Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £636, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 August 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 228 240 238
Rank change year-on-year +12 -2 +12
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 613 372 402
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.15% 1.13% 1.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.24% 1.24% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 412 234 238
10th Percentile £500 £511 £500
25th Percentile £545 £577 £606
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £636 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -5.74% -3.57% +2.34%
75th Percentile £775 £752 £775
90th Percentile £849 £800 £829
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £673 £650
% change year-on-year -3.42% +3.54% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 11
10th Percentile £69.20 £86.00 -
25th Percentile - £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 £83.60 £104.40 £87.53
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 49,377 30,074 36,691
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.44% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,758 19,109 23,758
10th Percentile £331 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
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 3,409 1,479 2,147
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.69 £14.13
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £42.91
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.39% +0.96%
75th Percentile £67.84 £54.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.35 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +11.69%

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 1 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 1 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 -12 527 £650 -3.70% 208
London +3 260 £669 -0.93% 107
UK excluding London -8 257 £650 -3.42% 103
Work from Home +8 201 £600 -12.73% 91
South East -6 113 £650 +8.33% 48
North of England -50 63 £653 -6.71% 27
North West -29 49 £677 -3.36% 14
Midlands -25 47 £625 -21.88% 5
West Midlands -36 46 £625 -21.88% 4
South West -49 22 £614 -5.58% 8
Yorkshire -33 11 £650 +18.18% 13
East of England -13 7 £625 +25.00% 6
Scotland -12 5 £700 - 2
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -
East Midlands - 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 299 (48.78%) Security Architecture
2 282 (46.00%) Security Cleared
3 203 (33.12%) Cybersecurity
4 189 (30.83%) SC Cleared
5 182 (29.69%) Azure
6 167 (27.24%) Threat Modelling
7 157 (25.61%) Cloud Security
8 150 (24.47%) AWS
9 126 (20.55%) NIST
10 125 (20.39%) CISSP
11 100 (16.31%) Zero Trust
12 98 (15.99%) Network Security
13 90 (14.68%) Risk Management
14 88 (14.36%) Identity Access Management
14 88 (14.36%) TOGAF
15 87 (14.19%) AI
15 87 (14.19%) Architectural Patterns
16 86 (14.03%) DV Cleared
17 84 (13.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
18 79 (12.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 74 (12.07%) GCP
20 72 (11.75%) Roadmaps
21 71 (11.58%) SABSA
22 70 (11.42%) Stakeholder Management
23 67 (10.93%) DevSecOps
24 63 (10.28%) Microsoft
25 62 (10.11%) CI/CD
25 62 (10.11%) CISM
26 59 (9.62%) NCSC
27 58 (9.46%) Enterprise Architecture

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 7 (1.14%) Confluence
2 4 (0.65%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.49%) nginx
4 2 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 4 (0.65%) 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 (29.69%) Azure
2 150 (24.47%) AWS
3 74 (12.07%) GCP
4 38 (6.20%) Entra ID
5 23 (3.75%) Azure Sentinel
6 17 (2.77%) SaaS
7 10 (1.63%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.31%) Azure Key Vault
9 6 (0.98%) GitHub
9 6 (0.98%) IaaS
10 5 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (0.82%) Anthropic Claude
10 5 (0.82%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 5 (0.82%) Dynamics 365
10 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Purview
10 5 (0.82%) Vertex AI
11 4 (0.65%) AWS Control Tower
11 4 (0.65%) AWS KMS
11 4 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (0.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 98 (15.99%) Network Security
2 48 (7.83%) Firewall
3 15 (2.45%) VPN
4 12 (1.96%) WAN
5 9 (1.47%) SD-WAN
6 8 (1.31%) 4G
6 8 (1.31%) IPsec
7 7 (1.14%) LAN
7 7 (1.14%) VLAN
8 6 (0.98%) 5G
8 6 (0.98%) NGFW
8 6 (0.98%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.65%) BGP
9 4 (0.65%) Intranet
9 4 (0.65%) MPLS
9 4 (0.65%) OSPF
10 3 (0.49%) Cisco ASA
10 3 (0.49%) Internet
11 2 (0.33%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.33%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.31%) Data Lake
2 5 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.33%) Big Data
4 2 (0.33%) BigQuery
4 2 (0.33%) Metadata
5 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.63%) Jenkins
2 9 (1.47%) JIRA
3 4 (0.65%) Snyk
4 3 (0.49%) Claude Code
4 3 (0.49%) GitLab
5 1 (0.16%) Artifactory
General
1 110 (17.94%) Social Skills
2 77 (12.56%) Public Sector
3 70 (11.42%) Finance
4 34 (5.55%) Banking
5 25 (4.08%) Influencing Skills
6 24 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.43%) Analytical Skills
8 16 (2.61%) Legal
9 14 (2.28%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.31%) Aerospace
11 8 (1.31%) Military
11 8 (1.31%) Police
11 8 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.82%) Retail
13 4 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.65%) Law
13 4 (0.65%) Local Government
14 2 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (2.77%) OAuth
2 13 (2.12%) OAuth2
3 12 (1.96%) OpenID
4 10 (1.63%) SAML
5 6 (0.98%) REST
5 6 (0.98%) SLSA
6 5 (0.82%) Azure Blueprints
6 5 (0.82%) JWT
6 5 (0.82%) LangChain
6 5 (0.82%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.82%) SailPoint
7 4 (0.65%) Jakarta EE
7 4 (0.65%) JSP
7 4 (0.65%) ModSecurity
8 3 (0.49%) .NET
8 3 (0.49%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.49%) Flask
8 3 (0.49%) HTML
8 3 (0.49%) LDAP
8 3 (0.49%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 57 (9.30%) Security Posture
2 49 (7.99%) Cloud Native
3 36 (5.87%) Operational Technology
4 35 (5.71%) Management Information System
5 20 (3.26%) Onboarding
6 15 (2.45%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.12%) Cyber Threat
8 12 (1.96%) Enterprise Cloud
9 11 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
10 10 (1.63%) Data Centre
11 9 (1.47%) Cloud Security Posture
11 9 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.14%) Private Cloud
12 7 (1.14%) Public Cloud
13 6 (0.98%) Data Fabric
13 6 (0.98%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 6 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.82%) PKI
15 4 (0.65%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.96%) Linux
2 8 (1.31%) Windows
3 7 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (0.98%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.65%) Alpine Linux
5 4 (0.65%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.16%) Android
6 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (48.78%) Security Architecture
2 203 (33.12%) Cybersecurity
3 167 (27.24%) Threat Modelling
4 157 (25.61%) Cloud Security
5 100 (16.31%) Zero Trust
6 90 (14.68%) Risk Management
7 88 (14.36%) Identity Access Management
7 88 (14.36%) TOGAF
8 87 (14.19%) AI
8 87 (14.19%) Architectural Patterns
9 79 (12.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (11.75%) Roadmaps
11 71 (11.58%) SABSA
12 70 (11.42%) Stakeholder Management
13 67 (10.93%) DevSecOps
14 62 (10.11%) CI/CD
15 58 (9.46%) Enterprise Architecture
16 54 (8.81%) Data Protection
17 51 (8.32%) Information Security
17 51 (8.32%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 18 (2.94%) Python
2 11 (1.79%) Java
3 10 (1.63%) Bicep
4 8 (1.31%) PowerShell
5 6 (0.98%) JavaScript
6 4 (0.65%) SQL
7 3 (0.49%) Bash
7 3 (0.49%) Groovy
7 3 (0.49%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.16%) R
Qualifications
1 282 (46.00%) Security Cleared
2 189 (30.83%) SC Cleared
3 125 (20.39%) CISSP
4 86 (14.03%) DV Cleared
5 62 (10.11%) CISM
6 50 (8.16%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (7.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 31 (5.06%) CCSP
9 26 (4.24%) Degree
10 22 (3.59%) AWS Certification
11 18 (2.94%) TOGAF Certification
12 15 (2.45%) CISA
13 13 (2.12%) CEH
14 12 (1.96%) Azure Certification
15 10 (1.63%) GIAC
16 9 (1.47%) SANS
17 7 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
17 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (1.14%) OSCP
18 6 (0.98%) ISSAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (20.55%) NIST
2 84 (13.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 59 (9.62%) NCSC
4 43 (7.01%) GDPR
5 21 (3.43%) GRC
5 21 (3.43%) NIST 800
6 20 (3.26%) PCI DSS
7 10 (1.63%) Government Security Classifications
8 9 (1.47%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 8 (1.31%) EU AI Act
9 8 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (1.31%) JSP 440
10 7 (1.14%) COBIT
10 7 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.98%) ISO 19650
11 6 (0.98%) QA
11 6 (0.98%) RMADS
12 5 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.82%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 23 (3.75%) Active Directory
2 12 (1.96%) Docker
3 6 (0.98%) 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 30 (4.89%) Kubernetes
2 27 (4.40%) Terraform
3 8 (1.31%) Ansible
4 4 (0.65%) 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
6 2 (0.33%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.16%) Suricata
Vendors
1 63 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 20 (3.26%) Google
3 18 (2.94%) Palo Alto
4 16 (2.61%) Splunk
5 15 (2.45%) Okta
6 14 (2.28%) Cisco
6 14 (2.28%) Fortinet
7 12 (1.96%) SAP
8 10 (1.63%) Salesforce
8 10 (1.63%) Tenable
9 9 (1.47%) Zscaler
10 8 (1.31%) CheckPoint
10 8 (1.31%) CrowdStrike
10 8 (1.31%) Qualys
11 7 (1.14%) Databricks
12 6 (0.98%) BiZZdesign
12 6 (0.98%) VMware
13 5 (0.82%) ServiceNow
14 4 (0.65%) CyberArk
14 4 (0.65%) Rapid7