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 8 August 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 274 273
Rank change year-on-year +85 -1 +8
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 770 317 332
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.44% 0.96% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.55% 1.05% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 201 223
10th Percentile £463 £463 £489
25th Percentile £525 £525 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £760
90th Percentile £775 £780 £873
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £585 £625
% change year-on-year +6.84% -6.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 11
10th Percentile - £41.31 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.58% -13.37% -6.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.37 -
90th Percentile - £64.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.64% -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 49,634 30,076 36,192
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.60% 91.43% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,863 19,075 23,380
10th Percentile £328 £281 £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 £625 £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 3,458 1,498 2,043
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.64 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.24
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +20.00%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +77 666 £620 +3.33% 304
London +32 354 £600 - 189
UK excluding London +57 307 £625 +6.84% 153
Work from Home +19 207 £625 +4.17% 129
Midlands +13 89 £638 -1.92% 33
West Midlands 0 71 £650 -3.70% 24
North of England -51 62 £632 +7.57% 35
South East -24 51 £613 +6.52% 30
South West -3 49 £650 +17.12% 17
Yorkshire -22 36 £675 +1.89% 14
East of England +9 33 £550 - 8
North West -35 25 £600 +14.29% 16
Scotland -11 23 £500 -2.77% 18
East Midlands +4 18 £606 +1.04% 9
North East - 4 £550 - 5
Wales - 1 £475 -

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

For the 6 months to 8 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.

1 378 (49.09%) Data Architecture
2 326 (42.34%) Data Modelling
3 252 (32.73%) Azure
4 248 (32.21%) Security Cleared
5 228 (29.61%) Analytics
6 212 (27.53%) SC Cleared
7 202 (26.23%) Data Governance
8 191 (24.81%) Migration
9 171 (22.21%) AWS
10 158 (20.52%) Databricks
11 145 (18.83%) AI
12 137 (17.79%) Data Quality
13 130 (16.88%) Business Intelligence
14 129 (16.75%) ETL
15 125 (16.23%) Integration Patterns
16 124 (16.10%) Metadata
17 123 (15.97%) Data Warehouse
18 120 (15.58%) Data Lake
19 109 (14.16%) SQL
20 107 (13.90%) Logical Data Model
21 105 (13.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 102 (13.25%) Data Integration
23 97 (12.60%) Data Pipeline
24 95 (12.34%) Data Engineering
25 94 (12.21%) Data Strategy
26 89 (11.56%) Power Platform
27 87 (11.30%) Stakeholder Management
28 84 (10.91%) Microsoft
29 82 (10.65%) Power BI
30 80 (10.39%) 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 (3.25%) Apache Spark
1 25 (3.25%) SAS
2 19 (2.47%) Apache
3 18 (2.34%) Palantir Foundry
4 11 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.30%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.78%) Confluence
7 2 (0.26%) Alfresco
8 1 (0.13%) JBoss
8 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (0.52%) 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
1 252 (32.73%) Azure
2 171 (22.21%) AWS
3 89 (11.56%) Power Platform
4 80 (10.39%) GCP
5 62 (8.05%) Snowflake
6 47 (6.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 45 (5.84%) Azure Data Factory
8 29 (3.77%) Amazon S3
9 25 (3.25%) Microsoft Purview
10 24 (3.12%) AWS Lambda
10 24 (3.12%) Serverless
11 23 (2.99%) dbt
12 18 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
13 16 (2.08%) SaaS
14 11 (1.43%) Amazon Kinesis
15 10 (1.30%) Amazon EMR
15 10 (1.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 10 (1.30%) Azure Machine Learning
15 10 (1.30%) Collibra
15 10 (1.30%) GitHub
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
1 124 (16.10%) Metadata
2 123 (15.97%) Data Warehouse
3 120 (15.58%) Data Lake
4 82 (10.65%) Power BI
5 46 (5.97%) NoSQL
6 25 (3.25%) BigQuery
7 23 (2.99%) Amazon Redshift
8 22 (2.86%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 21 (2.73%) Azure SQL Database
10 17 (2.21%) Big Data
11 16 (2.08%) Base SAS
11 16 (2.08%) Delta Lake
11 16 (2.08%) Semantic Layer
12 15 (1.95%) Snowflake Schema
13 13 (1.69%) Data Vault
13 13 (1.69%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
14 11 (1.43%) Amazon Athena
14 11 (1.43%) SQL Server
14 11 (1.43%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 22 (2.86%) ERwin
2 8 (1.04%) Git
3 6 (0.78%) GitLab
4 4 (0.52%) ER Studio
5 3 (0.39%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.39%) JIRA
6 2 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) MLflow
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 138 (17.92%) Social Skills
2 123 (15.97%) Finance
3 110 (14.29%) Public Sector
4 60 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (4.94%) Banking
6 35 (4.55%) Retail
7 17 (2.21%) Marketing
8 16 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
9 13 (1.69%) Police
10 10 (1.30%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.17%) Legal
12 7 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.91%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.78%) Local Government
13 6 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.26%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.26%) Private Banking
15 2 (0.26%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (4.42%) Kafka
2 23 (2.99%) PySpark
3 17 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.91%) .NET
4 7 (0.91%) Middleware
4 7 (0.91%) REST
5 5 (0.65%) FHIR
5 5 (0.65%) JSON
6 3 (0.39%) LangChain
6 3 (0.39%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.39%) Spark Streaming
7 2 (0.26%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.26%) FastAPI
7 2 (0.26%) JWT
7 2 (0.26%) Lightning Web Components
7 2 (0.26%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (0.26%) pytest
7 2 (0.26%) React
7 2 (0.26%) Snowpark
7 2 (0.26%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.44%) Cloud Native
2 40 (5.19%) Data Structures
3 26 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (2.86%) Reference Data
5 16 (2.08%) AI Agents
5 16 (2.08%) Data Centre
6 15 (1.95%) Management Information System
6 15 (1.95%) NHS
6 15 (1.95%) Taxonomies
7 13 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
7 13 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 11 (1.43%) IoT
9 10 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.30%) Product Ownership
10 9 (1.17%) Autonomous Agent
10 9 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
10 9 (1.17%) Mainframe
10 9 (1.17%) SCADA
11 8 (1.04%) Data Fabric
11 8 (1.04%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 6 (0.78%) zOS
2 3 (0.39%) Windows
3 2 (0.26%) AIX
3 2 (0.26%) HPUX
3 2 (0.26%) Linux
3 2 (0.26%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 378 (49.09%) Data Architecture
2 326 (42.34%) Data Modelling
3 228 (29.61%) Analytics
4 202 (26.23%) Data Governance
5 191 (24.81%) Migration
6 145 (18.83%) AI
7 130 (16.88%) Business Intelligence
8 129 (16.75%) ETL
9 125 (16.23%) Integration Patterns
10 107 (13.90%) Logical Data Model
11 105 (13.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 102 (13.25%) Data Integration
13 97 (12.60%) Data Pipeline
14 95 (12.34%) Data Engineering
15 94 (12.21%) Data Strategy
16 87 (11.30%) Stakeholder Management
17 79 (10.26%) Roadmaps
18 77 (10.00%) Data Migration
19 76 (9.87%) Agile
20 74 (9.61%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 109 (14.16%) SQL
2 55 (7.14%) Python
3 18 (2.34%) Java
4 9 (1.17%) Bicep
5 7 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 6 (0.78%) Scala
7 5 (0.65%) R
8 3 (0.39%) Kotlin
8 3 (0.39%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.26%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.26%) Cypher
9 2 (0.26%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.26%) SHACL
9 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.26%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.13%) C++
10 1 (0.13%) COBOL
10 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 248 (32.21%) Security Cleared
2 212 (27.53%) SC Cleared
3 29 (3.77%) DV Cleared
4 24 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (1.82%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.56%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.04%) Degree
8 7 (0.91%) DBS Check
9 5 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
10 4 (0.52%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.39%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.26%) VCAP
12 2 (0.26%) VCDX
13 1 (0.13%) CISSP
13 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.13%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (17.79%) Data Quality
2 41 (5.32%) GDPR
3 12 (1.56%) Accessibility
3 12 (1.56%) QA
4 11 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.91%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.78%) HL7
6 6 (0.78%) NIST
7 5 (0.65%) IFRS
7 5 (0.65%) IFRS 17
7 5 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.65%) SNOMED CT
8 3 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.39%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.26%) GRC
9 2 (0.26%) GxP
9 2 (0.26%) NCSC
9 2 (0.26%) SLA
10 1 (0.13%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 4 (0.52%) Docker
2 3 (0.39%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 25 (3.25%) Terraform
2 9 (1.17%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.65%) Grafana
4 4 (0.52%) Ansible
5 3 (0.39%) Istio
5 3 (0.39%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.26%) Argo
6 2 (0.26%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 158 (20.52%) Databricks
2 84 (10.91%) Microsoft
3 39 (5.06%) Oracle
4 21 (2.73%) Foundry
4 21 (2.73%) Salesforce
4 21 (2.73%) SAP
5 19 (2.47%) Google
5 19 (2.47%) Palantir
6 17 (2.21%) Informatica
7 9 (1.17%) Denodo
8 8 (1.04%) Talend
9 7 (0.91%) IFS
9 7 (0.91%) Sparx
10 6 (0.78%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.65%) Confluent
12 4 (0.52%) NVIDIA
13 3 (0.39%) Guidewire
13 3 (0.39%) IBM
13 3 (0.39%) Workday
14 2 (0.26%) ServiceNow