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 6 October 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 192 286 286
Rank change year-on-year +94 0 -4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 837 297 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.53% 0.91% 0.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.66% 1.00% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 191 205
10th Percentile £463 £450 £477
25th Percentile £538 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £688 £714 £738
90th Percentile £775 £775 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £626 £575 £625
% change year-on-year +8.87% -8.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 1 7
10th Percentile £32.87 - £57.00
25th Percentile £40.50 - -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.64% -35.07% -1.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - - £83.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.64% -35.07% -16.67%

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 50,334 29,798 35,032
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.11% 90.81% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,572 18,806 21,176
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £620 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,026 1,619 1,521
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.76 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £74.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.16%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +86 698 £625 +4.17% 574
London +54 377 £620 +3.33% 346
UK excluding London +63 314 £626 +8.87% 256
Work from Home +39 236 £638 +6.25% 226
Midlands +29 105 £626 +4.33% 59
West Midlands +10 79 £647 +12.56% 45
North of England -37 64 £650 +18.18% 63
South East -17 49 £606 -3.00% 53
South West +2 41 £650 +1.96% 22
Yorkshire -12 36 £713 +29.55% 19
East of England +1 34 £519 -11.70% 15
East Midlands +15 26 £600 - 14
North West -40 24 £600 +4.35% 31
Scotland -23 20 £492 +3.58% 30
North East - 4 £650 - 13
Wales - 1 £475 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 6 October 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.

1 441 (52.69%) Data Architecture
2 361 (43.13%) Data Modelling
3 307 (36.68%) Security Cleared
4 268 (32.02%) Azure
5 261 (31.18%) SC Cleared
6 248 (29.63%) Data Governance
7 240 (28.67%) Analytics
8 210 (25.09%) Migration
9 193 (23.06%) AWS
10 176 (21.03%) Data Quality
11 175 (20.91%) Databricks
12 172 (20.55%) Metadata
13 161 (19.24%) AI
14 143 (17.08%) Data Warehouse
15 139 (16.61%) Data Lake
16 138 (16.49%) Stakeholder Management
17 132 (15.77%) Integration Patterns
18 128 (15.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 124 (14.81%) Logical Data Model
20 122 (14.58%) ETL
21 121 (14.46%) Business Intelligence
21 121 (14.46%) SQL
22 116 (13.86%) Lakehouse
23 108 (12.90%) Roadmaps
24 105 (12.54%) Data Strategy
25 103 (12.31%) Data Integration
26 100 (11.95%) Technical Leadership
27 94 (11.23%) Microsoft
28 93 (11.11%) Physical Data Model
29 92 (10.99%) Decision-Making

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 (3.23%) SAS
2 25 (2.99%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.87%) Apache
4 21 (2.51%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (1.79%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (0.48%) Confluence
6 4 (0.48%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.24%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.12%) JBoss
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.84%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.24%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 268 (32.02%) Azure
2 193 (23.06%) AWS
3 90 (10.75%) Power Platform
4 80 (9.56%) GCP
5 71 (8.48%) Snowflake
6 56 (6.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 48 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
8 37 (4.42%) dbt
9 27 (3.23%) Amazon S3
10 24 (2.87%) Microsoft Purview
11 23 (2.75%) Serverless
12 21 (2.51%) SaaS
13 20 (2.39%) Azure Databricks
14 17 (2.03%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (1.91%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (1.19%) Collibra
16 10 (1.19%) GitHub
17 9 (1.08%) Amazon EMR
17 9 (1.08%) Amazon Kinesis
18 8 (0.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.36%) Network Security
1 3 (0.36%) SAN
2 2 (0.24%) DSL
2 2 (0.24%) VPN
3 1 (0.12%) Broadband
3 1 (0.12%) Firewall
3 1 (0.12%) NAS
3 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (20.55%) Metadata
2 143 (17.08%) Data Warehouse
3 139 (16.61%) Data Lake
4 86 (10.27%) Power BI
5 42 (5.02%) NoSQL
6 28 (3.35%) Amazon Redshift
6 28 (3.35%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 23 (2.75%) Azure SQL Database
8 21 (2.51%) BigQuery
9 20 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
10 19 (2.27%) Data Vault
10 19 (2.27%) Delta Lake
10 19 (2.27%) Semantic Layer
10 19 (2.27%) SQL Server
11 17 (2.03%) Star Schema
12 16 (1.91%) Base SAS
13 15 (1.79%) Snowflake Schema
14 13 (1.55%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (1.55%) Relational Database
14 13 (1.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 13 (1.55%) ERwin
2 10 (1.19%) Git
3 6 (0.72%) GitLab
4 5 (0.60%) ER Studio
4 5 (0.60%) JIRA
5 3 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
6 2 (0.24%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.24%) MLflow
6 2 (0.24%) RStudio
7 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 179 (21.39%) Social Skills
2 149 (17.80%) Public Sector
3 119 (14.22%) Finance
4 64 (7.65%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (4.54%) Banking
6 34 (4.06%) Influencing Skills
7 27 (3.23%) Retail
8 14 (1.67%) Police
9 13 (1.55%) Marketing
10 11 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.19%) Legal
12 9 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.84%) Local Government
14 6 (0.72%) Military
15 5 (0.60%) Billing
15 5 (0.60%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.36%) Investment Banking
17 2 (0.24%) General Ledger
17 2 (0.24%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.58%) Kafka
2 28 (3.35%) PySpark
3 26 (3.11%) Terraform
4 21 (2.51%) Oracle Fusion
5 12 (1.43%) REST
6 6 (0.72%) FHIR
7 5 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
8 4 (0.48%) Apache Avro
8 4 (0.48%) JSON
8 4 (0.48%) SOAP
9 3 (0.36%) .NET
9 3 (0.36%) LangChain
9 3 (0.36%) LangGraph
9 3 (0.36%) Middleware
9 3 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
9 3 (0.36%) OpenAPI
9 3 (0.36%) RESTful
9 3 (0.36%) Swagger
9 3 (0.36%) XML
10 2 (0.24%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.05%) Cloud Native
2 43 (5.14%) Data Structures
3 30 (3.58%) Legacy Systems
4 23 (2.75%) Onboarding
5 21 (2.51%) Reference Data
6 20 (2.39%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.15%) AI Agents
8 17 (2.03%) Data Fabric
9 16 (1.91%) Taxonomies
10 15 (1.79%) Data Centre
10 15 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.67%) Product Ownership
11 14 (1.67%) Reinsurance
12 11 (1.31%) Autonomous Agent
12 11 (1.31%) Replication
13 8 (0.96%) Clustering
13 8 (0.96%) Digital Media
13 8 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (0.96%) IoT
14 7 (0.84%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.36%) Linux
1 3 (0.36%) Windows
2 2 (0.24%) AIX
2 2 (0.24%) HPUX
2 2 (0.24%) Solaris
3 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 441 (52.69%) Data Architecture
2 361 (43.13%) Data Modelling
3 248 (29.63%) Data Governance
4 240 (28.67%) Analytics
5 210 (25.09%) Migration
6 161 (19.24%) AI
7 138 (16.49%) Stakeholder Management
8 132 (15.77%) Integration Patterns
9 128 (15.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 124 (14.81%) Logical Data Model
11 122 (14.58%) ETL
12 121 (14.46%) Business Intelligence
13 116 (13.86%) Lakehouse
14 108 (12.90%) Roadmaps
15 105 (12.54%) Data Strategy
16 103 (12.31%) Data Integration
17 100 (11.95%) Technical Leadership
18 93 (11.11%) Physical Data Model
19 92 (10.99%) Decision-Making
20 90 (10.75%) Metadata Management
Programming Languages
1 121 (14.46%) SQL
2 50 (5.97%) Python
3 16 (1.91%) Java
4 8 (0.96%) Bicep
5 7 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.60%) R
7 4 (0.48%) Scala
8 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.24%) Cypher
9 2 (0.24%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.24%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.24%) SHACL
9 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.12%) Korn
10 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 307 (36.68%) Security Cleared
2 261 (31.18%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 35 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.43%) AWS Certification
6 11 (1.31%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.84%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.84%) Degree
8 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
10 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.24%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.12%) CISSP
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
13 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (21.03%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.18%) GDPR
3 14 (1.67%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.96%) NCSC
6 7 (0.84%) NIST
6 7 (0.84%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.72%) IFRS
7 6 (0.72%) SNOMED CT
8 5 (0.60%) IFRS 17
8 5 (0.60%) QA
9 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) GxP
11 2 (0.24%) HL7
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
12 1 (0.12%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 3 (0.36%) Docker
2 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (0.84%) Kubernetes
2 6 (0.72%) Grafana
3 4 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.36%) Istio
4 3 (0.36%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Argo
5 2 (0.24%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.12%) Control-M
Vendors
1 175 (20.91%) Databricks
2 94 (11.23%) Microsoft
3 45 (5.38%) Oracle
4 25 (2.99%) Google
5 22 (2.63%) Informatica
6 19 (2.27%) Foundry
7 17 (2.03%) SAP
8 16 (1.91%) Palantir
9 12 (1.43%) Salesforce
10 11 (1.31%) Denodo
10 11 (1.31%) Talend
11 9 (1.08%) Sparx
12 7 (0.84%) IFS
12 7 (0.84%) ServiceNow
13 6 (0.72%) OpenAI
14 5 (0.60%) Confluent
14 5 (0.60%) Teradata
15 3 (0.36%) Cloudera
15 3 (0.36%) IBM
15 3 (0.36%) MicroStrategy