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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 201 300 360
Rank change year-on-year +99 +60 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 744 271 204
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 0.82% 0.53%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.10% 4.55% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 468 188 130
10th Percentile £397 £314 £400
25th Percentile £456 £455 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £670 £638 £792
90th Percentile £753 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +16.67% -7.69% -10.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 10
10th Percentile £19.28 - £13.50
25th Percentile £50.23 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.49 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.57% -30.00% -36.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.15 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +399.89% -17.68% -64.35%

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 8,177 5,951 7,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.27% 18.10% 18.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,463 4,003 4,956
10th Percentile £358 £341 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £601 £625 £650
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 259 93 100
10th Percentile £15.90 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.11 £27.11 £19.90
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +1.55% -37.34%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £78.74 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.85 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.11% +6.15% -39.74%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +76 638 £525 - 140
London +57 365 £525 -8.70% 73
UK excluding London +66 294 £525 +16.67% 108
Work from Home +56 213 £525 -8.70% 83
North of England -17 75 £500 +11.11% 16
Midlands -3 71 £613 +472.43% 15
West Midlands 0 65 £653 +510.28% 11
South East -46 53 £525 +12.18% 53
Yorkshire -1 44 £514 -4.31% 9
Scotland +23 41 £525 +10.53% 10
East of England +1 32 £463 -11.90% 4
South West -18 28 £550 -8.33% 4
North West -30 27 £575 +83.12% 5
North East -34 7 £463 +1.37% 2
East Midlands -16 6 £500 +21.95% 4
Wales -17 3 £750 +76.47% 4

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 41 (5.51%) SharePoint
2 30 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
3 25 (3.36%) Apache
3 25 (3.36%) Apache Spark
4 21 (2.82%) CMS
5 17 (2.28%) Confluence
6 15 (2.02%) SAS
7 6 (0.81%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.54%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
10 2 (0.27%) Sitecore CMS
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.13%) Drupal
11 1 (0.13%) JBoss
11 1 (0.13%) Liferay
11 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.94%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.94%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.94%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.94%) Revit
3 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.13%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.13%) Notion
6 1 (0.13%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 19 (2.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.54%) Summit
4 3 (0.40%) Maximo
4 3 (0.40%) 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 (0.13%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 224 (30.11%) Azure
2 175 (23.52%) AWS
3 102 (13.71%) Power Platform
4 88 (11.83%) GCP
5 62 (8.33%) Microsoft Purview
6 57 (7.66%) Collibra
7 48 (6.45%) Azure Data Factory
8 41 (5.51%) GitHub
9 40 (5.38%) Amazon S3
10 36 (4.84%) Snowflake
11 35 (4.70%) dbt
12 33 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 31 (4.17%) Serverless
14 30 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
15 29 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
16 28 (3.76%) Microsoft 365
17 19 (2.55%) Microsoft Copilot
18 18 (2.42%) Power Automate
19 17 (2.28%) Entra ID
19 17 (2.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.94%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.94%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.67%) Intranet
3 4 (0.54%) Broadband
3 4 (0.54%) HTTP
3 4 (0.54%) SSL
4 3 (0.40%) Firewall
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.13%) SAN
5 1 (0.13%) SMS
5 1 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (15.73%) Data Warehouse
2 90 (12.10%) Power BI
3 85 (11.42%) Data Lake
4 39 (5.24%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.84%) NoSQL
6 32 (4.30%) Data Vault
7 30 (4.03%) Delta Lake
8 28 (3.76%) Tableau
9 22 (2.96%) BigQuery
9 22 (2.96%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (2.82%) Semantic Layer
11 18 (2.42%) Snowflake Schema
12 17 (2.28%) Amazon Redshift
12 17 (2.28%) SQL Server
13 15 (2.02%) Elasticsearch
14 14 (1.88%) Db2
15 13 (1.75%) MongoDB
16 12 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
17 11 (1.48%) Big Data
17 11 (1.48%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 38 (5.11%) ERwin
2 33 (4.44%) Git
3 26 (3.49%) ER Studio
4 21 (2.82%) JIRA
5 19 (2.55%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.15%) Maven
7 15 (2.02%) PowerDesigner
8 13 (1.75%) GitLab
9 11 (1.48%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.54%) Selenium
11 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.27%) git-flow
12 2 (0.27%) MLflow
12 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
12 2 (0.27%) TestRail
13 1 (0.13%) Deequ
13 1 (0.13%) Postman
13 1 (0.13%) Subversion
13 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 212 (28.49%) Social Skills
2 203 (27.28%) Finance
3 157 (21.10%) Analytical Skills
4 93 (12.50%) Banking
5 83 (11.16%) Public Sector
6 38 (5.11%) Investment Banking
7 30 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
9 20 (2.69%) Publishing
10 19 (2.55%) Legal
10 19 (2.55%) Marketing
10 19 (2.55%) Retail
11 14 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.61%) Front Office
12 12 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
13 11 (1.48%) Aviation
13 11 (1.48%) Manufacturing
14 9 (1.21%) Law
15 8 (1.08%) Military
16 6 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 177 (23.79%) Architect
2 127 (17.07%) Data Architect
3 118 (15.86%) Data Engineer
4 96 (12.90%) Lead
5 89 (11.96%) Analyst
6 72 (9.68%) Senior
7 54 (7.26%) Data Analyst
8 46 (6.18%) Data Modeller
9 35 (4.70%) Developer
10 33 (4.44%) Business Analyst
11 26 (3.49%) Consultant
12 23 (3.09%) Senior Data Engineer
13 21 (2.82%) Data Business Analyst
13 21 (2.82%) Data Manager
14 19 (2.55%) Product Owner
15 18 (2.42%) DevOps Engineer
15 18 (2.42%) Lead Data Engineer
16 15 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
17 14 (1.88%) Governance Analyst
17 14 (1.88%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (6.85%) PySpark
2 43 (5.78%) JSON
3 36 (4.84%) Kafka
4 32 (4.30%) REST
5 19 (2.55%) YAML
6 14 (1.88%) Spring Boot
7 13 (1.75%) Node.js
8 12 (1.61%) XML
9 11 (1.48%) SLSA
10 10 (1.34%) React
11 9 (1.21%) .NET
11 9 (1.21%) Spring
12 8 (1.08%) GraphQL
12 8 (1.08%) Middleware
13 7 (0.94%) OAuth
13 7 (0.94%) Playwright
14 6 (0.81%) CSS
14 6 (0.81%) HTML
14 6 (0.81%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.81%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 74 (9.95%) Cloud Native
2 63 (8.47%) Onboarding
3 61 (8.20%) Data Structures
4 52 (6.99%) Taxonomies
5 50 (6.72%) Management Information System
6 48 (6.45%) Product Ownership
7 46 (6.18%) Legacy Systems
8 41 (5.51%) Reference Data
9 21 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
10 19 (2.55%) Derivative
11 16 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
12 14 (1.88%) AI Agents
13 12 (1.61%) Equity Derivative
13 12 (1.61%) Life Science
14 11 (1.48%) Data Fabric
15 10 (1.34%) Digital Media
15 10 (1.34%) Distributed Computing
16 9 (1.21%) Credit Risk
16 9 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
16 9 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.55%) Unix
2 14 (1.88%) Linux
3 1 (0.13%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.13%) VMS
3 1 (0.13%) Windows
3 1 (0.13%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 376 (50.54%) Data Governance
2 347 (46.64%) Data Modelling
3 270 (36.29%) Metadata Management
4 255 (34.27%) Analytics
5 194 (26.08%) AI
6 185 (24.87%) Data Architecture
7 174 (23.39%) Data Pipeline
8 172 (23.12%) Agile
9 160 (21.51%) Data Engineering
9 160 (21.51%) ETL
9 160 (21.51%) Stakeholder Management
10 156 (20.97%) CI/CD
11 155 (20.83%) Migration
12 127 (17.07%) Data Lineage
13 124 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
13 124 (16.67%) Validation
14 121 (16.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 118 (15.86%) Data Management
15 118 (15.86%) DevOps
16 116 (15.59%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 284 (38.17%) SQL
2 196 (26.34%) Python
3 62 (8.33%) Java
4 22 (2.96%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.02%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.88%) C#
6 14 (1.88%) Groovy
6 14 (1.88%) PowerShell
7 12 (1.61%) JavaScript
8 11 (1.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.21%) Bash
9 9 (1.21%) C++
10 7 (0.94%) Bicep
10 7 (0.94%) SPARQL
10 7 (0.94%) T-SQL
10 7 (0.94%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.67%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.67%) Scala
12 4 (0.54%) Cypher
12 4 (0.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 160 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 120 (16.13%) SC Cleared
3 43 (5.78%) Degree
4 33 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (2.42%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.75%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.21%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.08%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.94%) AWS Certification
10 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.40%) CISSP
11 3 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.40%) 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
1 314 (42.20%) Data Quality
2 65 (8.74%) GDPR
3 43 (5.78%) QA
4 41 (5.51%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.08%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.81%) ISO 19650
7 5 (0.67%) GRC
7 5 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.67%) NIST
7 5 (0.67%) WCAG
8 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.54%) MiFID
8 4 (0.54%) NCSC
8 4 (0.54%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.40%) IFRS
9 3 (0.40%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.27%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 20 (2.69%) Docker
2 10 (1.34%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 37 (4.97%) Terraform
2 23 (3.09%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.21%) Grafana
4 7 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.54%) Ansible
6 4 (0.54%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.54%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.27%) Control-M
7 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 136 (18.28%) Microsoft
2 116 (15.59%) Databricks
3 55 (7.39%) Oracle
4 50 (6.72%) Informatica
5 28 (3.76%) Google
6 19 (2.55%) Sparx
7 17 (2.28%) Salesforce
8 16 (2.15%) IBM
9 15 (2.02%) SAP
10 13 (1.75%) Autodesk
11 11 (1.48%) Sonatype
11 11 (1.48%) Sybase
11 11 (1.48%) Talend
12 10 (1.34%) Denodo
12 10 (1.34%) Palantir
13 9 (1.21%) Foundry
14 8 (1.08%) Adobe
14 8 (1.08%) CA Agile Central
15 7 (0.94%) Signiant
15 7 (0.94%) Teradata