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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 315 313
Rank change year-on-year +116 -2 +12
Contract jobs citing Metadata 604 217 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.26% 0.74% 0.69%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.28% 3.89% 4.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 411 157 197
10th Percentile £358 £232 £394
25th Percentile £421 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -11.30% +4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £788
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £469 £575
% change year-on-year +11.94% -18.43% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 15
10th Percentile £33.48 £19.73 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £22.66 £16.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +141.83% -18.57% -8.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £43.06 £42.88
90th Percentile £82.95 £82.25 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £20.97
% change year-on-year +141.83% +26.20% -45.00%

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 7,291 5,582 7,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.15% 19.00% 17.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,917 3,827 5,219
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £475
% change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 98 146
10th Percentile £15.94 £20.47 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.59 £23.69 £20.98
Median hourly rate £47.54 £33.81 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.63% -15.49% -33.33%
75th Percentile £73.81 £65.62 £61.58
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.63 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £31.64 £40.00
% change year-on-year +48.55% -20.90% -28.19%

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 17 May 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 17 May 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 17 May 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 +87 509 £519 -0.05% 128
London +79 292 £500 -12.28% 61
UK excluding London +28 240 £525 +11.94% 79
Work from Home +49 164 £525 -1.64% 114
Midlands -16 62 £570 +432.59% 15
West Midlands -12 60 £573 +435.51% 8
North of England -40 54 £500 -2.44% 19
South East -35 47 £500 +4.71% 27
Scotland +40 44 £473 +5.00% 6
East of England -9 29 £663 +106.14% 7
North West -28 28 £549 +0.69% 7
Yorkshire -37 24 £567 +51.13% 10
South West -31 9 £563 +2.32% 6
North East -20 5 £419 -9.46% 2
Wales -15 3 £750 +234.35% 2
East Midlands - 2 £474 - 7

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 34 (5.63%) Apache Spark
1 34 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 23 (3.81%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (3.64%) SAS
4 19 (3.15%) Confluence
5 15 (2.48%) Apache
6 8 (1.32%) CMS
7 4 (0.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 4 (0.66%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.50%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
10 1 (0.17%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.17%) Drupal
10 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.17%) SharePoint 2013
10 1 (0.17%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (4.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.16%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.16%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.16%) Revit
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 13 (2.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Summit
3 2 (0.33%) Actimize
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.17%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.17%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 177 (29.30%) Azure
2 127 (21.03%) AWS
3 88 (14.57%) Power Platform
4 69 (11.42%) GCP
5 55 (9.11%) Collibra
6 45 (7.45%) Microsoft Purview
7 42 (6.95%) Azure Data Factory
8 34 (5.63%) GitHub
9 33 (5.46%) Amazon S3
9 33 (5.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 32 (5.30%) Serverless
11 27 (4.47%) AWS Lambda
11 27 (4.47%) Azure DevOps
11 27 (4.47%) dbt
12 21 (3.48%) Snowflake
13 16 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
14 12 (1.99%) Amazon EMR
14 12 (1.99%) Entra ID
15 11 (1.82%) ChatGPT
15 11 (1.82%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.16%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.16%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.83%) Intranet
3 4 (0.66%) Firewall
3 4 (0.66%) SSL
4 3 (0.50%) HTTP
5 1 (0.17%) 4G
5 1 (0.17%) 5G
5 1 (0.17%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (19.04%) Data Warehouse
2 79 (13.08%) Power BI
3 75 (12.42%) Data Lake
4 35 (5.79%) Metadata Repository
5 34 (5.63%) Relational Database
6 27 (4.47%) Data Vault
6 27 (4.47%) NoSQL
6 27 (4.47%) Tableau
7 26 (4.30%) SQL Server
8 23 (3.81%) Delta Lake
9 21 (3.48%) Big Data
9 21 (3.48%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
11 19 (3.15%) Amazon Redshift
12 16 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
13 15 (2.48%) Oracle Database
13 15 (2.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 13 (2.15%) BigQuery
14 13 (2.15%) Hadoop
15 12 (1.99%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 33 (5.46%) ERwin
2 28 (4.64%) Git
3 20 (3.31%) JIRA
4 15 (2.48%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.48%) PowerDesigner
5 13 (2.15%) ER Studio
6 12 (1.99%) GitLab
7 9 (1.49%) Maven
8 8 (1.32%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.33%) git-flow
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
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
11 1 (0.17%) Yeoman
General
1 176 (29.14%) Social Skills
2 166 (27.48%) Finance
3 121 (20.03%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (12.75%) Banking
5 75 (12.42%) Public Sector
6 38 (6.29%) Documentation Skills
7 23 (3.81%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.98%) Legal
9 16 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.48%) Publishing
11 13 (2.15%) Marketing
12 9 (1.49%) Aviation
12 9 (1.49%) Front Office
12 9 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.49%) Retail
13 7 (1.16%) Military
14 6 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.99%) Law
15 5 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 4 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 136 (22.52%) Architect
2 98 (16.23%) Data Architect
3 97 (16.06%) Data Engineer
4 86 (14.24%) Analyst
5 56 (9.27%) Data Analyst
6 49 (8.11%) Lead
6 49 (8.11%) Senior
7 41 (6.79%) Developer
8 39 (6.46%) Data Modeller
9 33 (5.46%) Business Analyst
10 24 (3.97%) Consultant
11 19 (3.15%) Data Manager
12 18 (2.98%) Data Business Analyst
13 16 (2.65%) Senior Data Engineer
14 14 (2.32%) DevOps Engineer
15 13 (2.15%) AWS Engineer
15 13 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
16 12 (1.99%) Governance Analyst
16 12 (1.99%) Software Engineer
17 11 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.45%) PySpark
2 31 (5.13%) Kafka
3 24 (3.97%) JSON
3 24 (3.97%) REST
4 17 (2.81%) .NET
5 16 (2.65%) YAML
6 12 (1.99%) React
7 11 (1.82%) OAuth
8 10 (1.66%) Node.js
8 10 (1.66%) SOAP
9 9 (1.49%) Middleware
9 9 (1.49%) XML
10 8 (1.32%) SLSA
11 7 (1.16%) ADO
11 7 (1.16%) OAuth2
11 7 (1.16%) RESTful
12 6 (0.99%) HTML
13 5 (0.83%) CSS
13 5 (0.83%) Pandas
13 5 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 56 (9.27%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.28%) Data Structures
3 43 (7.12%) Onboarding
4 39 (6.46%) Management Information System
5 37 (6.13%) Reference Data
6 33 (5.46%) Product Ownership
6 33 (5.46%) Taxonomies
7 27 (4.47%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (2.98%) Derivative
9 17 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.99%) Credit Risk
10 12 (1.99%) Virtual Team
11 11 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.66%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (1.66%) Equity Derivative
13 9 (1.49%) Clustering
13 9 (1.49%) Fixed Income
14 8 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.32%) Market Risk
15 6 (0.99%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.15%) Unix
2 7 (1.16%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 301 (49.83%) Data Governance
2 277 (45.86%) Data Modelling
3 219 (36.26%) Metadata Management
4 204 (33.77%) Analytics
5 164 (27.15%) ETL
6 154 (25.50%) Data Architecture
7 133 (22.02%) AI
8 127 (21.03%) Data Pipeline
9 124 (20.53%) Data Engineering
10 119 (19.70%) CI/CD
11 115 (19.04%) Migration
12 110 (18.21%) Business Intelligence
12 110 (18.21%) Problem-Solving
13 106 (17.55%) Data Lineage
14 105 (17.38%) Agile
15 97 (16.06%) Validation
16 96 (15.89%) Stakeholder Management
17 93 (15.40%) Decision-Making
18 92 (15.23%) Data Management
19 91 (15.07%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 247 (40.89%) SQL
2 157 (25.99%) Python
3 38 (6.29%) Java
4 27 (4.47%) C#
5 26 (4.30%) PL/SQL
6 16 (2.65%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.15%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.15%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.66%) Perl
9 9 (1.49%) Groovy
10 8 (1.32%) T-SQL
11 7 (1.16%) C++
11 7 (1.16%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.99%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 5 (0.83%) Scala
14 4 (0.66%) Bash
14 4 (0.66%) Bicep
14 4 (0.66%) R
15 2 (0.33%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 136 (22.52%) Security Cleared
2 99 (16.39%) SC Cleared
3 40 (6.62%) Degree
4 22 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.15%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (1.66%) TOGAF Certification
8 9 (1.49%) Azure Certification
9 8 (1.32%) DV Cleared
10 5 (0.83%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
11 2 (0.33%) CISM
11 2 (0.33%) CISSP
11 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.33%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.17%) CSPO
12 1 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (41.39%) Data Quality
2 59 (9.77%) GDPR
3 33 (5.46%) QA
4 20 (3.31%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.99%) GRC
6 8 (1.32%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (1.16%) NIST
8 6 (0.99%) ISO 19650
8 6 (0.99%) MiFID
9 5 (0.83%) IFRS
10 4 (0.66%) ISO 22301
11 3 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.50%) ISO 31000
12 2 (0.33%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.33%) IFRS 9
12 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 15 (2.48%) Docker
2 8 (1.32%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 23 (3.81%) Terraform
2 13 (2.15%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.32%) Grafana
4 6 (0.99%) 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
1 112 (18.54%) Microsoft
2 84 (13.91%) Databricks
3 59 (9.77%) Oracle
4 47 (7.78%) Informatica
5 23 (3.81%) Salesforce
6 20 (3.31%) Google
6 20 (3.31%) Talend
7 16 (2.65%) ServiceNow
8 15 (2.48%) SAP
9 13 (2.15%) Autodesk
9 13 (2.15%) Sparx
10 9 (1.49%) Sybase
11 8 (1.32%) Sonatype
12 7 (1.16%) Adobe
12 7 (1.16%) IBM
12 7 (1.16%) OpenAI
12 7 (1.16%) Teradata
13 5 (0.83%) Denodo
14 4 (0.66%) Hortonworks
14 4 (0.66%) Ping Identity