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 27 June 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 260 263
Rank change year-on-year +43 +3 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 638 308 390
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 1.02% 0.90%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.35% 1.10% 0.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 446 206 276
10th Percentile £456 £453 £488
25th Percentile £513 £513 £548
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year - -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £700 £775
90th Percentile £775 £780 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £575 £650
% change year-on-year +6.52% -11.54% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 2 10
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 £64.00 £60.37 -
90th Percentile £69.00 £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 47,106 27,940 40,291
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.40% 92.14% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,573 17,914 25,878
10th Percentile £325 £289 £281
25th Percentile £415 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,158 1,233 2,861
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.76 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.25 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.21% -29.33% -14.29%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 +35 551 £600 - 135
London +25 290 £575 -4.17% 81
UK excluding London +19 262 £613 +6.52% 85
Work from Home +10 181 £610 +1.67% 68
Midlands -13 69 £624 +3.92% 14
West Midlands -20 59 £631 +5.21% 9
North of England -47 57 £610 +10.91% 14
South West -7 39 £664 +47.44% 15
South East -37 39 £525 -4.55% 31
Yorkshire -20 35 £700 +12.00% 3
East of England 0 32 £505 -8.18% 2
Scotland -1 28 £600 +11.42% 10
North West -49 18 £575 +9.52% 11
East Midlands -6 10 £613 - 5
North East -31 7 £550 -26.67%
Wales -12 3 £768 +225.21%

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

For the 6 months to 27 June 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.

1 326 (51.10%) Data Architecture
2 289 (45.30%) Data Modelling
3 224 (35.11%) Azure
4 211 (33.07%) Analytics
5 184 (28.84%) Security Cleared
6 160 (25.08%) Data Governance
6 160 (25.08%) Migration
7 159 (24.92%) SC Cleared
8 143 (22.41%) Databricks
9 140 (21.94%) AWS
10 129 (20.22%) ETL
11 117 (18.34%) AI
12 116 (18.18%) Metadata
13 115 (18.03%) Business Intelligence
14 108 (16.93%) Data Warehouse
15 104 (16.30%) Data Quality
15 104 (16.30%) Integration Patterns
15 104 (16.30%) SQL
16 94 (14.73%) Data Lake
17 93 (14.58%) Data Pipeline
18 92 (14.42%) Data Engineering
18 92 (14.42%) Data Integration
19 83 (13.01%) Logical Data Model
19 83 (13.01%) Microsoft
20 81 (12.70%) Power Platform
21 78 (12.23%) Data Management
22 76 (11.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 74 (11.60%) Data Migration
24 73 (11.44%) Power BI
25 72 (11.29%) Machine Learning

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 22 (3.45%) SAS
2 18 (2.82%) Apache Spark
3 15 (2.35%) Palantir Foundry
4 14 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (2.04%) Apache
6 12 (1.88%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.63%) Confluence
8 2 (0.31%) Alfresco
9 1 (0.16%) Appian
9 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.78%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.31%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.16%) iTrent
4 1 (0.16%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.16%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 224 (35.11%) Azure
2 140 (21.94%) AWS
3 81 (12.70%) Power Platform
4 70 (10.97%) GCP
5 51 (7.99%) Snowflake
6 44 (6.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 41 (6.43%) Azure Data Factory
8 25 (3.92%) Microsoft Purview
9 24 (3.76%) Amazon S3
9 24 (3.76%) Serverless
10 23 (3.61%) dbt
11 22 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
12 17 (2.66%) SaaS
13 13 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
14 12 (1.88%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 12 (1.88%) GitHub
15 11 (1.72%) Amazon Kinesis
16 9 (1.41%) Azure Machine Learning
17 8 (1.25%) AWS Step Functions
17 8 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.63%) Firewall
2 3 (0.47%) DSL
3 2 (0.31%) BGP
3 2 (0.31%) DNS
3 2 (0.31%) Network Security
3 2 (0.31%) OSPF
3 2 (0.31%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.31%) VPN
3 2 (0.31%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.16%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (18.18%) Metadata
2 108 (16.93%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (14.73%) Data Lake
4 73 (11.44%) Power BI
5 35 (5.49%) NoSQL
6 23 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
7 21 (3.29%) Amazon Redshift
8 20 (3.13%) Big Data
8 20 (3.13%) BigQuery
9 18 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
9 18 (2.82%) SQL Server
10 17 (2.66%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 15 (2.35%) Semantic Layer
12 14 (2.19%) Delta Lake
12 14 (2.19%) Metadata Repository
12 14 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
13 13 (2.04%) Base SAS
13 13 (2.04%) Data Vault
13 13 (2.04%) Tableau
14 12 (1.88%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 25 (3.92%) ERwin
2 7 (1.10%) Git
3 5 (0.78%) GitLab
3 5 (0.78%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.63%) ER Studio
5 2 (0.31%) JIRA
6 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.16%) MLflow
6 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 109 (17.08%) Finance
2 107 (16.77%) Social Skills
3 77 (12.07%) Public Sector
4 45 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (5.02%) Banking
6 29 (4.55%) Retail
7 12 (1.88%) Marketing
8 11 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (1.57%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.10%) Legal
11 6 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.94%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.47%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.47%) Military
12 3 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.31%) Law
13 2 (0.31%) Local Government
13 2 (0.31%) Publishing
13 2 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.70%) Kafka
2 15 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
3 14 (2.19%) PySpark
4 7 (1.10%) .NET
4 7 (1.10%) Middleware
5 6 (0.94%) FHIR
6 5 (0.78%) Apache Avro
6 5 (0.78%) Protocol Buffers
6 5 (0.78%) REST
7 4 (0.63%) JSON
8 3 (0.47%) LangChain
8 3 (0.47%) LangGraph
8 3 (0.47%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.47%) OpenTelemetry
9 2 (0.31%) Snowpark
9 2 (0.31%) SOAP
9 2 (0.31%) Spark Streaming
9 2 (0.31%) XML
10 1 (0.16%) Spring
10 1 (0.16%) XBRL
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.37%) Cloud Native
2 29 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 21 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
4 18 (2.82%) Reference Data
5 16 (2.51%) Data Centre
5 16 (2.51%) NHS
6 13 (2.04%) IoT
7 11 (1.72%) AI Agents
7 11 (1.72%) Management Information System
7 11 (1.72%) Onboarding
8 10 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.57%) Mainframe
8 10 (1.57%) Taxonomies
9 9 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.10%) Distributed Computing
10 7 (1.10%) Product Ownership
10 7 (1.10%) SCADA
11 6 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
11 6 (0.94%) Reinsurance
12 5 (0.78%) Autonomous Agent
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.25%) zOS
2 1 (0.16%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 326 (51.10%) Data Architecture
2 289 (45.30%) Data Modelling
3 211 (33.07%) Analytics
4 160 (25.08%) Data Governance
4 160 (25.08%) Migration
5 129 (20.22%) ETL
6 117 (18.34%) AI
7 115 (18.03%) Business Intelligence
8 104 (16.30%) Integration Patterns
9 93 (14.58%) Data Pipeline
10 92 (14.42%) Data Engineering
10 92 (14.42%) Data Integration
11 83 (13.01%) Logical Data Model
12 78 (12.23%) Data Management
13 76 (11.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 74 (11.60%) Data Migration
15 72 (11.29%) Machine Learning
16 70 (10.97%) Roadmaps
17 67 (10.50%) Data Strategy
18 64 (10.03%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 104 (16.30%) SQL
2 56 (8.78%) Python
3 13 (2.04%) Java
4 6 (0.94%) Bicep
4 6 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 6 (0.94%) Scala
5 5 (0.78%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.47%) Apex Code
6 3 (0.47%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.47%) R
7 2 (0.31%) Bash
7 2 (0.31%) COBOL
7 2 (0.31%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.31%) SPARQL
8 1 (0.16%) C++
8 1 (0.16%) Cypher
8 1 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.16%) SHACL
8 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 184 (28.84%) Security Cleared
2 159 (24.92%) SC Cleared
3 24 (3.76%) DV Cleared
4 23 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (2.98%) Azure Certification
6 16 (2.51%) Degree
7 12 (1.88%) Master's Degree
8 10 (1.57%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.10%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
11 4 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.31%) VCAP
13 2 (0.31%) VCDX
14 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (16.30%) Data Quality
2 32 (5.02%) GDPR
3 15 (2.35%) QA
4 8 (1.25%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.94%) HL7
6 5 (0.78%) IFRS
6 5 (0.78%) IFRS 17
6 5 (0.78%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.78%) SNOMED CT
6 5 (0.78%) Solvency II
7 2 (0.31%) NIST
7 2 (0.31%) SLA
8 1 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.16%) GRC
8 1 (0.16%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.16%) NCSC
8 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.47%) Docker
3 2 (0.31%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.31%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.31%) vSphere
4 1 (0.16%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 22 (3.45%) Terraform
2 9 (1.41%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.94%) Grafana
4 5 (0.78%) Ansible
4 5 (0.78%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.47%) Argo
5 3 (0.47%) Istio
6 2 (0.31%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.16%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 143 (22.41%) Databricks
2 83 (13.01%) Microsoft
3 41 (6.43%) Oracle
4 24 (3.76%) SAP
5 20 (3.13%) Salesforce
6 18 (2.82%) Foundry
7 17 (2.66%) Informatica
8 16 (2.51%) Palantir
9 15 (2.35%) Google
9 15 (2.35%) Talend
10 7 (1.10%) Confluent
10 7 (1.10%) Sparx
11 4 (0.63%) NVIDIA
11 4 (0.63%) OpenAI
11 4 (0.63%) VMware
12 3 (0.47%) Denodo
12 3 (0.47%) IBM
12 3 (0.47%) IFS
12 3 (0.47%) Remedy
13 2 (0.31%) IDERA