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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 190 270 374
Rank change year-on-year +80 +104 +7
Contract jobs citing Metadata 822 308 191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.51% 0.93% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.92% 5.18% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 211 123
10th Percentile £400 £350 £408
25th Percentile £456 £451 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £744
90th Percentile £750 £750 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £548 £465 £488
% change year-on-year +17.74% -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 8,290 5,950 6,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.21% 18.04% 17.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,519 3,980 4,756
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £748 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 94 86
10th Percentile £15.99 £22.86 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.00 £30.24 £20.88
Median hourly rate £39.50 £39.48 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% +14.55% -35.58%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £59.34
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.50 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +8.48% +18.30% -42.86%

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 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 10 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 10 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 +91 707 £550 +3.53% 323
London +58 410 £548 -4.78% 200
UK excluding London +52 320 £548 +17.74% 179
Work from Home +51 233 £525 -9.68% 144
North of England +3 89 £500 - 29
Midlands -2 75 £600 +100.00% 23
West Midlands +8 68 £612 +471.96% 17
Yorkshire +11 57 £500 -15.79% 6
South East -32 57 £555 +18.40% 50
Scotland -11 45 £540 +13.68% 21
East of England -5 32 £450 -18.18% 15
North West -38 28 £578 +41.84% 21
South West -22 27 £575 - 31
East Midlands -16 7 £494 +18.98% 6
North East -40 7 £463 +2.78% 2
Wales -17 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 50 (6.08%) SharePoint
2 38 (4.62%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.77%) Apache
4 27 (3.28%) CMS
5 24 (2.92%) Apache Spark
6 22 (2.68%) Confluence
7 16 (1.95%) SAS
8 10 (1.22%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.85%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.85%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.85%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.85%) Revit
3 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.49%) Summit
4 3 (0.36%) Maximo
4 3 (0.36%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.24%) HFM
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.24%) Workfront
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 251 (30.54%) Azure
2 194 (23.60%) AWS
3 110 (13.38%) Power Platform
4 94 (11.44%) GCP
5 74 (9.00%) Microsoft Purview
6 68 (8.27%) Collibra
7 52 (6.33%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 42 (5.11%) dbt
8 42 (5.11%) GitHub
8 42 (5.11%) Snowflake
9 41 (4.99%) Amazon S3
10 35 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
10 35 (4.26%) Serverless
11 33 (4.01%) AWS Lambda
12 31 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
13 27 (3.28%) Azure Databricks
14 23 (2.80%) Power Automate
15 21 (2.55%) Entra ID
15 21 (2.55%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.85%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.85%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.61%) Broadband
3 4 (0.49%) HTTP
3 4 (0.49%) Intranet
3 4 (0.49%) SSL
4 3 (0.36%) DNS
4 3 (0.36%) Firewall
5 2 (0.24%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (15.21%) Data Warehouse
2 96 (11.68%) Power BI
3 95 (11.56%) Data Lake
4 39 (4.74%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.38%) NoSQL
6 35 (4.26%) Delta Lake
7 30 (3.65%) Tableau
8 29 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
9 28 (3.41%) Semantic Layer
10 27 (3.28%) BigQuery
11 26 (3.16%) Data Vault
12 21 (2.55%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (2.19%) SQL Server
14 17 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.70%) Db2
15 14 (1.70%) Parquet
16 13 (1.58%) MongoDB
17 12 (1.46%) Big Data
17 12 (1.46%) Geospatial Data
17 12 (1.46%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 38 (4.62%) Git
2 34 (4.14%) ERwin
3 25 (3.04%) ER Studio
3 25 (3.04%) JIRA
4 16 (1.95%) Jenkins
5 15 (1.82%) Maven
6 13 (1.58%) PowerDesigner
7 11 (1.34%) GitLab
8 10 (1.22%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.73%) Selenium
10 3 (0.36%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.36%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) git-flow
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
12 1 (0.12%) Subversion
12 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 242 (29.44%) Social Skills
2 209 (25.43%) Finance
3 162 (19.71%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (12.90%) Public Sector
5 101 (12.29%) Banking
6 38 (4.62%) Investment Banking
7 36 (4.38%) Influencing Skills
8 27 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.04%) Publishing
10 23 (2.80%) Retail
11 22 (2.68%) Marketing
12 20 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (2.19%) Legal
14 15 (1.82%) Presentation Skills
15 14 (1.70%) Manufacturing
16 12 (1.46%) Front Office
17 11 (1.34%) Aerospace
18 10 (1.22%) Law
18 10 (1.22%) Military
19 8 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 215 (26.16%) Architect
2 156 (18.98%) Data Architect
3 133 (16.18%) Data Engineer
4 110 (13.38%) Lead
5 91 (11.07%) Analyst
6 74 (9.00%) Senior
7 51 (6.20%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.23%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.38%) Business Analyst
9 36 (4.38%) Developer
10 29 (3.53%) Senior Data Engineer
11 27 (3.28%) Consultant
12 24 (2.92%) Data Manager
13 21 (2.55%) Lead Data Engineer
13 21 (2.55%) Product Owner
14 20 (2.43%) Data Business Analyst
14 20 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
15 19 (2.31%) Enterprise Architect
16 17 (2.07%) DevOps Engineer
17 16 (1.95%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.18%) PySpark
2 44 (5.35%) JSON
3 42 (5.11%) Terraform
4 38 (4.62%) REST
5 33 (4.01%) Kafka
6 19 (2.31%) YAML
7 15 (1.82%) Spring Boot
8 14 (1.70%) XML
9 12 (1.46%) Node.js
10 10 (1.22%) React
10 10 (1.22%) SLSA
10 10 (1.22%) Spring
11 9 (1.09%) .NET
11 9 (1.09%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.09%) Playwright
12 8 (0.97%) Middleware
12 8 (0.97%) OAuth
13 7 (0.85%) Apache NiFi
13 7 (0.85%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.85%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 74 (9.00%) Cloud Native
2 72 (8.76%) Onboarding
3 66 (8.03%) Data Structures
4 65 (7.91%) Taxonomies
5 59 (7.18%) Management Information System
6 55 (6.69%) Product Ownership
7 46 (5.60%) Legacy Systems
8 43 (5.23%) Reference Data
9 21 (2.55%) Data Fabric
10 19 (2.31%) Derivative
11 17 (2.07%) AI Agents
11 17 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (1.58%) Life Science
14 12 (1.46%) Distributed Computing
14 12 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.46%) Equity Derivative
15 10 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
16 9 (1.09%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 18 (2.19%) Unix
2 14 (1.70%) 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
1 440 (53.53%) Data Governance
2 392 (47.69%) Data Modelling
3 322 (39.17%) Metadata Management
4 265 (32.24%) Analytics
5 230 (27.98%) Data Architecture
6 221 (26.89%) AI
7 213 (25.91%) Stakeholder Management
8 199 (24.21%) Agile
9 185 (22.51%) Data Pipeline
10 182 (22.14%) Data Engineering
11 177 (21.53%) Migration
12 173 (21.05%) ETL
13 171 (20.80%) CI/CD
14 155 (18.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 145 (17.64%) Data Management
16 143 (17.40%) Roadmaps
17 141 (17.15%) Data Lineage
18 130 (15.82%) Decision-Making
18 130 (15.82%) Validation
19 129 (15.69%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 297 (36.13%) SQL
2 212 (25.79%) Python
3 64 (7.79%) Java
4 22 (2.68%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.82%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.70%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.58%) C#
7 13 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 13 (1.58%) Groovy
7 13 (1.58%) JavaScript
8 9 (1.09%) Bash
8 9 (1.09%) C++
9 7 (0.85%) Bicep
9 7 (0.85%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.73%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.61%) Scala
11 5 (0.61%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.49%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.49%) Cypher
12 4 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 195 (23.72%) Security Cleared
2 147 (17.88%) SC Cleared
3 53 (6.45%) Degree
4 44 (5.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.55%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.70%) Azure Certification
8 12 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
9 10 (1.22%) AWS Certification
10 9 (1.09%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.73%) PRINCE2 Certification
13 5 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.36%) CISSP
14 3 (0.36%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.36%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.24%) ACCA
15 2 (0.24%) CIMA
15 2 (0.24%) CISM
15 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (45.74%) Data Quality
2 68 (8.27%) GDPR
3 45 (5.47%) Accessibility
4 44 (5.35%) QA
5 8 (0.97%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (0.97%) WCAG
6 7 (0.85%) NCSC
7 6 (0.73%) GRC
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.73%) MiFID
8 5 (0.61%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.61%) NIST
8 5 (0.61%) SNOMED CT
8 5 (0.61%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.24%) IFRS
10 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.24%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 23 (2.80%) Docker
2 9 (1.09%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 24 (2.92%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
3 8 (0.97%) Grafana
4 6 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.61%) Ansible
6 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.49%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.36%) Control-M
8 2 (0.24%) Kibana
8 2 (0.24%) systemd
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 154 (18.73%) Microsoft
2 137 (16.67%) Databricks
3 61 (7.42%) Informatica
4 55 (6.69%) Oracle
5 34 (4.14%) Google
6 18 (2.19%) Sparx
7 17 (2.07%) SAP
8 16 (1.95%) IBM
8 16 (1.95%) Talend
9 15 (1.82%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.70%) ServiceNow
11 13 (1.58%) Autodesk
12 11 (1.34%) Sybase
12 11 (1.34%) Teradata
13 10 (1.22%) Denodo
13 10 (1.22%) Palantir
13 10 (1.22%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.09%) Foundry
15 8 (0.97%) Adobe
15 8 (0.97%) CA Agile Central