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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 193 284 384
Rank change year-on-year +91 +100 -23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 859 304 184
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.55% 0.91% 0.49%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.52% 5.03% 2.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 200 117
10th Percentile £400 £403 £360
25th Percentile £458 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% +7.50% -8.26%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £685
90th Percentile £750 £739 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +10.53% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 5 4
10th Percentile £12.83 - £24.99
25th Percentile £43.22 £13.25 £33.51
Median hourly rate £61.45 £30.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year +101.48% -30.43% -5.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £48.18
90th Percentile - £78.30 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.40 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +362.22% -71.98% +4.33%

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 8,169 6,043 6,698
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.77% 18.16% 17.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,433 4,055 4,509
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -5.21% -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £736 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 82 90
10th Percentile £16.88 £20.78 £17.50
25th Percentile £21.63 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.18 £39.48 £33.22
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% +18.86% -34.94%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.69 £61.19
90th Percentile £74.68 £80.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.53% +18.30% -40.63%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 +86 725 £550 +2.33% 123
London +49 415 £550 - 61
UK excluding London +88 341 £525 +10.53% 85
Work from Home +37 245 £550 -3.93% 91
North of England +6 89 £500 - 23
Midlands +6 73 £605 +44.05% 9
West Midlands +7 64 £619 +11.33% 8
South East -22 59 £575 +22.67% 20
Yorkshire +15 55 £500 -4.76% 10
Scotland +11 55 £484 -0.21% 8
South West +3 44 £600 +20.60% 18
North West -28 28 £709 +58.38% 10
East of England -8 27 £463 -15.91% 7
East Midlands -3 9 £494 +18.98% 1
North East - 9 £463 - 3
Wales -19 2 - - 2

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 45 (5.24%) SharePoint
2 39 (4.54%) Apache Airflow
3 38 (4.42%) Apache
4 33 (3.84%) Apache Spark
5 27 (3.14%) CMS
6 25 (2.91%) Confluence
7 14 (1.63%) SAS
8 13 (1.51%) Headless CMS
9 11 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.47%) Sitecore CMS
12 3 (0.35%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 1 (0.12%) Camunda
14 1 (0.12%) GeoServer
14 1 (0.12%) JBoss
14 1 (0.12%) Liferay
14 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 19 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.28%) MS Visio
3 8 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.58%) Navisworks
4 5 (0.58%) Revit
5 2 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.12%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.12%) Pro Tools
6 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.35%) Maximo
3 3 (0.35%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.35%) Workfront
4 2 (0.23%) HFM
4 2 (0.23%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.23%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 264 (30.73%) Azure
2 201 (23.40%) AWS
3 122 (14.20%) Power Platform
4 106 (12.34%) GCP
5 85 (9.90%) Microsoft Purview
6 73 (8.50%) Collibra
7 60 (6.98%) Azure Data Factory
8 52 (6.05%) Snowflake
9 47 (5.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 45 (5.24%) Amazon S3
10 45 (5.24%) Azure DevOps
11 40 (4.66%) GitHub
12 39 (4.54%) dbt
13 35 (4.07%) Serverless
14 30 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.38%) Azure Databricks
15 29 (3.38%) Microsoft 365
16 23 (2.68%) Entra ID
17 22 (2.56%) Alation
18 21 (2.44%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.58%) Broadband
2 4 (0.47%) Firewall
2 4 (0.47%) HTTP
2 4 (0.47%) Intranet
2 4 (0.47%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.35%) DNS
3 3 (0.35%) SSH
4 2 (0.23%) SAN
5 1 (0.12%) BGP
5 1 (0.12%) LAN
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) OSPF
5 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.12%) VLAN
5 1 (0.12%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (13.85%) Data Warehouse
2 109 (12.69%) Power BI
3 103 (11.99%) Data Lake
4 39 (4.54%) BigQuery
5 38 (4.42%) Delta Lake
6 33 (3.84%) NoSQL
6 33 (3.84%) PostgreSQL
7 32 (3.73%) Relational Database
8 28 (3.26%) Semantic Layer
9 26 (3.03%) SQL Server
9 26 (3.03%) Tableau
10 22 (2.56%) Data Vault
11 19 (2.21%) Parquet
12 18 (2.10%) Azure SQL Database
12 18 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
13 17 (1.98%) Amazon Redshift
14 16 (1.86%) Big Data
15 15 (1.75%) Neo4j
16 13 (1.51%) Geospatial Data
17 12 (1.40%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 51 (5.94%) Git
2 31 (3.61%) JIRA
3 27 (3.14%) ERwin
4 21 (2.44%) ER Studio
5 14 (1.63%) Jenkins
6 13 (1.51%) GitLab
7 11 (1.28%) Maven
8 7 (0.81%) PowerDesigner
8 7 (0.81%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.58%) MLflow
9 5 (0.58%) Selenium
10 2 (0.23%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.23%) TestRail
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Deequ
11 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
11 1 (0.12%) Storybook
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 249 (28.99%) Social Skills
2 194 (22.58%) Finance
3 169 (19.67%) Analytical Skills
4 120 (13.97%) Public Sector
5 95 (11.06%) Banking
6 42 (4.89%) Influencing Skills
7 31 (3.61%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (2.91%) Publishing
9 22 (2.56%) Legal
9 22 (2.56%) Retail
10 20 (2.33%) Aerospace
11 18 (2.10%) Marketing
12 16 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (1.75%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.63%) Military
15 12 (1.40%) Law
16 11 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (1.05%) Police
Job Titles
1 248 (28.87%) Architect
2 178 (20.72%) Data Architect
3 137 (15.95%) Data Engineer
4 119 (13.85%) Lead
5 96 (11.18%) Senior
6 92 (10.71%) Analyst
7 50 (5.82%) Data Analyst
8 42 (4.89%) Data Modeller
9 40 (4.66%) Business Analyst
10 37 (4.31%) Developer
10 37 (4.31%) Senior Data Engineer
11 29 (3.38%) Consultant
12 26 (3.03%) Lead Data Engineer
12 26 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
13 24 (2.79%) Enterprise Architect
14 23 (2.68%) Data Business Analyst
15 21 (2.44%) Data Manager
15 21 (2.44%) Enterprise Data Architect
16 18 (2.10%) Python Engineer
17 17 (1.98%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (6.64%) PySpark
2 56 (6.52%) REST
2 56 (6.52%) Terraform
3 44 (5.12%) JSON
4 30 (3.49%) Kafka
5 23 (2.68%) YAML
6 17 (1.98%) FastAPI
6 17 (1.98%) Spring Boot
7 15 (1.75%) pydantic
8 13 (1.51%) Apache NiFi
8 13 (1.51%) React
9 12 (1.40%) Spring
10 10 (1.16%) XML
11 9 (1.05%) .NET
12 8 (0.93%) GraphQL
12 8 (0.93%) JDBC
12 8 (0.93%) Node.js
12 8 (0.93%) RESTful
13 7 (0.81%) Microsoft Graph
13 7 (0.81%) SLSA
Miscellaneous
1 86 (10.01%) Taxonomies
2 78 (9.08%) Cloud Native
3 76 (8.85%) Onboarding
4 74 (8.61%) Data Structures
5 69 (8.03%) Management Information System
6 56 (6.52%) Product Ownership
7 50 (5.82%) Legacy Systems
8 44 (5.12%) Reference Data
9 23 (2.68%) Data Fabric
10 19 (2.21%) AI Agents
10 19 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.40%) CMDB
12 12 (1.40%) Life Science
12 12 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.40%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
15 8 (0.93%) Derivative
15 8 (0.93%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.51%) Linux
2 3 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (0.35%) Unix
2 3 (0.35%) Windows
2 3 (0.35%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 473 (55.06%) Data Governance
2 423 (49.24%) Data Modelling
3 340 (39.58%) Metadata Management
4 286 (33.29%) Analytics
5 250 (29.10%) Data Architecture
6 244 (28.41%) AI
7 232 (27.01%) Stakeholder Management
8 220 (25.61%) Agile
9 196 (22.82%) Data Engineering
10 184 (21.42%) CI/CD
10 184 (21.42%) Data Pipeline
11 170 (19.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 169 (19.67%) Migration
13 167 (19.44%) Roadmaps
14 166 (19.32%) Data Lineage
15 160 (18.63%) Data Management
16 156 (18.16%) Validation
17 153 (17.81%) ETL
18 142 (16.53%) Business Intelligence
19 128 (14.90%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 290 (33.76%) SQL
2 227 (26.43%) Python
3 48 (5.59%) Java
4 19 (2.21%) PowerShell
5 16 (1.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.51%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.40%) Groovy
7 12 (1.40%) PL/SQL
8 11 (1.28%) C#
9 10 (1.16%) Bash
9 10 (1.16%) Bicep
10 8 (0.93%) SPARQL
10 8 (0.93%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.58%) Scala
11 5 (0.58%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.47%) Cypher
12 4 (0.47%) R
13 3 (0.35%) Gremlin
13 3 (0.35%) SHACL
13 3 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 211 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 161 (18.74%) SC Cleared
3 59 (6.87%) Degree
4 46 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 31 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 20 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.51%) Azure Certification
8 12 (1.40%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (1.05%) AWS Certification
10 7 (0.81%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 6 (0.70%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.47%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.35%) CISSP
14 2 (0.23%) ACCA
14 2 (0.23%) CBAP
14 2 (0.23%) CIMA
14 2 (0.23%) DBS Check
14 2 (0.23%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 421 (49.01%) Data Quality
2 57 (6.64%) GDPR
3 47 (5.47%) Accessibility
4 45 (5.24%) QA
5 8 (0.93%) WCAG
6 7 (0.81%) NCSC
7 6 (0.70%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.70%) MiFID
8 5 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.58%) NIST
9 4 (0.47%) GRC
9 4 (0.47%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.47%) ISO 19650
9 4 (0.47%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 2 (0.23%) IFRS
11 2 (0.23%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.23%) PMO
11 2 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 25 (2.91%) Docker
2 7 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 31 (3.61%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.16%) Ansible
2 10 (1.16%) Grafana
3 8 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.35%) Control-M
6 2 (0.23%) Kibana
6 2 (0.23%) systemd
7 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 174 (20.26%) Microsoft
2 158 (18.39%) Databricks
3 49 (5.70%) Google
4 47 (5.47%) Informatica
5 43 (5.01%) Oracle
6 18 (2.10%) Sparx
7 16 (1.86%) ServiceNow
8 14 (1.63%) SAP
9 10 (1.16%) Autodesk
9 10 (1.16%) IBM
9 10 (1.16%) Teradata
10 9 (1.05%) Foundry
10 9 (1.05%) Palantir
10 9 (1.05%) Talend
11 8 (0.93%) Salesforce
12 7 (0.81%) Aspera
12 7 (0.81%) CA Agile Central
12 7 (0.81%) Denodo
12 7 (0.81%) Signiant
12 7 (0.81%) Sonatype