Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £591, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 April 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 240 217
Rank change year-on-year -2 -23 +52
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 485 317 468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.08% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 1.17% 1.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 350 223 329
10th Percentile £463 £480 £505
25th Percentile £513 £522 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £591 £600 £700
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% -14.29% +3.70%
75th Percentile £675 £713 £775
90th Percentile £800 £799 £878
UK excluding London median daily rate £581 £588 £675
% change year-on-year -1.11% -12.96% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 6
10th Percentile - £66.25 £47.76
25th Percentile £64.00 £71.88 £54.38
Median hourly rate £66.50 £80.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.13% +33.75% -14.29%
75th Percentile £69.11 £82.94 -
90th Percentile £69.31 £84.18 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -17.39% +34.17% -14.29%

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 42,306 27,128 40,399
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.60% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,259 17,804 26,404
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £627 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,679 980 2,578
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.65 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.26 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.42 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.20% -10.22% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.58 £72.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.28% -14.29% -17.38%

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 15 April 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
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 15 April 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 -22 412 £595 -1.33% 112
London -9 231 £595 -4.88% 58
UK excluding London -9 184 £581 -1.11% 75
Work from Home +2 140 £600 - 54
Midlands -19 52 £581 -5.14% 12
West Midlands -20 48 £581 -5.08% 9
South West -9 36 £630 +21.74% 8
North of England -70 36 £588 -2.02% 18
South East -47 24 £588 +6.82% 22
Scotland +13 22 £550 -12.00% 3
East of England -18 19 £505 -20.78% 11
North West -48 19 £588 +11.90% 3
Yorkshire -47 13 £605 -22.44% 12
North East -17 7 £550 -8.28% 3
East Midlands -27 4 £445 - 3
Wales -10 2 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 15 April 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.

1 261 (53.81%) Data Architecture
2 233 (48.04%) Data Modelling
3 179 (36.91%) Analytics
4 163 (33.61%) Azure
5 151 (31.13%) Data Governance
6 122 (25.15%) AWS
7 116 (23.92%) Security Cleared
8 114 (23.51%) Metadata
9 105 (21.65%) SQL
10 99 (20.41%) ETL
11 98 (20.21%) Data Quality
12 97 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
13 96 (19.79%) Databricks
14 95 (19.59%) Business Intelligence
15 89 (18.35%) SC Cleared
16 84 (17.32%) AI
17 83 (17.11%) Migration
18 77 (15.88%) Data Integration
19 71 (14.64%) Microsoft
20 70 (14.43%) Data Lake
21 67 (13.81%) Data Pipeline
22 65 (13.40%) Data Strategy
23 64 (13.20%) Data Engineering
24 61 (12.58%) Power Platform
25 59 (12.16%) Agile
25 59 (12.16%) Data Management
25 59 (12.16%) Logical Data Model
25 59 (12.16%) Metadata Management
25 59 (12.16%) Python
26 57 (11.75%) 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 18 (3.71%) Apache Spark
2 17 (3.51%) SAS
3 13 (2.68%) SharePoint
4 11 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (2.06%) Apache
6 7 (1.44%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.41%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.41%) Confluence
8 1 (0.21%) Appian
8 1 (0.21%) Ethereum
8 1 (0.21%) Hyperledger
8 1 (0.21%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.62%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 9 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 5 (1.03%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.41%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.21%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.21%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.21%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 163 (33.61%) Azure
2 122 (25.15%) AWS
3 61 (12.58%) Power Platform
4 51 (10.52%) GCP
5 43 (8.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 39 (8.04%) Snowflake
7 38 (7.84%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (6.60%) Microsoft Purview
9 27 (5.57%) Serverless
10 21 (4.33%) Amazon S3
11 20 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
13 17 (3.51%) dbt
14 14 (2.89%) Amazon Kinesis
14 14 (2.89%) GitHub
15 10 (2.06%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 10 (2.06%) Collibra
15 10 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
16 9 (1.86%) AWS Step Functions
17 8 (1.65%) Amazon MSK
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.82%) Firewall
2 2 (0.41%) BGP
2 2 (0.41%) DNS
2 2 (0.41%) DSL
2 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.41%) OSPF
2 2 (0.41%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.41%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.21%) DWDM
3 1 (0.21%) LAN
3 1 (0.21%) Network Security
3 1 (0.21%) SMS
3 1 (0.21%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (23.51%) Metadata
2 97 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (14.43%) Data Lake
4 53 (10.93%) Power BI
5 30 (6.19%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.57%) SQL Server
7 25 (5.15%) PostgreSQL
8 24 (4.95%) Amazon Redshift
9 23 (4.74%) Big Data
10 21 (4.33%) Metadata Repository
11 19 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
12 17 (3.51%) Tableau
13 16 (3.30%) Data Vault
13 16 (3.30%) Oracle Database
14 15 (3.09%) Delta Lake
15 14 (2.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 12 (2.47%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (2.47%) Hadoop
17 10 (2.06%) BigQuery
17 10 (2.06%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 21 (4.33%) ERwin
2 5 (1.03%) GitLab
2 5 (1.03%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.62%) ER Studio
3 3 (0.62%) Git
4 1 (0.21%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.21%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.21%) MLflow
4 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
4 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 91 (18.76%) Social Skills
2 74 (15.26%) Finance
3 57 (11.75%) Public Sector
4 40 (8.25%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.74%) Retail
6 14 (2.89%) Banking
7 9 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (1.65%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.24%) Local Government
9 6 (1.24%) Marketing
10 5 (1.03%) Investment Banking
11 4 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.82%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.62%) Law
12 3 (0.62%) Legal
13 2 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.21%) Social Housing
14 1 (0.21%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (6.39%) Kafka
2 16 (3.30%) PySpark
3 10 (2.06%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (1.65%) Apache Avro
4 8 (1.65%) Protocol Buffers
5 6 (1.24%) .NET
6 5 (1.03%) Middleware
7 4 (0.82%) FHIR
7 4 (0.82%) JSON
7 4 (0.82%) REST
8 3 (0.62%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.62%) SOAP
9 2 (0.41%) OpenTelemetry
10 1 (0.21%) AWS CDK
10 1 (0.21%) Great Expectations
10 1 (0.21%) OpenAPI
10 1 (0.21%) Spark Streaming
10 1 (0.21%) Spring
10 1 (0.21%) Spring Boot
10 1 (0.21%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (7.01%) Cloud Native
2 32 (6.60%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.51%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.89%) NHS
5 13 (2.68%) Reference Data
6 11 (2.27%) IoT
7 10 (2.06%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.06%) Mainframe
8 9 (1.86%) Product Ownership
9 7 (1.44%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.44%) FMCG
9 7 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (1.44%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.24%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (1.24%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.03%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.03%) PACS
11 5 (1.03%) Reinsurance
11 5 (1.03%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.86%) zOS
2 2 (0.41%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 261 (53.81%) Data Architecture
2 233 (48.04%) Data Modelling
3 179 (36.91%) Analytics
4 151 (31.13%) Data Governance
5 99 (20.41%) ETL
6 95 (19.59%) Business Intelligence
7 84 (17.32%) AI
8 83 (17.11%) Migration
9 77 (15.88%) Data Integration
10 67 (13.81%) Data Pipeline
11 65 (13.40%) Data Strategy
12 64 (13.20%) Data Engineering
13 59 (12.16%) Agile
13 59 (12.16%) Data Management
13 59 (12.16%) Logical Data Model
13 59 (12.16%) Metadata Management
14 57 (11.75%) Architectural Patterns
14 57 (11.75%) Machine Learning
15 56 (11.55%) Physical Data Model
16 50 (10.31%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 105 (21.65%) SQL
2 59 (12.16%) Python
3 16 (3.30%) Java
4 8 (1.65%) Scala
4 8 (1.65%) T-SQL
5 6 (1.24%) PowerShell
6 4 (0.82%) Bicep
7 3 (0.62%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.41%) Bash
8 2 (0.41%) COBOL
8 2 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.41%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.41%) Kotlin
8 2 (0.41%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.41%) R
8 2 (0.41%) SPARQL
9 1 (0.21%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.21%) C++
9 1 (0.21%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 116 (23.92%) Security Cleared
2 89 (18.35%) SC Cleared
3 22 (4.54%) Azure Certification
4 19 (3.92%) Degree
5 16 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.89%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.89%) Master's Degree
7 10 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.06%) TOGAF Certification
8 7 (1.44%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.41%) VCAP
9 2 (0.41%) VCDX
10 1 (0.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.21%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.21%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.21%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (20.21%) Data Quality
2 35 (7.22%) GDPR
3 14 (2.89%) QA
4 8 (1.65%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.03%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (1.03%) ISO 20022
6 4 (0.82%) HL7
6 4 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.62%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.41%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.41%) FINREP
8 2 (0.41%) IFRS
8 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 4 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.62%) Docker
3 2 (0.41%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.41%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.41%) vSphere
4 1 (0.21%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (4.95%) Terraform
2 7 (1.44%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.24%) Grafana
4 5 (1.03%) Ansible
4 5 (1.03%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.41%) Argo
5 2 (0.41%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 96 (19.79%) Databricks
2 71 (14.64%) Microsoft
3 39 (8.04%) Oracle
4 28 (5.77%) Salesforce
5 21 (4.33%) Informatica
6 18 (3.71%) SAP
7 11 (2.27%) Talend
8 10 (2.06%) Confluent
8 10 (2.06%) Foundry
8 10 (2.06%) Google
9 9 (1.86%) Palantir
10 6 (1.24%) Remedy
11 5 (1.03%) Sparx
12 4 (0.82%) IBM
12 4 (0.82%) MicroStrategy
12 4 (0.82%) VMware
13 3 (0.62%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.62%) Cognos
13 3 (0.62%) NVIDIA
14 2 (0.41%) Red Hat