Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £610, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 July 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 268 267
Rank change year-on-year +60 -1 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 718 317 359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.97% 0.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.47% 1.06% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 503 212 251
10th Percentile £463 £463 £500
25th Percentile £525 £520 £545
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year +1.67% -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £716 £775
90th Percentile £775 £799 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £614 £586 £663
% change year-on-year +4.69% -11.51% +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 11
10th Percentile - £41.31 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £55.50 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.77% -13.37% -6.98%
75th Percentile £69.33 £60.37 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +42.45% -35.07% -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 48,798 29,864 38,453
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.64% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,431 18,992 24,873
10th Percentile £325 £285 £293
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,294 1,429 2,439
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.33% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.17 £73.75 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +5.65%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 21 July 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 +64 614 £603 +0.52% 214
London +33 322 £586 -3.74% 132
UK excluding London +34 293 £614 +4.69% 101
Work from Home +15 207 £608 +1.29% 90
Midlands +10 83 £620 -4.62% 17
West Midlands -12 63 £625 +4.17% 13
North of England -44 61 £610 -2.40% 31
South East -39 45 £600 +6.67% 27
South West -2 44 £650 +23.81% 12
Yorkshire -31 38 £675 +1.89% 8
East of England 0 31 £550 -4.35% 5
Scotland -10 31 £550 +4.07% 7
East Midlands +5 20 £600 - 4
North West -42 19 £588 +11.90% 13
North East -37 7 £550 -26.67% 10
Wales -15 1 £475 +101.27%

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

For the 6 months to 21 July 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.

1 362 (50.42%) Data Architecture
2 319 (44.43%) Data Modelling
3 242 (33.70%) Azure
4 216 (30.08%) Security Cleared
5 215 (29.94%) Analytics
6 188 (26.18%) SC Cleared
7 186 (25.91%) Data Governance
8 169 (23.54%) Migration
9 159 (22.14%) AWS
10 146 (20.33%) Databricks
11 134 (18.66%) ETL
12 130 (18.11%) Metadata
13 128 (17.83%) Business Intelligence
14 127 (17.69%) AI
15 124 (17.27%) Data Warehouse
16 120 (16.71%) Data Quality
17 118 (16.43%) Integration Patterns
18 116 (16.16%) SQL
19 109 (15.18%) Data Lake
20 106 (14.76%) Data Integration
21 98 (13.65%) Data Engineering
22 95 (13.23%) Data Pipeline
22 95 (13.23%) Logical Data Model
23 86 (11.98%) Microsoft
23 86 (11.98%) Power Platform
23 86 (11.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
24 80 (11.14%) Data Strategy
25 78 (10.86%) Power BI
26 77 (10.72%) Data Management
26 77 (10.72%) GCP

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 24 (3.34%) Apache Spark
1 24 (3.34%) SAS
2 20 (2.79%) Apache
3 17 (2.37%) Palantir Foundry
4 16 (2.23%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (1.53%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.70%) Confluence
7 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
8 1 (0.14%) Appian
8 1 (0.14%) JBoss
8 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.28%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.28%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.14%) iTrent
4 1 (0.14%) Maximo
4 1 (0.14%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 242 (33.70%) Azure
2 159 (22.14%) AWS
3 86 (11.98%) Power Platform
4 77 (10.72%) GCP
5 60 (8.36%) Snowflake
6 47 (6.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 43 (5.99%) Azure Data Factory
8 26 (3.62%) dbt
9 25 (3.48%) Microsoft Purview
10 24 (3.34%) Amazon S3
11 22 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
11 22 (3.06%) Serverless
12 18 (2.51%) SaaS
13 14 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (1.53%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 11 (1.53%) GitHub
15 10 (1.39%) Amazon EMR
15 10 (1.39%) Amazon Kinesis
15 10 (1.39%) Collibra
16 9 (1.25%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.70%) Firewall
2 4 (0.56%) DSL
3 2 (0.28%) BGP
3 2 (0.28%) DNS
3 2 (0.28%) Network Security
3 2 (0.28%) OSPF
3 2 (0.28%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.28%) VPN
3 2 (0.28%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.14%) SAN
4 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (18.11%) Metadata
2 124 (17.27%) Data Warehouse
3 109 (15.18%) Data Lake
4 78 (10.86%) Power BI
5 40 (5.57%) NoSQL
6 22 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
6 22 (3.06%) Big Data
7 21 (2.92%) BigQuery
7 21 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
8 20 (2.79%) Azure SQL Database
8 20 (2.79%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 16 (2.23%) Semantic Layer
9 16 (2.23%) SQL Server
10 15 (2.09%) Snowflake Schema
11 14 (1.95%) Base SAS
11 14 (1.95%) Delta Lake
11 14 (1.95%) Elasticsearch
12 13 (1.81%) Metadata Repository
13 12 (1.67%) Amazon Athena
13 12 (1.67%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 25 (3.48%) ERwin
2 8 (1.11%) Git
3 7 (0.97%) GitLab
4 5 (0.70%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.56%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.42%) JIRA
7 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.14%) MLflow
7 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 117 (16.30%) Finance
2 115 (16.02%) Social Skills
3 91 (12.67%) Public Sector
4 53 (7.38%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (4.87%) Banking
6 34 (4.74%) Retail
7 15 (2.09%) Marketing
8 12 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.39%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.25%) Legal
11 9 (1.25%) Police
12 6 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.84%) Investment Banking
13 5 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.56%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.42%) Military
16 2 (0.28%) Local Government
16 2 (0.28%) Publishing
16 2 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (4.74%) Kafka
2 20 (2.79%) PySpark
3 15 (2.09%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.97%) .NET
4 7 (0.97%) Middleware
4 7 (0.97%) REST
5 5 (0.70%) FHIR
5 5 (0.70%) JSON
6 4 (0.56%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (0.42%) LangChain
7 3 (0.42%) LangGraph
7 3 (0.42%) Spark Streaming
8 2 (0.28%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.28%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.28%) FastAPI
8 2 (0.28%) JWT
8 2 (0.28%) Protocol Buffers
8 2 (0.28%) pytest
8 2 (0.28%) React
8 2 (0.28%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.38%) Cloud Native
2 34 (4.74%) Data Structures
3 22 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
4 21 (2.92%) Reference Data
5 16 (2.23%) Data Centre
6 15 (2.09%) NHS
7 14 (1.95%) IoT
7 14 (1.95%) Taxonomies
8 13 (1.81%) Management Information System
9 12 (1.67%) AI Agents
10 10 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.39%) Onboarding
11 9 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
11 9 (1.25%) Mainframe
12 8 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
12 8 (1.11%) SCADA
13 7 (0.97%) Digital Media
13 7 (0.97%) Distributed Computing
13 7 (0.97%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.11%) zOS
2 3 (0.42%) Windows
3 1 (0.14%) AIX
3 1 (0.14%) HPUX
3 1 (0.14%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 362 (50.42%) Data Architecture
2 319 (44.43%) Data Modelling
3 215 (29.94%) Analytics
4 186 (25.91%) Data Governance
5 169 (23.54%) Migration
6 134 (18.66%) ETL
7 128 (17.83%) Business Intelligence
8 127 (17.69%) AI
9 118 (16.43%) Integration Patterns
10 106 (14.76%) Data Integration
11 98 (13.65%) Data Engineering
12 95 (13.23%) Data Pipeline
12 95 (13.23%) Logical Data Model
13 86 (11.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 80 (11.14%) Data Strategy
15 77 (10.72%) Data Management
16 75 (10.45%) Agile
16 75 (10.45%) Data Migration
16 75 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
17 73 (10.17%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 116 (16.16%) SQL
2 61 (8.50%) Python
3 16 (2.23%) Java
4 7 (0.97%) Bicep
4 7 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 7 (0.97%) Scala
5 5 (0.70%) R
6 3 (0.42%) T-SQL
7 2 (0.28%) Apex Code
7 2 (0.28%) Bash
7 2 (0.28%) COBOL
7 2 (0.28%) Cypher
7 2 (0.28%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.28%) SHACL
7 2 (0.28%) SPARQL
7 2 (0.28%) TypeScript
8 1 (0.14%) C++
8 1 (0.14%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.14%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 216 (30.08%) Security Cleared
2 188 (26.18%) SC Cleared
3 25 (3.48%) DV Cleared
4 23 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.37%) Degree
6 15 (2.09%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.67%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.53%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.97%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.84%) TOGAF Certification
11 5 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.28%) VCAP
12 2 (0.28%) VCDX
13 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (16.71%) Data Quality
2 39 (5.43%) GDPR
3 15 (2.09%) QA
4 11 (1.53%) Accessibility
5 6 (0.84%) HL7
5 6 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.70%) IFRS
6 5 (0.70%) IFRS 17
6 5 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.70%) SNOMED CT
6 5 (0.70%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.42%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.42%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.28%) NIST
8 2 (0.28%) SLA
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.14%) GRC
9 1 (0.14%) NCSC
9 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.56%) Docker
1 4 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.28%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.28%) VMware NSX
2 2 (0.28%) vSphere
3 1 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (3.34%) Terraform
2 11 (1.53%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.11%) Grafana
4 6 (0.84%) Ansible
5 5 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.56%) Argo
7 3 (0.42%) Istio
8 2 (0.28%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.14%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.14%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 146 (20.33%) Databricks
2 86 (11.98%) Microsoft
3 43 (5.99%) Oracle
4 22 (3.06%) Informatica
5 21 (2.92%) SAP
6 20 (2.79%) Foundry
7 19 (2.65%) Salesforce
8 18 (2.51%) Palantir
9 17 (2.37%) Google
10 14 (1.95%) Talend
11 7 (0.97%) IFS
11 7 (0.97%) Sparx
12 5 (0.70%) OpenAI
13 4 (0.56%) Confluent
13 4 (0.56%) Denodo
13 4 (0.56%) IBM
13 4 (0.56%) NVIDIA
13 4 (0.56%) VMware
14 3 (0.42%) Red Hat
14 3 (0.42%) Remedy