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 29 January 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 252 239 234
Rank change year-on-year -13 -5 +37
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Architect 407 338 439
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.07% 1.00%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.16% 1.16% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 222 341
10th Percentile £434 £489 £489
25th Percentile £512 £556 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -
75th Percentile £688 £750 £713
90th Percentile £744 £813 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £618 £660
% change year-on-year -2.83% -6.44% +1.54%
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 35,199 29,243 40,804
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.46% 92.89% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,208 17,871 27,021
10th Percentile £300 £293 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £495
% change year-on-year -0.47% -3.59% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,087 861 2,102
10th Percentile £14.41 £16.00 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.22
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.92% -13.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.51 £40.00
% change year-on-year -12.73% -21.23% +33.33%

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 29 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 29 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Technical Architect in the UK

Technical Architect
Top 14 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 29 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 -1 346 £600 -4.00% 104
UK excluding London +5 198 £600 -2.83% 100
London -11 143 £595 -8.54% 46
Work from Home -66 92 £575 -14.81% 63
North of England -37 49 £570 +1.51% 29
South East -29 46 £600 -3.42% 28
North West -1 40 £570 +14.00% 12
South West -2 37 £700 +12.00% 8
West Midlands -13 31 £485 -25.38% 9
Midlands -36 31 £485 -25.38% 9
East of England +3 24 £600 -4.00% 1
Yorkshire -47 9 £625 +11.31% 12
Wales +1 8 £550 +111.54% 8
Scotland -1 3 £550 -13.73% 15

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 196 (48.16%) Security Cleared
2 138 (33.91%) SC Cleared
3 107 (26.29%) AWS
4 98 (24.08%) Azure
5 71 (17.44%) Roadmaps
6 66 (16.22%) Agile
7 63 (15.48%) Technical Leadership
8 61 (14.99%) CI/CD
9 58 (14.25%) Microservices
10 54 (13.27%) Migration
10 54 (13.27%) Technical Architecture
11 51 (12.53%) DV Cleared
11 51 (12.53%) Microsoft
12 47 (11.55%) DevOps
13 42 (10.32%) Terraform
14 41 (10.07%) Stakeholder Management
15 40 (9.83%) TOGAF
16 38 (9.34%) ServiceNow
17 36 (8.85%) AI
17 36 (8.85%) Java
18 35 (8.60%) Mentoring
18 35 (8.60%) Problem-Solving
19 34 (8.35%) Kubernetes
19 34 (8.35%) Python
20 33 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
21 32 (7.86%) Serverless
22 31 (7.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 30 (7.37%) Data Modelling
24 29 (7.13%) Architectural Patterns
25 28 (6.88%) Containerisation

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 8 (1.97%) Confluence
2 7 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.72%) Skype for Business
3 6 (1.47%) CMS
4 4 (0.98%) nginx
4 4 (0.98%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.98%) Sitecore CMS
4 4 (0.98%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.74%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.49%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.49%) NetWeaver
6 2 (0.49%) SAP EP
6 2 (0.49%) SAS
7 1 (0.25%) Camunda
Applications
1 11 (2.70%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.25%) ArchiCAD
3 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.23%) Magento
2 2 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.49%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.25%) Endur
3 1 (0.25%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.25%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.25%) Shopify
3 1 (0.25%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 107 (26.29%) AWS
2 98 (24.08%) Azure
3 32 (7.86%) Serverless
4 25 (6.14%) GCP
5 22 (5.41%) AWS Lambda
6 15 (3.69%) GitHub
6 15 (3.69%) PaaS
7 14 (3.44%) Power Platform
8 13 (3.19%) SaaS
9 11 (2.70%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (2.46%) Route 53
11 9 (2.21%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (1.97%) Amazon SQS
12 8 (1.97%) Azure Key Vault
13 7 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (1.72%) Amazon EventBridge
13 7 (1.72%) Amazon S3
13 7 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.72%) IaaS
13 7 (1.72%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 22 (5.41%) WAN
2 20 (4.91%) Firewall
2 20 (4.91%) VPN
3 17 (4.18%) DNS
3 17 (4.18%) LAN
4 11 (2.70%) SAN
4 11 (2.70%) Wi-Fi
5 10 (2.46%) TCP/IP
6 7 (1.72%) DHCP
6 7 (1.72%) Network Security
6 7 (1.72%) SD-WAN
6 7 (1.72%) Skype
6 7 (1.72%) VLAN
7 5 (1.23%) Internet
8 4 (0.98%) OpenVPN
9 3 (0.74%) BGP
9 3 (0.74%) NAS
10 2 (0.49%) IPsec
10 2 (0.49%) OSPF
10 2 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
2 13 (3.19%) NoSQL
3 12 (2.95%) Redis
4 11 (2.70%) SQL Server
5 10 (2.46%) MySQL
5 10 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.46%) Relational Database
6 9 (2.21%) DynamoDB
6 9 (2.21%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (1.72%) Metadata
7 7 (1.72%) Power BI
8 6 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (1.23%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.23%) RDBMS
10 4 (0.98%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.74%) Data Hub
11 3 (0.74%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.49%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 14 (3.44%) Git
2 12 (2.95%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.70%) JIRA
4 10 (2.46%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.23%) Gradle
5 5 (1.23%) Maven
5 5 (1.23%) SonarLint
6 4 (0.98%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.74%) MLflow
8 2 (0.49%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.49%) GitLab
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
General
1 102 (25.06%) Social Skills
2 98 (24.08%) Public Sector
3 24 (5.90%) Finance
4 15 (3.69%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (3.19%) Military
5 13 (3.19%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (2.46%) Banking
7 9 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.72%) Marketing
9 6 (1.47%) Aerospace
9 6 (1.47%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.23%) Police
11 3 (0.74%) Local Government
12 2 (0.49%) Back Office
12 2 (0.49%) Law
12 2 (0.49%) Legal
12 2 (0.49%) Retail
13 1 (0.25%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.25%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (5.65%) .NET
2 16 (3.93%) REST
3 14 (3.44%) Middleware
4 12 (2.95%) RESTful
4 12 (2.95%) Spring Boot
5 10 (2.46%) SOAP
6 9 (2.21%) OpenID
7 8 (1.97%) AngularJS
7 8 (1.97%) Node.js
7 8 (1.97%) OAuth
7 8 (1.97%) OAuth2
8 7 (1.72%) J2EE
8 7 (1.72%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (1.47%) Celery
9 6 (1.47%) Dropwizard
9 6 (1.47%) JWT
9 6 (1.47%) Micronaut
9 6 (1.47%) PySpark
9 6 (1.47%) SAML
9 6 (1.47%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.39%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.18%) Legacy Systems
3 15 (3.69%) Data Centre
4 12 (2.95%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.46%) CMDB
6 9 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.97%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.47%) N-Tier
9 5 (1.23%) Client/Server
9 5 (1.23%) PKI
9 5 (1.23%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.98%) Onboarding
10 4 (0.98%) SCADA
11 3 (0.74%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 3 (0.74%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.74%) NHS
11 3 (0.74%) Replication
12 2 (0.49%) Greenfield Project
12 2 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 19 (4.67%) Windows
2 13 (3.19%) Linux
3 8 (1.97%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.72%) Windows 10
4 7 (1.72%) Windows 7
5 2 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.25%) Solaris
6 1 (0.25%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (17.44%) Roadmaps
2 66 (16.22%) Agile
3 63 (15.48%) Technical Leadership
4 61 (14.99%) CI/CD
5 58 (14.25%) Microservices
6 54 (13.27%) Migration
6 54 (13.27%) Technical Architecture
7 47 (11.55%) DevOps
8 41 (10.07%) Stakeholder Management
9 40 (9.83%) TOGAF
10 36 (8.85%) AI
11 35 (8.60%) Mentoring
11 35 (8.60%) Problem-Solving
12 33 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
13 31 (7.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 30 (7.37%) Data Modelling
15 29 (7.13%) Architectural Patterns
16 28 (6.88%) Containerisation
16 28 (6.88%) Design Patterns
17 25 (6.14%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 36 (8.85%) Java
2 34 (8.35%) Python
3 23 (5.65%) SQL
4 13 (3.19%) C#
5 11 (2.70%) PowerShell
6 10 (2.46%) Ruby
7 7 (1.72%) VB
7 7 (1.72%) VBScript
8 6 (1.47%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.47%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.23%) Bicep
9 5 (1.23%) PHP
10 3 (0.74%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.49%) ABAP
11 2 (0.49%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.25%) Bash
12 1 (0.25%) Go
Qualifications
1 196 (48.16%) Security Cleared
2 138 (33.91%) SC Cleared
3 51 (12.53%) DV Cleared
4 11 (2.70%) AWS Certification
5 10 (2.46%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.46%) Degree
5 10 (2.46%) TOGAF Certification
6 6 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.74%) CCNP
7 3 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.49%) CISSP
8 2 (0.49%) ISEB
8 2 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.25%) CCSE
9 1 (0.25%) JNCIE
9 1 (0.25%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.25%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.95%) NIST
2 9 (2.21%) Accessibility
3 7 (1.72%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.23%) Def Stans
4 5 (1.23%) NCSC
5 4 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.98%) GRC
6 3 (0.74%) GDPR
6 3 (0.74%) QA
7 2 (0.49%) COBIT
7 2 (0.49%) WCAG
8 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.25%) HL7
8 1 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.25%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 23 (5.65%) Docker
2 15 (3.69%) Active Directory
3 10 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.72%) BitLocker
5 5 (1.23%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (1.23%) Varnish
6 4 (0.98%) Squid
6 4 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.74%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.49%) RACF
8 2 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 42 (10.32%) Terraform
2 34 (8.35%) Kubernetes
3 12 (2.95%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (1.72%) Ansible
4 7 (1.72%) SCCM
5 5 (1.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (1.23%) FortiGate
5 5 (1.23%) Grafana
5 5 (1.23%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.98%) Consul
7 1 (0.25%) Data Guard
7 1 (0.25%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (12.53%) Microsoft
2 38 (9.34%) ServiceNow
3 21 (5.16%) VMware
4 17 (4.18%) MuleSoft
4 17 (4.18%) Oracle
5 15 (3.69%) SAP
6 13 (3.19%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.72%) Adobe
7 7 (1.72%) Cisco
7 7 (1.72%) Databricks
7 7 (1.72%) Zscaler
8 6 (1.47%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.47%) Gigya
8 6 (1.47%) Palo Alto
9 5 (1.23%) Google
9 5 (1.23%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.23%) Sitecore
10 4 (0.98%) Dynatrace
10 4 (0.98%) Meraki
10 4 (0.98%) Workday