Metadata Contract Job Trends in the South East

Metadata
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Metadata skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 147 170
Rank change year-on-year 0 +23 +15
Contract jobs citing Metadata 35 17 28
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.81% 0.51% 0.56%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.58% 3.39% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 10 21
10th Percentile £365 £419 £180
25th Percentile £411 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £583
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -7.80% +28.13%
75th Percentile £578 £675 £650
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
England median daily rate £525 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 5
10th Percentile - - £19.59
25th Percentile - - £20.49
Median hourly rate - £19.30 £31.45
Median % change year-on-year - -38.63% -
75th Percentile - - £51.58
90th Percentile - - £63.83
England median hourly rate £80.50 £32.47 £41.38
% change year-on-year +147.96% -21.53% -0.90%

All Database & BI Skills
South East

Metadata falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 532 502 660
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.25% 15.08% 13.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 423 326 457
10th Percentile £205 £323 £300
25th Percentile £363 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £573 £638 £630
90th Percentile £660 £675 £680
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 44
10th Percentile £24.64 £34.67 £20.32
25th Percentile £37.75 £41.25 £24.75
Median hourly rate £40.00 £63.15 £55.91
Median % change year-on-year -36.66% +12.95% +28.53%
75th Percentile £49.44 £64.95 £73.13
90th Percentile £71.34 £65.62 £79.93
England median hourly rate £51.36 £42.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +22.29% -9.05% -16.04%

Metadata
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Metadata relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Metadata job vacancy trend in the South East

Metadata
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Metadata.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Metadata

Metadata
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Metadata in the South East over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Metadata in the South East

Metadata
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Metadata.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Metadata

Metadata
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Metadata within the South East region over the 6 months to 13 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
Thames Valley +3 25 £506 -7.95% 20
Berkshire +3 13 £506 -25.00% 10
Buckinghamshire +2 11 £425 -10.53% 6
Surrey - 4 £375 - 3
West Sussex - 4 £488 - 2
Hampshire - 2 £575 - 8
Oxfordshire -13 1 £750 - 4
Metadata
England

Metadata
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 (14.29%) GeoServer
1 5 (14.29%) Smallworld
2 2 (5.71%) ArcGIS
2 2 (5.71%) SharePoint
3 1 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (2.86%) CMS
3 1 (2.86%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.86%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (8.57%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 13 (37.14%) Azure
2 10 (28.57%) Collibra
3 5 (14.29%) Microsoft Purview
4 4 (11.43%) AWS
4 4 (11.43%) Azure Data Factory
4 4 (11.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 3 (8.57%) Power Platform
6 2 (5.71%) Alation
6 2 (5.71%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (5.71%) Azure Key Vault
6 2 (5.71%) dbt
6 2 (5.71%) GCP
6 2 (5.71%) GitHub
6 2 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (5.71%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (5.71%) Snowflake
7 1 (2.86%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (2.86%) Dagster
7 1 (2.86%) Entra ID
7 1 (2.86%) Lucidchart
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (14.29%) Geospatial Data
1 5 (14.29%) GIS
1 5 (14.29%) QGIS
2 4 (11.43%) Metadata Repository
3 3 (8.57%) Data Lake
3 3 (8.57%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (8.57%) Power BI
4 2 (5.71%) Semantic Layer
4 2 (5.71%) Spatial Data
4 2 (5.71%) SQL Server
5 1 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (2.86%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.86%) MongoDB
5 1 (2.86%) RDBMS
5 1 (2.86%) Relational Database
5 1 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
5 1 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 1 (2.86%) Git
1 1 (2.86%) JIRA
1 1 (2.86%) Poetry
1 1 (2.86%) Pylint
1 1 (2.86%) SonarQube
1 1 (2.86%) Visual Studio
General
1 15 (42.86%) Social Skills
2 9 (25.71%) Finance
2 9 (25.71%) Public Sector
3 8 (22.86%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (8.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (8.57%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (5.71%) Banking
5 2 (5.71%) Law
6 1 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.86%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.86%) Legal
Job Titles
1 12 (34.29%) Architect
2 6 (17.14%) Data Architect
3 5 (14.29%) GIS Architect
3 5 (14.29%) Lead
4 3 (8.57%) Analyst
4 3 (8.57%) Data Analyst
4 3 (8.57%) Data Manager
4 3 (8.57%) Governance Analyst
5 2 (5.71%) Coordinator
5 2 (5.71%) Data Quality Manager
5 2 (5.71%) Information Manager
5 2 (5.71%) Knowledge Manager
5 2 (5.71%) Quality Manager
5 2 (5.71%) Release Manager
5 2 (5.71%) Senior
6 1 (2.86%) Azure Data Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Data Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Microsoft 365 Manager
6 1 (2.86%) ServiceNow Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (8.57%) PySpark
2 1 (2.86%) Kafka
2 1 (2.86%) pytest
2 1 (2.86%) REST
2 1 (2.86%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 3 (8.57%) Legacy Systems
1 3 (8.57%) Product Ownership
1 3 (8.57%) Replication
2 2 (5.71%) Management Information System
2 2 (5.71%) Taxonomies
3 1 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (2.86%) CMDB
3 1 (2.86%) Data Fabric
3 1 (2.86%) IoT
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (74.29%) Data Governance
2 15 (42.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 13 (37.14%) Analytics
4 11 (31.43%) Agile
5 10 (28.57%) DevOps
5 10 (28.57%) Metadata Management
5 10 (28.57%) Migration
6 9 (25.71%) Data Management
6 9 (25.71%) Decision-Making
7 8 (22.86%) Data Modelling
8 7 (20.00%) Data Architecture
8 7 (20.00%) Integration Patterns
8 7 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
9 6 (17.14%) User Acceptance Testing
9 6 (17.14%) Visualisation
10 5 (14.29%) Change Management
10 5 (14.29%) Data-Driven Decision Making
10 5 (14.29%) Quality Management
10 5 (14.29%) Use Case
11 4 (11.43%) DAMA
Programming Languages
1 4 (11.43%) Python
1 4 (11.43%) SQL
2 2 (5.71%) T-SQL
3 1 (2.86%) Bicep
3 1 (2.86%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 10 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 6 (17.14%) SC Cleared
3 5 (14.29%) Degree
4 3 (8.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 2 (5.71%) Master's Degree
5 2 (5.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (2.86%) PMI Certification
6 1 (2.86%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (54.29%) Data Quality
2 9 (25.71%) GDPR
3 3 (8.57%) QA
4 2 (5.71%) Accessibility
4 2 (5.71%) ISO 9001
5 1 (2.86%) EU AI Act
5 1 (2.86%) GRC
5 1 (2.86%) NIST
Systems Management
1 1 (2.86%) Terraform
Vendors
1 10 (28.57%) Microsoft
2 7 (20.00%) Informatica
3 5 (14.29%) Databricks
3 5 (14.29%) ESRI
3 5 (14.29%) Intergraph
4 2 (5.71%) OneTrust
4 2 (5.71%) Palantir
4 2 (5.71%) Salesforce
4 2 (5.71%) ServiceNow
4 2 (5.71%) Talend
5 1 (2.86%) Ab Initio
5 1 (2.86%) Alteryx
5 1 (2.86%) Google
5 1 (2.86%) Oracle
5 1 (2.86%) RedGate
5 1 (2.86%) Sparx