Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £621, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 August 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 195 281 277
Rank change year-on-year +86 -4 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 753 311 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.41% 0.94% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.52% 1.03% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 532 201 227
10th Percentile £463 £463 £488
25th Percentile £525 £513 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £621 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -7.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £766
90th Percentile £775 £780 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £585 £638
% change year-on-year +6.84% -8.24% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 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 49,411 30,266 36,487
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.43% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,780 19,222 23,643
10th Percentile £331 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,407 1,492 2,092
10th Percentile £15.36 £13.65 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £54.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -41.51% +10.19%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +68 651 £615 +2.50% 244
London +56 348 £600 -0.74% 149
UK excluding London +49 300 £625 +6.84% 131
Work from Home +23 209 £610 +1.67% 105
Midlands +3 80 £625 -3.85% 32
North of England -37 64 £610 +3.83% 34
West Midlands -16 62 £644 -4.63% 28
South West +5 50 £650 +23.81% 8
South East -32 50 £609 +5.98% 29
Yorkshire -20 40 £675 +1.89% 15
East of England +11 33 £550 - 5
Scotland -6 25 £500 -2.77% 14
North West -47 22 £600 +14.29% 13
East Midlands +1 18 £606 +1.04% 4
North East - 5 £550 - 6
Wales -13 1 £475 +101.27%

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 371 (49.27%) Data Architecture
2 317 (42.10%) Data Modelling
3 250 (33.20%) Azure
4 236 (31.34%) Security Cleared
5 224 (29.75%) Analytics
6 203 (26.96%) SC Cleared
7 197 (26.16%) Data Governance
8 175 (23.24%) Migration
9 167 (22.18%) AWS
10 152 (20.19%) Databricks
11 135 (17.93%) AI
12 130 (17.26%) Business Intelligence
13 129 (17.13%) ETL
14 128 (17.00%) Data Quality
15 123 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
16 121 (16.07%) Integration Patterns
17 120 (15.94%) Metadata
18 112 (14.87%) SQL
19 111 (14.74%) Data Lake
20 103 (13.68%) Data Integration
21 102 (13.55%) Logical Data Model
22 100 (13.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 95 (12.62%) Data Engineering
23 95 (12.62%) Data Pipeline
24 88 (11.69%) Power Platform
25 86 (11.42%) Microsoft
26 85 (11.29%) Data Strategy
27 81 (10.76%) GCP
27 81 (10.76%) Power BI
28 78 (10.36%) Stakeholder 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 (3.59%) Apache Spark
2 22 (2.92%) SAS
3 21 (2.79%) Apache
4 19 (2.52%) Palantir Foundry
5 14 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
6 12 (1.59%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.80%) Confluence
8 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
9 1 (0.13%) JBoss
9 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.66%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.27%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) iTrent
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 250 (33.20%) Azure
2 167 (22.18%) AWS
3 88 (11.69%) Power Platform
4 81 (10.76%) GCP
5 61 (8.10%) Snowflake
6 45 (5.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 43 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
8 29 (3.85%) Amazon S3
9 23 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (3.05%) dbt
9 23 (3.05%) Microsoft Purview
9 23 (3.05%) Serverless
10 17 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (2.12%) SaaS
12 11 (1.46%) Amazon EMR
12 11 (1.46%) Amazon Kinesis
12 11 (1.46%) GitHub
13 10 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (1.33%) Azure Machine Learning
13 10 (1.33%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.66%) Firewall
2 3 (0.40%) Network Security
2 3 (0.40%) VPN
3 2 (0.27%) BGP
3 2 (0.27%) DNS
3 2 (0.27%) DSL
3 2 (0.27%) OSPF
3 2 (0.27%) SAN
3 2 (0.27%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.27%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (16.33%) Data Warehouse
2 120 (15.94%) Metadata
3 111 (14.74%) Data Lake
4 81 (10.76%) Power BI
5 41 (5.44%) NoSQL
6 25 (3.32%) BigQuery
7 24 (3.19%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (2.79%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 20 (2.66%) Big Data
10 19 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
11 17 (2.26%) PostgreSQL
12 16 (2.12%) Semantic Layer
13 15 (1.99%) Base SAS
13 15 (1.99%) Delta Lake
13 15 (1.99%) Snowflake Schema
14 14 (1.86%) Data Vault
14 14 (1.86%) SQL Server
15 13 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
16 12 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (1.59%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (3.05%) ERwin
2 8 (1.06%) Git
3 7 (0.93%) GitLab
4 5 (0.66%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.53%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.40%) JIRA
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) MLflow
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 126 (16.73%) Social Skills
2 122 (16.20%) Finance
3 103 (13.68%) Public Sector
4 58 (7.70%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (5.31%) Banking
6 34 (4.52%) Retail
7 17 (2.26%) Marketing
8 14 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
9 12 (1.59%) Police
10 10 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.33%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.20%) Legal
12 7 (0.93%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.66%) Local Government
14 5 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.53%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.40%) Military
17 2 (0.27%) Pharmaceutical
17 2 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.78%) Kafka
2 24 (3.19%) PySpark
3 15 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.93%) .NET
4 7 (0.93%) Middleware
4 7 (0.93%) REST
5 5 (0.66%) FHIR
5 5 (0.66%) JSON
6 4 (0.53%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (0.40%) LangChain
7 3 (0.40%) LangGraph
7 3 (0.40%) Spark Streaming
8 2 (0.27%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Avro
8 2 (0.27%) Bootstrap
8 2 (0.27%) Protocol Buffers
8 2 (0.27%) SOAP
8 2 (0.27%) Spring
8 2 (0.27%) WebSockets
8 2 (0.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (7.97%) Cloud Native
2 39 (5.18%) Data Structures
3 24 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (3.19%) Reference Data
4 16 (2.12%) Data Centre
5 15 (1.99%) AI Agents
5 15 (1.99%) Management Information System
5 15 (1.99%) NHS
6 14 (1.86%) Taxonomies
7 13 (1.73%) Onboarding
8 12 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (1.59%) IoT
9 10 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.33%) Mainframe
9 10 (1.33%) Product Ownership
10 9 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 8 (1.06%) Data Fabric
11 8 (1.06%) Digital Media
11 8 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
11 8 (1.06%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 7 (0.93%) zOS
2 4 (0.53%) Windows
3 2 (0.27%) AIX
3 2 (0.27%) HPUX
3 2 (0.27%) Linux
3 2 (0.27%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 371 (49.27%) Data Architecture
2 317 (42.10%) Data Modelling
3 224 (29.75%) Analytics
4 197 (26.16%) Data Governance
5 175 (23.24%) Migration
6 135 (17.93%) AI
7 130 (17.26%) Business Intelligence
8 129 (17.13%) ETL
9 121 (16.07%) Integration Patterns
10 103 (13.68%) Data Integration
11 102 (13.55%) Logical Data Model
12 100 (13.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 95 (12.62%) Data Engineering
13 95 (12.62%) Data Pipeline
14 85 (11.29%) Data Strategy
15 78 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
16 77 (10.23%) Agile
16 77 (10.23%) Roadmaps
17 73 (9.69%) Data Migration
18 72 (9.56%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 112 (14.87%) SQL
2 59 (7.84%) Python
3 16 (2.12%) Java
4 8 (1.06%) Bicep
5 7 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 6 (0.80%) Scala
7 5 (0.66%) R
8 3 (0.40%) Kotlin
8 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.27%) Bash
9 2 (0.27%) COBOL
9 2 (0.27%) Cypher
9 2 (0.27%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.27%) SHACL
9 2 (0.27%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.27%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.13%) C++
10 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 236 (31.34%) Security Cleared
2 203 (26.96%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.72%) DV Cleared
4 21 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (1.73%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.59%) AWS Certification
6 12 (1.59%) Degree
7 7 (0.93%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.93%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
9 4 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.27%) VCAP
10 2 (0.27%) VCDX
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (17.00%) Data Quality
2 39 (5.18%) GDPR
3 13 (1.73%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.59%) QA
5 9 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.80%) HL7
7 5 (0.66%) IFRS
7 5 (0.66%) IFRS 17
7 5 (0.66%) NIST
7 5 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.66%) SNOMED CT
7 5 (0.66%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.40%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.27%) GxP
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.27%) NCSC
9 2 (0.27%) SLA
10 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.13%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 4 (0.53%) Docker
1 4 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.40%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.27%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.27%) vSphere
4 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 27 (3.59%) Terraform
2 11 (1.46%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.06%) Grafana
4 6 (0.80%) Ansible
5 4 (0.53%) Argo
6 3 (0.40%) Istio
6 3 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.27%) NetBackup
7 2 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 152 (20.19%) Databricks
2 86 (11.42%) Microsoft
3 36 (4.78%) Oracle
4 22 (2.92%) Foundry
5 21 (2.79%) SAP
6 20 (2.66%) Google
6 20 (2.66%) Informatica
6 20 (2.66%) Palantir
6 20 (2.66%) Salesforce
7 12 (1.59%) Talend
8 7 (0.93%) Denodo
8 7 (0.93%) IFS
8 7 (0.93%) Sparx
9 6 (0.80%) OpenAI
10 5 (0.66%) Confluent
11 4 (0.53%) IBM
11 4 (0.53%) NVIDIA
11 4 (0.53%) VMware
12 3 (0.40%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.40%) Red Hat