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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 186 286 379
Rank change year-on-year +100 +93 +4
Contract jobs citing Metadata 821 310 193
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.50% 0.94% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.92% 5.20% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 522 213 124
10th Percentile £400 £350 £402
25th Percentile £456 £453 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -2.78% -6.09%
75th Percentile £656 £638 £738
90th Percentile £756 £749 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +17.02% -3.59% -10.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 4 5
10th Percentile £20.00 - £20.08
25th Percentile £55.00 £13.25 £21.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £22.00 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.82% -44.30% -14.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.69 £48.18
90th Percentile - £70.78 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +400.00% -71.98% +4.74%

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 8,280 5,956 6,931
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.18% 18.04% 17.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,519 3,982 4,798
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £526
Median % change year-on-year - -4.90% -2.86%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £745 £794
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 93 86
10th Percentile £16.49 £22.85 £17.50
25th Percentile £24.13 £30.96 £20.88
Median hourly rate £39.84 £40.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% +16.06% -34.35%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £59.34
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.89% +18.30% -42.86%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +73 706 £550 +3.53% 466
London +57 403 £545 -5.22% 293
UK excluding London +67 325 £550 +17.02% 238
Work from Home +47 233 £525 -9.68% 312
North of England +3 93 £500 -2.44% 47
Midlands +1 76 £605 +101.67% 28
West Midlands +2 69 £619 +478.50% 22
Yorkshire +10 58 £500 -6.98% 9
South East -24 58 £560 +19.47% 64
Scotland +5 45 £540 +13.68% 30
East of England +2 32 £450 -18.18% 21
North West -27 31 £600 +47.24% 31
South West -23 26 £563 -2.17% 35
East Midlands -16 7 £494 +18.98% 6
North East -39 7 £463 +2.78% 7
Wales -22 3 £750 +7.14% 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 49 (5.97%) SharePoint
2 41 (4.99%) Apache Airflow
3 32 (3.90%) Apache
4 26 (3.17%) CMS
5 22 (2.68%) Apache Spark
6 21 (2.56%) Confluence
7 17 (2.07%) SAS
8 10 (1.22%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 20 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.85%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.85%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.85%) Revit
3 6 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.12%) Notion
7 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.37%) Maximo
3 3 (0.37%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.37%) Summit
4 2 (0.24%) HFM
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 2 (0.24%) Workfront
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 248 (30.21%) Azure
2 194 (23.63%) AWS
3 110 (13.40%) Power Platform
4 98 (11.94%) GCP
5 74 (9.01%) Microsoft Purview
6 68 (8.28%) Collibra
7 51 (6.21%) Azure Data Factory
8 44 (5.36%) dbt
9 43 (5.24%) Snowflake
10 42 (5.12%) Amazon S3
11 41 (4.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 41 (4.99%) GitHub
12 35 (4.26%) Serverless
13 34 (4.14%) Azure DevOps
14 33 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
15 31 (3.78%) Microsoft 365
16 26 (3.17%) Azure Databricks
17 23 (2.80%) Power Automate
18 22 (2.68%) Entra ID
19 21 (2.56%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.85%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.85%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.61%) Broadband
3 4 (0.49%) HTTP
3 4 (0.49%) Intranet
3 4 (0.49%) SSL
4 3 (0.37%) DNS
4 3 (0.37%) Firewall
5 2 (0.24%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (15.23%) Data Warehouse
2 97 (11.81%) Data Lake
3 96 (11.69%) Power BI
4 37 (4.51%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.38%) NoSQL
6 35 (4.26%) Delta Lake
7 32 (3.90%) BigQuery
8 30 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
9 28 (3.41%) Semantic Layer
10 26 (3.17%) Tableau
11 25 (3.05%) Data Vault
12 20 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (2.19%) SQL Server
14 17 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.71%) Db2
15 14 (1.71%) Parquet
16 13 (1.58%) MongoDB
16 13 (1.58%) Neo4j
17 12 (1.46%) Geospatial Data
17 12 (1.46%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 39 (4.75%) Git
2 33 (4.02%) ERwin
3 26 (3.17%) JIRA
4 25 (3.05%) ER Studio
5 16 (1.95%) Jenkins
6 15 (1.83%) Maven
7 12 (1.46%) GitLab
7 12 (1.46%) PowerDesigner
8 10 (1.22%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.73%) Selenium
10 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.37%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) Deequ
12 1 (0.12%) git-flow
12 1 (0.12%) Postman
12 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 241 (29.35%) Social Skills
2 206 (25.09%) Finance
3 159 (19.37%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (12.67%) Public Sector
5 101 (12.30%) Banking
6 37 (4.51%) Influencing Skills
7 36 (4.38%) Investment Banking
8 27 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (3.17%) Publishing
10 23 (2.80%) Retail
11 22 (2.68%) Marketing
12 20 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (2.19%) Legal
14 14 (1.71%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.58%) Aerospace
16 12 (1.46%) Front Office
17 10 (1.22%) Law
17 10 (1.22%) Military
18 8 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 217 (26.43%) Architect
2 157 (19.12%) Data Architect
3 135 (16.44%) Data Engineer
4 109 (13.28%) Lead
5 87 (10.60%) Analyst
6 74 (9.01%) Senior
7 48 (5.85%) Data Analyst
8 42 (5.12%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.38%) Developer
10 35 (4.26%) Business Analyst
11 29 (3.53%) Senior Data Engineer
12 27 (3.29%) Consultant
13 24 (2.92%) Data Manager
14 22 (2.68%) Solutions Architect
15 21 (2.56%) Lead Data Engineer
16 20 (2.44%) Product Owner
17 19 (2.31%) Data Business Analyst
17 19 (2.31%) Enterprise Architect
18 17 (2.07%) DevOps Engineer
19 16 (1.95%) Enterprise Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (7.31%) PySpark
2 44 (5.36%) JSON
3 43 (5.24%) Terraform
4 37 (4.51%) REST
5 32 (3.90%) Kafka
6 19 (2.31%) YAML
7 15 (1.83%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.58%) XML
9 12 (1.46%) Node.js
10 11 (1.34%) React
11 10 (1.22%) SLSA
11 10 (1.22%) Spring
12 9 (1.10%) .NET
12 9 (1.10%) GraphQL
12 9 (1.10%) Playwright
13 8 (0.97%) OAuth
14 7 (0.85%) Apache NiFi
14 7 (0.85%) Middleware
14 7 (0.85%) OAuth2
15 6 (0.73%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.38%) Cloud Native
2 73 (8.89%) Onboarding
3 65 (7.92%) Data Structures
4 63 (7.67%) Taxonomies
5 59 (7.19%) Management Information System
6 54 (6.58%) Product Ownership
7 45 (5.48%) Legacy Systems
8 43 (5.24%) Reference Data
9 22 (2.68%) Data Fabric
10 18 (2.19%) AI Agents
10 18 (2.19%) Derivative
11 17 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (1.58%) Life Science
12 13 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.46%) Distributed Computing
13 12 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.46%) Equity Derivative
14 10 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 16 (1.95%) Unix
2 13 (1.58%) Linux
3 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
3 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 441 (53.71%) Data Governance
2 391 (47.62%) Data Modelling
3 321 (39.10%) Metadata Management
4 267 (32.52%) Analytics
5 229 (27.89%) Data Architecture
6 226 (27.53%) AI
7 214 (26.07%) Stakeholder Management
8 200 (24.36%) Agile
9 189 (23.02%) Data Pipeline
10 183 (22.29%) Data Engineering
11 176 (21.44%) CI/CD
11 176 (21.44%) Migration
12 175 (21.32%) ETL
13 151 (18.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 146 (17.78%) Data Management
15 144 (17.54%) Roadmaps
16 139 (16.93%) Data Lineage
17 131 (15.96%) Validation
18 129 (15.71%) Business Intelligence
18 129 (15.71%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 295 (35.93%) SQL
2 216 (26.31%) Python
3 65 (7.92%) Java
4 21 (2.56%) PL/SQL
5 14 (1.71%) PowerShell
5 14 (1.71%) Shell Script
6 13 (1.58%) C#
6 13 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.58%) Groovy
6 13 (1.58%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.10%) Bash
7 9 (1.10%) C++
8 7 (0.85%) Bicep
8 7 (0.85%) SPARQL
9 6 (0.73%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.61%) Scala
10 5 (0.61%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.49%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.49%) Cypher
11 4 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 197 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 148 (18.03%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.58%) Degree
4 43 (5.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.56%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.71%) Azure Certification
8 12 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
9 10 (1.22%) AWS Certification
10 8 (0.97%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 5 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.37%) CISSP
13 3 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (0.37%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.24%) ACCA
14 2 (0.24%) CBAP
14 2 (0.24%) CISM
14 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (46.04%) Data Quality
2 64 (7.80%) GDPR
3 45 (5.48%) Accessibility
3 45 (5.48%) QA
4 8 (0.97%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 8 (0.97%) WCAG
5 7 (0.85%) NCSC
6 6 (0.73%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.73%) MiFID
7 5 (0.61%) GRC
7 5 (0.61%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.61%) SNOMED CT
8 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.49%) NIST
9 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.37%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.24%) PMO
10 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.24%) SLA
System Software
1 24 (2.92%) Docker
2 9 (1.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 25 (3.05%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
3 8 (0.97%) Grafana
4 6 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.61%) Ansible
6 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.49%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.37%) Control-M
8 2 (0.24%) Kibana
8 2 (0.24%) systemd
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 155 (18.88%) Microsoft
2 137 (16.69%) Databricks
3 61 (7.43%) Informatica
4 53 (6.46%) Oracle
5 36 (4.38%) Google
6 18 (2.19%) Sparx
7 17 (2.07%) SAP
8 16 (1.95%) IBM
9 15 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.83%) Talend
10 14 (1.71%) ServiceNow
11 13 (1.58%) Autodesk
12 11 (1.34%) Sybase
12 11 (1.34%) Teradata
13 10 (1.22%) Denodo
13 10 (1.22%) Palantir
13 10 (1.22%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.10%) Foundry
15 8 (0.97%) CA Agile Central
16 7 (0.85%) Signiant