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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 212 308 321
Rank change year-on-year +96 +13 +6
Contract jobs citing Metadata 613 222 279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 0.77% 0.65%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.30% 4.09% 3.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 157 181
10th Percentile £358 £232 £385
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 £800
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £473 £575
% change year-on-year +11.11% -17.83% +15.00%
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 £25.43 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.67% -21.75% -8.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £30.00 £42.88
90th Percentile £82.95 £82.25 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £25.43 £20.97
% change year-on-year +151.67% +21.27% -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 7,389 5,425 7,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.11% 18.87% 17.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,961 3,716 5,256
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.85%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £754 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 100 151
10th Percentile £14.00 £19.56 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.02 £23.38 £20.77
Median hourly rate £43.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.46% -17.60% -31.73%
75th Percentile £72.25 £64.78 £61.55
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +28.00% -9.60% -39.13%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 +78 517 £525 - 97
London +74 299 £520 -13.33% 45
UK excluding London +21 245 £525 +11.11% 67
Work from Home +55 169 £525 -8.70% 40
Midlands -11 63 £575 +437.38% 10
West Midlands -15 61 £578 +440.19% 7
North of England -48 52 £523 +1.95% 17
Scotland +37 48 £475 - 1
South East -28 47 £513 +7.33% 27
East of England -10 30 £575 +78.92% 6
North West -26 26 £575 +5.50% 5
Yorkshire -33 24 £571 +52.27% 9
South West -26 10 £563 -4.21% 5
North East -27 5 £419 -9.46% 3
Wales -15 3 £750 +234.35% 2
East Midlands - 2 £474 - 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 (5.55%) SharePoint
2 33 (5.38%) Apache Spark
3 24 (3.92%) Apache Airflow
4 19 (3.10%) Confluence
4 19 (3.10%) SAS
5 16 (2.61%) Apache
6 9 (1.47%) CMS
7 4 (0.65%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
8 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.33%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.33%) 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%) SharePoint 2013
9 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (3.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.79%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.14%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.14%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.14%) Revit
4 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
6 2 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (1.79%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) Summit
3 2 (0.33%) 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
1 175 (28.55%) Azure
2 125 (20.39%) AWS
3 85 (13.87%) Power Platform
4 63 (10.28%) GCP
5 53 (8.65%) Collibra
6 43 (7.01%) Microsoft Purview
7 39 (6.36%) Azure Data Factory
8 37 (6.04%) GitHub
9 32 (5.22%) Amazon S3
10 31 (5.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 31 (5.06%) Serverless
11 27 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
11 27 (4.40%) dbt
12 26 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (3.75%) Snowflake
14 16 (2.61%) Microsoft 365
15 14 (2.28%) Entra ID
16 13 (2.12%) ChatGPT
16 13 (2.12%) ShareGate
17 12 (1.96%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.14%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.14%) WinSCP
2 6 (0.98%) Intranet
3 4 (0.65%) Firewall
3 4 (0.65%) SSL
4 3 (0.49%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (18.27%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (12.72%) Data Lake
3 75 (12.23%) Power BI
4 35 (5.71%) Relational Database
5 33 (5.38%) Metadata Repository
6 32 (5.22%) Data Vault
7 28 (4.57%) NoSQL
8 27 (4.40%) Tableau
9 26 (4.24%) SQL Server
10 22 (3.59%) Delta Lake
10 22 (3.59%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (3.26%) Big Data
11 20 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
12 18 (2.94%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.61%) Hadoop
13 16 (2.61%) Oracle Database
14 15 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
15 14 (2.28%) DB2
16 12 (1.96%) MongoDB
16 12 (1.96%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 37 (6.04%) ERwin
2 26 (4.24%) Git
3 20 (3.26%) JIRA
4 17 (2.77%) ER Studio
5 15 (2.45%) PowerDesigner
6 13 (2.12%) Jenkins
7 12 (1.96%) GitLab
8 9 (1.47%) Maven
9 8 (1.31%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.33%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.33%) git-flow
11 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.16%) Deequ
12 1 (0.16%) gulp
12 1 (0.16%) Postman
12 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
12 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
12 1 (0.16%) VersionOne
General
1 176 (28.71%) Social Skills
2 175 (28.55%) Finance
3 119 (19.41%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (13.87%) Banking
5 71 (11.58%) Public Sector
6 37 (6.04%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (5.38%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.94%) Legal
9 15 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
10 13 (2.12%) Publishing
11 12 (1.96%) Front Office
11 12 (1.96%) Marketing
11 12 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.79%) Aviation
12 11 (1.79%) Retail
13 6 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.98%) Law
13 6 (0.98%) Military
14 3 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 142 (23.16%) Architect
2 101 (16.48%) Data Architect
3 94 (15.33%) Data Engineer
4 81 (13.21%) Analyst
5 57 (9.30%) Lead
6 55 (8.97%) Data Analyst
7 48 (7.83%) Senior
8 45 (7.34%) Data Modeller
9 43 (7.01%) Developer
10 31 (5.06%) Business Analyst
11 25 (4.08%) Consultant
12 19 (3.10%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.94%) Data Business Analyst
14 14 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.28%) Software Engineer
15 13 (2.12%) Governance Analyst
15 13 (2.12%) Senior Data Engineer
16 12 (1.96%) AWS Engineer
16 12 (1.96%) Designer
17 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (7.01%) PySpark
2 27 (4.40%) Kafka
3 25 (4.08%) JSON
4 24 (3.92%) REST
5 18 (2.94%) .NET
6 15 (2.45%) YAML
7 12 (1.96%) React
8 11 (1.79%) OAuth
9 10 (1.63%) Node.js
9 10 (1.63%) SOAP
9 10 (1.63%) XML
10 9 (1.47%) Middleware
11 8 (1.31%) SLSA
12 7 (1.14%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.14%) RESTful
13 6 (0.98%) ADO
14 5 (0.82%) CSS
14 5 (0.82%) Pandas
14 5 (0.82%) SAML
14 5 (0.82%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 60 (9.79%) Cloud Native
2 45 (7.34%) Onboarding
3 42 (6.85%) Management Information System
4 39 (6.36%) Data Structures
5 38 (6.20%) Reference Data
6 34 (5.55%) Product Ownership
6 34 (5.55%) Taxonomies
7 30 (4.89%) Legacy Systems
8 20 (3.26%) Derivative
9 18 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.96%) Credit Risk
10 12 (1.96%) Equity Derivative
10 12 (1.96%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.63%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (1.47%) Fixed Income
13 8 (1.31%) Clustering
13 8 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (1.31%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.10%) Unix
2 7 (1.14%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (50.08%) Data Governance
2 283 (46.17%) Data Modelling
3 217 (35.40%) Metadata Management
4 210 (34.26%) Analytics
5 156 (25.45%) ETL
6 151 (24.63%) Data Architecture
7 144 (23.49%) AI
8 127 (20.72%) Data Pipeline
9 123 (20.07%) CI/CD
10 121 (19.74%) Data Engineering
11 117 (19.09%) Migration
12 113 (18.43%) Agile
13 109 (17.78%) Data Lineage
14 108 (17.62%) Problem-Solving
15 104 (16.97%) Business Intelligence
16 103 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
17 97 (15.82%) Data Management
18 94 (15.33%) Decision-Making
18 94 (15.33%) DevOps
19 84 (13.70%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 247 (40.29%) SQL
2 160 (26.10%) Python
3 45 (7.34%) Java
4 28 (4.57%) C#
5 26 (4.24%) PL/SQL
6 15 (2.45%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.12%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.79%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.63%) Perl
10 9 (1.47%) C++
10 9 (1.47%) Groovy
11 8 (1.31%) TypeScript
12 7 (1.14%) T-SQL
13 6 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 5 (0.82%) Apex Code
15 4 (0.65%) Bash
15 4 (0.65%) Bicep
16 3 (0.49%) Scala
17 2 (0.33%) R
17 2 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 133 (21.70%) Security Cleared
2 99 (16.15%) SC Cleared
3 41 (6.69%) Degree
4 22 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.12%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.63%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.31%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
11 2 (0.33%) CISM
11 2 (0.33%) CISSP
11 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.33%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.33%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.16%) CBAP
12 1 (0.16%) CSPO
12 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (39.80%) Data Quality
2 60 (9.79%) GDPR
3 33 (5.38%) QA
4 20 (3.26%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.96%) GRC
6 7 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.14%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.98%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.98%) NIST
8 4 (0.65%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.65%) ISO 22301
8 4 (0.65%) MiFID
9 3 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.49%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.33%) IFRS
10 2 (0.33%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.16%) HL7
11 1 (0.16%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 12 (1.96%) Docker
2 8 (1.31%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 24 (3.92%) Terraform
2 11 (1.79%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.31%) Grafana
4 6 (0.98%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.65%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.65%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.16%) Ansible
7 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 115 (18.76%) Microsoft
2 86 (14.03%) Databricks
3 62 (10.11%) Oracle
4 40 (6.53%) Informatica
5 21 (3.43%) Salesforce
6 19 (3.10%) Google
7 17 (2.77%) Talend
8 15 (2.45%) SAP
8 15 (2.45%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.12%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.79%) Sparx
10 11 (1.79%) Sybase
11 10 (1.63%) IBM
12 8 (1.31%) Sonatype
13 7 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 6 (0.98%) Teradata
15 5 (0.82%) Adobe
15 5 (0.82%) Denodo
16 4 (0.65%) Hortonworks
16 4 (0.65%) Ping Identity