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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 213 291 364
Rank change year-on-year +78 +73 +13
Contract jobs citing Metadata 709 279 213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.34% 0.85% 0.54%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.75% 4.66% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 193 137
10th Percentile £386 £308 £379
25th Percentile £455 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £671 £638 £775
90th Percentile £751 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +23.53% -10.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 9
10th Percentile £30.69 - -
25th Percentile £57.63 £13.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £19.25 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.65% -40.77% -8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.90 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £13.50
% change year-on-year +400.00% - -66.25%

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 8,101 5,991 7,088
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.33% 18.21% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,383 4,054 5,008
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -2.95%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 89 101
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.15 £15.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £39.00 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.43% -1.41% -35.45%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.25 £78.96 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -41.46%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 +64 599 £525 - 283
London +55 344 £525 -8.70% 173
UK excluding London +61 281 £525 +23.53% 153
Work from Home +50 209 £525 -8.70% 143
North of England -1 71 £514 +14.29% 22
Midlands -11 62 £606 +466.59% 29
West Midlands -16 58 £650 +507.48% 23
South East -41 50 £525 +23.53% 61
Scotland +26 47 £525 +10.53% 15
Yorkshire -4 39 £514 -4.31% 7
East of England +4 30 £463 -7.50% 9
North West -34 28 £575 +83.12% 13
South West -23 25 £550 -8.33% 11
North East -36 6 £463 +1.37% 2
East Midlands -8 4 £500 +21.95% 6
Wales -14 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 42 (5.92%) SharePoint
2 31 (4.37%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.95%) Apache Spark
4 25 (3.53%) Apache
5 19 (2.68%) CMS
6 17 (2.40%) Confluence
7 12 (1.69%) SAS
8 4 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.28%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.14%) Liferay
11 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 21 (2.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.99%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.99%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.99%) Revit
3 5 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.14%) Notion
Business Applications
1 13 (1.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.56%) Summit
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%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 204 (28.77%) Azure
2 156 (22.00%) AWS
3 100 (14.10%) Power Platform
4 76 (10.72%) GCP
5 58 (8.18%) Collibra
6 54 (7.62%) Microsoft Purview
7 42 (5.92%) Amazon S3
7 42 (5.92%) Azure Data Factory
8 37 (5.22%) dbt
8 37 (5.22%) GitHub
9 35 (4.94%) Snowflake
10 32 (4.51%) Serverless
11 31 (4.37%) AWS Lambda
12 29 (4.09%) Azure DevOps
13 28 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 28 (3.95%) Microsoft 365
14 19 (2.68%) Microsoft Copilot
14 19 (2.68%) Power Automate
15 18 (2.54%) Amazon EMR
16 17 (2.40%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.99%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.99%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.71%) Intranet
3 4 (0.56%) SSL
4 3 (0.42%) Broadband
4 3 (0.42%) Firewall
4 3 (0.42%) HTTP
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (16.08%) Data Warehouse
2 86 (12.13%) Power BI
3 76 (10.72%) Data Lake
4 36 (5.08%) Data Vault
5 34 (4.80%) Relational Database
6 30 (4.23%) Tableau
7 29 (4.09%) NoSQL
8 26 (3.67%) Delta Lake
9 21 (2.96%) BigQuery
9 21 (2.96%) Semantic Layer
10 20 (2.82%) Snowflake Schema
11 18 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
12 17 (2.40%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.26%) Amazon Athena
14 14 (1.97%) Big Data
14 14 (1.97%) Db2
14 14 (1.97%) SQL Server
15 11 (1.55%) Elasticsearch
15 11 (1.55%) MongoDB
15 11 (1.55%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 41 (5.78%) ERwin
2 31 (4.37%) Git
3 27 (3.81%) ER Studio
4 20 (2.82%) JIRA
5 18 (2.54%) Jenkins
6 17 (2.40%) PowerDesigner
7 15 (2.12%) Maven
8 14 (1.97%) GitLab
9 10 (1.41%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.28%) git-flow
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.28%) Selenium
11 2 (0.28%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) Deequ
12 1 (0.14%) MLflow
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 200 (28.21%) Finance
2 191 (26.94%) Social Skills
3 150 (21.16%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (13.26%) Banking
5 69 (9.73%) Public Sector
6 37 (5.22%) Investment Banking
7 34 (4.80%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (2.68%) Legal
9 18 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (2.40%) Publishing
10 17 (2.40%) Retail
11 16 (2.26%) Marketing
12 13 (1.83%) Aviation
12 13 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (1.69%) Front Office
13 12 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (1.13%) Manufacturing
14 8 (1.13%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.85%) Law
15 6 (0.85%) Military
Job Titles
1 166 (23.41%) Architect
2 120 (16.93%) Data Architect
3 110 (15.51%) Data Engineer
4 88 (12.41%) Analyst
5 87 (12.27%) Lead
6 62 (8.74%) Senior
7 53 (7.48%) Data Analyst
7 53 (7.48%) Data Modeller
8 37 (5.22%) Developer
9 33 (4.65%) Business Analyst
10 28 (3.95%) Consultant
11 20 (2.82%) Data Business Analyst
11 20 (2.82%) Data Manager
12 18 (2.54%) Product Owner
12 18 (2.54%) Senior Data Engineer
13 17 (2.40%) DevOps Engineer
14 16 (2.26%) Lead Data Engineer
15 15 (2.12%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (1.97%) Governance Analyst
17 13 (1.83%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (6.63%) PySpark
2 38 (5.36%) JSON
3 29 (4.09%) Kafka
4 24 (3.39%) REST
5 16 (2.26%) YAML
6 13 (1.83%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.69%) Node.js
7 12 (1.69%) XML
8 10 (1.41%) OAuth
8 10 (1.41%) SLSA
9 9 (1.27%) .NET
9 9 (1.27%) React
10 8 (1.13%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.13%) Middleware
10 8 (1.13%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.13%) Spring
11 7 (0.99%) SPFx
12 6 (0.85%) CSS
12 6 (0.85%) HTML
12 6 (0.85%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 68 (9.59%) Cloud Native
2 64 (9.03%) Data Structures
3 59 (8.32%) Onboarding
4 53 (7.48%) Taxonomies
5 50 (7.05%) Product Ownership
6 44 (6.21%) Management Information System
7 43 (6.06%) Reference Data
8 41 (5.78%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (2.68%) Derivative
10 16 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.69%) AI Agents
11 12 (1.69%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (1.55%) Life Science
13 10 (1.41%) Digital Media
13 10 (1.41%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (1.27%) Clustering
14 9 (1.27%) Data Fabric
15 8 (1.13%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.68%) Unix
2 12 (1.69%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 354 (49.93%) Data Governance
2 338 (47.67%) Data Modelling
3 246 (34.70%) Metadata Management
4 233 (32.86%) Analytics
5 175 (24.68%) Data Architecture
6 169 (23.84%) AI
7 165 (23.27%) Data Pipeline
8 153 (21.58%) ETL
9 152 (21.44%) Agile
10 150 (21.16%) Data Engineering
11 141 (19.89%) CI/CD
12 140 (19.75%) Migration
13 135 (19.04%) Stakeholder Management
14 119 (16.78%) Business Intelligence
15 118 (16.64%) Data Lineage
16 113 (15.94%) Validation
17 111 (15.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 109 (15.37%) Data Management
19 107 (15.09%) DevOps
20 106 (14.95%) Logical Data Model
Programming Languages
1 271 (38.22%) SQL
2 185 (26.09%) Python
3 57 (8.04%) Java
4 22 (3.10%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.12%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.97%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.83%) C#
7 13 (1.83%) Groovy
8 11 (1.55%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.27%) C++
10 8 (1.13%) Bash
10 8 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.13%) TypeScript
11 7 (0.99%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.85%) Bicep
12 6 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.71%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.71%) Scala
14 4 (0.56%) Perl
14 4 (0.56%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 149 (21.02%) Security Cleared
2 113 (15.94%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.78%) Degree
4 31 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.40%) DV Cleared
6 16 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.55%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.13%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.99%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.71%) 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
1 285 (40.20%) Data Quality
2 62 (8.74%) GDPR
3 41 (5.78%) Accessibility
4 37 (5.22%) QA
5 7 (0.99%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.85%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.85%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.71%) GRC
7 5 (0.71%) NIST
7 5 (0.71%) WCAG
8 4 (0.56%) MiFID
9 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.42%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.42%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.42%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.42%) NCSC
10 2 (0.28%) IFRS
10 2 (0.28%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 16 (2.26%) Docker
2 9 (1.27%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 30 (4.23%) Terraform
2 19 (2.68%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.41%) Grafana
4 7 (0.99%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.85%) 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
8 1 (0.14%) Control-M
Vendors
1 126 (17.77%) Microsoft
2 107 (15.09%) Databricks
3 50 (7.05%) Oracle
4 47 (6.63%) Informatica
5 21 (2.96%) Google
6 18 (2.54%) Salesforce
7 16 (2.26%) IBM
8 14 (1.97%) SAP
9 13 (1.83%) Autodesk
9 13 (1.83%) Sparx
10 12 (1.69%) Talend
11 11 (1.55%) Sybase
12 10 (1.41%) Sonatype
13 8 (1.13%) Adobe
13 8 (1.13%) CA Agile Central
13 8 (1.13%) Denodo
13 8 (1.13%) Palantir
14 7 (0.99%) Aspera
14 7 (0.99%) Foundry
14 7 (0.99%) Signiant