Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £634, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 223 225
Rank change year-on-year -10 +2 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 583 398 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.23% 1.06%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.20% 1.34% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 393 264 268
10th Percentile £484 £513 £500
25th Percentile £538 £600 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £634 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -6.07% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £760 £768 £775
90th Percentile £844 £810 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £668 £660
% change year-on-year -2.69% +1.21% -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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

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 10 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 10 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 -8 504 £650 -3.70% 109
UK excluding London -32 252 £650 -2.69% 66
London -23 242 £650 -3.70% 56
Work from Home -4 199 £600 -14.29% 73
South East -8 103 £650 +8.33% 30
North of England -57 64 £675 -3.57% 12
Midlands -24 52 £600 -21.31% 4
North West -18 49 £704 +0.51% 8
West Midlands -38 49 £625 -18.03% 4
South West -46 21 £614 -5.58% 10
Yorkshire -39 13 £575 +4.55% 4
East of England -29 6 £625 +25.00% 2
Scotland -15 5 £700 -15.15% 1
East Midlands - 3 £438 -
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 278 (47.68%) Security Architecture
2 266 (45.63%) Security Cleared
3 208 (35.68%) Cybersecurity
4 174 (29.85%) SC Cleared
5 168 (28.82%) Azure
6 161 (27.62%) Threat Modelling
7 147 (25.21%) Cloud Security
8 142 (24.36%) AWS
9 117 (20.07%) NIST
10 114 (19.55%) CISSP
11 95 (16.30%) Network Security
11 95 (16.30%) Zero Trust
12 85 (14.58%) Architectural Patterns
13 84 (14.41%) Risk Management
14 79 (13.55%) TOGAF
15 78 (13.38%) DV Cleared
15 78 (13.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
16 76 (13.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 73 (12.52%) GCP
18 72 (12.35%) AI
19 70 (12.01%) SABSA
20 69 (11.84%) Identity Access Management
21 63 (10.81%) Stakeholder Management
22 61 (10.46%) Roadmaps
23 60 (10.29%) DevSecOps
24 58 (9.95%) Application Security
25 57 (9.78%) CISM
25 57 (9.78%) Microsoft
26 56 (9.61%) NCSC
27 52 (8.92%) Data Protection

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 (1.20%) Confluence
2 4 (0.69%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.51%) nginx
4 2 (0.34%) SAS
5 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.17%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
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
1 168 (28.82%) Azure
2 142 (24.36%) AWS
3 73 (12.52%) GCP
4 34 (5.83%) Entra ID
5 18 (3.09%) Azure Sentinel
6 13 (2.23%) SaaS
7 11 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (1.20%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 6 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (1.03%) GitHub
10 5 (0.86%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (0.69%) Anthropic Claude
11 4 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (0.69%) AWS Control Tower
11 4 (0.69%) AWS KMS
11 4 (0.69%) Serverless
11 4 (0.69%) Vertex AI
12 3 (0.51%) Azure API Management
12 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Purview
12 3 (0.51%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 95 (16.30%) Network Security
2 46 (7.89%) Firewall
3 15 (2.57%) VPN
4 10 (1.72%) IPsec
4 10 (1.72%) SD-WAN
5 9 (1.54%) WAN
6 8 (1.37%) VLAN
7 7 (1.20%) NGFW
8 5 (0.86%) 4G
8 5 (0.86%) MPLS
9 4 (0.69%) 5G
9 4 (0.69%) BGP
9 4 (0.69%) DNS
9 4 (0.69%) Intranet
9 4 (0.69%) LAN
9 4 (0.69%) OSPF
9 4 (0.69%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
10 3 (0.51%) DHCP
10 3 (0.51%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (0.51%) Data Lake
2 3 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (0.34%) Big Data
3 2 (0.34%) BigQuery
4 1 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.17%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 9 (1.54%) JIRA
2 7 (1.20%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.69%) 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 (18.01%) Social Skills
2 76 (13.04%) Public Sector
3 71 (12.18%) Finance
4 36 (6.17%) Banking
5 26 (4.46%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.43%) Analytical Skills
7 17 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.23%) Legal
9 11 (1.89%) Aerospace
10 9 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.37%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.37%) Military
12 7 (1.20%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.86%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.86%) Retail
14 3 (0.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.51%) Law
15 2 (0.34%) Police
15 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
16 1 (0.17%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.57%) OAuth
2 12 (2.06%) OAuth2
2 12 (2.06%) OpenID
3 10 (1.72%) SAML
4 7 (1.20%) REST
5 5 (0.86%) J2EE
5 5 (0.86%) JSP
5 5 (0.86%) JWT
5 5 (0.86%) LangChain
5 5 (0.86%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.86%) SailPoint
5 5 (0.86%) SLSA
6 4 (0.69%) Azure Blueprints
6 4 (0.69%) LDAP
7 3 (0.51%) ADO
7 3 (0.51%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.51%) Flask
7 3 (0.51%) Middleware
7 3 (0.51%) ModSecurity
7 3 (0.51%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 56 (9.61%) Security Posture
2 43 (7.38%) Cloud Native
3 38 (6.52%) Operational Technology
4 29 (4.97%) Management Information System
5 18 (3.09%) Onboarding
6 14 (2.40%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.23%) Cyber Threat
8 11 (1.89%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
9 10 (1.72%) Enterprise Cloud
9 10 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
10 9 (1.54%) Cloud Security Posture
10 9 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 6 (1.03%) Private Cloud
12 5 (0.86%) Public Cloud
13 4 (0.69%) CMDB
13 4 (0.69%) Mobile App
13 4 (0.69%) SCADA
13 4 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.40%) Linux
2 12 (2.06%) Windows
3 7 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (1.03%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.69%) Alpine Linux
5 4 (0.69%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.17%) Android
6 1 (0.17%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.17%) VMS
6 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 278 (47.68%) Security Architecture
2 208 (35.68%) Cybersecurity
3 161 (27.62%) Threat Modelling
4 147 (25.21%) Cloud Security
5 95 (16.30%) Zero Trust
6 85 (14.58%) Architectural Patterns
7 84 (14.41%) Risk Management
8 79 (13.55%) TOGAF
9 76 (13.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (12.35%) AI
11 70 (12.01%) SABSA
12 69 (11.84%) Identity Access Management
13 63 (10.81%) Stakeholder Management
14 61 (10.46%) Roadmaps
15 60 (10.29%) DevSecOps
16 58 (9.95%) Application Security
17 52 (8.92%) Data Protection
17 52 (8.92%) SIEM
18 51 (8.75%) CI/CD
18 51 (8.75%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 18 (3.09%) Python
2 12 (2.06%) Java
3 9 (1.54%) PowerShell
4 8 (1.37%) Bicep
5 6 (1.03%) JavaScript
6 4 (0.69%) SQL
7 3 (0.51%) Bash
8 1 (0.17%) Groovy
8 1 (0.17%) Lisp
8 1 (0.17%) R
8 1 (0.17%) RPG
8 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.17%) VB
8 1 (0.17%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 266 (45.63%) Security Cleared
2 174 (29.85%) SC Cleared
3 114 (19.55%) CISSP
4 78 (13.38%) DV Cleared
5 57 (9.78%) CISM
6 48 (8.23%) Cisco Certification
7 41 (7.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 27 (4.63%) CCSP
8 27 (4.63%) Degree
9 21 (3.60%) AWS Certification
10 15 (2.57%) TOGAF Certification
11 14 (2.40%) GIAC
12 13 (2.23%) CISA
13 12 (2.06%) CEH
14 11 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
15 9 (1.54%) Azure Certification
15 9 (1.54%) SANS
16 7 (1.20%) OSCP
17 6 (1.03%) CompTIA Security+
17 6 (1.03%) ISSAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (20.07%) NIST
2 78 (13.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (9.61%) NCSC
4 36 (6.17%) GDPR
5 22 (3.77%) NIST 800
6 21 (3.60%) PCI DSS
7 16 (2.74%) GRC
8 10 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 10 (1.72%) JSP 440
9 8 (1.37%) COBIT
10 7 (1.20%) EU AI Act
11 6 (1.03%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (1.03%) ISO 19650
11 6 (1.03%) QA
11 6 (1.03%) RMADS
12 5 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 5 (0.86%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.86%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.69%) HIPAA
14 3 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 22 (3.77%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.20%) Docker
3 5 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.51%) vSphere
5 2 (0.34%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.17%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.17%) KVM
6 1 (0.17%) Varnish
6 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 25 (4.29%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.12%) Terraform
3 9 (1.54%) Ansible
4 5 (0.86%) 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%) SCCM
7 1 (0.17%) SELinux
7 1 (0.17%) Suricata
Vendors
1 57 (9.78%) Microsoft
2 22 (3.77%) Splunk
3 16 (2.74%) Google
4 15 (2.57%) Okta
5 13 (2.23%) Fortinet
5 13 (2.23%) Palo Alto
5 13 (2.23%) SAP
6 12 (2.06%) Cisco
7 11 (1.89%) Tenable
8 10 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.37%) BiZZdesign
9 8 (1.37%) CrowdStrike
9 8 (1.37%) Qualys
10 7 (1.20%) CheckPoint
11 6 (1.03%) CyberArk
11 6 (1.03%) Zscaler
12 5 (0.86%) Cribl.io
12 5 (0.86%) VMware
13 4 (0.69%) Rapid7
13 4 (0.69%) ServiceNow