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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 187 277 385
Rank change year-on-year +90 +108 -8
Contract jobs citing Metadata 848 311 188
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.55% 0.94% 0.49%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.38% 5.15% 2.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 538 208 119
10th Percentile £400 £396 £392
25th Percentile £459 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year - +4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £661 £638 £688
90th Percentile £761 £741 £828
UK excluding London median daily rate £549 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +15.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 5 4
10th Percentile £22.88 - £24.99
25th Percentile £56.25 £13.25 £33.51
Median hourly rate £67.47 £30.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year +121.21% -30.43% -4.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £48.18
90th Percentile - £78.30 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +399.78% -71.98% +24.42%

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 8,168 6,036 6,845
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.89% 18.21% 18.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,444 4,038 4,635
10th Percentile £353 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £484
% change year-on-year - -1.76% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 88 91
10th Percentile £16.70 £21.02 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.36 £39.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.75% +12.80% -33.33%
75th Percentile £58.44 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £79.13 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £36.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +15.86% +20.00% -42.86%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 +83 717 £550 - 767
London +49 401 £550 - 399
UK excluding London +72 347 £549 +15.53% 472
Work from Home +44 233 £550 -8.33% 405
North of England +3 94 £500 -2.44% 103
Midlands +8 78 £611 +49.02% 50
West Midlands +14 72 £626 +108.67% 30
South East -27 59 £575 +22.67% 108
Scotland +16 56 £509 +7.16% 64
Yorkshire +13 56 £500 -4.76% 31
South West -5 39 £575 -2.13% 67
North West -28 33 £660 +47.49% 58
East of England -5 27 £450 -18.18% 42
North East - 8 £463 - 14
East Midlands -17 6 £488 +17.47% 20
Wales -18 3 £750 +7.14% 13

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 45 (5.31%) SharePoint
2 41 (4.83%) Apache Airflow
3 38 (4.48%) Apache
4 28 (3.30%) Apache Spark
5 26 (3.07%) CMS
6 21 (2.48%) Confluence
7 18 (2.12%) SAS
8 12 (1.42%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.47%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Camunda
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 17 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.30%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.83%) Navisworks
3 7 (0.83%) Revit
4 5 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.59%) Notepad++
5 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 19 (2.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.35%) Maximo
3 3 (0.35%) 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 ERP
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.12%) Summit
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 251 (29.60%) Azure
2 189 (22.29%) AWS
3 114 (13.44%) Power Platform
4 101 (11.91%) GCP
5 83 (9.79%) Microsoft Purview
6 70 (8.25%) Collibra
7 57 (6.72%) Azure Data Factory
8 51 (6.01%) Snowflake
9 47 (5.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 45 (5.31%) Amazon S3
11 41 (4.83%) dbt
12 40 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
13 39 (4.60%) GitHub
14 32 (3.77%) Serverless
15 29 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.42%) Microsoft 365
16 28 (3.30%) Azure Databricks
17 21 (2.48%) Alation
17 21 (2.48%) Entra ID
17 21 (2.48%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.59%) Broadband
1 5 (0.59%) PuTTY
1 5 (0.59%) WinSCP
2 4 (0.47%) HTTP
2 4 (0.47%) Intranet
2 4 (0.47%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.35%) DNS
3 3 (0.35%) Firewall
3 3 (0.35%) SSH
4 2 (0.24%) SAN
5 1 (0.12%) BGP
5 1 (0.12%) LAN
5 1 (0.12%) MPLS
5 1 (0.12%) Network Security
5 1 (0.12%) OSPF
5 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.12%) VLAN
5 1 (0.12%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (14.15%) Data Warehouse
2 102 (12.03%) Power BI
3 101 (11.91%) Data Lake
4 40 (4.72%) BigQuery
5 35 (4.13%) Relational Database
6 33 (3.89%) Delta Lake
6 33 (3.89%) NoSQL
7 32 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
8 26 (3.07%) Semantic Layer
9 25 (2.95%) Data Vault
10 22 (2.59%) Tableau
11 18 (2.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.12%) Elasticsearch
11 18 (2.12%) Parquet
11 18 (2.12%) SQL Server
12 16 (1.89%) Big Data
13 15 (1.77%) Neo4j
14 13 (1.53%) Azure SQL Database
15 12 (1.42%) Geospatial Data
15 12 (1.42%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 46 (5.42%) Git
2 32 (3.77%) ERwin
3 25 (2.95%) JIRA
4 23 (2.71%) ER Studio
5 14 (1.65%) GitLab
6 12 (1.42%) Jenkins
6 12 (1.42%) Maven
7 11 (1.30%) PowerDesigner
8 8 (0.94%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.59%) Selenium
10 4 (0.47%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.12%) Deequ
12 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 251 (29.60%) Social Skills
2 202 (23.82%) Finance
3 161 (18.99%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (13.56%) Public Sector
5 103 (12.15%) Banking
6 42 (4.95%) Influencing Skills
7 35 (4.13%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.95%) Publishing
9 23 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.71%) Legal
10 22 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (2.59%) Retail
11 19 (2.24%) Marketing
12 17 (2.00%) Aerospace
13 15 (1.77%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.65%) Military
14 14 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.18%) Front Office
16 9 (1.06%) Law
16 9 (1.06%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 236 (27.83%) Architect
2 170 (20.05%) Data Architect
3 138 (16.27%) Data Engineer
4 113 (13.33%) Lead
5 95 (11.20%) Senior
6 93 (10.97%) Analyst
7 48 (5.66%) Data Analyst
8 44 (5.19%) Data Modeller
9 42 (4.95%) Business Analyst
10 36 (4.25%) Developer
10 36 (4.25%) Senior Data Engineer
11 26 (3.07%) Consultant
12 24 (2.83%) Data Business Analyst
12 24 (2.83%) Enterprise Architect
12 24 (2.83%) Lead Data Engineer
13 23 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
14 21 (2.48%) Data Manager
15 20 (2.36%) Enterprise Data Architect
16 18 (2.12%) Product Owner
17 16 (1.89%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (6.49%) PySpark
2 50 (5.90%) Terraform
3 49 (5.78%) REST
4 46 (5.42%) JSON
5 30 (3.54%) Kafka
6 25 (2.95%) YAML
7 17 (2.00%) FastAPI
8 15 (1.77%) Spring Boot
9 13 (1.53%) pydantic
10 12 (1.42%) Apache NiFi
11 11 (1.30%) React
11 11 (1.30%) XML
12 10 (1.18%) Spring
13 9 (1.06%) .NET
13 9 (1.06%) GraphQL
13 9 (1.06%) Node.js
13 9 (1.06%) RESTful
14 8 (0.94%) JDBC
14 8 (0.94%) SLSA
15 7 (0.83%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 80 (9.43%) Cloud Native
1 80 (9.43%) Taxonomies
2 72 (8.49%) Onboarding
3 71 (8.37%) Data Structures
4 63 (7.43%) Management Information System
5 57 (6.72%) Product Ownership
6 48 (5.66%) Legacy Systems
7 40 (4.72%) Reference Data
8 23 (2.71%) Data Fabric
9 18 (2.12%) AI Agents
10 17 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.65%) Derivative
12 13 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.53%) Life Science
13 12 (1.42%) CMDB
14 11 (1.30%) Distributed Computing
15 10 (1.18%) Autonomous Agent
15 10 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.18%) Equity Derivative
16 9 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.53%) Linux
2 10 (1.18%) Unix
3 3 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (0.35%) Windows
3 3 (0.35%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 468 (55.19%) Data Governance
2 412 (48.58%) Data Modelling
3 336 (39.62%) Metadata Management
4 277 (32.67%) Analytics
5 250 (29.48%) Data Architecture
6 247 (29.13%) AI
7 230 (27.12%) Stakeholder Management
8 211 (24.88%) Agile
9 188 (22.17%) Data Engineering
10 187 (22.05%) Data Pipeline
11 182 (21.46%) CI/CD
12 175 (20.64%) Migration
13 169 (19.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 163 (19.22%) ETL
15 161 (18.99%) Data Lineage
16 157 (18.51%) Data Management
17 156 (18.40%) Roadmaps
18 143 (16.86%) Validation
19 134 (15.80%) Business Intelligence
20 129 (15.21%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 295 (34.79%) SQL
2 231 (27.24%) Python
3 56 (6.60%) Java
4 19 (2.24%) PowerShell
5 17 (2.00%) PL/SQL
6 13 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 12 (1.42%) C#
7 12 (1.42%) Groovy
8 11 (1.30%) Bash
8 11 (1.30%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.06%) Bicep
11 7 (0.83%) C++
11 7 (0.83%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.71%) Scala
12 6 (0.71%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.47%) Cypher
13 4 (0.47%) Perl
13 4 (0.47%) R
13 4 (0.47%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 211 (24.88%) Security Cleared
2 158 (18.63%) SC Cleared
3 57 (6.72%) Degree
4 44 (5.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 30 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 23 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.42%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.42%) TOGAF Certification
8 9 (1.06%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.83%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Certification
10 4 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.35%) CISSP
11 3 (0.35%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.24%) ACCA
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CIMA
12 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 410 (48.35%) Data Quality
2 61 (7.19%) GDPR
3 46 (5.42%) Accessibility
4 44 (5.19%) QA
5 8 (0.94%) WCAG
6 7 (0.83%) NCSC
7 6 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.71%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.71%) MiFID
8 5 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.59%) NIST
9 4 (0.47%) GRC
9 4 (0.47%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.47%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
11 2 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 25 (2.95%) Docker
2 7 (0.83%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 30 (3.54%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.18%) Ansible
3 8 (0.94%) Grafana
3 8 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.35%) Control-M
6 2 (0.24%) Kibana
6 2 (0.24%) systemd
7 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 162 (19.10%) Microsoft
2 147 (17.33%) Databricks
3 53 (6.25%) Informatica
4 46 (5.42%) Google
5 39 (4.60%) Oracle
6 19 (2.24%) Sparx
7 17 (2.00%) SAP
8 14 (1.65%) ServiceNow
9 13 (1.53%) IBM
10 12 (1.42%) Autodesk
11 11 (1.30%) Denodo
12 10 (1.18%) Teradata
13 9 (1.06%) Palantir
13 9 (1.06%) Salesforce
13 9 (1.06%) Sybase
13 9 (1.06%) Talend
14 8 (0.94%) Foundry
14 8 (0.94%) Sonatype
15 7 (0.83%) Aspera
15 7 (0.83%) Signiant