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 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 247 382 318
Rank change year-on-year +135 -64 +51
Contract jobs citing Metadata 398 185 313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 0.51% 0.70%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.25% 2.85% 4.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 121 218
10th Percentile £370 £356 £375
25th Percentile £442 £464 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £697
90th Percentile £700 £788 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £550
% change year-on-year -1.54% -11.36% +5.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 20
10th Percentile £35.70 £20.67 £15.15
25th Percentile £45.38 £22.72 £28.17
Median hourly rate £63.00 £39.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +59.49% -14.47% +167.71%
75th Percentile £74.75 £48.18 £49.50
90th Percentile £80.90 - £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £36.81 £46.18
% change year-on-year +101.06% -20.30% +242.07%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,371 6,489 7,579
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.46% 17.96% 16.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,380 4,285 5,310
10th Percentile £329 £345 £350
25th Percentile £409 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £534
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.75% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 88 143
10th Percentile £22.94 £18.35 £16.61
25th Percentile £29.06 £22.66 £21.50
Median hourly rate £47.61 £31.55 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +50.93% -31.69% -7.64%
75th Percentile £68.19 £54.25 £64.77
90th Percentile £84.13 £65.30 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.91% -40.45% +2.62%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Top 17 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 5 December 2025. 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 +113 342 £525 +2.44% 138
London +108 216 £538 -2.27% 66
UK excluding London +19 139 £480 -1.54% 120
Work from Home +56 110 £550 +5.77% 93
Midlands -1 33 £480 +25.90% 9
South East 0 27 £475 -17.39% 66
North of England -26 27 £450 +2.86% 28
West Midlands -10 22 £560 +46.89% 3
Scotland +9 20 £465 -32.12% 8
North West -9 18 £434 +8.38% 8
East of England -6 14 £496 +58.63% 1
South West -13 12 £568 +16.41% 6
East Midlands - 11 £423 - 5
Wales +4 10 £700 +98.00% 1
Yorkshire -22 9 £525 +5.00% 19
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1
Channel Islands - 1 £760 -

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 35 (8.79%) SharePoint
2 29 (7.29%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.27%) Apache
3 17 (4.27%) CMS
4 16 (4.02%) Confluence
5 14 (3.52%) SAS
6 10 (2.51%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
7 7 (1.76%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.51%) Drupal
9 4 (1.01%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.75%) GeoServer
10 3 (0.75%) Smallworld
11 2 (0.50%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.50%) Umbraco
12 1 (0.25%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.25%) Documentum
12 1 (0.25%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 19 (4.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.51%) MS Visio
3 9 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.50%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.25%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.25%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.25%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 13 (3.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 11 (2.76%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.51%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.51%) Salesforce CRM
3 6 (1.51%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.51%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.75%) Actimize
4 3 (0.75%) Maximo
5 2 (0.50%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.25%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.25%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.25%) Primavera
6 1 (0.25%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 122 (30.65%) Azure
2 95 (23.87%) AWS
3 72 (18.09%) Power Platform
4 46 (11.56%) GCP
5 39 (9.80%) Microsoft Purview
6 37 (9.30%) Collibra
7 33 (8.29%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (8.04%) Snowflake
9 30 (7.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 23 (5.78%) Microsoft 365
11 19 (4.77%) Amazon S3
12 15 (3.77%) dbt
12 15 (3.77%) Serverless
13 12 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (3.02%) GitHub
14 10 (2.51%) PowerApps
15 7 (1.76%) Alation
15 7 (1.76%) Entra ID
15 7 (1.76%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.75%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.50%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.25%) HTTP
3 1 (0.25%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (19.10%) Data Warehouse
2 60 (15.08%) Power BI
3 41 (10.30%) Data Lake
4 26 (6.53%) NoSQL
5 24 (6.03%) Big Data
6 20 (5.03%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.77%) Data Vault
8 18 (4.52%) PostgreSQL
9 17 (4.27%) Metadata Repository
9 17 (4.27%) Snowflake Schema
9 17 (4.27%) SQL Server
9 17 (4.27%) Tableau
10 16 (4.02%) BigQuery
11 15 (3.77%) Amazon Redshift
12 12 (3.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 11 (2.76%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (2.76%) Spark SQL
14 10 (2.51%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.51%) Hadoop
15 9 (2.26%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 25 (6.28%) ERwin
2 20 (5.03%) Git
2 20 (5.03%) JIRA
3 13 (3.27%) ER Studio
4 12 (3.02%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.75%) GitLab
5 3 (0.75%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.50%) Subversion
6 2 (0.50%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.25%) gulp
7 1 (0.25%) MLflow
7 1 (0.25%) Poetry
7 1 (0.25%) Postman
7 1 (0.25%) Pylint
7 1 (0.25%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.25%) Yeoman
General
1 163 (40.95%) Social Skills
2 107 (26.88%) Finance
3 73 (18.34%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (13.32%) Public Sector
5 38 (9.55%) Banking
6 26 (6.53%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (3.52%) Publishing
7 14 (3.52%) Retail
8 11 (2.76%) Legal
8 11 (2.76%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (2.01%) Investment Banking
11 7 (1.76%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.51%) Aviation
12 6 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.51%) Military
12 6 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.51%) Retail Banking
13 5 (1.26%) Corporate Banking
13 5 (1.26%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 91 (22.86%) Architect
2 67 (16.83%) Analyst
3 65 (16.33%) Data Architect
4 47 (11.81%) Data Analyst
5 39 (9.80%) Data Engineer
6 35 (8.79%) Data Modeller
7 27 (6.78%) Lead
8 26 (6.53%) Senior
9 23 (5.78%) Consultant
10 22 (5.53%) Developer
11 19 (4.77%) Business Analyst
12 15 (3.77%) Governance Analyst
13 13 (3.27%) Azure Engineer
13 13 (3.27%) Data Manager
14 12 (3.02%) Technical Architect
15 10 (2.51%) Azure Data Engineer
16 9 (2.26%) AWS Engineer
16 9 (2.26%) Data Quality Analyst
16 9 (2.26%) Quality Analyst
16 9 (2.26%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (7.54%) PySpark
2 25 (6.28%) Kafka
3 17 (4.27%) REST
4 10 (2.51%) JSON
5 9 (2.26%) XML
6 6 (1.51%) Lightning Web Components
6 6 (1.51%) React
6 6 (1.51%) SAP Basis
6 6 (1.51%) SAP Business Workflow
6 6 (1.51%) SAP Fiori
6 6 (1.51%) VML
7 5 (1.26%) RESTful
7 5 (1.26%) SOAP
7 5 (1.26%) Visualforce
7 5 (1.26%) YAML
8 4 (1.01%) Hugging Face
8 4 (1.01%) LDAP
8 4 (1.01%) OAuth
8 4 (1.01%) Regular Expression
8 4 (1.01%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (8.04%) Data Structures
2 26 (6.53%) Taxonomies
3 23 (5.78%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.02%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (4.02%) Management Information System
4 16 (4.02%) Reference Data
5 15 (3.77%) Onboarding
6 12 (3.02%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.26%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (1.76%) Data Fabric
8 7 (1.76%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.01%) Genomics
10 4 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.01%) NHS
10 4 (1.01%) Omics
10 4 (1.01%) Replication
11 3 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.75%) FMCG
11 3 (0.75%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.26%) Linux
1 5 (1.26%) Unix
2 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 216 (54.27%) Data Governance
2 201 (50.50%) Data Modelling
3 196 (49.25%) Metadata Management
4 130 (32.66%) Analytics
5 101 (25.38%) Data Architecture
6 95 (23.87%) ETL
7 94 (23.62%) Business Intelligence
8 80 (20.10%) Data Lineage
8 80 (20.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 76 (19.10%) Agile
10 73 (18.34%) Problem-Solving
11 67 (16.83%) Data Pipeline
12 66 (16.58%) Data Engineering
13 60 (15.08%) Validation
14 59 (14.82%) Migration
15 55 (13.82%) Data Management
16 54 (13.57%) Data Integration
17 52 (13.07%) AI
18 50 (12.56%) Stakeholder Management
19 49 (12.31%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 127 (31.91%) SQL
2 90 (22.61%) Python
3 17 (4.27%) Java
4 16 (4.02%) PowerShell
5 10 (2.51%) T-SQL
6 8 (2.01%) Scala
7 7 (1.76%) R
8 6 (1.51%) ABAP
8 6 (1.51%) Apex Code
8 6 (1.51%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.26%) C++
9 5 (1.26%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.26%) SOQL
9 5 (1.26%) SOSL
10 4 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.75%) C#
12 2 (0.50%) Bicep
12 2 (0.50%) Groovy
12 2 (0.50%) Korn
12 2 (0.50%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 79 (19.85%) Security Cleared
2 52 (13.07%) SC Cleared
3 26 (6.53%) Degree
4 11 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (2.26%) Azure Certification
5 9 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.01%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.76%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.01%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.50%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.50%) PMP
11 1 (0.25%) CISSP
11 1 (0.25%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.25%) MCP
11 1 (0.25%) MySQL Certification
11 1 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 158 (39.70%) Data Quality
2 48 (12.06%) GDPR
3 21 (5.28%) QA
4 16 (4.02%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.51%) IFRS
5 6 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 5 (1.26%) MiFID
6 5 (1.26%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.75%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.50%) Basel III
8 2 (0.50%) CRD IV
8 2 (0.50%) FINREP
8 2 (0.50%) GRC
8 2 (0.50%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.50%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.50%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.50%) NIST
9 1 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.25%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 10 (2.51%) Docker
2 5 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.75%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 16 (4.02%) Kubernetes
1 16 (4.02%) Terraform
2 4 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.75%) Hadoop YARN
3 3 (0.75%) Oozie
3 3 (0.75%) SCCM
4 1 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.25%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 83 (20.85%) Microsoft
2 56 (14.07%) Databricks
3 36 (9.05%) Informatica
4 34 (8.54%) Oracle
5 15 (3.77%) ServiceNow
6 14 (3.52%) SAP
6 14 (3.52%) Sparx
7 13 (3.27%) Salesforce
8 12 (3.02%) Google
9 11 (2.76%) Talend
10 9 (2.26%) OpenText
10 9 (2.26%) Teradata
11 7 (1.76%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.51%) IBM
12 6 (1.51%) Optimizely
13 5 (1.26%) Adobe
13 5 (1.26%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.26%) Palantir
14 4 (1.01%) Atlassian
14 4 (1.01%) Cognos