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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 293 372
Rank change year-on-year +94 +79 +7
Contract jobs citing Metadata 774 281 203
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.44% 0.86% 0.52%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.47% 4.78% 2.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 195 126
10th Percentile £400 £320 £400
25th Percentile £455 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £663 £638 £775
90th Percentile £750 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £459 £488
% change year-on-year +14.38% -5.85% -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 8,171 5,882 7,030
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.22% 17.96% 18.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,443 3,950 4,924
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.23%
75th Percentile £606 £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 252 95 100
10th Percentile £15.77 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £22.96 £29.00 £19.77
Median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +15.38% -40.91%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.73 £69.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £32.58 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.40% +8.60% -42.86%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +94 667 £540 +2.76% 532
London +66 385 £543 -7.66% 335
UK excluding London +75 303 £525 +14.38% 279
Work from Home +46 223 £525 -10.64% 250
North of England -2 83 £500 +5.26% 61
Midlands -8 69 £600 +194.84% 36
West Midlands -7 62 £653 +510.28% 30
South East -30 52 £525 +12.18% 78
Yorkshire +1 51 £500 -6.98% 22
Scotland +20 43 £540 +13.68% 29
East of England +2 32 £450 -14.29% 10
South West -19 28 £550 -8.33% 48
North West -30 27 £575 +41.10% 34
East Midlands -13 7 £494 +18.98% 6
North East -35 7 £463 +2.78% 5
Wales -14 3 £750 +76.47% 6

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 47 (6.07%) SharePoint
2 33 (4.26%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (3.36%) Apache
3 26 (3.36%) Apache Spark
4 22 (2.84%) CMS
5 17 (2.20%) Confluence
6 15 (1.94%) SAS
7 9 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.78%) Palantir Foundry
9 5 (0.65%) Headless CMS
10 3 (0.39%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.26%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.26%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.13%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.13%) JBoss
12 1 (0.13%) Liferay
12 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.90%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.90%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.90%) Revit
3 5 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.39%) 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 (2.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.52%) Summit
4 3 (0.39%) Maximo
4 3 (0.39%) 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
1 232 (29.97%) Azure
2 181 (23.39%) AWS
3 110 (14.21%) Power Platform
4 87 (11.24%) GCP
5 65 (8.40%) Microsoft Purview
6 62 (8.01%) Collibra
7 50 (6.46%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.43%) GitHub
9 40 (5.17%) Amazon S3
10 39 (5.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 38 (4.91%) Snowflake
12 37 (4.78%) dbt
13 33 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
14 32 (4.13%) Serverless
15 31 (4.01%) Microsoft 365
16 30 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
17 23 (2.97%) Power Automate
18 21 (2.71%) Entra ID
18 21 (2.71%) Microsoft Copilot
19 20 (2.58%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.90%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.90%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.65%) Broadband
3 4 (0.52%) HTTP
3 4 (0.52%) Intranet
3 4 (0.52%) SSL
4 3 (0.39%) 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
1 116 (14.99%) Data Warehouse
2 97 (12.53%) Power BI
3 87 (11.24%) Data Lake
4 39 (5.04%) Relational Database
5 35 (4.52%) NoSQL
6 34 (4.39%) Delta Lake
7 32 (4.13%) Tableau
8 27 (3.49%) Data Vault
9 24 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (2.84%) Semantic Layer
11 20 (2.58%) BigQuery
12 19 (2.45%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
13 16 (2.07%) SQL Server
14 14 (1.81%) Db2
15 13 (1.68%) MongoDB
15 13 (1.68%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
16 12 (1.55%) Parquet
17 11 (1.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 35 (4.52%) ERwin
1 35 (4.52%) Git
2 25 (3.23%) ER Studio
3 21 (2.71%) JIRA
4 18 (2.33%) Jenkins
5 16 (2.07%) Maven
6 13 (1.68%) PowerDesigner
7 12 (1.55%) GitLab
8 11 (1.42%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.65%) Selenium
10 3 (0.39%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.39%) MLflow
11 2 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.26%) git-flow
11 2 (0.26%) TestRail
12 1 (0.13%) Postman
12 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.13%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 228 (29.46%) Social Skills
2 202 (26.10%) Finance
3 157 (20.28%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (12.27%) Banking
5 92 (11.89%) Public Sector
6 38 (4.91%) Investment Banking
7 29 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
8 25 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.97%) Retail
10 20 (2.58%) Publishing
11 19 (2.45%) Marketing
12 18 (2.33%) Legal
13 17 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.55%) Front Office
15 12 (1.55%) Manufacturing
16 10 (1.29%) Law
16 10 (1.29%) Military
17 8 (1.03%) Aviation
17 8 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 192 (24.81%) Architect
2 137 (17.70%) Data Architect
3 121 (15.63%) Data Engineer
4 105 (13.57%) Lead
5 91 (11.76%) Analyst
6 71 (9.17%) Senior
7 53 (6.85%) Data Analyst
8 42 (5.43%) Data Modeller
9 35 (4.52%) Business Analyst
9 35 (4.52%) Developer
10 25 (3.23%) Senior Data Engineer
11 24 (3.10%) Consultant
12 22 (2.84%) Data Manager
13 20 (2.58%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.58%) Product Owner
14 19 (2.45%) Lead Data Engineer
15 18 (2.33%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.20%) Solutions Architect
17 16 (2.07%) Enterprise Architect
18 15 (1.94%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (7.24%) PySpark
2 44 (5.68%) JSON
3 39 (5.04%) Terraform
4 36 (4.65%) Kafka
5 34 (4.39%) REST
6 20 (2.58%) YAML
7 15 (1.94%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.55%) Node.js
8 12 (1.55%) XML
9 11 (1.42%) SLSA
10 10 (1.29%) React
10 10 (1.29%) Spring
11 9 (1.16%) .NET
12 8 (1.03%) GraphQL
12 8 (1.03%) Middleware
12 8 (1.03%) Playwright
13 7 (0.90%) RESTful
14 6 (0.78%) OAuth
14 6 (0.78%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.78%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 74 (9.56%) Cloud Native
2 64 (8.27%) Data Structures
3 62 (8.01%) Onboarding
4 53 (6.85%) Taxonomies
5 52 (6.72%) Management Information System
5 52 (6.72%) Product Ownership
6 46 (5.94%) Legacy Systems
7 44 (5.68%) Reference Data
8 19 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (2.45%) Derivative
9 15 (1.94%) AI Agents
10 14 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.68%) Life Science
12 12 (1.55%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.42%) Data Fabric
13 11 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
14 10 (1.29%) Digital Media
15 9 (1.16%) Clustering
15 9 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.45%) Unix
2 13 (1.68%) 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
1 407 (52.58%) Data Governance
2 362 (46.77%) Data Modelling
3 294 (37.98%) Metadata Management
4 254 (32.82%) Analytics
5 209 (27.00%) AI
6 206 (26.61%) Data Architecture
7 187 (24.16%) Stakeholder Management
8 176 (22.74%) Agile
8 176 (22.74%) Data Pipeline
9 168 (21.71%) ETL
10 167 (21.58%) CI/CD
11 165 (21.32%) Data Engineering
11 165 (21.32%) Migration
12 132 (17.05%) Data Management
13 130 (16.80%) Business Intelligence
13 130 (16.80%) Validation
14 129 (16.67%) Data Lineage
15 126 (16.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 124 (16.02%) DevOps
17 121 (15.63%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 285 (36.82%) SQL
2 201 (25.97%) Python
3 63 (8.14%) Java
4 22 (2.84%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.94%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.81%) C#
6 14 (1.81%) Groovy
6 14 (1.81%) PowerShell
7 12 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 12 (1.55%) JavaScript
8 9 (1.16%) Bash
8 9 (1.16%) C++
9 7 (0.90%) Bicep
9 7 (0.90%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.78%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.65%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.65%) Scala
11 5 (0.65%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.52%) Cypher
12 4 (0.52%) Perl
Qualifications
1 170 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 127 (16.41%) SC Cleared
3 46 (5.94%) Degree
4 34 (4.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (2.33%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.81%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.29%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (1.16%) Master's Degree
10 8 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.90%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.39%) CISSP
12 3 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
12 3 (0.39%) 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
1 345 (44.57%) Data Quality
2 72 (9.30%) GDPR
3 44 (5.68%) QA
4 42 (5.43%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.03%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.78%) GRC
6 6 (0.78%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.78%) MiFID
7 5 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.65%) NIST
7 5 (0.65%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.52%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.52%) NCSC
8 4 (0.52%) SNOMED CT
8 4 (0.52%) WCAG
9 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.26%) IFRS
10 2 (0.26%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.26%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 22 (2.84%) Docker
2 11 (1.42%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 23 (2.97%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
3 8 (1.03%) Grafana
4 5 (0.65%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.52%) Ansible
5 4 (0.52%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.52%) 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
1 146 (18.86%) Microsoft
2 127 (16.41%) Databricks
3 57 (7.36%) Oracle
4 53 (6.85%) Informatica
5 28 (3.62%) Google
6 18 (2.33%) Sparx
7 17 (2.20%) SAP
8 16 (2.07%) IBM
8 16 (2.07%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.68%) Autodesk
9 13 (1.68%) Talend
10 12 (1.55%) ServiceNow
11 11 (1.42%) Sonatype
11 11 (1.42%) Sybase
12 10 (1.29%) Denodo
12 10 (1.29%) Palantir
12 10 (1.29%) Teradata
13 9 (1.16%) Foundry
14 8 (1.03%) Adobe
14 8 (1.03%) CA Agile Central