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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 187 281 380
Rank change year-on-year +94 +99 -5
Contract jobs citing Metadata 845 314 187
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.54% 0.95% 0.49%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.30% 5.18% 2.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 540 209 119
10th Percentile £400 £398 £400
25th Percentile £459 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year - +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £652 £638 £697
90th Percentile £757 £740 £845
UK excluding London median daily rate £548 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +15.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 5 4
10th Percentile £20.72 - £24.99
25th Percentile £57.25 £13.25 £33.51
Median hourly rate £67.49 £30.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year +121.26% -30.43% -4.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £48.18
90th Percentile - £78.30 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +399.89% -71.98% +24.42%

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 8,205 6,066 6,798
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.94% 18.35% 17.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,462 4,055 4,602
10th Percentile £351 £340 £350
25th Percentile £418 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £793
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 89 90
10th Percentile £16.70 £21.02 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.05 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.36 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.15% +11.31% -33.33%
75th Percentile £58.44 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £79.00 £71.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.53% +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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +91 718 £550 - 773
London +52 405 £550 - 430
UK excluding London +79 342 £548 +15.26% 429
Work from Home +49 236 £550 -8.33% 348
North of England +3 94 £500 -2.44% 93
Midlands +9 80 £600 +46.34% 46
West Midlands +18 73 £612 +104.00% 28
South East -25 58 £575 +22.67% 107
Yorkshire +10 56 £500 -4.76% 29
Scotland +16 53 £509 +7.16% 55
South West -5 37 £575 -2.13% 66
North West -27 32 £625 +39.66% 54
East of England -9 26 £450 -18.18% 38
North East - 9 £463 - 10
East Midlands -14 7 £494 +18.98% 18
Wales -20 3 £750 +7.14% 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 45 (5.33%) SharePoint
2 41 (4.85%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (4.38%) Apache
4 28 (3.31%) Apache Spark
5 26 (3.08%) CMS
6 21 (2.49%) Confluence
7 18 (2.13%) SAS
8 12 (1.42%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.47%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Camunda
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 15 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.30%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.83%) Navisworks
3 7 (0.83%) Notepad++
3 7 (0.83%) Revit
4 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 19 (2.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.36%) Maximo
3 3 (0.36%) SAP HR
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%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.12%) Summit
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 253 (29.94%) Azure
2 188 (22.25%) AWS
3 114 (13.49%) Power Platform
4 100 (11.83%) GCP
5 83 (9.82%) Microsoft Purview
6 67 (7.93%) Collibra
7 57 (6.75%) Azure Data Factory
8 50 (5.92%) Snowflake
9 47 (5.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 45 (5.33%) Amazon S3
11 41 (4.85%) dbt
12 40 (4.73%) Azure DevOps
12 40 (4.73%) GitHub
13 33 (3.91%) Serverless
14 30 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (3.55%) Microsoft 365
15 28 (3.31%) Azure Databricks
16 21 (2.49%) Alation
16 21 (2.49%) Microsoft Copilot
16 21 (2.49%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.83%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.83%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.59%) Broadband
3 4 (0.47%) HTTP
3 4 (0.47%) Intranet
3 4 (0.47%) Kerberos
4 3 (0.36%) DNS
4 3 (0.36%) Firewall
4 3 (0.36%) SSH
5 2 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) BGP
6 1 (0.12%) LAN
6 1 (0.12%) MPLS
6 1 (0.12%) Network Security
6 1 (0.12%) OSPF
6 1 (0.12%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.12%) VLAN
6 1 (0.12%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (14.32%) Data Warehouse
2 101 (11.95%) Power BI
3 100 (11.83%) Data Lake
4 40 (4.73%) BigQuery
5 37 (4.38%) Relational Database
6 34 (4.02%) NoSQL
7 33 (3.91%) Delta Lake
7 33 (3.91%) PostgreSQL
8 26 (3.08%) Semantic Layer
9 25 (2.96%) Data Vault
10 21 (2.49%) Tableau
11 18 (2.13%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
11 18 (2.13%) SQL Server
12 17 (2.01%) Parquet
13 16 (1.89%) Big Data
14 15 (1.78%) Neo4j
15 13 (1.54%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (1.54%) Db2
15 13 (1.54%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 46 (5.44%) Git
2 33 (3.91%) ERwin
3 25 (2.96%) JIRA
4 24 (2.84%) ER Studio
5 14 (1.66%) GitLab
6 12 (1.42%) Jenkins
6 12 (1.42%) Maven
7 11 (1.30%) PowerDesigner
8 8 (0.95%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.59%) Selenium
10 4 (0.47%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.12%) Deequ
12 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 249 (29.47%) Social Skills
2 202 (23.91%) Finance
3 157 (18.58%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (13.37%) Public Sector
5 104 (12.31%) Banking
6 40 (4.73%) Influencing Skills
7 36 (4.26%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.96%) Legal
8 25 (2.96%) Publishing
9 24 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 23 (2.72%) Retail
11 20 (2.37%) Marketing
12 17 (2.01%) Aerospace
13 15 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.54%) Military
16 11 (1.30%) Front Office
17 9 (1.07%) Law
18 8 (0.95%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 234 (27.69%) Architect
2 168 (19.88%) Data Architect
3 137 (16.21%) Data Engineer
4 110 (13.02%) Lead
5 94 (11.12%) Analyst
6 92 (10.89%) Senior
7 50 (5.92%) Data Analyst
8 44 (5.21%) Business Analyst
8 44 (5.21%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.26%) Senior Data Engineer
10 34 (4.02%) Developer
11 26 (3.08%) Consultant
11 26 (3.08%) Data Business Analyst
12 23 (2.72%) Enterprise Architect
12 23 (2.72%) Lead Data Engineer
12 23 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
13 20 (2.37%) Data Manager
14 19 (2.25%) Enterprise Data Architect
15 18 (2.13%) Product Owner
16 16 (1.89%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (6.63%) PySpark
2 51 (6.04%) Terraform
3 47 (5.56%) REST
4 45 (5.33%) JSON
5 30 (3.55%) Kafka
6 24 (2.84%) YAML
7 15 (1.78%) FastAPI
7 15 (1.78%) Spring Boot
8 11 (1.30%) Apache NiFi
8 11 (1.30%) pydantic
8 11 (1.30%) React
8 11 (1.30%) XML
9 10 (1.18%) Spring
10 9 (1.07%) .NET
10 9 (1.07%) GraphQL
10 9 (1.07%) Node.js
11 8 (0.95%) JDBC
11 8 (0.95%) RESTful
11 8 (0.95%) SLSA
12 7 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 79 (9.35%) Cloud Native
2 78 (9.23%) Taxonomies
3 72 (8.52%) Onboarding
4 70 (8.28%) Data Structures
5 62 (7.34%) Management Information System
6 57 (6.75%) Product Ownership
7 47 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (4.73%) Reference Data
9 23 (2.72%) Data Fabric
10 18 (2.13%) AI Agents
11 17 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.78%) Derivative
13 13 (1.54%) Life Science
14 12 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.30%) CMDB
15 11 (1.30%) Distributed Computing
15 11 (1.30%) Equity Derivative
16 10 (1.18%) Autonomous Agent
16 10 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
16 10 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.54%) Linux
2 12 (1.42%) Unix
3 3 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (0.36%) Windows
3 3 (0.36%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 463 (54.79%) Data Governance
2 407 (48.17%) Data Modelling
3 328 (38.82%) Metadata Management
4 274 (32.43%) Analytics
5 250 (29.59%) Data Architecture
6 247 (29.23%) AI
7 227 (26.86%) Stakeholder Management
8 210 (24.85%) Agile
9 186 (22.01%) Data Engineering
10 185 (21.89%) Data Pipeline
11 183 (21.66%) CI/CD
12 178 (21.07%) Migration
13 166 (19.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 163 (19.29%) ETL
15 158 (18.70%) Data Lineage
16 155 (18.34%) Roadmaps
17 152 (17.99%) Data Management
18 140 (16.57%) Validation
19 132 (15.62%) Business Intelligence
20 129 (15.27%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 293 (34.67%) SQL
2 227 (26.86%) Python
3 57 (6.75%) Java
4 19 (2.25%) PowerShell
5 18 (2.13%) PL/SQL
6 13 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 12 (1.42%) C#
7 12 (1.42%) Groovy
7 12 (1.42%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.30%) Bash
8 11 (1.30%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.07%) Bicep
10 8 (0.95%) C++
11 7 (0.83%) SPARQL
12 6 (0.71%) Scala
12 6 (0.71%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.47%) Cypher
13 4 (0.47%) Perl
13 4 (0.47%) T-SQL
14 3 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 209 (24.73%) Security Cleared
2 158 (18.70%) SC Cleared
3 57 (6.75%) Degree
4 44 (5.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 23 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.42%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.42%) TOGAF Certification
8 9 (1.07%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.83%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Certification
10 4 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (0.47%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.36%) CISSP
12 2 (0.24%) ACCA
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CIMA
12 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 404 (47.81%) Data Quality
2 60 (7.10%) GDPR
3 46 (5.44%) Accessibility
4 41 (4.85%) QA
5 8 (0.95%) WCAG
6 7 (0.83%) NCSC
7 6 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.71%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.71%) MiFID
8 5 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.59%) NIST
9 4 (0.47%) GRC
9 4 (0.47%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.47%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
11 2 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 25 (2.96%) Docker
2 7 (0.83%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 29 (3.43%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.18%) Ansible
3 8 (0.95%) Grafana
3 8 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.36%) Control-M
6 2 (0.24%) Kibana
6 2 (0.24%) systemd
7 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 162 (19.17%) Microsoft
2 148 (17.51%) Databricks
3 55 (6.51%) Informatica
4 45 (5.33%) Google
5 39 (4.62%) Oracle
6 19 (2.25%) Sparx
7 17 (2.01%) SAP
8 14 (1.66%) IBM
9 13 (1.54%) Autodesk
9 13 (1.54%) ServiceNow
10 11 (1.30%) Denodo
10 11 (1.30%) Salesforce
11 10 (1.18%) Sybase
11 10 (1.18%) Teradata
12 9 (1.07%) Palantir
12 9 (1.07%) Talend
13 8 (0.95%) Foundry
13 8 (0.95%) Sonatype
14 7 (0.83%) Aspera
14 7 (0.83%) Signiant