Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £582, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 April 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 248 230
Rank change year-on-year -7 -18 +35
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 482 315 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.08% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 1.16% 1.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 347 222 333
10th Percentile £463 £480 £501
25th Percentile £508 £523 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £582 £601 £700
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -14.11% +3.70%
75th Percentile £675 £714 £775
90th Percentile £800 £799 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £581 £589 £675
% change year-on-year -1.32% -12.78% +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 42,310 27,110 40,746
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.27% 92.64% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,286 17,809 26,634
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £629 £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 2,662 974 2,583
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.84 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.16 £31.51 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.61% -9.97% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.03 £72.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £30.10 £35.00
% change year-on-year +40.37% -14.00% -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 12 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 12 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 -28 409 £588 -4.86% 107
London -12 231 £591 -9.08% 56
UK excluding London -15 181 £581 -1.32% 71
Work from Home -12 137 £582 -3.44% 46
Midlands -23 51 £581 -5.14% 13
West Midlands -26 47 £581 -5.14% 11
South West -5 36 £630 +21.74% 9
North of England -76 35 £575 -4.11% 12
South East -48 25 £600 +6.67% 23
Scotland +14 23 £550 -12.00% 2
North West -42 18 £575 +9.52% 3
East of England -31 17 £505 -20.78% 11
Yorkshire -51 13 £605 -22.44% 8
North East -17 7 £550 -8.28% 1
East Midlands -31 4 £445 - 2
Wales -9 2 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 260 (53.94%) Data Architecture
2 233 (48.34%) Data Modelling
3 181 (37.55%) Analytics
4 163 (33.82%) Azure
5 155 (32.16%) Data Governance
6 122 (25.31%) AWS
7 113 (23.44%) Metadata
7 113 (23.44%) Security Cleared
8 106 (21.99%) SQL
9 99 (20.54%) ETL
10 98 (20.33%) Data Warehouse
11 96 (19.92%) Data Quality
11 96 (19.92%) Databricks
12 93 (19.29%) Business Intelligence
13 86 (17.84%) SC Cleared
14 80 (16.60%) AI
14 80 (16.60%) Migration
15 78 (16.18%) Data Integration
16 71 (14.73%) Microsoft
17 68 (14.11%) Data Lake
17 68 (14.11%) Data Strategy
18 64 (13.28%) Data Pipeline
19 63 (13.07%) Data Engineering
20 61 (12.66%) Python
21 60 (12.45%) Metadata Management
22 59 (12.24%) Data Management
22 59 (12.24%) Logical Data Model
23 58 (12.03%) Machine Learning
23 58 (12.03%) Power Platform
24 57 (11.83%) Agile

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 (3.53%) Apache Spark
2 15 (3.11%) SAS
3 13 (2.70%) SharePoint
4 11 (2.28%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (2.07%) Apache
6 7 (1.45%) 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 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 5 (1.04%) 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 EBS
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.21%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.21%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 163 (33.82%) Azure
2 122 (25.31%) AWS
3 58 (12.03%) Power Platform
4 51 (10.58%) GCP
5 43 (8.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 40 (8.30%) Snowflake
7 38 (7.88%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (6.64%) Microsoft Purview
9 27 (5.60%) Serverless
10 20 (4.15%) Amazon S3
11 19 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
12 18 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
13 17 (3.53%) dbt
14 13 (2.70%) Amazon Kinesis
14 13 (2.70%) GitHub
15 10 (2.07%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 10 (2.07%) Collibra
15 10 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (1.66%) AWS Step Functions
16 8 (1.66%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.83%) 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
1 113 (23.44%) Metadata
2 98 (20.33%) Data Warehouse
3 68 (14.11%) Data Lake
4 51 (10.58%) Power BI
5 28 (5.81%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.60%) SQL Server
7 25 (5.19%) PostgreSQL
8 23 (4.77%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (4.77%) Big Data
9 21 (4.36%) Metadata Repository
10 18 (3.73%) Azure SQL Database
11 16 (3.32%) Oracle Database
12 15 (3.11%) Delta Lake
12 15 (3.11%) Tableau
13 14 (2.90%) Data Vault
14 13 (2.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (2.49%) Hadoop
16 11 (2.28%) Amazon Athena
17 9 (1.87%) BigQuery
17 9 (1.87%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 21 (4.36%) ERwin
2 4 (0.83%) GitLab
2 4 (0.83%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.62%) ER Studio
4 2 (0.41%) Git
5 1 (0.21%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.21%) MLflow
5 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
General
1 92 (19.09%) Social Skills
2 76 (15.77%) Finance
3 57 (11.83%) Public Sector
4 40 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.56%) Retail
6 17 (3.53%) Banking
7 9 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.66%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.24%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.24%) Local Government
10 6 (1.24%) Marketing
11 4 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.83%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.62%) Law
12 3 (0.62%) Legal
13 2 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.21%) Advertising
14 1 (0.21%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (6.64%) Kafka
2 15 (3.11%) PySpark
3 11 (2.28%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (1.45%) Apache Avro
4 7 (1.45%) Protocol Buffers
5 5 (1.04%) .NET
5 5 (1.04%) Middleware
6 4 (0.83%) FHIR
6 4 (0.83%) JSON
6 4 (0.83%) REST
7 3 (0.62%) Lightning Web Components
7 3 (0.62%) SOAP
8 2 (0.41%) OpenTelemetry
9 1 (0.21%) Apache NiFi
9 1 (0.21%) ARM Templates
9 1 (0.21%) AWS CDK
9 1 (0.21%) Great Expectations
9 1 (0.21%) OpenAPI
9 1 (0.21%) Smart Contracts
9 1 (0.21%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.85%) Cloud Native
2 32 (6.64%) Data Structures
3 16 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.90%) NHS
5 13 (2.70%) Reference Data
6 11 (2.28%) IoT
7 10 (2.07%) Mainframe
8 9 (1.87%) Data Centre
9 8 (1.66%) Product Ownership
10 7 (1.45%) Data Fabric
10 7 (1.45%) FMCG
10 7 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
10 7 (1.45%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.24%) Distributed Computing
11 6 (1.24%) Taxonomies
12 5 (1.04%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (1.04%) Onboarding
12 5 (1.04%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.87%) zOS
2 2 (0.41%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 260 (53.94%) Data Architecture
2 233 (48.34%) Data Modelling
3 181 (37.55%) Analytics
4 155 (32.16%) Data Governance
5 99 (20.54%) ETL
6 93 (19.29%) Business Intelligence
7 80 (16.60%) AI
7 80 (16.60%) Migration
8 78 (16.18%) Data Integration
9 68 (14.11%) Data Strategy
10 64 (13.28%) Data Pipeline
11 63 (13.07%) Data Engineering
12 60 (12.45%) Metadata Management
13 59 (12.24%) Data Management
13 59 (12.24%) Logical Data Model
14 58 (12.03%) Machine Learning
15 57 (11.83%) Agile
15 57 (11.83%) Architectural Patterns
16 56 (11.62%) Physical Data Model
17 51 (10.58%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 106 (21.99%) SQL
2 61 (12.66%) Python
3 14 (2.90%) Java
4 7 (1.45%) Scala
4 7 (1.45%) T-SQL
5 6 (1.24%) PowerShell
6 4 (0.83%) Bicep
7 3 (0.62%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.41%) Bash
8 2 (0.41%) COBOL
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%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.21%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 113 (23.44%) Security Cleared
2 86 (17.84%) SC Cleared
3 22 (4.56%) Azure Certification
4 19 (3.94%) Degree
5 16 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.90%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.90%) Master's Degree
7 10 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.07%) TOGAF Certification
8 7 (1.45%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.45%) 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 96 (19.92%) Data Quality
2 35 (7.26%) GDPR
3 15 (3.11%) QA
4 7 (1.45%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.04%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 4 (0.83%) HL7
6 4 (0.83%) ISO 20022
6 4 (0.83%) 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 (0.83%) 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 (4.98%) Terraform
2 7 (1.45%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.24%) Ansible
4 5 (1.04%) Grafana
5 4 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.41%) Argo
6 2 (0.41%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 96 (19.92%) Databricks
2 71 (14.73%) Microsoft
3 40 (8.30%) Oracle
4 27 (5.60%) Salesforce
5 21 (4.36%) Informatica
6 17 (3.53%) SAP
7 11 (2.28%) Talend
8 10 (2.07%) Foundry
9 9 (1.87%) Confluent
9 9 (1.87%) Google
9 9 (1.87%) Palantir
10 6 (1.24%) Remedy
11 5 (1.04%) Sparx
12 4 (0.83%) IBM
12 4 (0.83%) MicroStrategy
12 4 (0.83%) VMware
13 3 (0.62%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.62%) Cognos
14 2 (0.41%) Ariba
14 2 (0.41%) Red Hat