113 (34.66%) Analytics
3 113 (34.66%) Data Governance
4 68 (20.86%) ETL
5 59 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
6 57 (17.48%) Data Strategy
7 52 (15.95%) Migration
8 48 (14.72%) AI
9 45 (13.80%) Data Integration
10 43 (13.19%) Metadata Management
10 43 (13.19%) Physical Data Model
11 42 (12.88%) Logical Data Model
12 41 (12.58%) Roadmaps
13 40 (12.27%) Data Pipeline
13 40 (12.27%) DevOps
14 39 (11.96%) Data Management
14 39 (11.96%) Stakeholder Management
15 38 (11.66%) Machine Learning
16 36 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 68 (20.86%) SQL
2 64 (19.63%) Python
3 9 (2.76%) Java
4 8 (2.45%) T-SQL
5 5 (1.53%) PowerShell
6 4 (1.23%) PL/SQL
7 3 (0.92%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.92%) Scala
7 3 (0.92%) SPARQL
8 2 (0.61%) Korn
9 1 (0.31%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.31%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.31%) C#
9 1 (0.31%) R
9 1 (0.31%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 55 (16.87%) Security Cleared
2 43 (13.19%) SC Cleared
3 17 (5.21%) Azure Certification
4 16 (4.91%) Degree
5 11 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (2.15%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.15%) TOGAF Certification
9 6 (1.84%) Master's Degree
10 4 (1.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.92%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.31%) MCP
12 1 (0.31%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.31%) SAP Certification
12 1 (0.31%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (20.86%) Data Quality
2 29 (8.90%) GDPR
3 10 (3.07%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.53%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 5 (1.53%) QA
5 4 (1.23%) HIPAA
5 4 (1.23%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.61%) CRD IV
6 2 (0.61%) FINREP
6 2 (0.61%) IFRS
7 1 (0.31%) GMP
7 1 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (0.31%) Docker
1 1 (0.31%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (7.36%) Terraform
2 5 (1.53%) Ansible
3 2 (0.61%) Grafana
4 1 (0.31%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.31%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 65 (19.94%) Databricks
2 53 (16.26%) Microsoft
3 22 (6.75%) Oracle
4 15 (4.60%) Salesforce
4 15 (4.60%) SAP
5 14 (4.29%) Informatica
6 8 (2.45%) Google
7 7 (2.15%) Confluent
8 5 (1.53%) Greenplum
8 5 (1.53%) Sparx
9 4 (1.23%) Ab Initio
9 4 (1.23%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.23%) MicroStrategy
9 4 (1.23%) Pega
9 4 (1.23%) Remedy
10 3 (0.92%) Palantir
10 3 (0.92%) Talend
10 3 (0.92%) Workday
11 2 (0.61%) SimCorp
11 2 (0.61%) Virgin Media