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 8 May 2026.

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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 247 217
Rank change year-on-year +16 -30 +47
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 513 319 461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.10% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 1.18% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 361 221 324
10th Percentile £456 £475 £500
25th Percentile £513 £519 £555
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £691
Median % change year-on-year - -13.20% +2.41%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £775
90th Percentile £800 £780 £905
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £584 £675
% change year-on-year +2.78% -13.52% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 8
10th Percentile - £66.25 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £71.88 £58.13
Median hourly rate £55.50 £80.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.84% +33.75% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.25 £82.94 -
90th Percentile £69.13 £84.18 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -31.06% +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 43,778 26,928 40,006
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,907 17,551 26,037
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,831 1,044 2,664
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.04% -21.23% -18.89%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.59 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.76% -31.25% -5.35%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -4 432 £600 - 136
London +4 248 £588 -5.24% 68
UK excluding London -17 187 £600 +2.78% 92
Work from Home +1 140 £600 - 71
Midlands -32 50 £613 +2.08% 13
West Midlands -25 43 £606 +1.04% 9
South West -15 36 £675 +50.00% 10
North of England -69 29 £575 - 27
East of England -12 26 £505 -20.78% 3
South East -64 25 £588 +2.17% 30
Scotland 0 24 £550 -4.22% 5
Yorkshire -43 13 £605 -18.24% 11
North West -51 12 £538 +2.38% 10
North East -13 7 £550 -4.35% 6
East Midlands -22 7 £613 - 4
Wales -8 2 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 8 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.

1 257 (50.10%) Data Architecture
2 229 (44.64%) Data Modelling
3 185 (36.06%) Analytics
4 172 (33.53%) Azure
5 134 (26.12%) Data Governance
6 119 (23.20%) AWS
7 118 (23.00%) Security Cleared
8 109 (21.25%) SQL
9 108 (21.05%) ETL
10 106 (20.66%) Databricks
11 103 (20.08%) Migration
12 100 (19.49%) Metadata
13 98 (19.10%) Business Intelligence
14 91 (17.74%) SC Cleared
15 90 (17.54%) Data Quality
16 89 (17.35%) AI
17 86 (16.76%) Data Warehouse
18 80 (15.59%) Data Lake
19 76 (14.81%) Data Integration
20 74 (14.42%) Microsoft
21 70 (13.65%) Data Pipeline
22 69 (13.45%) Power Platform
23 66 (12.87%) Data Engineering
24 65 (12.67%) Data Management
25 62 (12.09%) Data Strategy
25 62 (12.09%) Logical Data Model
26 61 (11.89%) Power BI
27 57 (11.11%) Python
28 56 (10.92%) Agile
28 56 (10.92%) 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 (3.31%) Apache Spark
2 12 (2.34%) SAS
2 12 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 11 (2.14%) Apache
3 11 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.95%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.39%) Alfresco
5 2 (0.39%) Confluence
6 1 (0.19%) Appian
6 1 (0.19%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.19%) Hyperledger
6 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.58%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.78%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.39%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.19%) Distributed Ledger
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.19%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.19%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.19%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.19%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 172 (33.53%) Azure
2 119 (23.20%) AWS
3 69 (13.45%) Power Platform
4 52 (10.14%) GCP
5 44 (8.58%) Azure Data Factory
5 44 (8.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 39 (7.60%) Snowflake
7 30 (5.85%) Serverless
8 29 (5.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 26 (5.07%) Amazon S3
10 24 (4.68%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (3.70%) dbt
13 16 (3.12%) Amazon Kinesis
14 14 (2.73%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 14 (2.73%) GitHub
15 12 (2.34%) AWS Step Functions
16 10 (1.95%) Amazon MSK
16 10 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
16 10 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.78%) Firewall
2 2 (0.39%) BGP
2 2 (0.39%) DNS
2 2 (0.39%) DSL
2 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.39%) OSPF
2 2 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.39%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.19%) LAN
3 1 (0.19%) Network Security
3 1 (0.19%) SMS
3 1 (0.19%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (19.49%) Metadata
2 86 (16.76%) Data Warehouse
3 80 (15.59%) Data Lake
4 61 (11.89%) Power BI
5 31 (6.04%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.87%) Amazon Redshift
7 24 (4.68%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (4.68%) SQL Server
8 22 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
9 18 (3.51%) Big Data
9 18 (3.51%) Tableau
10 16 (3.12%) Delta Lake
11 15 (2.92%) Amazon Athena
12 14 (2.73%) Metadata Repository
12 14 (2.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 13 (2.53%) Data Vault
14 12 (2.34%) Star Schema
15 11 (2.14%) Apache Iceberg
15 11 (2.14%) BigQuery
16 10 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 22 (4.29%) ERwin
2 6 (1.17%) GitLab
2 6 (1.17%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.78%) Git
4 3 (0.58%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.19%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.19%) MLflow
5 1 (0.19%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 85 (16.57%) Social Skills
2 73 (14.23%) Finance
3 57 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 40 (7.80%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.07%) Retail
6 13 (2.53%) Banking
7 11 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.56%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.36%) Marketing
10 6 (1.17%) Local Government
11 5 (0.97%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.78%) Legal
13 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.58%) Law
13 3 (0.58%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.39%) Military
14 2 (0.39%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.19%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (6.24%) Kafka
2 15 (2.92%) PySpark
3 14 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
4 9 (1.75%) Apache Avro
4 9 (1.75%) Protocol Buffers
5 7 (1.36%) .NET
6 6 (1.17%) Middleware
7 4 (0.78%) FHIR
7 4 (0.78%) JSON
7 4 (0.78%) REST
8 3 (0.58%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.58%) SOAP
9 2 (0.39%) OpenTelemetry
9 2 (0.39%) Spark Streaming
10 1 (0.19%) Apache NiFi
10 1 (0.19%) GraphQL
10 1 (0.19%) Lambda Expressions
10 1 (0.19%) OpenAPI
10 1 (0.19%) Smart Contracts
10 1 (0.19%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 39 (7.60%) Cloud Native
2 27 (5.26%) Data Structures
3 18 (3.51%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.73%) NHS
4 14 (2.73%) Reference Data
5 13 (2.53%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.14%) Mainframe
7 10 (1.95%) IoT
8 9 (1.75%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.36%) AI Agents
10 7 (1.36%) FMCG
10 7 (1.36%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.17%) Data Fabric
11 6 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.17%) PACS
11 6 (1.17%) Reinsurance
11 6 (1.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 5 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.75%) zOS
2 2 (0.39%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (50.10%) Data Architecture
2 229 (44.64%) Data Modelling
3 185 (36.06%) Analytics
4 134 (26.12%) Data Governance
5 108 (21.05%) ETL
6 103 (20.08%) Migration
7 98 (19.10%) Business Intelligence
8 89 (17.35%) AI
9 76 (14.81%) Data Integration
10 70 (13.65%) Data Pipeline
11 66 (12.87%) Data Engineering
12 65 (12.67%) Data Management
13 62 (12.09%) Data Strategy
13 62 (12.09%) Logical Data Model
14 56 (10.92%) Agile
14 56 (10.92%) Architectural Patterns
14 56 (10.92%) Roadmaps
15 54 (10.53%) Physical Data Model
16 53 (10.33%) Integration Patterns
16 53 (10.33%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 109 (21.25%) SQL
2 57 (11.11%) Python
3 12 (2.34%) Java
4 9 (1.75%) Scala
5 8 (1.56%) T-SQL
6 6 (1.17%) PowerShell
7 5 (0.97%) Bicep
8 3 (0.58%) Apex Code
8 3 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.39%) Bash
9 2 (0.39%) COBOL
9 2 (0.39%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.39%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.39%) R
9 2 (0.39%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.19%) ANSI SQL
10 1 (0.19%) C++
10 1 (0.19%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.19%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 118 (23.00%) Security Cleared
2 91 (17.74%) SC Cleared
3 22 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (4.09%) Azure Certification
5 20 (3.90%) Degree
6 18 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 15 (2.92%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (1.75%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (1.17%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.39%) VCAP
11 2 (0.39%) VCDX
12 1 (0.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.19%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.19%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (17.54%) Data Quality
2 27 (5.26%) GDPR
3 13 (2.53%) QA
4 7 (1.36%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.17%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.78%) HL7
7 4 (0.78%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.39%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.39%) FINREP
8 2 (0.39%) IFRS
8 2 (0.39%) NIST
8 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.19%) NCSC
System Software
1 4 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.58%) Docker
3 2 (0.39%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.39%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.39%) vSphere
4 1 (0.19%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (4.68%) Terraform
2 7 (1.36%) Grafana
3 6 (1.17%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.17%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.97%) Ansible
5 2 (0.39%) Argo
5 2 (0.39%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 106 (20.66%) Databricks
2 74 (14.42%) Microsoft
3 37 (7.21%) Oracle
4 23 (4.48%) Salesforce
4 23 (4.48%) SAP
5 19 (3.70%) Informatica
6 14 (2.73%) Talend
7 13 (2.53%) Foundry
8 11 (2.14%) Confluent
8 11 (2.14%) Google
9 10 (1.95%) Palantir
10 5 (0.97%) Sparx
11 4 (0.78%) IBM
11 4 (0.78%) NVIDIA
11 4 (0.78%) VMware
12 3 (0.58%) Cognos
12 3 (0.58%) Denodo
12 3 (0.58%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.58%) Remedy
13 2 (0.39%) Pure Storage