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 2 May 2026.

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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 243 229
Rank change year-on-year +10 -14 +39
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 504 320 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.09% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 1.18% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 224 329
10th Percentile £457 £477 £500
25th Percentile £513 £519 £555
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year - -11.11% -
75th Percentile £675 £700 £775
90th Percentile £800 £780 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £591 £585 £675
% change year-on-year +0.94% -13.33% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 5
10th Percentile - £66.25 £55.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £71.88 -
Median hourly rate £64.00 £80.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.25% +33.75% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66.50 £82.94 -
90th Percentile £69.18 £84.18 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -20.50% +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 43,667 27,136 40,368
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.52% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,936 17,712 26,266
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.55% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,813 1,033 2,668
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.14 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -19.49% -19.95%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £39.50
% change year-on-year +62.36% -29.11% -6.91%

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 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 2 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 2 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 -4 424 £595 -0.92% 121
London -14 241 £588 -5.24% 58
UK excluding London -21 184 £591 +0.94% 77
Work from Home -10 141 £580 -3.42% 52
Midlands -30 49 £606 +1.04% 15
West Midlands -28 42 £600 - 9
South West -11 37 £651 +11.28% 9
North of England -68 29 £575 -4.11% 19
East of England -15 25 £505 -20.78% 8
South East -53 24 £588 +4.44% 24
Scotland +8 23 £550 -8.33%
Yorkshire -43 13 £605 -18.24% 4
North West -50 12 £538 +2.38% 8
North East -17 7 £550 -8.28% 7
East Midlands -29 7 £613 - 6
Wales -6 2 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 259 (51.39%) Data Architecture
2 228 (45.24%) Data Modelling
3 183 (36.31%) Analytics
4 172 (34.13%) Azure
5 134 (26.59%) Data Governance
6 117 (23.21%) AWS
7 112 (22.22%) Security Cleared
8 110 (21.83%) SQL
9 108 (21.43%) ETL
10 105 (20.83%) Databricks
11 100 (19.84%) Metadata
12 99 (19.64%) Migration
13 96 (19.05%) Business Intelligence
14 89 (17.66%) Data Quality
14 89 (17.66%) Data Warehouse
15 87 (17.26%) AI
16 86 (17.06%) SC Cleared
17 81 (16.07%) Data Lake
18 75 (14.88%) Data Integration
19 74 (14.68%) Microsoft
20 70 (13.89%) Data Pipeline
21 67 (13.29%) Data Engineering
21 67 (13.29%) Power Platform
22 62 (12.30%) Data Strategy
23 61 (12.10%) Data Management
23 61 (12.10%) Logical Data Model
24 59 (11.71%) Power BI
25 58 (11.51%) Agile
26 57 (11.31%) Python
27 56 (11.11%) Architectural 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 17 (3.37%) Apache Spark
2 12 (2.38%) SAS
2 12 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 11 (2.18%) Apache
4 10 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.98%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.40%) Alfresco
5 2 (0.40%) Confluence
6 1 (0.20%) Appian
6 1 (0.20%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.20%) Hyperledger
6 1 (0.20%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.60%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 9 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.79%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.40%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
4 1 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.20%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.20%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.20%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.20%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 172 (34.13%) Azure
2 117 (23.21%) AWS
3 67 (13.29%) Power Platform
4 53 (10.52%) GCP
5 45 (8.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 44 (8.73%) Azure Data Factory
7 40 (7.94%) Snowflake
8 29 (5.75%) Serverless
9 28 (5.56%) Microsoft Purview
10 25 (4.96%) Amazon S3
11 23 (4.56%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
13 18 (3.57%) dbt
14 17 (3.37%) Amazon Kinesis
15 14 (2.78%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 14 (2.78%) GitHub
16 12 (2.38%) AWS Step Functions
17 10 (1.98%) Amazon EventBridge
17 10 (1.98%) Amazon MSK
17 10 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.79%) Firewall
2 2 (0.40%) BGP
2 2 (0.40%) DNS
2 2 (0.40%) DSL
2 2 (0.40%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.40%) OSPF
2 2 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.40%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.20%) LAN
3 1 (0.20%) Network Security
3 1 (0.20%) SMS
3 1 (0.20%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (19.84%) Metadata
2 89 (17.66%) Data Warehouse
3 81 (16.07%) Data Lake
4 59 (11.71%) Power BI
5 31 (6.15%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.96%) Amazon Redshift
6 25 (4.96%) SQL Server
7 24 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
8 22 (4.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 18 (3.57%) Big Data
9 18 (3.57%) Tableau
10 15 (2.98%) Delta Lake
11 14 (2.78%) Metadata Repository
11 14 (2.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 13 (2.58%) Amazon Athena
12 13 (2.58%) Data Vault
13 12 (2.38%) Star Schema
14 11 (2.18%) BigQuery
15 10 (1.98%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (1.98%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 21 (4.17%) ERwin
2 6 (1.19%) GitLab
2 6 (1.19%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.79%) Git
4 3 (0.60%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.20%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.20%) MLflow
5 1 (0.20%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 84 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.29%) Finance
3 56 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 40 (7.94%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (4.76%) Retail
6 14 (2.78%) Banking
7 11 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.59%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.39%) Marketing
10 6 (1.19%) Local Government
11 5 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.79%) Legal
12 4 (0.79%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.60%) Law
13 3 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.40%) Military
15 1 (0.20%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (6.15%) Kafka
2 14 (2.78%) PySpark
3 13 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
4 9 (1.79%) Apache Avro
4 9 (1.79%) Protocol Buffers
5 7 (1.39%) .NET
6 5 (0.99%) Middleware
7 4 (0.79%) FHIR
7 4 (0.79%) JSON
7 4 (0.79%) REST
8 3 (0.60%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.60%) SOAP
9 2 (0.40%) OpenTelemetry
10 1 (0.20%) Apache Jena
10 1 (0.20%) Apache NiFi
10 1 (0.20%) Great Expectations
10 1 (0.20%) OpenAPI
10 1 (0.20%) Smart Contracts
10 1 (0.20%) Spring
10 1 (0.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 40 (7.94%) Cloud Native
2 26 (5.16%) Data Structures
3 18 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.78%) NHS
5 13 (2.58%) Reference Data
6 11 (2.18%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.18%) Mainframe
7 10 (1.98%) IoT
8 9 (1.79%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.39%) FMCG
10 7 (1.39%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.19%) Data Fabric
11 6 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.19%) PACS
11 6 (1.19%) Reinsurance
11 6 (1.19%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 5 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (0.99%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.79%) zOS
2 2 (0.40%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 259 (51.39%) Data Architecture
2 228 (45.24%) Data Modelling
3 183 (36.31%) Analytics
4 134 (26.59%) Data Governance
5 108 (21.43%) ETL
6 99 (19.64%) Migration
7 96 (19.05%) Business Intelligence
8 87 (17.26%) AI
9 75 (14.88%) Data Integration
10 70 (13.89%) Data Pipeline
11 67 (13.29%) Data Engineering
12 62 (12.30%) Data Strategy
13 61 (12.10%) Data Management
13 61 (12.10%) Logical Data Model
14 58 (11.51%) Agile
15 56 (11.11%) Architectural Patterns
15 56 (11.11%) Roadmaps
16 54 (10.71%) Machine Learning
16 54 (10.71%) Physical Data Model
17 52 (10.32%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 110 (21.83%) SQL
2 57 (11.31%) Python
3 13 (2.58%) Java
4 9 (1.79%) Scala
5 8 (1.59%) T-SQL
6 6 (1.19%) PowerShell
7 5 (0.99%) Bicep
8 3 (0.60%) Apex Code
8 3 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.40%) Bash
9 2 (0.40%) COBOL
9 2 (0.40%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.40%) R
9 2 (0.40%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.20%) ANSI SQL
10 1 (0.20%) C++
10 1 (0.20%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.20%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 112 (22.22%) Security Cleared
2 86 (17.06%) SC Cleared
3 21 (4.17%) Azure Certification
3 21 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (3.97%) Degree
5 16 (3.17%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.98%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (1.79%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.40%) VCAP
10 2 (0.40%) VCDX
11 1 (0.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
11 1 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (17.66%) Data Quality
2 28 (5.56%) GDPR
3 13 (2.58%) QA
4 6 (1.19%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.19%) ISO 20022
5 5 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.79%) HL7
6 4 (0.79%) SNOMED CT
7 2 (0.40%) CRD IV
7 2 (0.40%) FINREP
7 2 (0.40%) IFRS
7 2 (0.40%) NIST
7 2 (0.40%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 4 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.40%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.40%) Docker
2 2 (0.40%) VMware NSX
2 2 (0.40%) vSphere
3 1 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (4.76%) Terraform
2 7 (1.39%) Grafana
3 6 (1.19%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.19%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.99%) Ansible
5 2 (0.40%) Argo
5 2 (0.40%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.20%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 105 (20.83%) Databricks
2 74 (14.68%) Microsoft
3 37 (7.34%) Oracle
4 23 (4.56%) Salesforce
5 22 (4.37%) SAP
6 20 (3.97%) Informatica
7 14 (2.78%) Talend
8 13 (2.58%) Foundry
9 11 (2.18%) Confluent
9 11 (2.18%) Google
10 10 (1.98%) Palantir
11 5 (0.99%) Sparx
12 4 (0.79%) IBM
12 4 (0.79%) NVIDIA
12 4 (0.79%) VMware
13 3 (0.60%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.60%) Cognos
13 3 (0.60%) Denodo
13 3 (0.60%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.60%) Remedy