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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 293 355
Rank change year-on-year +89 +62 +22
Contract jobs citing Metadata 711 279 225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.34% 0.85% 0.56%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.74% 4.67% 3.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 461 194 147
10th Percentile £386 £308 £384
25th Percentile £455 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -10.87% -
75th Percentile £670 £638 £800
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 14 5 9
10th Percentile £41.64 - -
25th Percentile £60.25 £13.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £65.75 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +163.00% -23.08% -8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £30.00 £33.75
90th Percentile - £64.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £19.25 £13.50
% change year-on-year +241.56% +42.59% -66.25%

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 8,139 5,969 7,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.37% 18.19% 17.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,404 4,040 5,090
10th Percentile £356 £342 £350
25th Percentile £415 £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 £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 255 90 104
10th Percentile £16.28 £19.20 £14.48
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.50 £20.56
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.36
90th Percentile £76.30 £78.83 £72.20
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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 +79 598 £525 - 209
London +52 345 £525 -9.68% 127
UK excluding London +60 279 £525 +23.53% 112
Work from Home +39 207 £525 -8.70% 95
North of England -13 71 £519 +15.24% 19
Midlands -17 62 £589 +450.47% 20
West Midlands -24 58 £613 +472.43% 13
Scotland +27 48 £525 +10.53% 6
South East -46 47 £525 +23.53% 45
Yorkshire -12 36 £525 -2.33% 8
East of England +8 30 £463 +45.44% 5
North West -33 29 £575 +83.12% 10
South West -17 25 £550 -6.38% 11
North East -39 8 £463 +1.37% 1
East Midlands -10 4 £500 +21.95% 7
Wales -16 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 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 31 (4.36%) Apache Airflow
2 31 (4.36%) Apache Spark
3 25 (3.52%) Apache
4 18 (2.53%) CMS
5 17 (2.39%) Confluence
6 12 (1.69%) SAS
7 4 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.42%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
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 20 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.98%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.98%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.98%) Revit
3 5 (0.70%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.14%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (1.69%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.56%) Summit
4 3 (0.42%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.42%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Maximo
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
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
Cloud Services
1 212 (29.82%) Azure
2 158 (22.22%) AWS
3 100 (14.06%) Power Platform
4 78 (10.97%) GCP
5 59 (8.30%) Collibra
6 50 (7.03%) Microsoft Purview
7 44 (6.19%) Azure Data Factory
8 43 (6.05%) Amazon S3
9 36 (5.06%) GitHub
10 34 (4.78%) dbt
10 34 (4.78%) Serverless
11 32 (4.50%) Snowflake
12 31 (4.36%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 29 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
15 28 (3.94%) Microsoft 365
16 19 (2.67%) Power Automate
17 18 (2.53%) Microsoft Copilot
18 17 (2.39%) Amazon EMR
18 17 (2.39%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.98%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.98%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.70%) Intranet
3 4 (0.56%) SSL
4 3 (0.42%) Broadband
4 3 (0.42%) Firewall
4 3 (0.42%) HTTP
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (16.32%) Data Warehouse
2 86 (12.10%) Power BI
3 83 (11.67%) Data Lake
4 35 (4.92%) Data Vault
4 35 (4.92%) Relational Database
5 30 (4.22%) NoSQL
5 30 (4.22%) Tableau
6 27 (3.80%) Delta Lake
7 21 (2.95%) Semantic Layer
8 20 (2.81%) BigQuery
8 20 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
9 19 (2.67%) Snowflake Schema
10 18 (2.53%) Amazon Redshift
11 17 (2.39%) Big Data
11 17 (2.39%) SQL Server
12 15 (2.11%) Amazon Athena
13 14 (1.97%) Db2
14 12 (1.69%) Hadoop
14 12 (1.69%) MongoDB
15 11 (1.55%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 41 (5.77%) ERwin
2 31 (4.36%) Git
3 26 (3.66%) ER Studio
4 19 (2.67%) JIRA
5 17 (2.39%) Jenkins
5 17 (2.39%) PowerDesigner
6 15 (2.11%) Maven
7 14 (1.97%) GitLab
8 10 (1.41%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.28%) git-flow
10 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.28%) Selenium
10 2 (0.28%) TestRail
11 1 (0.14%) MLflow
11 1 (0.14%) Postman
11 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 202 (28.41%) Finance
2 190 (26.72%) Social Skills
3 142 (19.97%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (13.50%) Banking
5 72 (10.13%) Public Sector
6 37 (5.20%) Investment Banking
7 36 (5.06%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (2.67%) Legal
9 18 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (2.39%) Retail
11 16 (2.25%) Marketing
11 16 (2.25%) Publishing
12 14 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (1.69%) Aviation
13 12 (1.69%) Front Office
14 11 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 7 (0.98%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.98%) Military
15 7 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 170 (23.91%) Architect
2 123 (17.30%) Data Architect
3 107 (15.05%) Data Engineer
4 88 (12.38%) Analyst
5 85 (11.95%) Lead
6 61 (8.58%) Senior
7 54 (7.59%) Data Analyst
8 52 (7.31%) Data Modeller
9 41 (5.77%) Developer
10 33 (4.64%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.52%) Consultant
12 20 (2.81%) Data Business Analyst
12 20 (2.81%) Data Manager
13 19 (2.67%) Product Owner
14 17 (2.39%) DevOps Engineer
15 16 (2.25%) Lead Data Engineer
15 16 (2.25%) Senior Data Engineer
16 15 (2.11%) Enterprise Architect
16 15 (2.11%) Solutions Architect
17 13 (1.83%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.75%) PySpark
2 38 (5.34%) JSON
3 33 (4.64%) Kafka
4 24 (3.38%) REST
5 16 (2.25%) YAML
6 13 (1.83%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.69%) Node.js
7 12 (1.69%) XML
8 10 (1.41%) .NET
8 10 (1.41%) OAuth
8 10 (1.41%) SLSA
9 9 (1.27%) React
10 8 (1.13%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.13%) Middleware
10 8 (1.13%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.13%) Spring
11 7 (0.98%) SPFx
12 6 (0.84%) ADO
12 6 (0.84%) CSS
12 6 (0.84%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 68 (9.56%) Cloud Native
2 62 (8.72%) Data Structures
3 58 (8.16%) Onboarding
4 54 (7.59%) Taxonomies
5 49 (6.89%) Product Ownership
6 43 (6.05%) Management Information System
6 43 (6.05%) Reference Data
7 39 (5.49%) Legacy Systems
8 19 (2.67%) Derivative
9 17 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (1.83%) AI Agents
11 12 (1.69%) Distributed Computing
11 12 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
11 12 (1.69%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.41%) Digital Media
12 10 (1.41%) Life Science
13 9 (1.27%) Data Fabric
13 9 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.13%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.53%) Unix
2 12 (1.69%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 348 (48.95%) Data Governance
2 337 (47.40%) Data Modelling
3 241 (33.90%) Metadata Management
4 233 (32.77%) Analytics
5 176 (24.75%) Data Architecture
6 170 (23.91%) AI
7 162 (22.78%) Data Pipeline
8 158 (22.22%) ETL
9 151 (21.24%) Agile
9 151 (21.24%) Data Engineering
10 137 (19.27%) CI/CD
11 132 (18.57%) Migration
12 130 (18.28%) Stakeholder Management
13 118 (16.60%) Business Intelligence
14 115 (16.17%) Data Lineage
14 115 (16.17%) Validation
15 109 (15.33%) Data Management
16 106 (14.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 105 (14.77%) Continuous Improvement
17 105 (14.77%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 275 (38.68%) SQL
2 185 (26.02%) Python
3 56 (7.88%) Java
4 23 (3.23%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.11%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.97%) C#
6 14 (1.97%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.83%) Groovy
8 11 (1.55%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.27%) Bash
9 9 (1.27%) C++
9 9 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.13%) TypeScript
11 7 (0.98%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.84%) Bicep
12 6 (0.84%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.70%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.70%) Scala
14 4 (0.56%) Perl
14 4 (0.56%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 152 (21.38%) Security Cleared
2 116 (16.32%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.77%) Degree
4 32 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.39%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.55%) Master's Degree
8 11 (1.55%) TOGAF Certification
9 7 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 5 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.28%) ACCA
12 2 (0.28%) CBAP
12 2 (0.28%) CIMA
12 2 (0.28%) CISM
12 2 (0.28%) CISSP
12 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 282 (39.66%) Data Quality
2 64 (9.00%) GDPR
3 40 (5.63%) Accessibility
4 38 (5.34%) QA
5 7 (0.98%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.84%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.84%) GRC
6 6 (0.84%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.84%) NIST
7 4 (0.56%) ISO 22301
7 4 (0.56%) MiFID
7 4 (0.56%) WCAG
8 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.42%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.42%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.42%) NCSC
9 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 16 (2.25%) Docker
2 10 (1.41%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 29 (4.08%) Terraform
2 20 (2.81%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.41%) Grafana
4 7 (0.98%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.56%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.28%) Ansible
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
Vendors
1 124 (17.44%) Microsoft
2 113 (15.89%) Databricks
3 53 (7.45%) Oracle
4 50 (7.03%) Informatica
5 21 (2.95%) Google
6 19 (2.67%) Salesforce
7 15 (2.11%) IBM
7 15 (2.11%) SAP
7 15 (2.11%) Talend
8 13 (1.83%) Autodesk
9 12 (1.69%) Sparx
10 11 (1.55%) Sybase
11 10 (1.41%) Sonatype
12 8 (1.13%) Adobe
12 8 (1.13%) CA Agile Central
12 8 (1.13%) Denodo
12 8 (1.13%) Palantir
13 7 (0.98%) Aspera
13 7 (0.98%) Foundry
13 7 (0.98%) Signiant