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 2 March 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 264 238 232
Rank change year-on-year -26 -6 +65
Contract jobs requiring a Security Architect 400 326 451
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.97% 1.08% 1.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.05% 1.16% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 262 243 275
10th Percentile £463 £550 £514
25th Percentile £521 £600 £603
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -3.57% -
75th Percentile £738 £767 £775
90th Percentile £786 £838 £856
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £650 £693
% change year-on-year -7.69% -6.14% +1.84%
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 38,005 28,021 41,486
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.82% 92.83% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,844 17,678 27,270
10th Percentile £310 £288 £275
25th Percentile £409 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £487
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.46% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,343 846 2,411
10th Percentile £14.82 £16.25 £13.05
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.50 £34.06 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year -1.63% -0.57% -14.38%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.74 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.38 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% -7.03%

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 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 2 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 -20 341 £630 -6.67% 107
UK excluding London -1 189 £600 -7.69% 70
London -30 156 £640 -5.26% 44
Work from Home -35 105 £613 -9.26% 43
South East -13 61 £650 +4.00% 25
North of England -18 59 £600 -10.28% 21
Midlands -36 38 £675 -3.57% 15
West Midlands -34 34 £675 -3.57% 11
Yorkshire -35 32 £525 -21.05% 3
North West -20 25 £701 +4.75% 18
Scotland +8 11 £700 +16.67%
South West -33 11 £588 -9.62% 9
Wales - 8 £738 -
East of England -23 6 £520 -
East Midlands - 4 £438 - 4
North East - 2 £545 -
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 -

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 171 (42.75%) Security Architecture
2 169 (42.25%) Security Cleared
3 141 (35.25%) Cybersecurity
4 119 (29.75%) SC Cleared
5 111 (27.75%) Azure
6 100 (25.00%) AWS
7 94 (23.50%) CISSP
8 92 (23.00%) Threat Modelling
9 87 (21.75%) Cloud Security
10 81 (20.25%) NIST
11 77 (19.25%) TOGAF
12 76 (19.00%) Zero Trust
13 75 (18.75%) Network Security
14 64 (16.00%) Risk Management
15 62 (15.50%) SABSA
16 59 (14.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
17 57 (14.25%) Firewall
18 55 (13.75%) Identity Access Management
19 54 (13.50%) CISM
20 52 (13.00%) SIEM
21 51 (12.75%) Microsoft
22 50 (12.50%) Vulnerability Management
23 47 (11.75%) Incident Response
24 46 (11.50%) DevSecOps
25 45 (11.25%) GCP
26 43 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
27 39 (9.75%) Architectural Patterns
28 38 (9.50%) DV Cleared
29 36 (9.00%) CI/CD
30 35 (8.75%) 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 19 (4.75%) Confluence
2 5 (1.25%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.00%) nginx
4 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.25%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.25%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.50%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.25%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.25%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.25%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.25%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 111 (27.75%) Azure
2 100 (25.00%) AWS
3 45 (11.25%) GCP
4 26 (6.50%) Entra ID
5 13 (3.25%) SaaS
6 11 (2.75%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 11 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
7 10 (2.50%) GitHub
8 9 (2.25%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (2.00%) Microsoft Purview
10 7 (1.75%) AWS KMS
11 6 (1.50%) PaaS
11 6 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 5 (1.25%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (1.00%) Akamai
13 4 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.00%) IaaS
14 3 (0.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 75 (18.75%) Network Security
2 57 (14.25%) Firewall
3 20 (5.00%) VPN
4 15 (3.75%) WAN
5 12 (3.00%) LAN
6 11 (2.75%) SD-WAN
7 7 (1.75%) DNS
7 7 (1.75%) IPsec
7 7 (1.75%) NGFW
8 6 (1.50%) BGP
8 6 (1.50%) OSPF
9 4 (1.00%) DHCP
9 4 (1.00%) MQTT
9 4 (1.00%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (1.00%) SSL
10 3 (0.75%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.75%) Cisco ASA
10 3 (0.75%) MPLS
10 3 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.50%) S/MIME
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.75%) BigQuery
1 3 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (0.50%) Data Lake
3 1 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (0.25%) Metadata
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 16 (4.00%) JIRA
2 6 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.75%) GitLab
3 3 (0.75%) Snyk
4 1 (0.25%) AppScan
4 1 (0.25%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.25%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.25%) Git
4 1 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 78 (19.50%) Social Skills
2 63 (15.75%) Public Sector
3 53 (13.25%) Finance
4 18 (4.50%) Banking
5 15 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.50%) Presentation Skills
7 10 (2.50%) Legal
8 8 (2.00%) Aerospace
8 8 (2.00%) Analytical Skills
9 6 (1.50%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.75%) Law
13 2 (0.50%) Military
13 2 (0.50%) Retail
13 2 (0.50%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.25%) Aviation
14 1 (0.25%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.25%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.25%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.75%) OAuth
1 11 (2.75%) SAML
2 10 (2.50%) OpenID
3 8 (2.00%) OAuth2
4 6 (1.50%) SailPoint
5 5 (1.25%) Middleware
6 4 (1.00%) ADO
6 4 (1.00%) JWT
6 4 (1.00%) REST
7 3 (0.75%) FastAPI
7 3 (0.75%) Flask
7 3 (0.75%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.50%) .NET
8 2 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.50%) Kafka
8 2 (0.50%) LDAP
9 1 (0.25%) IDoc
9 1 (0.25%) J2EE
9 1 (0.25%) OpenTelemetry
9 1 (0.25%) React
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.50%) Cloud Native
2 25 (6.25%) Security Posture
3 21 (5.25%) Operational Technology
4 19 (4.75%) Management Information System
5 17 (4.25%) Onboarding
6 13 (3.25%) Product Ownership
7 12 (3.00%) Data Centre
8 10 (2.50%) PKI
9 9 (2.25%) Hybrid Cloud
10 8 (2.00%) Private Cloud
11 7 (1.75%) Taxonomies
12 6 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.25%) SCADA
13 5 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
14 4 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (1.00%) Public Cloud
15 3 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
15 3 (0.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 3 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.25%) Windows
2 11 (2.75%) Linux
3 4 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.50%) Android
4 2 (0.50%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.50%) Unix
4 2 (0.50%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.25%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.25%) Windows 7
5 1 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (42.75%) Security Architecture
2 141 (35.25%) Cybersecurity
3 92 (23.00%) Threat Modelling
4 87 (21.75%) Cloud Security
5 77 (19.25%) TOGAF
6 76 (19.00%) Zero Trust
7 64 (16.00%) Risk Management
8 62 (15.50%) SABSA
9 55 (13.75%) Identity Access Management
10 52 (13.00%) SIEM
11 50 (12.50%) Vulnerability Management
12 47 (11.75%) Incident Response
13 46 (11.50%) DevSecOps
14 43 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 39 (9.75%) Architectural Patterns
16 36 (9.00%) CI/CD
17 35 (8.75%) Network Segmentation
18 33 (8.25%) Application Security
19 32 (8.00%) Information Security
20 31 (7.75%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.50%) Python
2 8 (2.00%) Java
3 4 (1.00%) JavaScript
4 3 (0.75%) Bicep
4 3 (0.75%) PowerShell
4 3 (0.75%) SQL
5 2 (0.50%) C
5 2 (0.50%) Kotlin
5 2 (0.50%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.50%) Swift
6 1 (0.25%) Bash
6 1 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.25%) Lisp
6 1 (0.25%) ProC
6 1 (0.25%) R
6 1 (0.25%) RPG
6 1 (0.25%) VB
6 1 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 169 (42.25%) Security Cleared
2 119 (29.75%) SC Cleared
3 94 (23.50%) CISSP
4 54 (13.50%) CISM
5 38 (9.50%) DV Cleared
6 34 (8.50%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (7.25%) Degree
8 23 (5.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (4.25%) AWS Certification
9 17 (4.25%) TOGAF Certification
10 15 (3.75%) CCSP
11 10 (2.50%) CCNP
12 9 (2.25%) CCIE
12 9 (2.25%) GIAC
13 8 (2.00%) Azure Certification
14 7 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
14 7 (1.75%) Master's Degree
15 6 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
16 5 (1.25%) PhD
16 5 (1.25%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (20.25%) NIST
2 59 (14.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (7.75%) NCSC
4 26 (6.50%) GDPR
5 19 (4.75%) PCI DSS
6 8 (2.00%) GRC
6 8 (2.00%) JSP 440
6 8 (2.00%) NIST 800
7 7 (1.75%) Cyber Essentials
7 7 (1.75%) EU AI Act
8 6 (1.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 4 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.75%) COBIT
10 3 (0.75%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.75%) PSD2
10 3 (0.75%) RMADS
10 3 (0.75%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.50%) QA
System Software
1 14 (3.50%) Active Directory
2 4 (1.00%) Docker
3 1 (0.25%) BitLocker
3 1 (0.25%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.25%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 24 (6.00%) Terraform
2 18 (4.50%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.00%) Ansible
4 7 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.75%) FortiGate
5 3 (0.75%) SCCM
6 2 (0.50%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.25%) Kibana
7 1 (0.25%) logstash
7 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.25%) Nessus
7 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.25%) SELinux
Vendors
1 51 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 20 (5.00%) CyberArk
2 20 (5.00%) Splunk
3 19 (4.75%) BiZZdesign
4 15 (3.75%) Cisco
5 12 (3.00%) CheckPoint
6 11 (2.75%) Centrify
6 11 (2.75%) Palo Alto
7 10 (2.50%) Fortinet
7 10 (2.50%) Zscaler
8 7 (1.75%) F5
8 7 (1.75%) Google
8 7 (1.75%) Okta
8 7 (1.75%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.75%) Tenable
8 7 (1.75%) Virgin Media
9 6 (1.50%) Cribl.io
9 6 (1.50%) Sparx
10 4 (1.00%) Red Hat
10 4 (1.00%) Thycotic