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 30 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 290 295
Rank change year-on-year +105 +5 -9
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 844 295 304
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.54% 0.90% 0.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.67% 0.99% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 600 188 203
10th Percentile £463 £454 £476
25th Percentile £533 £513 £521
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £688 £703 £738
90th Percentile £775 £775 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £626 £575 £625
% change year-on-year +8.91% -8.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 1 9
10th Percentile £32.87 - £58.50
25th Percentile £46.00 - -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.64% -35.07% -1.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - - £71.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.64% -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 50,615 29,871 34,958
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 90.97% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,878 18,887 21,169
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,942 1,601 1,551
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.55 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.16%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +96 704 £625 +4.17% 497
London +59 387 £615 +2.50% 296
UK excluding London +72 315 £626 +8.91% 216
Work from Home +35 239 £638 +6.25% 204
Midlands +33 103 £626 +4.38% 57
West Midlands +12 78 £647 +7.87% 39
North of England -45 64 £650 +18.18% 56
South East -19 49 £606 -3.00% 31
South West -2 41 £650 +1.96% 20
Yorkshire -19 36 £713 +29.55% 17
East of England -1 34 £563 -4.26% 10
North West -39 26 £600 +14.29% 29
East Midlands +5 25 £606 +1.04% 18
Scotland -15 23 £633 +26.50% 36
North East - 2 £650 - 10
Wales - 1 £475 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 435 (51.54%) Data Architecture
2 359 (42.54%) Data Modelling
3 305 (36.14%) Security Cleared
4 269 (31.87%) Azure
5 259 (30.69%) SC Cleared
6 245 (29.03%) Analytics
7 243 (28.79%) Data Governance
8 211 (25.00%) Migration
9 197 (23.34%) AWS
10 179 (21.21%) Databricks
11 174 (20.62%) Data Quality
12 170 (20.14%) Metadata
13 163 (19.31%) AI
14 144 (17.06%) Data Warehouse
15 140 (16.59%) Data Lake
16 136 (16.11%) Stakeholder Management
17 129 (15.28%) Integration Patterns
18 126 (14.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 123 (14.57%) ETL
19 123 (14.57%) SQL
20 122 (14.45%) Logical Data Model
21 118 (13.98%) Business Intelligence
22 114 (13.51%) Lakehouse
23 108 (12.80%) Data Strategy
24 106 (12.56%) Data Integration
25 105 (12.44%) Roadmaps
26 99 (11.73%) Technical Leadership
27 94 (11.14%) Decision-Making
28 91 (10.78%) Data Engineering
28 91 (10.78%) 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 27 (3.20%) SAS
2 25 (2.96%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.84%) Apache
4 21 (2.49%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (2.13%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (0.47%) Confluence
6 4 (0.47%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.24%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.12%) JBoss
8 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.24%) SAP ERP
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
1 269 (31.87%) Azure
2 197 (23.34%) AWS
3 88 (10.43%) Power Platform
4 82 (9.72%) GCP
5 73 (8.65%) Snowflake
6 54 (6.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 46 (5.45%) Azure Data Factory
8 38 (4.50%) dbt
9 30 (3.55%) Amazon S3
10 25 (2.96%) Serverless
11 23 (2.73%) Microsoft Purview
12 22 (2.61%) SaaS
13 21 (2.49%) Azure Databricks
14 20 (2.37%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
16 13 (1.54%) Collibra
17 12 (1.42%) Amazon EMR
18 11 (1.30%) Amazon Kinesis
19 9 (1.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 8 (0.95%) GitHub
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
3 1 (0.12%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (20.14%) Metadata
2 144 (17.06%) Data Warehouse
3 140 (16.59%) Data Lake
4 83 (9.83%) Power BI
5 44 (5.21%) NoSQL
6 30 (3.55%) Amazon Redshift
6 30 (3.55%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 22 (2.61%) BigQuery
8 21 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 20 (2.37%) Semantic Layer
10 19 (2.25%) Data Vault
10 19 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
11 17 (2.01%) Delta Lake
12 16 (1.90%) Base SAS
12 16 (1.90%) Snowflake Schema
12 16 (1.90%) SQL Server
12 16 (1.90%) Star Schema
13 13 (1.54%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (1.54%) Tableau
14 12 (1.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 13 (1.54%) ERwin
2 10 (1.18%) Git
3 7 (0.83%) GitLab
4 5 (0.59%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.47%) JIRA
6 3 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.24%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.24%) MLflow
7 2 (0.24%) RStudio
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 180 (21.33%) Social Skills
2 150 (17.77%) Public Sector
3 119 (14.10%) Finance
4 65 (7.70%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (4.27%) Banking
6 33 (3.91%) Influencing Skills
7 30 (3.55%) Retail
8 15 (1.78%) Marketing
9 14 (1.66%) Police
10 10 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.18%) Legal
11 9 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.83%) Local Government
13 5 (0.59%) Billing
13 5 (0.59%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.59%) Military
14 4 (0.47%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.36%) Investment Banking
16 2 (0.24%) General Ledger
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.67%) Kafka
2 27 (3.20%) PySpark
3 26 (3.08%) Terraform
4 23 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
5 11 (1.30%) REST
6 6 (0.71%) FHIR
7 5 (0.59%) Apache NiFi
8 4 (0.47%) .NET
8 4 (0.47%) Apache Avro
8 4 (0.47%) JSON
8 4 (0.47%) SOAP
9 3 (0.36%) LangChain
9 3 (0.36%) LangGraph
9 3 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
9 3 (0.36%) XML
10 2 (0.24%) FastAPI
10 2 (0.24%) JWT
10 2 (0.24%) OpenAPI
10 2 (0.24%) OpenTelemetry
10 2 (0.24%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 62 (7.35%) Cloud Native
2 42 (4.98%) Data Structures
3 27 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.37%) Reference Data
6 19 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 17 (2.01%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.01%) Data Fabric
8 16 (1.90%) Data Centre
8 16 (1.90%) Taxonomies
9 15 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.66%) Product Ownership
10 14 (1.66%) Reinsurance
11 11 (1.30%) Autonomous Agent
12 10 (1.18%) NHS
12 10 (1.18%) Replication
13 9 (1.07%) Clustering
14 8 (0.95%) Digital Media
14 8 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.95%) IoT
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
1 435 (51.54%) Data Architecture
2 359 (42.54%) Data Modelling
3 245 (29.03%) Analytics
4 243 (28.79%) Data Governance
5 211 (25.00%) Migration
6 163 (19.31%) AI
7 136 (16.11%) Stakeholder Management
8 129 (15.28%) Integration Patterns
9 126 (14.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 123 (14.57%) ETL
11 122 (14.45%) Logical Data Model
12 118 (13.98%) Business Intelligence
13 114 (13.51%) Lakehouse
14 108 (12.80%) Data Strategy
15 106 (12.56%) Data Integration
16 105 (12.44%) Roadmaps
17 99 (11.73%) Technical Leadership
18 94 (11.14%) Decision-Making
19 91 (10.78%) Data Engineering
19 91 (10.78%) Physical Data Model
Programming Languages
1 123 (14.57%) SQL
2 51 (6.04%) Python
3 17 (2.01%) Java
4 7 (0.83%) Bicep
4 7 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 5 (0.59%) R
6 4 (0.47%) Scala
7 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.24%) Cypher
8 2 (0.24%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.24%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.24%) SHACL
8 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 305 (36.14%) Security Cleared
2 259 (30.69%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 35 (4.15%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.42%) AWS Certification
6 10 (1.18%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.83%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.83%) Degree
8 6 (0.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.24%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (20.62%) Data Quality
2 36 (4.27%) GDPR
3 13 (1.54%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.95%) NCSC
6 7 (0.83%) NIST
6 7 (0.83%) SNOMED CT
6 7 (0.83%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.71%) IFRS
7 6 (0.71%) QA
8 5 (0.59%) IFRS 17
9 4 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.36%) HL7
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%) 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 (0.83%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.59%) Grafana
3 4 (0.47%) 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
1 179 (21.21%) Databricks
2 90 (10.66%) Microsoft
3 48 (5.69%) Oracle
4 25 (2.96%) Google
5 24 (2.84%) Informatica
6 23 (2.73%) Foundry
7 19 (2.25%) Palantir
7 19 (2.25%) SAP
8 14 (1.66%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.54%) Talend
10 11 (1.30%) Denodo
11 9 (1.07%) Sparx
12 7 (0.83%) IFS
13 6 (0.71%) OpenAI
13 6 (0.71%) ServiceNow
14 5 (0.59%) Confluent
14 5 (0.59%) Teradata
15 4 (0.47%) IBM
15 4 (0.47%) NVIDIA
16 3 (0.36%) MicroStrategy