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 2 September 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 285 299
Rank change year-on-year +97 +14 -27
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 789 302 315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.47% 0.93% 0.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.59% 1.02% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 566 187 216
10th Percentile £463 £463 £488
25th Percentile £533 £513 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £706 £750
90th Percentile £775 £775 £856
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £575 £650
% change year-on-year +8.70% -11.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 10
10th Percentile - £41.31 £59.25
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £58.50 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.54% -13.37% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.37 -
90th Percentile - £64.65 £65.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +50.15% -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 49,539 29,677 35,948
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.24% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,564 18,735 22,669
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
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 3,586 1,552 1,836
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.00 £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 £53.89 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 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 2 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 2 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 +88 676 £621 +3.50% 360
London +57 361 £608 +1.29% 264
UK excluding London +60 308 £625 +8.70% 147
Work from Home +32 213 £625 +3.95% 154
Midlands +13 94 £625 -3.85% 28
West Midlands +8 76 £627 -7.19% 14
North of England -46 64 £657 +19.45% 39
South East -27 49 £606 +16.03% 30
South West -3 44 £710 +35.24% 16
Yorkshire -17 37 £675 +22.73% 14
East of England +4 35 £550 -6.38% 6
North West -41 26 £600 +14.29% 20
Scotland -22 21 £690 +38.00% 17
East Midlands -1 18 £606 +1.04% 14
North East - 4 £550 - 5
Wales - 1 £475 -

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 395 (50.06%) Data Architecture
2 342 (43.35%) Data Modelling
3 282 (35.74%) Security Cleared
4 274 (34.73%) Azure
5 241 (30.54%) SC Cleared
6 228 (28.90%) Analytics
6 228 (28.90%) Data Governance
7 197 (24.97%) Migration
8 190 (24.08%) AWS
9 180 (22.81%) Databricks
10 159 (20.15%) Data Quality
11 158 (20.03%) AI
12 148 (18.76%) Metadata
13 132 (16.73%) Data Warehouse
14 129 (16.35%) Business Intelligence
14 129 (16.35%) ETL
15 128 (16.22%) Data Lake
15 128 (16.22%) Integration Patterns
16 127 (16.10%) Stakeholder Management
17 124 (15.72%) SQL
18 120 (15.21%) Logical Data Model
19 119 (15.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 112 (14.20%) Data Integration
21 108 (13.69%) Data Strategy
22 103 (13.05%) Lakehouse
23 94 (11.91%) Data Engineering
24 93 (11.79%) Roadmaps
25 92 (11.66%) Power Platform
26 88 (11.15%) GCP
26 88 (11.15%) Technical Leadership

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 (3.17%) SAS
2 24 (3.04%) Apache Spark
3 18 (2.28%) Apache
3 18 (2.28%) Palantir Foundry
4 17 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.14%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.76%) Confluence
7 2 (0.25%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.25%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.13%) JBoss
8 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.63%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.25%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.25%) 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
1 274 (34.73%) Azure
2 190 (24.08%) AWS
3 92 (11.66%) Power Platform
4 88 (11.15%) GCP
5 67 (8.49%) Snowflake
6 53 (6.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 48 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
8 31 (3.93%) Amazon S3
9 29 (3.68%) dbt
10 28 (3.55%) Serverless
11 25 (3.17%) Microsoft Purview
12 23 (2.92%) AWS Lambda
13 21 (2.66%) Azure Databricks
13 21 (2.66%) SaaS
14 17 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
15 12 (1.52%) Amazon EMR
15 12 (1.52%) Collibra
16 11 (1.39%) Amazon Kinesis
17 10 (1.27%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 10 (1.27%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.51%) Firewall
2 3 (0.38%) VPN
3 2 (0.25%) BGP
3 2 (0.25%) DSL
3 2 (0.25%) Network Security
3 2 (0.25%) OSPF
3 2 (0.25%) SAN
3 2 (0.25%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.25%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (18.76%) Metadata
2 132 (16.73%) Data Warehouse
3 128 (16.22%) Data Lake
4 86 (10.90%) Power BI
5 47 (5.96%) NoSQL
6 29 (3.68%) Amazon Redshift
7 26 (3.30%) BigQuery
7 26 (3.30%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 20 (2.53%) Azure SQL Database
9 19 (2.41%) Delta Lake
9 19 (2.41%) Semantic Layer
10 17 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
11 16 (2.03%) Base SAS
11 16 (2.03%) Data Vault
11 16 (2.03%) Snowflake Schema
12 14 (1.77%) Big Data
12 14 (1.77%) Tableau
13 13 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (1.65%) SQL Server
14 12 (1.52%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 17 (2.15%) ERwin
2 10 (1.27%) Git
3 6 (0.76%) GitLab
4 5 (0.63%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.51%) JIRA
6 3 (0.38%) MLflow
6 3 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.25%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.25%) RStudio
8 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 161 (20.41%) Social Skills
2 134 (16.98%) Public Sector
3 124 (15.72%) Finance
4 63 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (4.44%) Retail
6 34 (4.31%) Banking
7 29 (3.68%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (2.15%) Marketing
9 14 (1.77%) Police
10 13 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.14%) Legal
12 8 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.76%) Local Government
15 5 (0.63%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.63%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.51%) Investment Banking
16 4 (0.51%) Military
17 3 (0.38%) Billing
18 2 (0.25%) General Ledger
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.18%) Kafka
1 33 (4.18%) Terraform
2 26 (3.30%) PySpark
3 19 (2.41%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (1.01%) FHIR
4 8 (1.01%) REST
5 5 (0.63%) .NET
5 5 (0.63%) JSON
6 4 (0.51%) Middleware
7 3 (0.38%) LangChain
7 3 (0.38%) LangGraph
7 3 (0.38%) Spark Streaming
8 2 (0.25%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.25%) FastAPI
8 2 (0.25%) JWT
8 2 (0.25%) Model Context Protocol
8 2 (0.25%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (0.25%) pytest
8 2 (0.25%) React
8 2 (0.25%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 62 (7.86%) Cloud Native
2 39 (4.94%) Data Structures
3 25 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (2.79%) Reference Data
5 21 (2.66%) Management Information System
6 17 (2.15%) Data Centre
6 17 (2.15%) Onboarding
7 16 (2.03%) AI Agents
8 14 (1.77%) Data Fabric
9 13 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.52%) NHS
10 12 (1.52%) Product Ownership
10 12 (1.52%) Taxonomies
11 11 (1.39%) IoT
12 10 (1.27%) Reinsurance
12 10 (1.27%) Replication
12 10 (1.27%) SCADA
13 9 (1.14%) Autonomous Agent
13 9 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (1.01%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.38%) Linux
1 3 (0.38%) Windows
2 2 (0.25%) AIX
2 2 (0.25%) HPUX
2 2 (0.25%) Solaris
2 2 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 395 (50.06%) Data Architecture
2 342 (43.35%) Data Modelling
3 228 (28.90%) Analytics
3 228 (28.90%) Data Governance
4 197 (24.97%) Migration
5 158 (20.03%) AI
6 129 (16.35%) Business Intelligence
6 129 (16.35%) ETL
7 128 (16.22%) Integration Patterns
8 127 (16.10%) Stakeholder Management
9 120 (15.21%) Logical Data Model
10 119 (15.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 112 (14.20%) Data Integration
12 108 (13.69%) Data Strategy
13 103 (13.05%) Lakehouse
14 94 (11.91%) Data Engineering
15 93 (11.79%) Roadmaps
16 88 (11.15%) Technical Leadership
17 87 (11.03%) Data Pipeline
18 85 (10.77%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 124 (15.72%) SQL
2 60 (7.60%) Python
3 18 (2.28%) Java
4 9 (1.14%) Bicep
5 6 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.63%) R
6 5 (0.63%) Scala
7 3 (0.38%) Kotlin
7 3 (0.38%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.25%) Cypher
8 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.25%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.25%) SHACL
8 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.13%) C++
9 1 (0.13%) COBOL
9 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 282 (35.74%) Security Cleared
2 241 (30.54%) SC Cleared
3 31 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
4 29 (3.68%) DV Cleared
5 14 (1.77%) Azure Certification
6 11 (1.39%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.89%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.89%) Degree
8 4 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.25%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.25%) VCAP
10 2 (0.25%) VCDX
11 1 (0.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (20.15%) Data Quality
2 41 (5.20%) GDPR
3 14 (1.77%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (1.01%) SNOMED CT
6 7 (0.89%) NIST
6 7 (0.89%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.76%) HL7
7 6 (0.76%) IFRS
8 5 (0.63%) IFRS 17
8 5 (0.63%) NCSC
8 5 (0.63%) QA
9 4 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.38%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.25%) GRC
11 2 (0.25%) GxP
11 2 (0.25%) SLA
12 1 (0.13%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 3 (0.38%) Docker
1 3 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.25%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 9 (1.14%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.63%) Grafana
3 4 (0.51%) Ansible
4 3 (0.38%) Istio
4 3 (0.38%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.25%) Argo
5 2 (0.25%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.13%) Control-M
Vendors
1 180 (22.81%) Databricks
2 87 (11.03%) Microsoft
3 45 (5.70%) Oracle
4 25 (3.17%) Informatica
5 23 (2.92%) Google
6 21 (2.66%) Foundry
6 21 (2.66%) SAP
7 19 (2.41%) Palantir
8 16 (2.03%) Salesforce
9 11 (1.39%) Talend
10 9 (1.14%) Denodo
11 7 (0.89%) IFS
11 7 (0.89%) Sparx
12 5 (0.63%) OpenAI
12 5 (0.63%) ServiceNow
12 5 (0.63%) Teradata
13 4 (0.51%) IBM
13 4 (0.51%) NVIDIA
14 3 (0.38%) Confluent
14 3 (0.38%) Workday