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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 295 358
Rank change year-on-year +95 +63 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 703 256 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.34% 0.79% 0.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.69% 4.32% 3.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 176 153
10th Percentile £362 £288 £376
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +9.09%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £825
90th Percentile £751 £768 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £468 £488
% change year-on-year +12.18% -4.00% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 6 13
10th Percentile £35.91 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £57.63 £15.56 £21.25
Median hourly rate £60.50 £26.25 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +130.48% -19.23% -10.34%
75th Percentile £66.50 £29.69 £46.18
90th Percentile £69.44 £58.75 £47.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.50 £25.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +142.00% -45.86% +15.45%

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 8,091 5,923 7,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.37% 18.23% 17.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,349 4,011 5,367
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 101 139
10th Percentile £16.56 £19.59 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £25.75 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.50 £51.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.50 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.38 £31.64 £31.25
% change year-on-year +21.29% +1.25% -40.48%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +93 582 £525 -1.18% 136
London +65 333 £525 -12.50% 70
UK excluding London +54 283 £525 +12.18% 88
Work from Home +43 205 £525 -9.68% 69
Midlands -8 73 £569 +431.54% 7
North of England -31 69 £524 +14.79% 11
West Midlands -9 68 £575 +437.38% 5
Scotland +35 55 £525 +10.53% 4
South East -37 48 £525 +9.95% 47
Yorkshire -19 35 £563 +23.29% 5
North West -34 30 £578 +83.49% 5
East of England -3 24 £475 +49.37% 7
South West -13 21 £540 -8.17% 8
North East -33 8 £463 - 1
East Midlands -7 5 £494 +20.43% 2
Wales -9 3 £750 +191.91% 1

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 38 (5.41%) SharePoint
2 34 (4.84%) Apache Airflow
3 33 (4.69%) Apache Spark
4 26 (3.70%) Apache
5 20 (2.84%) Confluence
6 17 (2.42%) SAS
7 15 (2.13%) CMS
8 3 (0.43%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.14%) Drupal
10 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.14%) Liferay
10 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 17 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.00%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.00%) Navisworks
2 7 (1.00%) Notepad++
2 7 (1.00%) Revit
3 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (1.56%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.85%) Summit
3 4 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.43%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Maximo
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe Campaign
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
6 1 (0.14%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 201 (28.59%) Azure
2 152 (21.62%) AWS
3 95 (13.51%) Power Platform
4 74 (10.53%) GCP
5 61 (8.68%) Collibra
6 50 (7.11%) Microsoft Purview
7 43 (6.12%) Amazon S3
8 39 (5.55%) Azure Data Factory
9 38 (5.41%) GitHub
10 37 (5.26%) dbt
11 33 (4.69%) Snowflake
12 32 (4.55%) Serverless
13 31 (4.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 30 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
15 29 (4.13%) AWS Lambda
16 22 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
17 16 (2.28%) Amazon EMR
18 15 (2.13%) Entra ID
18 15 (2.13%) Microsoft Copilot
18 15 (2.13%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.00%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.00%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.71%) Intranet
3 4 (0.57%) SSL
4 3 (0.43%) Firewall
4 3 (0.43%) HTTP
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) Broadband
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (17.35%) Data Warehouse
2 84 (11.95%) Power BI
3 78 (11.10%) Data Lake
4 35 (4.98%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.69%) Data Vault
6 31 (4.41%) Tableau
7 28 (3.98%) NoSQL
8 24 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
9 23 (3.27%) Delta Lake
10 21 (2.99%) Big Data
10 21 (2.99%) Snowflake Schema
10 21 (2.99%) SQL Server
11 20 (2.84%) Semantic Layer
12 19 (2.70%) Metadata Repository
13 18 (2.56%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (2.56%) BigQuery
14 17 (2.42%) Hadoop
15 16 (2.28%) Amazon Athena
16 13 (1.85%) Db2
17 12 (1.71%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 39 (5.55%) ERwin
2 36 (5.12%) Git
3 21 (2.99%) ER Studio
3 21 (2.99%) JIRA
4 17 (2.42%) Jenkins
5 15 (2.13%) Maven
5 15 (2.13%) PowerDesigner
6 14 (1.99%) GitLab
7 10 (1.42%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.43%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.28%) git-flow
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.28%) Selenium
10 1 (0.14%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.14%) Subversion
10 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
10 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 202 (28.73%) Finance
2 191 (27.17%) Social Skills
3 135 (19.20%) Analytical Skills
4 99 (14.08%) Banking
5 76 (10.81%) Public Sector
6 39 (5.55%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (5.41%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.70%) Retail
9 18 (2.56%) Legal
10 16 (2.28%) Marketing
11 15 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
12 14 (1.99%) Publishing
13 12 (1.71%) Aviation
13 12 (1.71%) Front Office
14 10 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 7 (1.00%) Manufacturing
15 7 (1.00%) Military
16 6 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
17 5 (0.71%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 173 (24.61%) Architect
2 125 (17.78%) Data Architect
3 100 (14.22%) Data Engineer
4 89 (12.66%) Analyst
5 83 (11.81%) Lead
6 57 (8.11%) Senior
7 55 (7.82%) Data Analyst
8 50 (7.11%) Data Modeller
9 48 (6.83%) Developer
10 36 (5.12%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.56%) Consultant
12 21 (2.99%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.84%) Data Manager
14 17 (2.42%) DevOps Engineer
14 17 (2.42%) Lead Data Engineer
15 16 (2.28%) Product Owner
15 16 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (1.99%) Enterprise Architect
16 14 (1.99%) Senior Data Engineer
17 12 (1.71%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.26%) PySpark
2 35 (4.98%) JSON
3 32 (4.55%) Kafka
4 26 (3.70%) REST
5 16 (2.28%) YAML
6 14 (1.99%) .NET
6 14 (1.99%) XML
7 13 (1.85%) Spring Boot
8 11 (1.56%) Node.js
9 10 (1.42%) OAuth
9 10 (1.42%) React
9 10 (1.42%) SLSA
10 8 (1.14%) Middleware
10 8 (1.14%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.14%) SOAP
10 8 (1.14%) Spring
11 7 (1.00%) GraphQL
11 7 (1.00%) RESTful
11 7 (1.00%) SPFx
12 6 (0.85%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.53%) Cloud Native
2 60 (8.53%) Onboarding
3 54 (7.68%) Data Structures
4 51 (7.25%) Taxonomies
5 42 (5.97%) Product Ownership
6 41 (5.83%) Management Information System
7 35 (4.98%) Legacy Systems
8 34 (4.84%) Reference Data
9 20 (2.84%) Derivative
10 16 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.85%) Credit Risk
11 13 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
12 12 (1.71%) Equity Derivative
12 12 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.56%) AI Agents
14 10 (1.42%) Clustering
14 10 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
14 10 (1.42%) Life Science
15 9 (1.28%) Fixed Income
15 9 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.84%) Unix
2 12 (1.71%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 352 (50.07%) Data Governance
2 335 (47.65%) Data Modelling
3 234 (33.29%) Analytics
4 233 (33.14%) Metadata Management
5 176 (25.04%) Data Architecture
6 166 (23.61%) AI
7 159 (22.62%) ETL
8 153 (21.76%) Data Pipeline
9 150 (21.34%) Data Engineering
10 142 (20.20%) Agile
11 139 (19.77%) Migration
12 138 (19.63%) CI/CD
13 123 (17.50%) Stakeholder Management
14 119 (16.93%) Business Intelligence
15 113 (16.07%) Validation
16 112 (15.93%) Data Lineage
17 106 (15.08%) Data Management
17 106 (15.08%) Decision-Making
18 104 (14.79%) DevOps
19 101 (14.37%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 268 (38.12%) SQL
2 182 (25.89%) Python
3 55 (7.82%) Java
4 25 (3.56%) PL/SQL
5 19 (2.70%) C#
6 14 (1.99%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.85%) Groovy
7 13 (1.85%) PowerShell
8 11 (1.56%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.28%) C++
9 9 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.14%) Bash
10 8 (1.14%) TypeScript
11 7 (1.00%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.85%) Bicep
12 6 (0.85%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.71%) Scala
14 4 (0.57%) Perl
14 4 (0.57%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 155 (22.05%) Security Cleared
2 116 (16.50%) SC Cleared
3 46 (6.54%) Degree
4 29 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (2.28%) DV Cleared
7 15 (2.13%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.71%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.56%) TOGAF Certification
10 8 (1.14%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.28%) ACCA
13 2 (0.28%) CBAP
13 2 (0.28%) CIMA
13 2 (0.28%) CISM
13 2 (0.28%) CISSP
13 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 276 (39.26%) Data Quality
2 67 (9.53%) GDPR
3 39 (5.55%) QA
4 34 (4.84%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.14%) GRC
6 7 (1.00%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.85%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.85%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.85%) NIST
8 4 (0.57%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.57%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.43%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.43%) MiFID
9 3 (0.43%) NCSC
10 2 (0.28%) IFRS
10 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 11 (1.56%) Docker
2 10 (1.42%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 29 (4.13%) Terraform
2 13 (1.85%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.42%) Grafana
4 8 (1.14%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.57%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.57%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.28%) Ansible
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
Vendors
1 126 (17.92%) Microsoft
2 109 (15.50%) Databricks
3 63 (8.96%) Oracle
4 50 (7.11%) Informatica
5 22 (3.13%) Google
6 21 (2.99%) Salesforce
7 17 (2.42%) Talend
8 14 (1.99%) IBM
8 14 (1.99%) SAP
9 13 (1.85%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.56%) Sparx
10 11 (1.56%) Sybase
11 10 (1.42%) Sonatype
12 8 (1.14%) Adobe
12 8 (1.14%) ServiceNow
13 7 (1.00%) Palantir
14 6 (0.85%) CA Agile Central
14 6 (0.85%) Foundry
14 6 (0.85%) OpenAI
15 5 (0.71%) Teradata