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 12 October 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 283 284
Rank change year-on-year +92 +1 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 826 301 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.51% 0.91% 0.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.64% 1.01% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 587 203 203
10th Percentile £456 £450 £476
25th Percentile £535 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £725
90th Percentile £775 £775 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £626 £563 £625
% change year-on-year +11.33% -10.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 2 7
10th Percentile £32.87 £43.21 £57.00
25th Percentile £34.47 £49.60 -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £60.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.93% +1.63% +17.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.12 -
90th Percentile - £79.95 £83.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £60.98 £60.00
% change year-on-year -22.93% +1.63% -2.48%

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 50,217 29,909 35,127
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 90.83% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,441 18,891 21,218
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,086 1,644 1,451
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.18 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 +87 684 £625 +4.17% 510
London +52 363 £620 +3.33% 302
UK excluding London +65 312 £626 +11.33% 242
Work from Home +44 239 £638 +4.94% 196
Midlands +34 106 £626 +4.33% 41
West Midlands +15 79 £647 +10.16% 32
North of England -33 62 £663 +20.45% 66
South East -31 47 £606 -3.00% 47
South West +6 42 £650 +1.96% 15
Yorkshire -7 36 £713 +29.55% 18
East of England +2 33 £519 -11.70% 12
East Midlands +12 27 £600 - 9
North West -41 22 £600 +14.29% 33
Scotland -22 20 £492 +3.58% 48
North East - 4 £650 - 15
Wales - 2 £475 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 12 October 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.

1 439 (53.15%) Data Architecture
2 363 (43.95%) Data Modelling
3 310 (37.53%) Security Cleared
4 265 (32.08%) Azure
5 263 (31.84%) SC Cleared
6 255 (30.87%) Data Governance
7 235 (28.45%) Analytics
8 209 (25.30%) Migration
9 188 (22.76%) AWS
10 181 (21.91%) Data Quality
11 179 (21.67%) Metadata
12 177 (21.43%) Databricks
13 158 (19.13%) AI
14 145 (17.55%) Data Warehouse
15 140 (16.95%) Stakeholder Management
16 138 (16.71%) Data Lake
17 130 (15.74%) Integration Patterns
18 126 (15.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 123 (14.89%) Logical Data Model
20 122 (14.77%) Business Intelligence
21 120 (14.53%) SQL
22 119 (14.41%) ETL
23 116 (14.04%) Lakehouse
24 111 (13.44%) Roadmaps
25 105 (12.71%) Data Integration
26 101 (12.23%) Data Strategy
27 100 (12.11%) Technical Leadership
28 96 (11.62%) Microsoft
29 94 (11.38%) Power Platform
30 93 (11.26%) Metadata 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 27 (3.27%) SAS
2 25 (3.03%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.91%) Apache
4 20 (2.42%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (1.57%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (0.48%) Confluence
6 4 (0.48%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.24%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.12%) JBoss
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.85%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.24%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 265 (32.08%) Azure
2 188 (22.76%) AWS
3 94 (11.38%) Power Platform
4 78 (9.44%) GCP
5 73 (8.84%) Snowflake
6 55 (6.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 47 (5.69%) Azure Data Factory
8 36 (4.36%) dbt
9 26 (3.15%) Amazon S3
10 25 (3.03%) Microsoft Purview
11 22 (2.66%) Serverless
12 21 (2.54%) SaaS
13 19 (2.30%) Azure Databricks
14 16 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
15 12 (1.45%) Collibra
15 12 (1.45%) GitHub
16 9 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
16 9 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (0.97%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.36%) Network Security
1 3 (0.36%) SAN
2 2 (0.24%) DSL
2 2 (0.24%) VPN
3 1 (0.12%) Broadband
3 1 (0.12%) Firewall
3 1 (0.12%) NAS
3 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (21.67%) Metadata
2 145 (17.55%) Data Warehouse
3 138 (16.71%) Data Lake
4 90 (10.90%) Power BI
5 42 (5.08%) NoSQL
6 28 (3.39%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 26 (3.15%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (2.78%) BigQuery
9 22 (2.66%) Azure SQL Database
10 21 (2.54%) Data Vault
11 20 (2.42%) SQL Server
12 19 (2.30%) Semantic Layer
13 18 (2.18%) Delta Lake
13 18 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
14 17 (2.06%) Star Schema
15 16 (1.94%) Base SAS
15 16 (1.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 14 (1.69%) Tableau
17 13 (1.57%) Elasticsearch
17 13 (1.57%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (1.57%) ERwin
2 11 (1.33%) Git
3 6 (0.73%) GitLab
4 5 (0.61%) ER Studio
4 5 (0.61%) JIRA
5 4 (0.48%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.24%) MLflow
7 2 (0.24%) RStudio
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 181 (21.91%) Social Skills
2 145 (17.55%) Public Sector
3 121 (14.65%) Finance
4 66 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (4.72%) Banking
6 34 (4.12%) Influencing Skills
7 28 (3.39%) Retail
8 14 (1.69%) Police
9 13 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (1.45%) Marketing
11 11 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Legal
13 7 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.85%) Local Government
14 6 (0.73%) Military
15 5 (0.61%) Billing
15 5 (0.61%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.36%) Investment Banking
17 2 (0.24%) General Ledger
17 2 (0.24%) Private Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.63%) Kafka
2 27 (3.27%) PySpark
2 27 (3.27%) Terraform
3 16 (1.94%) Oracle Fusion
4 11 (1.33%) REST
5 6 (0.73%) FHIR
6 5 (0.61%) Apache NiFi
7 4 (0.48%) Apache Avro
7 4 (0.48%) JSON
8 3 (0.36%) LangChain
8 3 (0.36%) LangGraph
8 3 (0.36%) Middleware
8 3 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
8 3 (0.36%) OpenAPI
8 3 (0.36%) RESTful
8 3 (0.36%) SOAP
8 3 (0.36%) Swagger
8 3 (0.36%) XML
9 2 (0.24%) pytest
9 2 (0.24%) React
Miscellaneous
1 57 (6.90%) Cloud Native
2 41 (4.96%) Data Structures
3 27 (3.27%) Legacy Systems
4 25 (3.03%) Reference Data
5 23 (2.78%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.42%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.18%) AI Agents
7 18 (2.18%) Data Fabric
7 18 (2.18%) Taxonomies
8 16 (1.94%) Data Centre
8 16 (1.94%) Product Ownership
9 14 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (1.69%) Reinsurance
10 11 (1.33%) Autonomous Agent
10 11 (1.33%) Replication
11 8 (0.97%) Clustering
11 8 (0.97%) Digital Media
11 8 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (0.97%) IoT
12 7 (0.85%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.36%) Linux
1 3 (0.36%) Windows
2 2 (0.24%) AIX
2 2 (0.24%) HPUX
2 2 (0.24%) Solaris
3 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 439 (53.15%) Data Architecture
2 363 (43.95%) Data Modelling
3 255 (30.87%) Data Governance
4 235 (28.45%) Analytics
5 209 (25.30%) Migration
6 158 (19.13%) AI
7 140 (16.95%) Stakeholder Management
8 130 (15.74%) Integration Patterns
9 126 (15.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 123 (14.89%) Logical Data Model
11 122 (14.77%) Business Intelligence
12 119 (14.41%) ETL
13 116 (14.04%) Lakehouse
14 111 (13.44%) Roadmaps
15 105 (12.71%) Data Integration
16 101 (12.23%) Data Strategy
17 100 (12.11%) Technical Leadership
18 93 (11.26%) Metadata Management
19 92 (11.14%) Physical Data Model
20 91 (11.02%) Enterprise Architecture
Programming Languages
1 120 (14.53%) SQL
2 50 (6.05%) Python
3 15 (1.82%) Java
4 8 (0.97%) Bicep
5 7 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.61%) R
7 3 (0.36%) Scala
7 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.24%) Cypher
8 2 (0.24%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.24%) SHACL
8 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.12%) Korn
9 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.12%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 310 (37.53%) Security Cleared
2 263 (31.84%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
3 36 (4.36%) DV Cleared
4 12 (1.45%) AWS Certification
5 10 (1.21%) Azure Certification
5 10 (1.21%) Degree
6 7 (0.85%) DBS Check
7 6 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 6 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.24%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.24%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.12%) CISSP
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (21.91%) Data Quality
2 34 (4.12%) GDPR
3 14 (1.69%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.97%) NCSC
6 7 (0.85%) NIST
6 7 (0.85%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.73%) IFRS
7 6 (0.73%) SNOMED CT
8 5 (0.61%) IFRS 17
8 5 (0.61%) QA
9 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) GxP
11 2 (0.24%) HL7
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
12 1 (0.12%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 3 (0.36%) Docker
2 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (0.85%) Kubernetes
2 6 (0.73%) Grafana
3 4 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.36%) Istio
4 3 (0.36%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Argo
5 2 (0.24%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.12%) Control-M
Vendors
1 177 (21.43%) Databricks
2 96 (11.62%) Microsoft
3 42 (5.08%) Oracle
4 27 (3.27%) Google
5 22 (2.66%) Informatica
6 18 (2.18%) SAP
7 16 (1.94%) Foundry
8 14 (1.69%) Palantir
9 12 (1.45%) Talend
10 11 (1.33%) Denodo
11 10 (1.21%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.09%) Sparx
13 7 (0.85%) IFS
13 7 (0.85%) ServiceNow
14 6 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 5 (0.61%) Confluent
15 5 (0.61%) Teradata
16 3 (0.36%) Cloudera
16 3 (0.36%) MicroStrategy
16 3 (0.36%) Workday