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 4 August 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 225 238
Rank change year-on-year -4 +13 -5
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 616 378 408
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.15% 1.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.26% 1.26% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 238 237
10th Percentile £500 £509 £500
25th Percentile £544 £577 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £634 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -6.07% -3.57% +2.87%
75th Percentile £762 £750 £775
90th Percentile £848 £800 £830
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £673 £650
% change year-on-year -3.42% +3.54% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 9
10th Percentile £60.00 £86.00 £81.86
25th Percentile £65.75 £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 - £102.75 -
90th Percentile £83.50 £104.40 £87.47
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 48,942 30,093 36,428
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 91.45% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,465 19,115 23,531
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,396 1,494 2,063
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +78.93% -42.71% +17.07%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 -16 529 £650 -3.70% 259
London +5 262 £663 -1.85% 131
UK excluding London -7 258 £650 -3.42% 130
Work from Home +7 202 £600 -11.11% 118
South East -10 114 £650 +8.33% 52
North of England -37 64 £653 -6.71% 31
North West -27 50 £677 -3.36% 17
Midlands -25 46 £613 -23.44% 8
West Midlands -31 45 £613 -23.44% 6
South West -54 22 £614 -5.58% 16
Yorkshire -37 11 £650 +18.18% 14
East of England -13 7 £625 +25.00% 8
Scotland -13 5 £700 - 4
East Midlands - 1 - - 2
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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

For the 6 months to 4 August 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.

1 303 (49.19%) Security Architecture
2 283 (45.94%) Security Cleared
3 205 (33.28%) Cybersecurity
4 189 (30.68%) SC Cleared
5 183 (29.71%) Azure
6 168 (27.27%) Threat Modelling
7 157 (25.49%) Cloud Security
8 148 (24.03%) AWS
9 129 (20.94%) NIST
10 125 (20.29%) CISSP
11 99 (16.07%) Network Security
12 97 (15.75%) Zero Trust
13 92 (14.94%) Risk Management
14 89 (14.45%) AI
14 89 (14.45%) Architectural Patterns
14 89 (14.45%) Identity Access Management
15 88 (14.29%) DV Cleared
15 88 (14.29%) TOGAF
16 87 (14.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
17 80 (12.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 75 (12.18%) GCP
19 72 (11.69%) Roadmaps
20 71 (11.53%) SABSA
21 70 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
22 67 (10.88%) DevSecOps
23 62 (10.06%) CISM
23 62 (10.06%) Microsoft
24 60 (9.74%) CI/CD
24 60 (9.74%) NCSC
25 57 (9.25%) Enterprise Architecture

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 (1.14%) Confluence
2 4 (0.65%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.49%) nginx
4 2 (0.32%) SAS
5 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 4 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.16%) SAP EHS
2 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 183 (29.71%) Azure
2 148 (24.03%) AWS
3 75 (12.18%) GCP
4 37 (6.01%) Entra ID
5 23 (3.73%) Azure Sentinel
6 17 (2.76%) SaaS
7 10 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.30%) Azure Key Vault
9 6 (0.97%) GitHub
9 6 (0.97%) IaaS
10 5 (0.81%) Anthropic Claude
10 5 (0.81%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 5 (0.81%) Dynamics 365
10 5 (0.81%) Microsoft Purview
10 5 (0.81%) Vertex AI
11 4 (0.65%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (0.65%) AWS Control Tower
11 4 (0.65%) AWS KMS
11 4 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (0.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 99 (16.07%) Network Security
2 46 (7.47%) Firewall
3 14 (2.27%) VPN
4 12 (1.95%) WAN
5 9 (1.46%) SD-WAN
6 8 (1.30%) 4G
6 8 (1.30%) IPsec
7 7 (1.14%) LAN
7 7 (1.14%) VLAN
8 6 (0.97%) 5G
8 6 (0.97%) NGFW
8 6 (0.97%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.65%) BGP
9 4 (0.65%) Intranet
9 4 (0.65%) MPLS
9 4 (0.65%) OSPF
10 3 (0.49%) Cisco ASA
10 3 (0.49%) Internet
11 2 (0.32%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.32%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.30%) Data Lake
2 5 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.32%) Big Data
4 2 (0.32%) BigQuery
4 2 (0.32%) Metadata
5 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 9 (1.46%) Jenkins
1 9 (1.46%) JIRA
2 4 (0.65%) Snyk
3 3 (0.49%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) GitLab
General
1 109 (17.69%) Social Skills
2 76 (12.34%) Public Sector
3 71 (11.53%) Finance
4 34 (5.52%) Banking
5 25 (4.06%) Influencing Skills
6 22 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.41%) Analytical Skills
8 18 (2.92%) Legal
9 14 (2.27%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 10 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.30%) Aerospace
12 8 (1.30%) Military
12 8 (1.30%) Police
13 5 (0.81%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.81%) Retail
14 4 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.65%) Law
14 4 (0.65%) Local Government
15 2 (0.32%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.60%) OAuth
2 12 (1.95%) OAuth2
2 12 (1.95%) OpenID
3 10 (1.62%) SAML
4 6 (0.97%) REST
4 6 (0.97%) SLSA
5 5 (0.81%) Azure Blueprints
5 5 (0.81%) LangChain
5 5 (0.81%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.81%) SailPoint
6 4 (0.65%) Jakarta EE
6 4 (0.65%) JSP
6 4 (0.65%) JWT
6 4 (0.65%) ModSecurity
7 3 (0.49%) .NET
7 3 (0.49%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.49%) Flask
7 3 (0.49%) HTML
7 3 (0.49%) LDAP
7 3 (0.49%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 57 (9.25%) Security Posture
2 51 (8.28%) Cloud Native
3 35 (5.68%) Management Information System
3 35 (5.68%) Operational Technology
4 20 (3.25%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.76%) AI Agents
6 13 (2.11%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (1.95%) Enterprise Cloud
8 11 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
9 10 (1.62%) Data Centre
10 9 (1.46%) Cloud Security Posture
10 9 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.14%) Private Cloud
12 7 (1.14%) Public Cloud
13 6 (0.97%) Data Fabric
13 6 (0.97%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 6 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.81%) PKI
15 4 (0.65%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.95%) Linux
2 8 (1.30%) Windows
3 7 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (0.97%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.65%) Alpine Linux
5 4 (0.65%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.16%) Android
6 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 303 (49.19%) Security Architecture
2 205 (33.28%) Cybersecurity
3 168 (27.27%) Threat Modelling
4 157 (25.49%) Cloud Security
5 97 (15.75%) Zero Trust
6 92 (14.94%) Risk Management
7 89 (14.45%) AI
7 89 (14.45%) Architectural Patterns
7 89 (14.45%) Identity Access Management
8 88 (14.29%) TOGAF
9 80 (12.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (11.69%) Roadmaps
11 71 (11.53%) SABSA
12 70 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
13 67 (10.88%) DevSecOps
14 60 (9.74%) CI/CD
15 57 (9.25%) Enterprise Architecture
16 56 (9.09%) Data Protection
17 51 (8.28%) Information Security
17 51 (8.28%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 18 (2.92%) Python
2 10 (1.62%) Bicep
2 10 (1.62%) Java
3 8 (1.30%) PowerShell
4 6 (0.97%) JavaScript
5 4 (0.65%) SQL
6 3 (0.49%) Bash
6 3 (0.49%) Groovy
6 3 (0.49%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.16%) R
Qualifications
1 283 (45.94%) Security Cleared
2 189 (30.68%) SC Cleared
3 125 (20.29%) CISSP
4 88 (14.29%) DV Cleared
5 62 (10.06%) CISM
6 50 (8.12%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (6.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 31 (5.03%) CCSP
9 26 (4.22%) Degree
10 22 (3.57%) AWS Certification
11 18 (2.92%) TOGAF Certification
12 15 (2.44%) CISA
13 13 (2.11%) CEH
14 12 (1.95%) Azure Certification
15 11 (1.79%) SANS
16 10 (1.62%) GIAC
17 7 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
17 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (1.14%) OSCP
18 6 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 129 (20.94%) NIST
2 87 (14.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (9.74%) NCSC
4 45 (7.31%) GDPR
5 22 (3.57%) PCI DSS
6 21 (3.41%) GRC
6 21 (3.41%) NIST 800
7 10 (1.62%) Government Security Classifications
8 9 (1.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 8 (1.30%) EU AI Act
9 8 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (1.30%) JSP 440
10 7 (1.14%) COBIT
10 7 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.97%) ISO 19650
11 6 (0.97%) QA
11 6 (0.97%) RMADS
12 5 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.81%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 22 (3.57%) Active Directory
2 12 (1.95%) Docker
3 6 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.49%) vSphere
5 2 (0.32%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.16%) KVM
6 1 (0.16%) Varnish
6 1 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 30 (4.87%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.06%) Terraform
3 8 (1.30%) Ansible
4 4 (0.65%) QRadar
5 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.32%) CASB
6 2 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
6 2 (0.32%) Istio
6 2 (0.32%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.16%) Suricata
Vendors
1 62 (10.06%) Microsoft
2 19 (3.08%) Google
3 17 (2.76%) Palo Alto
4 16 (2.60%) Splunk
5 15 (2.44%) Okta
6 14 (2.27%) Cisco
6 14 (2.27%) Fortinet
7 12 (1.95%) SAP
8 10 (1.62%) Salesforce
8 10 (1.62%) Tenable
9 8 (1.30%) CrowdStrike
9 8 (1.30%) Qualys
9 8 (1.30%) Zscaler
10 7 (1.14%) CheckPoint
10 7 (1.14%) Databricks
11 6 (0.97%) BiZZdesign
11 6 (0.97%) VMware
12 5 (0.81%) ServiceNow
13 4 (0.65%) CyberArk
13 4 (0.65%) Rapid7