Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £630, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 228 241
Rank change year-on-year +4 +13 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 608 381 395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 1.15% 1.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.23% 1.26% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 241 233
10th Percentile £500 £510 £500
25th Percentile £539 £581 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £630 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -3.57% +2.90%
75th Percentile £775 £753 £775
90th Percentile £850 £800 £835
UK excluding London median daily rate £635 £673 £655
% change year-on-year -5.65% +2.75% -2.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 9
10th Percentile £60.00 £86.00 £81.86
25th Percentile £65.75 £91.25 £81.88
Median hourly rate £83.00 £100.00 £87.46
Median % change year-on-year -17.00% +14.34% +24.94%
75th Percentile - £102.75 -
90th Percentile £83.50 £104.40 £87.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.00 £100.00 £87.46
% change year-on-year -17.00% +14.34% +24.94%

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 49,375 30,298 36,046
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.39% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,671 19,217 23,307
10th Percentile £328 £283 £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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,467 1,516 2,023
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.72 £17.21 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.63 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.11 £45.00
% change year-on-year +69.26% -44.20% +20.00%

Security Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Security Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Security Architect job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Architect
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Security Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Security Architect job vacancies in the UK

Security Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Architect over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Architect in the UK

Security Architect
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Security Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Security Architect job vacancies in the UK

Security Architect
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 10 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 -14 522 £650 -3.70% 296
London -8 264 £675 - 145
UK excluding London -17 248 £635 -5.65% 160
Work from Home +17 201 £600 -11.11% 148
South East -16 114 £650 +8.33% 48
North of England -44 61 £650 -8.19% 39
North West -21 48 £680 -3.94% 26
Midlands -28 40 £625 -21.88% 14
West Midlands -31 39 £625 -21.88% 12
South West -58 22 £614 -5.58% 27
Yorkshire -37 10 £350 -45.10% 12
East of England -13 7 £625 +25.00% 11
Scotland -11 4 £700 - 9
East Midlands - 1 - - 2
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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

For the 6 months to 10 August 2026, Security 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 Security Architect in the job title.

1 305 (50.16%) Security Architecture
2 279 (45.89%) Security Cleared
3 201 (33.06%) Cybersecurity
4 186 (30.59%) SC Cleared
5 182 (29.93%) Azure
6 164 (26.97%) Threat Modelling
7 163 (26.81%) Cloud Security
8 150 (24.67%) AWS
9 126 (20.72%) NIST
10 124 (20.39%) CISSP
11 98 (16.12%) Zero Trust
12 97 (15.95%) Network Security
13 93 (15.30%) Risk Management
14 92 (15.13%) Identity Access Management
15 89 (14.64%) AI
16 87 (14.31%) DV Cleared
16 87 (14.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
17 84 (13.82%) Architectural Patterns
17 84 (13.82%) TOGAF
18 78 (12.83%) GCP
18 78 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 74 (12.17%) Stakeholder Management
20 71 (11.68%) Roadmaps
21 68 (11.18%) DevSecOps
22 66 (10.86%) SABSA
23 61 (10.03%) CISM
23 61 (10.03%) Microsoft
24 60 (9.87%) CI/CD
25 59 (9.70%) Enterprise Architecture
25 59 (9.70%) NCSC

Security 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 3 (0.49%) Confluence
2 2 (0.33%) SAS
2 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.16%) SAP EHS
2 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 182 (29.93%) Azure
2 150 (24.67%) AWS
3 78 (12.83%) GCP
4 36 (5.92%) Entra ID
5 23 (3.78%) Azure Sentinel
6 18 (2.96%) SaaS
7 10 (1.64%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.32%) Azure Key Vault
9 7 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (0.99%) IaaS
11 5 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
11 5 (0.82%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Purview
11 5 (0.82%) Vertex AI
12 4 (0.66%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.66%) AWS Control Tower
12 4 (0.66%) AWS KMS
12 4 (0.66%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (0.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 4 (0.66%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 97 (15.95%) Network Security
2 47 (7.73%) Firewall
3 14 (2.30%) VPN
4 12 (1.97%) WAN
5 9 (1.48%) SD-WAN
6 8 (1.32%) 4G
6 8 (1.32%) IPsec
7 7 (1.15%) LAN
7 7 (1.15%) VLAN
8 6 (0.99%) 5G
8 6 (0.99%) NGFW
8 6 (0.99%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.66%) BGP
9 4 (0.66%) Intranet
9 4 (0.66%) MPLS
9 4 (0.66%) OSPF
10 3 (0.49%) Internet
11 2 (0.33%) 3GPP
11 2 (0.33%) DNS
11 2 (0.33%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.99%) Data Lake
2 4 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (0.33%) Big Data
3 2 (0.33%) BigQuery
3 2 (0.33%) Metadata
3 2 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 7 (1.15%) Jenkins
2 5 (0.82%) JIRA
3 4 (0.66%) Snyk
4 3 (0.49%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.16%) GitLab
General
1 107 (17.60%) Social Skills
2 76 (12.50%) Public Sector
3 66 (10.86%) Finance
4 33 (5.43%) Banking
5 25 (4.11%) Influencing Skills
6 22 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.45%) Analytical Skills
8 18 (2.96%) Legal
9 14 (2.30%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 9 (1.48%) Police
12 8 (1.32%) Military
12 8 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (1.15%) Aerospace
14 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.82%) Retail
15 4 (0.66%) Law
15 4 (0.66%) Local Government
16 2 (0.33%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.63%) OAuth
2 12 (1.97%) OAuth2
2 12 (1.97%) OpenID
3 10 (1.64%) SAML
4 6 (0.99%) REST
4 6 (0.99%) SLSA
5 5 (0.82%) Azure Blueprints
5 5 (0.82%) LangChain
5 5 (0.82%) PyTorch
6 4 (0.66%) Jakarta EE
6 4 (0.66%) JSP
6 4 (0.66%) JWT
6 4 (0.66%) ModSecurity
7 3 (0.49%) .NET
7 3 (0.49%) HTML
7 3 (0.49%) LDAP
7 3 (0.49%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.33%) Hugging Face
8 2 (0.33%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.33%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 60 (9.87%) Security Posture
2 50 (8.22%) Cloud Native
3 36 (5.92%) Operational Technology
4 35 (5.76%) Management Information System
5 22 (3.62%) Onboarding
6 17 (2.80%) AI Agents
7 14 (2.30%) Cyber Threat
8 13 (2.14%) Enterprise Cloud
8 13 (2.14%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (1.81%) Data Centre
10 9 (1.48%) Cloud Security Posture
11 8 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.32%) Private Cloud
12 7 (1.15%) Public Cloud
12 7 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.99%) Data Fabric
13 6 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.82%) PKI
15 4 (0.66%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.48%) Linux
2 8 (1.32%) Windows
3 6 (0.99%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.66%) Alpine Linux
4 4 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.66%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.16%) Android
5 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 305 (50.16%) Security Architecture
2 201 (33.06%) Cybersecurity
3 164 (26.97%) Threat Modelling
4 163 (26.81%) Cloud Security
5 98 (16.12%) Zero Trust
6 93 (15.30%) Risk Management
7 92 (15.13%) Identity Access Management
8 89 (14.64%) AI
9 84 (13.82%) Architectural Patterns
9 84 (13.82%) TOGAF
10 78 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 74 (12.17%) Stakeholder Management
12 71 (11.68%) Roadmaps
13 68 (11.18%) DevSecOps
14 66 (10.86%) SABSA
15 60 (9.87%) CI/CD
16 59 (9.70%) Enterprise Architecture
17 54 (8.88%) Data Protection
18 51 (8.39%) DevOps
18 51 (8.39%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 15 (2.47%) Python
2 10 (1.64%) Bicep
2 10 (1.64%) Java
3 8 (1.32%) PowerShell
4 4 (0.66%) Groovy
4 4 (0.66%) Shell Script
5 3 (0.49%) Bash
5 3 (0.49%) JavaScript
6 2 (0.33%) SQL
7 1 (0.16%) R
Qualifications
1 279 (45.89%) Security Cleared
2 186 (30.59%) SC Cleared
3 124 (20.39%) CISSP
4 87 (14.31%) DV Cleared
5 61 (10.03%) CISM
6 49 (8.06%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (7.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 30 (4.93%) CCSP
9 21 (3.45%) AWS Certification
10 20 (3.29%) Degree
11 16 (2.63%) TOGAF Certification
12 15 (2.47%) CISA
13 13 (2.14%) Azure Certification
14 11 (1.81%) CEH
15 10 (1.64%) GIAC
16 9 (1.48%) SANS
17 7 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
17 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (1.15%) OSCP
18 6 (0.99%) ISSAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (20.72%) NIST
2 87 (14.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 59 (9.70%) NCSC
4 43 (7.07%) GDPR
5 22 (3.62%) GRC
6 21 (3.45%) NIST 800
7 20 (3.29%) PCI DSS
8 11 (1.81%) Government Security Classifications
9 10 (1.64%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 8 (1.32%) EU AI Act
10 8 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (1.32%) JSP 440
11 7 (1.15%) COBIT
12 6 (0.99%) ISO 19650
12 6 (0.99%) QA
12 6 (0.99%) RMADS
13 5 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.82%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 20 (3.29%) Active Directory
2 13 (2.14%) Docker
3 6 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.49%) vSphere
5 2 (0.33%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.16%) KVM
6 1 (0.16%) Varnish
6 1 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 31 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.11%) Terraform
3 9 (1.48%) Ansible
4 4 (0.66%) QRadar
5 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.33%) CASB
6 2 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
6 2 (0.33%) Istio
7 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.16%) Suricata
Vendors
1 61 (10.03%) Microsoft
2 20 (3.29%) Google
3 17 (2.80%) Palo Alto
4 16 (2.63%) Splunk
5 15 (2.47%) Okta
6 13 (2.14%) Cisco
7 12 (1.97%) Fortinet
7 12 (1.97%) SAP
8 10 (1.64%) Salesforce
8 10 (1.64%) Tenable
9 8 (1.32%) CrowdStrike
9 8 (1.32%) Qualys
9 8 (1.32%) Zscaler
10 7 (1.15%) VMware
11 5 (0.82%) CheckPoint
11 5 (0.82%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.66%) CyberArk
12 4 (0.66%) IBM
12 4 (0.66%) Juniper
12 4 (0.66%) Rapid7