Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £580, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 March 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 266 237 221
Rank change year-on-year -29 -16 +47
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 445 319 463
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 1.09% 1.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.17% 1.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 232 328
10th Percentile £462 £480 £500
25th Percentile £510 £523 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £580 £600 £685
Median % change year-on-year -3.42% -12.41% +1.48%
75th Percentile £675 £713 £758
90th Percentile £800 £799 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £590 £663
% change year-on-year -2.54% -10.94% +1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 5
10th Percentile - £66.25 £46.03
25th Percentile £64.00 £71.88 £50.53
Median hourly rate £69.00 £80.25 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.02% +45.91% -21.43%
75th Percentile £69.44 £82.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.48 £84.18 £67.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £80.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% +46.36% -21.43%

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 40,989 27,183 41,081
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 92.83% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,539 17,878 26,912
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,552 945 2,521
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.09 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -1.52% -24.36%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.81 £71.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.63 £32.25 £33.00
% change year-on-year +19.78% -2.27% -21.07%

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 29 March 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 29 March 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 29 March 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 -37 371 £588 -3.49% 172
London -32 194 £600 -5.88% 73
UK excluding London -18 181 £575 -2.54% 135
Work from Home +5 133 £605 +0.83% 53
Midlands -22 53 £578 -4.07% 18
West Midlands -11 50 £581 -5.14% 11
South West -9 36 £628 +21.26% 22
North of England -68 34 £600 +0.06% 25
South East -43 25 £575 -0.65% 43
Scotland +17 24 £550 -12.00% 11
North West -50 16 £600 +14.29% 9
East of England -22 15 £505 -20.78% 15
Yorkshire -54 14 £610 -21.79% 11
North East -9 7 £550 -8.28% 5
East Midlands -29 3 £444 +24.65% 7
Wales -10 2 £768 +225.21% 4

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

For the 6 months to 29 March 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.

1 243 (54.61%) Data Architecture
2 231 (51.91%) Data Modelling
3 169 (37.98%) Analytics
4 156 (35.06%) Azure
5 152 (34.16%) Data Governance
6 116 (26.07%) AWS
7 109 (24.49%) Metadata
8 107 (24.04%) Security Cleared
9 104 (23.37%) SQL
10 102 (22.92%) Data Warehouse
11 97 (21.80%) Business Intelligence
11 97 (21.80%) ETL
12 95 (21.35%) Data Quality
13 90 (20.22%) Databricks
14 82 (18.43%) SC Cleared
15 79 (17.75%) AI
16 75 (16.85%) Data Integration
17 73 (16.40%) Migration
18 71 (15.96%) Microsoft
19 65 (14.61%) Data Strategy
19 65 (14.61%) Python
20 64 (14.38%) Data Lake
21 61 (13.71%) Power Platform
22 60 (13.48%) Data Engineering
22 60 (13.48%) Machine Learning
22 60 (13.48%) Metadata Management
23 59 (13.26%) Data Pipeline
23 59 (13.26%) Logical Data Model
24 57 (12.81%) Architectural Patterns
25 56 (12.58%) Power BI

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 (4.04%) Apache Spark
2 15 (3.37%) SAS
3 13 (2.92%) SharePoint
4 11 (2.47%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (2.25%) Apache
6 2 (0.45%) Confluence
6 2 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.22%) Appian
7 1 (0.22%) Ethereum
7 1 (0.22%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.67%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 8 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.57%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 5 (1.12%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.22%) Distributed Ledger
4 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.22%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.22%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.22%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 156 (35.06%) Azure
2 116 (26.07%) AWS
3 61 (13.71%) Power Platform
4 46 (10.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 42 (9.44%) Azure Data Factory
5 42 (9.44%) GCP
6 40 (8.99%) Snowflake
7 32 (7.19%) Microsoft Purview
8 28 (6.29%) Serverless
9 21 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
10 17 (3.82%) Amazon S3
11 16 (3.60%) dbt
12 15 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (2.92%) GitHub
14 11 (2.47%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 10 (2.25%) Amazon Kinesis
15 10 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (1.80%) Azure Functions
17 7 (1.57%) AWS Step Functions
17 7 (1.57%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.90%) Firewall
2 2 (0.45%) BGP
2 2 (0.45%) DNS
2 2 (0.45%) DSL
2 2 (0.45%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.45%) OSPF
2 2 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
2 2 (0.45%) VXLAN
3 1 (0.22%) DWDM
3 1 (0.22%) LAN
3 1 (0.22%) Network Security
3 1 (0.22%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (24.49%) Metadata
2 102 (22.92%) Data Warehouse
3 64 (14.38%) Data Lake
4 56 (12.58%) Power BI
5 31 (6.97%) SQL Server
6 28 (6.29%) PostgreSQL
7 27 (6.07%) NoSQL
8 24 (5.39%) Big Data
9 21 (4.72%) Metadata Repository
10 19 (4.27%) Amazon Redshift
10 19 (4.27%) Azure SQL Database
11 16 (3.60%) Oracle Database
11 16 (3.60%) Tableau
12 15 (3.37%) Data Vault
13 14 (3.15%) Delta Lake
13 14 (3.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 12 (2.70%) Hadoop
15 11 (2.47%) Amazon Athena
15 11 (2.47%) Relational Database
16 10 (2.25%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 25 (5.62%) ERwin
2 5 (1.12%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.67%) ER Studio
3 3 (0.67%) Git
3 3 (0.67%) GitLab
4 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.22%) MLflow
4 1 (0.22%) PowerDesigner
General
1 91 (20.45%) Social Skills
2 73 (16.40%) Finance
3 46 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 39 (8.76%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (4.27%) Retail
6 16 (3.60%) Banking
7 10 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.35%) Financial Institution
8 6 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.35%) Investment Banking
8 6 (1.35%) Local Government
9 5 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.90%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.67%) Law
12 2 (0.45%) Legal
12 2 (0.45%) Marketing
12 2 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.22%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.22%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (7.19%) Kafka
2 14 (3.15%) PySpark
3 7 (1.57%) Apache Avro
3 7 (1.57%) Protocol Buffers
4 5 (1.12%) Middleware
5 4 (0.90%) FHIR
5 4 (0.90%) JSON
5 4 (0.90%) REST
6 3 (0.67%) .NET
6 3 (0.67%) AWS CDK
6 3 (0.67%) Lightning Web Components
6 3 (0.67%) SOAP
7 2 (0.45%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (0.45%) Oracle Fusion
8 1 (0.22%) Apache NiFi
8 1 (0.22%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.22%) Great Expectations
8 1 (0.22%) OpenAPI
8 1 (0.22%) Smart Contracts
8 1 (0.22%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.19%) Cloud Native
2 30 (6.74%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.82%) Reference Data
4 13 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (2.70%) NHS
6 11 (2.47%) IoT
7 10 (2.25%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (2.25%) Mainframe
8 8 (1.80%) Data Fabric
8 8 (1.80%) FMCG
8 8 (1.80%) Product Ownership
9 7 (1.57%) Data Centre
9 7 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (1.57%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.35%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
10 6 (1.35%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.35%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.12%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.12%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 9 (2.02%) zOS
2 2 (0.45%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 243 (54.61%) Data Architecture
2 231 (51.91%) Data Modelling
3 169 (37.98%) Analytics
4 152 (34.16%) Data Governance
5 97 (21.80%) Business Intelligence
5 97 (21.80%) ETL
6 79 (17.75%) AI
7 75 (16.85%) Data Integration
8 73 (16.40%) Migration
9 65 (14.61%) Data Strategy
10 60 (13.48%) Data Engineering
10 60 (13.48%) Machine Learning
10 60 (13.48%) Metadata Management
11 59 (13.26%) Data Pipeline
11 59 (13.26%) Logical Data Model
12 57 (12.81%) Architectural Patterns
13 55 (12.36%) Physical Data Model
14 54 (12.13%) Data Management
15 53 (11.91%) Agile
16 50 (11.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 104 (23.37%) SQL
2 65 (14.61%) Python
3 12 (2.70%) Java
4 7 (1.57%) T-SQL
5 6 (1.35%) Scala
6 5 (1.12%) PowerShell
7 3 (0.67%) Apex Code
7 3 (0.67%) Bicep
7 3 (0.67%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.45%) Bash
8 2 (0.45%) COBOL
8 2 (0.45%) Kotlin
8 2 (0.45%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.45%) R
8 2 (0.45%) SPARQL
9 1 (0.22%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.22%) C++
9 1 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.22%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 107 (24.04%) Security Cleared
2 82 (18.43%) SC Cleared
3 21 (4.72%) Azure Certification
4 20 (4.49%) Degree
5 16 (3.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (3.15%) Master's Degree
7 13 (2.92%) DV Cleared
8 10 (2.25%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (1.57%) AWS Certification
10 7 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.45%) VCAP
11 2 (0.45%) VCDX
12 1 (0.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.22%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (21.35%) Data Quality
2 35 (7.87%) GDPR
3 14 (3.15%) QA
4 8 (1.80%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 4 (0.90%) ISO 20022
6 4 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.67%) HL7
8 2 (0.45%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.45%) FINREP
8 2 (0.45%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.45%) IFRS
8 2 (0.45%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.45%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 4 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.67%) Docker
3 2 (0.45%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.45%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.45%) vSphere
4 1 (0.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 27 (6.07%) Terraform
2 9 (2.02%) Ansible
3 7 (1.57%) Kubernetes
4 5 (1.12%) Grafana
5 4 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.45%) Argo
6 2 (0.45%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.22%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 90 (20.22%) Databricks
2 71 (15.96%) Microsoft
3 29 (6.52%) Oracle
4 21 (4.72%) Salesforce
5 20 (4.49%) Informatica
6 15 (3.37%) SAP
7 9 (2.02%) Confluent
7 9 (2.02%) Google
7 9 (2.02%) Talend
8 7 (1.57%) Remedy
9 5 (1.12%) Sparx
10 4 (0.90%) Greenplum
10 4 (0.90%) MicroStrategy
10 4 (0.90%) Palantir
10 4 (0.90%) VMware
11 3 (0.67%) Ab Initio
11 3 (0.67%) Cognos
11 3 (0.67%) IBM
12 2 (0.45%) Pure Storage
12 2 (0.45%) Red Hat