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 February 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 287 239 234
Rank change year-on-year -48 -5 +60
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 362 336 461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.09% 1.03%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.99% 1.17% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 243 280
10th Percentile £463 £550 £512
25th Percentile £525 £600 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £750 £775
90th Percentile £788 £835 £851
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 11
10th Percentile £79.38 - £78.13
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 36,606 28,720 41,783
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.62% 92.93% 93.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,016 17,759 27,499
10th Percentile £303 £290 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +0.32% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 814 2,315
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.07 £13.14
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.77% -5.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £61.84 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.80% -9.26% -

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 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 15 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 -38 307 £630 -6.67% 95
UK excluding London -30 165 £600 -7.69% 62
London -14 147 £643 -4.81% 43
Work from Home -45 89 £600 -11.11% 52
South East -17 54 £650 +4.00% 30
North of England -32 53 £600 -11.76% 12
Yorkshire -39 33 £531 -20.15% 1
Midlands -40 28 £675 -3.57% 12
West Midlands -35 24 £675 -3.57% 12
North West -27 18 £700 +2.98% 9
Scotland 0 11 £700 +16.67%
South West -34 11 £588 -5.05% 7
Wales +7 8 £738 -
East of England -18 5 £520 - 1
East Midlands - 4 £438 -
Northern Ireland -1 2 £500 -
North East - 2 £545 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 157 (43.37%) Security Architecture
2 151 (41.71%) Security Cleared
3 135 (37.29%) Cybersecurity
4 111 (30.66%) SC Cleared
5 101 (27.90%) Azure
6 91 (25.14%) Threat Modelling
7 85 (23.48%) AWS
8 84 (23.20%) CISSP
9 83 (22.93%) NIST
10 80 (22.10%) Cloud Security
11 72 (19.89%) TOGAF
12 71 (19.61%) Network Security
13 70 (19.34%) Zero Trust
14 60 (16.57%) SABSA
15 59 (16.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
16 57 (15.75%) Risk Management
17 55 (15.19%) Firewall
18 49 (13.54%) CISM
18 49 (13.54%) Identity Access Management
18 49 (13.54%) Incident Response
19 48 (13.26%) Vulnerability Management
20 47 (12.98%) Microsoft
21 41 (11.33%) DevSecOps
22 40 (11.05%) Architectural Patterns
23 39 (10.77%) GCP
23 39 (10.77%) SIEM
24 38 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
25 34 (9.39%) Network Segmentation
26 33 (9.12%) DV Cleared
27 31 (8.56%) CI/CD

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 20 (5.52%) Confluence
2 5 (1.38%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.10%) nginx
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.55%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.66%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.28%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.28%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.28%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 101 (27.90%) Azure
2 85 (23.48%) AWS
3 39 (10.77%) GCP
4 20 (5.52%) Entra ID
5 11 (3.04%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 11 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
6 10 (2.76%) GitHub
6 10 (2.76%) SaaS
7 8 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
7 8 (2.21%) Microsoft Purview
8 7 (1.93%) AWS KMS
8 7 (1.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (1.66%) Azure Sentinel
9 6 (1.66%) PaaS
10 5 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (1.10%) Akamai
11 4 (1.10%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (1.10%) IaaS
12 3 (0.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 3 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 71 (19.61%) Network Security
2 55 (15.19%) Firewall
3 18 (4.97%) VPN
4 14 (3.87%) WAN
5 11 (3.04%) LAN
6 9 (2.49%) SD-WAN
7 7 (1.93%) DNS
7 7 (1.93%) NGFW
8 6 (1.66%) IPsec
9 5 (1.38%) BGP
9 5 (1.38%) OSPF
10 4 (1.10%) DHCP
10 4 (1.10%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (1.10%) SSL
11 3 (0.83%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.83%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (0.83%) MPLS
11 3 (0.83%) MQTT
11 3 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.55%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (0.55%) BigQuery
2 2 (0.55%) Data Lake
3 1 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (0.28%) Metadata
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (4.70%) JIRA
2 6 (1.66%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.83%) GitLab
4 1 (0.28%) AppScan
4 1 (0.28%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.28%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.28%) Git
4 1 (0.28%) Metasploit
General
1 71 (19.61%) Social Skills
2 55 (15.19%) Public Sector
3 48 (13.26%) Finance
4 15 (4.14%) Banking
4 15 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (3.59%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (2.76%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (2.76%) Legal
7 8 (2.21%) Aerospace
8 6 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.38%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.83%) Law
11 2 (0.55%) Military
11 2 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.55%) Retail
11 2 (0.55%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.04%) SAML
2 9 (2.49%) OAuth
3 8 (2.21%) OpenID
4 6 (1.66%) OAuth2
5 4 (1.10%) SailPoint
6 3 (0.83%) ADO
6 3 (0.83%) FastAPI
6 3 (0.83%) Flask
6 3 (0.83%) Middleware
6 3 (0.83%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.55%) .NET
7 2 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.55%) JWT
7 2 (0.55%) Kafka
7 2 (0.55%) LDAP
7 2 (0.55%) REST
8 1 (0.28%) IDoc
8 1 (0.28%) JSSE
8 1 (0.28%) React
8 1 (0.28%) SAP PI
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.91%) Cloud Native
1 25 (6.91%) Security Posture
2 18 (4.97%) Operational Technology
3 16 (4.42%) Onboarding
4 15 (4.14%) Management Information System
5 13 (3.59%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.31%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.76%) PKI
8 9 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (2.21%) Private Cloud
10 7 (1.93%) Taxonomies
11 6 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
12 5 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.38%) NHS
12 5 (1.38%) SCADA
12 5 (1.38%) Security Operations Centre
13 4 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (1.10%) Public Cloud
14 3 (0.83%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.31%) Windows
2 11 (3.04%) Linux
3 4 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.55%) Android
4 2 (0.55%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.55%) Unix
4 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.28%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
5 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (43.37%) Security Architecture
2 135 (37.29%) Cybersecurity
3 91 (25.14%) Threat Modelling
4 80 (22.10%) Cloud Security
5 72 (19.89%) TOGAF
6 70 (19.34%) Zero Trust
7 60 (16.57%) SABSA
8 57 (15.75%) Risk Management
9 49 (13.54%) Identity Access Management
9 49 (13.54%) Incident Response
10 48 (13.26%) Vulnerability Management
11 41 (11.33%) DevSecOps
12 40 (11.05%) Architectural Patterns
13 39 (10.77%) SIEM
14 38 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 34 (9.39%) Network Segmentation
16 31 (8.56%) CI/CD
17 29 (8.01%) Information Security
18 27 (7.46%) Roadmaps
18 27 (7.46%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.76%) Python
2 8 (2.21%) Java
3 4 (1.10%) JavaScript
4 3 (0.83%) Bicep
4 3 (0.83%) PowerShell
4 3 (0.83%) SQL
5 2 (0.55%) C
5 2 (0.55%) Kotlin
5 2 (0.55%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.55%) Swift
6 1 (0.28%) Bash
6 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.28%) Lisp
6 1 (0.28%) ProC
6 1 (0.28%) R
6 1 (0.28%) RPG
6 1 (0.28%) VB
6 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 151 (41.71%) Security Cleared
2 111 (30.66%) SC Cleared
3 84 (23.20%) CISSP
4 49 (13.54%) CISM
5 33 (9.12%) DV Cleared
6 29 (8.01%) Degree
7 27 (7.46%) Cisco Certification
8 17 (4.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 17 (4.70%) TOGAF Certification
9 16 (4.42%) AWS Certification
10 11 (3.04%) CCSP
11 10 (2.76%) CCNP
12 8 (2.21%) Azure Certification
12 8 (2.21%) GIAC
13 7 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
13 7 (1.93%) CCIE
13 7 (1.93%) Master's Degree
14 6 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
15 5 (1.38%) PhD
15 5 (1.38%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (22.93%) NIST
2 59 (16.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (7.73%) GDPR
3 28 (7.73%) NCSC
4 18 (4.97%) PCI DSS
5 8 (2.21%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (2.21%) GRC
6 7 (1.93%) EU AI Act
6 7 (1.93%) JSP 440
6 7 (1.93%) NIST 800
7 6 (1.66%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 5 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.83%) Def Stans
9 3 (0.83%) PSD2
9 3 (0.83%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.55%) COBIT
10 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.55%) QA
10 2 (0.55%) RMADS
System Software
1 11 (3.04%) Active Directory
2 4 (1.10%) Docker
3 1 (0.28%) BitLocker
3 1 (0.28%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 24 (6.63%) Terraform
2 14 (3.87%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.21%) Ansible
4 7 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.83%) SCCM
6 2 (0.55%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.55%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.28%) Kibana
7 1 (0.28%) logstash
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) Nessus
7 1 (0.28%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.28%) SELinux
Vendors
1 47 (12.98%) Microsoft
2 22 (6.08%) CyberArk
3 19 (5.25%) Splunk
4 18 (4.97%) BiZZdesign
5 14 (3.87%) Palo Alto
6 13 (3.59%) Cisco
7 12 (3.31%) CheckPoint
8 11 (3.04%) Centrify
9 10 (2.76%) Fortinet
9 10 (2.76%) Zscaler
10 7 (1.93%) F5
10 7 (1.93%) Google
10 7 (1.93%) Virgin Media
11 6 (1.66%) Cribl.io
11 6 (1.66%) Sparx
12 5 (1.38%) Darktrace
12 5 (1.38%) ServiceNow
13 4 (1.10%) Juniper
13 4 (1.10%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.10%) Thycotic