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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 313 308
Rank change year-on-year +109 -5 +29
Contract jobs citing Metadata 608 217 288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.26% 0.75% 0.68%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.36% 3.97% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 156 191
10th Percentile £358 £231 £385
25th Percentile £423 £448 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £516 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -10.22% +4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £794
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £473 £575
% change year-on-year +11.11% -17.83% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 15
10th Percentile £33.48 £19.73 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £22.66 £16.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +141.83% -18.57% -8.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £43.06 £42.88
90th Percentile £82.95 £82.25 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £20.97
% change year-on-year +141.83% +26.20% -45.00%

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 7,275 5,465 7,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.06% 18.97% 17.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,898 3,744 5,224
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.02%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £475
% change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 220 96 148
10th Percentile £15.82 £21.03 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.85 £24.25 £20.93
Median hourly rate £45.90 £34.58 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.75% -13.56% -30.43%
75th Percentile £73.00 £65.71 £61.53
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.10 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.64 £39.25
% change year-on-year +42.23% -19.39% -28.64%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 +84 513 £525 - 203
London +84 296 £513 -14.58% 105
UK excluding London +14 243 £525 +11.11% 139
Work from Home +54 164 £525 -4.55% 129
Midlands -16 64 £573 +435.51% 17
West Midlands -6 62 £577 +438.79% 6
North of England -46 51 £523 +1.95% 19
South East -31 48 £506 +6.02% 58
Scotland +36 47 £475 - 2
East of England -10 29 £663 +106.14% 27
North West -37 25 £575 +5.50% 7
Yorkshire -31 24 £571 +52.27% 10
South West -26 9 £563 +2.32% 20
North East -28 5 £419 -9.46% 2
Wales -17 3 £750 +234.35% 1
East Midlands - 2 £474 - 11

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 (5.76%) SharePoint
2 34 (5.59%) Apache Spark
3 24 (3.95%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (3.29%) SAS
5 19 (3.13%) Confluence
6 15 (2.47%) Apache
7 8 (1.32%) CMS
8 4 (0.66%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.33%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
10 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (4.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.81%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.15%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.15%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.15%) Revit
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 12 (1.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Summit
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.16%) Actimize
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.16%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 177 (29.11%) Azure
2 126 (20.72%) AWS
3 85 (13.98%) Power Platform
4 66 (10.86%) GCP
5 52 (8.55%) Collibra
6 42 (6.91%) Microsoft Purview
7 40 (6.58%) Azure Data Factory
8 36 (5.92%) GitHub
9 32 (5.26%) Amazon S3
9 32 (5.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 31 (5.10%) Serverless
11 27 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
11 27 (4.44%) dbt
12 26 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
13 22 (3.62%) Snowflake
14 15 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
15 14 (2.30%) Entra ID
16 12 (1.97%) Amazon EMR
16 12 (1.97%) ChatGPT
16 12 (1.97%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.15%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.15%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.82%) Intranet
3 4 (0.66%) Firewall
3 4 (0.66%) SSL
4 3 (0.49%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (18.59%) Data Warehouse
2 77 (12.66%) Data Lake
3 76 (12.50%) Power BI
4 35 (5.76%) Metadata Repository
4 35 (5.76%) Relational Database
5 30 (4.93%) Data Vault
6 27 (4.44%) SQL Server
6 27 (4.44%) Tableau
7 26 (4.28%) NoSQL
8 23 (3.78%) Delta Lake
9 21 (3.45%) Big Data
9 21 (3.45%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
11 18 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
12 16 (2.63%) Oracle Database
13 15 (2.47%) Amazon Athena
13 15 (2.47%) Hadoop
14 13 (2.14%) DB2
14 13 (2.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (1.97%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 35 (5.76%) ERwin
2 28 (4.61%) Git
3 20 (3.29%) JIRA
4 15 (2.47%) ER Studio
4 15 (2.47%) PowerDesigner
5 14 (2.30%) Jenkins
6 12 (1.97%) GitLab
7 9 (1.48%) Maven
8 8 (1.32%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.33%) git-flow
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) gulp
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.16%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.16%) Yeoman
General
1 176 (28.95%) Social Skills
2 171 (28.13%) Finance
3 120 (19.74%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (13.32%) Banking
5 72 (11.84%) Public Sector
6 36 (5.92%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (4.61%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.96%) Legal
9 16 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (2.30%) Publishing
11 12 (1.97%) Marketing
12 11 (1.81%) Front Office
13 10 (1.64%) Aviation
13 10 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (1.64%) Retail
14 7 (1.15%) Military
15 6 (0.99%) Law
16 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
16 5 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 4 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 137 (22.53%) Architect
2 98 (16.12%) Data Architect
3 96 (15.79%) Data Engineer
4 83 (13.65%) Analyst
5 55 (9.05%) Lead
6 54 (8.88%) Data Analyst
7 49 (8.06%) Senior
8 42 (6.91%) Data Modeller
9 41 (6.74%) Developer
10 30 (4.93%) Business Analyst
11 25 (4.11%) Consultant
12 20 (3.29%) Data Manager
13 16 (2.63%) Data Business Analyst
14 15 (2.47%) Senior Data Engineer
15 14 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
15 14 (2.30%) Software Engineer
16 12 (1.97%) AWS Engineer
16 12 (1.97%) Azure Engineer
17 11 (1.81%) Designer
17 11 (1.81%) Governance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.40%) PySpark
2 29 (4.77%) Kafka
3 24 (3.95%) JSON
3 24 (3.95%) REST
4 17 (2.80%) .NET
5 15 (2.47%) YAML
6 11 (1.81%) OAuth
6 11 (1.81%) React
7 10 (1.64%) Node.js
7 10 (1.64%) SOAP
8 9 (1.48%) Middleware
8 9 (1.48%) XML
9 8 (1.32%) SLSA
10 7 (1.15%) ADO
10 7 (1.15%) OAuth2
10 7 (1.15%) RESTful
11 6 (0.99%) Pandas
12 5 (0.82%) HTML
12 5 (0.82%) Playwright
12 5 (0.82%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 57 (9.38%) Cloud Native
2 43 (7.07%) Onboarding
3 42 (6.91%) Data Structures
4 40 (6.58%) Management Information System
5 37 (6.09%) Reference Data
6 34 (5.59%) Product Ownership
7 33 (5.43%) Taxonomies
8 28 (4.61%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (3.13%) Derivative
10 18 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.97%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.97%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.81%) Equity Derivative
12 11 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (1.48%) Fixed Income
15 8 (1.32%) Clustering
15 8 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (1.32%) Market Risk
16 7 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.13%) Unix
2 7 (1.15%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 303 (49.84%) Data Governance
2 281 (46.22%) Data Modelling
3 218 (35.86%) Metadata Management
4 206 (33.88%) Analytics
5 162 (26.64%) ETL
6 151 (24.84%) Data Architecture
7 139 (22.86%) AI
8 128 (21.05%) Data Pipeline
9 124 (20.39%) CI/CD
10 123 (20.23%) Data Engineering
11 118 (19.41%) Migration
12 109 (17.93%) Agile
12 109 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
13 108 (17.76%) Data Lineage
14 106 (17.43%) Business Intelligence
15 100 (16.45%) Stakeholder Management
16 94 (15.46%) Data Management
16 94 (15.46%) Decision-Making
16 94 (15.46%) DevOps
17 91 (14.97%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 248 (40.79%) SQL
2 160 (26.32%) Python
3 42 (6.91%) Java
4 27 (4.44%) C#
5 26 (4.28%) PL/SQL
6 14 (2.30%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.14%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.81%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.64%) Perl
10 9 (1.48%) Groovy
11 8 (1.32%) C++
11 8 (1.32%) T-SQL
12 7 (1.15%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 5 (0.82%) Apex Code
15 4 (0.66%) Bash
15 4 (0.66%) Bicep
15 4 (0.66%) Scala
16 3 (0.49%) R
17 2 (0.33%) C
Qualifications
1 134 (22.04%) Security Cleared
2 99 (16.28%) SC Cleared
3 40 (6.58%) Degree
4 22 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.14%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.48%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (1.48%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.32%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.66%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
10 2 (0.33%) CISM
10 2 (0.33%) CISSP
10 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.33%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CBAP
11 1 (0.16%) CSPO
11 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (40.63%) Data Quality
2 57 (9.38%) GDPR
3 33 (5.43%) QA
4 21 (3.45%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.97%) GRC
6 7 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.15%) NIST
7 6 (0.99%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.99%) Solvency II
8 5 (0.82%) MiFID
9 4 (0.66%) ISO 22301
10 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.49%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.49%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.33%) IFRS
11 2 (0.33%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.33%) PMO
12 1 (0.16%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 14 (2.30%) Docker
2 8 (1.32%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (4.11%) Terraform
2 12 (1.97%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.32%) Grafana
4 6 (0.99%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.66%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.16%) Ansible
7 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 113 (18.59%) Microsoft
2 85 (13.98%) Databricks
3 61 (10.03%) Oracle
4 43 (7.07%) Informatica
5 21 (3.45%) Salesforce
6 20 (3.29%) Google
7 19 (3.13%) Talend
8 15 (2.47%) SAP
8 15 (2.47%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.14%) Autodesk
10 12 (1.97%) Sparx
11 10 (1.64%) Sybase
12 9 (1.48%) IBM
13 8 (1.32%) Sonatype
14 7 (1.15%) OpenAI
14 7 (1.15%) Teradata
15 5 (0.82%) Adobe
15 5 (0.82%) Denodo
16 4 (0.66%) Hortonworks
16 4 (0.66%) Ping Identity