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 23 January 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 236 228
Rank change year-on-year -20 -8 +50
Contract jobs requiring a Technical Architect 398 344 440
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.09% 1.01%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 1.17% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 227 340
10th Percentile £429 £484 £489
25th Percentile £512 £555 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £641
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +1.36% -1.35%
75th Percentile £689 £750 £710
90th Percentile £750 £813 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £621 £650
% change year-on-year -3.42% -4.42% -
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 34,674 29,426 40,527
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.44% 92.86% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,946 18,016 26,864
10th Percentile £300 £288 £275
25th Percentile £406 £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 £500
% change year-on-year -0.31% -4.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,058 877 1,975
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -17.83% +13.00%
75th Percentile £60.60 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.85 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.59 £31.64 £40.28
% change year-on-year -19.11% -21.44% +34.25%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +1 343 £600 -4.00% 91
UK excluding London 0 192 £600 -3.42% 85
London -15 145 £600 -7.69% 44
Work from Home -64 94 £574 -15.00% 57
North of England -32 49 £570 +7.34% 21
South East -23 45 £600 -3.42% 19
North West -5 41 £570 +14.00% 10
South West +1 34 £710 +13.60% 7
West Midlands -25 31 £485 -25.38% 7
Midlands -29 31 £485 -25.38% 7
East of England -6 24 £575 -8.00% 1
Wales +2 8 £550 +111.54% 10
Yorkshire -46 8 £625 +11.31% 6
Scotland -2 1 £550 -26.67% 18

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 193 (48.49%) Security Cleared
2 137 (34.42%) SC Cleared
3 103 (25.88%) AWS
4 99 (24.87%) Azure
5 71 (17.84%) Roadmaps
6 67 (16.83%) Agile
7 66 (16.58%) Technical Leadership
8 60 (15.08%) CI/CD
9 58 (14.57%) Microservices
10 54 (13.57%) Migration
11 53 (13.32%) Technical Architecture
12 52 (13.07%) DV Cleared
13 51 (12.81%) Microsoft
14 47 (11.81%) DevOps
15 44 (11.06%) Terraform
16 40 (10.05%) TOGAF
17 39 (9.80%) Mentoring
18 38 (9.55%) ServiceNow
18 38 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
19 36 (9.05%) AI
19 36 (9.05%) Python
20 35 (8.79%) Java
20 35 (8.79%) Kubernetes
20 35 (8.79%) Problem-Solving
21 32 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
21 32 (8.04%) Serverless
21 32 (8.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 30 (7.54%) Architectural Patterns
22 30 (7.54%) Data Modelling
23 28 (7.04%) 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 (2.01%) Confluence
2 7 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.76%) Skype for Business
3 5 (1.26%) CMS
3 5 (1.26%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.01%) Anypoint
4 4 (1.01%) nginx
5 3 (0.75%) Sitecore CMS
6 2 (0.50%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.50%) NetWeaver
6 2 (0.50%) SAP EP
6 2 (0.50%) SAS
6 2 (0.50%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.25%) Camunda
7 1 (0.25%) Mule
7 1 (0.25%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 11 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.26%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.25%) ArchiCAD
4 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.26%) Magento
2 2 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.50%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.50%) 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%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.25%) Shopify
3 1 (0.25%) Summit
3 1 (0.25%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 103 (25.88%) AWS
2 99 (24.87%) Azure
3 32 (8.04%) Serverless
4 25 (6.28%) GCP
5 23 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
6 15 (3.77%) GitHub
6 15 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 14 (3.52%) PaaS
8 12 (3.02%) SaaS
9 11 (2.76%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (2.51%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (2.51%) Route 53
11 8 (2.01%) Amazon S3
11 8 (2.01%) Amazon SQS
11 8 (2.01%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (2.01%) Azure Key Vault
12 7 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (1.76%) Amazon EventBridge
12 7 (1.76%) Entra ID
12 7 (1.76%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 23 (5.78%) WAN
2 21 (5.28%) Firewall
2 21 (5.28%) VPN
3 18 (4.52%) LAN
4 17 (4.27%) DNS
5 11 (2.76%) SAN
5 11 (2.76%) Wi-Fi
6 10 (2.51%) TCP/IP
7 8 (2.01%) Network Security
7 8 (2.01%) SD-WAN
8 7 (1.76%) DHCP
8 7 (1.76%) Skype
8 7 (1.76%) VLAN
9 5 (1.26%) Internet
10 4 (1.01%) BGP
10 4 (1.01%) OpenVPN
11 3 (0.75%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 3 (0.75%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 3 (0.75%) NAS
11 3 (0.75%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
2 12 (3.02%) NoSQL
2 12 (3.02%) Redis
3 10 (2.51%) MySQL
3 10 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (2.51%) Relational Database
4 9 (2.26%) DynamoDB
4 9 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
4 9 (2.26%) SQL Server
5 8 (2.01%) Metadata
6 7 (1.76%) Power BI
7 6 (1.51%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (1.26%) BigQuery
8 5 (1.26%) RDBMS
9 4 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.01%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.75%) Data Hub
10 3 (0.75%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.50%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 14 (3.52%) Git
2 12 (3.02%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.76%) JIRA
4 10 (2.51%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.26%) Gradle
5 5 (1.26%) Maven
5 5 (1.26%) SonarLint
6 4 (1.01%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.75%) MLflow
8 2 (0.50%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.50%) GitLab
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
General
1 102 (25.63%) Social Skills
2 97 (24.37%) Public Sector
3 25 (6.28%) Finance
4 15 (3.77%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (3.27%) Presentation Skills
6 12 (3.02%) Military
7 9 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.01%) Banking
9 7 (1.76%) Marketing
9 7 (1.76%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.51%) Aerospace
11 5 (1.26%) Police
12 3 (0.75%) Local Government
13 2 (0.50%) Back Office
13 2 (0.50%) Billing
13 2 (0.50%) Law
13 2 (0.50%) Legal
13 2 (0.50%) Retail
14 1 (0.25%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.28%) .NET
2 15 (3.77%) REST
3 14 (3.52%) Middleware
4 13 (3.27%) Spring Boot
5 12 (3.02%) RESTful
6 10 (2.51%) SOAP
7 8 (2.01%) J2EE
7 8 (2.01%) OpenID
8 7 (1.76%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.76%) Node.js
8 7 (1.76%) OAuth
8 7 (1.76%) OAuth2
8 7 (1.76%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.76%) Spring
9 6 (1.51%) Celery
9 6 (1.51%) Dropwizard
9 6 (1.51%) JWT
9 6 (1.51%) Micronaut
9 6 (1.51%) PySpark
10 5 (1.26%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 28 (7.04%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.27%) Legacy Systems
3 16 (4.02%) Data Centre
4 13 (3.27%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.51%) CMDB
6 8 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.01%) Operational Technology
7 6 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.51%) N-Tier
8 5 (1.26%) Client/Server
8 5 (1.26%) PKI
9 4 (1.01%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.01%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.01%) SCADA
10 3 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.75%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.75%) NHS
10 3 (0.75%) Replication
11 2 (0.50%) Mainframe
11 2 (0.50%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 19 (4.77%) Windows
2 13 (3.27%) Linux
3 8 (2.01%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.76%) Windows 10
4 7 (1.76%) Windows 7
5 2 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.25%) Solaris
6 1 (0.25%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (17.84%) Roadmaps
2 67 (16.83%) Agile
3 66 (16.58%) Technical Leadership
4 60 (15.08%) CI/CD
5 58 (14.57%) Microservices
6 54 (13.57%) Migration
7 53 (13.32%) Technical Architecture
8 47 (11.81%) DevOps
9 40 (10.05%) TOGAF
10 39 (9.80%) Mentoring
11 38 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
12 36 (9.05%) AI
13 35 (8.79%) Problem-Solving
14 32 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
14 32 (8.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 30 (7.54%) Architectural Patterns
15 30 (7.54%) Data Modelling
16 28 (7.04%) Containerisation
17 27 (6.78%) Design Patterns
18 25 (6.28%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 36 (9.05%) Python
2 35 (8.79%) Java
3 23 (5.78%) SQL
4 12 (3.02%) C#
5 11 (2.76%) PowerShell
6 10 (2.51%) Ruby
7 7 (1.76%) VB
7 7 (1.76%) VBScript
8 6 (1.51%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.26%) Bicep
9 5 (1.26%) PHP
10 4 (1.01%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.75%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.50%) ABAP
13 1 (0.25%) Bash
13 1 (0.25%) Go
13 1 (0.25%) SOQL
13 1 (0.25%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 193 (48.49%) Security Cleared
2 137 (34.42%) SC Cleared
3 52 (13.07%) DV Cleared
4 11 (2.76%) AWS Certification
4 11 (2.76%) Degree
5 10 (2.51%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.51%) TOGAF Certification
6 5 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.75%) CCNP
7 3 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.50%) CCIE
8 2 (0.50%) CCSE
8 2 (0.50%) CISSP
8 2 (0.50%) ISEB
8 2 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.50%) JNCIE
8 2 (0.50%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.25%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.76%) NIST
2 9 (2.26%) Accessibility
3 7 (1.76%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.26%) Def Stans
5 4 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (1.01%) GRC
5 4 (1.01%) NCSC
6 3 (0.75%) GDPR
6 3 (0.75%) QA
7 2 (0.50%) COBIT
7 2 (0.50%) 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 24 (6.03%) Docker
2 16 (4.02%) Active Directory
3 10 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.76%) BitLocker
5 5 (1.26%) Varnish
6 4 (1.01%) Squid
6 4 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.01%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.75%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.25%) RACF
Systems Management
1 44 (11.06%) Terraform
2 35 (8.79%) Kubernetes
3 11 (2.76%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (2.01%) Ansible
5 7 (1.76%) SCCM
6 5 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 5 (1.26%) FortiGate
6 5 (1.26%) Grafana
6 5 (1.26%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.01%) Consul
8 1 (0.25%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.25%) Oracle ZFS
8 1 (0.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (12.81%) Microsoft
2 38 (9.55%) ServiceNow
3 20 (5.03%) VMware
4 17 (4.27%) MuleSoft
5 16 (4.02%) Oracle
6 15 (3.77%) SAP
7 14 (3.52%) Salesforce
8 8 (2.01%) Cisco
8 8 (2.01%) Zscaler
9 7 (1.76%) Adobe
9 7 (1.76%) Databricks
10 6 (1.51%) Atlassian
10 6 (1.51%) Gigya
10 6 (1.51%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.26%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.26%) Google
11 5 (1.26%) OpenAI
11 5 (1.26%) Workday
12 4 (1.01%) Meraki
12 4 (1.01%) Sitecore