Security Architect Contract Job Trends

Security Architect
UK

The median Security Architect daily rate in the UK is £630, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 May 2026.

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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 239 234
Rank change year-on-year -2 -5 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 477 326 455
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.11% 1.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.20% 1.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 302 235 281
10th Percentile £463 £541 £519
25th Percentile £525 £600 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £630 £665 £700
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £750 £750 £775
90th Percentile £824 £835 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £635 £663 £669
% change year-on-year -4.15% -0.97% -4.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 19
10th Percentile - £69.68 £81.86
25th Percentile £83.00 £71.82 £81.88
Median hourly rate £83.50 £79.16 £87.46
Median % change year-on-year +5.49% -9.50% +24.94%
75th Percentile £84.75 £85.22 £87.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £86.59 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.50 £79.16 £87.46
% change year-on-year +5.49% -9.50% +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 43,667 27,136 40,368
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.52% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,936 17,712 26,266
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.55% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,813 1,033 2,668
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.14 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -19.49% -19.95%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £39.50
% change year-on-year +62.36% -29.11% -6.91%

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 2 May 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 2 May 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 -15 400 £635 -5.65% 95
UK excluding London -13 209 £635 -4.15% 67
London -47 183 £640 -5.26% 41
Work from Home +2 153 £600 -10.58% 52
South East -8 80 £631 +0.96% 15
North of England -22 60 £688 +2.46% 21
North West -10 44 £707 +5.39% 20
Midlands -51 39 £625 -10.71% 8
West Midlands -45 37 £700 - 7
Yorkshire -39 14 £625 -8.09%
South West -46 14 £591 -11.75% 7
Scotland -4 9 £738 +22.92% 2
East of England - 6 £600 - 4
North East -18 2 £545 -12.80% 1
East Midlands - 2 £438 - 1
Wales - 1 - - 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 2 May 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.

1 221 (46.33%) Security Architecture
2 208 (43.61%) Security Cleared
3 154 (32.29%) Cybersecurity
4 137 (28.72%) SC Cleared
5 129 (27.04%) Azure
5 129 (27.04%) Threat Modelling
6 107 (22.43%) Cloud Security
7 104 (21.80%) AWS
8 102 (21.38%) NIST
9 92 (19.29%) Zero Trust
10 91 (19.08%) CISSP
11 88 (18.45%) Network Security
12 69 (14.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 69 (14.47%) Risk Management
13 64 (13.42%) TOGAF
14 61 (12.79%) Architectural Patterns
15 58 (12.16%) SABSA
16 56 (11.74%) DV Cleared
17 54 (11.32%) GCP
17 54 (11.32%) Microsoft
18 51 (10.69%) CISM
18 51 (10.69%) Identity Access Management
18 51 (10.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 49 (10.27%) Application Security
20 45 (9.43%) DevSecOps
20 45 (9.43%) SIEM
20 45 (9.43%) Vulnerability Management
21 42 (8.81%) Cisco Certification
22 41 (8.60%) Firewall
23 40 (8.39%) 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 10 (2.10%) Confluence
2 7 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.84%) nginx
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.21%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.21%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.21%) SAP EHS
2 1 (0.21%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.21%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.21%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 129 (27.04%) Azure
2 104 (21.80%) AWS
3 54 (11.32%) GCP
4 29 (6.08%) Entra ID
5 16 (3.35%) SaaS
6 14 (2.94%) Azure Sentinel
7 13 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (2.31%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 8 (1.68%) AWS KMS
10 7 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (1.47%) GitHub
10 7 (1.47%) IaaS
10 7 (1.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 6 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (1.26%) PaaS
12 5 (1.05%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (0.84%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (0.84%) Microsoft Purview
14 3 (0.63%) Apigee
14 3 (0.63%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 88 (18.45%) Network Security
2 41 (8.60%) Firewall
3 13 (2.73%) VPN
4 10 (2.10%) LAN
4 10 (2.10%) WAN
5 8 (1.68%) SD-WAN
6 6 (1.26%) IPsec
7 5 (1.05%) BGP
7 5 (1.05%) OSPF
8 4 (0.84%) MQTT
8 4 (0.84%) Reverse Proxy
9 3 (0.63%) BIG-IP
9 3 (0.63%) MPLS
10 2 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
10 2 (0.42%) DMZ
10 2 (0.42%) DNS
10 2 (0.42%) Intranet
10 2 (0.42%) Intrusion Detection
10 2 (0.42%) VLAN
10 2 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (0.63%) Data Lake
2 3 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (0.42%) Big Data
3 2 (0.42%) Metadata
4 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.21%) BigQuery
4 1 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 7 (1.47%) JIRA
2 5 (1.05%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.84%) Snyk
4 3 (0.63%) GitLab
5 1 (0.21%) AppScan
5 1 (0.21%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.21%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.21%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.21%) Git
5 1 (0.21%) Metasploit
General
1 78 (16.35%) Social Skills
2 62 (13.00%) Public Sector
3 54 (11.32%) Finance
4 24 (5.03%) Banking
5 19 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
6 13 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
7 12 (2.52%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (2.10%) Legal
9 9 (1.89%) Aerospace
10 6 (1.26%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.05%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.05%) Military
12 3 (0.63%) Law
13 2 (0.42%) Police
13 2 (0.42%) Retail
13 2 (0.42%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.21%) Aviation
14 1 (0.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.21%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.10%) OAuth
1 10 (2.10%) OpenID
2 9 (1.89%) OAuth2
3 7 (1.47%) SAML
4 5 (1.05%) J2EE
4 5 (1.05%) JSP
4 5 (1.05%) JWT
4 5 (1.05%) Middleware
4 5 (1.05%) SailPoint
5 4 (0.84%) ADO
6 3 (0.63%) FastAPI
6 3 (0.63%) Flask
6 3 (0.63%) REST
7 2 (0.42%) A2A Protocol
7 2 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.42%) Hugging Face
7 2 (0.42%) LangChain
7 2 (0.42%) PyTorch
7 2 (0.42%) TensorFlow
8 1 (0.21%) IDoc
Miscellaneous
1 40 (8.39%) Security Posture
2 30 (6.29%) Cloud Native
3 28 (5.87%) Management Information System
3 28 (5.87%) Operational Technology
4 16 (3.35%) Onboarding
5 15 (3.14%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.52%) AI Agents
7 10 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (1.47%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.47%) Private Cloud
9 6 (1.26%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
10 5 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.84%) Autonomous Agent
11 4 (0.84%) Cloud Security Posture
11 4 (0.84%) PKI
11 4 (0.84%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.63%) Cyber Defence
12 3 (0.63%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.52%) Windows
2 11 (2.31%) Linux
3 4 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.63%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.42%) Android
5 2 (0.42%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.21%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.21%) Unix
6 1 (0.21%) VMS
6 1 (0.21%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.21%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (46.33%) Security Architecture
2 154 (32.29%) Cybersecurity
3 129 (27.04%) Threat Modelling
4 107 (22.43%) Cloud Security
5 92 (19.29%) Zero Trust
6 69 (14.47%) Risk Management
7 64 (13.42%) TOGAF
8 61 (12.79%) Architectural Patterns
9 58 (12.16%) SABSA
10 51 (10.69%) Identity Access Management
10 51 (10.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 49 (10.27%) Application Security
12 45 (9.43%) DevSecOps
12 45 (9.43%) SIEM
12 45 (9.43%) Vulnerability Management
13 40 (8.39%) Data Protection
13 40 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
14 39 (8.18%) Information Security
15 38 (7.97%) AI
15 38 (7.97%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 9 (1.89%) Java
2 7 (1.47%) Python
3 4 (0.84%) Bicep
3 4 (0.84%) SQL
4 3 (0.63%) JavaScript
5 2 (0.42%) C
5 2 (0.42%) Kotlin
5 2 (0.42%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.42%) Swift
6 1 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.21%) Lisp
6 1 (0.21%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.21%) ProC
6 1 (0.21%) RPG
6 1 (0.21%) VB
6 1 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 208 (43.61%) Security Cleared
2 137 (28.72%) SC Cleared
3 91 (19.08%) CISSP
4 56 (11.74%) DV Cleared
5 51 (10.69%) CISM
6 42 (8.81%) Cisco Certification
7 33 (6.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 26 (5.45%) Degree
9 21 (4.40%) CCSP
10 14 (2.94%) AWS Certification
11 12 (2.52%) Azure Certification
12 11 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
12 11 (2.31%) TOGAF Certification
13 10 (2.10%) CISA
13 10 (2.10%) GIAC
14 8 (1.68%) CCNP
14 8 (1.68%) SANS
15 7 (1.47%) CEH
16 5 (1.05%) CCIE
16 5 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (21.38%) NIST
2 69 (14.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 40 (8.39%) NCSC
4 35 (7.34%) GDPR
5 15 (3.14%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.94%) GRC
7 12 (2.52%) NIST 800
8 7 (1.47%) EU AI Act
8 7 (1.47%) RMADS
9 6 (1.26%) COBIT
9 6 (1.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.26%) JSP 440
10 5 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (1.05%) QA
11 4 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.63%) IFRS
12 3 (0.63%) IFRS 9
12 3 (0.63%) ISO 19650
12 3 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 3 (0.63%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (3.56%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.63%) Docker
2 3 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.42%) vSphere
4 1 (0.21%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.21%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.21%) Varnish
4 1 (0.21%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 23 (4.82%) Terraform
2 18 (3.77%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.26%) Ansible
4 3 (0.63%) SCCM
4 3 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.42%) Network Intrusion Detection System
5 2 (0.42%) QRadar
6 1 (0.21%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.21%) Istio
6 1 (0.21%) Kibana
6 1 (0.21%) logstash
6 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.21%) Nessus
6 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.21%) SELinux
Vendors
1 54 (11.32%) Microsoft
2 15 (3.14%) Splunk
3 12 (2.52%) SAP
4 11 (2.31%) Cisco
5 10 (2.10%) BiZZdesign
5 10 (2.10%) Okta
6 9 (1.89%) CheckPoint
6 9 (1.89%) Zscaler
7 8 (1.68%) Fortinet
7 8 (1.68%) Tenable
8 7 (1.47%) CyberArk
8 7 (1.47%) Palo Alto
8 7 (1.47%) ServiceNow
9 6 (1.26%) Sparx
10 5 (1.05%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.05%) F5
10 5 (1.05%) VMware
11 4 (0.84%) Google
11 4 (0.84%) Qualys
11 4 (0.84%) Red Hat