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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 187 294 392
Rank change year-on-year +107 +98 -24
Contract jobs citing Metadata 798 290 195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.49% 0.89% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.76% 4.95% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 502 200 122
10th Percentile £400 £329 £400
25th Percentile £456 £452 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -2.78% -6.09%
75th Percentile £661 £638 £750
90th Percentile £750 £750 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £546 £468 £481
% change year-on-year +16.72% -2.75% -11.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 3 10
10th Percentile £20.00 - £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £13.25 £14.95
Median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +400.00% -50.91% -44.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.63 £33.75
90th Percentile - £72.75 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £16.40
% change year-on-year +400.00% -17.68% -69.82%

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 8,173 5,858 6,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.25% 18.01% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,444 3,920 4,881
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.23%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 94 100
10th Percentile £15.88 £21.22 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.02 £19.77
Median hourly rate £38.38 £38.85 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% +19.52% -40.91%
75th Percentile £61.31 £64.94 £55.63
90th Percentile £75.30 £79.63 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £34.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.87% +13.97% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +96 686 £550 +4.76% 578
London +68 396 £550 -4.35% 368
UK excluding London +66 313 £546 +16.72% 296
Work from Home +55 229 £525 -10.64% 271
North of England -9 84 £500 - 75
Midlands -4 76 £605 +101.67% 29
West Midlands +3 69 £619 +478.50% 22
South East -37 56 £538 +14.85% 80
Yorkshire +10 51 £500 -15.79% 26
Scotland +10 44 £533 +12.11% 32
East of England 0 32 £450 -18.18% 12
North West -32 29 £575 +41.10% 42
South West -20 26 £575 -4.17% 49
East Midlands -14 7 £494 +18.98% 7
North East -39 7 £463 +2.78% 7
Wales -16 3 £750 +76.47% 6

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 (6.14%) SharePoint
2 35 (4.39%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (3.38%) Apache
4 26 (3.26%) CMS
5 24 (3.01%) Apache Spark
6 19 (2.38%) Confluence
7 16 (2.01%) SAS
8 9 (1.13%) Headless CMS
8 9 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.38%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.25%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.13%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.13%) JBoss
12 1 (0.13%) Liferay
12 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (2.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.88%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.88%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.88%) Revit
3 6 (0.75%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.13%) Notion
7 1 (0.13%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.50%) Summit
4 3 (0.38%) Maximo
4 3 (0.38%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.25%) HFM
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.25%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.25%) Workfront
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 245 (30.70%) Azure
2 191 (23.93%) AWS
3 109 (13.66%) Power Platform
4 90 (11.28%) GCP
5 67 (8.40%) Microsoft Purview
6 61 (7.64%) Collibra
7 51 (6.39%) Azure Data Factory
8 42 (5.26%) GitHub
9 41 (5.14%) Amazon S3
10 39 (4.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 39 (4.89%) dbt
10 39 (4.89%) Snowflake
11 35 (4.39%) Azure DevOps
11 35 (4.39%) Serverless
12 33 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (3.88%) Microsoft 365
14 26 (3.26%) Azure Databricks
15 23 (2.88%) Power Automate
16 21 (2.63%) Entra ID
16 21 (2.63%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.88%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.88%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.63%) Broadband
3 4 (0.50%) HTTP
3 4 (0.50%) Intranet
3 4 (0.50%) SSL
4 3 (0.38%) Firewall
5 1 (0.13%) DNS
5 1 (0.13%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.13%) SAN
5 1 (0.13%) SMS
5 1 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (15.16%) Data Warehouse
2 96 (12.03%) Power BI
3 89 (11.15%) Data Lake
4 39 (4.89%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.51%) NoSQL
6 34 (4.26%) Delta Lake
7 31 (3.88%) Tableau
8 27 (3.38%) Semantic Layer
9 26 (3.26%) Data Vault
9 26 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (2.76%) BigQuery
11 20 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
12 16 (2.01%) Elasticsearch
12 16 (2.01%) SQL Server
13 14 (1.75%) Db2
14 13 (1.63%) MongoDB
15 12 (1.50%) Amazon Athena
15 12 (1.50%) Parquet
15 12 (1.50%) Snowflake Schema
16 11 (1.38%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 38 (4.76%) Git
2 34 (4.26%) ERwin
3 25 (3.13%) ER Studio
4 23 (2.88%) JIRA
5 17 (2.13%) Jenkins
6 15 (1.88%) Maven
7 13 (1.63%) PowerDesigner
8 12 (1.50%) GitLab
9 10 (1.25%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.75%) Selenium
11 3 (0.38%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.38%) MLflow
12 2 (0.25%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.25%) TestRail
13 1 (0.13%) Deequ
13 1 (0.13%) git-flow
13 1 (0.13%) Postman
13 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 1 (0.13%) Team Foundation Server
13 1 (0.13%) VersionOne
General
1 238 (29.82%) Social Skills
2 207 (25.94%) Finance
3 160 (20.05%) Analytical Skills
4 102 (12.78%) Public Sector
5 97 (12.16%) Banking
6 38 (4.76%) Investment Banking
7 37 (4.64%) Influencing Skills
8 26 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.88%) Publishing
9 23 (2.88%) Retail
10 21 (2.63%) Marketing
11 18 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (2.26%) Legal
12 14 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (1.63%) Manufacturing
14 12 (1.50%) Front Office
15 10 (1.25%) Law
15 10 (1.25%) Military
16 8 (1.00%) Aerospace
16 8 (1.00%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 208 (26.07%) Architect
2 148 (18.55%) Data Architect
3 128 (16.04%) Data Engineer
4 105 (13.16%) Lead
5 93 (11.65%) Analyst
6 73 (9.15%) Senior
7 54 (6.77%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.39%) Data Modeller
9 35 (4.39%) Business Analyst
9 35 (4.39%) Developer
10 28 (3.51%) Senior Data Engineer
11 24 (3.01%) Consultant
12 22 (2.76%) Data Manager
13 21 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.51%) Data Business Analyst
14 20 (2.51%) Enterprise Architect
14 20 (2.51%) Lead Data Engineer
14 20 (2.51%) Product Owner
15 17 (2.13%) DevOps Engineer
16 16 (2.01%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.27%) PySpark
2 42 (5.26%) JSON
3 40 (5.01%) Terraform
4 35 (4.39%) REST
5 34 (4.26%) Kafka
6 19 (2.38%) YAML
7 15 (1.88%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.50%) Node.js
8 12 (1.50%) XML
9 11 (1.38%) React
10 10 (1.25%) SLSA
10 10 (1.25%) Spring
11 9 (1.13%) .NET
11 9 (1.13%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.13%) Playwright
12 8 (1.00%) Middleware
13 7 (0.88%) RESTful
14 6 (0.75%) FastAPI
14 6 (0.75%) OAuth
14 6 (0.75%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 73 (9.15%) Cloud Native
2 66 (8.27%) Onboarding
3 64 (8.02%) Data Structures
4 59 (7.39%) Taxonomies
5 56 (7.02%) Management Information System
6 53 (6.64%) Product Ownership
7 47 (5.89%) Legacy Systems
8 43 (5.39%) Reference Data
9 19 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (2.38%) Derivative
10 16 (2.01%) AI Agents
10 16 (2.01%) Data Fabric
11 15 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.63%) Life Science
13 12 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.50%) Equity Derivative
14 11 (1.38%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.13%) Clustering
15 9 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (1.13%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.38%) Unix
2 13 (1.63%) Linux
3 1 (0.13%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.13%) VMS
3 1 (0.13%) Windows
3 1 (0.13%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 420 (52.63%) Data Governance
2 372 (46.62%) Data Modelling
3 307 (38.47%) Metadata Management
4 261 (32.71%) Analytics
5 220 (27.57%) AI
5 220 (27.57%) Data Architecture
6 203 (25.44%) Stakeholder Management
7 185 (23.18%) Agile
8 180 (22.56%) Data Pipeline
9 170 (21.30%) Data Engineering
9 170 (21.30%) ETL
9 170 (21.30%) Migration
10 168 (21.05%) CI/CD
11 139 (17.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 138 (17.29%) Data Management
13 135 (16.92%) Data Lineage
13 135 (16.92%) Roadmaps
14 129 (16.17%) Business Intelligence
14 129 (16.17%) Decision-Making
14 129 (16.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 290 (36.34%) SQL
2 207 (25.94%) Python
3 63 (7.89%) Java
4 22 (2.76%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.88%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.75%) C#
6 14 (1.75%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.63%) Groovy
7 13 (1.63%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.13%) Bash
9 9 (1.13%) C++
10 7 (0.88%) Bicep
10 7 (0.88%) SPARQL
11 6 (0.75%) TypeScript
12 5 (0.63%) Scala
12 5 (0.63%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.50%) Apex Code
13 4 (0.50%) Cypher
13 4 (0.50%) Perl
Qualifications
1 185 (23.18%) Security Cleared
2 142 (17.79%) SC Cleared
3 50 (6.27%) Degree
4 43 (5.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.75%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.25%) TOGAF Certification
9 9 (1.13%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.88%) AWS Certification
10 7 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.38%) CISSP
11 3 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.38%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 2 (0.25%) ACCA
12 2 (0.25%) CIMA
12 2 (0.25%) CISM
12 2 (0.25%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (44.61%) Data Quality
2 70 (8.77%) GDPR
3 46 (5.76%) Accessibility
4 44 (5.51%) QA
5 8 (1.00%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (1.00%) WCAG
6 6 (0.75%) GRC
6 6 (0.75%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.75%) MiFID
7 5 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.63%) NIST
7 5 (0.63%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.50%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.50%) NCSC
8 4 (0.50%) SNOMED CT
9 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.25%) IFRS
10 2 (0.25%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.25%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 22 (2.76%) Docker
2 10 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 23 (2.88%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (0.88%) Grafana
4 5 (0.63%) Ansible
4 5 (0.63%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.50%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.50%) PingFederate
6 2 (0.25%) Control-M
6 2 (0.25%) Kibana
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Ranger
7 1 (0.13%) Istio
7 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 149 (18.67%) Microsoft
2 130 (16.29%) Databricks
3 56 (7.02%) Oracle
4 55 (6.89%) Informatica
5 31 (3.88%) Google
6 18 (2.26%) Sparx
7 17 (2.13%) SAP
8 16 (2.01%) IBM
9 15 (1.88%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.75%) Talend
11 13 (1.63%) Autodesk
11 13 (1.63%) ServiceNow
12 11 (1.38%) Sybase
12 11 (1.38%) Teradata
13 10 (1.25%) Denodo
13 10 (1.25%) Palantir
13 10 (1.25%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.13%) Foundry
15 8 (1.00%) Adobe
15 8 (1.00%) CA Agile Central