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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 332 289
Rank change year-on-year +124 -43 +30
Contract jobs citing Metadata 567 194 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.27% 0.66% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.99% 3.50% 4.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 392 144 231
10th Percentile £358 £240 £375
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £639 £745
90th Percentile £694 £775 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £465 £575
% change year-on-year +8.87% -19.13% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 7 26
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.75
25th Percentile £56.98 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.69 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £47.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +11.03%

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 7,097 5,538 7,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.93% 18.91% 16.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,872 3,849 5,153
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £757 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £488
% change year-on-year -2.81% +0.26% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 102 163
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.99 £14.07
25th Percentile £30.52 £24.38 £20.77
Median hourly rate £51.00 £32.23 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.26% -19.44% -33.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.67 £55.63
90th Percentile £85.00 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.11 £38.50
% change year-on-year +66.09% -21.81% -30.00%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 +105 481 £511 +0.74% 208
London +94 279 £500 -20.00% 89
UK excluding London +25 217 £506 +8.87% 159
Work from Home +62 154 £525 +0.48% 63
Midlands -27 51 £560 +138.55% 15
South East -18 45 £513 +7.33% 60
West Midlands -21 45 £569 +142.28% 6
North of England -48 43 £475 -7.32% 30
Scotland +39 38 £436 -17.58% 7
East of England -11 29 £486 +52.57% 27
North West -37 22 £496 -9.04% 11
Yorkshire -43 20 £525 +40.00% 15
South West -16 17 £569 +16.67% 14
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 9
North East -13 4 £475 -12.58% 4
Wales -15 2 £750 +217.80% 7

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 42 (7.41%) Apache Spark
2 31 (5.47%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.41%) SAS
4 24 (4.23%) Confluence
5 20 (3.53%) Apache Airflow
6 16 (2.82%) Apache
7 13 (2.29%) CMS
8 7 (1.23%) Drupal
8 7 (1.23%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.88%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.35%) GeoServer
11 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.35%) Smallworld
12 1 (0.18%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.18%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.18%) SharePoint 2013
12 1 (0.18%) WordPress
Applications
1 32 (5.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.12%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.35%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 17 (3.00%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.06%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.06%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.06%) SAP MM
4 5 (0.88%) Summit
5 3 (0.53%) Actimize
5 3 (0.53%) Maximo
6 2 (0.35%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.18%) Loan IQ
7 1 (0.18%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.18%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 176 (31.04%) Azure
2 133 (23.46%) AWS
3 92 (16.23%) Power Platform
4 73 (12.87%) GCP
5 57 (10.05%) Collibra
6 47 (8.29%) Azure Data Factory
7 46 (8.11%) Microsoft Purview
8 33 (5.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (5.64%) Snowflake
10 30 (5.29%) Serverless
11 29 (5.11%) Amazon S3
12 25 (4.41%) GitHub
13 24 (4.23%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (4.06%) dbt
15 22 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
16 17 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
17 10 (1.76%) Amazon EMR
18 8 (1.41%) Entra ID
18 8 (1.41%) Power Automate
19 7 (1.23%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.53%) Firewall
1 3 (0.53%) Intranet
1 3 (0.53%) SSL
2 2 (0.35%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.18%) 4G
3 1 (0.18%) 5G
3 1 (0.18%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (21.34%) Data Warehouse
2 85 (14.99%) Power BI
3 68 (11.99%) Data Lake
4 41 (7.23%) Metadata Repository
5 32 (5.64%) SQL Server
6 31 (5.47%) Tableau
7 28 (4.94%) Big Data
8 24 (4.23%) NoSQL
8 24 (4.23%) Relational Database
9 23 (4.06%) Data Vault
9 23 (4.06%) Snowflake Schema
10 22 (3.88%) PostgreSQL
11 20 (3.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 19 (3.35%) Amazon Redshift
12 19 (3.35%) Oracle Database
13 18 (3.17%) Hadoop
14 16 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (2.82%) BigQuery
14 16 (2.82%) Delta Lake
15 13 (2.29%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 29 (5.11%) Git
2 27 (4.76%) ERwin
2 27 (4.76%) JIRA
3 15 (2.65%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.94%) PowerDesigner
5 9 (1.59%) GitLab
6 8 (1.41%) ER Studio
6 8 (1.41%) Maven
7 7 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.53%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.53%) Subversion
9 2 (0.35%) git-flow
9 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.18%) Selenium
10 1 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.18%) Terragrunt
General
1 187 (32.98%) Social Skills
2 151 (26.63%) Finance
3 124 (21.87%) Analytical Skills
4 73 (12.87%) Public Sector
5 58 (10.23%) Banking
6 41 (7.23%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (3.00%) Publishing
8 14 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
8 14 (2.47%) Legal
9 13 (2.29%) Investment Banking
10 12 (2.12%) Aviation
10 12 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
11 11 (1.94%) Marketing
12 9 (1.59%) Retail
13 8 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (1.23%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.23%) Military
15 6 (1.06%) Law
16 4 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 141 (24.87%) Architect
2 109 (19.22%) Data Architect
3 80 (14.11%) Analyst
3 80 (14.11%) Data Engineer
4 56 (9.88%) Data Analyst
5 45 (7.94%) Senior
6 43 (7.58%) Developer
6 43 (7.58%) Lead
7 40 (7.05%) Data Modeller
8 26 (4.59%) Business Analyst
8 26 (4.59%) Consultant
9 16 (2.82%) Azure Engineer
10 14 (2.47%) AWS Engineer
11 13 (2.29%) Data Business Analyst
11 13 (2.29%) Governance Analyst
11 13 (2.29%) Software Engineer
12 12 (2.12%) Azure Data Engineer
12 12 (2.12%) Principal Engineer
13 11 (1.94%) Senior Data Engineer
14 10 (1.76%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.94%) PySpark
2 35 (6.17%) Kafka
2 35 (6.17%) REST
3 24 (4.23%) JSON
4 15 (2.65%) .NET
4 15 (2.65%) YAML
5 14 (2.47%) XML
6 13 (2.29%) SOAP
7 12 (2.12%) React
8 10 (1.76%) OAuth
9 9 (1.59%) Node.js
10 7 (1.23%) RESTful
10 7 (1.23%) SLSA
11 6 (1.06%) HTML
11 6 (1.06%) SAP Basis
11 6 (1.06%) SAP Business Workflow
11 6 (1.06%) SAP Fiori
11 6 (1.06%) VML
12 5 (0.88%) OAuth2
12 5 (0.88%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 54 (9.52%) Cloud Native
2 46 (8.11%) Data Structures
3 38 (6.70%) Taxonomies
4 35 (6.17%) Management Information System
4 35 (6.17%) Onboarding
4 35 (6.17%) Reference Data
5 24 (4.23%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
7 16 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (2.12%) Virtual Team
9 11 (1.94%) Credit Risk
10 9 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.41%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (1.23%) Data Fabric
12 7 (1.23%) Derivative
12 7 (1.23%) Market Risk
13 6 (1.06%) Clustering
14 5 (0.88%) Fixed Income
14 5 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
14 5 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.47%) Unix
2 8 (1.41%) Linux
3 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 287 (50.62%) Data Governance
2 279 (49.21%) Data Modelling
3 231 (40.74%) Metadata Management
4 207 (36.51%) Analytics
5 160 (28.22%) Data Architecture
5 160 (28.22%) ETL
6 132 (23.28%) Business Intelligence
7 119 (20.99%) Data Engineering
8 112 (19.75%) Data Pipeline
9 109 (19.22%) Validation
10 106 (18.69%) Problem-Solving
11 102 (17.99%) Agile
12 97 (17.11%) Data Lineage
13 93 (16.40%) CI/CD
14 91 (16.05%) Migration
15 90 (15.87%) AI
16 87 (15.34%) Data Integration
17 83 (14.64%) Data Management
18 81 (14.29%) DevOps
19 79 (13.93%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 229 (40.39%) SQL
2 148 (26.10%) Python
3 25 (4.41%) C#
3 25 (4.41%) Java
4 19 (3.35%) PowerShell
5 14 (2.47%) PL/SQL
6 12 (2.12%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.59%) Groovy
8 8 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.41%) Shell Script
8 8 (1.41%) T-SQL
9 7 (1.23%) R
10 6 (1.06%) ABAP
10 6 (1.06%) Perl
11 5 (0.88%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.88%) Scala
11 5 (0.88%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.35%) Bicep
12 2 (0.35%) SOQL
12 2 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 137 (24.16%) Security Cleared
2 102 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 35 (6.17%) Degree
4 25 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.29%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.76%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.23%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.53%) CISSP
11 3 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.35%) Analytics IQ
12 2 (0.35%) CISM
12 2 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.18%) CSPO
13 1 (0.18%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.18%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 1 (0.18%) MySQL Certification
13 1 (0.18%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (42.33%) Data Quality
2 57 (10.05%) GDPR
3 27 (4.76%) QA
4 17 (3.00%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.94%) GRC
5 11 (1.94%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.06%) IFRS
6 6 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.06%) NIST
7 4 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.71%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.53%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.53%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.53%) MiFID
9 2 (0.35%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.35%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.35%) ISO 19650
9 2 (0.35%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.35%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (2.29%) Docker
2 7 (1.23%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 22 (3.88%) Terraform
2 17 (3.00%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.06%) Grafana
4 5 (0.88%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.53%) CA Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.53%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.18%) Ansible
Vendors
1 108 (19.05%) Microsoft
2 82 (14.46%) Databricks
3 60 (10.58%) Oracle
4 48 (8.47%) Informatica
5 26 (4.59%) ServiceNow
6 23 (4.06%) Talend
7 19 (3.35%) Salesforce
7 19 (3.35%) SAP
8 18 (3.17%) Google
9 15 (2.65%) Sparx
10 12 (2.12%) Teradata
11 8 (1.41%) OpenText
12 7 (1.23%) Remedy
12 7 (1.23%) Sitecore
12 7 (1.23%) Sonatype
13 6 (1.06%) Adobe
13 6 (1.06%) Atlassian
13 6 (1.06%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.06%) Palantir
14 5 (0.88%) IBM