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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 340 285
Rank change year-on-year +123 -55 +34
Contract jobs citing Metadata 533 191 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.24% 0.65% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.71% 3.39% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 369 138 232
10th Percentile £358 £255 £361
25th Percentile £415 £411 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £508 £559
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% -9.17% +1.59%
75th Percentile £600 £644 £738
90th Percentile £696 £791 £848
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £550
% change year-on-year +6.61% -14.73% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 7 25
10th Percentile £38.47 £22.63 £13.70
25th Percentile £63.38 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.69 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £47.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +11.03%

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 6,917 5,627 7,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.04% 19.03% 16.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,752 3,891 5,170
10th Percentile £349 £350 £340
25th Percentile £413 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £488
% change year-on-year -4.04% +1.54% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 143 96 172
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.59 £14.36
25th Percentile £28.19 £24.06 £20.77
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.47% -32.92%
75th Percentile £74.84 £64.56 £58.81
90th Percentile £84.80 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -30.43%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 +110 455 £525 +1.20% 201
London +102 267 £525 -16.00% 134
UK excluding London +17 201 £500 +6.61% 137
Work from Home +47 148 £525 +0.48% 118
Midlands -16 51 £560 +54.48% 8
South East -20 46 £513 +7.61% 70
West Midlands -26 45 £569 +56.90% 4
North of England -45 38 £466 -10.86% 16
Scotland +33 36 £447 -30.86% 4
North West -33 22 £466 -14.54% 7
East of England -20 20 £492 +54.78% 17
South West -14 17 £570 +12.59% 21
Yorkshire -46 15 £500 +29.03% 9
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 4
North East -12 4 £475 -23.91%
Wales -12 1 £750 +217.80% 5

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 (7.88%) Apache Spark
2 31 (5.82%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.69%) SAS
4 20 (3.75%) Apache Airflow
5 19 (3.56%) Confluence
6 18 (3.38%) Apache
7 12 (2.25%) CMS
8 7 (1.31%) Drupal
8 7 (1.31%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.94%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.94%) GeoServer
9 5 (0.94%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.19%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
11 1 (0.19%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (5.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (2.44%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
6 2 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 17 (3.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.13%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.13%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.13%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.56%) Actimize
4 3 (0.56%) Maximo
4 3 (0.56%) Summit
5 2 (0.38%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.19%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.19%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.19%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.19%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 166 (31.14%) Azure
2 119 (22.33%) AWS
3 87 (16.32%) Power Platform
4 65 (12.20%) GCP
5 51 (9.57%) Collibra
6 48 (9.01%) Azure Data Factory
7 41 (7.69%) Microsoft Purview
8 35 (6.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 33 (6.19%) Snowflake
10 26 (4.88%) Serverless
11 24 (4.50%) Amazon S3
12 21 (3.94%) dbt
13 20 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
13 20 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
14 19 (3.56%) GitHub
15 16 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
16 7 (1.31%) Amazon EMR
16 7 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (1.31%) Entra ID
16 7 (1.31%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.56%) Intranet
2 2 (0.38%) Firewall
2 2 (0.38%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.19%) 4G
3 1 (0.19%) 5G
3 1 (0.19%) HTTP
3 1 (0.19%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (21.39%) Data Warehouse
2 81 (15.20%) Power BI
3 69 (12.95%) Data Lake
4 42 (7.88%) Metadata Repository
5 29 (5.44%) Big Data
5 29 (5.44%) SQL Server
6 26 (4.88%) Data Vault
6 26 (4.88%) Tableau
7 24 (4.50%) NoSQL
7 24 (4.50%) Snowflake Schema
8 23 (4.32%) Relational Database
9 21 (3.94%) PostgreSQL
10 19 (3.56%) Oracle Database
10 19 (3.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 18 (3.38%) Hadoop
12 17 (3.19%) Amazon Redshift
12 17 (3.19%) BigQuery
13 16 (3.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 14 (2.63%) Delta Lake
15 12 (2.25%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 29 (5.44%) ERwin
2 26 (4.88%) Git
3 21 (3.94%) JIRA
4 12 (2.25%) Jenkins
4 12 (2.25%) PowerDesigner
5 10 (1.88%) ER Studio
6 6 (1.13%) GitLab
7 5 (0.94%) Maven
7 5 (0.94%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.38%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.38%) Subversion
8 2 (0.38%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.19%) git-flow
9 1 (0.19%) gulp
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.19%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.19%) Selenium
9 1 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.19%) Yeoman
General
1 175 (32.83%) Social Skills
2 145 (27.20%) Finance
3 109 (20.45%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (12.95%) Public Sector
5 56 (10.51%) Banking
6 38 (7.13%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (3.00%) Publishing
8 13 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.44%) Legal
9 12 (2.25%) Aviation
9 12 (2.25%) Investment Banking
10 11 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
10 11 (2.06%) Retail
11 9 (1.69%) Marketing
12 7 (1.31%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.31%) Military
13 6 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.13%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.94%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 141 (26.45%) Architect
2 107 (20.08%) Data Architect
3 75 (14.07%) Analyst
4 74 (13.88%) Data Engineer
5 52 (9.76%) Data Analyst
6 40 (7.50%) Data Modeller
6 40 (7.50%) Lead
6 40 (7.50%) Senior
7 36 (6.75%) Developer
8 25 (4.69%) Business Analyst
8 25 (4.69%) Consultant
9 16 (3.00%) Azure Engineer
10 14 (2.63%) Data Business Analyst
10 14 (2.63%) Software Engineer
11 12 (2.25%) Azure Data Engineer
11 12 (2.25%) Governance Analyst
11 12 (2.25%) Principal Engineer
12 11 (2.06%) AWS Engineer
12 11 (2.06%) Data Analytics Engineer
12 11 (2.06%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (7.69%) PySpark
2 31 (5.82%) Kafka
3 30 (5.63%) REST
4 18 (3.38%) JSON
5 15 (2.81%) .NET
6 13 (2.44%) YAML
7 12 (2.25%) React
7 12 (2.25%) SOAP
7 12 (2.25%) XML
8 8 (1.50%) OAuth
9 6 (1.13%) Node.js
9 6 (1.13%) Pandas
9 6 (1.13%) RESTful
9 6 (1.13%) SAP Basis
9 6 (1.13%) SAP Business Workflow
9 6 (1.13%) SAP Fiori
9 6 (1.13%) VML
10 5 (0.94%) HTML
10 5 (0.94%) SLSA
11 3 (0.56%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 52 (9.76%) Cloud Native
2 44 (8.26%) Data Structures
3 35 (6.57%) Taxonomies
4 34 (6.38%) Management Information System
5 32 (6.00%) Reference Data
6 24 (4.50%) Onboarding
7 23 (4.32%) Legacy Systems
8 22 (4.13%) Product Ownership
9 12 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (2.06%) Virtual Team
11 9 (1.69%) Credit Risk
11 9 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.31%) Data Fabric
12 7 (1.31%) Distributed Computing
13 5 (0.94%) CMDB
13 5 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.94%) IoT
13 5 (0.94%) Market Risk
14 4 (0.75%) Derivative
14 4 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.25%) Unix
2 8 (1.50%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 271 (50.84%) Data Governance
2 266 (49.91%) Data Modelling
3 215 (40.34%) Metadata Management
4 197 (36.96%) Analytics
5 160 (30.02%) Data Architecture
6 144 (27.02%) ETL
7 124 (23.26%) Business Intelligence
8 110 (20.64%) Data Engineering
9 100 (18.76%) Agile
10 99 (18.57%) Validation
11 98 (18.39%) Data Pipeline
12 94 (17.64%) Data Lineage
13 93 (17.45%) Problem-Solving
14 90 (16.89%) AI
15 89 (16.70%) Migration
16 82 (15.38%) Data Integration
17 80 (15.01%) Data Management
18 78 (14.63%) CI/CD
19 74 (13.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 73 (13.70%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 215 (40.34%) SQL
2 137 (25.70%) Python
3 24 (4.50%) C#
4 21 (3.94%) PowerShell
5 18 (3.38%) Java
6 12 (2.25%) PL/SQL
7 11 (2.06%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.50%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.31%) Groovy
9 7 (1.31%) R
10 6 (1.13%) ABAP
10 6 (1.13%) Perl
10 6 (1.13%) T-SQL
11 5 (0.94%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.94%) Scala
11 5 (0.94%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.56%) SOQL
13 2 (0.38%) Bicep
13 2 (0.38%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 128 (24.02%) Security Cleared
2 96 (18.01%) SC Cleared
3 34 (6.38%) Degree
4 24 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.44%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.88%) Azure Certification
6 10 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.50%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.94%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.19%) Analytics IQ
10 1 (0.19%) CISSP
10 1 (0.19%) CSPO
10 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.19%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.19%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 227 (42.59%) Data Quality
2 55 (10.32%) GDPR
3 24 (4.50%) QA
4 18 (3.38%) Accessibility
5 11 (2.06%) GRC
5 11 (2.06%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.13%) IFRS
6 6 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.94%) NIST
8 4 (0.75%) MiFID
9 3 (0.56%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.38%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.38%) FINREP
10 2 (0.38%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.38%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.38%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 12 (2.25%) Docker
2 5 (0.94%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (3.75%) Terraform
2 15 (2.81%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.75%) Grafana
3 4 (0.75%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.19%) Ansible
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.19%) SCCM
4 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 100 (18.76%) Microsoft
2 78 (14.63%) Databricks
3 52 (9.76%) Oracle
4 41 (7.69%) Informatica
5 23 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 19 (3.56%) Talend
7 18 (3.38%) SAP
8 17 (3.19%) Google
8 17 (3.19%) Salesforce
9 16 (3.00%) Sparx
10 11 (2.06%) Teradata
11 8 (1.50%) OpenText
12 7 (1.31%) Remedy
12 7 (1.31%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.13%) ESRI
13 6 (1.13%) Optimizely
14 5 (0.94%) Adobe
14 5 (0.94%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.94%) Intergraph
14 5 (0.94%) Sonatype