Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 August 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 195 267 282
Rank change year-on-year +72 +15 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 772 319 322
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.44% 0.97% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.56% 1.06% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 556 198 222
10th Percentile £475 £463 £488
25th Percentile £533 £525 £532
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £709 £750
90th Percentile £775 £780 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £575 £650
% change year-on-year +8.70% -11.54% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 10
10th Percentile - £41.31 £59.25
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £58.50 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.54% -13.37% -6.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.37 -
90th Percentile - £64.65 £65.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +50.15% -35.07% -9.09%

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 49,489 29,958 36,053
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.24% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,683 18,934 23,125
10th Percentile £325 £280 £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 £620 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,498 1,546 1,979
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.63 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.62 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.71% +17.07%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 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 +54 666 £620 +3.33% 110
London +36 357 £600 - 60
UK excluding London +47 303 £625 +8.70% 70
Work from Home +22 209 £625 +4.17% 58
Midlands +5 89 £625 -3.85% 11
West Midlands -4 71 £650 -3.70% 11
North of England -24 64 £632 +14.91% 25
South East -21 50 £609 +8.33% 22
South West -2 45 £652 +17.48% 5
Yorkshire -20 37 £675 -3.57% 13
East of England +7 34 £550 - 1
North West -25 26 £600 +14.29% 8
Scotland -16 20 £690 +38.00% 3
East Midlands -3 18 £606 +1.04%
North East - 4 £550 - 4
Wales - 1 £475 -

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

For the 6 months to 20 August 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.

1 376 (48.70%) Data Architecture
2 331 (42.88%) Data Modelling
3 260 (33.68%) Azure
4 254 (32.90%) Security Cleared
5 231 (29.92%) Analytics
6 214 (27.72%) SC Cleared
7 204 (26.42%) Data Governance
8 190 (24.61%) Migration
9 180 (23.32%) AWS
10 166 (21.50%) Databricks
11 148 (19.17%) AI
12 145 (18.78%) Data Quality
13 133 (17.23%) Business Intelligence
14 129 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
15 128 (16.58%) Integration Patterns
16 127 (16.45%) Data Lake
17 126 (16.32%) Metadata
18 125 (16.19%) ETL
19 123 (15.93%) SQL
20 113 (14.64%) Logical Data Model
21 109 (14.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 105 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
23 103 (13.34%) Data Integration
23 103 (13.34%) Data Strategy
24 98 (12.69%) Data Engineering
25 97 (12.56%) Power Platform
26 90 (11.66%) Microsoft
27 89 (11.53%) Power BI
28 88 (11.40%) Data Pipeline
29 85 (11.01%) GCP

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 25 (3.24%) Apache Spark
1 25 (3.24%) SAS
2 19 (2.46%) Apache
3 18 (2.33%) Palantir Foundry
4 14 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.17%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.78%) Confluence
7 2 (0.26%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.26%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.13%) JBoss
8 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.65%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.26%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.26%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) iTrent
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.13%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 260 (33.68%) Azure
2 180 (23.32%) AWS
3 97 (12.56%) Power Platform
4 85 (11.01%) GCP
5 64 (8.29%) Snowflake
6 53 (6.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 49 (6.35%) Azure Data Factory
8 30 (3.89%) Amazon S3
9 28 (3.63%) Serverless
10 27 (3.50%) Microsoft Purview
11 26 (3.37%) dbt
12 25 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
14 15 (1.94%) SaaS
15 12 (1.55%) Amazon EMR
16 11 (1.42%) Amazon Kinesis
17 10 (1.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 10 (1.30%) Collibra
17 10 (1.30%) GitHub
18 9 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.65%) Firewall
2 3 (0.39%) Network Security
2 3 (0.39%) VPN
3 2 (0.26%) BGP
3 2 (0.26%) DSL
3 2 (0.26%) OSPF
3 2 (0.26%) SAN
3 2 (0.26%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.26%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
2 127 (16.45%) Data Lake
3 126 (16.32%) Metadata
4 89 (11.53%) Power BI
5 45 (5.83%) NoSQL
6 28 (3.63%) BigQuery
7 27 (3.50%) Amazon Redshift
8 25 (3.24%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 22 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
10 20 (2.59%) Delta Lake
11 16 (2.07%) Base SAS
11 16 (2.07%) Data Vault
11 16 (2.07%) Snowflake Schema
12 15 (1.94%) Semantic Layer
13 14 (1.81%) Big Data
14 13 (1.68%) Amazon Athena
14 13 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
14 13 (1.68%) SQL Server
15 12 (1.55%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 19 (2.46%) ERwin
2 10 (1.30%) Git
3 6 (0.78%) GitLab
4 4 (0.52%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.52%) JIRA
5 2 (0.26%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.26%) MLflow
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.13%) RStudio
6 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 144 (18.65%) Social Skills
2 129 (16.71%) Finance
3 122 (15.80%) Public Sector
4 59 (7.64%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (4.66%) Banking
6 35 (4.53%) Retail
7 19 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (2.20%) Marketing
9 14 (1.81%) Police
10 11 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.17%) Legal
12 7 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 7 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (0.78%) Local Government
13 6 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 5 (0.65%) Investment Banking
15 3 (0.39%) Military
16 2 (0.26%) General Ledger
16 2 (0.26%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.27%) Kafka
2 31 (4.02%) Terraform
3 26 (3.37%) PySpark
4 17 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
5 8 (1.04%) REST
6 7 (0.91%) .NET
7 6 (0.78%) Middleware
8 5 (0.65%) FHIR
8 5 (0.65%) JSON
9 3 (0.39%) LangChain
9 3 (0.39%) LangGraph
9 3 (0.39%) Spark Streaming
10 2 (0.26%) AngularJS
10 2 (0.26%) Model Context Protocol
10 2 (0.26%) Protocol Buffers
10 2 (0.26%) pytest
10 2 (0.26%) React
10 2 (0.26%) Snowpark
10 2 (0.26%) Spring Boot
10 2 (0.26%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.42%) Cloud Native
2 38 (4.92%) Data Structures
3 28 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
4 24 (3.11%) Reference Data
5 19 (2.46%) Data Centre
5 19 (2.46%) Management Information System
6 15 (1.94%) AI Agents
7 14 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
7 14 (1.81%) Onboarding
8 13 (1.68%) NHS
9 11 (1.42%) IoT
9 11 (1.42%) Taxonomies
10 10 (1.30%) Product Ownership
10 10 (1.30%) SCADA
11 9 (1.17%) Autonomous Agent
11 9 (1.17%) Data Fabric
11 9 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
12 8 (1.04%) Digital Media
12 8 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
13 7 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (0.52%) zOS
2 3 (0.39%) Linux
2 3 (0.39%) Windows
3 2 (0.26%) AIX
3 2 (0.26%) HPUX
3 2 (0.26%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 376 (48.70%) Data Architecture
2 331 (42.88%) Data Modelling
3 231 (29.92%) Analytics
4 204 (26.42%) Data Governance
5 190 (24.61%) Migration
6 148 (19.17%) AI
7 133 (17.23%) Business Intelligence
8 128 (16.58%) Integration Patterns
9 125 (16.19%) ETL
10 113 (14.64%) Logical Data Model
11 109 (14.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 105 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
13 103 (13.34%) Data Integration
13 103 (13.34%) Data Strategy
14 98 (12.69%) Data Engineering
15 88 (11.40%) Data Pipeline
16 82 (10.62%) Roadmaps
17 79 (10.23%) CI/CD
18 77 (9.97%) Decision-Making
19 76 (9.84%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 123 (15.93%) SQL
2 58 (7.51%) Python
3 18 (2.33%) Java
4 9 (1.17%) Bicep
5 7 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.65%) R
6 5 (0.65%) Scala
7 3 (0.39%) Kotlin
7 3 (0.39%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.26%) Cypher
8 2 (0.26%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.26%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.26%) SHACL
8 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.26%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.13%) C++
9 1 (0.13%) COBOL
9 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 254 (32.90%) Security Cleared
2 214 (27.72%) SC Cleared
3 29 (3.76%) DV Cleared
4 26 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (1.94%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.55%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.91%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.91%) Degree
8 5 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.26%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.26%) VCAP
10 2 (0.26%) VCDX
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 145 (18.78%) Data Quality
2 40 (5.18%) GDPR
3 14 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.91%) NIST
5 7 (0.91%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.78%) HL7
6 6 (0.78%) IFRS
6 6 (0.78%) QA
7 5 (0.65%) IFRS 17
7 5 (0.65%) SNOMED CT
8 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 4 (0.52%) NCSC
9 3 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.39%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.26%) GRC
10 2 (0.26%) GxP
10 2 (0.26%) SLA
11 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (0.39%) Active Directory
1 3 (0.39%) Docker
1 3 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 9 (1.17%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.65%) Grafana
3 4 (0.52%) Ansible
4 3 (0.39%) Istio
4 3 (0.39%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.26%) Argo
5 2 (0.26%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.13%) Control-M
Vendors
1 166 (21.50%) Databricks
2 90 (11.66%) Microsoft
3 41 (5.31%) Oracle
4 22 (2.85%) Google
5 21 (2.72%) Foundry
5 21 (2.72%) Informatica
5 21 (2.72%) SAP
6 19 (2.46%) Palantir
7 18 (2.33%) Salesforce
8 9 (1.17%) Denodo
9 8 (1.04%) Talend
10 7 (0.91%) IFS
10 7 (0.91%) Sparx
11 6 (0.78%) OpenAI
12 4 (0.52%) IBM
12 4 (0.52%) NVIDIA
13 3 (0.39%) Cloudera
13 3 (0.39%) Guidewire
13 3 (0.39%) Teradata
13 3 (0.39%) VMware