Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 February 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 266 251 235
Rank change year-on-year -15 -16 +72
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 398 331 446
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 1.08% 1.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.04% 1.16% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 261 248 273
10th Percentile £463 £550 £512
25th Percentile £520 £600 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £767 £775
90th Percentile £788 £838 £858
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £650 £700
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% +2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 13
10th Percentile £79.38 - £78.88
25th Percentile £82.19 £68.26 £81.88
Median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +15.95% -12.48% +19.66%
75th Percentile £91.56 £78.36 £87.53
90th Percentile £94.38 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £83.77
% change year-on-year +15.95% -12.48% +19.66%

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 38,124 28,451 41,052
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.79% 92.87% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,974 17,854 27,035
10th Percentile £309 £290 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,315 836 2,340
10th Percentile £14.64 £16.38 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.49 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.50 £34.31 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.35% -1.99% -12.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -3.08% -7.14% -6.67%

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 27 February 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 17 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 27 February 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 -13 339 £630 -6.67% 86
UK excluding London -6 185 £600 -7.69% 57
London -27 158 £645 -4.44% 42
Work from Home -30 104 £600 -11.11% 36
South East -12 59 £650 +4.00% 27
North of England -23 58 £600 -10.28% 15
Midlands -31 37 £650 -7.14% 10
West Midlands -30 33 £675 -3.57% 8
Yorkshire -39 32 £525 -21.05% 1
North West -15 24 £700 +4.71% 14
Scotland +10 11 £700 +16.67%
South West -37 11 £588 -9.62% 5
Wales - 8 £738 -
East of England -25 6 £520 -
East Midlands - 4 £438 - 2
North East - 2 £545 -
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 -

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

For the 6 months to 27 February 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.

1 172 (43.22%) Security Architecture
2 168 (42.21%) Security Cleared
3 141 (35.43%) Cybersecurity
4 118 (29.65%) SC Cleared
5 111 (27.89%) Azure
6 100 (25.13%) AWS
7 95 (23.87%) CISSP
8 93 (23.37%) Threat Modelling
9 88 (22.11%) Cloud Security
10 84 (21.11%) NIST
11 77 (19.35%) Network Security
11 77 (19.35%) TOGAF
12 75 (18.84%) Zero Trust
13 64 (16.08%) Risk Management
14 62 (15.58%) SABSA
15 61 (15.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
16 58 (14.57%) Firewall
17 57 (14.32%) Identity Access Management
18 56 (14.07%) CISM
19 51 (12.81%) Microsoft
20 50 (12.56%) SIEM
20 50 (12.56%) Vulnerability Management
21 48 (12.06%) Incident Response
22 46 (11.56%) DevSecOps
23 44 (11.06%) GCP
24 43 (10.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
25 39 (9.80%) Architectural Patterns
26 38 (9.55%) DV Cleared
27 36 (9.05%) CI/CD
28 35 (8.79%) Network Segmentation

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 19 (4.77%) Confluence
2 5 (1.26%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.01%) nginx
4 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.25%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.25%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.50%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.25%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.25%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.25%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.25%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 111 (27.89%) Azure
2 100 (25.13%) AWS
3 44 (11.06%) GCP
4 26 (6.53%) Entra ID
5 12 (3.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 12 (3.02%) SaaS
6 11 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
7 10 (2.51%) GitHub
8 9 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (2.26%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (2.01%) AWS KMS
9 8 (2.01%) Microsoft Purview
10 6 (1.51%) PaaS
10 6 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (1.26%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.01%) Akamai
12 4 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.01%) IaaS
13 3 (0.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 77 (19.35%) Network Security
2 58 (14.57%) Firewall
3 20 (5.03%) VPN
4 15 (3.77%) WAN
5 12 (3.02%) LAN
6 11 (2.76%) SD-WAN
7 8 (2.01%) NGFW
8 7 (1.76%) DNS
8 7 (1.76%) IPsec
9 6 (1.51%) BGP
9 6 (1.51%) OSPF
10 4 (1.01%) DHCP
10 4 (1.01%) MQTT
10 4 (1.01%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (1.01%) SSL
11 3 (0.75%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.75%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (0.75%) MPLS
11 3 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.50%) S/MIME
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.75%) BigQuery
1 3 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (0.50%) Data Lake
3 1 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (0.25%) Metadata
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 16 (4.02%) JIRA
2 6 (1.51%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.75%) GitLab
3 3 (0.75%) Snyk
4 1 (0.25%) AppScan
4 1 (0.25%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.25%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.25%) Git
4 1 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 78 (19.60%) Social Skills
2 64 (16.08%) Public Sector
3 54 (13.57%) Finance
4 18 (4.52%) Banking
5 15 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.52%) Presentation Skills
7 10 (2.51%) Legal
8 8 (2.01%) Aerospace
8 8 (2.01%) Analytical Skills
9 7 (1.76%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.75%) Law
13 2 (0.50%) Military
13 2 (0.50%) Retail
13 2 (0.50%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.25%) Aviation
14 1 (0.25%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.25%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.25%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.76%) SAML
2 10 (2.51%) OAuth
3 9 (2.26%) OpenID
4 7 (1.76%) OAuth2
5 6 (1.51%) SailPoint
6 5 (1.26%) Middleware
7 4 (1.01%) ADO
7 4 (1.01%) REST
8 3 (0.75%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.75%) Flask
8 3 (0.75%) JWT
8 3 (0.75%) ModSecurity
9 2 (0.50%) .NET
9 2 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.50%) Kafka
9 2 (0.50%) LDAP
10 1 (0.25%) J2EE
10 1 (0.25%) JSP
10 1 (0.25%) JSSE
10 1 (0.25%) SAP PI
Miscellaneous
1 27 (6.78%) Cloud Native
2 26 (6.53%) Security Posture
3 21 (5.28%) Operational Technology
4 19 (4.77%) Management Information System
5 17 (4.27%) Onboarding
6 13 (3.27%) Product Ownership
7 12 (3.02%) Data Centre
8 10 (2.51%) PKI
9 9 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
10 8 (2.01%) Private Cloud
11 7 (1.76%) Taxonomies
12 6 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.26%) SCADA
13 5 (1.26%) Security Operations Centre
14 4 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (1.01%) NHS
14 4 (1.01%) Public Cloud
15 3 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
15 3 (0.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.27%) Windows
2 11 (2.76%) Linux
3 4 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.50%) Android
4 2 (0.50%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.50%) Unix
4 2 (0.50%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.25%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.25%) Windows 7
5 1 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (43.22%) Security Architecture
2 141 (35.43%) Cybersecurity
3 93 (23.37%) Threat Modelling
4 88 (22.11%) Cloud Security
5 77 (19.35%) TOGAF
6 75 (18.84%) Zero Trust
7 64 (16.08%) Risk Management
8 62 (15.58%) SABSA
9 57 (14.32%) Identity Access Management
10 50 (12.56%) SIEM
10 50 (12.56%) Vulnerability Management
11 48 (12.06%) Incident Response
12 46 (11.56%) DevSecOps
13 43 (10.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 39 (9.80%) Architectural Patterns
15 36 (9.05%) CI/CD
16 35 (8.79%) Network Segmentation
17 33 (8.29%) Application Security
17 33 (8.29%) Information Security
18 31 (7.79%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.51%) Python
2 8 (2.01%) Java
3 4 (1.01%) JavaScript
4 3 (0.75%) Bicep
4 3 (0.75%) PowerShell
4 3 (0.75%) SQL
5 2 (0.50%) C
5 2 (0.50%) Kotlin
5 2 (0.50%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.50%) Swift
6 1 (0.25%) Bash
6 1 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.25%) Lisp
6 1 (0.25%) ProC
6 1 (0.25%) R
6 1 (0.25%) RPG
6 1 (0.25%) VB
6 1 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 168 (42.21%) Security Cleared
2 118 (29.65%) SC Cleared
3 95 (23.87%) CISSP
4 56 (14.07%) CISM
5 38 (9.55%) DV Cleared
6 33 (8.29%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (7.29%) Degree
8 22 (5.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 18 (4.52%) AWS Certification
10 17 (4.27%) TOGAF Certification
11 15 (3.77%) CCSP
12 10 (2.51%) CCNP
13 9 (2.26%) CCIE
14 8 (2.01%) Azure Certification
14 8 (2.01%) GIAC
15 7 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
15 7 (1.76%) Master's Degree
16 6 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
17 5 (1.26%) PhD
17 5 (1.26%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (21.11%) NIST
2 61 (15.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (7.79%) NCSC
4 27 (6.78%) GDPR
5 19 (4.77%) PCI DSS
6 8 (2.01%) GRC
6 8 (2.01%) JSP 440
6 8 (2.01%) NIST 800
7 7 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials
7 7 (1.76%) EU AI Act
8 6 (1.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 4 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.75%) COBIT
10 3 (0.75%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.75%) PSD2
10 3 (0.75%) RMADS
10 3 (0.75%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.50%) QA
System Software
1 14 (3.52%) Active Directory
2 4 (1.01%) Docker
3 1 (0.25%) BitLocker
3 1 (0.25%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.25%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (6.28%) Terraform
2 18 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.01%) Ansible
4 7 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.75%) FortiGate
5 3 (0.75%) SCCM
6 2 (0.50%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.25%) Kibana
7 1 (0.25%) logstash
7 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.25%) Nessus
7 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.25%) SELinux
Vendors
1 51 (12.81%) Microsoft
2 21 (5.28%) CyberArk
2 21 (5.28%) Splunk
3 19 (4.77%) BiZZdesign
4 15 (3.77%) Cisco
5 12 (3.02%) CheckPoint
6 11 (2.76%) Centrify
6 11 (2.76%) Palo Alto
7 10 (2.51%) Fortinet
7 10 (2.51%) Zscaler
8 7 (1.76%) F5
8 7 (1.76%) Google
8 7 (1.76%) Okta
8 7 (1.76%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.76%) Tenable
8 7 (1.76%) Virgin Media
9 6 (1.51%) Cribl.io
9 6 (1.51%) Sparx
10 4 (1.01%) Darktrace
10 4 (1.01%) Thycotic