Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £595, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 241 218
Rank change year-on-year +3 -23 +51
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 495 320 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.09% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 1.18% 1.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 225 332
10th Percentile £463 £481 £507
25th Percentile £511 £523 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £595 £600 £700
Median % change year-on-year -0.92% -14.29% +3.70%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £775
90th Percentile £795 £799 £886
UK excluding London median daily rate £580 £586 £675
% change year-on-year -1.15% -13.15% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 6
10th Percentile £53.20 £66.25 £47.76
25th Percentile - £71.88 £54.38
Median hourly rate £64.00 £80.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.25% +33.75% -14.29%
75th Percentile £69.00 £82.94 -
90th Percentile £69.26 £84.18 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -20.50% +34.17% -14.29%

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 42,439 27,180 40,683
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 92.60% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,345 17,830 26,590
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,678 986 2,604
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.71 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.79 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.20% -12.02% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.59 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.08 £75.38 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.64% -15.64% -17.38%

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 17 April 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Architect over the 6 months to 17 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Architect in the UK

Data Architect
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 Data Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 17 April 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 -18 420 £595 -0.92% 100
London -23 232 £600 -4.00% 45
UK excluding London -2 189 £580 -1.15% 74
Work from Home +1 141 £591 -1.52% 44
Midlands -29 52 £581 -5.14% 14
West Midlands -18 48 £581 -5.08% 10
South West -12 36 £630 +21.74% 8
North of England -72 36 £588 +2.17% 17
South East -51 25 £575 +4.55% 20
East of England -13 23 £505 -20.78% 11
Scotland +12 22 £550 -12.00% 3
North West -40 19 £588 +11.90% 6
Yorkshire -48 13 £605 -18.24% 9
North East -16 7 £550 -8.28% 2
East Midlands -29 4 £445 - 4
Wales -8 2 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 17 April 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.

1 265 (53.54%) Data Architecture
2 238 (48.08%) Data Modelling
3 181 (36.57%) Analytics
4 165 (33.33%) Azure
5 153 (30.91%) Data Governance
6 125 (25.25%) AWS
7 116 (23.43%) Metadata
7 116 (23.43%) Security Cleared
8 107 (21.62%) SQL
9 103 (20.81%) ETL
10 99 (20.00%) Databricks
11 98 (19.80%) Data Quality
12 95 (19.19%) Business Intelligence
12 95 (19.19%) Data Warehouse
13 89 (17.98%) SC Cleared
14 86 (17.37%) Migration
15 84 (16.97%) AI
16 78 (15.76%) Data Integration
17 73 (14.75%) Data Lake
17 73 (14.75%) Microsoft
18 69 (13.94%) Data Pipeline
19 66 (13.33%) Data Engineering
19 66 (13.33%) Data Strategy
20 62 (12.53%) Data Management
21 61 (12.32%) Agile
21 61 (12.32%) Power Platform
21 61 (12.32%) Python
22 60 (12.12%) Logical Data Model
23 59 (11.92%) Metadata Management
24 56 (11.31%) Architectural Patterns

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 19 (3.84%) Apache Spark
2 18 (3.64%) SAS
3 13 (2.63%) SharePoint
4 11 (2.22%) Apache
5 10 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (1.41%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.40%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.40%) Confluence
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 1 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 1 (0.20%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.61%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 9 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 5 (1.01%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.40%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.20%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.20%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.20%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 165 (33.33%) Azure
2 125 (25.25%) AWS
3 61 (12.32%) Power Platform
4 52 (10.51%) GCP
5 44 (8.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 40 (8.08%) Snowflake
7 39 (7.88%) Azure Data Factory
8 31 (6.26%) Microsoft Purview
8 31 (6.26%) Serverless
9 24 (4.85%) Amazon S3
10 23 (4.65%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
12 17 (3.43%) Amazon Kinesis
13 16 (3.23%) dbt
14 14 (2.83%) GitHub
15 11 (2.22%) AWS Step Functions
16 10 (2.02%) Amazon MSK
16 10 (2.02%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 10 (2.02%) Collibra
16 10 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.81%) Firewall
2 2 (0.40%) BGP
2 2 (0.40%) DNS
2 2 (0.40%) DSL
2 2 (0.40%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.40%) OSPF
2 2 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.40%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.20%) DWDM
3 1 (0.20%) LAN
3 1 (0.20%) Network Security
3 1 (0.20%) SMS
3 1 (0.20%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (23.43%) Metadata
2 95 (19.19%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (14.75%) Data Lake
4 52 (10.51%) Power BI
5 31 (6.26%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.45%) SQL Server
7 26 (5.25%) Amazon Redshift
8 25 (5.05%) PostgreSQL
9 23 (4.65%) Big Data
10 21 (4.24%) Metadata Repository
11 20 (4.04%) Azure SQL Database
12 18 (3.64%) Tableau
13 15 (3.03%) Delta Lake
13 15 (3.03%) Oracle Database
14 14 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 13 (2.63%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (2.63%) Data Vault
16 12 (2.42%) Hadoop
16 12 (2.42%) Star Schema
17 10 (2.02%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 21 (4.24%) ERwin
2 6 (1.21%) GitLab
2 6 (1.21%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.81%) Git
4 3 (0.61%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.20%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.20%) MLflow
5 1 (0.20%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 91 (18.38%) Social Skills
2 73 (14.75%) Finance
3 56 (11.31%) Public Sector
4 38 (7.68%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.44%) Retail
6 14 (2.83%) Banking
7 10 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.62%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.41%) Marketing
10 6 (1.21%) Local Government
11 5 (1.01%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.81%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.61%) Law
13 3 (0.61%) Legal
14 2 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.20%) Advertising
15 1 (0.20%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (6.46%) Kafka
2 15 (3.03%) PySpark
3 10 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
4 9 (1.82%) Apache Avro
4 9 (1.82%) Protocol Buffers
5 7 (1.41%) .NET
6 5 (1.01%) Middleware
7 4 (0.81%) FHIR
7 4 (0.81%) JSON
7 4 (0.81%) REST
8 3 (0.61%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.61%) SOAP
9 2 (0.40%) OpenTelemetry
10 1 (0.20%) AWS CDK
10 1 (0.20%) GraphQL
10 1 (0.20%) Great Expectations
10 1 (0.20%) OpenAPI
10 1 (0.20%) Spark Streaming
10 1 (0.20%) Spring Boot
10 1 (0.20%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (7.27%) Cloud Native
2 32 (6.46%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.83%) NHS
5 13 (2.63%) Reference Data
6 11 (2.22%) IoT
7 10 (2.02%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.02%) Mainframe
8 8 (1.62%) Product Ownership
9 7 (1.41%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.41%) FMCG
9 7 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (1.41%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.21%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (1.21%) PACS
10 6 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 6 (1.21%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.01%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.01%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.82%) zOS
2 2 (0.40%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (53.54%) Data Architecture
2 238 (48.08%) Data Modelling
3 181 (36.57%) Analytics
4 153 (30.91%) Data Governance
5 103 (20.81%) ETL
6 95 (19.19%) Business Intelligence
7 86 (17.37%) Migration
8 84 (16.97%) AI
9 78 (15.76%) Data Integration
10 69 (13.94%) Data Pipeline
11 66 (13.33%) Data Engineering
11 66 (13.33%) Data Strategy
12 62 (12.53%) Data Management
13 61 (12.32%) Agile
14 60 (12.12%) Logical Data Model
15 59 (11.92%) Metadata Management
16 56 (11.31%) Architectural Patterns
17 54 (10.91%) Machine Learning
17 54 (10.91%) Physical Data Model
18 53 (10.71%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 107 (21.62%) SQL
2 61 (12.32%) Python
3 17 (3.43%) Java
4 9 (1.82%) Scala
5 8 (1.62%) T-SQL
6 6 (1.21%) PowerShell
7 5 (1.01%) Bicep
8 3 (0.61%) Apex Code
8 3 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.40%) Bash
9 2 (0.40%) COBOL
9 2 (0.40%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.40%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.40%) R
9 2 (0.40%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.20%) ANSI SQL
10 1 (0.20%) C++
10 1 (0.20%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 116 (23.43%) Security Cleared
2 89 (17.98%) SC Cleared
3 22 (4.44%) Azure Certification
4 20 (4.04%) Degree
5 17 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (3.03%) Master's Degree
7 14 (2.83%) DV Cleared
8 10 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 10 (2.02%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (1.41%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.40%) VCAP
11 2 (0.40%) VCDX
12 1 (0.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (19.80%) Data Quality
2 34 (6.87%) GDPR
3 14 (2.83%) QA
4 8 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.21%) ISO 20022
6 5 (1.01%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.81%) HL7
7 4 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.61%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.40%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.40%) FINREP
9 2 (0.40%) IFRS
9 2 (0.40%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 4 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.61%) Docker
3 2 (0.40%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.40%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.40%) vSphere
4 1 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 26 (5.25%) Terraform
2 7 (1.41%) Grafana
2 7 (1.41%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.21%) Prometheus
4 5 (1.01%) Ansible
5 2 (0.40%) Argo
5 2 (0.40%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.20%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 99 (20.00%) Databricks
2 73 (14.75%) Microsoft
3 40 (8.08%) Oracle
4 30 (6.06%) Salesforce
5 21 (4.24%) Informatica
6 20 (4.04%) SAP
7 11 (2.22%) Confluent
7 11 (2.22%) Talend
8 10 (2.02%) Foundry
8 10 (2.02%) Google
9 9 (1.82%) Palantir
10 6 (1.21%) Remedy
11 5 (1.01%) Sparx
12 4 (0.81%) IBM
12 4 (0.81%) VMware
13 3 (0.61%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.61%) Cognos
13 3 (0.61%) Denodo
13 3 (0.61%) NVIDIA
13 3 (0.61%) OpenAI