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 3 October 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 286 290
Rank change year-on-year +97 +4 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 838 298 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.53% 0.90% 0.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.66% 0.99% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 192 210
10th Percentile £463 £450 £480
25th Percentile £538 £513 £514
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -6.72%
75th Percentile £688 £703 £738
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £626 £575 £625
% change year-on-year +8.91% -8.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 1 9
10th Percentile £32.87 - £58.50
25th Percentile £46.00 - -
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 - - £71.77
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 50,556 30,128 35,360
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.16% 90.91% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,767 19,028 21,436
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 £636 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,987 1,619 1,546
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.78 £17.27 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.96
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.45% -3.47%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.31 £74.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.27%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +86 700 £625 +4.17% 562
London +60 381 £618 +2.92% 338
UK excluding London +62 312 £626 +8.91% 256
Work from Home +39 234 £638 +6.25% 228
Midlands +25 105 £626 +4.38% 65
West Midlands +14 79 £647 +10.16% 46
North of England -39 63 £663 +20.45% 59
South East -22 49 £606 -3.00% 48
South West 0 41 £650 +1.96% 26
Yorkshire -13 36 £713 +29.55% 16
East of England +1 33 £575 -2.13% 12
East Midlands +6 26 £606 +1.04% 19
North West -41 25 £600 +14.29% 31
Scotland -25 20 £492 +3.58% 36
North East - 2 £650 - 12
Wales - 1 £475 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 434 (51.79%) Data Architecture
2 358 (42.72%) Data Modelling
3 309 (36.87%) Security Cleared
4 269 (32.10%) Azure
5 263 (31.38%) SC Cleared
6 243 (29.00%) Data Governance
7 241 (28.76%) Analytics
8 209 (24.94%) Migration
9 196 (23.39%) AWS
10 174 (20.76%) Data Quality
10 174 (20.76%) Databricks
11 170 (20.29%) Metadata
12 163 (19.45%) AI
13 141 (16.83%) Data Warehouse
14 139 (16.59%) Data Lake
15 135 (16.11%) Stakeholder Management
16 129 (15.39%) Integration Patterns
17 128 (15.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 122 (14.56%) Logical Data Model
19 120 (14.32%) Business Intelligence
19 120 (14.32%) ETL
20 119 (14.20%) SQL
21 114 (13.60%) Lakehouse
22 107 (12.77%) Data Strategy
22 107 (12.77%) Roadmaps
23 102 (12.17%) Data Integration
24 101 (12.05%) Technical Leadership
25 92 (10.98%) Decision-Making
25 92 (10.98%) Microsoft
26 91 (10.86%) Physical Data Model

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 (3.22%) SAS
2 25 (2.98%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.86%) Apache
4 21 (2.51%) Apache Airflow
5 16 (1.91%) 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
Applications
1 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.84%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.24%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.12%) iTrent
3 1 (0.12%) Maximo
3 1 (0.12%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 269 (32.10%) Azure
2 196 (23.39%) AWS
3 89 (10.62%) Power Platform
4 80 (9.55%) GCP
5 70 (8.35%) Snowflake
6 55 (6.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 47 (5.61%) Azure Data Factory
8 37 (4.42%) dbt
9 28 (3.34%) Amazon S3
10 23 (2.74%) Microsoft Purview
10 23 (2.74%) Serverless
11 21 (2.51%) SaaS
12 20 (2.39%) Azure Databricks
13 18 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.19%) Amazon EMR
15 10 (1.19%) Amazon Kinesis
15 10 (1.19%) Collibra
16 8 (0.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 8 (0.95%) GitHub
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
1 170 (20.29%) Metadata
2 141 (16.83%) Data Warehouse
3 139 (16.59%) Data Lake
4 85 (10.14%) Power BI
5 42 (5.01%) NoSQL
6 29 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
7 28 (3.34%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 21 (2.51%) BigQuery
9 20 (2.39%) Azure SQL Database
10 19 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
11 18 (2.15%) Data Vault
11 18 (2.15%) Delta Lake
11 18 (2.15%) Semantic Layer
12 17 (2.03%) SQL Server
12 17 (2.03%) Star Schema
13 16 (1.91%) Base SAS
14 15 (1.79%) Snowflake Schema
15 13 (1.55%) Elasticsearch
15 13 (1.55%) Tableau
16 12 (1.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (1.55%) ERwin
2 10 (1.19%) Git
3 6 (0.72%) GitLab
4 5 (0.60%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.48%) JIRA
6 3 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.24%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.24%) MLflow
7 2 (0.24%) RStudio
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 178 (21.24%) Social Skills
2 151 (18.02%) Public Sector
3 117 (13.96%) Finance
4 64 (7.64%) Analytical Skills
5 37 (4.42%) Banking
6 34 (4.06%) Influencing Skills
7 28 (3.34%) Retail
8 14 (1.67%) Police
9 13 (1.55%) Marketing
10 10 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.19%) Legal
11 9 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.84%) Local Government
13 6 (0.72%) Military
14 5 (0.60%) Billing
14 5 (0.60%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.36%) Investment Banking
16 2 (0.24%) General Ledger
16 2 (0.24%) Private Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.58%) Kafka
2 27 (3.22%) PySpark
3 25 (2.98%) Terraform
4 23 (2.74%) Oracle Fusion
5 11 (1.31%) 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%) 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%) OpenTelemetry
10 2 (0.24%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 62 (7.40%) Cloud Native
2 43 (5.13%) Data Structures
3 28 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
4 23 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.39%) Reference Data
6 19 (2.27%) 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
13 10 (1.19%) Replication
14 8 (0.95%) Clustering
14 8 (0.95%) Digital Media
14 8 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.95%) IoT
15 7 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
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
1 434 (51.79%) Data Architecture
2 358 (42.72%) Data Modelling
3 243 (29.00%) Data Governance
4 241 (28.76%) Analytics
5 209 (24.94%) Migration
6 163 (19.45%) AI
7 135 (16.11%) Stakeholder Management
8 129 (15.39%) Integration Patterns
9 128 (15.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 122 (14.56%) Logical Data Model
11 120 (14.32%) Business Intelligence
11 120 (14.32%) ETL
12 114 (13.60%) Lakehouse
13 107 (12.77%) Data Strategy
13 107 (12.77%) Roadmaps
14 102 (12.17%) Data Integration
15 101 (12.05%) Technical Leadership
16 92 (10.98%) Decision-Making
17 91 (10.86%) Physical Data Model
18 88 (10.50%) Metadata Management
Programming Languages
1 119 (14.20%) SQL
2 49 (5.85%) Python
3 16 (1.91%) Java
4 7 (0.84%) Bicep
4 7 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 5 (0.60%) R
6 4 (0.48%) Scala
7 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.24%) Cypher
8 2 (0.24%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.24%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.24%) SHACL
8 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 309 (36.87%) Security Cleared
2 263 (31.38%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 35 (4.18%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.43%) AWS Certification
6 10 (1.19%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.84%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.84%) Degree
8 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.24%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (20.76%) Data Quality
2 34 (4.06%) GDPR
3 13 (1.55%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.95%) NCSC
6 7 (0.84%) NIST
6 7 (0.84%) SNOMED CT
6 7 (0.84%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.72%) IFRS
7 6 (0.72%) QA
8 5 (0.60%) IFRS 17
9 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.36%) HL7
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%) 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 5 (0.60%) 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
1 174 (20.76%) Databricks
2 92 (10.98%) Microsoft
3 46 (5.49%) Oracle
4 25 (2.98%) Google
5 22 (2.63%) Informatica
6 19 (2.27%) Foundry
7 17 (2.03%) Palantir
7 17 (2.03%) SAP
8 12 (1.43%) Salesforce
9 11 (1.31%) Denodo
9 11 (1.31%) Talend
10 9 (1.07%) Sparx
11 7 (0.84%) IFS
11 7 (0.84%) ServiceNow
12 6 (0.72%) OpenAI
13 5 (0.60%) Confluent
13 5 (0.60%) Teradata
14 3 (0.36%) IBM
14 3 (0.36%) MicroStrategy
14 3 (0.36%) Workday