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 5 September 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 187 273 289
Rank change year-on-year +86 +16 -7
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 808 301 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.50% 0.93% 0.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.62% 1.02% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 585 186 214
10th Percentile £463 £459 £488
25th Percentile £533 £513 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £688 £709 £738
90th Percentile £775 £775 £834
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £550 £638
% change year-on-year +13.64% -13.73% -1.92%
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% -1.23%
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% -16.67%

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 49,872 29,645 35,352
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 91.14% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,754 18,681 22,225
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% -1.69%
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 3,620 1,543 1,776
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.61 £14.47
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.98 £20.24
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.85 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 5 September 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 5 September 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 5 September 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 +77 692 £625 +4.17% 387
London +49 370 £608 +1.29% 280
UK excluding London +67 315 £625 +13.64% 159
Work from Home +42 223 £625 +4.17% 168
Midlands +13 96 £625 -3.85% 33
West Midlands +9 78 £650 -3.70% 17
North of England -34 66 £645 +19.91% 36
South East -29 51 £613 +6.52% 31
South West +4 46 £710 +45.64% 16
Yorkshire -20 38 £675 +22.73% 14
East of England +5 35 £550 -6.38% 7
North West -51 26 £600 +14.29% 20
Scotland -33 20 £690 +38.00% 26
East Midlands -4 18 £606 +1.04% 16
North East - 5 £550 - 2
Wales - 1 £475 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 5 September 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.

1 406 (50.25%) Data Architecture
2 355 (43.94%) Data Modelling
3 289 (35.77%) Security Cleared
4 273 (33.79%) Azure
5 242 (29.95%) SC Cleared
6 236 (29.21%) Data Governance
7 235 (29.08%) Analytics
8 199 (24.63%) Migration
9 195 (24.13%) AWS
10 184 (22.77%) Databricks
11 165 (20.42%) Data Quality
12 160 (19.80%) AI
13 155 (19.18%) Metadata
14 132 (16.34%) Integration Patterns
14 132 (16.34%) Stakeholder Management
15 131 (16.21%) Data Lake
15 131 (16.21%) Data Warehouse
16 129 (15.97%) ETL
17 127 (15.72%) Business Intelligence
17 127 (15.72%) SQL
18 125 (15.47%) Logical Data Model
19 123 (15.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 113 (13.99%) Data Integration
21 110 (13.61%) Data Strategy
22 107 (13.24%) Lakehouse
23 98 (12.13%) Data Engineering
24 95 (11.76%) Roadmaps
25 91 (11.26%) Technical Leadership
26 90 (11.14%) Power Platform
27 89 (11.01%) Physical Data Model

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 (3.09%) SAS
2 24 (2.97%) Apache Spark
3 22 (2.72%) Apache
4 20 (2.48%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (2.23%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.62%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.50%) Confluence
8 2 (0.25%) Alfresco
8 2 (0.25%) PowerExchange
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.12%) JBoss
9 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (0.74%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.25%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.25%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 273 (33.79%) Azure
2 195 (24.13%) AWS
3 90 (11.14%) Power Platform
4 88 (10.89%) GCP
5 70 (8.66%) Snowflake
6 55 (6.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 48 (5.94%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (3.96%) dbt
9 31 (3.84%) Amazon S3
10 28 (3.47%) Serverless
11 25 (3.09%) Microsoft Purview
12 23 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
13 21 (2.60%) Azure Databricks
13 21 (2.60%) SaaS
14 17 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
15 12 (1.49%) Amazon EMR
15 12 (1.49%) Collibra
16 11 (1.36%) Amazon Kinesis
17 10 (1.24%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 10 (1.24%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.50%) Firewall
2 2 (0.25%) BGP
2 2 (0.25%) DSL
2 2 (0.25%) Network Security
2 2 (0.25%) OSPF
2 2 (0.25%) SAN
2 2 (0.25%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.25%) VPN
2 2 (0.25%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
3 1 (0.12%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (19.18%) Metadata
2 131 (16.21%) Data Lake
2 131 (16.21%) Data Warehouse
3 84 (10.40%) Power BI
4 47 (5.82%) NoSQL
5 31 (3.84%) Amazon Redshift
6 27 (3.34%) BigQuery
7 26 (3.22%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 20 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
8 20 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
9 19 (2.35%) Delta Lake
9 19 (2.35%) Semantic Layer
10 16 (1.98%) Base SAS
10 16 (1.98%) Data Vault
10 16 (1.98%) Snowflake Schema
11 15 (1.86%) SQL Server
12 14 (1.73%) Big Data
12 14 (1.73%) Tableau
13 13 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
14 12 (1.49%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 17 (2.10%) ERwin
2 10 (1.24%) Git
3 6 (0.74%) GitLab
4 5 (0.62%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.50%) JIRA
6 3 (0.37%) MLflow
6 3 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.25%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.25%) RStudio
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 165 (20.42%) Social Skills
2 140 (17.33%) Public Sector
3 125 (15.47%) Finance
4 64 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (4.33%) Banking
5 35 (4.33%) Retail
6 29 (3.59%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (2.10%) Marketing
8 14 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
8 14 (1.73%) Police
9 10 (1.24%) Legal
10 8 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (0.74%) Local Government
13 5 (0.62%) Billing
13 5 (0.62%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.62%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.50%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.50%) Military
15 2 (0.25%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.08%) Kafka
1 33 (4.08%) Terraform
2 26 (3.22%) PySpark
3 19 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
4 10 (1.24%) REST
5 9 (1.11%) FHIR
6 7 (0.87%) JSON
7 5 (0.62%) .NET
7 5 (0.62%) Apache NiFi
8 4 (0.50%) Apache Avro
8 4 (0.50%) Middleware
8 4 (0.50%) SOAP
9 3 (0.37%) LangChain
9 3 (0.37%) LangGraph
9 3 (0.37%) Spark Streaming
9 3 (0.37%) XML
10 2 (0.25%) Model Context Protocol
10 2 (0.25%) pytest
10 2 (0.25%) Snowpark
10 2 (0.25%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 63 (7.80%) Cloud Native
2 41 (5.07%) Data Structures
3 25 (3.09%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (2.72%) Reference Data
5 21 (2.60%) Management Information System
6 19 (2.35%) Onboarding
7 18 (2.23%) Data Centre
8 16 (1.98%) AI Agents
8 16 (1.98%) Data Fabric
9 14 (1.73%) Taxonomies
10 13 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (1.61%) Reinsurance
11 12 (1.49%) NHS
11 12 (1.49%) Product Ownership
12 11 (1.36%) IoT
13 10 (1.24%) Replication
13 10 (1.24%) SCADA
14 9 (1.11%) Autonomous Agent
14 9 (1.11%) Clustering
14 9 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.37%) Linux
1 3 (0.37%) Windows
2 2 (0.25%) AIX
2 2 (0.25%) HPUX
2 2 (0.25%) Solaris
2 2 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 406 (50.25%) Data Architecture
2 355 (43.94%) Data Modelling
3 236 (29.21%) Data Governance
4 235 (29.08%) Analytics
5 199 (24.63%) Migration
6 160 (19.80%) AI
7 132 (16.34%) Integration Patterns
7 132 (16.34%) Stakeholder Management
8 129 (15.97%) ETL
9 127 (15.72%) Business Intelligence
10 125 (15.47%) Logical Data Model
11 123 (15.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 113 (13.99%) Data Integration
13 110 (13.61%) Data Strategy
14 107 (13.24%) Lakehouse
15 98 (12.13%) Data Engineering
16 95 (11.76%) Roadmaps
17 91 (11.26%) Technical Leadership
18 89 (11.01%) Physical Data Model
19 87 (10.77%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 127 (15.72%) SQL
2 58 (7.18%) Python
3 16 (1.98%) Java
4 9 (1.11%) Bicep
5 6 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.62%) R
6 5 (0.62%) Scala
7 3 (0.37%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.25%) Cypher
8 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.25%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.25%) SHACL
8 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.12%) C++
9 1 (0.12%) COBOL
9 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 289 (35.77%) Security Cleared
2 242 (29.95%) SC Cleared
3 33 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
3 33 (4.08%) DV Cleared
4 12 (1.49%) AWS Certification
4 12 (1.49%) Azure Certification
5 7 (0.87%) DBS Check
5 7 (0.87%) Degree
6 6 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 5 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.25%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.25%) VCAP
9 2 (0.25%) VCDX
10 1 (0.12%) CISSP
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 165 (20.42%) Data Quality
2 40 (4.95%) GDPR
3 14 (1.73%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (1.11%) SNOMED CT
6 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 7 (0.87%) NIST
7 7 (0.87%) Solvency II
8 6 (0.74%) HL7
8 6 (0.74%) IFRS
9 5 (0.62%) IFRS 17
9 5 (0.62%) QA
10 4 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.25%) GRC
12 2 (0.25%) GxP
12 2 (0.25%) SLA
13 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 3 (0.37%) Docker
1 3 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 9 (1.11%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.62%) Grafana
3 4 (0.50%) Ansible
3 4 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.37%) Istio
4 3 (0.37%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.25%) Argo
5 2 (0.25%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.12%) Control-M
Vendors
1 184 (22.77%) Databricks
2 88 (10.89%) Microsoft
3 45 (5.57%) Oracle
4 27 (3.34%) Informatica
5 24 (2.97%) Google
6 22 (2.72%) SAP
7 21 (2.60%) Foundry
8 19 (2.35%) Palantir
9 16 (1.98%) Salesforce
10 13 (1.61%) Talend
11 9 (1.11%) Denodo
12 8 (0.99%) Sparx
13 7 (0.87%) IFS
14 5 (0.62%) OpenAI
14 5 (0.62%) ServiceNow
14 5 (0.62%) Teradata
15 4 (0.50%) IBM
15 4 (0.50%) NVIDIA
16 3 (0.37%) Confluent
16 3 (0.37%) Workday