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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 281 369
Rank change year-on-year +96 +88 -3
Contract jobs citing Metadata 831 305 195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.53% 0.93% 0.51%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.16% 5.09% 2.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 209 125
10th Percentile £400 £373 £400
25th Percentile £456 £463 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year - +3.77% -7.83%
75th Percentile £655 £638 £725
90th Percentile £762 £750 £895
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +15.79% -2.56% -8.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 5
10th Percentile £19.28 - £20.08
25th Percentile £58.94 £13.25 £21.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £22.00 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.82% -44.30% -14.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.69 £48.18
90th Percentile £70.15 £70.78 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +400.00% -71.98% +4.74%

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 8,181 5,987 6,922
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.04% 18.17% 17.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,462 4,012 4,763
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -6.19% -2.20%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £710 £738 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 89 91
10th Percentile £16.35 £21.24 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.35 £29.07 £21.00
Median hourly rate £39.84 £43.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.41% +24.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £59.88 £65.00 £60.78
90th Percentile £75.50 £81.50 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £37.48 £30.00
% change year-on-year +4.06% +24.93% -45.45%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +93 709 £550 - 697
London +55 399 £550 -4.35% 405
UK excluding London +71 338 £550 +15.79% 363
Work from Home +48 226 £548 -8.75% 296
North of England +12 95 £500 -4.76% 87
Midlands +7 77 £610 +71.83% 44
West Midlands +9 70 £626 +207.62% 34
Yorkshire +17 59 £500 -5.88% 30
South East -27 56 £565 +22.16% 87
Scotland +13 50 £525 +10.53% 46
East of England -6 32 £450 -18.18% 29
South West -10 32 £575 - 48
North West -30 31 £625 +31.93% 51
North East -39 8 £463 +2.78% 6
East Midlands -14 7 £494 +18.98% 10
Wales -18 4 £750 +7.14% 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 46 (5.54%) SharePoint
2 40 (4.81%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.73%) Apache
4 23 (2.77%) CMS
4 23 (2.77%) Confluence
5 21 (2.53%) Apache Spark
6 18 (2.17%) SAS
7 10 (1.20%) Headless CMS
8 9 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.48%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.12%) Camunda
12 1 (0.12%) JBoss
12 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.12%) Liferay
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 18 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.08%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.84%) Navisworks
3 7 (0.84%) Notepad++
3 7 (0.84%) Revit
4 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 19 (2.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.36%) Maximo
3 3 (0.36%) SAP HR
4 2 (0.24%) HFM
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 2 (0.24%) Workfront
5 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) Summit
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 253 (30.45%) Azure
2 197 (23.71%) AWS
3 110 (13.24%) Power Platform
4 103 (12.39%) GCP
5 77 (9.27%) Microsoft Purview
6 72 (8.66%) Collibra
7 51 (6.14%) Azure Data Factory
8 45 (5.42%) Snowflake
9 44 (5.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 44 (5.29%) dbt
10 43 (5.17%) Amazon S3
11 42 (5.05%) GitHub
12 36 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
13 35 (4.21%) Serverless
14 33 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (3.61%) Microsoft 365
16 26 (3.13%) Azure Databricks
17 22 (2.65%) Entra ID
17 22 (2.65%) Microsoft Copilot
18 21 (2.53%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.84%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.84%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.60%) Broadband
3 4 (0.48%) HTTP
3 4 (0.48%) Intranet
3 4 (0.48%) SSL
4 3 (0.36%) DNS
4 3 (0.36%) Firewall
5 2 (0.24%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) BGP
6 1 (0.12%) LAN
6 1 (0.12%) MPLS
6 1 (0.12%) Network Security
6 1 (0.12%) OSPF
6 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
6 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (15.28%) Data Warehouse
2 98 (11.79%) Data Lake
3 96 (11.55%) Power BI
4 37 (4.45%) BigQuery
5 36 (4.33%) NoSQL
5 36 (4.33%) Relational Database
6 33 (3.97%) Delta Lake
7 30 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
8 28 (3.37%) Semantic Layer
9 25 (3.01%) Data Vault
10 23 (2.77%) Tableau
11 20 (2.41%) Amazon Redshift
12 19 (2.29%) SQL Server
13 17 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
14 15 (1.81%) Parquet
15 14 (1.68%) Db2
15 14 (1.68%) Neo4j
16 12 (1.44%) Big Data
16 12 (1.44%) Geospatial Data
16 12 (1.44%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 41 (4.93%) Git
2 32 (3.85%) ERwin
3 28 (3.37%) JIRA
4 24 (2.89%) ER Studio
5 15 (1.81%) Jenkins
6 14 (1.68%) Maven
7 12 (1.44%) GitLab
8 11 (1.32%) PowerDesigner
9 10 (1.20%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.60%) Selenium
11 3 (0.36%) MLflow
12 2 (0.24%) TestRail
13 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
13 1 (0.12%) Deequ
13 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
13 1 (0.12%) git-flow
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
13 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 244 (29.36%) Social Skills
2 207 (24.91%) Finance
3 157 (18.89%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (13.24%) Public Sector
5 102 (12.27%) Banking
6 39 (4.69%) Influencing Skills
7 35 (4.21%) Investment Banking
8 26 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.01%) Publishing
10 23 (2.77%) Retail
11 22 (2.65%) Legal
12 21 (2.53%) Marketing
13 20 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.68%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.56%) Aerospace
16 12 (1.44%) Front Office
16 12 (1.44%) Military
17 10 (1.20%) Law
18 8 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 226 (27.20%) Architect
2 163 (19.61%) Data Architect
3 133 (16.00%) Data Engineer
4 109 (13.12%) Lead
5 85 (10.23%) Analyst
6 78 (9.39%) Senior
7 48 (5.78%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.17%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.33%) Developer
10 35 (4.21%) Business Analyst
11 30 (3.61%) Senior Data Engineer
12 26 (3.13%) Consultant
13 23 (2.77%) Data Manager
13 23 (2.77%) Enterprise Architect
13 23 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
14 21 (2.53%) Data Business Analyst
14 21 (2.53%) Lead Data Engineer
15 20 (2.41%) Product Owner
16 19 (2.29%) Enterprise Data Architect
17 17 (2.05%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (6.98%) PySpark
2 47 (5.66%) JSON
3 44 (5.29%) Terraform
4 41 (4.93%) REST
5 33 (3.97%) Kafka
6 22 (2.65%) YAML
7 15 (1.81%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.44%) Node.js
9 11 (1.32%) React
9 11 (1.32%) XML
10 10 (1.20%) SLSA
10 10 (1.20%) Spring
11 9 (1.08%) .NET
11 9 (1.08%) FastAPI
11 9 (1.08%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.08%) OAuth
11 9 (1.08%) Playwright
12 8 (0.96%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.84%) Apache NiFi
13 7 (0.84%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 78 (9.39%) Cloud Native
2 74 (8.90%) Onboarding
3 68 (8.18%) Taxonomies
4 66 (7.94%) Data Structures
5 61 (7.34%) Management Information System
6 56 (6.74%) Product Ownership
7 44 (5.29%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (5.05%) Reference Data
9 23 (2.77%) Data Fabric
10 18 (2.17%) AI Agents
11 17 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.93%) Derivative
13 13 (1.56%) Life Science
14 12 (1.44%) Distributed Computing
14 12 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.44%) Equity Derivative
15 11 (1.32%) CMDB
15 11 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
16 10 (1.20%) Clustering
16 10 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.44%) Unix
2 11 (1.32%) Linux
3 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
3 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 456 (54.87%) Data Governance
2 396 (47.65%) Data Modelling
3 326 (39.23%) Metadata Management
4 270 (32.49%) Analytics
5 237 (28.52%) Data Architecture
6 235 (28.28%) AI
7 226 (27.20%) Stakeholder Management
8 206 (24.79%) Agile
9 190 (22.86%) Data Pipeline
10 181 (21.78%) Data Engineering
11 179 (21.54%) CI/CD
12 176 (21.18%) Migration
13 175 (21.06%) ETL
14 157 (18.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 151 (18.17%) Roadmaps
16 148 (17.81%) Data Lineage
17 146 (17.57%) Data Management
18 133 (16.00%) Validation
19 132 (15.88%) DevOps
20 128 (15.40%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 292 (35.14%) SQL
2 220 (26.47%) Python
3 65 (7.82%) Java
4 21 (2.53%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.81%) PowerShell
6 13 (1.56%) C#
6 13 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.56%) Groovy
7 12 (1.44%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.32%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.08%) Bash
9 9 (1.08%) C++
10 7 (0.84%) Bicep
10 7 (0.84%) SPARQL
11 6 (0.72%) Scala
11 6 (0.72%) T-SQL
11 6 (0.72%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.48%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.48%) Perl
12 4 (0.48%) R
Qualifications
1 202 (24.31%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.41%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.50%) Degree
4 42 (5.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (2.89%) DV Cleared
6 12 (1.44%) Azure Certification
6 12 (1.44%) TOGAF Certification
7 10 (1.20%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.96%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Certification
10 5 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (0.60%) CISSP
11 4 (0.48%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.36%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.24%) ACCA
13 2 (0.24%) CIMA
13 2 (0.24%) CISM
13 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 398 (47.89%) Data Quality
2 66 (7.94%) GDPR
3 45 (5.42%) Accessibility
4 41 (4.93%) QA
5 8 (0.96%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (0.96%) WCAG
6 7 (0.84%) NCSC
7 6 (0.72%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.72%) MiFID
8 5 (0.60%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.48%) GRC
9 4 (0.48%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.36%) NIST
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
11 2 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 25 (3.01%) Docker
2 9 (1.08%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 27 (3.25%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (1.20%) Grafana
4 7 (0.84%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.72%) Ansible
6 4 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.48%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.48%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.36%) Control-M
8 2 (0.24%) Kibana
8 2 (0.24%) systemd
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 162 (19.49%) Microsoft
2 141 (16.97%) Databricks
3 63 (7.58%) Informatica
4 47 (5.66%) Oracle
5 41 (4.93%) Google
6 19 (2.29%) Sparx
7 17 (2.05%) SAP
8 16 (1.93%) IBM
8 16 (1.93%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.81%) Talend
10 14 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 13 (1.56%) Autodesk
12 11 (1.32%) Denodo
12 11 (1.32%) Sybase
12 11 (1.32%) Teradata
13 10 (1.20%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.08%) Palantir
15 8 (0.96%) Foundry
16 7 (0.84%) Aspera
16 7 (0.84%) Signiant