Principal Architect Contracts

Principal Architect
UK

The median Principal Architect daily rate in the UK is £663, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 498 557 680
Rank change year-on-year +59 +123 +129
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Architect 22 25 38
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.075% 0.057% 0.064%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.081% 0.062% 0.067%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 23 26
10th Percentile £429 - £625
25th Percentile £463 £588 £644
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £663 £675 £800
Median % change year-on-year -1.85% -15.63% +23.08%
75th Percentile £739 £769 £814
90th Percentile £743 £1,200 £873
UK excluding London median daily rate £722 £700 £659
% change year-on-year +3.08% +6.18% +9.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £68.26 - -
Median hourly rate £73.31 - -
75th Percentile £78.36 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.31 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Principal Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Principal Architect in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Principal Architect in the UK

Principal Architect
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Principal Architect.

Daily rate trend for Principal Architect in the UK

Principal Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Architect over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Architect in the UK

Principal Architect
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Principal Architect.

Hourly rate trend for Principal Architect in the UK

Principal Architect
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +50 17 £688 +1.85% 87
Work from Home +47 12 £625 -50.00% 54
UK excluding London +69 10 £722 +3.08% 59
London +27 8 £600 -11.11% 41
South East - 6 £743 - 11
Wales - 2 £461 - 5
North of England +17 1 £700 - 23
North West +15 1 £700 - 16
East of England - 1 - - 6
Scotland - 1 £700 - 3

Principal Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Principal Architect contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Principal Architect in the job title.

1 11 (50.00%) Azure
1 11 (50.00%) AWS
2 10 (45.45%) Security Cleared
2 10 (45.45%) CI/CD
3 9 (40.91%) SC Cleared
3 9 (40.91%) Agile
4 8 (36.36%) Enterprise Architecture
4 8 (36.36%) ITIL
4 8 (36.36%) DevOps
4 8 (36.36%) Microservices
4 8 (36.36%) IT Strategy
5 7 (31.82%) Microsoft
5 7 (31.82%) TOGAF
5 7 (31.82%) Social Skills
6 5 (22.73%) Technology Strategy
6 5 (22.73%) Containerisation
6 5 (22.73%) DevSecOps
6 5 (22.73%) NCSC
6 5 (22.73%) Google
6 5 (22.73%) Migration
6 5 (22.73%) VMware
6 5 (22.73%) AWS Certification
6 5 (22.73%) Public Cloud
6 5 (22.73%) Cloud Native
6 5 (22.73%) User Experience
7 4 (18.18%) Zachman Framework
7 4 (18.18%) Prototyping
7 4 (18.18%) GCP
7 4 (18.18%) Continuous Delivery
7 4 (18.18%) Matrix Organization

Principal Architect Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 11 (50.00%) AWS
1 11 (50.00%) Azure
2 4 (18.18%) GCP
3 3 (13.64%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (9.09%) Entra ID
4 2 (9.09%) SaaS
5 1 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
5 1 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (4.55%) Amazon S3
5 1 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (4.55%) Power Platform
5 1 (4.55%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (9.09%) Software-Defined Networking
2 1 (4.55%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (9.09%) Data Lake
1 2 (9.09%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (9.09%) Metadata
1 2 (9.09%) NoSQL
2 1 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (4.55%) Big Data
2 1 (4.55%) Power BI
2 1 (4.55%) RDBMS
2 1 (4.55%) Relational Database
2 1 (4.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (4.55%) ER Studio
1 1 (4.55%) ERwin
General
1 7 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 4 (18.18%) Public Sector
3 3 (13.64%) Digital Health
4 2 (9.09%) Finance
4 2 (9.09%) Organisational Skills
4 2 (9.09%) Telecoms
5 1 (4.55%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (4.55%) Pharmaceutical
5 1 (4.55%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (9.09%) SailPoint
1 2 (9.09%) Spring
2 1 (4.55%) Hibernate
2 1 (4.55%) MACH
2 1 (4.55%) Struts
Miscellaneous
1 5 (22.73%) Cloud Native
1 5 (22.73%) Public Cloud
2 3 (13.64%) NHS
3 1 (4.55%) Cyber Defence
3 1 (4.55%) Data Fabric
3 1 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 1 (4.55%) Legacy Applications
3 1 (4.55%) Management Information System
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (45.45%) CI/CD
2 9 (40.91%) Agile
3 8 (36.36%) DevOps
3 8 (36.36%) Enterprise Architecture
3 8 (36.36%) IT Strategy
3 8 (36.36%) ITIL
3 8 (36.36%) Microservices
4 7 (31.82%) TOGAF
5 5 (22.73%) Containerisation
5 5 (22.73%) DevSecOps
5 5 (22.73%) Migration
5 5 (22.73%) Technology Strategy
5 5 (22.73%) User Experience
6 4 (18.18%) Continuous Delivery
6 4 (18.18%) Data Architecture
6 4 (18.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 4 (18.18%) Matrix Organization
6 4 (18.18%) Prototyping
6 4 (18.18%) Roadmaps
6 4 (18.18%) Zachman Framework
Programming Languages
1 2 (9.09%) Java
1 2 (9.09%) Python
2 1 (4.55%) SQL
Qualifications
1 10 (45.45%) Security Cleared
2 9 (40.91%) SC Cleared
3 5 (22.73%) AWS Certification
4 4 (18.18%) CCNP
4 4 (18.18%) Cisco Certification
4 4 (18.18%) MCSE
4 4 (18.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (13.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 3 (13.64%) CITP
5 3 (13.64%) Degree
6 2 (9.09%) Azure Certification
6 2 (9.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (9.09%) DV Cleared
6 2 (9.09%) Master's Degree
7 1 (4.55%) CESG Certified Professional
7 1 (4.55%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (22.73%) NCSC
2 4 (18.18%) NIST
3 1 (4.55%) Accessibility
3 1 (4.55%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (4.55%) Docker
1 1 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure
1 1 (4.55%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 1 (4.55%) Ansible
1 1 (4.55%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (31.82%) Microsoft
2 5 (22.73%) Google
2 5 (22.73%) VMware
3 2 (9.09%) BT
3 2 (9.09%) ServiceNow
4 1 (4.55%) Cisco
4 1 (4.55%) Databricks
4 1 (4.55%) Hitachi
4 1 (4.55%) Palo Alto
4 1 (4.55%) Pega
4 1 (4.55%) SAP