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 February 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 274 240 235
Rank change year-on-year -34 -5 +77
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 391 339 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.95% 1.11% 1.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.03% 1.20% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 257 246 271
10th Percentile £462 £550 £511
25th Percentile £520 £600 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £768 £775
90th Percentile £788 £838 £860
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 13
10th Percentile £79.38 - £78.88
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 37,909 28,295 41,010
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.78% 92.89% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,822 17,724 26,992
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,307 828 2,328
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.43 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% - -10.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £71.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.11 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.37% -7.14% -2.78%

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 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 25 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 -29 334 £630 -6.67% 110
UK excluding London -19 182 £600 -7.69% 73
London -33 156 £650 -3.70% 49
Work from Home -32 104 £613 -9.26% 49
South East -17 59 £650 +4.00% 34
North of England -26 56 £600 -10.28% 14
Midlands -39 36 £675 -3.57% 19
Yorkshire -35 32 £525 -21.05% 1
West Midlands -39 32 £675 -3.57% 14
North West -28 22 £700 +4.71% 11
Scotland +7 11 £700 +16.67%
South West -40 11 £588 -9.62% 6
Wales +5 8 £738 -
East of England -17 6 £520 -
East Midlands - 4 £438 - 5
Northern Ireland -2 2 £500 -
North East - 2 £545 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 25 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.

1 171 (43.73%) Security Architecture
2 164 (41.94%) Security Cleared
3 138 (35.29%) Cybersecurity
4 115 (29.41%) SC Cleared
5 108 (27.62%) Azure
6 97 (24.81%) AWS
7 93 (23.79%) CISSP
8 91 (23.27%) Threat Modelling
9 89 (22.76%) Cloud Security
10 84 (21.48%) NIST
11 78 (19.95%) Network Security
12 77 (19.69%) TOGAF
13 73 (18.67%) Zero Trust
14 61 (15.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 61 (15.60%) Risk Management
15 60 (15.35%) SABSA
16 58 (14.83%) Firewall
17 57 (14.58%) Identity Access Management
18 56 (14.32%) CISM
19 51 (13.04%) Microsoft
20 50 (12.79%) Vulnerability Management
21 49 (12.53%) Incident Response
22 48 (12.28%) SIEM
23 44 (11.25%) DevSecOps
24 42 (10.74%) GCP
25 41 (10.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
26 40 (10.23%) Architectural Patterns
27 37 (9.46%) DV Cleared
28 35 (8.95%) CI/CD
28 35 (8.95%) Network Segmentation

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 (5.12%) Confluence
2 5 (1.28%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.02%) nginx
4 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.26%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.26%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.51%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.26%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.26%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.26%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 108 (27.62%) Azure
2 97 (24.81%) AWS
3 42 (10.74%) GCP
4 25 (6.39%) Entra ID
5 12 (3.07%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 12 (3.07%) SaaS
6 11 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
7 10 (2.56%) GitHub
8 9 (2.30%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (2.30%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (2.05%) AWS KMS
9 8 (2.05%) Microsoft Purview
10 6 (1.53%) PaaS
10 6 (1.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (1.28%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.02%) Akamai
12 4 (1.02%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.02%) IaaS
13 3 (0.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 78 (19.95%) Network Security
2 58 (14.83%) Firewall
3 19 (4.86%) VPN
4 15 (3.84%) WAN
5 12 (3.07%) LAN
6 11 (2.81%) SD-WAN
7 8 (2.05%) NGFW
8 7 (1.79%) DNS
8 7 (1.79%) IPsec
9 6 (1.53%) BGP
9 6 (1.53%) OSPF
10 4 (1.02%) DHCP
10 4 (1.02%) MQTT
10 4 (1.02%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (1.02%) SSL
11 3 (0.77%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.77%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (0.77%) MPLS
11 3 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.51%) S/MIME
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.77%) BigQuery
1 3 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (0.51%) Data Lake
3 1 (0.26%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (0.26%) Metadata
3 1 (0.26%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (4.35%) JIRA
2 6 (1.53%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.77%) GitLab
3 3 (0.77%) Snyk
4 1 (0.26%) AppScan
4 1 (0.26%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.26%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.26%) Git
4 1 (0.26%) Metasploit
General
1 77 (19.69%) Social Skills
2 63 (16.11%) Public Sector
3 52 (13.30%) Finance
4 16 (4.09%) Banking
5 15 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.58%) Presentation Skills
7 10 (2.56%) Legal
8 8 (2.05%) Aerospace
8 8 (2.05%) Analytical Skills
9 7 (1.79%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.77%) Law
13 2 (0.51%) Military
13 2 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.51%) Retail
13 2 (0.51%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.26%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.26%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.26%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.81%) SAML
2 9 (2.30%) OAuth
3 8 (2.05%) OpenID
4 6 (1.53%) OAuth2
5 5 (1.28%) SailPoint
6 4 (1.02%) ADO
6 4 (1.02%) Middleware
7 3 (0.77%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.77%) Flask
7 3 (0.77%) ModSecurity
7 3 (0.77%) REST
8 2 (0.51%) .NET
8 2 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.51%) JWT
8 2 (0.51%) Kafka
8 2 (0.51%) LDAP
9 1 (0.26%) J2EE
9 1 (0.26%) JSP
9 1 (0.26%) JSSE
9 1 (0.26%) SAP PI
Miscellaneous
1 27 (6.91%) Cloud Native
1 27 (6.91%) Security Posture
2 20 (5.12%) Operational Technology
3 17 (4.35%) Management Information System
4 16 (4.09%) Onboarding
5 13 (3.32%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.56%) PKI
8 9 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (2.05%) Private Cloud
10 7 (1.79%) Taxonomies
11 6 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.28%) NHS
12 5 (1.28%) SCADA
12 5 (1.28%) Security Operations Centre
13 4 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (1.02%) Public Cloud
14 3 (0.77%) Cyber Defence
14 3 (0.77%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.32%) Windows
2 11 (2.81%) Linux
3 4 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.51%) Android
4 2 (0.51%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.51%) Unix
4 2 (0.51%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.26%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.26%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.26%) Windows 7
5 1 (0.26%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (43.73%) Security Architecture
2 138 (35.29%) Cybersecurity
3 91 (23.27%) Threat Modelling
4 89 (22.76%) Cloud Security
5 77 (19.69%) TOGAF
6 73 (18.67%) Zero Trust
7 61 (15.60%) Risk Management
8 60 (15.35%) SABSA
9 57 (14.58%) Identity Access Management
10 50 (12.79%) Vulnerability Management
11 49 (12.53%) Incident Response
12 48 (12.28%) SIEM
13 44 (11.25%) DevSecOps
14 41 (10.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 40 (10.23%) Architectural Patterns
16 35 (8.95%) CI/CD
16 35 (8.95%) Network Segmentation
17 32 (8.18%) Application Security
18 31 (7.93%) Information Security
18 31 (7.93%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.56%) Python
2 8 (2.05%) Java
3 4 (1.02%) JavaScript
4 3 (0.77%) Bicep
4 3 (0.77%) PowerShell
4 3 (0.77%) SQL
5 2 (0.51%) C
5 2 (0.51%) Kotlin
5 2 (0.51%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.51%) Swift
6 1 (0.26%) Bash
6 1 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.26%) Lisp
6 1 (0.26%) ProC
6 1 (0.26%) R
6 1 (0.26%) RPG
6 1 (0.26%) VB
6 1 (0.26%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 164 (41.94%) Security Cleared
2 115 (29.41%) SC Cleared
3 93 (23.79%) CISSP
4 56 (14.32%) CISM
5 37 (9.46%) DV Cleared
6 31 (7.93%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (7.42%) Degree
8 20 (5.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 18 (4.60%) AWS Certification
10 17 (4.35%) TOGAF Certification
11 14 (3.58%) CCSP
12 10 (2.56%) CCNP
13 8 (2.05%) Azure Certification
13 8 (2.05%) CCIE
14 7 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
14 7 (1.79%) GIAC
14 7 (1.79%) Master's Degree
15 6 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
16 5 (1.28%) PhD
16 5 (1.28%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (21.48%) NIST
2 61 (15.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (7.93%) NCSC
4 28 (7.16%) GDPR
5 19 (4.86%) PCI DSS
6 8 (2.05%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (2.05%) GRC
6 8 (2.05%) JSP 440
6 8 (2.05%) NIST 800
7 7 (1.79%) EU AI Act
8 6 (1.53%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.77%) COBIT
10 3 (0.77%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.77%) PSD2
10 3 (0.77%) RMADS
10 3 (0.77%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.51%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.51%) QA
System Software
1 13 (3.32%) Active Directory
2 4 (1.02%) Docker
3 1 (0.26%) BitLocker
3 1 (0.26%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.26%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (6.39%) Terraform
2 17 (4.35%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.05%) Ansible
4 7 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.77%) SCCM
6 2 (0.51%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.51%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.26%) Kibana
7 1 (0.26%) logstash
7 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.26%) Nessus
7 1 (0.26%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.26%) SELinux
Vendors
1 51 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 21 (5.37%) CyberArk
2 21 (5.37%) Splunk
3 19 (4.86%) BiZZdesign
4 14 (3.58%) Cisco
5 13 (3.32%) Palo Alto
6 12 (3.07%) CheckPoint
7 11 (2.81%) Centrify
7 11 (2.81%) Zscaler
8 9 (2.30%) Fortinet
9 7 (1.79%) F5
9 7 (1.79%) Google
9 7 (1.79%) Okta
9 7 (1.79%) Tenable
9 7 (1.79%) Virgin Media
10 6 (1.53%) Cribl.io
10 6 (1.53%) ServiceNow
10 6 (1.53%) Sparx
11 4 (1.02%) Darktrace
11 4 (1.02%) Thycotic