Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £638, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 July 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 217 227
Rank change year-on-year -9 +10 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 588 389 448
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.20% 1.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.21% 1.30% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 393 251 260
10th Percentile £491 £513 £500
25th Percentile £545 £588 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £638 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -3.57% +0.90%
75th Percentile £750 £764 £775
90th Percentile £844 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £671 £660
% change year-on-year -3.13% +1.67% -2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 19
10th Percentile - £86.00 £81.86
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 £83.25 £102.75 £87.50
90th Percentile £83.70 £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 48,733 29,823 39,253
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.69% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,478 18,993 25,331
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,268 1,412 2,586
10th Percentile £15.92 £13.75 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £17.50
Median hourly rate £44.50 £25.31 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.82% -36.73% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.02 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.63% +5.15%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 -20 503 £650 -3.70% 102
UK excluding London -15 247 £650 -3.13% 68
London -28 244 £656 -2.78% 46
Work from Home -4 204 £600 -14.29% 54
South East -13 103 £653 +8.83% 31
North of England -53 60 £664 -5.14% 13
Midlands -27 51 £613 -19.67% 6
West Midlands -31 49 £625 -18.03% 5
North West -26 46 £700 - 10
South West -56 20 £614 -5.58% 8
Yorkshire -35 12 £475 -13.64% 3
East of England -17 7 £625 +25.00% 3
Scotland -11 5 £700 -15.15% 1
East Midlands - 2 £438 - 1
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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

For the 6 months to 17 July 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.

1 284 (48.30%) Security Architecture
2 271 (46.09%) Security Cleared
3 209 (35.54%) Cybersecurity
4 181 (30.78%) SC Cleared
5 171 (29.08%) Azure
6 160 (27.21%) Threat Modelling
7 149 (25.34%) Cloud Security
8 142 (24.15%) AWS
9 121 (20.58%) CISSP
10 118 (20.07%) NIST
11 94 (15.99%) Network Security
12 91 (15.48%) Zero Trust
13 84 (14.29%) Architectural Patterns
14 83 (14.12%) Risk Management
15 81 (13.78%) TOGAF
16 80 (13.61%) DV Cleared
17 79 (13.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
18 77 (13.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 75 (12.76%) Identity Access Management
20 74 (12.59%) AI
21 69 (11.73%) GCP
21 69 (11.73%) SABSA
22 68 (11.56%) Stakeholder Management
23 65 (11.05%) DevSecOps
23 65 (11.05%) Roadmaps
24 59 (10.03%) CISM
25 58 (9.86%) CI/CD
26 57 (9.69%) Microsoft
27 56 (9.52%) NCSC
28 55 (9.35%) Application Security

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 (1.19%) Confluence
2 4 (0.68%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.51%) nginx
4 2 (0.34%) SAS
5 1 (0.17%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 4 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.17%) SAP EHS
2 1 (0.17%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.17%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.17%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 171 (29.08%) Azure
2 142 (24.15%) AWS
3 69 (11.73%) GCP
4 36 (6.12%) Entra ID
5 22 (3.74%) Azure Sentinel
6 15 (2.55%) SaaS
7 11 (1.87%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (1.19%) Azure Key Vault
9 6 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (1.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 6 (1.02%) GitHub
9 6 (1.02%) IaaS
10 5 (0.85%) AWS Control Tower
10 5 (0.85%) AWS KMS
10 5 (0.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 4 (0.68%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (0.68%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (0.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 4 (0.68%) Serverless
11 4 (0.68%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 94 (15.99%) Network Security
2 46 (7.82%) Firewall
3 15 (2.55%) VPN
4 10 (1.70%) IPsec
4 10 (1.70%) SD-WAN
5 9 (1.53%) WAN
6 7 (1.19%) NGFW
6 7 (1.19%) VLAN
7 6 (1.02%) MPLS
8 5 (0.85%) 4G
8 5 (0.85%) BGP
8 5 (0.85%) OSPF
9 4 (0.68%) 5G
9 4 (0.68%) Intranet
9 4 (0.68%) LAN
9 4 (0.68%) Radio Access Network
10 3 (0.51%) Cisco ASA
10 3 (0.51%) DNS
10 3 (0.51%) Internet
10 3 (0.51%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.19%) Data Lake
2 5 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.34%) Big Data
4 2 (0.34%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.17%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 9 (1.53%) JIRA
2 8 (1.36%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.68%) Snyk
4 3 (0.51%) GitLab
5 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.17%) AppScan
6 1 (0.17%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.17%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Metasploit
General
1 105 (17.86%) Social Skills
2 75 (12.76%) Public Sector
3 70 (11.90%) Finance
4 35 (5.95%) Banking
5 28 (4.76%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.40%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.21%) Legal
9 10 (1.70%) Aerospace
10 9 (1.53%) Military
10 9 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
10 9 (1.53%) Telecoms
11 8 (1.36%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.85%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.85%) Retail
13 4 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.34%) Police
14 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
15 1 (0.17%) Investment Banking
15 1 (0.17%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.55%) OAuth
2 12 (2.04%) OAuth2
2 12 (2.04%) OpenID
3 10 (1.70%) SAML
4 7 (1.19%) REST
5 6 (1.02%) SLSA
6 5 (0.85%) Azure Blueprints
6 5 (0.85%) JWT
6 5 (0.85%) LangChain
6 5 (0.85%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.85%) SailPoint
7 4 (0.68%) J2EE
7 4 (0.68%) JSP
7 4 (0.68%) LDAP
8 3 (0.51%) .NET
8 3 (0.51%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.51%) Flask
8 3 (0.51%) HTML
8 3 (0.51%) Middleware
8 3 (0.51%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 55 (9.35%) Security Posture
2 44 (7.48%) Cloud Native
3 37 (6.29%) Operational Technology
4 31 (5.27%) Management Information System
5 21 (3.57%) Onboarding
6 14 (2.38%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.21%) Cyber Threat
8 12 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 10 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
9 10 (1.70%) Enterprise Cloud
9 10 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
10 9 (1.53%) Cloud Security Posture
10 9 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.19%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (0.85%) Data Fabric
12 5 (0.85%) Private Cloud
12 5 (0.85%) Public Cloud
12 5 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.68%) Genomics
13 4 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.38%) Linux
2 10 (1.70%) Windows
3 7 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.02%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.68%) Alpine Linux
5 4 (0.68%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.17%) Android
6 1 (0.17%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 284 (48.30%) Security Architecture
2 209 (35.54%) Cybersecurity
3 160 (27.21%) Threat Modelling
4 149 (25.34%) Cloud Security
5 91 (15.48%) Zero Trust
6 84 (14.29%) Architectural Patterns
7 83 (14.12%) Risk Management
8 81 (13.78%) TOGAF
9 77 (13.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 75 (12.76%) Identity Access Management
11 74 (12.59%) AI
12 69 (11.73%) SABSA
13 68 (11.56%) Stakeholder Management
14 65 (11.05%) DevSecOps
14 65 (11.05%) Roadmaps
15 58 (9.86%) CI/CD
16 55 (9.35%) Application Security
17 53 (9.01%) SIEM
18 51 (8.67%) DevOps
18 51 (8.67%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 18 (3.06%) Python
2 11 (1.87%) Java
3 10 (1.70%) Bicep
4 8 (1.36%) PowerShell
5 6 (1.02%) JavaScript
6 4 (0.68%) SQL
7 3 (0.51%) Bash
8 2 (0.34%) Groovy
8 2 (0.34%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.17%) Lisp
9 1 (0.17%) R
Qualifications
1 271 (46.09%) Security Cleared
2 181 (30.78%) SC Cleared
3 121 (20.58%) CISSP
4 80 (13.61%) DV Cleared
5 59 (10.03%) CISM
6 51 (8.67%) Cisco Certification
7 44 (7.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 31 (5.27%) CCSP
9 27 (4.59%) Degree
10 22 (3.74%) AWS Certification
11 18 (3.06%) TOGAF Certification
12 14 (2.38%) GIAC
13 13 (2.21%) CISA
14 12 (2.04%) Azure Certification
14 12 (2.04%) CEH
15 9 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
15 9 (1.53%) SANS
16 7 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
16 7 (1.19%) OSCP
17 6 (1.02%) ISSAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 118 (20.07%) NIST
2 79 (13.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (9.52%) NCSC
4 40 (6.80%) GDPR
5 21 (3.57%) NIST 800
6 20 (3.40%) PCI DSS
7 18 (3.06%) GRC
8 9 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (1.36%) COBIT
10 7 (1.19%) EU AI Act
10 7 (1.19%) JSP 440
11 6 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (1.02%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (1.02%) ISO 19650
11 6 (1.02%) QA
11 6 (1.02%) RMADS
12 5 (0.85%) Government Security Classifications
13 4 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.68%) HIPAA
14 3 (0.51%) Data Quality
System Software
1 25 (4.25%) Active Directory
2 9 (1.53%) Docker
3 5 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.51%) vSphere
5 2 (0.34%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.17%) KVM
6 1 (0.17%) Varnish
6 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 27 (4.59%) Terraform
2 26 (4.42%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.53%) Ansible
4 4 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.51%) QRadar
6 2 (0.34%) CASB
6 2 (0.34%) Istio
6 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.34%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.17%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.17%) Nessus
7 1 (0.17%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.17%) SELinux
7 1 (0.17%) Suricata
Vendors
1 57 (9.69%) Microsoft
2 21 (3.57%) Splunk
3 17 (2.89%) Google
4 15 (2.55%) Okta
5 14 (2.38%) Fortinet
5 14 (2.38%) Palo Alto
6 13 (2.21%) Cisco
6 13 (2.21%) SAP
7 11 (1.87%) Tenable
8 10 (1.70%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.36%) CheckPoint
9 8 (1.36%) CrowdStrike
9 8 (1.36%) Qualys
10 7 (1.19%) BiZZdesign
10 7 (1.19%) Databricks
11 6 (1.02%) CyberArk
11 6 (1.02%) Zscaler
12 5 (0.85%) Cribl.io
12 5 (0.85%) VMware
13 4 (0.68%) Rapid7