Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £613, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 July 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 275 272
Rank change year-on-year +78 -3 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 744 311 346
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.41% 0.94% 0.86%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.52% 1.03% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 524 205 240
10th Percentile £463 £463 £500
25th Percentile £525 £513 £539
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £713 £775
90th Percentile £775 £800 £876
UK excluding London median daily rate £621 £575 £650
% change year-on-year +8.00% -11.54% +1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 11
10th Percentile - £41.31 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £64.00 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.12% -13.37% -6.98%
75th Percentile £69.72 £60.37 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +64.27% -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 48,898 30,175 37,360
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 91.56% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,518 19,205 24,201
10th Percentile £329 £284 £300
25th Percentile £423 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
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 3,323 1,465 2,247
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.71 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +70.97% -40.16% -2.26%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.17 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.72%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 +76 638 £610 +1.67% 209
London +41 336 £595 -3.10% 127
UK excluding London +47 302 £621 +8.00% 112
Work from Home +31 214 £610 +1.67% 95
Midlands +6 82 £625 +4.17% 22
West Midlands -6 64 £638 +6.25% 19
North of England -43 62 £610 +3.83% 33
South West +1 49 £650 +23.81% 8
South East -38 48 £606 +7.78% 28
Yorkshire -24 39 £675 +1.89% 13
East of England +6 33 £550 - 3
Scotland +2 30 £550 +6.95% 8
North West -41 21 £588 +11.90% 12
East Midlands +3 18 £606 - 3
North East - 5 £550 - 8
Wales -13 1 £475 +101.27% 1

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

For the 6 months to 27 July 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 (50.54%) Data Architecture
2 328 (44.09%) Data Modelling
3 248 (33.33%) Azure
4 230 (30.91%) Security Cleared
5 222 (29.84%) Analytics
6 200 (26.88%) SC Cleared
7 194 (26.08%) Data Governance
8 175 (23.52%) Migration
9 166 (22.31%) AWS
10 153 (20.56%) Databricks
11 134 (18.01%) ETL
11 134 (18.01%) Metadata
12 132 (17.74%) AI
12 132 (17.74%) Business Intelligence
13 130 (17.47%) Data Warehouse
14 128 (17.20%) Data Quality
15 120 (16.13%) Integration Patterns
16 116 (15.59%) SQL
17 114 (15.32%) Data Lake
18 108 (14.52%) Data Integration
19 101 (13.58%) Logical Data Model
20 98 (13.17%) Data Engineering
21 97 (13.04%) Data Pipeline
22 90 (12.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 89 (11.96%) Microsoft
24 87 (11.69%) Power Platform
25 84 (11.29%) Data Strategy
26 82 (11.02%) GCP
27 80 (10.75%) Power BI
28 78 (10.48%) Data Management

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 28 (3.76%) Apache Spark
2 27 (3.63%) SAS
3 23 (3.09%) Apache
4 18 (2.42%) Palantir Foundry
5 17 (2.28%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (1.48%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.67%) Confluence
8 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
9 1 (0.13%) Appian
9 1 (0.13%) JBoss
9 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.67%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.27%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) iTrent
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 248 (33.33%) Azure
2 166 (22.31%) AWS
3 87 (11.69%) Power Platform
4 82 (11.02%) GCP
5 59 (7.93%) Snowflake
6 48 (6.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 43 (5.78%) Azure Data Factory
8 29 (3.90%) Amazon S3
9 25 (3.36%) Microsoft Purview
10 23 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
10 23 (3.09%) dbt
10 23 (3.09%) Serverless
11 18 (2.42%) SaaS
12 16 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (1.48%) Amazon Kinesis
13 11 (1.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 11 (1.48%) GitHub
14 10 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 10 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
14 10 (1.34%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.67%) Firewall
2 3 (0.40%) DSL
2 3 (0.40%) Network Security
3 2 (0.27%) BGP
3 2 (0.27%) DNS
3 2 (0.27%) OSPF
3 2 (0.27%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.27%) VPN
3 2 (0.27%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SAN
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (18.01%) Metadata
2 130 (17.47%) Data Warehouse
3 114 (15.32%) Data Lake
4 80 (10.75%) Power BI
5 43 (5.78%) NoSQL
6 25 (3.36%) BigQuery
7 24 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (3.09%) Big Data
9 21 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
10 20 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
10 20 (2.69%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 18 (2.42%) SQL Server
12 16 (2.15%) Semantic Layer
13 15 (2.02%) Delta Lake
13 15 (2.02%) Snowflake Schema
14 14 (1.88%) Base SAS
14 14 (1.88%) Data Vault
15 13 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
16 12 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (1.61%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 25 (3.36%) ERwin
2 8 (1.08%) Git
3 7 (0.94%) GitLab
4 5 (0.67%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.54%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.40%) JIRA
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) MLflow
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 125 (16.80%) Finance
2 123 (16.53%) Social Skills
3 97 (13.04%) Public Sector
4 56 (7.53%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (5.11%) Banking
6 34 (4.57%) Retail
7 15 (2.02%) Marketing
8 14 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (1.48%) Police
10 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.21%) Legal
12 6 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.81%) Investment Banking
12 6 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.67%) Local Government
14 4 (0.54%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.40%) Military
16 2 (0.27%) Private Banking
16 2 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (5.11%) Kafka
2 23 (3.09%) PySpark
3 15 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.94%) .NET
4 7 (0.94%) Middleware
4 7 (0.94%) REST
5 5 (0.67%) FHIR
5 5 (0.67%) JSON
6 4 (0.54%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (0.40%) LangChain
7 3 (0.40%) LangGraph
7 3 (0.40%) Spark Streaming
8 2 (0.27%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.27%) FastAPI
8 2 (0.27%) JWT
8 2 (0.27%) Lightning Web Components
8 2 (0.27%) Model Context Protocol
8 2 (0.27%) Snowpark
8 2 (0.27%) WebSockets
8 2 (0.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (8.06%) Cloud Native
2 37 (4.97%) Data Structures
3 24 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (3.23%) Reference Data
4 16 (2.15%) Data Centre
5 15 (2.02%) Management Information System
5 15 (2.02%) NHS
6 14 (1.88%) IoT
6 14 (1.88%) Taxonomies
7 12 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (1.61%) Onboarding
8 11 (1.48%) AI Agents
9 10 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.34%) Mainframe
10 9 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
10 9 (1.21%) Product Ownership
11 8 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
11 8 (1.08%) SCADA
12 7 (0.94%) Digital Media
12 7 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.08%) zOS
2 3 (0.40%) Windows
3 1 (0.13%) AIX
3 1 (0.13%) HPUX
3 1 (0.13%) Linux
3 1 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 376 (50.54%) Data Architecture
2 328 (44.09%) Data Modelling
3 222 (29.84%) Analytics
4 194 (26.08%) Data Governance
5 175 (23.52%) Migration
6 134 (18.01%) ETL
7 132 (17.74%) AI
7 132 (17.74%) Business Intelligence
8 120 (16.13%) Integration Patterns
9 108 (14.52%) Data Integration
10 101 (13.58%) Logical Data Model
11 98 (13.17%) Data Engineering
12 97 (13.04%) Data Pipeline
13 90 (12.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 84 (11.29%) Data Strategy
15 78 (10.48%) Data Management
15 78 (10.48%) Roadmaps
16 77 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
17 75 (10.08%) Agile
17 75 (10.08%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 116 (15.59%) SQL
2 57 (7.66%) Python
3 15 (2.02%) Java
4 7 (0.94%) Bicep
4 7 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 6 (0.81%) Scala
6 5 (0.67%) R
7 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.27%) Bash
8 2 (0.27%) COBOL
8 2 (0.27%) Cypher
8 2 (0.27%) Kotlin
8 2 (0.27%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.27%) SHACL
8 2 (0.27%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.13%) C++
9 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.13%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.13%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 230 (30.91%) Security Cleared
2 200 (26.88%) SC Cleared
3 29 (3.90%) DV Cleared
4 20 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.15%) Degree
6 15 (2.02%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.48%) AWS Certification
8 10 (1.34%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.94%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
11 5 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 2 (0.27%) VCAP
13 2 (0.27%) VCDX
14 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (17.20%) Data Quality
2 38 (5.11%) GDPR
3 14 (1.88%) QA
4 12 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.81%) HL7
5 6 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.67%) IFRS
6 5 (0.67%) IFRS 17
6 5 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.67%) SNOMED CT
6 5 (0.67%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.40%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.27%) NCSC
8 2 (0.27%) NIST
8 2 (0.27%) SLA
9 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 4 (0.54%) Docker
1 4 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.27%) VMware NSX
2 2 (0.27%) vSphere
3 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 25 (3.36%) Terraform
2 11 (1.48%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.08%) Grafana
4 5 (0.67%) Ansible
5 4 (0.54%) Argo
6 3 (0.40%) Istio
6 3 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.27%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.13%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 153 (20.56%) Databricks
2 89 (11.96%) Microsoft
3 42 (5.65%) Oracle
4 23 (3.09%) Informatica
5 21 (2.82%) Foundry
5 21 (2.82%) SAP
6 20 (2.69%) Google
7 19 (2.55%) Palantir
7 19 (2.55%) Salesforce
8 15 (2.02%) Talend
9 7 (0.94%) Denodo
9 7 (0.94%) IFS
9 7 (0.94%) Sparx
10 6 (0.81%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.67%) Confluent
12 4 (0.54%) IBM
12 4 (0.54%) NVIDIA
12 4 (0.54%) VMware
13 3 (0.40%) Red Hat
13 3 (0.40%) Remedy