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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 301 330
Rank change year-on-year +98 +29 +24
Contract jobs citing Metadata 646 245 277
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.28% 0.83% 0.64%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.44% 4.42% 3.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 429 169 174
10th Percentile £358 £294 £400
25th Percentile £425 £444 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% +4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £825
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £470 £550
% change year-on-year +11.70% -14.55% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 16
10th Percentile £33.48 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £20.19 £20.11
Median hourly rate £64.00 £28.75 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +122.61% -11.54% -7.14%
75th Percentile £73.75 £82.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £82.95 £83.83 £47.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +132.73% -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 7,657 5,544 7,460
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.22% 18.68% 17.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,109 3,775 5,324
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 101 153
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.59 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.00 £20.77
Median hourly rate £41.71 £34.98 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.24% -12.55% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.72 £66.00 £54.13
90th Percentile £78.58 £78.70 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +21.68% -9.60% -38.54%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 +69 538 £525 -3.67% 319
London +70 313 £520 -13.33% 94
UK excluding London +28 254 £525 +11.70% 324
Work from Home +41 189 £525 -8.70% 288
Midlands -10 66 £570 +432.59% 45
West Midlands -8 64 £573 +435.51% 22
North of England -33 58 £524 +4.75% 66
Scotland +29 49 £488 +2.63% 34
South East -37 45 £506 +6.02% 78
East of England -9 30 £525 +63.36% 38
North West -29 27 £575 +5.50% 31
Yorkshire -33 26 £567 +51.13% 21
South West -22 11 £563 -4.21% 29
North East -27 8 £463 - 14
Wales -12 3 £750 +184.67% 19
East Midlands -19 2 £474 +15.49% 23

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 36 (5.57%) SharePoint
2 33 (5.11%) Apache Spark
3 29 (4.49%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (3.10%) Confluence
5 17 (2.63%) Apache
6 16 (2.48%) SAS
7 12 (1.86%) CMS
8 5 (0.77%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.46%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.31%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.31%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.31%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.31%) Smallworld
11 1 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.15%) Drupal
11 1 (0.15%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.15%) Liferay
11 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.24%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.08%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.08%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.08%) Revit
4 4 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.31%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (1.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.93%) Summit
3 5 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.31%) Maximo
4 2 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.15%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.15%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 187 (28.95%) Azure
2 136 (21.05%) AWS
3 88 (13.62%) Power Platform
4 65 (10.06%) GCP
5 55 (8.51%) Collibra
6 47 (7.28%) Microsoft Purview
7 40 (6.19%) GitHub
8 38 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
9 36 (5.57%) Amazon S3
10 34 (5.26%) dbt
11 33 (5.11%) Serverless
12 30 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 29 (4.49%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
15 26 (4.02%) Snowflake
16 18 (2.79%) Microsoft 365
17 15 (2.32%) Entra ID
18 14 (2.17%) Microsoft Copilot
19 13 (2.01%) ChatGPT
19 13 (2.01%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.08%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.08%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.77%) Intranet
3 4 (0.62%) Firewall
3 4 (0.62%) SSL
4 3 (0.46%) HTTP
5 1 (0.15%) 4G
5 1 (0.15%) 5G
5 1 (0.15%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (17.03%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (12.07%) Power BI
3 76 (11.76%) Data Lake
4 35 (5.42%) Relational Database
5 32 (4.95%) Data Vault
6 29 (4.49%) Metadata Repository
6 29 (4.49%) NoSQL
6 29 (4.49%) Tableau
7 24 (3.72%) SQL Server
8 22 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (3.25%) Delta Lake
10 20 (3.10%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (2.94%) Amazon Redshift
11 19 (2.94%) Big Data
12 16 (2.48%) Hadoop
13 15 (2.32%) Amazon Athena
14 14 (2.17%) Oracle Database
15 13 (2.01%) Db2
16 12 (1.86%) MySQL
16 12 (1.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 36 (5.57%) ERwin
2 29 (4.49%) Git
3 19 (2.94%) JIRA
4 17 (2.63%) ER Studio
5 15 (2.32%) Jenkins
5 15 (2.32%) PowerDesigner
6 14 (2.17%) GitLab
7 11 (1.70%) Maven
8 10 (1.55%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.46%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.31%) git-flow
11 1 (0.15%) Deequ
11 1 (0.15%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
General
1 184 (28.48%) Finance
2 179 (27.71%) Social Skills
3 121 (18.73%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (14.09%) Banking
5 73 (11.30%) Public Sector
6 39 (6.04%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (5.42%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.94%) Legal
9 16 (2.48%) Publishing
9 16 (2.48%) Retail
10 15 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
11 14 (2.17%) Marketing
12 12 (1.86%) Front Office
13 11 (1.70%) Aviation
14 8 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (1.24%) Law
15 5 (0.77%) Automotive
15 5 (0.77%) Manufacturing
15 5 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 149 (23.07%) Architect
2 104 (16.10%) Data Architect
3 99 (15.33%) Data Engineer
4 78 (12.07%) Analyst
5 67 (10.37%) Lead
6 55 (8.51%) Senior
7 50 (7.74%) Data Analyst
8 46 (7.12%) Data Modeller
9 44 (6.81%) Developer
10 31 (4.80%) Business Analyst
11 26 (4.02%) Consultant
12 19 (2.94%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.79%) Data Business Analyst
14 16 (2.48%) DevOps Engineer
15 15 (2.32%) Senior Data Engineer
16 12 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
16 12 (1.86%) Enterprise Architect
16 12 (1.86%) Lead Data Engineer
16 12 (1.86%) Software Engineer
17 11 (1.70%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.81%) PySpark
2 32 (4.95%) JSON
3 27 (4.18%) Kafka
4 24 (3.72%) REST
5 19 (2.94%) .NET
6 16 (2.48%) YAML
7 14 (2.17%) React
8 12 (1.86%) Node.js
9 11 (1.70%) OAuth
9 11 (1.70%) XML
10 10 (1.55%) SLSA
11 9 (1.39%) Middleware
11 9 (1.39%) SOAP
12 8 (1.24%) RESTful
13 7 (1.08%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.93%) ADO
14 6 (0.93%) CSS
14 6 (0.93%) SPFx
14 6 (0.93%) Spring Boot
15 5 (0.77%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 63 (9.75%) Cloud Native
2 51 (7.89%) Onboarding
3 47 (7.28%) Management Information System
4 45 (6.97%) Data Structures
5 43 (6.66%) Taxonomies
6 36 (5.57%) Reference Data
7 35 (5.42%) Legacy Systems
8 34 (5.26%) Product Ownership
9 20 (3.10%) Derivative
10 17 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.86%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.86%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.86%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.39%) AI Agents
13 9 (1.39%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.39%) Fixed Income
14 8 (1.24%) Clustering
14 8 (1.24%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.94%) Unix
2 7 (1.08%) Linux
3 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 317 (49.07%) Data Governance
2 300 (46.44%) Data Modelling
3 222 (34.37%) Metadata Management
4 218 (33.75%) Analytics
5 159 (24.61%) Data Architecture
6 157 (24.30%) AI
7 154 (23.84%) ETL
8 134 (20.74%) Data Engineering
9 130 (20.12%) Data Pipeline
10 126 (19.50%) CI/CD
11 122 (18.89%) Migration
12 119 (18.42%) Agile
13 111 (17.18%) Stakeholder Management
14 109 (16.87%) Data Lineage
15 107 (16.56%) Business Intelligence
16 105 (16.25%) Decision-Making
17 102 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
18 100 (15.48%) Data Management
19 98 (15.17%) DevOps
19 98 (15.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 252 (39.01%) SQL
2 169 (26.16%) Python
3 48 (7.43%) Java
4 29 (4.49%) C#
5 24 (3.72%) PL/SQL
6 16 (2.48%) PowerShell
7 14 (2.17%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.86%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.55%) Groovy
9 10 (1.55%) Perl
10 9 (1.39%) C++
10 9 (1.39%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.77%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.77%) Bash
11 5 (0.77%) Bicep
11 5 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (0.77%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.62%) Scala
13 3 (0.46%) R
13 3 (0.46%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 139 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 105 (16.25%) SC Cleared
3 41 (6.35%) Degree
4 27 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (2.17%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.24%) DV Cleared
9 8 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.77%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.31%) Analytics IQ
11 2 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.31%) CISM
11 2 (0.31%) CISSP
11 2 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.31%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.31%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.15%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 256 (39.63%) Data Quality
2 62 (9.60%) GDPR
3 36 (5.57%) QA
4 25 (3.87%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.70%) GRC
6 7 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.08%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.93%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.93%) NIST
8 5 (0.77%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.77%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.62%) ISO 22301
9 4 (0.62%) MiFID
10 3 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.46%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.31%) IFRS
11 2 (0.31%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.31%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.31%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (2.01%) Docker
2 10 (1.55%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 28 (4.33%) Terraform
2 12 (1.86%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.24%) Grafana
4 6 (0.93%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.62%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.62%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.15%) Ansible
6 1 (0.15%) Kibana
Vendors
1 119 (18.42%) Microsoft
2 92 (14.24%) Databricks
3 61 (9.44%) Oracle
4 38 (5.88%) Informatica
5 21 (3.25%) Google
5 21 (3.25%) Salesforce
6 17 (2.63%) Talend
7 14 (2.17%) IBM
7 14 (2.17%) SAP
7 14 (2.17%) ServiceNow
8 13 (2.01%) Autodesk
9 11 (1.70%) Sybase
10 10 (1.55%) Sonatype
10 10 (1.55%) Sparx
11 8 (1.24%) OpenAI
12 6 (0.93%) Adobe
13 5 (0.77%) Denodo
13 5 (0.77%) Foundry
13 5 (0.77%) Palantir
14 4 (0.62%) Hortonworks