Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 284 286
Rank change year-on-year +95 +2 -7
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 828 301 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.52% 0.91% 0.83%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.65% 1.00% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 588 197 211
10th Percentile £463 £450 £475
25th Percentile £538 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £620
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.23% -5.34%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £725
90th Percentile £775 £775 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £626 £550 £625
% change year-on-year +13.82% -12.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 1 7
10th Percentile £32.87 - £57.00
25th Percentile £40.50 - -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.64% -35.07% -1.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - - £83.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.64% -35.07% -16.67%

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 50,176 30,117 35,319
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.07% 90.80% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,458 18,999 21,350
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,042 1,639 1,491
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.36 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.57
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.49% -6.60%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.96
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.80% -3.47%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +82 688 £625 +4.17% 553
London +47 370 £620 +3.33% 329
UK excluding London +67 311 £626 +13.82% 258
Work from Home +45 236 £638 +6.25% 219
Midlands +30 105 £626 +4.33% 57
West Midlands +11 79 £647 +10.16% 46
North of England -32 62 £663 +20.45% 68
South East -23 48 £603 -3.50% 39
South West +7 42 £650 +1.96% 18
Yorkshire -10 36 £713 +29.55% 19
East of England -3 33 £519 -11.70% 15
East Midlands +5 26 £600 - 11
North West -46 22 £600 +14.29% 36
Scotland -26 20 £492 +3.58% 46
North East - 4 £650 - 13
Wales - 1 £475 - 7

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

For the 6 months to 9 October 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.

1 439 (53.02%) Data Architecture
2 362 (43.72%) Data Modelling
3 307 (37.08%) Security Cleared
4 266 (32.13%) Azure
5 261 (31.52%) SC Cleared
6 253 (30.56%) Data Governance
7 241 (29.11%) Analytics
8 208 (25.12%) Migration
9 193 (23.31%) AWS
10 180 (21.74%) Data Quality
11 177 (21.38%) Databricks
11 177 (21.38%) Metadata
12 160 (19.32%) AI
13 146 (17.63%) Data Warehouse
14 139 (16.79%) Data Lake
14 139 (16.79%) Stakeholder Management
15 132 (15.94%) Integration Patterns
16 127 (15.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 124 (14.98%) Business Intelligence
17 124 (14.98%) Logical Data Model
18 121 (14.61%) ETL
19 120 (14.49%) SQL
20 117 (14.13%) Lakehouse
21 110 (13.29%) Roadmaps
22 106 (12.80%) Data Integration
23 103 (12.44%) Data Strategy
24 100 (12.08%) Technical Leadership
25 94 (11.35%) Microsoft
26 93 (11.23%) Physical Data Model
26 93 (11.23%) Power Platform

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 27 (3.26%) SAS
2 25 (3.02%) Apache Spark
3 24 (2.90%) Apache
4 21 (2.54%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (1.69%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (0.48%) Confluence
6 4 (0.48%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.24%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.12%) JBoss
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.85%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.24%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) iTrent
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 266 (32.13%) Azure
2 193 (23.31%) AWS
3 93 (11.23%) Power Platform
4 80 (9.66%) GCP
5 72 (8.70%) Snowflake
6 55 (6.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 47 (5.68%) Azure Data Factory
8 37 (4.47%) dbt
9 27 (3.26%) Amazon S3
10 23 (2.78%) Microsoft Purview
10 23 (2.78%) Serverless
11 21 (2.54%) SaaS
12 20 (2.42%) Azure Databricks
13 17 (2.05%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
15 12 (1.45%) GitHub
16 10 (1.21%) Collibra
17 9 (1.09%) Amazon EMR
17 9 (1.09%) Amazon Kinesis
17 9 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.36%) Network Security
1 3 (0.36%) SAN
2 2 (0.24%) DSL
2 2 (0.24%) VPN
3 1 (0.12%) Broadband
3 1 (0.12%) Firewall
3 1 (0.12%) NAS
3 1 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (21.38%) Metadata
2 146 (17.63%) Data Warehouse
3 139 (16.79%) Data Lake
4 89 (10.75%) Power BI
5 42 (5.07%) NoSQL
6 28 (3.38%) Amazon Redshift
6 28 (3.38%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 23 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
7 23 (2.78%) BigQuery
8 21 (2.54%) Data Vault
9 19 (2.29%) Delta Lake
9 19 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
9 19 (2.29%) Semantic Layer
9 19 (2.29%) SQL Server
10 17 (2.05%) Star Schema
11 16 (1.93%) Base SAS
12 15 (1.81%) Snowflake Schema
13 14 (1.69%) Tableau
14 13 (1.57%) Elasticsearch
14 13 (1.57%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (1.57%) ERwin
2 10 (1.21%) Git
3 6 (0.72%) GitLab
4 5 (0.60%) ER Studio
4 5 (0.60%) JIRA
5 4 (0.48%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.24%) MLflow
7 2 (0.24%) RStudio
8 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 180 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 146 (17.63%) Public Sector
3 120 (14.49%) Finance
4 67 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (4.59%) Banking
6 34 (4.11%) Influencing Skills
7 28 (3.38%) Retail
8 14 (1.69%) Police
9 13 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (1.45%) Marketing
11 11 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.21%) Legal
13 7 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.85%) Local Government
14 6 (0.72%) Military
15 5 (0.60%) Billing
15 5 (0.60%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.36%) Investment Banking
17 2 (0.24%) General Ledger
17 2 (0.24%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.62%) Kafka
2 27 (3.26%) PySpark
2 27 (3.26%) Terraform
3 19 (2.29%) Oracle Fusion
4 12 (1.45%) REST
5 6 (0.72%) FHIR
6 5 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
7 4 (0.48%) Apache Avro
7 4 (0.48%) JSON
7 4 (0.48%) SOAP
8 3 (0.36%) .NET
8 3 (0.36%) LangChain
8 3 (0.36%) LangGraph
8 3 (0.36%) Middleware
8 3 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
8 3 (0.36%) OpenAPI
8 3 (0.36%) RESTful
8 3 (0.36%) Swagger
8 3 (0.36%) XML
9 2 (0.24%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (7.25%) Cloud Native
2 42 (5.07%) Data Structures
3 27 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
4 23 (2.78%) Onboarding
4 23 (2.78%) Reference Data
5 20 (2.42%) Management Information System
6 18 (2.17%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.05%) Data Fabric
8 16 (1.93%) Product Ownership
8 16 (1.93%) Taxonomies
9 14 (1.69%) Data Centre
9 14 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (1.69%) Reinsurance
10 11 (1.33%) Autonomous Agent
10 11 (1.33%) Replication
11 8 (0.97%) Clustering
11 8 (0.97%) Digital Media
11 8 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (0.97%) IoT
12 7 (0.85%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.36%) Linux
1 3 (0.36%) Windows
2 2 (0.24%) AIX
2 2 (0.24%) HPUX
2 2 (0.24%) Solaris
3 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 439 (53.02%) Data Architecture
2 362 (43.72%) Data Modelling
3 253 (30.56%) Data Governance
4 241 (29.11%) Analytics
5 208 (25.12%) Migration
6 160 (19.32%) AI
7 139 (16.79%) Stakeholder Management
8 132 (15.94%) Integration Patterns
9 127 (15.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 124 (14.98%) Business Intelligence
10 124 (14.98%) Logical Data Model
11 121 (14.61%) ETL
12 117 (14.13%) Lakehouse
13 110 (13.29%) Roadmaps
14 106 (12.80%) Data Integration
15 103 (12.44%) Data Strategy
16 100 (12.08%) Technical Leadership
17 93 (11.23%) Physical Data Model
18 92 (11.11%) Decision-Making
19 91 (10.99%) Metadata Management
Programming Languages
1 120 (14.49%) SQL
2 49 (5.92%) Python
3 16 (1.93%) Java
4 8 (0.97%) Bicep
5 7 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (0.60%) R
7 4 (0.48%) Scala
8 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.24%) Cypher
9 2 (0.24%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.24%) SHACL
9 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.12%) Korn
10 1 (0.12%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.12%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 307 (37.08%) Security Cleared
2 261 (31.52%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 35 (4.23%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.45%) AWS Certification
6 10 (1.21%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.09%) Degree
8 7 (0.85%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.24%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.12%) CISSP
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.12%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (21.74%) Data Quality
2 34 (4.11%) GDPR
3 14 (1.69%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.97%) NCSC
6 7 (0.85%) NIST
6 7 (0.85%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.72%) IFRS
7 6 (0.72%) SNOMED CT
8 5 (0.60%) IFRS 17
8 5 (0.60%) QA
9 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) GxP
11 2 (0.24%) HL7
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
12 1 (0.12%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 3 (0.36%) Docker
2 1 (0.12%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (0.85%) Kubernetes
2 6 (0.72%) Grafana
3 4 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.36%) Istio
4 3 (0.36%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.24%) Ansible
5 2 (0.24%) Argo
5 2 (0.24%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.12%) Control-M
Vendors
1 177 (21.38%) Databricks
2 94 (11.35%) Microsoft
3 44 (5.31%) Oracle
4 28 (3.38%) Google
5 22 (2.66%) Informatica
6 17 (2.05%) Foundry
6 17 (2.05%) SAP
7 15 (1.81%) Palantir
8 12 (1.45%) Talend
9 11 (1.33%) Denodo
10 10 (1.21%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.09%) Sparx
12 7 (0.85%) IFS
12 7 (0.85%) ServiceNow
13 6 (0.72%) OpenAI
14 5 (0.60%) Confluent
14 5 (0.60%) Teradata
15 3 (0.36%) Cloudera
15 3 (0.36%) MicroStrategy
15 3 (0.36%) Workday