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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 206 306 345
Rank change year-on-year +100 +39 +47
Contract jobs citing Metadata 720 267 237
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.37% 0.82% 0.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.88% 4.49% 3.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 186 154
10th Percentile £360 £303 £377
25th Percentile £450 £436 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £819
90th Percentile £761 £755 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £481
% change year-on-year +16.67% -6.49% -3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 10
10th Percentile £43.55 - £13.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £13.25 £15.44
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +156.00% -23.08% -8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £30.00 £43.07
90th Percentile - £64.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £19.25 £29.84
% change year-on-year +232.47% -35.49% -25.40%

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 8,107 5,940 7,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.38% 18.23% 17.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,352 4,021 5,264
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -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 97 119
10th Percentile £16.56 £19.45 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £26.32 £20.38
Median hourly rate £42.50 £37.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% -2.60% -30.00%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £77.10 £77.50 £71.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.25 £32.05 £31.25
% change year-on-year +25.59% +2.56% -39.02%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +86 598 £525 - 173
London +56 338 £525 -11.58% 101
UK excluding London +54 293 £525 +16.67% 89
Work from Home +44 207 £525 -9.68% 78
Midlands +5 73 £569 +431.54% 8
North of England -20 71 £523 +14.52% 18
West Midlands -6 68 £578 +440.19% 5
Scotland +31 55 £525 +10.53% 5
South East -48 49 £525 +12.18% 41
Yorkshire -18 37 £544 +19.18% 5
North West -29 30 £578 +83.49% 9
East of England -1 28 £475 +49.37% 6
South West -20 23 £545 -7.28% 10
North East -37 8 £463 - 4
East Midlands -8 5 £494 +20.43% 3
Wales -16 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 40 (5.56%) SharePoint
2 35 (4.86%) Apache Airflow
2 35 (4.86%) Apache Spark
3 28 (3.89%) Apache
4 21 (2.92%) Confluence
5 17 (2.36%) CMS
5 17 (2.36%) SAS
6 4 (0.56%) ArcGIS
6 4 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.14%) Drupal
8 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.14%) Liferay
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 21 (2.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.97%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.97%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.97%) Revit
3 5 (0.69%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.14%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (1.67%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.69%) Summit
3 4 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.42%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Maximo
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) Workfront
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
Cloud Services
1 206 (28.61%) Azure
2 156 (21.67%) AWS
3 95 (13.19%) Power Platform
4 77 (10.69%) GCP
5 63 (8.75%) Collibra
6 51 (7.08%) Microsoft Purview
7 44 (6.11%) Amazon S3
8 40 (5.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 38 (5.28%) dbt
9 38 (5.28%) GitHub
10 34 (4.72%) Snowflake
11 33 (4.58%) Serverless
12 31 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
12 31 (4.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 30 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (3.19%) Microsoft 365
15 16 (2.22%) Amazon EMR
15 16 (2.22%) Power Automate
16 15 (2.08%) Entra ID
16 15 (2.08%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.97%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.97%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.69%) Intranet
3 4 (0.56%) SSL
4 3 (0.42%) Firewall
4 3 (0.42%) HTTP
5 2 (0.28%) Broadband
6 1 (0.14%) 4G
6 1 (0.14%) 5G
6 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (17.08%) Data Warehouse
2 83 (11.53%) Power BI
3 80 (11.11%) Data Lake
4 34 (4.72%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.58%) Data Vault
6 30 (4.17%) Tableau
7 29 (4.03%) NoSQL
8 24 (3.33%) Delta Lake
9 22 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (2.92%) Big Data
10 21 (2.92%) Semantic Layer
10 21 (2.92%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (2.64%) BigQuery
11 19 (2.64%) Metadata Repository
11 19 (2.64%) SQL Server
12 18 (2.50%) Amazon Redshift
13 17 (2.36%) Hadoop
14 15 (2.08%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (1.81%) Db2
16 12 (1.67%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 37 (5.14%) ERwin
2 36 (5.00%) Git
3 22 (3.06%) JIRA
4 21 (2.92%) ER Studio
5 18 (2.50%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.22%) Maven
7 15 (2.08%) PowerDesigner
8 14 (1.94%) GitLab
9 11 (1.53%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.28%) git-flow
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.28%) Selenium
12 1 (0.14%) MLflow
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) ScriptRunner
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 203 (28.19%) Finance
2 190 (26.39%) Social Skills
3 143 (19.86%) Analytical Skills
4 98 (13.61%) Banking
5 77 (10.69%) Public Sector
6 38 (5.28%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (5.14%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.50%) Legal
8 18 (2.50%) Marketing
9 17 (2.36%) Retail
10 16 (2.22%) Publishing
11 15 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (1.67%) Aviation
12 12 (1.67%) Front Office
13 11 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.97%) Military
15 6 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
16 5 (0.69%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 180 (25.00%) Architect
2 130 (18.06%) Data Architect
3 104 (14.44%) Data Engineer
4 90 (12.50%) Analyst
5 85 (11.81%) Lead
6 59 (8.19%) Senior
7 55 (7.64%) Data Analyst
8 48 (6.67%) Data Modeller
9 46 (6.39%) Developer
10 36 (5.00%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.47%) Consultant
12 21 (2.92%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.78%) Data Manager
14 19 (2.64%) DevOps Engineer
15 18 (2.50%) Product Owner
16 17 (2.36%) Lead Data Engineer
17 16 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
18 15 (2.08%) Enterprise Architect
18 15 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
19 12 (1.67%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (5.97%) PySpark
2 39 (5.42%) JSON
3 34 (4.72%) Kafka
4 27 (3.75%) REST
5 17 (2.36%) YAML
6 13 (1.81%) .NET
6 13 (1.81%) Node.js
6 13 (1.81%) Spring Boot
6 13 (1.81%) XML
7 11 (1.53%) SLSA
8 10 (1.39%) OAuth
8 10 (1.39%) React
9 8 (1.11%) GraphQL
9 8 (1.11%) Middleware
9 8 (1.11%) OAuth2
9 8 (1.11%) Spring
10 7 (0.97%) RESTful
10 7 (0.97%) SOAP
10 7 (0.97%) SPFx
11 6 (0.83%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 66 (9.17%) Cloud Native
2 61 (8.47%) Onboarding
3 55 (7.64%) Data Structures
3 55 (7.64%) Taxonomies
4 45 (6.25%) Management Information System
5 44 (6.11%) Product Ownership
6 39 (5.42%) Legacy Systems
7 38 (5.28%) Reference Data
8 19 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (2.64%) Derivative
9 13 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (1.67%) AI Agents
10 12 (1.67%) Credit Risk
10 12 (1.67%) Equity Derivative
10 12 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.53%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (1.39%) Clustering
12 10 (1.39%) Life Science
13 9 (1.25%) Data Fabric
13 9 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.64%) Unix
2 12 (1.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (49.03%) Data Governance
2 342 (47.50%) Data Modelling
3 244 (33.89%) Metadata Management
4 240 (33.33%) Analytics
5 183 (25.42%) Data Architecture
6 175 (24.31%) AI
7 162 (22.50%) ETL
8 157 (21.81%) Data Pipeline
9 155 (21.53%) Data Engineering
10 150 (20.83%) Agile
11 141 (19.58%) CI/CD
12 137 (19.03%) Migration
13 128 (17.78%) Stakeholder Management
14 120 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
15 115 (15.97%) Data Lineage
16 114 (15.83%) Validation
17 108 (15.00%) Decision-Making
17 108 (15.00%) DevOps
18 106 (14.72%) Problem-Solving
19 105 (14.58%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 276 (38.33%) SQL
2 184 (25.56%) Python
3 57 (7.92%) Java
4 24 (3.33%) PL/SQL
5 18 (2.50%) C#
6 15 (2.08%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.94%) Groovy
8 13 (1.81%) PowerShell
9 11 (1.53%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.25%) Bash
10 9 (1.25%) C++
10 9 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.11%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.97%) Apex Code
12 7 (0.97%) SPARQL
13 6 (0.83%) Bicep
13 6 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.69%) Scala
15 4 (0.56%) Cypher
15 4 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 163 (22.64%) Security Cleared
2 122 (16.94%) SC Cleared
3 47 (6.53%) Degree
4 30 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.50%) DV Cleared
6 16 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (2.08%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.67%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
10 8 (1.11%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.42%) 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
1 280 (38.89%) Data Quality
2 68 (9.44%) GDPR
3 39 (5.42%) QA
4 38 (5.28%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.97%) GRC
5 7 (0.97%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.83%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.83%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.83%) NIST
7 4 (0.56%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.56%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.42%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.42%) MiFID
8 3 (0.42%) NCSC
8 3 (0.42%) WCAG
9 2 (0.28%) IFRS
9 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (1.94%) Docker
2 10 (1.39%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 31 (4.31%) Terraform
2 18 (2.50%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.39%) Grafana
4 8 (1.11%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.97%) 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
1 126 (17.50%) Microsoft
2 112 (15.56%) Databricks
3 60 (8.33%) Oracle
4 52 (7.22%) Informatica
5 22 (3.06%) Salesforce
6 21 (2.92%) Google
7 18 (2.50%) Talend
8 15 (2.08%) IBM
9 14 (1.94%) SAP
10 13 (1.81%) Autodesk
11 12 (1.67%) Sparx
12 11 (1.53%) Sonatype
12 11 (1.53%) Sybase
13 9 (1.25%) Adobe
14 8 (1.11%) Palantir
15 7 (0.97%) CA Agile Central
15 7 (0.97%) Foundry
15 7 (0.97%) ServiceNow
16 6 (0.83%) Aspera
16 6 (0.83%) Signiant