Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 May 2026.

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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 242 222
Rank change year-on-year +17 -20 +49
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 543 317 441
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 1.09% 1.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.23% 1.18% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 383 219 309
10th Percentile £457 £468 £500
25th Percentile £513 £516 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year - -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £700 £775
90th Percentile £788 £780 £893
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £675
% change year-on-year +4.35% -14.81% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 8
10th Percentile - £48.38 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £62.50 £58.13
Median hourly rate £47.00 £80.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.25% +33.33% -9.09%
75th Percentile £64.00 £82.25 -
90th Percentile £69.09 £83.90 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -41.61% +34.17% -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 44,326 26,919 39,482
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 92.40% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,149 17,544 25,684
10th Percentile £320 £295 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.74% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,891 1,039 2,653
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.47% -22.79% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.38 £61.38 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.35 £40.00
% change year-on-year +64.53% -31.63% -5.88%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 +2 462 £600 - 139
London +12 261 £588 -2.08% 73
UK excluding London -11 202 £600 +4.35% 91
Work from Home +5 147 £600 - 67
Midlands -29 53 £613 +2.08% 21
West Midlands -30 45 £613 +2.08% 14
North of England -65 37 £600 +9.09% 18
South West -17 34 £695 +54.44% 9
South East -59 29 £575 +4.55% 31
East of England -11 28 £505 -20.78% 4
Scotland +1 23 £600 +9.39% 5
Yorkshire -46 20 £610 -12.86% 6
North West -44 13 £575 +9.52% 6
East Midlands -19 8 £613 - 7
North East -18 7 £550 -4.35% 6
Wales -9 3 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 16 May 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.

1 277 (51.01%) Data Architecture
2 244 (44.94%) Data Modelling
3 192 (35.36%) Analytics
4 186 (34.25%) Azure
5 139 (25.60%) Data Governance
6 135 (24.86%) Security Cleared
7 123 (22.65%) AWS
7 123 (22.65%) Databricks
8 119 (21.92%) Migration
9 111 (20.44%) ETL
10 109 (20.07%) SQL
11 108 (19.89%) SC Cleared
12 101 (18.60%) Business Intelligence
13 98 (18.05%) Metadata
14 88 (16.21%) AI
14 88 (16.21%) Data Quality
14 88 (16.21%) Data Warehouse
15 83 (15.29%) Microsoft
16 82 (15.10%) Data Integration
17 80 (14.73%) Data Lake
18 76 (14.00%) Data Pipeline
19 74 (13.63%) Data Management
20 71 (13.08%) Logical Data Model
21 70 (12.89%) Power Platform
22 68 (12.52%) Data Engineering
23 64 (11.79%) Data Strategy
24 62 (11.42%) Power BI
25 61 (11.23%) Roadmaps
26 60 (11.05%) Data Migration
26 60 (11.05%) Integration Patterns

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 18 (3.31%) Apache Spark
2 12 (2.21%) SAS
2 12 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 11 (2.03%) Apache
3 11 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.84%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.37%) Alfresco
5 2 (0.37%) Confluence
6 1 (0.18%) Appian
6 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.55%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 8 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.37%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.18%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 186 (34.25%) Azure
2 123 (22.65%) AWS
3 70 (12.89%) Power Platform
4 54 (9.94%) GCP
5 44 (8.10%) Azure Data Factory
6 43 (7.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 42 (7.73%) Snowflake
8 31 (5.71%) Microsoft Purview
9 30 (5.52%) Serverless
10 26 (4.79%) Amazon S3
11 24 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
13 19 (3.50%) dbt
14 16 (2.95%) Amazon Kinesis
15 15 (2.76%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 14 (2.58%) GitHub
17 12 (2.21%) AWS Step Functions
18 11 (2.03%) SaaS
19 10 (1.84%) Amazon EventBridge
19 10 (1.84%) Amazon MSK
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.74%) Firewall
2 2 (0.37%) BGP
2 2 (0.37%) DNS
2 2 (0.37%) DSL
2 2 (0.37%) OSPF
2 2 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.37%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.18%) LAN
3 1 (0.18%) Network Security
3 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
3 1 (0.18%) SMS
3 1 (0.18%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (18.05%) Metadata
2 88 (16.21%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (14.73%) Data Lake
4 62 (11.42%) Power BI
5 32 (5.89%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.60%) Amazon Redshift
6 25 (4.60%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (4.60%) SQL Server
7 21 (3.87%) Azure SQL Database
8 19 (3.50%) Tableau
9 18 (3.31%) Big Data
10 16 (2.95%) Delta Lake
11 15 (2.76%) Amazon Athena
12 14 (2.58%) Metadata Repository
12 14 (2.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 13 (2.39%) BigQuery
13 13 (2.39%) Data Vault
14 12 (2.21%) Star Schema
15 11 (2.03%) Apache Iceberg
16 10 (1.84%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 22 (4.05%) ERwin
2 6 (1.10%) GitLab
2 6 (1.10%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.74%) Git
4 3 (0.55%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.18%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.18%) MLflow
5 1 (0.18%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 88 (16.21%) Social Skills
2 77 (14.18%) Finance
3 59 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 45 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (4.97%) Retail
6 19 (3.50%) Banking
7 11 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (1.84%) Marketing
9 8 (1.47%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.10%) Local Government
12 5 (0.92%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.55%) Law
13 3 (0.55%) Legal
13 3 (0.55%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.37%) Military
14 2 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.18%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.89%) Kafka
2 16 (2.95%) PySpark
3 14 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
4 9 (1.66%) Apache Avro
4 9 (1.66%) Protocol Buffers
5 7 (1.29%) .NET
5 7 (1.29%) Middleware
6 5 (0.92%) REST
7 4 (0.74%) FHIR
7 4 (0.74%) JSON
8 3 (0.55%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.55%) SOAP
9 2 (0.37%) OpenTelemetry
9 2 (0.37%) Spark Streaming
9 2 (0.37%) XML
10 1 (0.18%) Apache NiFi
10 1 (0.18%) FIX Protocol
10 1 (0.18%) GraphQL
10 1 (0.18%) Lambda Expressions
10 1 (0.18%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 40 (7.37%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.34%) Data Structures
3 19 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
4 17 (3.13%) Reference Data
5 14 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 14 (2.58%) NHS
6 11 (2.03%) Mainframe
7 10 (1.84%) IoT
8 9 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.47%) AI Agents
9 8 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.29%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 6 (1.10%) PACS
11 6 (1.10%) Reinsurance
11 6 (1.10%) Taxonomies
12 5 (0.92%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (0.92%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.92%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.66%) zOS
2 2 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 277 (51.01%) Data Architecture
2 244 (44.94%) Data Modelling
3 192 (35.36%) Analytics
4 139 (25.60%) Data Governance
5 119 (21.92%) Migration
6 111 (20.44%) ETL
7 101 (18.60%) Business Intelligence
8 88 (16.21%) AI
9 82 (15.10%) Data Integration
10 76 (14.00%) Data Pipeline
11 74 (13.63%) Data Management
12 71 (13.08%) Logical Data Model
13 68 (12.52%) Data Engineering
14 64 (11.79%) Data Strategy
15 61 (11.23%) Roadmaps
16 60 (11.05%) Data Migration
16 60 (11.05%) Integration Patterns
17 58 (10.68%) Architectural Patterns
18 57 (10.50%) Physical Data Model
19 56 (10.31%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 109 (20.07%) SQL
2 57 (10.50%) Python
3 12 (2.21%) Java
4 9 (1.66%) Scala
5 8 (1.47%) T-SQL
6 6 (1.10%) PowerShell
7 5 (0.92%) Bicep
8 3 (0.55%) Apex Code
8 3 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.37%) Bash
9 2 (0.37%) COBOL
9 2 (0.37%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.37%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.37%) R
9 2 (0.37%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.18%) ANSI SQL
10 1 (0.18%) C++
10 1 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.18%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 135 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 108 (19.89%) SC Cleared
3 22 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (3.87%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.87%) Degree
5 20 (3.68%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.76%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (1.66%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.74%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.37%) VCAP
11 2 (0.37%) VCDX
12 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.18%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.18%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (16.21%) Data Quality
2 24 (4.42%) GDPR
3 13 (2.39%) QA
4 8 (1.47%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.29%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.74%) HL7
7 4 (0.74%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.37%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.37%) FINREP
8 2 (0.37%) IFRS
8 2 (0.37%) NIST
8 2 (0.37%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.18%) GRC
9 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 4 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.55%) Docker
3 2 (0.37%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.37%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.37%) vSphere
4 1 (0.18%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (4.42%) Terraform
2 7 (1.29%) Grafana
3 6 (1.10%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.10%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.92%) Ansible
5 2 (0.37%) Argo
5 2 (0.37%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 123 (22.65%) Databricks
2 83 (15.29%) Microsoft
3 37 (6.81%) Oracle
4 22 (4.05%) Salesforce
5 21 (3.87%) SAP
6 18 (3.31%) Informatica
7 15 (2.76%) Talend
8 13 (2.39%) Foundry
9 12 (2.21%) Google
10 11 (2.03%) Confluent
11 10 (1.84%) Palantir
12 4 (0.74%) IBM
12 4 (0.74%) NVIDIA
12 4 (0.74%) Sparx
12 4 (0.74%) VMware
13 3 (0.55%) Cognos
13 3 (0.55%) Denodo
13 3 (0.55%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.55%) Remedy
14 2 (0.37%) Pure Storage