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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 201 326 299
Rank change year-on-year +125 -27 +25
Contract jobs citing Metadata 600 207 320
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.31% 0.71% 0.73%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.27% 3.74% 4.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 151 216
10th Percentile £357 £236 £385
25th Percentile £415 £411 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -11.30% +4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £756
90th Percentile £700 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £465 £575
% change year-on-year +8.66% -19.13% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 7 25
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.70
25th Percentile £60.50 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £68.25 £27.50 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +148.18% -31.68% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.25 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £47.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.25 £27.50 £43.22
% change year-on-year +148.18% -36.36% +19.21%

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 7,251 5,538 7,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.85% 18.95% 16.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,994 3,842 5,140
10th Percentile £350 £352 £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 £598 £645 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.56% - -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 108 154
10th Percentile £18.18 £21.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.47 £24.25 £20.78
Median hourly rate £51.00 £32.43 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -18.93% -30.43%
75th Percentile £74.68 £65.62 £53.44
90th Percentile £83.83 £76.63 £71.03
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.82 £35.00
% change year-on-year +62.23% -11.94% -36.36%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 +100 510 £500 -3.38% 208
London +86 290 £500 -20.00% 89
UK excluding London +31 240 £505 +8.66% 159
Work from Home +51 160 £525 +0.24% 63
Midlands -15 59 £551 +415.19% 15
West Midlands -24 52 £561 +423.83% 6
North of England -37 52 £488 -4.88% 30
South East -18 45 £506 +6.02% 60
Scotland +42 42 £450 -14.93% 7
East of England -10 32 £489 +53.62% 27
North West -22 27 £511 -6.19% 11
Yorkshire -32 23 £563 +50.00% 15
South West -22 16 £569 +12.35% 14
East Midlands - 7 £447 - 9
North East -18 5 £419 -22.94% 4
Wales -14 3 £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 (7.00%) Apache Spark
2 33 (5.50%) SharePoint
3 26 (4.33%) SAS
4 25 (4.17%) Confluence
5 20 (3.33%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (2.83%) Apache
7 13 (2.17%) CMS
8 7 (1.17%) Drupal
8 7 (1.17%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.83%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
11 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
12 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 32 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.00%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.83%) Notepad++
5 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
8 1 (0.17%) Navisworks
8 1 (0.17%) Revit
Business Applications
1 17 (2.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 13 (2.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.00%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.00%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.00%) SAP MM
3 6 (1.00%) Summit
4 3 (0.50%) Actimize
4 3 (0.50%) Maximo
5 2 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.17%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.17%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 184 (30.67%) Azure
2 138 (23.00%) AWS
3 95 (15.83%) Power Platform
4 74 (12.33%) GCP
5 60 (10.00%) Collibra
6 48 (8.00%) Azure Data Factory
7 45 (7.50%) Microsoft Purview
8 35 (5.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 31 (5.17%) Amazon S3
9 31 (5.17%) Serverless
9 31 (5.17%) Snowflake
10 28 (4.67%) GitHub
11 25 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
12 23 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
12 23 (3.83%) dbt
13 16 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
14 12 (2.00%) Amazon EMR
15 9 (1.50%) Entra ID
15 9 (1.50%) Power Automate
16 8 (1.33%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.83%) PuTTY
1 5 (0.83%) WinSCP
2 4 (0.67%) SSL
3 3 (0.50%) Firewall
3 3 (0.50%) Intranet
4 2 (0.33%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.17%) 4G
5 1 (0.17%) 5G
5 1 (0.17%) HTTP
5 1 (0.17%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (21.17%) Data Warehouse
2 87 (14.50%) Power BI
3 71 (11.83%) Data Lake
4 39 (6.50%) Metadata Repository
5 31 (5.17%) SQL Server
5 31 (5.17%) Tableau
6 28 (4.67%) Big Data
7 27 (4.50%) NoSQL
8 26 (4.33%) Relational Database
9 25 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (3.67%) Data Vault
10 22 (3.67%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (3.33%) Amazon Redshift
12 19 (3.17%) Delta Lake
12 19 (3.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 18 (3.00%) Hadoop
13 18 (3.00%) Oracle Database
14 16 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (2.67%) BigQuery
15 14 (2.33%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 30 (5.00%) Git
2 27 (4.50%) ERwin
2 27 (4.50%) JIRA
3 16 (2.67%) Jenkins
4 12 (2.00%) GitLab
5 9 (1.50%) Maven
5 9 (1.50%) PowerDesigner
6 8 (1.33%) ER Studio
6 8 (1.33%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.50%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.50%) Subversion
8 2 (0.33%) git-flow
8 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.17%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.17%) gulp
9 1 (0.17%) Postman
9 1 (0.17%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.17%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.17%) Yeoman
General
1 194 (32.33%) Social Skills
2 160 (26.67%) Finance
3 126 (21.00%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (13.17%) Public Sector
5 63 (10.50%) Banking
6 41 (6.83%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (2.83%) Legal
7 17 (2.83%) Publishing
8 15 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
8 15 (2.50%) Investment Banking
9 12 (2.00%) Aviation
9 12 (2.00%) Marketing
9 12 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (1.67%) Retail
11 8 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.17%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.17%) Military
12 7 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.00%) Law
14 3 (0.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 144 (24.00%) Architect
2 113 (18.83%) Data Architect
3 86 (14.33%) Data Engineer
4 85 (14.17%) Analyst
5 60 (10.00%) Data Analyst
6 50 (8.33%) Senior
7 45 (7.50%) Lead
8 41 (6.83%) Developer
9 38 (6.33%) Data Modeller
10 31 (5.17%) Business Analyst
11 27 (4.50%) Consultant
12 16 (2.67%) Data Business Analyst
13 15 (2.50%) Azure Engineer
13 15 (2.50%) Data Manager
14 14 (2.33%) AWS Engineer
14 14 (2.33%) Software Engineer
15 13 (2.17%) Senior Data Engineer
16 12 (2.00%) DevOps Engineer
16 12 (2.00%) Governance Analyst
16 12 (2.00%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.50%) PySpark
2 36 (6.00%) REST
3 35 (5.83%) Kafka
4 25 (4.17%) JSON
5 16 (2.67%) YAML
6 15 (2.50%) .NET
6 15 (2.50%) XML
7 14 (2.33%) SOAP
8 12 (2.00%) OAuth
8 12 (2.00%) React
9 10 (1.67%) Node.js
10 8 (1.33%) RESTful
10 8 (1.33%) SLSA
11 7 (1.17%) OAuth2
12 6 (1.00%) HTML
12 6 (1.00%) Middleware
12 6 (1.00%) SAP Basis
12 6 (1.00%) SAP Business Workflow
12 6 (1.00%) SAP Fiori
12 6 (1.00%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (8.83%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.67%) Data Structures
3 39 (6.50%) Taxonomies
4 38 (6.33%) Onboarding
5 36 (6.00%) Management Information System
6 34 (5.67%) Reference Data
7 26 (4.33%) Product Ownership
8 23 (3.83%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (2.00%) Credit Risk
10 12 (2.00%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.67%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.50%) Derivative
13 8 (1.33%) Market Risk
14 7 (1.17%) Clustering
15 6 (1.00%) Data Fabric
15 6 (1.00%) Fixed Income
15 6 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
16 5 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.50%) Unix
2 10 (1.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (49.83%) Data Governance
2 286 (47.67%) Data Modelling
3 238 (39.67%) Metadata Management
4 213 (35.50%) Analytics
5 170 (28.33%) ETL
6 163 (27.17%) Data Architecture
7 132 (22.00%) Business Intelligence
8 124 (20.67%) Data Engineering
9 120 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
10 111 (18.50%) Problem-Solving
10 111 (18.50%) Validation
11 109 (18.17%) Agile
12 105 (17.50%) CI/CD
13 104 (17.33%) Migration
14 102 (17.00%) AI
15 101 (16.83%) Data Lineage
16 91 (15.17%) DevOps
17 89 (14.83%) Data Integration
18 88 (14.67%) Stakeholder Management
19 87 (14.50%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 242 (40.33%) SQL
2 156 (26.00%) Python
3 30 (5.00%) Java
4 25 (4.17%) C#
5 20 (3.33%) PL/SQL
5 20 (3.33%) PowerShell
6 13 (2.17%) Shell Script
7 12 (2.00%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.67%) Groovy
9 8 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (1.33%) T-SQL
10 7 (1.17%) R
11 6 (1.00%) ABAP
11 6 (1.00%) Apex Code
11 6 (1.00%) Perl
12 5 (0.83%) Scala
12 5 (0.83%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.50%) Bicep
13 3 (0.50%) C++
14 2 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 145 (24.17%) Security Cleared
2 108 (18.00%) SC Cleared
3 36 (6.00%) Degree
4 26 (4.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.00%) Master's Degree
6 11 (1.83%) Azure Certification
7 10 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.17%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.00%) AWS Certification
11 4 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.50%) CISSP
13 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
13 2 (0.33%) CISM
13 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
14 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Developer
14 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 1 (0.17%) CSPO
14 1 (0.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
14 1 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (41.50%) Data Quality
2 59 (9.83%) GDPR
3 28 (4.67%) QA
4 18 (3.00%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.83%) GRC
5 11 (1.83%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.00%) IFRS
6 6 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.00%) NIST
7 4 (0.67%) ISO 19650
7 4 (0.67%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.50%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.50%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.50%) MiFID
9 2 (0.33%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (2.33%) Docker
2 8 (1.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (4.17%) Terraform
2 17 (2.83%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.00%) Grafana
4 5 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 5 (0.83%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.67%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.67%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.17%) Ansible
Vendors
1 111 (18.50%) Microsoft
2 86 (14.33%) Databricks
3 68 (11.33%) Oracle
4 56 (9.33%) Informatica
5 27 (4.50%) ServiceNow
6 25 (4.17%) Talend
7 22 (3.67%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.67%) SAP
8 18 (3.00%) Google
9 15 (2.50%) Sparx
10 12 (2.00%) Teradata
11 8 (1.33%) OpenText
11 8 (1.33%) Sitecore
11 8 (1.33%) Sonatype
12 7 (1.17%) IBM
13 6 (1.00%) Adobe
13 6 (1.00%) Atlassian
13 6 (1.00%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.00%) Palantir
13 6 (1.00%) Remedy