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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 297 364
Rank change year-on-year +94 +67 +6
Contract jobs citing Metadata 727 273 213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.82% 0.55%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.91% 4.53% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 189 137
10th Percentile £385 £315 £394
25th Percentile £455 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £671 £638 £775
90th Percentile £761 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £438 £475
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 10
10th Percentile £25.04 - £13.50
25th Percentile £56.31 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.49 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.57% -30.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.45 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +399.89% -17.68% -54.76%

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 8,157 6,033 7,032
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.29% 18.20% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,429 4,082 4,976
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £418 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -3.89%
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 254 92 102
10th Percentile £15.95 £19.71 £15.10
25th Percentile £23.05 £24.25 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +1.55% -37.34%
75th Percentile £61.31 £62.44 £56.88
90th Percentile £76.35 £78.58 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -39.48%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +83 618 £525 -2.33% 298
London +44 350 £525 -10.64% 179
UK excluding London +74 293 £525 +20.00% 156
Work from Home +64 214 £525 -8.70% 144
North of England -2 72 £519 +35.57% 27
Midlands -2 68 £606 +466.59% 23
West Midlands -5 63 £650 +507.48% 16
South East -41 54 £525 +17.58% 57
Scotland +29 46 £525 +10.53% 16
Yorkshire -2 40 £520 -3.29% 9
East of England +5 31 £463 -7.50% 9
North West -25 27 £575 +83.71% 16
South West -21 26 £550 -8.33% 18
North East -37 7 £463 +1.37% 2
East Midlands -7 5 £500 +21.95% 7
Wales -15 3 £750 +76.47% 3

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 (5.78%) SharePoint
2 31 (4.26%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (3.71%) Apache Spark
4 25 (3.44%) Apache
5 20 (2.75%) CMS
6 19 (2.61%) Confluence
7 14 (1.93%) SAS
8 4 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.41%) Headless CMS
9 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.28%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.14%) Liferay
11 1 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
11 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 23 (3.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.96%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.96%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.96%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.96%) Revit
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.14%) Notion
5 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 16 (2.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.55%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) SAP Oil and Gas
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
1 209 (28.75%) Azure
2 159 (21.87%) AWS
3 103 (14.17%) Power Platform
4 78 (10.73%) GCP
5 58 (7.98%) Collibra
5 58 (7.98%) Microsoft Purview
6 44 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
7 43 (5.91%) Amazon S3
8 39 (5.36%) GitHub
9 36 (4.95%) dbt
9 36 (4.95%) Snowflake
10 33 (4.54%) Serverless
11 32 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
13 29 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 28 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (2.61%) Microsoft Copilot
15 19 (2.61%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.34%) Amazon EMR
16 17 (2.34%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.96%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.96%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.69%) Intranet
3 4 (0.55%) Broadband
3 4 (0.55%) HTTP
3 4 (0.55%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (15.96%) Data Warehouse
2 89 (12.24%) Power BI
3 80 (11.00%) Data Lake
4 36 (4.95%) Relational Database
5 34 (4.68%) Data Vault
6 33 (4.54%) NoSQL
7 28 (3.85%) Tableau
8 27 (3.71%) Delta Lake
9 22 (3.03%) BigQuery
9 22 (3.03%) Semantic Layer
10 18 (2.48%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
10 18 (2.48%) Snowflake Schema
11 16 (2.20%) Amazon Athena
12 14 (1.93%) Db2
12 14 (1.93%) SQL Server
13 13 (1.79%) Big Data
13 13 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
14 12 (1.65%) Star Schema
15 11 (1.51%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 39 (5.36%) ERwin
2 32 (4.40%) Git
3 27 (3.71%) ER Studio
4 22 (3.03%) JIRA
5 18 (2.48%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.20%) PowerDesigner
7 15 (2.06%) Maven
8 13 (1.79%) GitLab
9 10 (1.38%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.41%) Selenium
11 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.28%) git-flow
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.28%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) MLflow
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 205 (28.20%) Social Skills
2 196 (26.96%) Finance
3 155 (21.32%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (12.52%) Banking
5 77 (10.59%) Public Sector
6 35 (4.81%) Investment Banking
7 33 (4.54%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
9 19 (2.61%) Legal
10 17 (2.34%) Marketing
10 17 (2.34%) Publishing
10 17 (2.34%) Retail
11 12 (1.65%) Front Office
11 12 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.51%) Aviation
13 10 (1.38%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.96%) Law
14 7 (0.96%) Military
14 7 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 172 (23.66%) Architect
2 124 (17.06%) Data Architect
3 113 (15.54%) Data Engineer
4 90 (12.38%) Analyst
4 90 (12.38%) Lead
5 67 (9.22%) Senior
6 55 (7.57%) Data Analyst
7 50 (6.88%) Data Modeller
8 37 (5.09%) Developer
9 33 (4.54%) Business Analyst
10 28 (3.85%) Consultant
11 21 (2.89%) Data Manager
12 20 (2.75%) Data Business Analyst
13 19 (2.61%) Senior Data Engineer
14 18 (2.48%) Product Owner
15 17 (2.34%) DevOps Engineer
16 16 (2.20%) Lead Data Engineer
17 15 (2.06%) Governance Analyst
17 15 (2.06%) Solutions Architect
18 13 (1.79%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.60%) PySpark
2 38 (5.23%) JSON
3 30 (4.13%) Kafka
4 27 (3.71%) REST
5 16 (2.20%) YAML
6 13 (1.79%) Node.js
6 13 (1.79%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.65%) XML
8 11 (1.51%) .NET
9 10 (1.38%) OAuth
9 10 (1.38%) React
9 10 (1.38%) SLSA
10 8 (1.10%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.10%) Middleware
10 8 (1.10%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.10%) Spring
11 7 (0.96%) RESTful
11 7 (0.96%) SPFx
12 6 (0.83%) CSS
12 6 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 70 (9.63%) Cloud Native
2 64 (8.80%) Data Structures
3 59 (8.12%) Onboarding
4 56 (7.70%) Taxonomies
5 52 (7.15%) Product Ownership
6 47 (6.46%) Management Information System
7 42 (5.78%) Legacy Systems
7 42 (5.78%) Reference Data
8 19 (2.61%) Derivative
9 17 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.79%) AI Agents
11 13 (1.79%) Life Science
12 12 (1.65%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.38%) Digital Media
14 10 (1.38%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.24%) Clustering
15 9 (1.24%) Data Fabric
16 8 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.61%) Unix
2 12 (1.65%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (49.52%) Data Governance
2 343 (47.18%) Data Modelling
3 253 (34.80%) Metadata Management
4 243 (33.43%) Analytics
5 181 (24.90%) AI
6 179 (24.62%) Data Architecture
7 172 (23.66%) Data Pipeline
8 162 (22.28%) Agile
9 159 (21.87%) ETL
10 155 (21.32%) Data Engineering
11 150 (20.63%) CI/CD
11 150 (20.63%) Migration
12 143 (19.67%) Stakeholder Management
13 123 (16.92%) Business Intelligence
14 119 (16.37%) Data Lineage
15 116 (15.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 115 (15.82%) DevOps
16 115 (15.82%) Validation
17 112 (15.41%) Continuous Improvement
18 110 (15.13%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 273 (37.55%) SQL
2 189 (26.00%) Python
3 60 (8.25%) Java
4 22 (3.03%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.06%) C#
5 15 (2.06%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.93%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.79%) Groovy
8 12 (1.65%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 9 (1.24%) C++
11 8 (1.10%) Bash
11 8 (1.10%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.96%) SPARQL
13 6 (0.83%) Bicep
13 6 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.69%) Apex Code
14 5 (0.69%) Scala
15 4 (0.55%) Perl
15 4 (0.55%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 158 (21.73%) Security Cleared
2 121 (16.64%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.64%) Degree
4 33 (4.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.48%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.51%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.51%) TOGAF Certification
8 7 (0.96%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.83%) AWS Certification
9 6 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.28%) ACCA
11 2 (0.28%) CBAP
11 2 (0.28%) CIMA
11 2 (0.28%) CISM
11 2 (0.28%) CISSP
11 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (40.85%) Data Quality
2 63 (8.67%) GDPR
3 43 (5.91%) QA
4 40 (5.50%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.96%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.83%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.83%) GRC
6 6 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.83%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.69%) NIST
7 5 (0.69%) WCAG
8 4 (0.55%) MiFID
9 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.41%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.41%) NCSC
10 2 (0.28%) IFRS
10 2 (0.28%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 18 (2.48%) Docker
2 9 (1.24%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 32 (4.40%) Terraform
2 19 (2.61%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.38%) Grafana
4 7 (0.96%) Prometheus
4 7 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.55%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) PingFederate
6 3 (0.41%) Ansible
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.14%) Control-M
Vendors
1 133 (18.29%) Microsoft
2 108 (14.86%) Databricks
3 51 (7.02%) Oracle
4 45 (6.19%) Informatica
5 24 (3.30%) Google
6 17 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 16 (2.20%) IBM
7 16 (2.20%) SAP
7 16 (2.20%) Sparx
8 13 (1.79%) Autodesk
9 11 (1.51%) Sybase
9 11 (1.51%) Talend
10 10 (1.38%) Denodo
10 10 (1.38%) Sonatype
11 8 (1.10%) Adobe
11 8 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
11 8 (1.10%) Palantir
12 7 (0.96%) Aspera
12 7 (0.96%) Foundry
12 7 (0.96%) Signiant