Data Architect Contract Job Trends

Data Architect
UK

The median Data Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 July 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 271 277
Rank change year-on-year +80 +6 +7
Contract jobs requiring a Data Architect 747 311 340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.41% 0.95% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.52% 1.04% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 204 232
10th Percentile £463 £463 £500
25th Percentile £525 £513 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -11.11% -
75th Percentile £688 £703 £775
90th Percentile £775 £800 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £580 £650
% change year-on-year +7.76% -10.77% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 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 49,068 30,025 37,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.63% 91.50% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,609 19,114 23,981
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
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 3,359 1,460 2,193
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.69 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -40.82% -1.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +7.50%

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 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 30 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 30 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 +76 644 £613 +2.08% 202
London +39 344 £600 -2.91% 129
UK excluding London +53 296 £625 +7.76% 102
Work from Home +24 212 £610 +1.46% 97
Midlands -5 78 £625 +4.17% 22
North of England -37 63 £610 +3.83% 26
West Midlands -23 60 £644 +7.29% 20
South West +6 50 £650 +23.81% 5
South East -33 48 £606 +5.43% 29
Yorkshire -23 40 £675 +1.89% 7
East of England +10 33 £550 - 3
Scotland -11 26 £525 +2.09% 8
North West -44 21 £588 +11.90% 15
East Midlands +4 18 £606 - 2
North East - 5 £550 - 4
Wales -15 1 £475 +101.27%

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 372 (49.80%) Data Architecture
2 320 (42.84%) Data Modelling
3 249 (33.33%) Azure
4 226 (30.25%) Security Cleared
5 222 (29.72%) Analytics
6 195 (26.10%) SC Cleared
7 194 (25.97%) Data Governance
8 176 (23.56%) Migration
9 166 (22.22%) AWS
10 154 (20.62%) Databricks
11 133 (17.80%) AI
12 131 (17.54%) ETL
13 128 (17.14%) Business Intelligence
13 128 (17.14%) Data Quality
14 126 (16.87%) Data Warehouse
15 124 (16.60%) Integration Patterns
16 123 (16.47%) Metadata
17 113 (15.13%) Data Lake
17 113 (15.13%) SQL
18 105 (14.06%) Data Integration
19 101 (13.52%) Logical Data Model
20 96 (12.85%) Data Engineering
21 95 (12.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 94 (12.58%) Data Pipeline
23 87 (11.65%) Power Platform
24 86 (11.51%) Microsoft
25 85 (11.38%) Data Strategy
26 82 (10.98%) GCP
27 80 (10.71%) Power BI
28 79 (10.58%) Stakeholder Management

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 26 (3.48%) Apache Spark
2 22 (2.95%) SAS
3 20 (2.68%) Apache
4 19 (2.54%) Palantir Foundry
5 14 (1.87%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (1.47%) SharePoint
7 5 (0.67%) Confluence
8 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
9 1 (0.13%) JBoss
9 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.67%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.27%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.13%) iTrent
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) SAP MDM
4 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 249 (33.33%) Azure
2 166 (22.22%) AWS
3 87 (11.65%) Power Platform
4 82 (10.98%) GCP
5 61 (8.17%) Snowflake
6 48 (6.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 43 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
8 29 (3.88%) Amazon S3
9 23 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (3.08%) dbt
9 23 (3.08%) Serverless
10 22 (2.95%) Microsoft Purview
11 16 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (2.14%) SaaS
12 11 (1.47%) Amazon Kinesis
12 11 (1.47%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 11 (1.47%) GitHub
13 10 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
13 10 (1.34%) Azure Machine Learning
13 10 (1.34%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.67%) Firewall
2 3 (0.40%) Network Security
3 2 (0.27%) BGP
3 2 (0.27%) DNS
3 2 (0.27%) DSL
3 2 (0.27%) OSPF
3 2 (0.27%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.27%) VPN
3 2 (0.27%) VXLAN
4 1 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.13%) SAN
4 1 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (16.87%) Data Warehouse
2 123 (16.47%) Metadata
3 113 (15.13%) Data Lake
4 80 (10.71%) Power BI
5 41 (5.49%) NoSQL
6 25 (3.35%) BigQuery
7 24 (3.21%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (2.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 21 (2.81%) Big Data
8 21 (2.81%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 17 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
10 16 (2.14%) Semantic Layer
11 15 (2.01%) Base SAS
11 15 (2.01%) Delta Lake
11 15 (2.01%) Snowflake Schema
12 14 (1.87%) Data Vault
12 14 (1.87%) SQL Server
13 13 (1.74%) Elasticsearch
14 12 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
14 12 (1.61%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (3.08%) ERwin
2 8 (1.07%) Git
3 7 (0.94%) GitLab
4 5 (0.67%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.54%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.40%) JIRA
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) MLflow
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 125 (16.73%) Finance
1 125 (16.73%) Social Skills
2 100 (13.39%) Public Sector
3 57 (7.63%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (5.22%) Banking
5 34 (4.55%) Retail
6 16 (2.14%) Marketing
7 14 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (1.47%) Police
9 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
10 9 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (1.20%) Legal
11 6 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.80%) Investment Banking
11 6 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.67%) Local Government
13 4 (0.54%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.40%) Military
15 2 (0.27%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.27%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.82%) Kafka
2 23 (3.08%) PySpark
3 15 (2.01%) Oracle Fusion
4 7 (0.94%) .NET
4 7 (0.94%) Middleware
4 7 (0.94%) REST
5 5 (0.67%) FHIR
5 5 (0.67%) JSON
6 4 (0.54%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (0.40%) LangChain
7 3 (0.40%) LangGraph
7 3 (0.40%) Spark Streaming
8 2 (0.27%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Avro
8 2 (0.27%) Bootstrap
8 2 (0.27%) Protocol Buffers
8 2 (0.27%) pytest
8 2 (0.27%) React
8 2 (0.27%) Spring Boot
8 2 (0.27%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 61 (8.17%) Cloud Native
2 38 (5.09%) Data Structures
3 24 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (3.21%) Reference Data
4 16 (2.14%) Data Centre
5 15 (2.01%) NHS
6 14 (1.87%) AI Agents
6 14 (1.87%) IoT
6 14 (1.87%) Management Information System
6 14 (1.87%) Taxonomies
7 13 (1.74%) Onboarding
8 12 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (1.47%) Mainframe
10 10 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
11 9 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (1.20%) Product Ownership
12 8 (1.07%) Digital Media
12 8 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
12 8 (1.07%) SCADA
13 7 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.07%) zOS
2 3 (0.40%) Windows
3 1 (0.13%) AIX
3 1 (0.13%) HPUX
3 1 (0.13%) Linux
3 1 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 372 (49.80%) Data Architecture
2 320 (42.84%) Data Modelling
3 222 (29.72%) Analytics
4 194 (25.97%) Data Governance
5 176 (23.56%) Migration
6 133 (17.80%) AI
7 131 (17.54%) ETL
8 128 (17.14%) Business Intelligence
9 124 (16.60%) Integration Patterns
10 105 (14.06%) Data Integration
11 101 (13.52%) Logical Data Model
12 96 (12.85%) Data Engineering
13 95 (12.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 94 (12.58%) Data Pipeline
15 85 (11.38%) Data Strategy
16 79 (10.58%) Stakeholder Management
17 77 (10.31%) Roadmaps
18 74 (9.91%) Agile
18 74 (9.91%) Data Migration
19 72 (9.64%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 113 (15.13%) SQL
2 57 (7.63%) Python
3 15 (2.01%) Java
4 7 (0.94%) Bicep
4 7 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 6 (0.80%) Scala
6 5 (0.67%) R
7 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.27%) Bash
8 2 (0.27%) COBOL
8 2 (0.27%) Cypher
8 2 (0.27%) Kotlin
8 2 (0.27%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.27%) SHACL
8 2 (0.27%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.13%) C++
9 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.13%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 226 (30.25%) Security Cleared
2 195 (26.10%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.75%) DV Cleared
4 20 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.01%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.61%) Degree
7 11 (1.47%) AWS Certification
8 7 (0.94%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.94%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
10 5 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.27%) VCAP
12 2 (0.27%) VCDX
13 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (17.14%) Data Quality
2 40 (5.35%) GDPR
3 13 (1.74%) Accessibility
3 13 (1.74%) QA
4 8 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (0.80%) HL7
6 5 (0.67%) IFRS
6 5 (0.67%) IFRS 17
6 5 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.67%) SNOMED CT
6 5 (0.67%) Solvency II
7 4 (0.54%) NIST
8 3 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.40%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.27%) NCSC
9 2 (0.27%) SLA
10 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.13%) GRC
10 1 (0.13%) GxP
System Software
1 4 (0.54%) Docker
1 4 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.27%) VMware NSX
2 2 (0.27%) vSphere
3 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 26 (3.48%) Terraform
2 11 (1.47%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.07%) Grafana
4 5 (0.67%) Ansible
5 4 (0.54%) Argo
6 3 (0.40%) Istio
6 3 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.27%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.13%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 154 (20.62%) Databricks
2 86 (11.51%) Microsoft
3 36 (4.82%) Oracle
4 22 (2.95%) Foundry
5 21 (2.81%) SAP
6 20 (2.68%) Google
6 20 (2.68%) Informatica
6 20 (2.68%) Palantir
6 20 (2.68%) Salesforce
7 12 (1.61%) Talend
8 7 (0.94%) Denodo
8 7 (0.94%) IFS
8 7 (0.94%) Sparx
9 6 (0.80%) OpenAI
10 5 (0.67%) Confluent
11 4 (0.54%) IBM
11 4 (0.54%) NVIDIA
11 4 (0.54%) VMware
12 3 (0.40%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.40%) Red Hat