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 15 March 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 272 228 233
Rank change year-on-year -44 +5 +64
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 429 333 453
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 1.12% 1.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.08% 1.21% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 256 274
10th Percentile £463 £550 £519
25th Percentile £513 £600 £606
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £753 £775
90th Percentile £788 £838 £837
UK excluding London median daily rate £606 £650 £685
% change year-on-year -6.73% -5.11% +0.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 12
10th Percentile £79.75 - -
25th Percentile £82.63 £68.26 £81.88
Median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £85.38
Median % change year-on-year +15.95% -14.14% +21.98%
75th Percentile £89.38 £78.36 £87.53
90th Percentile £94.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £85.38
% change year-on-year +15.95% -14.14% +21.98%

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 39,729 27,628 41,284
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.88% 92.94% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,809 17,866 27,104
10th Percentile £313 £297 £270
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.37%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,476 879 2,491
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.32 £12.92
25th Percentile £19.08 £21.13 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.71 £33.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.21% +1.54% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £75.79 £77.50 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -20.36%

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 15 March 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 15 March 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 -26 366 £630 -6.67% 151
UK excluding London -2 206 £606 -6.73% 130
London -24 164 £630 -6.67% 34
Work from Home -22 120 £600 -11.11% 93
South East -20 72 £650 +4.00% 36
North of England -12 70 £606 -7.62% 35
North West -6 35 £704 +6.24% 20
Midlands -37 35 £675 -3.57% 15
Yorkshire -29 33 £537 -19.25% 9
West Midlands -47 32 £675 -3.57% 11
Scotland +7 12 £700 +16.67% 4
South West -53 10 £588 -9.62% 20
East of England -21 6 £520 - 15
Wales - 6 - - 5
East Midlands - 3 £438 - 4
North East -11 2 £545 -12.80% 6
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 15 March 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.

1 182 (42.42%) Security Architecture
2 181 (42.19%) Security Cleared
3 147 (34.27%) Cybersecurity
4 122 (28.44%) SC Cleared
5 121 (28.21%) Azure
6 107 (24.94%) AWS
7 101 (23.54%) Threat Modelling
8 96 (22.38%) CISSP
8 96 (22.38%) Cloud Security
9 87 (20.28%) NIST
10 82 (19.11%) Network Security
11 78 (18.18%) Zero Trust
12 74 (17.25%) TOGAF
13 66 (15.38%) Risk Management
13 66 (15.38%) SABSA
14 63 (14.69%) CISM
15 62 (14.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
16 56 (13.05%) Identity Access Management
17 54 (12.59%) Firewall
18 53 (12.35%) DevSecOps
18 53 (12.35%) Microsoft
19 52 (12.12%) GCP
20 51 (11.89%) SIEM
20 51 (11.89%) Vulnerability Management
21 48 (11.19%) Architectural Patterns
21 48 (11.19%) Incident Response
22 47 (10.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 44 (10.26%) DV Cleared
24 37 (8.62%) CI/CD
24 37 (8.62%) 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 19 (4.43%) Confluence
2 5 (1.17%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.93%) nginx
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.23%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.23%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.47%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.23%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.23%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.23%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.23%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 121 (28.21%) Azure
2 107 (24.94%) AWS
3 52 (12.12%) GCP
4 29 (6.76%) Entra ID
5 14 (3.26%) SaaS
6 11 (2.56%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 11 (2.56%) Azure Sentinel
6 11 (2.56%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
7 8 (1.86%) AWS KMS
7 8 (1.86%) GitHub
8 7 (1.63%) Microsoft Purview
9 6 (1.40%) IaaS
9 6 (1.40%) PaaS
9 6 (1.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 5 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (1.17%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (0.70%) Akamai
12 3 (0.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 82 (19.11%) Network Security
2 54 (12.59%) Firewall
3 18 (4.20%) VPN
4 15 (3.50%) WAN
5 12 (2.80%) LAN
6 11 (2.56%) SD-WAN
7 7 (1.63%) IPsec
8 6 (1.40%) BGP
8 6 (1.40%) OSPF
9 5 (1.17%) DNS
10 4 (0.93%) DHCP
10 4 (0.93%) MQTT
10 4 (0.93%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.93%) SSL
11 3 (0.70%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.70%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (0.70%) MPLS
11 3 (0.70%) NGFW
11 3 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.47%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (0.70%) BigQuery
2 3 (0.70%) Data Lake
2 3 (0.70%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (0.47%) Metadata
4 1 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.23%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 16 (3.73%) JIRA
2 5 (1.17%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.93%) Snyk
4 3 (0.70%) GitLab
5 1 (0.23%) AppScan
5 1 (0.23%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.23%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.23%) Git
5 1 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 86 (20.05%) Social Skills
2 62 (14.45%) Finance
2 62 (14.45%) Public Sector
3 21 (4.90%) Banking
4 17 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
5 16 (3.73%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (2.33%) Aerospace
6 10 (2.33%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (2.10%) Legal
8 7 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.17%) Financial Institution
10 4 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.70%) Law
12 2 (0.47%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.47%) Military
12 2 (0.47%) Retail
12 2 (0.47%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.23%) Aviation
13 1 (0.23%) Digital Health
13 1 (0.23%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.56%) OAuth
1 11 (2.56%) SAML
2 10 (2.33%) OpenID
3 8 (1.86%) OAuth2
4 6 (1.40%) SailPoint
5 5 (1.17%) Middleware
6 4 (0.93%) ADO
6 4 (0.93%) JWT
6 4 (0.93%) REST
7 3 (0.70%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.70%) Flask
7 3 (0.70%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.47%) .NET
8 2 (0.47%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.47%) LDAP
9 1 (0.23%) J2EE
9 1 (0.23%) JAAS
9 1 (0.23%) Kafka
9 1 (0.23%) SAP PI
9 1 (0.23%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 33 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 32 (7.46%) Security Posture
3 21 (4.90%) Management Information System
4 19 (4.43%) Onboarding
4 19 (4.43%) Operational Technology
5 14 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.56%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.10%) Private Cloud
8 8 (1.86%) PKI
9 7 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.63%) Taxonomies
10 6 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.40%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (1.17%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
12 4 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (0.93%) Public Cloud
13 3 (0.70%) Cyber Defence
13 3 (0.70%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.03%) Windows
2 12 (2.80%) Linux
3 4 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.70%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.47%) Android
5 2 (0.47%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.23%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.23%) Unix
6 1 (0.23%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.23%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.23%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 182 (42.42%) Security Architecture
2 147 (34.27%) Cybersecurity
3 101 (23.54%) Threat Modelling
4 96 (22.38%) Cloud Security
5 78 (18.18%) Zero Trust
6 74 (17.25%) TOGAF
7 66 (15.38%) Risk Management
7 66 (15.38%) SABSA
8 56 (13.05%) Identity Access Management
9 53 (12.35%) DevSecOps
10 51 (11.89%) SIEM
10 51 (11.89%) Vulnerability Management
11 48 (11.19%) Architectural Patterns
11 48 (11.19%) Incident Response
12 47 (10.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 37 (8.62%) CI/CD
13 37 (8.62%) Network Segmentation
14 35 (8.16%) Application Security
14 35 (8.16%) Information Security
15 33 (7.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.33%) Python
2 8 (1.86%) Java
3 5 (1.17%) Bicep
4 4 (0.93%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.93%) SQL
5 3 (0.70%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.47%) C
6 2 (0.47%) Kotlin
6 2 (0.47%) PL/SQL
6 2 (0.47%) Swift
7 1 (0.23%) Bash
7 1 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.23%) Lisp
7 1 (0.23%) ProC
7 1 (0.23%) R
7 1 (0.23%) RPG
7 1 (0.23%) VB
7 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 181 (42.19%) Security Cleared
2 122 (28.44%) SC Cleared
3 96 (22.38%) CISSP
4 63 (14.69%) CISM
5 44 (10.26%) DV Cleared
6 35 (8.16%) Cisco Certification
7 31 (7.23%) Degree
8 26 (6.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (3.96%) CCSP
10 16 (3.73%) AWS Certification
10 16 (3.73%) TOGAF Certification
11 10 (2.33%) GIAC
12 8 (1.86%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (1.86%) CCNP
12 8 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.86%) Master's Degree
13 7 (1.63%) CCIE
14 6 (1.40%) CEH
15 5 (1.17%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (20.28%) NIST
2 62 (14.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (8.62%) NCSC
4 34 (7.93%) GDPR
5 21 (4.90%) PCI DSS
6 9 (2.10%) NIST 800
7 8 (1.86%) EU AI Act
8 7 (1.63%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.63%) JSP 440
9 6 (1.40%) GRC
9 6 (1.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (1.17%) COBIT
11 4 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (0.93%) RMADS
12 3 (0.70%) Def Stans
12 3 (0.70%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.70%) PSD2
12 3 (0.70%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.47%) QA
System Software
1 17 (3.96%) Active Directory
2 4 (0.93%) Docker
3 2 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.47%) vSphere
4 1 (0.23%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.23%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.23%) Varnish
4 1 (0.23%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 24 (5.59%) Terraform
2 18 (4.20%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.63%) Ansible
3 7 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.70%) SCCM
5 2 (0.47%) Network Intrusion Detection System
6 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.23%) Kibana
6 1 (0.23%) logstash
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.23%) Nessus
6 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.23%) SELinux
Vendors
1 53 (12.35%) Microsoft
2 19 (4.43%) BiZZdesign
2 19 (4.43%) CyberArk
2 19 (4.43%) Splunk
3 15 (3.50%) Cisco
4 11 (2.56%) Centrify
4 11 (2.56%) Zscaler
5 10 (2.33%) CheckPoint
5 10 (2.33%) Fortinet
6 9 (2.10%) Palo Alto
7 8 (1.86%) Okta
7 8 (1.86%) Tenable
8 7 (1.63%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.63%) Virgin Media
9 6 (1.40%) Cribl.io
9 6 (1.40%) F5
9 6 (1.40%) Google
9 6 (1.40%) Sparx
10 5 (1.17%) VMware
11 4 (0.93%) Red Hat