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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 333 284
Rank change year-on-year +96 -49 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 465 199 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 0.64% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.24% 3.45% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 321 134 240
10th Percentile £363 £319 £384
25th Percentile £415 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £651 £691
90th Percentile £688 £799 £789
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +2.56% -15.22% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 25
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.72 £14.61
25th Percentile £61.50 £24.48 £20.50
Median hourly rate £69.00 £30.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% -35.04% +10.61%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.50 -
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £63.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £43.22
% change year-on-year +140.77% -33.47% -30.86%

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 6,421 5,760 7,273
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.40% 18.49% 16.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,417 3,805 5,193
10th Percentile £336 £356 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 89 183
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.65
25th Percentile £29.00 £25.09 £20.99
Median hourly rate £53.25 £38.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.73% -10.33% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.73 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.30 £70.75 £77.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.25 £30.11 £40.00
% change year-on-year +86.85% -24.74% -29.65%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 +104 396 £510 -1.92% 155
London +92 236 £524 -4.77% 79
UK excluding London +11 179 £500 +2.56% 124
Work from Home +21 126 £525 +0.48% 82
Midlands -17 46 £543 +40.13% 16
South East -9 39 £506 +1.25% 51
West Midlands -14 38 £560 +44.52% 13
North of England -45 32 £475 -12.84% 23
Scotland +22 31 £458 -33.21% 18
East of England -15 20 £492 +54.56% 8
North West -25 18 £474 -13.07% 8
South West -13 12 £568 +16.41% 5
Yorkshire -47 12 £525 +35.48% 7
Wales +2 8 £700 +229.21% 3
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 3
North East -13 4 £475 -30.87% 8

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 34 (7.31%) Apache Spark
2 28 (6.02%) SharePoint
3 23 (4.95%) SAS
4 20 (4.30%) Confluence
5 17 (3.66%) Apache
6 15 (3.23%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (2.15%) CMS
8 7 (1.51%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.29%) Drupal
9 6 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (1.08%) ArcGIS
10 5 (1.08%) GeoServer
10 5 (1.08%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.22%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.22%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.22%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.22%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 26 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.15%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.22%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.22%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.01%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.29%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.29%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.29%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.65%) Actimize
4 3 (0.65%) Maximo
5 2 (0.43%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.43%) Summit
6 1 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.22%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.22%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.22%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.22%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 151 (32.47%) Azure
2 106 (22.80%) AWS
3 76 (16.34%) Power Platform
4 56 (12.04%) GCP
5 43 (9.25%) Azure Data Factory
6 42 (9.03%) Collibra
7 41 (8.82%) Microsoft Purview
8 39 (8.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 31 (6.67%) Snowflake
10 20 (4.30%) dbt
11 18 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
11 18 (3.87%) Serverless
12 15 (3.23%) Amazon S3
13 14 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
14 13 (2.80%) GitHub
15 11 (2.37%) AWS Lambda
16 8 (1.72%) Alation
16 8 (1.72%) Entra ID
16 8 (1.72%) SaaS
17 7 (1.51%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.65%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.43%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.43%) Intranet
3 1 (0.22%) Firewall
3 1 (0.22%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (20.43%) Data Warehouse
2 70 (15.05%) Power BI
3 61 (13.12%) Data Lake
4 36 (7.74%) Metadata Repository
5 29 (6.24%) Big Data
6 26 (5.59%) NoSQL
7 24 (5.16%) SQL Server
8 23 (4.95%) Relational Database
9 21 (4.52%) PostgreSQL
10 20 (4.30%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (4.30%) Tableau
11 19 (4.09%) Data Vault
12 18 (3.87%) Azure SQL Database
12 18 (3.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
14 15 (3.23%) BigQuery
14 15 (3.23%) Hadoop
14 15 (3.23%) Oracle Database
15 12 (2.58%) Delta Lake
15 12 (2.58%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 26 (5.59%) ERwin
1 26 (5.59%) JIRA
2 23 (4.95%) Git
3 11 (2.37%) ER Studio
4 8 (1.72%) PowerDesigner
5 7 (1.51%) Jenkins
6 4 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.65%) Maven
8 2 (0.43%) Subversion
8 2 (0.43%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.22%) GitLab
9 1 (0.22%) gulp
9 1 (0.22%) Poetry
9 1 (0.22%) Pylint
9 1 (0.22%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.22%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.22%) Yeoman
General
1 169 (36.34%) Social Skills
2 120 (25.81%) Finance
3 85 (18.28%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (13.76%) Public Sector
5 36 (7.74%) Banking
6 33 (7.10%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (3.66%) Publishing
8 15 (3.23%) Retail
9 13 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.37%) Legal
11 9 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.94%) Military
11 9 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.51%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.51%) Marketing
13 6 (1.29%) Aviation
13 6 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.29%) Retail Banking
14 5 (1.08%) Corporate Banking
14 5 (1.08%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 119 (25.59%) Architect
2 87 (18.71%) Data Architect
3 68 (14.62%) Analyst
4 58 (12.47%) Data Engineer
5 49 (10.54%) Data Analyst
6 37 (7.96%) Lead
7 34 (7.31%) Developer
8 33 (7.10%) Data Modeller
9 32 (6.88%) Senior
10 23 (4.95%) Business Analyst
11 20 (4.30%) Consultant
12 18 (3.87%) Azure Engineer
13 14 (3.01%) Azure Data Engineer
14 13 (2.80%) Data Business Analyst
14 13 (2.80%) Software Engineer
15 10 (2.15%) Data Analytics Engineer
15 10 (2.15%) Data Quality Analyst
15 10 (2.15%) Senior Data Engineer
16 9 (1.94%) Governance Analyst
16 9 (1.94%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (7.74%) PySpark
2 28 (6.02%) Kafka
3 26 (5.59%) REST
4 15 (3.23%) JSON
5 12 (2.58%) .NET
5 12 (2.58%) XML
6 11 (2.37%) SOAP
7 10 (2.15%) React
7 10 (2.15%) YAML
8 6 (1.29%) OAuth
8 6 (1.29%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.29%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.29%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.29%) VML
9 5 (1.08%) HTML
9 5 (1.08%) Pandas
9 5 (1.08%) RESTful
10 4 (0.86%) Node.js
11 3 (0.65%) NumPy
11 3 (0.65%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 36 (7.74%) Cloud Native
2 30 (6.45%) Management Information System
3 28 (6.02%) Data Structures
4 23 (4.95%) Reference Data
4 23 (4.95%) Taxonomies
5 21 (4.52%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (4.09%) Onboarding
7 16 (3.44%) Product Ownership
8 11 (2.37%) Distributed Computing
9 9 (1.94%) Virtual Team
10 8 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.29%) Data Fabric
12 5 (1.08%) CMDB
12 5 (1.08%) Credit Risk
13 4 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.86%) Genomics
13 4 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
13 4 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.86%) IoT
13 4 (0.86%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.51%) Unix
2 4 (0.86%) Linux
3 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 243 (52.26%) Data Governance
2 229 (49.25%) Data Modelling
3 225 (48.39%) Metadata Management
4 156 (33.55%) Analytics
5 133 (28.60%) Data Architecture
6 122 (26.24%) ETL
7 111 (23.87%) Business Intelligence
8 90 (19.35%) Agile
9 89 (19.14%) Data Engineering
9 89 (19.14%) Data Lineage
10 88 (18.92%) Problem-Solving
11 82 (17.63%) AI
12 81 (17.42%) Data Pipeline
13 76 (16.34%) Data Management
14 75 (16.13%) Validation
15 71 (15.27%) Decision-Making
16 68 (14.62%) Migration
16 68 (14.62%) Stakeholder Management
17 67 (14.41%) Data Integration
18 65 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 173 (37.20%) SQL
2 116 (24.95%) Python
3 22 (4.73%) PowerShell
4 20 (4.30%) C#
4 20 (4.30%) Java
5 10 (2.15%) PL/SQL
6 9 (1.94%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.51%) R
7 7 (1.51%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.29%) ABAP
8 6 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.29%) Perl
8 6 (1.29%) Scala
9 5 (1.08%) Groovy
9 5 (1.08%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.86%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.86%) C++
11 3 (0.65%) Bicep
11 3 (0.65%) SOQL
11 3 (0.65%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 108 (23.23%) Security Cleared
2 82 (17.63%) SC Cleared
3 36 (7.74%) Degree
4 21 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.80%) Master's Degree
6 10 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.72%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.29%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.86%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Analytics IQ
12 1 (0.22%) CISSP
12 1 (0.22%) CSPO
12 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.22%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.22%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.22%) PMP
12 1 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (44.30%) Data Quality
2 47 (10.11%) GDPR
3 19 (4.09%) QA
4 14 (3.01%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.94%) GRC
6 6 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.08%) IFRS
7 5 (1.08%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.86%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.86%) MiFID
9 3 (0.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.65%) NIST
10 2 (0.43%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.43%) FINREP
10 2 (0.43%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.43%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.43%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (3.01%) Docker
2 5 (1.08%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 19 (4.09%) Kubernetes
2 18 (3.87%) Terraform
3 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.65%) SCCM
4 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.22%) Hadoop YARN
4 1 (0.22%) Oozie
4 1 (0.22%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 93 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 76 (16.34%) Databricks
3 45 (9.68%) Oracle
4 40 (8.60%) Informatica
5 23 (4.95%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.87%) Talend
7 16 (3.44%) Google
7 16 (3.44%) SAP
8 14 (3.01%) Salesforce
9 13 (2.80%) Sparx
10 10 (2.15%) Teradata
11 9 (1.94%) OpenText
12 7 (1.51%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.29%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.29%) Remedy
14 5 (1.08%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.08%) ESRI
14 5 (1.08%) Intergraph
14 5 (1.08%) Palantir
15 4 (0.86%) Adobe