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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 331 285
Rank change year-on-year +89 -46 +36
Contract jobs citing Metadata 416 189 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 0.60% 0.77%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.68% 3.30% 4.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 285 126 234
10th Percentile £380 £318 £400
25th Percentile £431 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £548
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -5.02% -4.37%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £679
90th Percentile £688 £793 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +2.56% -15.22% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 6 24
10th Percentile £29.71 £21.01 £14.46
25th Percentile £35.91 £22.72 £20.50
Median hourly rate £80.50 £32.47 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +147.96% -29.60% +10.46%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.88 £46.91
90th Percentile £84.20 £82.25 £65.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.50 £25.43 £40.25
% change year-on-year +216.56% -36.82% -35.60%

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 6,229 5,725 7,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.71% 18.30% 16.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,298 3,767 5,044
10th Percentile £333 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £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% - -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 79 162
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.78 £16.01
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.29% -22.22% -20.86%
75th Percentile £74.37 £64.61 £63.56
90th Percentile £84.10 £67.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.36 £28.65 £42.50
% change year-on-year +72.29% -32.59% -22.73%

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 20 January 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 20 January 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 20 January 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 +101 361 £525 +1.45% 193
London +87 225 £525 - 51
UK excluding London +8 146 £500 +2.56% 186
Work from Home +34 109 £525 +0.48% 68
South East -6 34 £500 -6.98% 65
Midlands -16 32 £537 +43.20% 27
North of England -47 25 £475 -12.84% 36
West Midlands -17 22 £561 +49.47% 13
Scotland +12 21 £465 -32.12% 14
East of England -7 21 £500 +57.01% 19
North West -21 15 £448 -17.89% 11
South West -2 12 £568 +16.41% 17
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 13
Yorkshire -44 9 £525 +31.25% 17
Wales -1 8 £700 +229.21% 9
North East -13 1 £475 -23.91% 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 29 (6.97%) Apache Spark
1 29 (6.97%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.85%) Confluence
3 15 (3.61%) SAS
4 14 (3.37%) Apache
5 11 (2.64%) CMS
6 8 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (1.68%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.44%) Drupal
8 6 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (1.20%) GeoServer
9 5 (1.20%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.96%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.48%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.24%) Documentum
12 1 (0.24%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 23 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.16%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.24%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.24%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.24%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.37%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.44%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.44%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.44%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.72%) Actimize
3 3 (0.72%) Maximo
4 2 (0.48%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.24%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.24%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Shopify
5 1 (0.24%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 130 (31.25%) Azure
2 100 (24.04%) AWS
3 72 (17.31%) Power Platform
4 48 (11.54%) GCP
5 39 (9.38%) Azure Data Factory
5 39 (9.38%) Collibra
6 37 (8.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 36 (8.65%) Microsoft Purview
8 28 (6.73%) Snowflake
9 18 (4.33%) Serverless
10 16 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (3.61%) Amazon S3
11 15 (3.61%) dbt
12 14 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (2.64%) GitHub
15 7 (1.68%) Alation
15 7 (1.68%) Contentful
15 7 (1.68%) SaaS
16 6 (1.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.72%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.48%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.48%) Intranet
3 1 (0.24%) Firewall
3 1 (0.24%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (18.27%) Data Warehouse
2 65 (15.63%) Power BI
3 51 (12.26%) Data Lake
4 30 (7.21%) Metadata Repository
5 23 (5.53%) NoSQL
6 21 (5.05%) Big Data
6 21 (5.05%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.57%) Data Vault
8 18 (4.33%) Snowflake Schema
9 17 (4.09%) SQL Server
9 17 (4.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 17 (4.09%) Tableau
10 16 (3.85%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
12 14 (3.37%) Amazon Redshift
13 13 (3.13%) BigQuery
14 10 (2.40%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.40%) Oracle Database
14 10 (2.40%) Spark SQL
14 10 (2.40%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 22 (5.29%) ERwin
1 22 (5.29%) JIRA
2 20 (4.81%) Git
3 10 (2.40%) ER Studio
4 9 (2.16%) PowerDesigner
5 5 (1.20%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.48%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.48%) Subversion
6 2 (0.48%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.24%) GitLab
7 1 (0.24%) gulp
7 1 (0.24%) Maven
7 1 (0.24%) Poetry
7 1 (0.24%) Pylint
7 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.24%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.24%) Yeoman
General
1 163 (39.18%) Social Skills
2 108 (25.96%) Finance
3 82 (19.71%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (13.70%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.97%) Banking
5 29 (6.97%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (4.33%) Publishing
7 14 (3.37%) Retail
8 12 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (2.64%) Legal
10 10 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.92%) Military
12 7 (1.68%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.44%) Aviation
13 6 (1.44%) Law
13 6 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (1.44%) Retail Banking
14 5 (1.20%) Investment Banking
14 5 (1.20%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 87 (20.91%) Architect
2 64 (15.38%) Analyst
3 63 (15.14%) Data Architect
4 55 (13.22%) Data Engineer
5 44 (10.58%) Data Analyst
6 33 (7.93%) Data Modeller
7 32 (7.69%) Lead
8 28 (6.73%) Developer
8 28 (6.73%) Senior
9 26 (6.25%) Consultant
10 21 (5.05%) Business Analyst
11 17 (4.09%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (3.13%) Azure Data Engineer
13 12 (2.88%) Software Engineer
14 11 (2.64%) Data Business Analyst
14 11 (2.64%) Governance Analyst
15 10 (2.40%) Senior Data Engineer
16 9 (2.16%) Data Analytics Engineer
16 9 (2.16%) Data Quality Analyst
16 9 (2.16%) Quality Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (8.89%) PySpark
2 25 (6.01%) Kafka
3 21 (5.05%) REST
4 13 (3.13%) JSON
5 11 (2.64%) XML
6 9 (2.16%) React
7 8 (1.92%) YAML
8 7 (1.68%) .NET
8 7 (1.68%) SOAP
9 6 (1.44%) OAuth
9 6 (1.44%) RESTful
9 6 (1.44%) SAP Basis
9 6 (1.44%) SAP Business Workflow
9 6 (1.44%) SAP Fiori
9 6 (1.44%) VML
10 5 (1.20%) HTML
10 5 (1.20%) Node.js
10 5 (1.20%) Pandas
11 3 (0.72%) SAML
11 3 (0.72%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.21%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.73%) Data Structures
3 24 (5.77%) Management Information System
4 20 (4.81%) Taxonomies
5 19 (4.57%) Legacy Systems
6 17 (4.09%) Onboarding
6 17 (4.09%) Reference Data
7 15 (3.61%) Product Ownership
8 11 (2.64%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (1.68%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (0.96%) Genomics
12 4 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (0.96%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.96%) Low-Code
12 4 (0.96%) Omics
12 4 (0.96%) Replication
12 4 (0.96%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.72%) Biopharmaceutical
Operating Systems
1 6 (1.44%) Unix
2 4 (0.96%) Linux
3 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (52.40%) Data Governance
2 204 (49.04%) Metadata Management
3 203 (48.80%) Data Modelling
4 142 (34.13%) Analytics
5 109 (26.20%) Data Architecture
6 105 (25.24%) ETL
7 102 (24.52%) Business Intelligence
8 82 (19.71%) Data Lineage
9 80 (19.23%) Agile
10 79 (18.99%) Data Pipeline
11 77 (18.51%) Data Engineering
11 77 (18.51%) Problem-Solving
12 71 (17.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 64 (15.38%) Data Management
13 64 (15.38%) Validation
14 63 (15.14%) AI
15 59 (14.18%) Decision-Making
15 59 (14.18%) Migration
15 59 (14.18%) Stakeholder Management
16 58 (13.94%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 150 (36.06%) SQL
2 107 (25.72%) Python
3 22 (5.29%) Java
4 19 (4.57%) PowerShell
5 14 (3.37%) C#
6 9 (2.16%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.92%) Scala
8 7 (1.68%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.68%) R
8 7 (1.68%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.44%) ABAP
9 6 (1.44%) Perl
10 5 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.20%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.96%) C++
12 3 (0.72%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.72%) Bicep
12 3 (0.72%) SOQL
12 3 (0.72%) SOSL
12 3 (0.72%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 89 (21.39%) Security Cleared
2 66 (15.87%) SC Cleared
3 23 (5.53%) Degree
4 15 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.68%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.20%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.96%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.96%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.24%) Analytics IQ
10 1 (0.24%) CSPO
10 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.24%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.24%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.24%) PMP
10 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 188 (45.19%) Data Quality
2 43 (10.34%) GDPR
3 16 (3.85%) QA
4 14 (3.37%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.44%) GRC
5 6 (1.44%) IFRS
5 6 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.20%) MiFID
6 5 (1.20%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.72%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.48%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.48%) FINREP
8 2 (0.48%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.48%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.48%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.48%) NIST
9 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.24%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (3.37%) Docker
2 3 (0.72%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.72%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 18 (4.33%) Kubernetes
2 17 (4.09%) Terraform
3 3 (0.72%) Hadoop YARN
3 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.72%) Oozie
3 3 (0.72%) SCCM
4 1 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 82 (19.71%) Microsoft
2 61 (14.66%) Databricks
3 35 (8.41%) Oracle
4 33 (7.93%) Informatica
5 19 (4.57%) ServiceNow
6 18 (4.33%) SAP
7 14 (3.37%) Sparx
8 11 (2.64%) Google
8 11 (2.64%) Talend
9 10 (2.40%) OpenText
9 10 (2.40%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.92%) Teradata
11 7 (1.68%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.44%) ESRI
12 6 (1.44%) IBM
12 6 (1.44%) Optimizely
13 5 (1.20%) Intergraph
13 5 (1.20%) Palantir
14 4 (0.96%) Atlassian
14 4 (0.96%) Remedy