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 17 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 299 365
Rank change year-on-year +97 +66 +14
Contract jobs citing Metadata 737 271 204
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 0.82% 0.53%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.01% 4.53% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 464 188 130
10th Percentile £393 £314 £400
25th Percentile £456 £455 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £666 £638 £792
90th Percentile £750 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +16.67% -7.69% -10.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 10
10th Percentile £19.28 - £13.50
25th Percentile £50.23 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.49 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.57% -30.00% -36.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.15 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +399.89% -17.68% -64.35%

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 8,180 5,988 7,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.29% 18.09% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,457 4,031 4,956
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
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 93 100
10th Percentile £15.86 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.11 £19.90
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +1.55% -37.34%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £78.74 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.85 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.11% +6.15% -39.48%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +91 631 £525 - 191
London +55 360 £525 -8.70% 97
UK excluding London +66 291 £525 +16.67% 144
Work from Home +44 212 £525 -8.70% 101
North of England -11 72 £500 +11.11% 29
Midlands +1 70 £606 +466.59% 18
West Midlands -6 64 £650 +507.48% 12
South East -34 52 £513 +9.51% 61
Scotland +24 41 £525 +10.53% 14
Yorkshire +6 41 £514 -4.37% 13
East of England +4 32 £463 -11.90% 5
South West -18 29 £550 -8.33% 7
North West -23 26 £575 +83.12% 11
North East -37 7 £463 +1.37% 5
East Midlands -14 6 £500 +21.95% 6
Wales -13 3 £750 +76.47% 5

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 40 (5.43%) SharePoint
2 30 (4.07%) Apache Airflow
3 25 (3.39%) Apache
3 25 (3.39%) Apache Spark
4 20 (2.71%) CMS
5 17 (2.31%) Confluence
6 14 (1.90%) SAS
7 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.41%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) JBoss
11 1 (0.14%) Liferay
11 1 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
11 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.95%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.95%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.95%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.95%) Revit
3 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.14%) Notion
6 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 19 (2.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.54%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.27%) HFM
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.27%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.27%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.27%) 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
Cloud Services
1 220 (29.85%) Azure
2 172 (23.34%) AWS
3 102 (13.84%) Power Platform
4 87 (11.80%) GCP
5 61 (8.28%) Microsoft Purview
6 55 (7.46%) Collibra
7 48 (6.51%) Azure Data Factory
8 41 (5.56%) GitHub
9 40 (5.43%) Amazon S3
10 36 (4.88%) Snowflake
11 35 (4.75%) dbt
12 32 (4.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 32 (4.34%) Serverless
13 30 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
15 28 (3.80%) Microsoft 365
16 19 (2.58%) Microsoft Copilot
16 19 (2.58%) Power Automate
17 17 (2.31%) Entra ID
17 17 (2.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.95%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.95%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.68%) Intranet
3 4 (0.54%) Broadband
3 4 (0.54%) HTTP
3 4 (0.54%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) DNS
5 1 (0.14%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.14%) SAN
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
5 1 (0.14%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (15.60%) Data Warehouse
2 90 (12.21%) Power BI
3 83 (11.26%) Data Lake
4 37 (5.02%) Relational Database
5 35 (4.75%) NoSQL
6 32 (4.34%) Data Vault
7 30 (4.07%) Delta Lake
8 28 (3.80%) Tableau
9 22 (2.99%) BigQuery
10 21 (2.85%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (2.85%) Semantic Layer
11 18 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
12 17 (2.31%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.17%) SQL Server
14 15 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.90%) Db2
16 13 (1.76%) MongoDB
17 12 (1.63%) Amazon Athena
18 11 (1.49%) Big Data
18 11 (1.49%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 38 (5.16%) ERwin
2 33 (4.48%) Git
3 26 (3.53%) ER Studio
4 21 (2.85%) JIRA
5 19 (2.58%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.17%) Maven
7 15 (2.04%) PowerDesigner
8 13 (1.76%) GitLab
9 11 (1.49%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.54%) Selenium
11 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.27%) git-flow
12 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
12 2 (0.27%) TestRail
13 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
13 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 1 (0.14%) Subversion
13 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
13 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 210 (28.49%) Social Skills
2 201 (27.27%) Finance
3 156 (21.17%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (12.48%) Banking
5 79 (10.72%) Public Sector
6 38 (5.16%) Investment Banking
7 30 (4.07%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
9 20 (2.71%) Publishing
10 19 (2.58%) Legal
11 18 (2.44%) Retail
12 17 (2.31%) Marketing
13 13 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 12 (1.63%) Front Office
14 12 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
15 11 (1.49%) Aviation
15 11 (1.49%) Manufacturing
16 8 (1.09%) Law
16 8 (1.09%) Military
17 6 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 175 (23.74%) Architect
2 125 (16.96%) Data Architect
3 117 (15.88%) Data Engineer
4 94 (12.75%) Lead
5 88 (11.94%) Analyst
6 70 (9.50%) Senior
7 53 (7.19%) Data Analyst
8 47 (6.38%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.88%) Developer
10 33 (4.48%) Business Analyst
11 26 (3.53%) Consultant
12 21 (2.85%) Data Business Analyst
12 21 (2.85%) Data Manager
12 21 (2.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 19 (2.58%) Product Owner
14 18 (2.44%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (2.44%) Lead Data Engineer
15 15 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (1.90%) Governance Analyst
16 14 (1.90%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.51%) PySpark
2 42 (5.70%) JSON
3 35 (4.75%) Kafka
4 32 (4.34%) REST
5 19 (2.58%) YAML
6 14 (1.90%) Node.js
6 14 (1.90%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.63%) XML
8 11 (1.49%) React
8 11 (1.49%) SLSA
9 9 (1.22%) .NET
9 9 (1.22%) Spring
10 8 (1.09%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.09%) Middleware
10 8 (1.09%) OAuth
11 7 (0.95%) Playwright
12 6 (0.81%) CSS
12 6 (0.81%) HTML
12 6 (0.81%) OAuth2
12 6 (0.81%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 72 (9.77%) Cloud Native
2 63 (8.55%) Onboarding
3 61 (8.28%) Data Structures
4 51 (6.92%) Taxonomies
5 50 (6.78%) Management Information System
6 48 (6.51%) Product Ownership
7 46 (6.24%) Legacy Systems
8 41 (5.56%) Reference Data
9 21 (2.85%) Data Protection Act
10 19 (2.58%) Derivative
11 15 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.76%) AI Agents
13 12 (1.63%) Equity Derivative
13 12 (1.63%) Life Science
14 11 (1.49%) Data Fabric
15 10 (1.36%) Digital Media
15 10 (1.36%) Distributed Computing
16 9 (1.22%) Clustering
16 9 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
16 9 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.58%) Unix
2 14 (1.90%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
3 1 (0.14%) Windows
3 1 (0.14%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 371 (50.34%) Data Governance
2 345 (46.81%) Data Modelling
3 267 (36.23%) Metadata Management
4 250 (33.92%) Analytics
5 192 (26.05%) AI
6 183 (24.83%) Data Architecture
7 173 (23.47%) Data Pipeline
8 172 (23.34%) Agile
9 159 (21.57%) ETL
10 157 (21.30%) Data Engineering
11 156 (21.17%) Stakeholder Management
12 155 (21.03%) CI/CD
13 154 (20.90%) Migration
14 124 (16.82%) Business Intelligence
15 123 (16.69%) Data Lineage
16 120 (16.28%) Validation
17 119 (16.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 117 (15.88%) Data Management
18 117 (15.88%) DevOps
19 115 (15.60%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 280 (37.99%) SQL
2 193 (26.19%) Python
3 62 (8.41%) Java
4 21 (2.85%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.04%) PowerShell
5 15 (2.04%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.90%) Groovy
7 13 (1.76%) C#
7 13 (1.76%) JavaScript
8 11 (1.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.22%) Bash
9 9 (1.22%) C++
10 8 (1.09%) TypeScript
11 7 (0.95%) Bicep
11 7 (0.95%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.81%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.68%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.68%) Scala
14 4 (0.54%) Cypher
14 4 (0.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 159 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 119 (16.15%) SC Cleared
3 42 (5.70%) Degree
4 33 (4.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (2.44%) DV Cleared
6 13 (1.76%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.22%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.95%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.41%) CISSP
10 3 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (0.41%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.27%) ACCA
11 2 (0.27%) CBAP
11 2 (0.27%) CIMA
11 2 (0.27%) CISM
11 2 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (41.66%) Data Quality
2 64 (8.68%) GDPR
3 42 (5.70%) QA
4 40 (5.43%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.95%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.81%) ISO 19650
7 5 (0.68%) GRC
7 5 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.68%) NIST
7 5 (0.68%) WCAG
8 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.54%) MiFID
8 4 (0.54%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.41%) IFRS
9 3 (0.41%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.41%) NCSC
10 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 20 (2.71%) Docker
2 10 (1.36%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 36 (4.88%) Terraform
2 23 (3.12%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.22%) Grafana
4 7 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.54%) Ansible
6 4 (0.54%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.54%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.27%) Control-M
7 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 135 (18.32%) Microsoft
2 115 (15.60%) Databricks
3 54 (7.33%) Oracle
4 49 (6.65%) Informatica
5 28 (3.80%) Google
6 19 (2.58%) Sparx
7 17 (2.31%) Salesforce
8 16 (2.17%) IBM
8 16 (2.17%) SAP
9 13 (1.76%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.49%) Sonatype
10 11 (1.49%) Sybase
10 11 (1.49%) Talend
11 10 (1.36%) Denodo
12 8 (1.09%) Adobe
12 8 (1.09%) CA Agile Central
12 8 (1.09%) Palantir
13 7 (0.95%) Aspera
13 7 (0.95%) Foundry
13 7 (0.95%) Signiant