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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 198 290 366
Rank change year-on-year +92 +76 +21
Contract jobs citing Metadata 783 285 202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 0.87% 0.52%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.57% 4.85% 2.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 487 197 125
10th Percentile £400 £323 £400
25th Percentile £456 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £664 £638 £775
90th Percentile £750 £750 £920
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £465 £488
% change year-on-year +12.84% -4.56% -11.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 3 10
10th Percentile £19.28 - £13.50
25th Percentile £50.23 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +399.89% -50.91% -44.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.63 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.15 £72.75 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +399.89% -17.68% -69.82%

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 8,183 5,877 7,030
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.22% 17.97% 18.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,453 3,943 4,930
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.31%
75th Percentile £613 £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 255 92 100
10th Percentile £15.82 £21.21 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.00 £19.77
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.85 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.53% +19.52% -40.91%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.00 £54.06
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.75 £69.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £33.88 £30.00
% change year-on-year +12.90% +12.93% -44.19%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +84 673 £540 +2.86% 521
London +57 390 £550 -6.38% 333
UK excluding London +66 305 £525 +12.84% 269
Work from Home +51 222 £525 -10.64% 252
North of England +3 84 £500 - 60
Midlands -4 69 £600 +194.84% 30
West Midlands -12 62 £653 +510.28% 25
South East -32 53 £525 +12.84% 75
Yorkshire +5 51 £500 -15.79% 23
Scotland +25 44 £533 +12.11% 28
East of England +4 32 £450 -18.18% 10
North West -29 28 £575 +41.10% 32
South West -8 27 £563 -6.25% 50
East Midlands -16 7 £494 +18.98% 5
North East -33 7 £463 +2.78% 5
Wales -19 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 48 (6.13%) SharePoint
2 35 (4.47%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (3.45%) Apache
4 26 (3.32%) Apache Spark
5 22 (2.81%) CMS
6 17 (2.17%) Confluence
7 15 (1.92%) SAS
8 9 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.77%) Palantir Foundry
10 5 (0.64%) Headless CMS
11 3 (0.38%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.26%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.26%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.13%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.13%) JBoss
13 1 (0.13%) Liferay
13 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.89%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.89%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.89%) Revit
3 6 (0.77%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.13%) Notion
7 1 (0.13%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.51%) Summit
4 3 (0.38%) Maximo
4 3 (0.38%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.26%) HFM
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.26%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.26%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.26%) Workfront
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 236 (30.14%) Azure
2 187 (23.88%) AWS
3 113 (14.43%) Power Platform
4 90 (11.49%) GCP
5 67 (8.56%) Microsoft Purview
6 62 (7.92%) Collibra
7 51 (6.51%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.36%) Amazon S3
8 42 (5.36%) GitHub
9 39 (4.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 39 (4.98%) dbt
9 39 (4.98%) Snowflake
10 34 (4.34%) Serverless
11 33 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
12 32 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (3.96%) Microsoft 365
14 23 (2.94%) Power Automate
15 22 (2.81%) Entra ID
16 21 (2.68%) Microsoft Copilot
17 20 (2.55%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.89%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.89%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.64%) Broadband
3 4 (0.51%) HTTP
3 4 (0.51%) Intranet
3 4 (0.51%) SSL
4 3 (0.38%) Firewall
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.13%) SAN
5 1 (0.13%) SMS
5 1 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (15.20%) Data Warehouse
2 100 (12.77%) Power BI
3 91 (11.62%) Data Lake
4 39 (4.98%) Relational Database
5 35 (4.47%) Delta Lake
5 35 (4.47%) NoSQL
6 32 (4.09%) Tableau
7 27 (3.45%) Data Vault
8 24 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
8 24 (3.07%) Semantic Layer
9 21 (2.68%) BigQuery
10 20 (2.55%) Amazon Redshift
11 16 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
12 15 (1.92%) SQL Server
13 14 (1.79%) Db2
14 13 (1.66%) Amazon Athena
14 13 (1.66%) MongoDB
14 13 (1.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (1.53%) Parquet
16 11 (1.40%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 37 (4.73%) Git
2 35 (4.47%) ERwin
3 25 (3.19%) ER Studio
4 21 (2.68%) JIRA
5 18 (2.30%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.04%) Maven
7 13 (1.66%) PowerDesigner
8 12 (1.53%) GitLab
9 11 (1.40%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.77%) Selenium
11 3 (0.38%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.38%) MLflow
12 2 (0.26%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.26%) git-flow
12 2 (0.26%) TestRail
13 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
13 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 1 (0.13%) Team Foundation Server
13 1 (0.13%) VersionOne
13 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 229 (29.25%) Social Skills
2 204 (26.05%) Finance
3 158 (20.18%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (12.13%) Banking
5 93 (11.88%) Public Sector
6 38 (4.85%) Investment Banking
7 30 (3.83%) Influencing Skills
8 25 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.94%) Retail
10 20 (2.55%) Publishing
11 19 (2.43%) Marketing
12 18 (2.30%) Legal
13 17 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.53%) Front Office
15 12 (1.53%) Manufacturing
16 10 (1.28%) Law
16 10 (1.28%) Military
17 8 (1.02%) Aviation
17 8 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 195 (24.90%) Architect
2 139 (17.75%) Data Architect
3 125 (15.96%) Data Engineer
4 107 (13.67%) Lead
5 92 (11.75%) Analyst
6 70 (8.94%) Senior
7 53 (6.77%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.49%) Data Modeller
9 35 (4.47%) Business Analyst
9 35 (4.47%) Developer
10 25 (3.19%) Senior Data Engineer
11 24 (3.07%) Consultant
12 22 (2.81%) Data Manager
13 21 (2.68%) Lead Data Engineer
14 20 (2.55%) Data Business Analyst
14 20 (2.55%) Product Owner
15 18 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
15 18 (2.30%) Solutions Architect
16 16 (2.04%) Enterprise Architect
17 15 (1.92%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.54%) PySpark
2 43 (5.49%) JSON
3 41 (5.24%) Terraform
4 37 (4.73%) Kafka
5 33 (4.21%) REST
6 20 (2.55%) YAML
7 15 (1.92%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.53%) Node.js
8 12 (1.53%) XML
9 11 (1.40%) React
9 11 (1.40%) SLSA
10 10 (1.28%) Spring
11 9 (1.15%) .NET
11 9 (1.15%) Playwright
12 8 (1.02%) GraphQL
12 8 (1.02%) Middleware
13 7 (0.89%) RESTful
14 6 (0.77%) OAuth
14 6 (0.77%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.77%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 75 (9.58%) Cloud Native
2 65 (8.30%) Data Structures
3 63 (8.05%) Onboarding
4 53 (6.77%) Management Information System
4 53 (6.77%) Taxonomies
5 52 (6.64%) Product Ownership
6 47 (6.00%) Legacy Systems
7 44 (5.62%) Reference Data
8 19 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (2.43%) Derivative
9 16 (2.04%) AI Agents
10 14 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.66%) Life Science
12 12 (1.53%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.40%) Data Fabric
13 11 (1.40%) Distributed Computing
14 10 (1.28%) Digital Media
15 9 (1.15%) Clustering
15 9 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.43%) Unix
2 13 (1.66%) Linux
3 1 (0.13%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.13%) VMS
3 1 (0.13%) Windows
3 1 (0.13%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 413 (52.75%) Data Governance
2 367 (46.87%) Data Modelling
3 298 (38.06%) Metadata Management
4 261 (33.33%) Analytics
5 214 (27.33%) AI
6 208 (26.56%) Data Architecture
7 189 (24.14%) Stakeholder Management
8 180 (22.99%) Agile
8 180 (22.99%) Data Pipeline
9 169 (21.58%) CI/CD
9 169 (21.58%) ETL
10 168 (21.46%) Data Engineering
11 165 (21.07%) Migration
12 134 (17.11%) Business Intelligence
13 133 (16.99%) Data Management
14 131 (16.73%) Data Lineage
15 129 (16.48%) Validation
16 128 (16.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 124 (15.84%) DevOps
18 123 (15.71%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 290 (37.04%) SQL
2 204 (26.05%) Python
3 63 (8.05%) Java
4 22 (2.81%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.92%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.79%) C#
6 14 (1.79%) Groovy
6 14 (1.79%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 13 (1.66%) JavaScript
8 9 (1.15%) Bash
8 9 (1.15%) C++
9 7 (0.89%) Bicep
9 7 (0.89%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.77%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.64%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.64%) Scala
11 5 (0.64%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.51%) Cypher
12 4 (0.51%) Perl
Qualifications
1 173 (22.09%) Security Cleared
2 130 (16.60%) SC Cleared
3 47 (6.00%) Degree
4 35 (4.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (2.30%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.79%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 8 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.89%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.38%) CISSP
12 3 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
12 3 (0.38%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.26%) ACCA
13 2 (0.26%) CBAP
13 2 (0.26%) CIMA
13 2 (0.26%) CISM
13 2 (0.26%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (44.96%) Data Quality
2 72 (9.20%) GDPR
3 44 (5.62%) QA
4 42 (5.36%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.02%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.77%) GRC
6 6 (0.77%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.77%) MiFID
7 5 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.64%) NIST
7 5 (0.64%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.51%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.51%) NCSC
8 4 (0.51%) SNOMED CT
8 4 (0.51%) WCAG
9 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.26%) IFRS
10 2 (0.26%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.26%) PMO
System Software
1 23 (2.94%) Docker
2 11 (1.40%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 23 (2.94%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
3 8 (1.02%) Grafana
4 5 (0.64%) Ansible
4 5 (0.64%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.51%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.51%) PingFederate
6 2 (0.26%) Control-M
6 2 (0.26%) Kibana
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.13%) Istio
7 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 150 (19.16%) Microsoft
2 129 (16.48%) Databricks
3 56 (7.15%) Oracle
4 53 (6.77%) Informatica
5 29 (3.70%) Google
6 18 (2.30%) Sparx
7 17 (2.17%) SAP
8 16 (2.04%) IBM
8 16 (2.04%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.66%) Autodesk
9 13 (1.66%) Talend
10 12 (1.53%) ServiceNow
11 11 (1.40%) Sonatype
11 11 (1.40%) Sybase
12 10 (1.28%) Denodo
12 10 (1.28%) Palantir
12 10 (1.28%) Teradata
13 9 (1.15%) Foundry
14 8 (1.02%) Adobe
14 8 (1.02%) CA Agile Central