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 5 August 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 268 278
Rank change year-on-year +83 +10 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 762 311 335
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.43% 0.95% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.55% 1.03% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 544 200 225
10th Percentile £463 £462 £490
25th Percentile £525 £513 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £758
90th Percentile £775 £782 £870
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £585 £638
% change year-on-year +6.84% -8.24% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 11
10th Percentile - £41.31 £52.50
25th Percentile £46.00 £44.85 -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £51.98 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.58% -13.37% -6.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.37 -
90th Percentile - £64.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +20.64% -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 49,279 30,093 36,428
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 91.45% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,675 19,115 23,531
10th Percentile £330 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,419 1,494 2,063
10th Percentile £15.23 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.99 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +75.33% -42.71% +17.07%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 +61 658 £620 +3.33% 324
London +50 352 £600 - 194
UK excluding London +46 302 £625 +6.84% 173
Work from Home +32 210 £619 +3.13% 137
Midlands +2 86 £638 -1.92% 36
West Midlands -9 68 £650 -3.70% 25
North of England -31 61 £625 +6.38% 45
South East -31 50 £609 +5.98% 33
South West -5 48 £650 +23.81% 18
Yorkshire -26 37 £675 +1.89% 21
East of England +10 33 £550 - 7
Scotland -11 24 £500 -2.77% 21
North West -43 23 £600 +14.29% 18
East Midlands +5 18 £606 +1.04% 11
North East - 4 £550 - 6
Wales -11 1 £475 +101.27%

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

For the 6 months to 5 August 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.

1 375 (49.21%) Data Architecture
2 326 (42.78%) Data Modelling
3 249 (32.68%) Azure
4 241 (31.63%) Security Cleared
5 228 (29.92%) Analytics
6 208 (27.30%) SC Cleared
7 197 (25.85%) Data Governance
8 187 (24.54%) Migration
9 168 (22.05%) AWS
10 156 (20.47%) Databricks
11 141 (18.50%) AI
12 133 (17.45%) Business Intelligence
12 133 (17.45%) ETL
13 132 (17.32%) Data Quality
14 126 (16.54%) Data Warehouse
15 124 (16.27%) Metadata
16 122 (16.01%) Integration Patterns
17 116 (15.22%) Data Lake
18 110 (14.44%) SQL
19 106 (13.91%) Logical Data Model
20 103 (13.52%) Data Integration
21 100 (13.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 99 (12.99%) Data Pipeline
23 92 (12.07%) Data Engineering
24 91 (11.94%) Data Strategy
25 90 (11.81%) Power Platform
26 86 (11.29%) Microsoft
27 83 (10.89%) Power BI
28 82 (10.76%) Stakeholder Management
29 80 (10.50%) Roadmaps

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 25 (3.28%) Apache Spark
2 24 (3.15%) SAS
3 19 (2.49%) Apache
4 18 (2.36%) Palantir Foundry
5 12 (1.57%) SharePoint
6 11 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.79%) Confluence
8 2 (0.26%) Alfresco
9 1 (0.13%) JBoss
9 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.66%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.26%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.26%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) iTrent
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.13%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 249 (32.68%) Azure
2 168 (22.05%) AWS
3 90 (11.81%) Power Platform
4 79 (10.37%) GCP
5 61 (8.01%) Snowflake
6 45 (5.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 44 (5.77%) Azure Data Factory
8 28 (3.67%) Amazon S3
9 24 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
9 24 (3.15%) Microsoft Purview
9 24 (3.15%) Serverless
10 23 (3.02%) dbt
11 18 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
12 16 (2.10%) SaaS
13 11 (1.44%) Amazon EMR
13 11 (1.44%) Amazon Kinesis
14 10 (1.31%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 10 (1.31%) Azure Machine Learning
14 10 (1.31%) Collibra
14 10 (1.31%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.66%) Firewall
2 3 (0.39%) Network Security
2 3 (0.39%) VPN
3 2 (0.26%) BGP
3 2 (0.26%) DSL
3 2 (0.26%) OSPF
3 2 (0.26%) SAN
3 2 (0.26%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.26%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (16.54%) Data Warehouse
2 124 (16.27%) Metadata
3 116 (15.22%) Data Lake
4 83 (10.89%) Power BI
5 45 (5.91%) NoSQL
6 25 (3.28%) BigQuery
7 23 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (2.76%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 20 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
10 18 (2.36%) Big Data
11 16 (2.10%) Delta Lake
11 16 (2.10%) Semantic Layer
12 15 (1.97%) Base SAS
12 15 (1.97%) Snowflake Schema
13 13 (1.71%) Data Vault
13 13 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
13 13 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
14 11 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
14 11 (1.44%) Star Schema
14 11 (1.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 22 (2.89%) ERwin
2 8 (1.05%) Git
3 6 (0.79%) GitLab
4 4 (0.52%) ER Studio
5 3 (0.39%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.39%) JIRA
6 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.13%) MLflow
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 131 (17.19%) Social Skills
2 121 (15.88%) Finance
3 104 (13.65%) Public Sector
4 60 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (5.12%) Banking
6 35 (4.59%) Retail
7 17 (2.23%) Marketing
8 16 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
9 12 (1.57%) Police
10 10 (1.31%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.18%) Legal
12 7 (0.92%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.66%) Local Government
14 5 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.52%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.26%) Military
16 2 (0.26%) Pharmaceutical
16 2 (0.26%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (4.46%) Kafka
2 24 (3.15%) PySpark
3 15 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.92%) .NET
4 7 (0.92%) Middleware
4 7 (0.92%) REST
5 5 (0.66%) FHIR
5 5 (0.66%) JSON
6 3 (0.39%) LangChain
6 3 (0.39%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.39%) Spark Streaming
7 2 (0.26%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.26%) JWT
7 2 (0.26%) Lightning Web Components
7 2 (0.26%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (0.26%) pytest
7 2 (0.26%) React
7 2 (0.26%) Snowpark
7 2 (0.26%) Spring Boot
7 2 (0.26%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.40%) Cloud Native
2 39 (5.12%) Data Structures
3 25 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
4 24 (3.15%) Reference Data
5 16 (2.10%) Data Centre
6 15 (1.97%) AI Agents
6 15 (1.97%) Management Information System
6 15 (1.97%) NHS
7 14 (1.84%) Taxonomies
8 13 (1.71%) IoT
8 13 (1.71%) Onboarding
9 12 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.31%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.31%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.18%) Autonomous Agent
11 9 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (1.18%) Mainframe
11 9 (1.18%) SCADA
12 8 (1.05%) Data Fabric
12 8 (1.05%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 6 (0.79%) zOS
2 3 (0.39%) Windows
3 2 (0.26%) AIX
3 2 (0.26%) HPUX
3 2 (0.26%) Linux
3 2 (0.26%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (49.21%) Data Architecture
2 326 (42.78%) Data Modelling
3 228 (29.92%) Analytics
4 197 (25.85%) Data Governance
5 187 (24.54%) Migration
6 141 (18.50%) AI
7 133 (17.45%) Business Intelligence
7 133 (17.45%) ETL
8 122 (16.01%) Integration Patterns
9 106 (13.91%) Logical Data Model
10 103 (13.52%) Data Integration
11 100 (13.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 99 (12.99%) Data Pipeline
13 92 (12.07%) Data Engineering
14 91 (11.94%) Data Strategy
15 82 (10.76%) Stakeholder Management
16 80 (10.50%) Roadmaps
17 79 (10.37%) Agile
18 74 (9.71%) Data Management
18 74 (9.71%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 110 (14.44%) SQL
2 56 (7.35%) Python
3 18 (2.36%) Java
4 9 (1.18%) Bicep
5 7 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 6 (0.79%) Scala
7 5 (0.66%) R
8 3 (0.39%) Kotlin
8 3 (0.39%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.26%) Apex Code
9 2 (0.26%) Cypher
9 2 (0.26%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.26%) SHACL
9 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.26%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.13%) C++
10 1 (0.13%) COBOL
10 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 241 (31.63%) Security Cleared
2 208 (27.30%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.67%) DV Cleared
4 24 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (1.84%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.57%) AWS Certification
7 9 (1.18%) Degree
8 7 (0.92%) DBS Check
9 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
10 4 (0.52%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (0.52%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.26%) VCAP
11 2 (0.26%) VCDX
12 1 (0.13%) CISSP
12 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (17.32%) Data Quality
2 40 (5.25%) GDPR
3 12 (1.57%) Accessibility
3 12 (1.57%) QA
4 10 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.92%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.79%) HL7
7 5 (0.66%) IFRS
7 5 (0.66%) IFRS 17
7 5 (0.66%) NIST
7 5 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.66%) SNOMED CT
8 3 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.39%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.26%) GxP
9 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.26%) NCSC
9 2 (0.26%) SLA
10 1 (0.13%) Good Clinical Practice
10 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 4 (0.52%) Docker
2 3 (0.39%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 25 (3.28%) Terraform
2 9 (1.18%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.66%) Grafana
4 4 (0.52%) Ansible
5 3 (0.39%) Istio
5 3 (0.39%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.26%) Argo
6 2 (0.26%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 156 (20.47%) Databricks
2 86 (11.29%) Microsoft
3 36 (4.72%) Oracle
4 21 (2.76%) Foundry
4 21 (2.76%) Salesforce
4 21 (2.76%) SAP
5 19 (2.49%) Google
5 19 (2.49%) Palantir
6 18 (2.36%) Informatica
7 9 (1.18%) Denodo
7 9 (1.18%) Talend
8 7 (0.92%) IFS
8 7 (0.92%) Sparx
9 6 (0.79%) OpenAI
10 5 (0.66%) Confluent
11 4 (0.52%) NVIDIA
12 3 (0.39%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.39%) IBM
12 3 (0.39%) Workday
13 2 (0.26%) ServiceNow