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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 304 334
Rank change year-on-year +93 +30 +12
Contract jobs citing Metadata 622 233 275
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.28% 4.23% 3.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 161 175
10th Percentile £358 £270 £391
25th Percentile £425 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% +4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £825
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £470 £550
% change year-on-year +11.70% -14.55% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 9 15
10th Percentile £33.48 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £22.50 £16.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.73% -15.38% -8.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £82.25 £42.88
90th Percentile £82.95 £83.30 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £20.97
% change year-on-year +141.83% +26.20% -45.00%

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 7,509 5,512 7,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.12% 18.83% 17.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,024 3,745 5,279
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £762 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 102 152
10th Percentile £14.34 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.91 £23.50 £20.77
Median hourly rate £43.00 £34.19 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.77% -14.53% -33.33%
75th Percentile £73.00 £65.34 £55.63
90th Percentile £81.43 £77.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.84% -9.60% -40.26%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +70 524 £525 - 155
London +66 302 £520 -13.33% 82
UK excluding London +29 252 £525 +11.70% 98
Work from Home +38 178 £525 -8.70% 97
Midlands -14 65 £571 +433.64% 15
West Midlands -13 63 £575 +437.38% 12
North of England -42 56 £524 +4.75% 24
Scotland +32 49 £488 +2.63%
South East -36 46 £506 +6.02% 39
East of England -12 31 £525 +63.36% 10
North West -29 26 £575 +7.48% 16
Yorkshire -36 26 £567 +51.13% 7
South West -23 10 £563 -4.21% 6
North East -21 7 £419 -9.46% 1
Wales -12 3 £750 +184.67% 6
East Midlands -27 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 34 (5.47%) SharePoint
2 33 (5.31%) Apache Spark
3 26 (4.18%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (2.89%) Confluence
5 16 (2.57%) Apache
5 16 (2.57%) SAS
6 10 (1.61%) CMS
7 4 (0.64%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.32%) Alfresco
8 2 (0.32%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.32%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.32%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.16%) Drupal
9 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.29%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.13%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.13%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.13%) Revit
4 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (1.61%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.96%) Summit
3 2 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.16%) Maximo
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 179 (28.78%) Azure
2 130 (20.90%) AWS
3 86 (13.83%) Power Platform
4 65 (10.45%) GCP
5 56 (9.00%) Collibra
6 45 (7.23%) Microsoft Purview
7 38 (6.11%) GitHub
8 37 (5.95%) Azure Data Factory
9 33 (5.31%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 32 (5.14%) Serverless
11 31 (4.98%) dbt
12 30 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
13 27 (4.34%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (4.02%) Snowflake
15 16 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
16 14 (2.25%) Entra ID
17 13 (2.09%) ChatGPT
17 13 (2.09%) ShareGate
18 12 (1.93%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.13%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.13%) WinSCP
2 6 (0.96%) Intranet
3 4 (0.64%) Firewall
3 4 (0.64%) SSL
4 3 (0.48%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (17.20%) Data Warehouse
2 76 (12.22%) Data Lake
3 75 (12.06%) Power BI
4 34 (5.47%) Relational Database
5 33 (5.31%) Data Vault
6 32 (5.14%) Metadata Repository
7 28 (4.50%) NoSQL
8 27 (4.34%) Tableau
9 26 (4.18%) SQL Server
10 22 (3.54%) Delta Lake
11 21 (3.38%) Snowflake Schema
12 20 (3.22%) Big Data
13 19 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
13 19 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
14 16 (2.57%) Amazon Athena
14 16 (2.57%) Hadoop
15 15 (2.41%) Oracle Database
16 13 (2.09%) Db2
17 12 (1.93%) MongoDB
17 12 (1.93%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 37 (5.95%) ERwin
2 28 (4.50%) Git
3 19 (3.05%) JIRA
4 17 (2.73%) ER Studio
5 15 (2.41%) Jenkins
5 15 (2.41%) PowerDesigner
6 12 (1.93%) GitLab
7 11 (1.77%) Maven
8 10 (1.61%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.48%) 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%) Deequ
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Subversion
11 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.16%) VersionOne
General
1 176 (28.30%) Social Skills
2 174 (27.97%) Finance
3 118 (18.97%) Analytical Skills
4 86 (13.83%) Banking
5 70 (11.25%) Public Sector
6 39 (6.27%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (5.47%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.89%) Legal
9 15 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.41%) Publishing
10 13 (2.09%) Retail
11 12 (1.93%) Front Office
11 12 (1.93%) Marketing
11 12 (1.93%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.77%) Aviation
13 7 (1.13%) Law
14 6 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.80%) Military
16 4 (0.64%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 142 (22.83%) Architect
2 100 (16.08%) Data Architect
3 94 (15.11%) Data Engineer
4 75 (12.06%) Analyst
5 61 (9.81%) Lead
6 51 (8.20%) Data Analyst
7 49 (7.88%) Senior
8 46 (7.40%) Data Modeller
9 45 (7.23%) Developer
10 30 (4.82%) Business Analyst
11 24 (3.86%) Consultant
12 19 (3.05%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.89%) Data Business Analyst
14 16 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
15 14 (2.25%) Software Engineer
16 13 (2.09%) Senior Data Engineer
17 12 (1.93%) AWS Engineer
17 12 (1.93%) Designer
17 12 (1.93%) Enterprise Architect
17 12 (1.93%) Governance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.07%) PySpark
2 28 (4.50%) JSON
3 27 (4.34%) Kafka
4 22 (3.54%) REST
5 20 (3.22%) .NET
6 16 (2.57%) YAML
7 13 (2.09%) React
8 12 (1.93%) Node.js
9 11 (1.77%) OAuth
10 10 (1.61%) SLSA
10 10 (1.61%) XML
11 9 (1.45%) Middleware
11 9 (1.45%) SOAP
12 7 (1.13%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.13%) RESTful
13 6 (0.96%) ADO
13 6 (0.96%) CSS
13 6 (0.96%) SPFx
14 5 (0.80%) Pandas
14 5 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 61 (9.81%) Cloud Native
2 47 (7.56%) Onboarding
3 43 (6.91%) Management Information System
4 39 (6.27%) Data Structures
5 37 (5.95%) Reference Data
5 37 (5.95%) Taxonomies
6 35 (5.63%) Product Ownership
7 32 (5.14%) Legacy Systems
8 20 (3.22%) Derivative
9 18 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.93%) Credit Risk
10 12 (1.93%) Equity Derivative
10 12 (1.93%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.61%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (1.45%) Fixed Income
13 8 (1.29%) Clustering
13 8 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (1.29%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.05%) Unix
2 7 (1.13%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (49.68%) Data Governance
2 285 (45.82%) Data Modelling
3 217 (34.89%) Metadata Management
4 214 (34.41%) Analytics
5 153 (24.60%) ETL
6 152 (24.44%) Data Architecture
7 147 (23.63%) AI
8 129 (20.74%) Data Pipeline
9 127 (20.42%) CI/CD
10 125 (20.10%) Data Engineering
11 116 (18.65%) Migration
12 113 (18.17%) Agile
13 109 (17.52%) Data Lineage
14 106 (17.04%) Stakeholder Management
15 105 (16.88%) Business Intelligence
16 103 (16.56%) Problem-Solving
17 98 (15.76%) Data Management
17 98 (15.76%) DevOps
18 96 (15.43%) Decision-Making
19 88 (14.15%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 243 (39.07%) SQL
2 163 (26.21%) Python
3 45 (7.23%) Java
4 30 (4.82%) C#
5 26 (4.18%) PL/SQL
6 15 (2.41%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.09%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.93%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.61%) Groovy
9 10 (1.61%) Perl
10 9 (1.45%) C++
10 9 (1.45%) TypeScript
11 6 (0.96%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.80%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (0.64%) Bash
13 4 (0.64%) Bicep
14 3 (0.48%) Scala
15 2 (0.32%) R
15 2 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 134 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 99 (15.92%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.27%) Degree
4 22 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.09%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.45%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.45%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.29%) DV Cleared
8 8 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.80%) 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
1 251 (40.35%) Data Quality
2 63 (10.13%) GDPR
3 32 (5.14%) QA
4 22 (3.54%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.77%) GRC
6 7 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.13%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.96%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.96%) NIST
8 5 (0.80%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.80%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.64%) ISO 22301
9 4 (0.64%) MiFID
10 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.48%) 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
12 1 (0.16%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 12 (1.93%) Docker
2 9 (1.45%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 26 (4.18%) Terraform
2 11 (1.77%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.29%) Grafana
4 6 (0.96%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.64%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.16%) Ansible
6 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 116 (18.65%) Microsoft
2 89 (14.31%) Databricks
3 60 (9.65%) Oracle
4 38 (6.11%) Informatica
5 21 (3.38%) Salesforce
6 19 (3.05%) Google
7 17 (2.73%) Talend
8 15 (2.41%) SAP
9 14 (2.25%) ServiceNow
10 13 (2.09%) Autodesk
10 13 (2.09%) IBM
11 11 (1.77%) Sybase
12 10 (1.61%) Sonatype
12 10 (1.61%) Sparx
13 7 (1.13%) OpenAI
14 5 (0.80%) Adobe
14 5 (0.80%) Denodo
15 4 (0.64%) Foundry
15 4 (0.64%) Ping Identity
15 4 (0.64%) Teradata