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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 300 361
Rank change year-on-year +96 +61 +32
Contract jobs citing Metadata 717 268 240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.82% 0.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.84% 4.48% 3.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 186 156
10th Percentile £360 £303 £375
25th Percentile £450 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £825
90th Percentile £760 £755 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £481
% change year-on-year +16.67% -6.49% -3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 6 10
10th Percentile £43.55 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £15.56 £15.44
Median hourly rate £64.00 £26.25 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +143.81% -19.23% -8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £29.69 £43.07
90th Percentile - £58.75 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £25.00 £29.84
% change year-on-year +156.00% -16.22% -25.40%

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 8,111 5,986 7,442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.37% 18.25% 17.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,361 4,057 5,307
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 100 124
10th Percentile £16.49 £19.56 £14.08
25th Percentile £25.10 £25.94 £20.77
Median hourly rate £42.11 £36.25 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +16.15% -7.64% -28.64%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.63 £54.06
90th Percentile £77.15 £77.62 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.64 £32.50
% change year-on-year +24.84% -2.65% -35.00%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 +74 595 £525 - 169
London +52 338 £525 -11.58% 96
UK excluding London +39 291 £525 +16.67% 91
Work from Home +61 209 £525 -9.68% 78
Midlands +7 73 £564 +427.45% 8
North of England -25 69 £523 +14.52% 19
West Midlands -13 68 £577 +438.79% 5
Scotland +31 55 £525 +10.53% 5
South East -46 50 £525 +12.18% 44
Yorkshire -19 35 £544 +19.18% 5
North West -32 30 £578 +83.49% 10
East of England +6 28 £475 +49.37% 6
South West -20 22 £545 -7.28% 9
North East -31 8 £463 - 4
East Midlands -9 5 £494 +20.43% 3
Wales -16 3 £750 +191.91% 1

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 40 (5.58%) SharePoint
2 35 (4.88%) Apache Airflow
2 35 (4.88%) Apache Spark
3 28 (3.91%) Apache
4 21 (2.93%) Confluence
5 17 (2.37%) CMS
5 17 (2.37%) SAS
6 3 (0.42%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.14%) Drupal
8 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.14%) Liferay
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 21 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.98%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.98%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.98%) Revit
3 6 (0.84%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.14%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (1.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.70%) Summit
3 4 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.42%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Maximo
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) Workfront
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.14%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 205 (28.59%) Azure
2 152 (21.20%) AWS
3 94 (13.11%) Power Platform
4 75 (10.46%) GCP
5 63 (8.79%) Collibra
6 51 (7.11%) Microsoft Purview
7 44 (6.14%) Amazon S3
8 40 (5.58%) Azure Data Factory
9 38 (5.30%) dbt
9 38 (5.30%) GitHub
10 34 (4.74%) Snowflake
11 33 (4.60%) Serverless
12 31 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
12 31 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 30 (4.18%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (3.21%) Microsoft 365
15 16 (2.23%) Amazon EMR
15 16 (2.23%) Power Automate
16 15 (2.09%) Entra ID
16 15 (2.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.98%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.98%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.70%) Intranet
3 4 (0.56%) SSL
4 3 (0.42%) Firewall
4 3 (0.42%) HTTP
5 2 (0.28%) Broadband
6 1 (0.14%) 4G
6 1 (0.14%) 5G
6 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (17.15%) Data Warehouse
2 82 (11.44%) Power BI
3 78 (10.88%) Data Lake
4 34 (4.74%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.60%) Data Vault
6 30 (4.18%) Tableau
7 29 (4.04%) NoSQL
8 23 (3.21%) Delta Lake
8 23 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (2.93%) Big Data
9 21 (2.93%) Semantic Layer
9 21 (2.93%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (2.79%) SQL Server
11 19 (2.65%) BigQuery
11 19 (2.65%) Metadata Repository
12 18 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
13 17 (2.37%) Hadoop
14 15 (2.09%) Amazon Athena
15 13 (1.81%) Db2
16 12 (1.67%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 38 (5.30%) ERwin
2 36 (5.02%) Git
3 22 (3.07%) JIRA
4 21 (2.93%) ER Studio
5 16 (2.23%) Jenkins
6 15 (2.09%) PowerDesigner
7 14 (1.95%) GitLab
7 14 (1.95%) Maven
8 9 (1.26%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.28%) git-flow
10 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.28%) Selenium
11 1 (0.14%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.14%) TestRail
11 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 203 (28.31%) Finance
2 191 (26.64%) Social Skills
3 143 (19.94%) Analytical Skills
4 98 (13.67%) Banking
5 76 (10.60%) Public Sector
6 39 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (5.16%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.51%) Legal
8 18 (2.51%) Marketing
8 18 (2.51%) Retail
9 15 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
10 13 (1.81%) Publishing
11 12 (1.67%) Aviation
11 12 (1.67%) Front Office
12 11 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.98%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.98%) Military
14 6 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.70%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 180 (25.10%) Architect
2 129 (17.99%) Data Architect
3 103 (14.37%) Data Engineer
4 90 (12.55%) Analyst
5 84 (11.72%) Lead
6 59 (8.23%) Senior
7 55 (7.67%) Data Analyst
8 49 (6.83%) Data Modeller
9 48 (6.69%) Developer
10 36 (5.02%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.49%) Consultant
12 21 (2.93%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.79%) Data Manager
14 17 (2.37%) Lead Data Engineer
14 17 (2.37%) Product Owner
15 16 (2.23%) DevOps Engineer
15 16 (2.23%) Solutions Architect
16 15 (2.09%) Enterprise Architect
16 15 (2.09%) Senior Data Engineer
17 12 (1.67%) Governance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.00%) PySpark
2 37 (5.16%) JSON
3 34 (4.74%) Kafka
4 28 (3.91%) REST
5 15 (2.09%) YAML
6 14 (1.95%) .NET
7 13 (1.81%) Spring Boot
7 13 (1.81%) XML
8 10 (1.39%) Node.js
8 10 (1.39%) OAuth
8 10 (1.39%) React
9 9 (1.26%) SLSA
10 8 (1.12%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.12%) Middleware
10 8 (1.12%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.12%) SOAP
10 8 (1.12%) Spring
11 7 (0.98%) RESTful
11 7 (0.98%) SPFx
12 6 (0.84%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 66 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 61 (8.51%) Onboarding
3 55 (7.67%) Taxonomies
4 54 (7.53%) Data Structures
5 46 (6.42%) Management Information System
6 43 (6.00%) Product Ownership
7 39 (5.44%) Legacy Systems
8 38 (5.30%) Reference Data
9 19 (2.65%) Derivative
10 16 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
12 12 (1.67%) AI Agents
12 12 (1.67%) Credit Risk
12 12 (1.67%) Equity Derivative
12 12 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.39%) Clustering
13 10 (1.39%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (1.39%) Life Science
14 9 (1.26%) Data Fabric
14 9 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.65%) Unix
2 12 (1.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (49.23%) Data Governance
2 341 (47.56%) Data Modelling
3 241 (33.61%) Metadata Management
4 239 (33.33%) Analytics
5 182 (25.38%) Data Architecture
6 172 (23.99%) AI
7 161 (22.45%) ETL
8 154 (21.48%) Data Pipeline
9 152 (21.20%) Data Engineering
10 146 (20.36%) Agile
11 139 (19.39%) Migration
12 138 (19.25%) CI/CD
13 127 (17.71%) Stakeholder Management
14 118 (16.46%) Business Intelligence
15 116 (16.18%) Data Lineage
16 114 (15.90%) Validation
17 109 (15.20%) Decision-Making
18 107 (14.92%) Problem-Solving
19 105 (14.64%) Data Management
19 105 (14.64%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 275 (38.35%) SQL
2 183 (25.52%) Python
3 54 (7.53%) Java
4 25 (3.49%) PL/SQL
5 19 (2.65%) C#
6 15 (2.09%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.81%) PowerShell
8 12 (1.67%) Groovy
9 11 (1.53%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.26%) Bash
10 9 (1.26%) C++
10 9 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.12%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.98%) Apex Code
12 7 (0.98%) SPARQL
13 6 (0.84%) Bicep
13 6 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.70%) Scala
15 4 (0.56%) Cypher
15 4 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 161 (22.45%) Security Cleared
2 121 (16.88%) SC Cleared
3 48 (6.69%) Degree
4 31 (4.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.51%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (2.09%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.67%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
10 8 (1.12%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.28%) ACCA
13 2 (0.28%) CBAP
13 2 (0.28%) CIMA
13 2 (0.28%) CISM
13 2 (0.28%) CISSP
13 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 278 (38.77%) Data Quality
2 68 (9.48%) GDPR
3 39 (5.44%) QA
4 37 (5.16%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.12%) GRC
6 7 (0.98%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.84%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.84%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.84%) NIST
8 4 (0.56%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.56%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.42%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.42%) MiFID
9 3 (0.42%) NCSC
9 3 (0.42%) WCAG
10 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (1.81%) Docker
2 10 (1.39%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 29 (4.04%) Terraform
2 15 (2.09%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.39%) Grafana
4 8 (1.12%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.56%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.28%) Ansible
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
Vendors
1 126 (17.57%) Microsoft
2 110 (15.34%) Databricks
3 62 (8.65%) Oracle
4 52 (7.25%) Informatica
5 22 (3.07%) Google
5 22 (3.07%) Salesforce
6 18 (2.51%) Talend
7 15 (2.09%) IBM
8 14 (1.95%) SAP
9 13 (1.81%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.53%) Sparx
10 11 (1.53%) Sybase
11 9 (1.26%) Adobe
11 9 (1.26%) Sonatype
12 8 (1.12%) ServiceNow
13 7 (0.98%) CA Agile Central
13 7 (0.98%) Palantir
14 6 (0.84%) Aspera
14 6 (0.84%) Foundry
14 6 (0.84%) Signiant