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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 312 306
Rank change year-on-year +109 -6 +24
Contract jobs citing Metadata 602 219 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.30% 0.74% 0.70%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.30% 3.90% 4.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 413 159 204
10th Percentile £353 £234 £390
25th Percentile £413 £440 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.83% -9.57% +4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £775
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £470 £575
% change year-on-year +9.04% -18.26% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 7 18
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.50
25th Percentile £58.94 £22.72 £19.37
Median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.73% -15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £75.88 £56.13 £45.57
90th Percentile £83.13 £82.25 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +132.73% -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 7,249 5,619 7,272
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.60% 19.02% 16.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,944 3,876 5,169
10th Percentile £349 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.02%
75th Percentile £598 £639 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £483
% change year-on-year -2.86% +1.24% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 108 145
10th Percentile £17.13 £20.47 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.10 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £50.00 £34.58 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.61% -13.56% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.62 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £40.00
% change year-on-year +58.03% -20.90% -31.73%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 +105 505 £500 -4.31% 250
London +82 287 £500 -16.67% 105
UK excluding London +43 238 £513 +9.04% 233
Work from Home +47 162 £525 -3.67% 174
Midlands -11 59 £543 +407.48% 19
North of England -39 54 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -18 52 £571 +433.64% 7
Scotland +48 44 £485 -8.32% 31
South East -33 43 £500 +4.71% 84
East of England -14 30 £575 +80.56% 47
North West -25 29 £523 -4.13% 10
Yorkshire -31 23 £563 +50.00% 15
South West -28 12 £550 +4.76% 27
East Midlands - 7 £447 - 12
North East -16 5 £419 -22.94% 4
Wales -15 4 £750 +217.80% 2

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 39 (6.48%) Apache Spark
2 37 (6.15%) SharePoint
3 23 (3.82%) Apache Airflow
4 21 (3.49%) SAS
5 20 (3.32%) Confluence
6 17 (2.82%) Apache
7 9 (1.50%) CMS
8 4 (0.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 4 (0.66%) ArcGIS
8 4 (0.66%) Drupal
8 4 (0.66%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
10 1 (0.17%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 30 (4.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.66%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.16%) Notepad++
4 6 (1.00%) Navisworks
4 6 (1.00%) Revit
5 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
6 3 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 18 (2.99%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 8 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.00%) Summit
4 3 (0.50%) Maximo
5 2 (0.33%) Actimize
5 2 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.17%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.17%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.17%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 184 (30.56%) Azure
2 133 (22.09%) AWS
3 96 (15.95%) Power Platform
4 76 (12.62%) GCP
5 54 (8.97%) Collibra
6 47 (7.81%) Azure Data Factory
7 42 (6.98%) Microsoft Purview
8 36 (5.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (5.65%) GitHub
10 32 (5.32%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.32%) Serverless
11 26 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
11 26 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
12 25 (4.15%) dbt
13 24 (3.99%) Snowflake
14 17 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (1.99%) Amazon EMR
16 10 (1.66%) ChatGPT
16 10 (1.66%) Power Automate
17 9 (1.50%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.16%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.16%) WinSCP
2 4 (0.66%) HTTP
2 4 (0.66%) Intranet
2 4 (0.66%) SSL
3 3 (0.50%) Firewall
4 2 (0.33%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.17%) 4G
5 1 (0.17%) 5G
5 1 (0.17%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (20.43%) Data Warehouse
2 88 (14.62%) Power BI
3 75 (12.46%) Data Lake
4 35 (5.81%) Relational Database
5 33 (5.48%) Metadata Repository
6 30 (4.98%) NoSQL
6 30 (4.98%) SQL Server
6 30 (4.98%) Tableau
7 27 (4.49%) Big Data
8 26 (4.32%) Data Vault
9 23 (3.82%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (3.65%) Snowflake Schema
11 21 (3.49%) Amazon Redshift
12 20 (3.32%) Delta Lake
13 19 (3.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (2.82%) Hadoop
15 15 (2.49%) Oracle Database
16 14 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
16 14 (2.33%) BigQuery
16 14 (2.33%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 31 (5.15%) ERwin
1 31 (5.15%) Git
2 20 (3.32%) JIRA
3 16 (2.66%) Jenkins
4 13 (2.16%) PowerDesigner
5 12 (1.99%) GitLab
6 10 (1.66%) ER Studio
7 9 (1.50%) Maven
8 8 (1.33%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.50%) Subversion
10 2 (0.33%) git-flow
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.17%) Deequ
11 1 (0.17%) gulp
11 1 (0.17%) Postman
11 1 (0.17%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.17%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.17%) VersionOne
General
1 198 (32.89%) Social Skills
2 163 (27.08%) Finance
3 125 (20.76%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (13.29%) Public Sector
5 69 (11.46%) Banking
6 39 (6.48%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (3.16%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.99%) Legal
9 16 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.49%) Publishing
11 13 (2.16%) Marketing
12 10 (1.66%) Aviation
12 10 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.66%) Retail
13 9 (1.50%) Front Office
14 7 (1.16%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.16%) Military
15 6 (1.00%) Law
16 5 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 139 (23.09%) Architect
2 103 (17.11%) Data Architect
3 89 (14.78%) Data Engineer
4 82 (13.62%) Analyst
5 53 (8.80%) Data Analyst
6 52 (8.64%) Senior
7 49 (8.14%) Lead
8 42 (6.98%) Developer
9 38 (6.31%) Data Modeller
10 33 (5.48%) Business Analyst
11 22 (3.65%) Consultant
12 17 (2.82%) Data Business Analyst
13 16 (2.66%) Data Manager
14 14 (2.33%) AWS Engineer
14 14 (2.33%) Azure Engineer
14 14 (2.33%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.33%) Senior Data Engineer
14 14 (2.33%) Software Engineer
15 11 (1.83%) Azure Data Engineer
15 11 (1.83%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.48%) PySpark
2 34 (5.65%) Kafka
3 30 (4.98%) REST
4 29 (4.82%) JSON
5 18 (2.99%) YAML
6 16 (2.66%) .NET
7 15 (2.49%) XML
8 13 (2.16%) SOAP
9 12 (1.99%) OAuth
10 11 (1.83%) React
11 10 (1.66%) Node.js
12 8 (1.33%) Middleware
12 8 (1.33%) SLSA
13 7 (1.16%) ADO
13 7 (1.16%) OAuth2
13 7 (1.16%) RESTful
14 6 (1.00%) HTML
15 5 (0.83%) Playwright
16 4 (0.66%) LDAP
16 4 (0.66%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 58 (9.63%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.64%) Data Structures
3 43 (7.14%) Management Information System
4 38 (6.31%) Onboarding
5 34 (5.65%) Taxonomies
6 33 (5.48%) Reference Data
7 29 (4.82%) Product Ownership
8 26 (4.32%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (2.49%) Derivative
11 12 (1.99%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.99%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.50%) Clustering
13 9 (1.50%) Equity Derivative
14 8 (1.33%) Distributed Computing
14 8 (1.33%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.33%) Market Risk
15 6 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 6 (1.00%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 22 (3.65%) Unix
2 11 (1.83%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 303 (50.33%) Data Governance
2 275 (45.68%) Data Modelling
3 229 (38.04%) Metadata Management
4 211 (35.05%) Analytics
5 172 (28.57%) ETL
6 161 (26.74%) Data Architecture
7 129 (21.43%) Data Pipeline
8 128 (21.26%) AI
9 126 (20.93%) Data Engineering
10 123 (20.43%) Business Intelligence
11 119 (19.77%) CI/CD
12 117 (19.44%) Problem-Solving
13 111 (18.44%) Migration
14 109 (18.11%) Agile
15 105 (17.44%) Validation
16 103 (17.11%) Data Lineage
17 98 (16.28%) Stakeholder Management
18 92 (15.28%) Data Management
18 92 (15.28%) DevOps
19 87 (14.45%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 245 (40.70%) SQL
2 158 (26.25%) Python
3 37 (6.15%) Java
4 27 (4.49%) C#
5 24 (3.99%) PL/SQL
6 18 (2.99%) PowerShell
7 16 (2.66%) Shell Script
8 13 (2.16%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.50%) Groovy
9 9 (1.50%) Perl
9 9 (1.50%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.33%) C++
11 7 (1.16%) R
12 6 (1.00%) Apex Code
12 6 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 6 (1.00%) Scala
12 6 (1.00%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.66%) Bicep
14 2 (0.33%) Bash
14 2 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 145 (24.09%) Security Cleared
2 103 (17.11%) SC Cleared
3 41 (6.81%) Degree
4 26 (4.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.16%) Master's Degree
7 11 (1.83%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (1.50%) TOGAF Certification
9 7 (1.16%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.00%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.50%) CISSP
12 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
12 2 (0.33%) CISM
12 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.17%) CSPO
13 1 (0.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 1 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (42.03%) Data Quality
2 60 (9.97%) GDPR
3 29 (4.82%) QA
4 19 (3.16%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.83%) GRC
5 11 (1.83%) Solvency II
6 7 (1.16%) ISO 19650
6 7 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.16%) NIST
7 6 (1.00%) IFRS
8 4 (0.66%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.50%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.50%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.50%) MiFID
10 2 (0.33%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.33%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (2.33%) Docker
2 8 (1.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (4.15%) Terraform
2 16 (2.66%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.16%) Grafana
4 6 (1.00%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.17%) Ansible
7 1 (0.17%) Kibana
Vendors
1 110 (18.27%) Microsoft
2 87 (14.45%) Databricks
3 61 (10.13%) Oracle
4 54 (8.97%) Informatica
5 25 (4.15%) Salesforce
6 24 (3.99%) Talend
7 20 (3.32%) Google
8 19 (3.16%) SAP
8 19 (3.16%) ServiceNow
9 18 (2.99%) Sparx
10 12 (1.99%) Autodesk
11 10 (1.66%) IBM
12 8 (1.33%) Sonatype
12 8 (1.33%) Sybase
13 7 (1.16%) Adobe
13 7 (1.16%) OpenAI
13 7 (1.16%) Teradata
14 6 (1.00%) Sitecore
15 5 (0.83%) Denodo
16 4 (0.66%) Ping Identity