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 25 September 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 248 251 245
Rank change year-on-year +3 -6 -26
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 593 368 376
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.12% 0.98%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 1.22% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 413 232 214
10th Percentile £500 £508 £500
25th Percentile £525 £600 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% +2.94%
75th Percentile £738 £756 £775
90th Percentile £825 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £675 £650
% change year-on-year -11.07% +3.85% -4.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 3
10th Percentile - £86.00 -
25th Percentile £60.00 £91.25 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £100.00 £87.46
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% +14.34% +24.94%
75th Percentile £82.25 £102.75 -
90th Percentile £83.00 £104.40 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £100.00 £87.46
% change year-on-year -30.00% +14.34% +22.46%

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 50,616 30,052 35,689
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.07% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,900 18,989 21,757
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,913 1,614 1,619
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.95 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.02% -42.72% +0.34%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -20 505 £625 -7.41% 423
London -15 269 £628 -7.04% 235
UK excluding London -44 225 £600 -11.07% 199
Work from Home +2 195 £597 -12.37% 202
South East -9 110 £630 +5.00% 73
North of England -60 49 £600 -16.20% 22
North West -45 37 £600 -16.35% 17
Midlands -35 29 £638 -5.56% 33
West Midlands -28 28 £638 -13.56% 29
South West -40 28 £600 -7.65% 38
Yorkshire -38 9 £350 -44.00% 3
East of England -30 6 £625 +25.00% 9
Channel Islands - 3 £700 - 2
East Midlands -12 1 - - 4
Scotland -29 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 25 September 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.

1 310 (52.28%) Security Architecture
2 287 (48.40%) Security Cleared
3 207 (34.91%) Cybersecurity
4 194 (32.72%) SC Cleared
5 183 (30.86%) Azure
6 161 (27.15%) Cloud Security
7 154 (25.97%) Threat Modelling
8 143 (24.11%) AWS
9 136 (22.93%) NIST
10 114 (19.22%) CISSP
11 96 (16.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 94 (15.85%) Risk Management
13 93 (15.68%) Identity Access Management
13 93 (15.68%) Zero Trust
14 92 (15.51%) DV Cleared
15 89 (15.01%) Stakeholder Management
16 86 (14.50%) AI
17 83 (14.00%) TOGAF
18 80 (13.49%) Network Security
19 79 (13.32%) Architectural Patterns
20 76 (12.82%) Microsoft
21 74 (12.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 69 (11.64%) NCSC
23 68 (11.47%) Roadmaps
24 62 (10.46%) SABSA
25 61 (10.29%) DevSecOps
26 60 (10.12%) GCP
27 59 (9.95%) CISM
27 59 (9.95%) Data Protection
27 59 (9.95%) Vulnerability Management

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 5 (0.84%) IIS
2 3 (0.51%) Confluence
3 2 (0.34%) SAS
3 2 (0.34%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 3 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 183 (30.86%) Azure
2 143 (24.11%) AWS
3 60 (10.12%) GCP
4 37 (6.24%) Entra ID
5 18 (3.04%) Azure Sentinel
5 18 (3.04%) SaaS
6 12 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
6 12 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (1.52%) Azure Key Vault
8 6 (1.01%) AWS KMS
9 5 (0.84%) AWS Control Tower
9 5 (0.84%) Azure AI
9 5 (0.84%) IaaS
9 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Purview
9 5 (0.84%) OCI
9 5 (0.84%) PaaS
9 5 (0.84%) Vertex AI
10 4 (0.67%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (0.67%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (0.67%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 80 (13.49%) Network Security
2 49 (8.26%) Firewall
3 14 (2.36%) WAN
4 13 (2.19%) VPN
5 8 (1.35%) 4G
5 8 (1.35%) SD-WAN
5 8 (1.35%) VLAN
6 7 (1.18%) IPsec
7 6 (1.01%) 5G
7 6 (1.01%) LAN
7 6 (1.01%) NGFW
8 5 (0.84%) BGP
8 5 (0.84%) OSPF
8 5 (0.84%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.67%) MPLS
10 3 (0.51%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
10 3 (0.51%) EIGRP
10 3 (0.51%) Internet
10 3 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.84%) Data Lake
2 2 (0.34%) Metadata
3 1 (0.17%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (0.17%) BigQuery
3 1 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (1.52%) Jenkins
2 5 (0.84%) JIRA
3 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
3 2 (0.34%) GitLab
4 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
General
1 97 (16.36%) Social Skills
2 73 (12.31%) Public Sector
3 51 (8.60%) Finance
4 27 (4.55%) Influencing Skills
5 26 (4.38%) Banking
6 25 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (3.37%) Legal
8 19 (3.20%) Analytical Skills
9 18 (3.04%) Telecoms
10 13 (2.19%) Manufacturing
11 10 (1.69%) Military
11 10 (1.69%) Police
12 8 (1.35%) Aerospace
12 8 (1.35%) Law
13 7 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.67%) Automotive
15 4 (0.67%) Local Government
15 4 (0.67%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (4.22%) Terraform
2 16 (2.70%) OAuth
3 12 (2.02%) OpenID
3 12 (2.02%) SAML
4 10 (1.69%) OAuth2
5 8 (1.35%) REST
6 6 (1.01%) ModSecurity
6 6 (1.01%) SLSA
7 5 (0.84%) Azure Blueprints
7 5 (0.84%) LangChain
7 5 (0.84%) LDAP
7 5 (0.84%) PyTorch
8 3 (0.51%) .NET
8 3 (0.51%) HTML
8 3 (0.51%) JWT
8 3 (0.51%) scikit-learn
9 2 (0.34%) A2A Protocol
9 2 (0.34%) Hugging Face
9 2 (0.34%) Jakarta EE
9 2 (0.34%) JSP
Miscellaneous
1 53 (8.94%) Cloud Native
2 48 (8.09%) Security Posture
3 32 (5.40%) Management Information System
4 31 (5.23%) Operational Technology
5 18 (3.04%) Cyber Threat
5 18 (3.04%) Onboarding
6 17 (2.87%) Data Centre
7 14 (2.36%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (1.85%) Public Cloud
9 10 (1.69%) Enterprise Cloud
9 10 (1.69%) PKI
10 8 (1.35%) Cloud Security Posture
11 7 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.18%) Private Cloud
12 6 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
12 6 (1.01%) IoT
12 6 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (0.84%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.19%) Linux
2 11 (1.85%) Windows
3 10 (1.69%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.67%) Alpine Linux
4 4 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.67%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.51%) Unix
6 1 (0.17%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 310 (52.28%) Security Architecture
2 207 (34.91%) Cybersecurity
3 161 (27.15%) Cloud Security
4 154 (25.97%) Threat Modelling
5 94 (15.85%) Risk Management
6 93 (15.68%) Identity Access Management
6 93 (15.68%) Zero Trust
7 89 (15.01%) Stakeholder Management
8 86 (14.50%) AI
9 83 (14.00%) TOGAF
10 79 (13.32%) Architectural Patterns
11 74 (12.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 68 (11.47%) Roadmaps
13 62 (10.46%) SABSA
14 61 (10.29%) DevSecOps
15 59 (9.95%) Data Protection
15 59 (9.95%) Vulnerability Management
16 58 (9.78%) CI/CD
16 58 (9.78%) Information Security
17 56 (9.44%) Enterprise Architecture
Programming Languages
1 20 (3.37%) Python
2 10 (1.69%) PowerShell
3 8 (1.35%) Bicep
3 8 (1.35%) Java
4 5 (0.84%) Groovy
4 5 (0.84%) Shell Script
5 4 (0.67%) Bash
6 3 (0.51%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.34%) SQL
8 1 (0.17%) R
Qualifications
1 287 (48.40%) Security Cleared
2 194 (32.72%) SC Cleared
3 114 (19.22%) CISSP
4 92 (15.51%) DV Cleared
5 59 (9.95%) CISM
6 46 (7.76%) Cisco Certification
7 40 (6.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 33 (5.56%) CCSP
9 24 (4.05%) AWS Certification
10 22 (3.71%) Degree
11 20 (3.37%) TOGAF Certification
12 18 (3.04%) CISA
13 16 (2.70%) Azure Certification
14 10 (1.69%) SANS
15 9 (1.52%) CEH
16 8 (1.35%) CompTIA Security+
16 8 (1.35%) CRISC
16 8 (1.35%) ISSAP
16 8 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (1.18%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 136 (22.93%) NIST
2 96 (16.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 69 (11.64%) NCSC
4 38 (6.41%) GDPR
5 33 (5.56%) GRC
6 21 (3.54%) NIST 800
7 19 (3.20%) PCI DSS
8 12 (2.02%) JSP 440
9 11 (1.85%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 10 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
10 10 (1.69%) Government Security Classifications
11 9 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 7 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 6 (1.01%) EU AI Act
13 6 (1.01%) ISO 19650
13 6 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 5 (0.84%) COBIT
14 5 (0.84%) HIPAA
15 4 (0.67%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 21 (3.54%) Active Directory
2 15 (2.53%) Docker
3 7 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.67%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.34%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.34%) vSphere
6 1 (0.17%) KVM
6 1 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 13 (2.19%) Ansible
3 7 (1.18%) CASB
4 6 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.67%) QRadar
6 3 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.51%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (0.34%) Istio
8 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.17%) Suricata
Vendors
1 76 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 26 (4.38%) Google
3 23 (3.88%) Cisco
4 18 (3.04%) Palo Alto
5 17 (2.87%) Splunk
6 14 (2.36%) CrowdStrike
7 12 (2.02%) Fortinet
8 11 (1.85%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.52%) Qualys
10 8 (1.35%) F5
10 8 (1.35%) Tenable
10 8 (1.35%) VMware
11 7 (1.18%) SAP
11 7 (1.18%) Zscaler
12 6 (1.01%) IFS
12 6 (1.01%) Juniper
13 5 (0.84%) Okta
14 4 (0.67%) Centrify
14 4 (0.67%) CyberArk
14 4 (0.67%) Databricks