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 18 March 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 242 224
Rank change year-on-year -13 -18 +81
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 433 327 455
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 1.12% 1.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.20% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 271 253 276
10th Percentile £463 £550 £519
25th Percentile £513 £600 £608
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £766 £775
90th Percentile £788 £838 £846
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £650 £685
% change year-on-year -5.77% -5.11% +0.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 12
10th Percentile £79.75 - -
25th Percentile £82.63 £68.26 £81.88
Median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £85.38
Median % change year-on-year +15.95% -14.14% +21.98%
75th Percentile £89.38 £78.36 £87.53
90th Percentile £94.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £73.31 £85.38
% change year-on-year +15.95% -14.14% +21.98%

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 39,756 27,258 41,316
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.88% 92.98% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,823 17,712 27,111
10th Percentile £313 £300 £273
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.02%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,465 888 2,497
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.25 £12.96
25th Percentile £19.10 £21.04 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.91 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.49% - -23.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £75.92 £77.28 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -18.75%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 -26 369 £625 -7.41% 107
UK excluding London -3 210 £613 -5.77% 77
London -19 164 £630 -6.67% 41
Work from Home -18 126 £600 -11.11% 47
North of England -7 73 £613 -6.67% 26
South East -18 71 £632 +1.12% 24
North West -9 38 £701 +5.74% 16
Midlands -40 35 £675 -3.57% 9
Yorkshire -32 33 £537 -19.25% 7
West Midlands -39 32 £675 -3.57% 9
Scotland +6 12 £700 +16.67% 2
South West -44 10 £588 -9.62% 11
East of England -17 6 £520 - 2
Wales - 6 - - 3
East Midlands - 3 £438 -
North East -10 2 £545 -12.80% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 -

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

For the 6 months to 18 March 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.

1 185 (42.73%) Security Architecture
2 183 (42.26%) Security Cleared
3 146 (33.72%) Cybersecurity
4 123 (28.41%) SC Cleared
5 121 (27.94%) Azure
6 106 (24.48%) AWS
7 103 (23.79%) Threat Modelling
8 98 (22.63%) Cloud Security
9 97 (22.40%) CISSP
10 89 (20.55%) NIST
11 82 (18.94%) Network Security
12 78 (18.01%) Zero Trust
13 74 (17.09%) TOGAF
14 67 (15.47%) SABSA
15 66 (15.24%) Risk Management
16 64 (14.78%) CISM
17 63 (14.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
18 56 (12.93%) Identity Access Management
19 54 (12.47%) GCP
20 52 (12.01%) Architectural Patterns
20 52 (12.01%) Firewall
21 50 (11.55%) DevSecOps
21 50 (11.55%) Microsoft
21 50 (11.55%) Vulnerability Management
22 48 (11.09%) SIEM
23 46 (10.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
24 45 (10.39%) DV Cleared
24 45 (10.39%) Incident Response
25 37 (8.55%) CI/CD
25 37 (8.55%) NCSC

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 19 (4.39%) Confluence
2 5 (1.15%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.92%) nginx
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.23%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.23%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.46%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.23%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.23%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.23%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.23%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 121 (27.94%) Azure
2 106 (24.48%) AWS
3 54 (12.47%) GCP
4 27 (6.24%) Entra ID
5 14 (3.23%) SaaS
6 11 (2.54%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 11 (2.54%) Azure Sentinel
6 11 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
7 8 (1.85%) AWS KMS
7 8 (1.85%) GitHub
8 6 (1.39%) IaaS
8 6 (1.39%) PaaS
8 6 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 5 (1.15%) Amazon ECS
9 5 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (1.15%) Microsoft Purview
10 4 (0.92%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (0.69%) Akamai
11 3 (0.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 82 (18.94%) Network Security
2 52 (12.01%) Firewall
3 16 (3.70%) VPN
4 15 (3.46%) WAN
5 12 (2.77%) LAN
6 11 (2.54%) SD-WAN
7 7 (1.62%) IPsec
8 6 (1.39%) BGP
8 6 (1.39%) OSPF
9 5 (1.15%) DNS
10 4 (0.92%) DHCP
10 4 (0.92%) MQTT
10 4 (0.92%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.92%) SSL
11 3 (0.69%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.69%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (0.69%) MPLS
11 3 (0.69%) NGFW
11 3 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.46%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (0.69%) BigQuery
2 3 (0.69%) Data Lake
2 3 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (0.46%) Metadata
4 1 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.23%) Big Data
4 1 (0.23%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 16 (3.70%) JIRA
2 5 (1.15%) Jenkins
3 4 (0.92%) Snyk
4 3 (0.69%) GitLab
5 1 (0.23%) AppScan
5 1 (0.23%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.23%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.23%) Git
5 1 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 88 (20.32%) Social Skills
2 64 (14.78%) Public Sector
3 63 (14.55%) Finance
4 19 (4.39%) Banking
5 17 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (3.70%) Presentation Skills
7 14 (3.23%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (2.31%) Aerospace
9 9 (2.08%) Legal
10 8 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.69%) Law
14 2 (0.46%) Military
14 2 (0.46%) Retail
14 2 (0.46%) Retail Banking
15 1 (0.23%) Investment Banking
15 1 (0.23%) Manufacturing
15 1 (0.23%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.23%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.54%) OAuth
1 11 (2.54%) SAML
2 10 (2.31%) OpenID
3 8 (1.85%) OAuth2
4 6 (1.39%) SailPoint
5 5 (1.15%) Middleware
6 4 (0.92%) ADO
6 4 (0.92%) JWT
7 3 (0.69%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.69%) Flask
7 3 (0.69%) ModSecurity
7 3 (0.69%) REST
8 2 (0.46%) .NET
8 2 (0.46%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.46%) LDAP
9 1 (0.23%) J2EE
9 1 (0.23%) JSP
9 1 (0.23%) SOAP
9 1 (0.23%) STL
9 1 (0.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 33 (7.62%) Cloud Native
1 33 (7.62%) Security Posture
2 21 (4.85%) Management Information System
3 19 (4.39%) Operational Technology
4 16 (3.70%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.23%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.54%) Product Ownership
7 8 (1.85%) PKI
7 8 (1.85%) Private Cloud
8 7 (1.62%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (1.62%) Taxonomies
9 6 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.39%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.15%) AI Agents
11 4 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (0.92%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.69%) Cyber Defence
12 3 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.00%) Windows
2 12 (2.77%) Linux
3 4 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.69%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.46%) Android
5 2 (0.46%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.23%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.23%) Unix
6 1 (0.23%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.23%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.23%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (42.73%) Security Architecture
2 146 (33.72%) Cybersecurity
3 103 (23.79%) Threat Modelling
4 98 (22.63%) Cloud Security
5 78 (18.01%) Zero Trust
6 74 (17.09%) TOGAF
7 67 (15.47%) SABSA
8 66 (15.24%) Risk Management
9 56 (12.93%) Identity Access Management
10 52 (12.01%) Architectural Patterns
11 50 (11.55%) DevSecOps
11 50 (11.55%) Vulnerability Management
12 48 (11.09%) SIEM
13 46 (10.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 45 (10.39%) Incident Response
15 37 (8.55%) CI/CD
15 37 (8.55%) Network Segmentation
16 35 (8.08%) Application Security
16 35 (8.08%) Information Security
17 32 (7.39%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 9 (2.08%) Python
2 8 (1.85%) Java
3 5 (1.15%) Bicep
4 4 (0.92%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.92%) SQL
5 3 (0.69%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.46%) C
6 2 (0.46%) Kotlin
6 2 (0.46%) PL/SQL
6 2 (0.46%) Swift
7 1 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.23%) Lisp
7 1 (0.23%) ProC
7 1 (0.23%) RPG
7 1 (0.23%) VB
7 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 183 (42.26%) Security Cleared
2 123 (28.41%) SC Cleared
3 97 (22.40%) CISSP
4 64 (14.78%) CISM
5 45 (10.39%) DV Cleared
6 36 (8.31%) Cisco Certification
7 33 (7.62%) Degree
8 27 (6.24%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (3.93%) CCSP
10 16 (3.70%) AWS Certification
10 16 (3.70%) TOGAF Certification
11 9 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (1.85%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.85%) CCNP
12 8 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.85%) GIAC
12 8 (1.85%) Master's Degree
13 7 (1.62%) CCIE
14 6 (1.39%) CEH
15 5 (1.15%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (20.55%) NIST
2 63 (14.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (8.55%) NCSC
4 35 (8.08%) GDPR
5 22 (5.08%) PCI DSS
6 9 (2.08%) NIST 800
7 8 (1.85%) EU AI Act
8 7 (1.62%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.62%) GRC
8 7 (1.62%) JSP 440
9 6 (1.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (1.15%) COBIT
10 5 (1.15%) RMADS
11 4 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.69%) Def Stans
12 3 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.69%) PSD2
12 3 (0.69%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.46%) HIPAA
System Software
1 16 (3.70%) Active Directory
2 4 (0.92%) Docker
3 2 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.46%) vSphere
4 1 (0.23%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.23%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.23%) Varnish
4 1 (0.23%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 24 (5.54%) Terraform
2 19 (4.39%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.62%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (1.39%) Ansible
5 3 (0.69%) SCCM
6 2 (0.46%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.23%) Kibana
7 1 (0.23%) logstash
7 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.23%) Nessus
7 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.23%) SELinux
Vendors
1 50 (11.55%) Microsoft
2 19 (4.39%) BiZZdesign
2 19 (4.39%) CyberArk
3 18 (4.16%) Splunk
4 15 (3.46%) Cisco
5 11 (2.54%) Centrify
5 11 (2.54%) Zscaler
6 10 (2.31%) CheckPoint
6 10 (2.31%) Fortinet
7 9 (2.08%) Palo Alto
8 8 (1.85%) Okta
8 8 (1.85%) Tenable
9 7 (1.62%) ServiceNow
10 6 (1.39%) F5
10 6 (1.39%) Google
10 6 (1.39%) Sparx
11 5 (1.15%) Cribl.io
11 5 (1.15%) Virgin Media
11 5 (1.15%) VMware
12 4 (0.92%) Red Hat