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 13 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 279 379
Rank change year-on-year +91 +100 +3
Contract jobs citing Metadata 811 306 196
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.49% 0.93% 0.51%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.88% 5.15% 2.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 515 210 126
10th Percentile £400 £350 £403
25th Percentile £456 £453 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £544 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.15% -1.14% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £747
90th Percentile £754 £750 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £465 £488
% change year-on-year +18.28% -4.62% -10.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 4 5
10th Percentile £20.00 - £20.08
25th Percentile £55.00 £13.25 £21.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £22.00 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.82% -44.30% -14.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.69 £48.18
90th Percentile - £70.78 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +400.00% -71.98% +4.74%

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 8,212 5,947 6,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.11% 18.07% 17.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,471 3,973 4,785
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -2.21%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £747 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 92 86
10th Percentile £16.49 £22.85 £17.50
25th Percentile £24.13 £30.55 £20.88
Median hourly rate £39.84 £39.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.91% +12.80% -36.36%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £59.34
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £34.98 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.49% +16.60% -43.93%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 +83 698 £550 - 494
London +46 396 £543 -5.65% 313
UK excluding London +69 323 £550 +18.28% 239
Work from Home +47 231 £525 -10.64% 379
North of England +7 93 £500 -2.44% 48
Midlands +10 76 £605 +101.67% 28
West Midlands +5 69 £619 +478.50% 22
Yorkshire +16 58 £500 -6.98% 13
South East -26 58 £560 +26.20% 61
Scotland +4 44 £543 +14.21% 27
East of England +2 32 £450 -18.18% 24
North West -37 31 £600 +47.24% 31
South West -24 25 £550 -4.35% 36
East Midlands -15 7 £494 +18.98% 6
North East -35 7 £463 +2.78% 4
Wales -20 3 £750 +7.14% 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 49 (6.04%) SharePoint
2 38 (4.69%) Apache Airflow
3 30 (3.70%) Apache
4 24 (2.96%) CMS
5 21 (2.59%) Confluence
6 20 (2.47%) Apache Spark
7 17 (2.10%) SAS
8 10 (1.23%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.25%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.25%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.12%) Camunda
13 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.86%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.86%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.86%) Revit
3 6 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.12%) Notion
7 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 17 (2.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.37%) Maximo
3 3 (0.37%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.37%) Summit
4 2 (0.25%) HFM
4 2 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.25%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 2 (0.25%) Workfront
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 243 (29.96%) Azure
2 192 (23.67%) AWS
3 110 (13.56%) Power Platform
4 97 (11.96%) GCP
5 74 (9.12%) Microsoft Purview
6 68 (8.38%) Collibra
7 49 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
8 44 (5.43%) dbt
9 43 (5.30%) Snowflake
10 42 (5.18%) Amazon S3
11 41 (5.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 38 (4.69%) GitHub
13 35 (4.32%) Serverless
14 33 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
15 32 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
16 31 (3.82%) Microsoft 365
17 24 (2.96%) Azure Databricks
18 23 (2.84%) Power Automate
19 22 (2.71%) Entra ID
20 21 (2.59%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.86%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.86%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.62%) Broadband
3 4 (0.49%) HTTP
3 4 (0.49%) Intranet
3 4 (0.49%) SSL
4 3 (0.37%) DNS
4 3 (0.37%) Firewall
5 2 (0.25%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.25%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (15.17%) Data Warehouse
2 96 (11.84%) Power BI
3 95 (11.71%) Data Lake
4 37 (4.56%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.44%) NoSQL
6 33 (4.07%) Delta Lake
7 32 (3.95%) BigQuery
8 30 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
9 28 (3.45%) Semantic Layer
10 26 (3.21%) Tableau
11 25 (3.08%) Data Vault
12 20 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (2.22%) SQL Server
14 17 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.73%) Db2
15 14 (1.73%) Parquet
16 13 (1.60%) MongoDB
16 13 (1.60%) Neo4j
17 12 (1.48%) Geospatial Data
18 11 (1.36%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 37 (4.56%) Git
2 31 (3.82%) ERwin
3 25 (3.08%) JIRA
4 24 (2.96%) ER Studio
5 15 (1.85%) Jenkins
5 15 (1.85%) Maven
6 11 (1.36%) PowerDesigner
7 10 (1.23%) GitLab
7 10 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.62%) Selenium
9 3 (0.37%) MLflow
10 2 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.25%) TestRail
11 1 (0.12%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.12%) Deequ
11 1 (0.12%) git-flow
11 1 (0.12%) Subversion
11 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 240 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 202 (24.91%) Finance
3 156 (19.24%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (12.82%) Public Sector
5 100 (12.33%) Banking
6 37 (4.56%) Influencing Skills
7 36 (4.44%) Investment Banking
8 27 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.08%) Publishing
10 23 (2.84%) Retail
11 21 (2.59%) Marketing
12 20 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (2.22%) Legal
14 14 (1.73%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.60%) Aerospace
16 12 (1.48%) Front Office
17 10 (1.23%) Law
17 10 (1.23%) Military
18 8 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 215 (26.51%) Architect
2 156 (19.24%) Data Architect
3 132 (16.28%) Data Engineer
4 107 (13.19%) Lead
5 87 (10.73%) Analyst
6 74 (9.12%) Senior
7 48 (5.92%) Data Analyst
8 40 (4.93%) Data Modeller
9 35 (4.32%) Business Analyst
9 35 (4.32%) Developer
10 29 (3.58%) Senior Data Engineer
11 27 (3.33%) Consultant
12 24 (2.96%) Data Manager
13 22 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.47%) Lead Data Engineer
14 20 (2.47%) Product Owner
15 19 (2.34%) Data Business Analyst
15 19 (2.34%) Enterprise Architect
16 17 (2.10%) DevOps Engineer
17 16 (1.97%) Enterprise Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (7.03%) PySpark
2 44 (5.43%) JSON
3 42 (5.18%) Terraform
4 37 (4.56%) REST
5 32 (3.95%) Kafka
6 18 (2.22%) YAML
7 15 (1.85%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.60%) XML
9 12 (1.48%) Node.js
10 11 (1.36%) React
11 10 (1.23%) SLSA
11 10 (1.23%) Spring
12 9 (1.11%) .NET
12 9 (1.11%) GraphQL
12 9 (1.11%) Playwright
13 8 (0.99%) OAuth
14 7 (0.86%) Apache NiFi
14 7 (0.86%) OAuth2
15 6 (0.74%) RESTful
15 6 (0.74%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 73 (9.00%) Cloud Native
1 73 (9.00%) Onboarding
2 63 (7.77%) Data Structures
3 62 (7.64%) Taxonomies
4 57 (7.03%) Management Information System
5 54 (6.66%) Product Ownership
6 42 (5.18%) Legacy Systems
6 42 (5.18%) Reference Data
7 22 (2.71%) Data Fabric
8 18 (2.22%) AI Agents
8 18 (2.22%) Derivative
9 17 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (1.60%) Life Science
11 12 (1.48%) Distributed Computing
11 12 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.48%) Equity Derivative
12 11 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
13 10 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (1.23%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (1.73%) Unix
2 11 (1.36%) Linux
3 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
3 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 437 (53.88%) Data Governance
2 384 (47.35%) Data Modelling
3 316 (38.96%) Metadata Management
4 262 (32.31%) Analytics
5 225 (27.74%) Data Architecture
6 224 (27.62%) AI
7 214 (26.39%) Stakeholder Management
8 197 (24.29%) Agile
9 185 (22.81%) Data Pipeline
10 179 (22.07%) Data Engineering
11 171 (21.09%) ETL
12 170 (20.96%) CI/CD
12 170 (20.96%) Migration
13 149 (18.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 143 (17.63%) Data Management
14 143 (17.63%) Roadmaps
15 137 (16.89%) Data Lineage
16 128 (15.78%) Business Intelligence
16 128 (15.78%) Validation
17 126 (15.54%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 290 (35.76%) SQL
2 212 (26.14%) Python
3 65 (8.01%) Java
4 21 (2.59%) PL/SQL
5 14 (1.73%) PowerShell
6 13 (1.60%) C#
6 13 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.60%) Groovy
7 12 (1.48%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.48%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.11%) Bash
8 9 (1.11%) C++
9 7 (0.86%) Bicep
9 7 (0.86%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.74%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.62%) Scala
11 5 (0.62%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.49%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.49%) Cypher
12 4 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 195 (24.04%) Security Cleared
2 146 (18.00%) SC Cleared
3 53 (6.54%) Degree
4 43 (5.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.48%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.48%) TOGAF Certification
8 10 (1.23%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.99%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.86%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 5 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.37%) CISSP
12 3 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
12 3 (0.37%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.25%) ACCA
13 2 (0.25%) CIMA
13 2 (0.25%) CISM
13 2 (0.25%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (46.24%) Data Quality
2 62 (7.64%) GDPR
3 45 (5.55%) Accessibility
4 44 (5.43%) QA
5 8 (0.99%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (0.99%) WCAG
6 7 (0.86%) NCSC
7 6 (0.74%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.74%) MiFID
8 5 (0.62%) GRC
8 5 (0.62%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.49%) NIST
9 4 (0.49%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.25%) PMO
11 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.25%) SLA
11 2 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 23 (2.84%) Docker
2 9 (1.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 25 (3.08%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
3 8 (0.99%) Grafana
4 6 (0.74%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.62%) Ansible
6 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.49%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.37%) Control-M
8 2 (0.25%) Kibana
8 2 (0.25%) systemd
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 155 (19.11%) Microsoft
2 133 (16.40%) Databricks
3 61 (7.52%) Informatica
4 51 (6.29%) Oracle
5 36 (4.44%) Google
6 17 (2.10%) SAP
6 17 (2.10%) Sparx
7 16 (1.97%) IBM
8 15 (1.85%) Talend
9 14 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 14 (1.73%) ServiceNow
10 13 (1.60%) Autodesk
11 11 (1.36%) Sybase
11 11 (1.36%) Teradata
12 10 (1.23%) Denodo
12 10 (1.23%) Palantir
12 10 (1.23%) Sonatype
13 9 (1.11%) Foundry
14 8 (0.99%) CA Agile Central
15 7 (0.86%) Signiant