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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 302 361
Rank change year-on-year +100 +59 +26
Contract jobs citing Metadata 731 273 214
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.83% 0.55%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.88% 4.55% 3.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 189 138
10th Percentile £385 £315 £396
25th Percentile £455 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £671 £638 £775
90th Percentile £756 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £438 £475
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 4 10
10th Percentile £31.56 - £13.50
25th Percentile £58.94 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.49 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.57% -30.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.75 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +399.89% -17.68% -56.98%

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 8,233 6,002 7,036
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.36% 18.25% 18.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,480 4,057 4,971
10th Percentile £356 £344 £350
25th Percentile £418 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £656
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 255 91 100
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.59 £14.93
25th Percentile £24.00 £24.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +1.55% -37.34%
75th Percentile £60.75 £62.88 £58.11
90th Percentile £76.30 £78.70 £71.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -40.00%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +87 621 £525 -2.33% 305
London +44 351 £525 -10.64% 185
UK excluding London +73 296 £525 +20.00% 160
Work from Home +47 215 £525 -8.70% 141
North of England -19 74 £514 +34.46% 26
Midlands -4 68 £613 +472.43% 25
West Midlands -6 64 £650 +507.48% 17
South East -31 55 £525 +17.58% 57
Scotland +30 47 £525 +10.53% 15
Yorkshire 0 41 £515 -4.25% 9
East of England +5 30 £463 -7.50% 10
North West -27 28 £575 +83.71% 15
South West -23 26 £550 -8.33% 20
North East -38 7 £463 +1.37% 2
East Midlands -10 4 £500 +21.95% 8
Wales -12 3 £750 +76.47% 3

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 (5.75%) SharePoint
2 32 (4.38%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.83%) Apache Spark
4 25 (3.42%) Apache
5 19 (2.60%) CMS
5 19 (2.60%) Confluence
6 14 (1.92%) SAS
7 4 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.27%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.14%) Drupal
10 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.14%) Liferay
10 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.96%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.96%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.96%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.96%) Revit
3 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.14%) Notion
5 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 16 (2.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.55%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.27%) HFM
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.27%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.27%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.27%) 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
1 213 (29.14%) Azure
2 161 (22.02%) AWS
3 104 (14.23%) Power Platform
4 80 (10.94%) GCP
5 58 (7.93%) Collibra
5 58 (7.93%) Microsoft Purview
6 44 (6.02%) Azure Data Factory
7 43 (5.88%) Amazon S3
8 39 (5.34%) GitHub
9 37 (5.06%) dbt
10 36 (4.92%) Snowflake
11 33 (4.51%) Serverless
12 32 (4.38%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
13 30 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 28 (3.83%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (2.60%) Microsoft Copilot
15 19 (2.60%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.33%) Amazon EMR
16 17 (2.33%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.96%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.96%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.68%) Intranet
3 4 (0.55%) Broadband
3 4 (0.55%) HTTP
3 4 (0.55%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (16.28%) Data Warehouse
2 90 (12.31%) Power BI
3 81 (11.08%) Data Lake
4 36 (4.92%) Relational Database
5 35 (4.79%) Data Vault
6 33 (4.51%) NoSQL
7 29 (3.97%) Tableau
8 27 (3.69%) Delta Lake
9 22 (3.01%) BigQuery
9 22 (3.01%) Semantic Layer
10 19 (2.60%) Snowflake Schema
11 18 (2.46%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
12 16 (2.19%) Amazon Athena
13 14 (1.92%) Db2
13 14 (1.92%) SQL Server
14 13 (1.78%) Big Data
14 13 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
15 12 (1.64%) Star Schema
16 11 (1.50%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 41 (5.61%) ERwin
2 32 (4.38%) Git
3 27 (3.69%) ER Studio
4 22 (3.01%) JIRA
5 19 (2.60%) Jenkins
6 17 (2.33%) PowerDesigner
7 16 (2.19%) Maven
8 13 (1.78%) GitLab
9 11 (1.50%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.41%) Selenium
11 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.27%) git-flow
11 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.27%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) MLflow
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 204 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 198 (27.09%) Finance
3 156 (21.34%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (12.59%) Banking
5 77 (10.53%) Public Sector
6 36 (4.92%) Investment Banking
7 34 (4.65%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
9 19 (2.60%) Legal
10 18 (2.46%) Publishing
11 17 (2.33%) Retail
12 16 (2.19%) Marketing
13 13 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
14 12 (1.64%) Aviation
14 12 (1.64%) Front Office
14 12 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (1.37%) Manufacturing
16 8 (1.09%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.96%) Military
18 6 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 172 (23.53%) Architect
2 124 (16.96%) Data Architect
3 113 (15.46%) Data Engineer
4 92 (12.59%) Lead
5 90 (12.31%) Analyst
6 67 (9.17%) Senior
7 55 (7.52%) Data Analyst
8 52 (7.11%) Data Modeller
9 37 (5.06%) Developer
10 33 (4.51%) Business Analyst
11 28 (3.83%) Consultant
12 21 (2.87%) Data Manager
13 20 (2.74%) Data Business Analyst
14 19 (2.60%) Senior Data Engineer
15 18 (2.46%) DevOps Engineer
15 18 (2.46%) Product Owner
16 17 (2.33%) Lead Data Engineer
17 15 (2.05%) Governance Analyst
17 15 (2.05%) Solutions Architect
18 13 (1.78%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.57%) PySpark
2 39 (5.34%) JSON
3 31 (4.24%) Kafka
4 27 (3.69%) REST
5 17 (2.33%) YAML
6 13 (1.78%) Node.js
6 13 (1.78%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.64%) XML
8 11 (1.50%) .NET
8 11 (1.50%) SLSA
9 10 (1.37%) OAuth
9 10 (1.37%) React
10 8 (1.09%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.09%) Middleware
10 8 (1.09%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.09%) Spring
11 7 (0.96%) RESTful
11 7 (0.96%) SPFx
12 6 (0.82%) CSS
12 6 (0.82%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 72 (9.85%) Cloud Native
2 66 (9.03%) Data Structures
3 59 (8.07%) Onboarding
4 55 (7.52%) Taxonomies
5 52 (7.11%) Product Ownership
6 46 (6.29%) Management Information System
7 42 (5.75%) Reference Data
8 41 (5.61%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (2.60%) Derivative
10 16 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.78%) AI Agents
11 13 (1.78%) Life Science
11 13 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.64%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.37%) Digital Media
14 10 (1.37%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.23%) Clustering
15 9 (1.23%) Data Fabric
16 8 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.60%) Unix
2 12 (1.64%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 364 (49.79%) Data Governance
2 345 (47.20%) Data Modelling
3 253 (34.61%) Metadata Management
4 247 (33.79%) Analytics
5 182 (24.90%) AI
6 180 (24.62%) Data Architecture
7 172 (23.53%) Data Pipeline
8 164 (22.44%) Agile
9 160 (21.89%) ETL
10 156 (21.34%) Data Engineering
11 151 (20.66%) CI/CD
12 149 (20.38%) Migration
13 143 (19.56%) Stakeholder Management
14 124 (16.96%) Business Intelligence
15 120 (16.42%) Data Lineage
16 118 (16.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 116 (15.87%) DevOps
18 115 (15.73%) Validation
19 112 (15.32%) Continuous Improvement
20 111 (15.18%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 275 (37.62%) SQL
2 191 (26.13%) Python
3 60 (8.21%) Java
4 22 (3.01%) PL/SQL
5 15 (2.05%) C#
5 15 (2.05%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.92%) Groovy
6 14 (1.92%) PowerShell
7 12 (1.64%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.23%) C++
10 8 (1.09%) Bash
10 8 (1.09%) TypeScript
11 7 (0.96%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.82%) Bicep
12 6 (0.82%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.68%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.68%) Scala
14 4 (0.55%) Perl
14 4 (0.55%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 159 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 122 (16.69%) SC Cleared
3 41 (5.61%) Degree
4 33 (4.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.46%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.64%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.50%) TOGAF Certification
9 7 (0.96%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.96%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.27%) ACCA
12 2 (0.27%) CBAP
12 2 (0.27%) CIMA
12 2 (0.27%) CISM
12 2 (0.27%) CISSP
12 2 (0.27%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.27%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.27%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (40.90%) Data Quality
2 64 (8.76%) GDPR
3 42 (5.75%) QA
4 40 (5.47%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.96%) ISO 19650
5 7 (0.96%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.82%) GRC
6 6 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.68%) NIST
7 5 (0.68%) WCAG
8 4 (0.55%) MiFID
9 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.41%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.41%) NCSC
10 2 (0.27%) IFRS
10 2 (0.27%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 18 (2.46%) Docker
2 9 (1.23%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 33 (4.51%) Terraform
2 20 (2.74%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.37%) Grafana
4 7 (0.96%) Prometheus
4 7 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.55%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.55%) PingFederate
6 3 (0.41%) Ansible
7 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.14%) Control-M
Vendors
1 132 (18.06%) Microsoft
2 111 (15.18%) Databricks
3 51 (6.98%) Oracle
4 45 (6.16%) Informatica
5 24 (3.28%) Google
6 17 (2.33%) Salesforce
7 16 (2.19%) IBM
7 16 (2.19%) SAP
7 16 (2.19%) Sparx
8 13 (1.78%) Autodesk
9 11 (1.50%) Sonatype
9 11 (1.50%) Sybase
9 11 (1.50%) Talend
10 10 (1.37%) Denodo
11 8 (1.09%) Adobe
11 8 (1.09%) CA Agile Central
11 8 (1.09%) Palantir
12 7 (0.96%) Aspera
12 7 (0.96%) Foundry
12 7 (0.96%) Signiant