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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 298 329
Rank change year-on-year +87 +31 +27
Contract jobs citing Metadata 634 241 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.27% 0.82% 0.65%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.36% 4.37% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 424 165 179
10th Percentile £358 £282 £397
25th Percentile £428 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -9.13% +4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £813
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £469 £550
% change year-on-year +11.94% -14.73% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 17
10th Percentile £33.48 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £20.19 £19.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £28.75 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +122.61% -11.54% -7.14%
75th Percentile £73.75 £82.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £82.95 £83.83 £46.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +132.73% -31.68% +11.03%

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 7,581 5,518 7,461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.17% 18.75% 17.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,065 3,745 5,333
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £760 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 102 155
10th Percentile £14.51 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £25.00 £20.77
Median hourly rate £41.71 £34.99 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.21% -12.53% -31.73%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.90 £54.56
90th Percentile £78.58 £78.58 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.50 £31.85 £35.00
% change year-on-year +20.90% -9.01% -38.54%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +75 529 £525 -3.67% 167
London +70 305 £520 -13.33% 95
UK excluding London +47 253 £525 +11.94% 102
Work from Home +44 186 £525 -8.70% 93
Midlands -16 66 £570 +432.59% 17
West Midlands -12 64 £573 +435.51% 14
North of England -38 57 £523 +4.50% 21
Scotland +31 49 £488 +2.63% 2
South East -52 45 £513 +7.33% 41
East of England -3 31 £525 +63.36% 8
North West -23 26 £575 +5.50% 17
Yorkshire -29 26 £567 +51.13% 3
South West -19 10 £563 -4.21% 9
North East -29 8 £463 - 1
Wales -16 3 £750 +184.67% 4
East Midlands -21 2 £474 +15.49% 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 35 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 32 (5.05%) Apache Spark
3 27 (4.26%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (3.15%) Confluence
5 16 (2.52%) Apache
5 16 (2.52%) SAS
6 10 (1.58%) CMS
7 4 (0.63%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.32%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.32%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.32%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.32%) Smallworld
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.16%) Drupal
10 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.26%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.10%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.10%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.10%) Revit
4 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.32%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (1.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.95%) Summit
3 2 (0.32%) Maximo
3 2 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 180 (28.39%) Azure
2 134 (21.14%) AWS
3 86 (13.56%) Power Platform
4 65 (10.25%) GCP
5 54 (8.52%) Collibra
6 46 (7.26%) Microsoft Purview
7 40 (6.31%) GitHub
8 38 (5.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 35 (5.52%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.05%) dbt
10 32 (5.05%) Serverless
11 30 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 29 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
13 28 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (3.94%) Snowflake
15 17 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
16 15 (2.37%) Entra ID
17 13 (2.05%) ChatGPT
17 13 (2.05%) Power Automate
17 13 (2.05%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.10%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.10%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.79%) Intranet
3 4 (0.63%) Firewall
3 4 (0.63%) SSL
4 3 (0.47%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (17.03%) Data Warehouse
2 76 (11.99%) Power BI
3 75 (11.83%) Data Lake
4 34 (5.36%) Relational Database
5 32 (5.05%) Data Vault
6 31 (4.89%) Metadata Repository
7 29 (4.57%) NoSQL
8 27 (4.26%) Tableau
9 26 (4.10%) SQL Server
10 21 (3.31%) Delta Lake
10 21 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (3.31%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (3.15%) Amazon Redshift
11 20 (3.15%) Big Data
12 16 (2.52%) Amazon Athena
12 16 (2.52%) Hadoop
13 14 (2.21%) Oracle Database
14 13 (2.05%) Db2
15 12 (1.89%) BigQuery
15 12 (1.89%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 36 (5.68%) ERwin
2 28 (4.42%) Git
3 20 (3.15%) JIRA
4 17 (2.68%) ER Studio
5 15 (2.37%) Jenkins
5 15 (2.37%) PowerDesigner
6 14 (2.21%) GitLab
7 11 (1.74%) Maven
8 10 (1.58%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.47%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.32%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.32%) git-flow
10 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Selenium
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.16%) VersionOne
General
1 181 (28.55%) Social Skills
2 178 (28.08%) Finance
3 121 (19.09%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (14.20%) Banking
5 73 (11.51%) Public Sector
6 38 (5.99%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (5.52%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.84%) Legal
9 15 (2.37%) Publishing
10 14 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
11 13 (2.05%) Retail
12 12 (1.89%) Front Office
12 12 (1.89%) Marketing
12 12 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
13 11 (1.74%) Aviation
14 7 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.10%) Law
15 5 (0.79%) Military
16 4 (0.63%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.63%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 145 (22.87%) Architect
2 102 (16.09%) Data Architect
3 96 (15.14%) Data Engineer
4 79 (12.46%) Analyst
5 65 (10.25%) Lead
6 53 (8.36%) Senior
7 50 (7.89%) Data Analyst
8 45 (7.10%) Data Modeller
9 44 (6.94%) Developer
10 31 (4.89%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.94%) Consultant
12 20 (3.15%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.84%) Data Business Analyst
14 16 (2.52%) DevOps Engineer
15 13 (2.05%) Senior Data Engineer
15 13 (2.05%) Software Engineer
16 12 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
16 12 (1.89%) Enterprise Architect
16 12 (1.89%) Lead Data Engineer
17 11 (1.74%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.78%) PySpark
2 31 (4.89%) JSON
3 26 (4.10%) Kafka
4 22 (3.47%) REST
5 19 (3.00%) .NET
6 16 (2.52%) YAML
7 14 (2.21%) React
8 12 (1.89%) Node.js
9 11 (1.74%) OAuth
9 11 (1.74%) XML
10 10 (1.58%) SLSA
11 9 (1.42%) Middleware
11 9 (1.42%) SOAP
12 8 (1.26%) RESTful
13 7 (1.10%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.95%) ADO
14 6 (0.95%) CSS
14 6 (0.95%) SPFx
14 6 (0.95%) Spring Boot
15 5 (0.79%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 63 (9.94%) Cloud Native
2 49 (7.73%) Onboarding
3 45 (7.10%) Management Information System
4 42 (6.62%) Data Structures
5 39 (6.15%) Taxonomies
6 36 (5.68%) Reference Data
7 35 (5.52%) Product Ownership
8 33 (5.21%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (3.15%) Derivative
10 18 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.89%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.89%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.89%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.42%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.42%) Fixed Income
14 8 (1.26%) Clustering
14 8 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.26%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.00%) Unix
2 7 (1.10%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 312 (49.21%) Data Governance
2 292 (46.06%) Data Modelling
3 218 (34.38%) Metadata Management
4 215 (33.91%) Analytics
5 155 (24.45%) ETL
6 154 (24.29%) Data Architecture
7 151 (23.82%) AI
8 129 (20.35%) Data Pipeline
9 128 (20.19%) Data Engineering
10 126 (19.87%) CI/CD
11 120 (18.93%) Migration
12 116 (18.30%) Agile
13 111 (17.51%) Stakeholder Management
14 107 (16.88%) Data Lineage
15 106 (16.72%) Business Intelligence
16 104 (16.40%) Problem-Solving
17 99 (15.62%) Decision-Making
17 99 (15.62%) DevOps
18 98 (15.46%) Data Management
19 92 (14.51%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 249 (39.27%) SQL
2 167 (26.34%) Python
3 49 (7.73%) Java
4 29 (4.57%) C#
5 25 (3.94%) PL/SQL
6 16 (2.52%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.05%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.89%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.58%) Groovy
9 10 (1.58%) Perl
10 9 (1.42%) C++
10 9 (1.42%) TypeScript
11 6 (0.95%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.79%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (0.63%) Bash
13 4 (0.63%) Bicep
13 4 (0.63%) Scala
14 2 (0.32%) R
14 2 (0.32%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 138 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 103 (16.25%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.15%) Degree
4 25 (3.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.05%) Master's Degree
7 11 (1.74%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.42%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (1.42%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (0.79%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.32%) Analytics IQ
10 2 (0.32%) CISM
10 2 (0.32%) CISSP
10 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.32%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.32%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CBAP
11 1 (0.16%) CSPO
11 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (40.06%) Data Quality
2 63 (9.94%) GDPR
3 36 (5.68%) QA
4 22 (3.47%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.74%) GRC
6 7 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.10%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.95%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.95%) NIST
8 5 (0.79%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.79%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.63%) ISO 22301
9 4 (0.63%) MiFID
10 3 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.47%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.32%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 12 (1.89%) Docker
2 10 (1.58%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 26 (4.10%) Terraform
2 11 (1.74%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.26%) Grafana
4 6 (0.95%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.63%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.63%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.16%) Ansible
6 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 116 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 89 (14.04%) Databricks
3 61 (9.62%) Oracle
4 38 (5.99%) Informatica
5 21 (3.31%) Google
5 21 (3.31%) Salesforce
6 17 (2.68%) Talend
7 15 (2.37%) SAP
8 14 (2.21%) IBM
8 14 (2.21%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.05%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.74%) Sybase
11 10 (1.58%) Sonatype
12 9 (1.42%) Sparx
13 7 (1.10%) OpenAI
14 5 (0.79%) Adobe
14 5 (0.79%) Denodo
14 5 (0.79%) Foundry
14 5 (0.79%) Palantir
15 4 (0.63%) Teradata