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 11 September 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 292 277
Rank change year-on-year +104 -15 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 812 303 321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.49% 0.92% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.61% 1.01% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 188 223
10th Percentile £463 £454 £488
25th Percentile £533 £513 £534
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £645
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -6.98% -4.44%
75th Percentile £688 £703 £750
90th Percentile £775 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £575 £638
% change year-on-year +8.70% -9.80% -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 50,390 30,066 35,884
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 91.06% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,936 18,964 22,304
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,743 1,564 1,744
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.06 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.60 £52.50 £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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +88 690 £625 +4.17% 294
London +53 373 £608 +1.29% 215
UK excluding London +72 311 £625 +8.70% 113
Work from Home +30 224 £625 +4.17% 118
Midlands +19 96 £626 -3.65% 24
West Midlands +11 78 £653 -3.26% 15
North of England -36 65 £650 +18.18% 17
South East -16 51 £613 +2.08% 34
South West -8 44 £679 +39.23% 12
Yorkshire -15 37 £675 +22.73% 10
East of England -8 33 £563 -4.26% 4
North West -32 26 £600 +14.29% 6
Scotland -15 21 £633 +26.50% 18
East Midlands +1 18 £606 +1.04% 9
North East - 5 £550 - 1
Wales - 1 £475 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 11 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.

1 405 (49.88%) Data Architecture
2 353 (43.47%) Data Modelling
3 291 (35.84%) Security Cleared
4 270 (33.25%) Azure
5 246 (30.30%) SC Cleared
6 238 (29.31%) Analytics
7 235 (28.94%) Data Governance
8 200 (24.63%) Migration
9 193 (23.77%) AWS
10 183 (22.54%) Databricks
11 167 (20.57%) Data Quality
12 161 (19.83%) AI
13 155 (19.09%) Metadata
14 133 (16.38%) Data Warehouse
14 133 (16.38%) Integration Patterns
15 132 (16.26%) Data Lake
15 132 (16.26%) Stakeholder Management
16 128 (15.76%) Business Intelligence
17 125 (15.39%) ETL
17 125 (15.39%) SQL
18 123 (15.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 121 (14.90%) Logical Data Model
20 110 (13.55%) Data Strategy
20 110 (13.55%) Lakehouse
21 109 (13.42%) Data Integration
22 97 (11.95%) Data Engineering
23 96 (11.82%) Roadmaps
24 91 (11.21%) Power Platform
25 90 (11.08%) Technical Leadership
26 89 (10.96%) Decision-Making

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 (3.08%) SAS
2 23 (2.83%) Apache Spark
3 22 (2.71%) Apache
4 20 (2.46%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (2.22%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.62%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.49%) 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 (0.49%) 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%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 270 (33.25%) Azure
2 193 (23.77%) AWS
3 91 (11.21%) Power Platform
4 87 (10.71%) GCP
5 71 (8.74%) Snowflake
6 54 (6.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 46 (5.67%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (3.94%) dbt
9 30 (3.69%) Amazon S3
10 26 (3.20%) Serverless
11 24 (2.96%) Microsoft Purview
12 22 (2.71%) SaaS
13 21 (2.59%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (2.34%) Azure Databricks
15 16 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
16 12 (1.48%) Amazon EMR
16 12 (1.48%) Collibra
17 11 (1.35%) Amazon Kinesis
18 9 (1.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 8 (0.99%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.25%) DSL
1 2 (0.25%) Firewall
1 2 (0.25%) Network Security
1 2 (0.25%) SAN
1 2 (0.25%) VPN
2 1 (0.12%) BGP
2 1 (0.12%) OSPF
2 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
2 1 (0.12%) SMS
2 1 (0.12%) Structured Cabling
2 1 (0.12%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (19.09%) Metadata
2 133 (16.38%) Data Warehouse
3 132 (16.26%) Data Lake
4 85 (10.47%) Power BI
5 43 (5.30%) NoSQL
6 30 (3.69%) Amazon Redshift
7 27 (3.33%) BigQuery
7 27 (3.33%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 20 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
8 20 (2.46%) Semantic Layer
9 19 (2.34%) Azure SQL Database
10 17 (2.09%) Delta Lake
11 16 (1.97%) Base SAS
11 16 (1.97%) Data Vault
11 16 (1.97%) Snowflake Schema
12 15 (1.85%) SQL Server
13 14 (1.72%) Star Schema
13 14 (1.72%) Tableau
14 13 (1.60%) Big Data
14 13 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 17 (2.09%) ERwin
2 10 (1.23%) Git
3 6 (0.74%) GitLab
4 5 (0.62%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.49%) 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
1 168 (20.69%) Social Skills
2 139 (17.12%) Public Sector
3 125 (15.39%) Finance
4 65 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (4.43%) Banking
6 35 (4.31%) Retail
7 29 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (2.09%) Marketing
9 14 (1.72%) Police
10 13 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.23%) Legal
12 8 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.74%) Local Government
15 5 (0.62%) Billing
15 5 (0.62%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.62%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.49%) Investment Banking
16 4 (0.49%) Military
17 2 (0.25%) General Ledger
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.69%) Kafka
1 30 (3.69%) Terraform
2 27 (3.33%) PySpark
3 20 (2.46%) Oracle Fusion
4 10 (1.23%) REST
5 9 (1.11%) FHIR
6 7 (0.86%) JSON
7 5 (0.62%) .NET
7 5 (0.62%) Apache NiFi
8 4 (0.49%) Apache Avro
8 4 (0.49%) Middleware
8 4 (0.49%) 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%) FastAPI
10 2 (0.25%) Model Context Protocol
10 2 (0.25%) OpenTelemetry
10 2 (0.25%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 61 (7.51%) Cloud Native
2 42 (5.17%) Data Structures
3 25 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
4 21 (2.59%) Reference Data
5 19 (2.34%) Management Information System
5 19 (2.34%) Onboarding
6 17 (2.09%) AI Agents
6 17 (2.09%) Data Centre
7 16 (1.97%) Data Fabric
8 14 (1.72%) Taxonomies
9 13 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (1.60%) NHS
9 13 (1.60%) Product Ownership
9 13 (1.60%) Reinsurance
10 10 (1.23%) Replication
11 9 (1.11%) Autonomous Agent
11 9 (1.11%) Clustering
11 9 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.11%) IoT
12 8 (0.99%) Digital Media
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
3 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 405 (49.88%) Data Architecture
2 353 (43.47%) Data Modelling
3 238 (29.31%) Analytics
4 235 (28.94%) Data Governance
5 200 (24.63%) Migration
6 161 (19.83%) AI
7 133 (16.38%) Integration Patterns
8 132 (16.26%) Stakeholder Management
9 128 (15.76%) Business Intelligence
10 125 (15.39%) ETL
11 123 (15.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 121 (14.90%) Logical Data Model
13 110 (13.55%) Data Strategy
13 110 (13.55%) Lakehouse
14 109 (13.42%) Data Integration
15 97 (11.95%) Data Engineering
16 96 (11.82%) Roadmaps
17 90 (11.08%) Technical Leadership
18 89 (10.96%) Decision-Making
19 87 (10.71%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 125 (15.39%) SQL
2 56 (6.90%) Python
3 16 (1.97%) Java
4 7 (0.86%) Bicep
4 7 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 5 (0.62%) R
6 4 (0.49%) 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
1 291 (35.84%) Security Cleared
2 246 (30.30%) SC Cleared
3 34 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
4 32 (3.94%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.48%) AWS Certification
6 11 (1.35%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.86%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 6 (0.74%) Degree
9 5 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.25%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.12%) CISSP
11 1 (0.12%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.12%) VCAP
11 1 (0.12%) VCDX
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 167 (20.57%) Data Quality
2 37 (4.56%) GDPR
3 13 (1.60%) Accessibility
4 10 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (1.11%) SNOMED CT
6 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 7 (0.86%) NIST
7 7 (0.86%) 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 (0.49%) 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%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 3 (0.37%) Docker
2 2 (0.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 8 (0.99%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.62%) Grafana
3 4 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.37%) Ansible
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
1 183 (22.54%) Databricks
2 88 (10.84%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.42%) Oracle
4 25 (3.08%) Informatica
5 23 (2.83%) Google
6 21 (2.59%) Foundry
7 19 (2.34%) Palantir
7 19 (2.34%) SAP
8 16 (1.97%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.60%) Talend
10 9 (1.11%) Denodo
11 8 (0.99%) Sparx
12 7 (0.86%) IFS
13 5 (0.62%) OpenAI
13 5 (0.62%) ServiceNow
13 5 (0.62%) Teradata
14 4 (0.49%) IBM
14 4 (0.49%) NVIDIA
15 3 (0.37%) Cloudera
15 3 (0.37%) MicroStrategy