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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 337 301
Rank change year-on-year +122 -36 +9
Contract jobs citing Metadata 508 202 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 0.66% 0.75%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.68% 3.53% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 140 232
10th Percentile £358 £305 £375
25th Percentile £413 £430 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £519 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -5.68% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £685 £725
90th Percentile £696 £799 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £478 £560
% change year-on-year +4.19% -14.73% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 21
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.72 £19.00
25th Percentile £61.50 £24.48 £30.73
Median hourly rate £69.00 £30.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% -35.04% +31.94%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.50 -
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £51.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +140.77% -37.74% +31.94%

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 6,613 5,720 7,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.22% 18.61% 16.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,556 3,833 5,164
10th Percentile £343 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 93 171
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £16.00
25th Percentile £28.93 £25.09 £21.31
Median hourly rate £54.75 £38.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +43.66% -10.33% -24.01%
75th Percentile £75.63 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.78 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £40.13
% change year-on-year +83.33% -25.23% -28.26%

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 +107 426 £521 +0.10% 137
London +103 252 £525 -12.50% 68
UK excluding London +28 203 £498 +4.19% 106
Work from Home +43 139 £525 +0.48% 64
Midlands -9 50 £548 +41.29% 18
Scotland +26 42 £450 -34.31% 8
West Midlands -27 42 £560 +44.52% 11
North of England -47 40 £475 -9.09% 15
South East -6 39 £513 +4.86% 49
North West -21 22 £469 -13.94% 5
East of England -16 20 £492 +54.67% 5
Yorkshire -48 16 £525 +35.48% 5
South West -15 13 £568 +12.10% 10
Wales -3 8 £700 +196.61% 2
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 7
North East -21 4 £475 -23.91% 5

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 37 (7.28%) Apache Spark
2 30 (5.91%) SharePoint
3 24 (4.72%) SAS
4 23 (4.53%) Confluence
5 17 (3.35%) Apache
6 15 (2.95%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.97%) CMS
8 7 (1.38%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.18%) Drupal
9 6 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.98%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.98%) GeoServer
10 5 (0.98%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.20%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.20%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (5.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (2.17%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.20%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (2.76%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.18%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.18%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.59%) Actimize
4 3 (0.59%) Maximo
5 2 (0.39%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.39%) Summit
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.20%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.20%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 166 (32.68%) Azure
2 117 (23.03%) AWS
3 78 (15.35%) Power Platform
4 59 (11.61%) GCP
5 46 (9.06%) Collibra
6 44 (8.66%) Azure Data Factory
7 43 (8.46%) Microsoft Purview
8 38 (7.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (6.30%) Snowflake
10 23 (4.53%) Serverless
11 22 (4.33%) dbt
12 20 (3.94%) Amazon S3
13 18 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
14 17 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
16 14 (2.76%) GitHub
17 8 (1.57%) Amazon EMR
17 8 (1.57%) Entra ID
17 8 (1.57%) SaaS
17 8 (1.57%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.59%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.39%) Intranet
3 1 (0.20%) 4G
3 1 (0.20%) 5G
3 1 (0.20%) Firewall
3 1 (0.20%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (21.65%) Data Warehouse
2 71 (13.98%) Power BI
3 64 (12.60%) Data Lake
4 39 (7.68%) Metadata Repository
5 32 (6.30%) Big Data
6 28 (5.51%) NoSQL
7 26 (5.12%) Data Vault
8 25 (4.92%) SQL Server
9 24 (4.72%) Snowflake Schema
10 22 (4.33%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (4.33%) Relational Database
11 20 (3.94%) Tableau
12 18 (3.54%) Hadoop
12 18 (3.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (3.15%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (2.95%) Amazon Redshift
14 15 (2.95%) BigQuery
14 15 (2.95%) Oracle Database
15 12 (2.36%) Delta Lake
15 12 (2.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 32 (6.30%) ERwin
2 27 (5.31%) JIRA
3 25 (4.92%) Git
4 12 (2.36%) ER Studio
5 11 (2.17%) PowerDesigner
6 9 (1.77%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.79%) Maven
7 4 (0.79%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.59%) GitLab
9 2 (0.39%) Subversion
9 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.20%) gulp
10 1 (0.20%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.20%) Yeoman
General
1 181 (35.63%) Social Skills
2 130 (25.59%) Finance
3 98 (19.29%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (12.99%) Public Sector
5 46 (9.06%) Banking
6 39 (7.68%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.54%) Publishing
8 15 (2.95%) Retail
9 12 (2.36%) Legal
10 11 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 10 (1.97%) Aviation
12 9 (1.77%) Investment Banking
12 9 (1.77%) Military
13 8 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.38%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.38%) Marketing
15 6 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (1.18%) Retail Banking
16 5 (0.98%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 132 (25.98%) Architect
2 98 (19.29%) Data Architect
3 70 (13.78%) Analyst
4 67 (13.19%) Data Engineer
5 51 (10.04%) Data Analyst
6 43 (8.46%) Data Modeller
7 39 (7.68%) Lead
8 38 (7.48%) Senior
9 37 (7.28%) Developer
10 22 (4.33%) Business Analyst
10 22 (4.33%) Consultant
11 17 (3.35%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (2.56%) Azure Data Engineer
12 13 (2.56%) Software Engineer
13 12 (2.36%) Data Business Analyst
14 11 (2.17%) Scrum Master
14 11 (2.17%) Senior Data Engineer
15 10 (1.97%) Data Analytics Engineer
15 10 (1.97%) Data Quality Analyst
15 10 (1.97%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (7.28%) PySpark
2 27 (5.31%) Kafka
2 27 (5.31%) REST
3 16 (3.15%) JSON
4 14 (2.76%) .NET
5 12 (2.36%) XML
6 11 (2.17%) React
6 11 (2.17%) SOAP
6 11 (2.17%) YAML
7 9 (1.77%) OAuth
8 6 (1.18%) RESTful
8 6 (1.18%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.18%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.18%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.18%) VML
9 5 (0.98%) Node.js
9 5 (0.98%) Pandas
10 4 (0.79%) HTML
10 4 (0.79%) SLSA
11 3 (0.59%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 43 (8.46%) Cloud Native
2 36 (7.09%) Data Structures
3 32 (6.30%) Management Information System
4 29 (5.71%) Reference Data
4 29 (5.71%) Taxonomies
5 21 (4.13%) Onboarding
6 20 (3.94%) Legacy Systems
6 20 (3.94%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.17%) Virtual Team
8 9 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.77%) Distributed Computing
9 6 (1.18%) Data Fabric
10 5 (0.98%) CMDB
10 5 (0.98%) Credit Risk
10 5 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.79%) Genomics
11 4 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.79%) IoT
11 4 (0.79%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.38%) Unix
2 5 (0.98%) Linux
3 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (51.97%) Data Governance
2 258 (50.79%) Data Modelling
3 232 (45.67%) Metadata Management
4 175 (34.45%) Analytics
5 148 (29.13%) Data Architecture
6 136 (26.77%) ETL
7 115 (22.64%) Business Intelligence
8 98 (19.29%) Agile
8 98 (19.29%) Data Lineage
9 97 (19.09%) Data Engineering
10 94 (18.50%) Problem-Solving
11 87 (17.13%) AI
12 86 (16.93%) Data Pipeline
13 84 (16.54%) Validation
14 79 (15.55%) Data Management
15 76 (14.96%) Data Integration
16 75 (14.76%) Migration
17 74 (14.57%) Stakeholder Management
18 72 (14.17%) Decision-Making
19 70 (13.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 187 (36.81%) SQL
2 124 (24.41%) Python
3 23 (4.53%) PowerShell
4 22 (4.33%) C#
5 19 (3.74%) Java
6 10 (1.97%) PL/SQL
7 9 (1.77%) JavaScript
8 7 (1.38%) R
8 7 (1.38%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.18%) ABAP
9 6 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.18%) Groovy
9 6 (1.18%) Perl
10 5 (0.98%) Scala
10 5 (0.98%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.79%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.79%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.59%) C++
12 3 (0.59%) SOQL
13 2 (0.39%) Korn
Qualifications
1 119 (23.43%) Security Cleared
2 90 (17.72%) SC Cleared
3 37 (7.28%) Degree
4 23 (4.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.56%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.38%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.79%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.20%) Analytics IQ
11 1 (0.20%) CISSP
11 1 (0.20%) CSPO
11 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.20%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (43.70%) Data Quality
2 48 (9.45%) GDPR
3 20 (3.94%) QA
4 16 (3.15%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.97%) GRC
6 8 (1.57%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.98%) IFRS
9 4 (0.79%) MiFID
9 4 (0.79%) NIST
10 3 (0.59%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.39%) CRD IV
11 2 (0.39%) FINREP
11 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 19650
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.20%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 12 (2.36%) Docker
2 5 (0.98%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 19 (3.74%) Kubernetes
1 19 (3.74%) Terraform
2 4 (0.79%) Prometheus
3 3 (0.59%) Grafana
3 3 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.59%) SCCM
4 1 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.20%) Ansible
4 1 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
4 1 (0.20%) Oozie
4 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 101 (19.88%) Microsoft
2 81 (15.94%) Databricks
3 45 (8.86%) Oracle
4 42 (8.27%) Informatica
5 23 (4.53%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.54%) SAP
6 18 (3.54%) Talend
7 15 (2.95%) Google
7 15 (2.95%) Salesforce
8 13 (2.56%) Sparx
9 10 (1.97%) Teradata
10 9 (1.77%) OpenText
11 7 (1.38%) Remedy
11 7 (1.38%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.18%) Optimizely
13 5 (0.98%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.98%) ESRI
13 5 (0.98%) Intergraph
13 5 (0.98%) Palantir
14 4 (0.79%) IBM