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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 281 384
Rank change year-on-year +92 +103 -10
Contract jobs citing Metadata 829 309 192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.52% 0.94% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.06% 5.18% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 214 123
10th Percentile £400 £363 £401
25th Percentile £456 £461 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year - +3.77% -7.83%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £731
90th Percentile £762 £749 £898
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 8,243 5,967 6,865
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.08% 18.12% 17.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,501 3,995 4,734
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -1.47%
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 267 93 86
10th Percentile £16.42 £22.85 £17.50
25th Percentile £24.00 £29.33 £20.88
Median hourly rate £40.18 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +14.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £60.50 £65.00 £61.19
90th Percentile £75.40 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.30% +18.30% -45.21%

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 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 17 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 17 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 +75 712 £550 - 919
London +47 404 £550 -2.22% 545
UK excluding London +62 332 £550 +15.79% 469
Work from Home +59 229 £525 -10.64% 401
North of England -2 95 £500 -2.44% 108
Midlands +5 77 £610 +103.33% 54
West Midlands -1 70 £626 +485.05% 41
Yorkshire +9 59 £500 -5.88% 39
South East -34 57 £563 +21.62% 110
Scotland +8 46 £533 +12.11% 55
East of England -6 32 £450 -18.18% 41
North West -23 31 £625 +39.66% 62
South West -21 29 £563 -2.17% 66
North East -34 8 £463 +2.78% 7
East Midlands -6 7 £494 +18.98% 13
Wales -18 4 £750 +7.14% 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 47 (5.67%) SharePoint
2 40 (4.83%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.74%) Apache
4 23 (2.77%) CMS
5 22 (2.65%) Confluence
6 21 (2.53%) Apache Spark
7 18 (2.17%) SAS
8 10 (1.21%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.72%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.48%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 19 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.97%) 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 18 (2.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.36%) Maximo
3 3 (0.36%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.36%) Summit
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%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 251 (30.28%) Azure
2 196 (23.64%) AWS
3 111 (13.39%) Power Platform
4 103 (12.42%) GCP
5 74 (8.93%) Microsoft Purview
6 69 (8.32%) Collibra
7 50 (6.03%) Azure Data Factory
8 44 (5.31%) dbt
9 43 (5.19%) Amazon S3
9 43 (5.19%) Snowflake
10 42 (5.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 40 (4.83%) GitHub
12 35 (4.22%) Azure DevOps
12 35 (4.22%) Serverless
13 33 (3.98%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (3.62%) Microsoft 365
15 26 (3.14%) Azure Databricks
16 22 (2.65%) Entra ID
17 21 (2.53%) Power Automate
18 20 (2.41%) PowerApps
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
1 126 (15.20%) Data Warehouse
2 97 (11.70%) Power BI
3 96 (11.58%) Data Lake
4 38 (4.58%) Relational Database
5 37 (4.46%) BigQuery
6 36 (4.34%) NoSQL
7 33 (3.98%) Delta Lake
8 30 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
9 28 (3.38%) Semantic Layer
10 25 (3.02%) Data Vault
11 23 (2.77%) Tableau
12 20 (2.41%) Amazon Redshift
13 19 (2.29%) SQL Server
14 17 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.69%) Db2
15 14 (1.69%) Neo4j
15 14 (1.69%) Parquet
16 12 (1.45%) Big Data
16 12 (1.45%) Geospatial Data
16 12 (1.45%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 39 (4.70%) Git
2 31 (3.74%) ERwin
3 27 (3.26%) JIRA
4 24 (2.90%) ER Studio
5 15 (1.81%) Jenkins
5 15 (1.81%) Maven
6 12 (1.45%) GitLab
7 11 (1.33%) PowerDesigner
8 10 (1.21%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.60%) Selenium
10 3 (0.36%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) Deequ
12 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
12 1 (0.12%) git-flow
12 1 (0.12%) Subversion
12 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 246 (29.67%) Social Skills
2 205 (24.73%) Finance
3 158 (19.06%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (13.03%) Public Sector
5 101 (12.18%) Banking
6 39 (4.70%) Influencing Skills
7 37 (4.46%) Investment Banking
8 26 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.02%) 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 (1.69%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.57%) Aerospace
16 12 (1.45%) Front Office
16 12 (1.45%) Military
17 10 (1.21%) Law
18 8 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 221 (26.66%) Architect
2 160 (19.30%) Data Architect
3 136 (16.41%) Data Engineer
4 109 (13.15%) Lead
5 88 (10.62%) Analyst
6 76 (9.17%) Senior
7 50 (6.03%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.19%) Data Modeller
9 37 (4.46%) Business Analyst
10 34 (4.10%) Developer
11 30 (3.62%) Senior Data Engineer
12 26 (3.14%) Consultant
13 23 (2.77%) Data Manager
14 22 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
15 21 (2.53%) Data Business Analyst
15 21 (2.53%) Enterprise Architect
15 21 (2.53%) Lead Data Engineer
16 20 (2.41%) Product Owner
17 17 (2.05%) DevOps Engineer
17 17 (2.05%) Enterprise Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.12%) PySpark
2 44 (5.31%) JSON
2 44 (5.31%) Terraform
3 37 (4.46%) REST
4 32 (3.86%) Kafka
5 18 (2.17%) YAML
6 15 (1.81%) Spring Boot
7 13 (1.57%) XML
8 12 (1.45%) Node.js
9 11 (1.33%) React
10 10 (1.21%) SLSA
10 10 (1.21%) Spring
11 9 (1.09%) .NET
11 9 (1.09%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.09%) OAuth
11 9 (1.09%) Playwright
12 8 (0.97%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.84%) Apache NiFi
13 7 (0.84%) Middleware
13 7 (0.84%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 78 (9.41%) Cloud Native
2 76 (9.17%) Onboarding
3 67 (8.08%) Taxonomies
4 65 (7.84%) Data Structures
5 57 (6.88%) Management Information System
6 55 (6.63%) Product Ownership
7 44 (5.31%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (5.07%) Reference Data
9 23 (2.77%) Data Fabric
10 18 (2.17%) AI Agents
10 18 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (2.17%) Derivative
11 13 (1.57%) Life Science
12 12 (1.45%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.45%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.33%) CMDB
13 11 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.21%) Clustering
14 10 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 14 (1.69%) Unix
2 11 (1.33%) 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
1 452 (54.52%) Data Governance
2 396 (47.77%) Data Modelling
3 325 (39.20%) Metadata Management
4 272 (32.81%) Analytics
5 234 (28.23%) Data Architecture
6 230 (27.74%) AI
7 223 (26.90%) Stakeholder Management
8 204 (24.61%) Agile
9 191 (23.04%) Data Pipeline
10 183 (22.07%) Data Engineering
11 176 (21.23%) CI/CD
11 176 (21.23%) ETL
12 175 (21.11%) Migration
13 158 (19.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 149 (17.97%) Roadmaps
15 148 (17.85%) Data Lineage
15 148 (17.85%) Data Management
16 131 (15.80%) DevOps
16 131 (15.80%) Validation
17 130 (15.68%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 295 (35.59%) SQL
2 217 (26.18%) Python
3 66 (7.96%) Java
4 21 (2.53%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.81%) PowerShell
6 13 (1.57%) C#
6 13 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.57%) Groovy
7 12 (1.45%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.45%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.09%) Bash
8 9 (1.09%) C++
9 7 (0.84%) Bicep
9 7 (0.84%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.72%) Scala
10 6 (0.72%) T-SQL
10 6 (0.72%) TypeScript
11 4 (0.48%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.48%) Cypher
11 4 (0.48%) R
Qualifications
1 199 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 149 (17.97%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.51%) Degree
4 43 (5.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (2.65%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.45%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.45%) TOGAF Certification
8 10 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.97%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 5 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.48%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.36%) CISSP
13 3 (0.36%) CompTIA Security+
14 2 (0.24%) ACCA
14 2 (0.24%) CIMA
14 2 (0.24%) CISM
14 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (47.53%) Data Quality
2 63 (7.60%) GDPR
3 46 (5.55%) Accessibility
4 43 (5.19%) QA
5 8 (0.97%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (0.97%) WCAG
6 7 (0.84%) NCSC
7 6 (0.72%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.72%) MiFID
8 5 (0.60%) GRC
8 5 (0.60%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.48%) NIST
9 4 (0.48%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
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 (3.02%) Docker
2 9 (1.09%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 27 (3.26%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (1.21%) 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
1 157 (18.94%) Microsoft
2 138 (16.65%) Databricks
3 61 (7.36%) Informatica
4 50 (6.03%) Oracle
5 41 (4.95%) Google
6 18 (2.17%) Sparx
7 17 (2.05%) SAP
8 16 (1.93%) IBM
8 16 (1.93%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.81%) Talend
10 14 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 13 (1.57%) Autodesk
12 11 (1.33%) Denodo
12 11 (1.33%) Sybase
12 11 (1.33%) Teradata
13 10 (1.21%) Palantir
13 10 (1.21%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.09%) Foundry
15 8 (0.97%) CA Agile Central
16 7 (0.84%) Signiant