Technical Architect Contract Job Trends

Technical Architect
UK

The median Technical Architect daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 January 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 266 248 230
Rank change year-on-year -18 -18 +49
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Architect 378 326 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.02% 1.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.11% 1.10% 1.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 249 220 338
10th Percentile £425 £483 £491
25th Percentile £506 £550 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - +0.31%
75th Percentile £700 £750 £710
90th Percentile £750 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £618 £650
% change year-on-year -2.83% -5.00% +2.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 1
10th Percentile £65.00 - -
25th Percentile £80.00 - -
Median hourly rate £90.00 - £78.00
75th Percentile £95.63 - -
90th Percentile £100.05 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 - £78.00

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 33,987 29,559 39,694
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.39% 92.78% 93.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,524 18,135 26,394
10th Percentile £300 £288 £280
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,986 889 1,685
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.61 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.22 £18.93
Median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.46% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.52 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.21% -29.96% +53.85%

Technical Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Technical Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Technical Architect job vacancy trend in the UK

Technical Architect
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Technical Architect job vacancies in the UK

Technical Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Architect over the 6 months to 16 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Architect in the UK

Technical Architect
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Technical Architect job vacancies in the UK

Technical Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Technical Architect over the 6 months to 16 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Technical Architect in the UK

Technical 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 Technical Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 16 January 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 +2 325 £600 -4.00% 88
UK excluding London +7 187 £600 -2.83% 74
London +1 136 £615 -1.60% 31
Work from Home -67 91 £604 -10.47% 20
North of England -23 51 £570 +13.94% 13
South East -19 44 £600 -2.44% 22
North West +5 41 £570 +14.00% 7
Midlands -23 33 £450 -30.77% 11
West Midlands -15 32 £478 -26.54% 6
South West -11 29 £710 +13.60% 13
East of England -5 21 £550 -12.00% 6
Yorkshire -47 10 £581 +3.52% 5
Wales +4 7 £550 +111.54% 5
Scotland -5 2 £636 -15.17% 1
East Midlands -27 1 £450 -21.74% 5

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

For the 6 months to 16 January 2026, Technical 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 Technical Architect in the job title.

1 178 (47.09%) Security Cleared
2 125 (33.07%) SC Cleared
3 99 (26.19%) Azure
4 95 (25.13%) AWS
5 70 (18.52%) Roadmaps
6 65 (17.20%) Agile
7 63 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
8 55 (14.55%) CI/CD
9 52 (13.76%) Microservices
9 52 (13.76%) Technical Architecture
10 51 (13.49%) Microsoft
10 51 (13.49%) Migration
11 49 (12.96%) DV Cleared
12 39 (10.32%) DevOps
12 39 (10.32%) Terraform
13 38 (10.05%) Mentoring
14 37 (9.79%) TOGAF
15 34 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
16 33 (8.73%) AI
16 33 (8.73%) Java
17 32 (8.47%) Data Modelling
17 32 (8.47%) Python
18 31 (8.20%) Kubernetes
18 31 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 30 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
19 30 (7.94%) Serverless
19 30 (7.94%) ServiceNow
20 29 (7.67%) Architectural Patterns
20 29 (7.67%) Containerisation
20 29 (7.67%) Integration Patterns

Technical 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 5 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (1.32%) Skype for Business
2 4 (1.06%) Anypoint
3 3 (0.79%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.53%) CMS
4 2 (0.53%) Confluence
4 2 (0.53%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.53%) NetWeaver
4 2 (0.53%) SAP EP
4 2 (0.53%) SAS
5 1 (0.26%) Camunda
5 1 (0.26%) Mule
5 1 (0.26%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 9 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.79%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.26%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 4 (1.06%) Magento
2 2 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.53%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.26%) Endur
3 1 (0.26%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.26%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.26%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.26%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.26%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.26%) Shopify
3 1 (0.26%) Summit
3 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 99 (26.19%) Azure
2 95 (25.13%) AWS
3 30 (7.94%) Serverless
4 23 (6.08%) GCP
5 20 (5.29%) AWS Lambda
6 16 (4.23%) GitHub
7 15 (3.97%) Power Platform
8 13 (3.44%) PaaS
9 12 (3.17%) SaaS
10 11 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
10 11 (2.91%) Microsoft 365
11 9 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (2.12%) Amazon SQS
12 8 (2.12%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (2.12%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (1.85%) Amazon EventBridge
13 7 (1.85%) Azure AKS
13 7 (1.85%) Route 53
14 6 (1.59%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (5.03%) WAN
2 15 (3.97%) Firewall
3 14 (3.70%) LAN
3 14 (3.70%) VPN
4 11 (2.91%) DNS
4 11 (2.91%) SAN
5 9 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (1.59%) SD-WAN
6 6 (1.59%) TCP/IP
7 5 (1.32%) DHCP
7 5 (1.32%) Internet
7 5 (1.32%) Skype
7 5 (1.32%) VLAN
8 4 (1.06%) Network Security
9 3 (0.79%) NAS
9 3 (0.79%) Reverse Proxy
10 2 (0.53%) BGP
11 1 (0.26%) BIG-IP
11 1 (0.26%) IPsec
11 1 (0.26%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (2.91%) Redis
3 10 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (2.38%) DynamoDB
4 9 (2.38%) MySQL
4 9 (2.38%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.38%) Relational Database
5 8 (2.12%) Metadata
6 7 (1.85%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (1.85%) Power BI
7 6 (1.59%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (1.32%) BigQuery
8 5 (1.32%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.32%) SQL Server
9 4 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (0.79%) Data Hub
10 3 (0.79%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.53%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.53%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (3.97%) Git
2 13 (3.44%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.38%) JIRA
4 6 (1.59%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.32%) Gradle
5 5 (1.32%) Maven
5 5 (1.32%) SonarLint
6 3 (0.79%) GitLab
6 3 (0.79%) MLflow
7 2 (0.53%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle APEX
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
General
1 94 (24.87%) Public Sector
2 93 (24.60%) Social Skills
3 27 (7.14%) Finance
4 12 (3.17%) Presentation Skills
5 11 (2.91%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (2.91%) Military
6 9 (2.38%) Banking
6 9 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.12%) Marketing
8 6 (1.59%) Aerospace
8 6 (1.59%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.32%) Police
10 4 (1.06%) Local Government
11 2 (0.53%) Back Office
11 2 (0.53%) Billing
11 2 (0.53%) Law
11 2 (0.53%) Legal
11 2 (0.53%) Retail
12 1 (0.26%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.03%) .NET
2 14 (3.70%) Middleware
3 13 (3.44%) REST
3 13 (3.44%) Spring Boot
4 12 (3.17%) RESTful
5 10 (2.65%) SOAP
6 8 (2.12%) J2EE
7 7 (1.85%) GraphQL
7 7 (1.85%) OAuth
7 7 (1.85%) OAuth2
7 7 (1.85%) Spring
8 6 (1.59%) Celery
8 6 (1.59%) Dropwizard
8 6 (1.59%) JWT
8 6 (1.59%) Lightning Web Components
8 6 (1.59%) Micronaut
8 6 (1.59%) RabbitMQ
9 5 (1.32%) .NET Core
9 5 (1.32%) SAML
10 4 (1.06%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.88%) Cloud Native
2 16 (4.23%) Data Centre
3 15 (3.97%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (3.70%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.12%) CMDB
5 8 (2.12%) Operational Technology
6 6 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (1.59%) N-Tier
7 5 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.32%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.32%) PKI
8 4 (1.06%) Client/Server
8 4 (1.06%) NHS
8 4 (1.06%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.06%) SCADA
9 3 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.79%) Management Information System
9 3 (0.79%) Replication
9 3 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.53%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 16 (4.23%) Windows
2 11 (2.91%) Linux
3 5 (1.32%) Windows 10
3 5 (1.32%) Windows 7
3 5 (1.32%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.26%) Solaris
5 1 (0.26%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (18.52%) Roadmaps
2 65 (17.20%) Agile
3 63 (16.67%) Technical Leadership
4 55 (14.55%) CI/CD
5 52 (13.76%) Microservices
5 52 (13.76%) Technical Architecture
6 51 (13.49%) Migration
7 39 (10.32%) DevOps
8 38 (10.05%) Mentoring
9 37 (9.79%) TOGAF
10 34 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
11 33 (8.73%) AI
12 32 (8.47%) Data Modelling
13 31 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 30 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
15 29 (7.67%) Architectural Patterns
15 29 (7.67%) Containerisation
15 29 (7.67%) Integration Patterns
16 28 (7.41%) Problem-Solving
17 26 (6.88%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 33 (8.73%) Java
2 32 (8.47%) Python
3 23 (6.08%) SQL
4 10 (2.65%) C#
5 9 (2.38%) PowerShell
5 9 (2.38%) Ruby
6 7 (1.85%) Apex Code
7 6 (1.59%) Bicep
7 6 (1.59%) TypeScript
8 5 (1.32%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.32%) VB
8 5 (1.32%) VBScript
9 4 (1.06%) PHP
10 3 (0.79%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.53%) ABAP
12 1 (0.26%) Bash
12 1 (0.26%) Go
12 1 (0.26%) SOQL
12 1 (0.26%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 178 (47.09%) Security Cleared
2 125 (33.07%) SC Cleared
3 49 (12.96%) DV Cleared
4 11 (2.91%) Degree
5 10 (2.65%) AWS Certification
5 10 (2.65%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.65%) TOGAF Certification
6 8 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.53%) CCNP
9 2 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.53%) CISSP
10 1 (0.26%) CCIE
10 1 (0.26%) CCSE
10 1 (0.26%) ISEB
10 1 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.26%) JNCIE
10 1 (0.26%) JNCIP
10 1 (0.26%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.91%) NIST
2 8 (2.12%) Data Quality
3 6 (1.59%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.32%) Def Stans
5 4 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (1.06%) GDPR
5 4 (1.06%) NCSC
5 4 (1.06%) QA
6 3 (0.79%) GRC
7 2 (0.53%) HL7
7 2 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.53%) WCAG
8 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.26%) COBIT
8 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.26%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 25 (6.61%) Docker
2 14 (3.70%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.32%) BitLocker
5 4 (1.06%) Varnish
5 4 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.79%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.26%) RACF
8 1 (0.26%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 39 (10.32%) Terraform
2 31 (8.20%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (1.32%) Ansible
4 5 (1.32%) SCCM
5 2 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (0.53%) Grafana
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Clustering
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (0.53%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.26%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.26%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 30 (7.94%) ServiceNow
3 18 (4.76%) MuleSoft
3 18 (4.76%) Salesforce
4 17 (4.50%) SAP
4 17 (4.50%) VMware
5 12 (3.17%) Oracle
6 7 (1.85%) Cisco
6 7 (1.85%) Databricks
7 6 (1.59%) Adobe
7 6 (1.59%) Gigya
7 6 (1.59%) Google
7 6 (1.59%) Palo Alto
8 5 (1.32%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.32%) Workday
8 5 (1.32%) Zscaler
9 4 (1.06%) Ariba
9 4 (1.06%) ForgeRock
9 4 (1.06%) Meraki
10 3 (0.79%) NetApp