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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 319 359
Rank change year-on-year +117 +40 +20
Contract jobs citing Metadata 735 268 213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 0.81% 0.55%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.01% 4.48% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 185 137
10th Percentile £385 £314 £394
25th Percentile £455 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £671 £638 £775
90th Percentile £758 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +16.67% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 4 10
10th Percentile £25.76 - £13.50
25th Percentile £57.63 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.50 £19.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +250.65% -30.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.50 £33.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £69.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +400.00% -17.68% -54.76%

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 8,158 5,984 7,057
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.27% 18.17% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,435 4,045 4,978
10th Percentile £356 £344 £350
25th Percentile £418 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 91 102
10th Percentile £15.95 £20.75 £15.10
25th Percentile £23.05 £24.76 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +1.55% -34.35%
75th Percentile £61.31 £62.88 £56.88
90th Percentile £76.00 £78.70 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -38.77%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 +81 626 £525 -2.33% 298
London +42 354 £525 -9.68% 176
UK excluding London +78 296 £525 +16.67% 160
Work from Home +53 218 £525 -8.70% 140
North of England -14 74 £514 +34.46% 32
Midlands -7 69 £600 +460.75% 24
West Midlands -9 64 £631 +489.95% 17
South East -43 54 £525 +17.58% 57
Scotland +26 45 £525 +10.53% 16
Yorkshire -4 42 £514 -4.31% 10
East of England +4 32 £463 -11.90% 9
North West -21 27 £575 +83.71% 19
South West -15 26 £550 -8.33% 16
North East -37 7 £463 +1.37% 3
East Midlands -9 5 £500 +21.95% 7
Wales -10 3 £750 +76.47% 3

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 41 (5.58%) SharePoint
2 31 (4.22%) Apache Airflow
3 25 (3.40%) Apache
3 25 (3.40%) Apache Spark
4 20 (2.72%) CMS
5 18 (2.45%) Confluence
6 14 (1.90%) SAS
7 4 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.41%) Headless CMS
8 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.14%) Drupal
10 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.14%) Liferay
10 1 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
10 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.95%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.95%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.95%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.95%) Revit
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.14%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.14%) Notion
5 1 (0.14%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 16 (2.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.54%) Summit
4 3 (0.41%) Maximo
4 3 (0.41%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.27%) HFM
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.27%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.27%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.27%) Workfront
6 1 (0.14%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 214 (29.12%) Azure
2 162 (22.04%) AWS
3 103 (14.01%) Power Platform
4 80 (10.88%) GCP
5 60 (8.16%) Microsoft Purview
6 59 (8.03%) Collibra
7 46 (6.26%) Azure Data Factory
8 44 (5.99%) Amazon S3
9 40 (5.44%) GitHub
10 36 (4.90%) dbt
10 36 (4.90%) Snowflake
11 34 (4.63%) Serverless
12 32 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
13 30 (4.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 28 (3.81%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (2.59%) Microsoft Copilot
15 19 (2.59%) Power Automate
16 17 (2.31%) Amazon EMR
17 16 (2.18%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.95%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.95%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.68%) Intranet
3 4 (0.54%) Broadband
3 4 (0.54%) HTTP
3 4 (0.54%) SSL
4 3 (0.41%) Firewall
5 1 (0.14%) 4G
5 1 (0.14%) 5G
5 1 (0.14%) DNS
5 1 (0.14%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.14%) SAN
5 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (15.78%) Data Warehouse
2 90 (12.24%) Power BI
3 81 (11.02%) Data Lake
4 37 (5.03%) Relational Database
5 34 (4.63%) Data Vault
6 33 (4.49%) NoSQL
7 28 (3.81%) Delta Lake
8 27 (3.67%) Tableau
9 22 (2.99%) BigQuery
9 22 (2.99%) Semantic Layer
10 18 (2.45%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
10 18 (2.45%) Snowflake Schema
11 16 (2.18%) Amazon Athena
12 15 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
12 15 (2.04%) SQL Server
13 14 (1.90%) Db2
14 12 (1.63%) Star Schema
15 11 (1.50%) Big Data
15 11 (1.50%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 38 (5.17%) ERwin
2 32 (4.35%) Git
3 27 (3.67%) ER Studio
4 21 (2.86%) JIRA
5 18 (2.45%) Jenkins
6 15 (2.04%) Maven
6 15 (2.04%) PowerDesigner
7 13 (1.77%) GitLab
8 10 (1.36%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.41%) Selenium
10 2 (0.27%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.27%) git-flow
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.27%) TestRail
11 1 (0.14%) MLflow
11 1 (0.14%) Postman
11 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.14%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 207 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 196 (26.67%) Finance
3 157 (21.36%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (12.24%) Banking
5 78 (10.61%) Public Sector
6 35 (4.76%) Investment Banking
7 33 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
9 20 (2.72%) Legal
10 18 (2.45%) Publishing
11 17 (2.31%) Marketing
11 17 (2.31%) Retail
12 12 (1.63%) Front Office
12 12 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
13 11 (1.50%) Aviation
13 11 (1.50%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.95%) Law
14 7 (0.95%) Military
14 7 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 175 (23.81%) Architect
2 126 (17.14%) Data Architect
3 117 (15.92%) Data Engineer
4 93 (12.65%) Lead
5 89 (12.11%) Analyst
6 67 (9.12%) Senior
7 54 (7.35%) Data Analyst
8 48 (6.53%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.90%) Developer
10 33 (4.49%) Business Analyst
11 28 (3.81%) Consultant
12 21 (2.86%) Data Manager
13 20 (2.72%) Data Business Analyst
14 19 (2.59%) Senior Data Engineer
15 18 (2.45%) Product Owner
16 17 (2.31%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.31%) Lead Data Engineer
17 15 (2.04%) Governance Analyst
17 15 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
18 13 (1.77%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.53%) PySpark
2 38 (5.17%) JSON
3 32 (4.35%) Kafka
4 29 (3.95%) REST
5 16 (2.18%) YAML
6 13 (1.77%) Node.js
6 13 (1.77%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.63%) .NET
7 12 (1.63%) XML
8 10 (1.36%) OAuth
8 10 (1.36%) React
8 10 (1.36%) SLSA
9 8 (1.09%) GraphQL
9 8 (1.09%) Middleware
9 8 (1.09%) OAuth2
9 8 (1.09%) Spring
10 7 (0.95%) RESTful
11 6 (0.82%) CSS
11 6 (0.82%) HTML
11 6 (0.82%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 70 (9.52%) Cloud Native
2 63 (8.57%) Data Structures
3 61 (8.30%) Onboarding
4 56 (7.62%) Taxonomies
5 51 (6.94%) Product Ownership
6 48 (6.53%) Management Information System
7 45 (6.12%) Legacy Systems
8 44 (5.99%) Reference Data
9 19 (2.59%) Derivative
10 17 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.77%) AI Agents
12 13 (1.77%) Life Science
13 12 (1.63%) Equity Derivative
14 11 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.36%) Digital Media
15 10 (1.36%) Distributed Computing
16 9 (1.22%) Clustering
16 9 (1.22%) Data Fabric
16 9 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.59%) Unix
2 13 (1.77%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 364 (49.52%) Data Governance
2 349 (47.48%) Data Modelling
3 261 (35.51%) Metadata Management
4 246 (33.47%) Analytics
5 183 (24.90%) AI
6 179 (24.35%) Data Architecture
7 175 (23.81%) Data Pipeline
8 162 (22.04%) Agile
9 161 (21.90%) ETL
10 155 (21.09%) Data Engineering
11 153 (20.82%) Migration
12 152 (20.68%) CI/CD
13 144 (19.59%) Stakeholder Management
14 124 (16.87%) Data Lineage
15 123 (16.73%) Business Intelligence
16 117 (15.92%) DevOps
16 117 (15.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 116 (15.78%) Validation
18 112 (15.24%) Data Management
18 112 (15.24%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 276 (37.55%) SQL
2 192 (26.12%) Python
3 60 (8.16%) Java
4 22 (2.99%) PL/SQL
5 16 (2.18%) C#
6 15 (2.04%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.90%) PowerShell
8 13 (1.77%) Groovy
9 12 (1.63%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 9 (1.22%) C++
12 8 (1.09%) Bash
12 8 (1.09%) TypeScript
13 7 (0.95%) SPARQL
14 6 (0.82%) Bicep
14 6 (0.82%) T-SQL
15 5 (0.68%) Apex Code
15 5 (0.68%) Scala
16 4 (0.54%) Cypher
16 4 (0.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 157 (21.36%) Security Cleared
2 120 (16.33%) SC Cleared
3 40 (5.44%) Degree
4 34 (4.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.45%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.36%) TOGAF Certification
9 7 (0.95%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.82%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.27%) ACCA
12 2 (0.27%) CBAP
12 2 (0.27%) CIMA
12 2 (0.27%) CISM
12 2 (0.27%) CISSP
12 2 (0.27%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.27%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.27%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (41.50%) Data Quality
2 62 (8.44%) GDPR
3 43 (5.85%) QA
4 40 (5.44%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.95%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.82%) GRC
6 6 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.68%) NIST
7 5 (0.68%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.68%) WCAG
8 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.54%) MiFID
9 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.41%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.41%) NCSC
10 2 (0.27%) IFRS
10 2 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 19 (2.59%) Docker
2 9 (1.22%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 33 (4.49%) Terraform
2 20 (2.72%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.50%) Grafana
4 8 (1.09%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.54%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.54%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.41%) Ansible
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.14%) Control-M
9 1 (0.14%) systemd
Vendors
1 135 (18.37%) Microsoft
2 112 (15.24%) Databricks
3 52 (7.07%) Oracle
4 47 (6.39%) Informatica
5 26 (3.54%) Google
6 17 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 16 (2.18%) IBM
7 16 (2.18%) SAP
7 16 (2.18%) Sparx
8 13 (1.77%) Autodesk
9 11 (1.50%) Sybase
9 11 (1.50%) Talend
10 10 (1.36%) Denodo
10 10 (1.36%) Sonatype
11 8 (1.09%) Adobe
11 8 (1.09%) CA Agile Central
11 8 (1.09%) Palantir
12 7 (0.95%) Aspera
12 7 (0.95%) Foundry
12 7 (0.95%) Signiant