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 30 May 2026.

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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 245 240
Rank change year-on-year +28 -5 +33
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 579 308 421
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.07% 0.98%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.28% 1.16% 1.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 410 214 296
10th Percentile £463 £452 £494
25th Percentile £513 £519 £540
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year - -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £700 £775
90th Percentile £788 £775 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £610 £550 £675
% change year-on-year +10.91% -18.52% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 5 10
10th Percentile - £48.38 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £62.50 -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £80.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.25% +33.33% -6.98%
75th Percentile £64.00 £82.25 -
90th Percentile £69.00 £83.90 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £80.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -41.61% +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 45,367 26,659 39,830
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,689 17,296 25,850
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,009 1,048 2,796
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.28% -36.73% -6.98%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +18 495 £600 - 234
London +21 273 £588 -2.08% 119
UK excluding London -1 222 £610 +10.91% 139
Work from Home +1 163 £604 +0.65% 109
Midlands -19 61 £615 +2.50% 23
West Midlands -31 53 £625 +4.17% 17
North of England -71 44 £610 +10.91% 33
South East -48 33 £575 +9.52% 32
East of England -8 31 £505 -20.78% 3
South West -17 31 £725 +61.11% 32
Yorkshire -49 27 £738 +11.32% 7
Scotland +3 24 £600 +11.42% 12
North West -55 13 £575 +9.52% 16
East Midlands -18 8 £613 - 6
North East -21 7 £550 -4.35% 10
Wales -10 3 £768 +225.21% 2

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 298 (51.47%) Data Architecture
2 262 (45.25%) Data Modelling
3 206 (35.58%) Azure
4 201 (34.72%) Analytics
5 154 (26.60%) Security Cleared
6 148 (25.56%) Data Governance
7 138 (23.83%) Databricks
8 134 (23.14%) AWS
9 131 (22.63%) Migration
10 128 (22.11%) SC Cleared
11 113 (19.52%) SQL
12 112 (19.34%) ETL
13 104 (17.96%) Business Intelligence
14 102 (17.62%) Metadata
15 96 (16.58%) AI
16 95 (16.41%) Data Warehouse
17 91 (15.72%) Data Quality
18 88 (15.20%) Data Lake
19 84 (14.51%) Data Integration
19 84 (14.51%) Microsoft
20 80 (13.82%) Data Pipeline
21 79 (13.64%) Integration Patterns
22 78 (13.47%) Data Management
23 76 (13.13%) Logical Data Model
24 74 (12.78%) Data Engineering
25 72 (12.44%) Power Platform
26 67 (11.57%) Roadmaps
27 65 (11.23%) Data Strategy
28 64 (11.05%) Power BI
29 63 (10.88%) Data Migration

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 19 (3.28%) Apache Spark
2 15 (2.59%) SAS
3 13 (2.25%) Palantir Foundry
4 12 (2.07%) Apache
4 12 (2.07%) SharePoint
5 11 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.35%) Alfresco
6 2 (0.35%) Confluence
7 1 (0.17%) Appian
7 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.52%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 9 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.69%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.35%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.17%) iTrent
4 1 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.17%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.17%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 206 (35.58%) Azure
2 134 (23.14%) AWS
3 72 (12.44%) Power Platform
4 60 (10.36%) GCP
5 46 (7.94%) Snowflake
6 44 (7.60%) Azure Data Factory
7 43 (7.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 30 (5.18%) Microsoft Purview
8 30 (5.18%) Serverless
9 27 (4.66%) Amazon S3
10 25 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (3.28%) dbt
13 14 (2.42%) Amazon Kinesis
13 14 (2.42%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 14 (2.42%) GitHub
14 12 (2.07%) AWS Step Functions
14 12 (2.07%) SaaS
15 10 (1.73%) Amazon MSK
15 10 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.69%) Firewall
2 2 (0.35%) BGP
2 2 (0.35%) DNS
2 2 (0.35%) DSL
2 2 (0.35%) OSPF
2 2 (0.35%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.35%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.17%) LAN
3 1 (0.17%) Network Security
3 1 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
3 1 (0.17%) SMS
3 1 (0.17%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 102 (17.62%) Metadata
2 95 (16.41%) Data Warehouse
3 88 (15.20%) Data Lake
4 64 (11.05%) Power BI
5 33 (5.70%) NoSQL
6 26 (4.49%) Amazon Redshift
7 25 (4.32%) PostgreSQL
7 25 (4.32%) SQL Server
8 19 (3.28%) Azure SQL Database
9 18 (3.11%) Big Data
9 18 (3.11%) Tableau
10 15 (2.59%) Amazon Athena
10 15 (2.59%) BigQuery
10 15 (2.59%) Delta Lake
11 14 (2.42%) Metadata Repository
12 13 (2.25%) Data Vault
13 12 (2.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 11 (1.90%) Apache Iceberg
14 11 (1.90%) Hadoop
14 11 (1.90%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 21 (3.63%) ERwin
2 6 (1.04%) GitLab
2 6 (1.04%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.69%) Git
4 2 (0.35%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.17%) MLflow
5 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 94 (16.23%) Social Skills
2 88 (15.20%) Finance
3 67 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 45 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (4.84%) Retail
6 26 (4.49%) Banking
7 11 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (1.73%) Marketing
9 9 (1.55%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.04%) Local Government
12 5 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.52%) Law
14 3 (0.52%) Legal
14 3 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.35%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.35%) Military
15 2 (0.35%) Retail Banking
15 2 (0.35%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.35%) Kafka
2 16 (2.76%) PySpark
3 13 (2.25%) Oracle Fusion
4 9 (1.55%) Apache Avro
4 9 (1.55%) Protocol Buffers
5 7 (1.21%) .NET
5 7 (1.21%) Middleware
6 5 (0.86%) FHIR
6 5 (0.86%) REST
7 4 (0.69%) JSON
8 3 (0.52%) Lightning Web Components
9 2 (0.35%) OpenTelemetry
9 2 (0.35%) SOAP
9 2 (0.35%) Spark Streaming
9 2 (0.35%) XML
10 1 (0.17%) Django
10 1 (0.17%) FIX Protocol
10 1 (0.17%) Spring
10 1 (0.17%) Swagger
10 1 (0.17%) XBRL
Miscellaneous
1 41 (7.08%) Cloud Native
2 30 (5.18%) Data Structures
3 18 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
3 18 (3.11%) Reference Data
4 16 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 15 (2.59%) NHS
6 11 (1.90%) Mainframe
7 10 (1.73%) IoT
8 9 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.55%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.55%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.38%) AI Agents
9 8 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 7 (1.21%) Taxonomies
11 6 (1.04%) PACS
11 6 (1.04%) Reinsurance
12 5 (0.86%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (0.86%) Data Fabric
12 5 (0.86%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.55%) zOS
2 2 (0.35%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 298 (51.47%) Data Architecture
2 262 (45.25%) Data Modelling
3 201 (34.72%) Analytics
4 148 (25.56%) Data Governance
5 131 (22.63%) Migration
6 112 (19.34%) ETL
7 104 (17.96%) Business Intelligence
8 96 (16.58%) AI
9 84 (14.51%) Data Integration
10 80 (13.82%) Data Pipeline
11 79 (13.64%) Integration Patterns
12 78 (13.47%) Data Management
13 76 (13.13%) Logical Data Model
14 74 (12.78%) Data Engineering
15 67 (11.57%) Roadmaps
16 65 (11.23%) Data Strategy
17 63 (10.88%) Data Migration
18 60 (10.36%) Architectural Patterns
18 60 (10.36%) Physical Data Model
18 60 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 113 (19.52%) SQL
2 58 (10.02%) Python
3 13 (2.25%) Java
4 8 (1.38%) Scala
4 8 (1.38%) T-SQL
5 6 (1.04%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.86%) Bicep
7 3 (0.52%) Apex Code
7 3 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.35%) Bash
8 2 (0.35%) COBOL
8 2 (0.35%) Kotlin
8 2 (0.35%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.35%) R
8 2 (0.35%) SPARQL
9 1 (0.17%) C++
9 1 (0.17%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 154 (26.60%) Security Cleared
2 128 (22.11%) SC Cleared
3 23 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (3.63%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.63%) DV Cleared
5 20 (3.45%) Degree
6 14 (2.42%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.38%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (1.21%) DBS Check
8 7 (1.21%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (0.35%) VCAP
9 2 (0.35%) VCDX
10 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (15.72%) Data Quality
2 23 (3.97%) GDPR
3 13 (2.25%) QA
4 9 (1.55%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.21%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.86%) HL7
6 5 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.69%) SNOMED CT
8 3 (0.52%) IFRS
8 3 (0.52%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.52%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.35%) NIST
9 2 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.17%) GRC
10 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.17%) NCSC
10 1 (0.17%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.17%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.52%) Docker
3 2 (0.35%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.35%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.35%) vSphere
4 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 25 (4.32%) Terraform
2 7 (1.21%) Grafana
2 7 (1.21%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.04%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.86%) Ansible
5 2 (0.35%) Argo
5 2 (0.35%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.17%) Istio
6 1 (0.17%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 138 (23.83%) Databricks
2 84 (14.51%) Microsoft
3 41 (7.08%) Oracle
4 21 (3.63%) SAP
5 19 (3.28%) Salesforce
6 17 (2.94%) Informatica
7 16 (2.76%) Foundry
8 14 (2.42%) Palantir
8 14 (2.42%) Talend
9 13 (2.25%) Google
10 11 (1.90%) Confluent
11 6 (1.04%) Sparx
12 4 (0.69%) IBM
12 4 (0.69%) NVIDIA
12 4 (0.69%) VMware
13 3 (0.52%) Denodo
13 3 (0.52%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.52%) Remedy
14 2 (0.35%) IDERA
14 2 (0.35%) Pure Storage