Metadata Contract Job Trends

Metadata
UK

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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 295 359
Rank change year-on-year +93 +64 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 725 277 212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.84% 0.54%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.87% 4.61% 3.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 191 135
10th Percentile £385 £306 £391
25th Percentile £455 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile £670 £638 £781
90th Percentile £750 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +23.53% -10.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 10
10th Percentile £30.69 - £13.50
25th Percentile £57.63 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.50 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.65% -30.00% -22.81%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.90 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +400.00% -17.68% -59.00%

All Database & BI Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 8,172 6,015 7,073
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.33% 18.28% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,436 4,071 4,991
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £416 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 90 102
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.75 £20.19
Median hourly rate £38.50 £34.99 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year +10.03% -0.74% -35.91%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.31 £56.88
90th Percentile £76.20 £78.83 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -41.46%

Metadata
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Metadata job vacancy trend in the UK

Metadata
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Metadata

Metadata
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Metadata over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Metadata

Metadata
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Metadata over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Metadata within the UK over the 6 months to 6 August 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 +88 615 £525 - 297
London +49 351 £525 -8.70% 176
UK excluding London +60 290 £525 +23.53% 160
Work from Home +46 213 £525 -8.70% 149
North of England -9 73 £515 +34.54% 27
Midlands -8 66 £631 +489.95% 25
West Midlands -12 62 £650 +507.48% 17
South East -28 53 £525 +17.58% 57
Scotland +35 47 £525 +10.53% 18
Yorkshire -7 41 £515 -4.25% 10
East of England +2 30 £463 -7.50% 10
North West -33 28 £575 +83.71% 15
South West -25 25 £550 -8.33% 18
North East -36 6 £463 +1.37% 2
East Midlands -7 4 £500 +21.95% 8
Wales -11 3 £750 +191.91% 2

Metadata
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 42 (5.79%) SharePoint
2 32 (4.41%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.86%) Apache Spark
4 25 (3.45%) Apache
5 19 (2.62%) CMS
5 19 (2.62%) Confluence
6 14 (1.93%) SAS
7 4 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.28%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.14%) Drupal
10 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.14%) Liferay
10 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.97%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.97%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.97%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.97%) Revit
3 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.14%) Notion
5 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 15 (2.07%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.55%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) Workfront
6 1 (0.14%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.14%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 211 (29.10%) Azure
2 159 (21.93%) AWS
3 103 (14.21%) Power Platform
4 79 (10.90%) GCP
5 58 (8.00%) Collibra
6 56 (7.72%) Microsoft Purview
7 44 (6.07%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.79%) Amazon S3
9 40 (5.52%) GitHub
10 37 (5.10%) dbt
11 36 (4.97%) Snowflake
12 32 (4.41%) Serverless
13 31 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
15 28 (3.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 28 (3.86%) Microsoft 365
16 19 (2.62%) Microsoft Copilot
16 19 (2.62%) Power Automate
17 18 (2.48%) Amazon EMR
18 17 (2.34%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.97%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.97%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.69%) Intranet
3 4 (0.55%) Broadband
3 4 (0.55%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
4 3 (0.41%) HTTP
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (16.28%) Data Warehouse
2 89 (12.28%) Power BI
3 79 (10.90%) Data Lake
4 36 (4.97%) Data Vault
5 35 (4.83%) Relational Database
6 33 (4.55%) NoSQL
7 29 (4.00%) Tableau
8 27 (3.72%) Delta Lake
9 21 (2.90%) BigQuery
9 21 (2.90%) Semantic Layer
10 20 (2.76%) Snowflake Schema
11 18 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
12 17 (2.34%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.21%) Amazon Athena
14 14 (1.93%) Db2
14 14 (1.93%) SQL Server
15 13 (1.79%) Big Data
15 13 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
16 11 (1.52%) Metadata Repository
16 11 (1.52%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 41 (5.66%) ERwin
2 31 (4.28%) Git
3 27 (3.72%) ER Studio
4 22 (3.03%) JIRA
5 19 (2.62%) Jenkins
6 17 (2.34%) PowerDesigner
7 16 (2.21%) Maven
8 14 (1.93%) GitLab
9 11 (1.52%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.28%) git-flow
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.28%) Selenium
11 2 (0.28%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 199 (27.45%) Finance
2 197 (27.17%) Social Skills
3 153 (21.10%) Analytical Skills
4 93 (12.83%) Banking
5 73 (10.07%) Public Sector
6 37 (5.10%) Investment Banking
7 35 (4.83%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.90%) Influencing Skills
9 19 (2.62%) Legal
10 18 (2.48%) Publishing
11 17 (2.34%) Retail
12 16 (2.21%) Marketing
13 13 (1.79%) Aviation
13 13 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
14 12 (1.66%) Front Office
14 12 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 9 (1.24%) Manufacturing
16 8 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
17 6 (0.83%) Law
17 6 (0.83%) Military
Job Titles
1 169 (23.31%) Architect
2 122 (16.83%) Data Architect
3 112 (15.45%) Data Engineer
4 90 (12.41%) Analyst
5 88 (12.14%) Lead
6 65 (8.97%) Senior
7 55 (7.59%) Data Analyst
8 53 (7.31%) Data Modeller
9 38 (5.24%) Developer
10 33 (4.55%) Business Analyst
11 28 (3.86%) Consultant
12 21 (2.90%) Data Manager
13 20 (2.76%) Data Business Analyst
14 18 (2.48%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (2.48%) Product Owner
14 18 (2.48%) Senior Data Engineer
15 16 (2.21%) Lead Data Engineer
16 15 (2.07%) Governance Analyst
16 15 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
17 13 (1.79%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (6.48%) PySpark
2 39 (5.38%) JSON
3 31 (4.28%) Kafka
4 26 (3.59%) REST
5 17 (2.34%) YAML
6 13 (1.79%) Node.js
6 13 (1.79%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.66%) XML
8 11 (1.52%) .NET
8 11 (1.52%) SLSA
9 10 (1.38%) OAuth
10 9 (1.24%) React
11 8 (1.10%) GraphQL
11 8 (1.10%) Middleware
11 8 (1.10%) OAuth2
11 8 (1.10%) Spring
12 7 (0.97%) RESTful
12 7 (0.97%) SPFx
13 6 (0.83%) CSS
13 6 (0.83%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 72 (9.93%) Cloud Native
2 65 (8.97%) Data Structures
3 59 (8.14%) Onboarding
4 54 (7.45%) Taxonomies
5 51 (7.03%) Product Ownership
6 46 (6.34%) Management Information System
7 43 (5.93%) Reference Data
8 41 (5.66%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (2.62%) Derivative
10 16 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.79%) AI Agents
11 13 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.66%) Equity Derivative
12 12 (1.66%) Life Science
13 11 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.38%) Digital Media
14 10 (1.38%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.24%) Clustering
15 9 (1.24%) Data Fabric
16 8 (1.10%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.62%) Unix
2 12 (1.66%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 357 (49.24%) Data Governance
2 342 (47.17%) Data Modelling
3 249 (34.34%) Metadata Management
4 240 (33.10%) Analytics
5 180 (24.83%) AI
6 176 (24.28%) Data Architecture
7 171 (23.59%) Data Pipeline
8 161 (22.21%) Agile
9 158 (21.79%) ETL
10 153 (21.10%) Data Engineering
11 150 (20.69%) CI/CD
12 148 (20.41%) Migration
13 140 (19.31%) Stakeholder Management
14 122 (16.83%) Business Intelligence
15 118 (16.28%) Data Lineage
16 116 (16.00%) Validation
17 115 (15.86%) DevOps
18 114 (15.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 111 (15.31%) Data Management
20 108 (14.90%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 273 (37.66%) SQL
2 190 (26.21%) Python
3 60 (8.28%) Java
4 22 (3.03%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.07%) C#
5 15 (2.07%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.93%) Groovy
6 14 (1.93%) PowerShell
7 11 (1.52%) JavaScript
8 9 (1.24%) C++
9 8 (1.10%) Bash
9 8 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 7 (0.97%) SPARQL
11 6 (0.83%) Bicep
11 6 (0.83%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.69%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.69%) Scala
13 4 (0.55%) Cypher
13 4 (0.55%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 156 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 120 (16.55%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.66%) Degree
4 31 (4.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (2.34%) DV Cleared
6 12 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.52%) TOGAF Certification
8 7 (0.97%) AWS Certification
8 7 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.28%) ACCA
11 2 (0.28%) CBAP
11 2 (0.28%) CIMA
11 2 (0.28%) CISM
11 2 (0.28%) CISSP
11 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 292 (40.28%) Data Quality
2 63 (8.69%) GDPR
3 40 (5.52%) Accessibility
3 40 (5.52%) QA
4 7 (0.97%) ISO 19650
4 7 (0.97%) Solvency II
5 6 (0.83%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.69%) GRC
6 5 (0.69%) NIST
6 5 (0.69%) WCAG
7 4 (0.55%) MiFID
8 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.41%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.41%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.41%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.41%) NCSC
9 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 17 (2.34%) Docker
2 9 (1.24%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 32 (4.41%) Terraform
2 20 (2.76%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.38%) Grafana
4 7 (0.97%) Prometheus
4 7 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.55%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) PingFederate
6 2 (0.28%) Ansible
6 2 (0.28%) Kibana
7 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.14%) Control-M
Vendors
1 130 (17.93%) Microsoft
2 109 (15.03%) Databricks
3 51 (7.03%) Oracle
4 46 (6.34%) Informatica
5 23 (3.17%) Google
6 17 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 16 (2.21%) IBM
8 15 (2.07%) SAP
8 15 (2.07%) Sparx
9 13 (1.79%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.52%) Sonatype
10 11 (1.52%) Sybase
10 11 (1.52%) Talend
11 10 (1.38%) Denodo
12 8 (1.10%) Adobe
12 8 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
12 8 (1.10%) Palantir
13 7 (0.97%) Aspera
13 7 (0.97%) Foundry
13 7 (0.97%) Signiant