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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 303 361
Rank change year-on-year +103 +58 +15
Contract jobs citing Metadata 739 270 212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 0.82% 0.54%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.07% 4.53% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 471 187 138
10th Percentile £386 £314 £396
25th Percentile £456 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £668 £638 £775
90th Percentile £761 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +16.67% -5.26% -8.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 4 10
10th Percentile £25.76 - £13.50
25th Percentile £57.63 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.50 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.65% -30.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +400.00% -17.68% -54.76%

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 8,147 5,961 7,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.27% 18.10% 18.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,430 4,022 4,961
10th Percentile £358 £344 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 92 102
10th Percentile £15.94 £20.87 £15.10
25th Percentile £23.00 £25.99 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.38 £34.99 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +9.67% +1.52% -34.35%
75th Percentile £61.63 £59.75 £56.88
90th Percentile £76.00 £78.58 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -38.77%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +89 630 £525 - 542
London +52 359 £525 -9.68% 320
UK excluding London +56 293 £525 +16.67% 296
Work from Home +57 216 £525 -8.70% 246
North of England -2 73 £507 +12.67% 69
Midlands -7 69 £600 +460.75% 39
West Midlands +3 64 £613 +472.43% 31
South East -34 53 £525 +12.18% 85
Scotland +27 43 £525 +10.53% 28
Yorkshire +1 42 £514 -4.37% 24
East of England +4 32 £463 -11.90% 18
South West -16 27 £550 -8.33% 34
North West -28 26 £575 +83.12% 38
North East -37 7 £463 +1.37% 7
East Midlands -15 5 £500 +21.95% 8
Wales -11 3 £750 +76.47% 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 39 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 31 (4.19%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (3.52%) Apache
4 25 (3.38%) Apache Spark
5 20 (2.71%) CMS
6 18 (2.44%) Confluence
7 14 (1.89%) SAS
8 4 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.41%) Headless CMS
9 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.14%) Liferay
11 1 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
11 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (3.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.95%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.95%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.95%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.95%) Revit
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.14%) Notion
5 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.54%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.27%) HFM
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.27%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.27%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.27%) Workfront
6 1 (0.14%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 220 (29.77%) Azure
2 171 (23.14%) AWS
3 101 (13.67%) Power Platform
4 87 (11.77%) GCP
5 58 (7.85%) Collibra
6 57 (7.71%) Microsoft Purview
7 47 (6.36%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.68%) Amazon S3
9 41 (5.55%) GitHub
10 38 (5.14%) Snowflake
11 36 (4.87%) dbt
12 32 (4.33%) Serverless
13 31 (4.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 30 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (4.06%) Azure DevOps
15 26 (3.52%) Microsoft 365
16 19 (2.57%) Microsoft Copilot
17 17 (2.30%) Power Automate
18 15 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
18 15 (2.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.95%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.95%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.68%) Intranet
3 4 (0.54%) Broadband
3 4 (0.54%) HTTP
3 4 (0.54%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) DNS
5 1 (0.14%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.14%) SAN
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
5 1 (0.14%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (16.24%) Data Warehouse
2 88 (11.91%) Power BI
3 84 (11.37%) Data Lake
4 37 (5.01%) Relational Database
5 34 (4.60%) NoSQL
6 33 (4.47%) Data Vault
7 28 (3.79%) Tableau
8 27 (3.65%) Delta Lake
9 22 (2.98%) BigQuery
10 21 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (2.84%) Semantic Layer
11 18 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
12 15 (2.03%) Elasticsearch
12 15 (2.03%) SQL Server
13 14 (1.89%) Amazon Athena
13 14 (1.89%) Db2
14 13 (1.76%) MongoDB
15 12 (1.62%) Big Data
15 12 (1.62%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 40 (5.41%) ERwin
2 32 (4.33%) Git
3 26 (3.52%) ER Studio
4 21 (2.84%) JIRA
5 19 (2.57%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.17%) Maven
7 15 (2.03%) PowerDesigner
8 13 (1.76%) GitLab
9 11 (1.49%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.41%) Selenium
11 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.27%) git-flow
11 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.27%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) Deequ
12 1 (0.14%) MLflow
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 208 (28.15%) Social Skills
2 199 (26.93%) Finance
3 161 (21.79%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (12.45%) Banking
5 78 (10.55%) Public Sector
6 36 (4.87%) Investment Banking
7 32 (4.33%) Documentation Skills
8 23 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
9 20 (2.71%) Legal
10 19 (2.57%) Publishing
11 17 (2.30%) Marketing
11 17 (2.30%) Retail
12 13 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (1.62%) Front Office
13 12 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 11 (1.49%) Aviation
14 11 (1.49%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.95%) Law
15 7 (0.95%) Military
16 6 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 178 (24.09%) Architect
2 127 (17.19%) Data Architect
3 117 (15.83%) Data Engineer
4 93 (12.58%) Lead
5 88 (11.91%) Analyst
6 69 (9.34%) Senior
7 53 (7.17%) Data Analyst
8 47 (6.36%) Data Modeller
9 37 (5.01%) Developer
10 33 (4.47%) Business Analyst
11 27 (3.65%) Consultant
12 21 (2.84%) Data Manager
13 20 (2.71%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.71%) Senior Data Engineer
14 18 (2.44%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (2.44%) Product Owner
15 17 (2.30%) Lead Data Engineer
16 15 (2.03%) Solutions Architect
17 14 (1.89%) Governance Analyst
18 13 (1.76%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (6.22%) PySpark
2 41 (5.55%) JSON
3 36 (4.87%) Kafka
4 31 (4.19%) REST
5 18 (2.44%) YAML
6 14 (1.89%) Node.js
7 13 (1.76%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.62%) .NET
8 12 (1.62%) XML
9 11 (1.49%) SLSA
10 10 (1.35%) React
11 8 (1.08%) GraphQL
11 8 (1.08%) Middleware
11 8 (1.08%) OAuth
11 8 (1.08%) Spring
12 7 (0.95%) RESTful
13 6 (0.81%) CSS
13 6 (0.81%) HTML
13 6 (0.81%) OAuth2
13 6 (0.81%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 72 (9.74%) Cloud Native
2 62 (8.39%) Onboarding
3 60 (8.12%) Data Structures
4 53 (7.17%) Taxonomies
5 49 (6.63%) Management Information System
5 49 (6.63%) Product Ownership
6 45 (6.09%) Legacy Systems
7 43 (5.82%) Reference Data
8 19 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (2.57%) Derivative
9 14 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (1.76%) AI Agents
11 12 (1.62%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.62%) Life Science
12 10 (1.35%) Digital Media
12 10 (1.35%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.22%) Clustering
13 9 (1.22%) Data Fabric
13 9 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.57%) Unix
2 14 (1.89%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
3 1 (0.14%) Windows
3 1 (0.14%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 369 (49.93%) Data Governance
2 349 (47.23%) Data Modelling
3 265 (35.86%) Metadata Management
4 247 (33.42%) Analytics
5 189 (25.58%) AI
6 185 (25.03%) Data Architecture
7 174 (23.55%) Data Pipeline
8 168 (22.73%) Agile
9 164 (22.19%) ETL
10 155 (20.97%) Data Engineering
11 153 (20.70%) CI/CD
12 150 (20.30%) Stakeholder Management
13 149 (20.16%) Migration
14 124 (16.78%) Data Lineage
15 120 (16.24%) Business Intelligence
16 119 (16.10%) DevOps
17 117 (15.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 116 (15.70%) Validation
19 114 (15.43%) Data Management
19 114 (15.43%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 282 (38.16%) SQL
2 195 (26.39%) Python
3 61 (8.25%) Java
4 22 (2.98%) PL/SQL
5 16 (2.17%) C#
6 15 (2.03%) PowerShell
6 15 (2.03%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.89%) Groovy
8 12 (1.62%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 9 (1.22%) Bash
10 9 (1.22%) C++
11 8 (1.08%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.95%) SPARQL
13 6 (0.81%) Bicep
13 6 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.68%) Apex Code
14 5 (0.68%) Scala
15 4 (0.54%) Cypher
15 4 (0.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 156 (21.11%) Security Cleared
2 119 (16.10%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.55%) Degree
4 34 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (2.44%) DV Cleared
6 12 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.22%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.08%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.41%) CISSP
11 3 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.41%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.27%) ACCA
12 2 (0.27%) CBAP
12 2 (0.27%) CIMA
12 2 (0.27%) CISM
12 2 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (41.14%) Data Quality
2 63 (8.53%) GDPR
3 43 (5.82%) QA
4 41 (5.55%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.95%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 7 (0.95%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.81%) GRC
6 6 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.81%) NIST
7 5 (0.68%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.68%) WCAG
8 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.54%) MiFID
9 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.41%) IFRS
9 3 (0.41%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.41%) NCSC
System Software
1 19 (2.57%) Docker
2 10 (1.35%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 34 (4.60%) Terraform
2 23 (3.11%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.22%) Grafana
4 7 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.54%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.54%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.41%) Ansible
8 2 (0.27%) Control-M
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 132 (17.86%) Microsoft
2 113 (15.29%) Databricks
3 54 (7.31%) Oracle
4 49 (6.63%) Informatica
5 27 (3.65%) Google
6 18 (2.44%) Sparx
7 17 (2.30%) Salesforce
8 16 (2.17%) IBM
8 16 (2.17%) SAP
9 13 (1.76%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.49%) Sonatype
10 11 (1.49%) Sybase
10 11 (1.49%) Talend
11 10 (1.35%) Denodo
12 8 (1.08%) Adobe
12 8 (1.08%) CA Agile Central
12 8 (1.08%) Palantir
13 7 (0.95%) Aspera
13 7 (0.95%) Foundry
13 7 (0.95%) Signiant