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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 259 382 335
Rank change year-on-year +123 -47 +28
Contract jobs citing Metadata 395 187 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 0.51% 0.67%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.22% 2.87% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 266 121 213
10th Percentile £391 £360 £363
25th Percentile £450 £464 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £651 £688
90th Percentile £700 £788 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £488 £540
% change year-on-year -0.97% -9.72% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 20
10th Percentile £38.93 £24.99 £15.15
25th Percentile £53.44 £33.51 £28.17
Median hourly rate £69.00 £43.84 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +57.39% -5.07% +129.52%
75th Percentile £85.63 £48.18 £49.50
90th Percentile £86.75 - £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £48.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +53.59% +4.33% +242.07%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,351 6,514 7,660
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.59% 17.79% 16.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,349 4,291 5,370
10th Percentile £330 £345 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £533
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.56% -3.09%
75th Percentile £609 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 90 146
10th Percentile £21.89 £18.00 £16.62
25th Percentile £29.33 £22.92 £21.86
Median hourly rate £54.70 £31.55 £46.84
Median % change year-on-year +73.40% -32.65% -2.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £55.25 £66.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £65.10 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +100.00% -40.45% +13.38%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Top 17 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 28 November 2025. 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 +117 338 £525 +1.94% 162
London +103 214 £550 - 94
UK excluding London +31 140 £483 -0.97% 136
Work from Home +67 114 £550 +6.28% 74
Midlands +7 36 £509 +33.38% 9
South East +9 26 £475 -17.39% 86
West Midlands -17 25 £561 +47.02% 7
North of England -25 25 £475 +8.57% 20
Scotland -1 21 £465 -32.12% 9
North West -8 17 £447 +11.75% 8
East of England -7 14 £496 +58.63% 4
South West -5 12 £568 +16.41% 8
East Midlands - 11 £423 - 2
Wales +8 10 £700 +29.63% 1
Yorkshire -34 8 £525 +5.00% 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - -
Channel Islands - 1 £760 -

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 (8.86%) SharePoint
2 33 (8.35%) Apache Spark
3 22 (5.57%) Apache
4 19 (4.81%) Confluence
5 17 (4.30%) CMS
6 11 (2.78%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (2.78%) SAS
7 7 (1.77%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.52%) Drupal
8 6 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (1.01%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.76%) GeoServer
10 3 (0.76%) Smallworld
11 2 (0.51%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.51%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.51%) Umbraco
12 1 (0.25%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.25%) Documentum
12 1 (0.25%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.25%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 18 (4.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 9 (2.28%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.51%) ProjectWise
5 1 (0.25%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.25%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.25%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 12 (3.04%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 11 (2.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.52%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.52%) Salesforce CRM
3 6 (1.52%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.52%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.76%) Actimize
4 3 (0.76%) Maximo
5 2 (0.51%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.25%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.25%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.25%) Primavera
6 1 (0.25%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.25%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 121 (30.63%) Azure
2 96 (24.30%) AWS
3 70 (17.72%) Power Platform
4 48 (12.15%) GCP
5 38 (9.62%) Microsoft Purview
6 35 (8.86%) Collibra
7 32 (8.10%) Snowflake
8 29 (7.34%) Azure Data Factory
9 27 (6.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 24 (6.08%) Microsoft 365
11 19 (4.81%) Amazon S3
12 18 (4.56%) dbt
13 17 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
14 14 (3.54%) GitHub
14 14 (3.54%) Serverless
15 12 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
16 9 (2.28%) PowerApps
17 8 (2.03%) SaaS
18 7 (1.77%) Alation
18 7 (1.77%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.76%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.51%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.25%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (18.99%) Data Warehouse
2 59 (14.94%) Power BI
3 44 (11.14%) Data Lake
4 26 (6.58%) NoSQL
5 24 (6.08%) Big Data
6 19 (4.81%) Relational Database
7 18 (4.56%) Data Vault
7 18 (4.56%) SQL Server
8 17 (4.30%) Metadata Repository
8 17 (4.30%) PostgreSQL
8 17 (4.30%) Tableau
9 16 (4.05%) BigQuery
9 16 (4.05%) Snowflake Schema
10 15 (3.80%) Amazon Redshift
11 13 (3.29%) Delta Lake
12 12 (3.04%) Spark SQL
13 11 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
14 10 (2.53%) Hadoop
14 10 (2.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 28 (7.09%) ERwin
2 24 (6.08%) JIRA
3 18 (4.56%) Git
4 15 (3.80%) ER Studio
5 13 (3.29%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (0.76%) GitLab
6 3 (0.76%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.51%) Subversion
7 2 (0.51%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.25%) MLflow
8 1 (0.25%) Poetry
8 1 (0.25%) Postman
8 1 (0.25%) Pylint
8 1 (0.25%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 160 (40.51%) Social Skills
2 101 (25.57%) Finance
3 71 (17.97%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (12.91%) Public Sector
5 38 (9.62%) Banking
6 30 (7.59%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (4.05%) Retail
8 14 (3.54%) Publishing
9 13 (3.29%) Legal
10 11 (2.78%) Presentation Skills
11 10 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (2.28%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
13 7 (1.77%) Retail Banking
14 6 (1.52%) Aviation
14 6 (1.52%) Corporate Banking
14 6 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (1.27%) Billing
15 5 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (1.27%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 89 (22.53%) Architect
2 64 (16.20%) Data Architect
3 63 (15.95%) Analyst
4 43 (10.89%) Data Analyst
5 38 (9.62%) Data Modeller
6 36 (9.11%) Data Engineer
7 26 (6.58%) Lead
7 26 (6.58%) Senior
8 25 (6.33%) Developer
9 23 (5.82%) Consultant
10 19 (4.81%) Business Analyst
11 14 (3.54%) Governance Analyst
12 12 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.04%) Data Manager
13 11 (2.78%) Technical Architect
14 9 (2.28%) AWS Engineer
14 9 (2.28%) Azure Data Engineer
14 9 (2.28%) SAP Consultant
15 8 (2.03%) Data Business Analyst
15 8 (2.03%) Data Quality Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (7.59%) PySpark
2 25 (6.33%) Kafka
3 15 (3.80%) REST
4 9 (2.28%) JSON
5 8 (2.03%) XML
6 6 (1.52%) Lightning Web Components
6 6 (1.52%) React
6 6 (1.52%) RESTful
6 6 (1.52%) SAP Basis
6 6 (1.52%) SAP Business Workflow
6 6 (1.52%) SAP Fiori
6 6 (1.52%) VML
7 5 (1.27%) Visualforce
8 4 (1.01%) LDAP
8 4 (1.01%) OAuth
8 4 (1.01%) Regular Expression
8 4 (1.01%) SAML
8 4 (1.01%) SOAP
8 4 (1.01%) SpaCy
8 4 (1.01%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (8.10%) Data Structures
2 24 (6.08%) Taxonomies
3 23 (5.82%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.05%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (4.05%) Management Information System
5 15 (3.80%) Onboarding
6 14 (3.54%) Reference Data
7 12 (3.04%) Product Ownership
8 9 (2.28%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (1.77%) Low-Code
10 6 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.27%) Data Fabric
12 4 (1.01%) Genomics
12 4 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (1.01%) NHS
12 4 (1.01%) Omics
12 4 (1.01%) Replication
13 3 (0.76%) Data Centre
13 3 (0.76%) FMCG
13 3 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.27%) Linux
1 5 (1.27%) Unix
2 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 212 (53.67%) Data Governance
2 198 (50.13%) Data Modelling
3 195 (49.37%) Metadata Management
4 126 (31.90%) Analytics
5 104 (26.33%) Data Architecture
6 95 (24.05%) Business Intelligence
7 87 (22.03%) ETL
8 82 (20.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 79 (20.00%) Agile
10 78 (19.75%) Data Lineage
11 69 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
12 68 (17.22%) Data Pipeline
13 63 (15.95%) Data Engineering
14 56 (14.18%) Migration
15 55 (13.92%) Data Management
15 55 (13.92%) Validation
16 51 (12.91%) Data Integration
16 51 (12.91%) DevOps
17 49 (12.41%) AI
17 49 (12.41%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 126 (31.90%) SQL
2 87 (22.03%) Python
3 16 (4.05%) Java
4 15 (3.80%) PowerShell
5 10 (2.53%) T-SQL
6 9 (2.28%) R
7 8 (2.03%) Scala
8 6 (1.52%) ABAP
8 6 (1.52%) Apex Code
9 5 (1.27%) C++
9 5 (1.27%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.27%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.27%) SOQL
9 5 (1.27%) SOSL
10 4 (1.01%) C#
11 3 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.51%) Bicep
12 2 (0.51%) Korn
12 2 (0.51%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.25%) C
Qualifications
1 77 (19.49%) Security Cleared
2 52 (13.16%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.08%) Degree
4 10 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.03%) AWS Certification
6 8 (2.03%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.77%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.01%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.51%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.51%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.51%) PMP
11 1 (0.25%) CISSP
11 1 (0.25%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.25%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.25%) MCP
11 1 (0.25%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (39.24%) Data Quality
2 46 (11.65%) GDPR
3 21 (5.32%) QA
4 17 (4.30%) Accessibility
5 8 (2.03%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.52%) IFRS
6 6 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 5 (1.27%) MiFID
8 3 (0.76%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.51%) Basel III
9 2 (0.51%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.51%) FINREP
9 2 (0.51%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.51%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.51%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.51%) NIST
10 1 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.25%) GRC
System Software
1 9 (2.28%) Docker
2 5 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.76%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (4.30%) Terraform
2 16 (4.05%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.76%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.76%) Oozie
4 3 (0.76%) SCCM
5 1 (0.25%) Kubeflow
5 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 81 (20.51%) Microsoft
2 53 (13.42%) Databricks
3 33 (8.35%) Oracle
4 32 (8.10%) Informatica
5 15 (3.80%) SAP
6 14 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 14 (3.54%) Sparx
7 13 (3.29%) Salesforce
8 12 (3.04%) Google
9 10 (2.53%) Talend
10 9 (2.28%) OpenText
11 7 (1.77%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.52%) IBM
12 6 (1.52%) Optimizely
12 6 (1.52%) Teradata
13 5 (1.27%) Adobe
13 5 (1.27%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.27%) Palantir
14 4 (1.01%) Atlassian
14 4 (1.01%) Cognos