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 23 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 315 305
Rank change year-on-year +113 -10 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 608 217 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.31% 0.73% 0.71%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.40% 3.86% 4.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 158 211
10th Percentile £353 £233 £385
25th Percentile £413 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.08% -9.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £609 £638 £775
90th Percentile £738 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £575
% change year-on-year +6.38% -18.26% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 19
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £22.72 £19.74
Median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.73% -15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £82.25 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +132.73% -31.68% +11.03%

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 7,234 5,629 7,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.58% 19.06% 16.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,929 3,888 5,179
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.07%
75th Percentile £598 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £483
% change year-on-year -2.56% +0.93% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 107 146
10th Percentile £17.05 £20.35 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.50 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £51.00 £34.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -13.75% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.62 £54.78
90th Percentile £82.45 £74.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £40.00
% change year-on-year +58.03% -20.90% -31.73%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 +100 511 £500 -4.31% 266
London +92 291 £500 -16.67% 110
UK excluding London +28 241 £500 +6.38% 241
Work from Home +47 159 £525 -3.67% 188
Midlands -17 57 £537 +401.40% 29
North of England -33 56 £500 -4.76% 27
West Midlands -23 50 £569 +431.54% 15
South East -28 45 £500 +4.71% 83
Scotland +42 44 £485 -8.32% 29
East of England -4 33 £489 +53.51% 46
North West -22 31 £523 -4.13% 7
Yorkshire -32 23 £563 +50.00% 16
South West -27 12 £550 +4.76% 30
East Midlands - 7 £447 - 14
North East -20 5 £419 -22.94% 4
Wales -12 4 £750 +217.80% 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 41 (6.74%) Apache Spark
2 37 (6.09%) SharePoint
3 23 (3.78%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (3.62%) Confluence
5 21 (3.45%) SAS
6 17 (2.80%) Apache
7 10 (1.64%) CMS
8 5 (0.82%) Drupal
8 5 (0.82%) Sitecore CMS
9 4 (0.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.66%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
11 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.16%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 30 (4.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.64%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.15%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.66%) Navisworks
4 4 (0.66%) Revit
5 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 20 (3.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 13 (2.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.99%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (0.99%) SAP FI
3 6 (0.99%) SAP MM
3 6 (0.99%) Summit
4 3 (0.49%) Maximo
5 2 (0.33%) Actimize
5 2 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.16%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.16%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 185 (30.43%) Azure
2 138 (22.70%) AWS
3 96 (15.79%) Power Platform
4 77 (12.66%) GCP
5 56 (9.21%) Collibra
6 47 (7.73%) Azure Data Factory
7 44 (7.24%) Microsoft Purview
8 36 (5.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (5.59%) GitHub
10 32 (5.26%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.26%) Serverless
11 26 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
11 26 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
12 25 (4.11%) dbt
13 24 (3.95%) Snowflake
14 17 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (1.97%) Amazon EMR
16 10 (1.64%) ChatGPT
16 10 (1.64%) Power Automate
17 9 (1.48%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.15%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.15%) WinSCP
2 4 (0.66%) HTTP
2 4 (0.66%) Intranet
2 4 (0.66%) SSL
3 3 (0.49%) Firewall
4 2 (0.33%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (20.23%) Data Warehouse
2 88 (14.47%) Power BI
3 77 (12.66%) Data Lake
4 36 (5.92%) Relational Database
5 33 (5.43%) Metadata Repository
6 31 (5.10%) NoSQL
7 30 (4.93%) SQL Server
7 30 (4.93%) Tableau
8 29 (4.77%) Big Data
9 26 (4.28%) Data Vault
10 23 (3.78%) PostgreSQL
11 22 (3.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 21 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
13 20 (3.29%) Delta Lake
14 19 (3.13%) Hadoop
14 19 (3.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (2.47%) Oracle Database
16 14 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
16 14 (2.30%) BigQuery
16 14 (2.30%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 31 (5.10%) ERwin
1 31 (5.10%) Git
2 22 (3.62%) JIRA
3 16 (2.63%) Jenkins
4 13 (2.14%) PowerDesigner
5 12 (1.97%) GitLab
6 10 (1.64%) ER Studio
7 9 (1.48%) Maven
8 8 (1.32%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.49%) Subversion
10 2 (0.33%) git-flow
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Selenium
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.16%) Yeoman
General
1 200 (32.89%) Social Skills
2 169 (27.80%) Finance
3 125 (20.56%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (13.16%) Public Sector
5 69 (11.35%) Banking
6 40 (6.58%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (3.13%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.96%) Legal
9 16 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.47%) Publishing
11 13 (2.14%) Marketing
12 10 (1.64%) Aviation
12 10 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.64%) Retail
13 9 (1.48%) Front Office
14 7 (1.15%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.15%) Military
15 6 (0.99%) Law
15 6 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 142 (23.36%) Architect
2 108 (17.76%) Data Architect
3 89 (14.64%) Data Engineer
4 81 (13.32%) Analyst
5 53 (8.72%) Senior
6 52 (8.55%) Data Analyst
7 48 (7.89%) Lead
8 42 (6.91%) Developer
9 38 (6.25%) Data Modeller
10 32 (5.26%) Business Analyst
11 27 (4.44%) Consultant
12 16 (2.63%) Data Business Analyst
12 16 (2.63%) Data Manager
13 14 (2.30%) AWS Engineer
13 14 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
13 14 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
13 14 (2.30%) Senior Data Engineer
13 14 (2.30%) Software Engineer
14 11 (1.81%) Azure Data Engineer
14 11 (1.81%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.40%) PySpark
2 34 (5.59%) Kafka
3 30 (4.93%) REST
4 29 (4.77%) JSON
5 18 (2.96%) YAML
6 16 (2.63%) .NET
7 15 (2.47%) XML
8 13 (2.14%) SOAP
9 12 (1.97%) OAuth
10 11 (1.81%) React
11 10 (1.64%) Node.js
12 8 (1.32%) SLSA
13 7 (1.15%) ADO
13 7 (1.15%) OAuth2
13 7 (1.15%) RESTful
14 6 (0.99%) HTML
14 6 (0.99%) Middleware
14 6 (0.99%) SAP Basis
14 6 (0.99%) SAP Business Workflow
14 6 (0.99%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 59 (9.70%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.57%) Data Structures
3 39 (6.41%) Management Information System
4 38 (6.25%) Onboarding
5 37 (6.09%) Taxonomies
6 34 (5.59%) Reference Data
7 29 (4.77%) Product Ownership
8 26 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (2.47%) Derivative
11 12 (1.97%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.97%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (1.48%) Clustering
14 9 (1.48%) Equity Derivative
15 8 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (1.32%) Market Risk
16 6 (0.99%) Data Fabric
16 6 (0.99%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 22 (3.62%) Unix
2 11 (1.81%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (49.18%) Data Governance
2 277 (45.56%) Data Modelling
3 231 (37.99%) Metadata Management
4 215 (35.36%) Analytics
5 174 (28.62%) ETL
6 161 (26.48%) Data Architecture
7 129 (21.22%) Data Pipeline
8 126 (20.72%) AI
9 125 (20.56%) Data Engineering
10 121 (19.90%) Business Intelligence
11 119 (19.57%) CI/CD
12 115 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
13 113 (18.59%) Migration
14 110 (18.09%) Agile
14 110 (18.09%) Validation
15 102 (16.78%) Data Lineage
16 98 (16.12%) Stakeholder Management
17 94 (15.46%) DevOps
18 92 (15.13%) Data Management
19 87 (14.31%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 247 (40.63%) SQL
2 160 (26.32%) Python
3 39 (6.41%) Java
4 27 (4.44%) C#
5 24 (3.95%) PL/SQL
6 18 (2.96%) PowerShell
7 16 (2.63%) Shell Script
8 13 (2.14%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.48%) Groovy
9 9 (1.48%) Perl
9 9 (1.48%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.32%) C++
11 7 (1.15%) R
12 6 (0.99%) ABAP
12 6 (0.99%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 6 (0.99%) Scala
12 6 (0.99%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.66%) Bicep
14 2 (0.33%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 144 (23.68%) Security Cleared
2 102 (16.78%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.41%) Degree
4 27 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.14%) Master's Degree
7 11 (1.81%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.15%) TOGAF Certification
10 6 (0.99%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.99%) DV Cleared
11 3 (0.49%) CISSP
12 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
12 2 (0.33%) CISM
12 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.16%) CSPO
13 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.16%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (41.78%) Data Quality
2 60 (9.87%) GDPR
3 29 (4.77%) QA
4 21 (3.45%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.81%) GRC
5 11 (1.81%) Solvency II
6 7 (1.15%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.99%) IFRS
7 6 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.99%) NIST
8 4 (0.66%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.49%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.49%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.49%) MiFID
10 2 (0.33%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.33%) FINREP
10 2 (0.33%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 14 (2.30%) Docker
2 8 (1.32%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (4.11%) Terraform
2 16 (2.63%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.15%) Grafana
4 6 (0.99%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.16%) Ansible
7 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 110 (18.09%) Microsoft
2 87 (14.31%) Databricks
3 61 (10.03%) Oracle
4 56 (9.21%) Informatica
5 25 (4.11%) Salesforce
6 24 (3.95%) SAP
6 24 (3.95%) ServiceNow
6 24 (3.95%) Talend
7 20 (3.29%) Google
8 18 (2.96%) Sparx
9 10 (1.64%) IBM
10 8 (1.32%) Autodesk
10 8 (1.32%) OpenText
10 8 (1.32%) Sonatype
10 8 (1.32%) Sybase
11 7 (1.15%) Adobe
11 7 (1.15%) OpenAI
11 7 (1.15%) Sitecore
11 7 (1.15%) Teradata
12 6 (0.99%) Palantir