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 7 January 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 263 240 225
Rank change year-on-year -23 -15 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Architect 373 333 457
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.03% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.10% 1.11% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 244 221 342
10th Percentile £432 £463 £500
25th Percentile £507 £550 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £646 £644
Median % change year-on-year -7.12% +0.35% -0.96%
75th Percentile £700 £750 £712
90th Percentile £749 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £622 £650
% change year-on-year -3.56% -4.29% +4.00%
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 33,792 29,885 39,768
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.29% 92.67% 93.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,415 18,301 26,575
10th Percentile £300 £293 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £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 £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 924 1,607
10th Percentile £14.32 £15.56 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.78 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.60% -26.97% +36.75%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -20.16% -31.34% +69.89%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -4 311 £600 -4.00% 117
UK excluding London -12 186 £600 -3.56% 96
London -11 135 £615 -1.60% 38
Work from Home -52 95 £604 -7.67% 29
North of England -29 49 £563 +12.50% 26
South East -22 41 £600 -2.44% 29
North West -6 38 £563 +12.50% 14
South West -4 28 £710 +13.60% 12
Midlands -26 26 £449 -31.00% 15
West Midlands -21 25 £447 -31.23% 9
East of England -7 22 £553 -11.60% 10
Scotland -4 12 £723 -3.67% 1
Yorkshire -45 11 £581 +3.52% 9
Wales +3 8 £588 +117.59% 6
East Midlands -26 1 £450 -21.74% 6

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

For the 6 months to 7 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.

1 175 (46.92%) Security Cleared
2 122 (32.71%) SC Cleared
3 110 (29.49%) AWS
4 98 (26.27%) Azure
5 82 (21.98%) Roadmaps
6 72 (19.30%) CI/CD
7 63 (16.89%) Agile
8 59 (15.82%) Technical Leadership
9 56 (15.01%) Terraform
10 54 (14.48%) Microservices
11 52 (13.94%) Technical Architecture
12 48 (12.87%) Migration
13 46 (12.33%) Kubernetes
14 45 (12.06%) Infrastructure as Code
14 45 (12.06%) Microsoft
15 43 (11.53%) DV Cleared
16 42 (11.26%) DevOps
17 37 (9.92%) Mentoring
17 37 (9.92%) TOGAF
18 36 (9.65%) Java
19 35 (9.38%) Containerisation
20 34 (9.12%) Data Modelling
21 33 (8.85%) Serverless
22 32 (8.58%) Python
22 32 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 32 (8.58%) Stakeholder Management
23 30 (8.04%) AI
23 30 (8.04%) Docker
24 29 (7.77%) GitHub
24 29 (7.77%) Problem-Solving

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 11 (2.95%) WebLogic
2 4 (1.07%) Anypoint
3 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.80%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.80%) Skype for Business
4 2 (0.54%) CMS
4 2 (0.54%) Confluence
4 2 (0.54%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.54%) NetWeaver
4 2 (0.54%) SAP EP
4 2 (0.54%) SAS
5 1 (0.27%) Camunda
5 1 (0.27%) Mule
5 1 (0.27%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 7 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.27%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 3 (0.80%) Magento
2 2 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.54%) Endur
2 2 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.54%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.27%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.27%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.27%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.27%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.27%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.27%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.27%) Shopify
3 1 (0.27%) Summit
3 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.27%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 110 (29.49%) AWS
2 98 (26.27%) Azure
3 33 (8.85%) Serverless
4 29 (7.77%) GitHub
5 24 (6.43%) GCP
6 22 (5.90%) AWS Lambda
7 18 (4.83%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (3.75%) Power Platform
9 12 (3.22%) Amazon ECS
9 12 (3.22%) PaaS
10 11 (2.95%) AWS CloudFormation
10 11 (2.95%) SaaS
11 10 (2.68%) Azure Key Vault
11 10 (2.68%) Entra ID
11 10 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
12 9 (2.41%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (2.41%) Amazon SQS
13 8 (2.14%) Route 53
14 7 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.88%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 19 (5.09%) WAN
2 17 (4.56%) Firewall
3 15 (4.02%) VPN
4 13 (3.49%) LAN
5 11 (2.95%) SAN
6 9 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (2.14%) DNS
8 7 (1.88%) SD-WAN
9 6 (1.61%) TCP/IP
10 5 (1.34%) Internet
11 4 (1.07%) Network Security
12 3 (0.80%) DHCP
12 3 (0.80%) NAS
12 3 (0.80%) Reverse Proxy
12 3 (0.80%) Skype
12 3 (0.80%) VLAN
13 2 (0.54%) BGP
13 2 (0.54%) VSAN
14 1 (0.27%) Ethernet VPN
14 1 (0.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
1 16 (4.29%) SQL Server
2 10 (2.68%) Oracle Database
2 10 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (2.68%) Redis
3 9 (2.41%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (2.41%) DynamoDB
3 9 (2.41%) NoSQL
4 8 (2.14%) Metadata
4 8 (2.14%) MySQL
4 8 (2.14%) Relational Database
5 7 (1.88%) Power BI
6 6 (1.61%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (1.61%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.34%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.34%) RDBMS
8 3 (0.80%) Data Hub
8 3 (0.80%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.80%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 16 (4.29%) Git
2 14 (3.75%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.95%) CircleCI
4 10 (2.68%) Oracle Forms
5 9 (2.41%) JIRA
6 6 (1.61%) SonarQube
7 5 (1.34%) Gradle
7 5 (1.34%) Maven
7 5 (1.34%) SonarLint
8 4 (1.07%) GitLab
9 3 (0.80%) MLflow
10 2 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
General
1 94 (25.20%) Public Sector
2 90 (24.13%) Social Skills
3 28 (7.51%) Finance
4 12 (3.22%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (2.95%) Military
5 11 (2.95%) Presentation Skills
6 9 (2.41%) Banking
7 8 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.14%) Marketing
8 7 (1.88%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.61%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.07%) Local Government
11 3 (0.80%) Back Office
12 2 (0.54%) Billing
12 2 (0.54%) Legal
12 2 (0.54%) Retail
13 1 (0.27%) Aviation
13 1 (0.27%) French Language
13 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.09%) .NET
2 14 (3.75%) Middleware
2 14 (3.75%) Spring Boot
3 13 (3.49%) RESTful
4 12 (3.22%) REST
5 9 (2.41%) SOAP
6 8 (2.14%) GraphQL
6 8 (2.14%) J2EE
6 8 (2.14%) Spring
7 7 (1.88%) JWT
7 7 (1.88%) OAuth
7 7 (1.88%) OAuth2
8 6 (1.61%) Celery
8 6 (1.61%) Dropwizard
8 6 (1.61%) Lightning Web Components
8 6 (1.61%) Micronaut
8 6 (1.61%) Node.js
9 5 (1.34%) .NET Core
9 5 (1.34%) RabbitMQ
10 4 (1.07%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.97%) Cloud Native
2 23 (6.17%) Legacy Systems
3 18 (4.83%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.29%) Data Centre
5 8 (2.14%) CMDB
5 8 (2.14%) Operational Technology
6 6 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (1.61%) N-Tier
6 6 (1.61%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.34%) PKI
8 4 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (1.07%) NHS
8 4 (1.07%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.07%) SCADA
9 3 (0.80%) Client/Server
9 3 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.80%) Replication
9 3 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.54%) Grid Computing
Operating Systems
1 14 (3.75%) Windows
2 10 (2.68%) Linux
3 5 (1.34%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.80%) Windows 10
4 3 (0.80%) Windows 7
5 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.27%) Android
6 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (21.98%) Roadmaps
2 72 (19.30%) CI/CD
3 63 (16.89%) Agile
4 59 (15.82%) Technical Leadership
5 54 (14.48%) Microservices
6 52 (13.94%) Technical Architecture
7 48 (12.87%) Migration
8 45 (12.06%) Infrastructure as Code
9 42 (11.26%) DevOps
10 37 (9.92%) Mentoring
10 37 (9.92%) TOGAF
11 35 (9.38%) Containerisation
12 34 (9.12%) Data Modelling
13 32 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 32 (8.58%) Stakeholder Management
14 30 (8.04%) AI
15 29 (7.77%) Problem-Solving
16 28 (7.51%) Integration Patterns
17 27 (7.24%) Strategic Roadmap
18 26 (6.97%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 36 (9.65%) Java
2 32 (8.58%) Python
3 25 (6.70%) SQL
4 19 (5.09%) TypeScript
5 11 (2.95%) C#
6 10 (2.68%) Ruby
7 8 (2.14%) Bicep
8 7 (1.88%) Apex Code
8 7 (1.88%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.34%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.80%) PHP
10 3 (0.80%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.80%) VB
10 3 (0.80%) VBScript
11 2 (0.54%) ABAP
12 1 (0.27%) Bash
12 1 (0.27%) Go
12 1 (0.27%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.27%) SOQL
12 1 (0.27%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 175 (46.92%) Security Cleared
2 122 (32.71%) SC Cleared
3 43 (11.53%) DV Cleared
4 10 (2.68%) AWS Certification
4 10 (2.68%) Azure Certification
4 10 (2.68%) Degree
4 10 (2.68%) TOGAF Certification
5 8 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.80%) CCNP
7 3 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.54%) CISSP
8 2 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.27%) CCSE
9 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.27%) JNCIE
9 1 (0.27%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.27%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.27%) VCDX
9 1 (0.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.68%) NIST
2 7 (1.88%) Data Quality
3 6 (1.61%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.34%) Def Stans
4 5 (1.34%) NCSC
5 4 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (1.07%) GDPR
6 3 (0.80%) GRC
6 3 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.80%) QA
7 2 (0.54%) HL7
7 2 (0.54%) WCAG
8 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.27%) COBIT
8 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 30 (8.04%) Docker
2 15 (4.02%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.80%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.80%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.80%) Varnish
7 2 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.54%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.27%) RACF
8 1 (0.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 56 (15.01%) Terraform
2 46 (12.33%) Kubernetes
3 14 (3.75%) Grafana
3 14 (3.75%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.61%) Ansible
4 6 (1.61%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.80%) SCCM
6 2 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Clustering
6 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 45 (12.06%) Microsoft
2 25 (6.70%) ServiceNow
3 20 (5.36%) Oracle
4 18 (4.83%) VMware
5 17 (4.56%) MuleSoft
5 17 (4.56%) Salesforce
6 16 (4.29%) SAP
7 8 (2.14%) Cisco
7 8 (2.14%) Databricks
8 6 (1.61%) Gigya
8 6 (1.61%) Palo Alto
8 6 (1.61%) Workday
9 5 (1.34%) Adobe
9 5 (1.34%) Google
9 5 (1.34%) Zscaler
10 4 (1.07%) Ariba
10 4 (1.07%) ForgeRock
10 4 (1.07%) Meraki
10 4 (1.07%) NetApp
10 4 (1.07%) OpenAI