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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 210 301 325
Rank change year-on-year +91 +24 +22
Contract jobs citing Metadata 625 242 282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 0.82% 0.65%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.28% 4.39% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 418 165 178
10th Percentile £358 £282 £396
25th Percentile £425 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -9.13% +4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £819
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £473 £550
% change year-on-year +11.11% -14.09% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 9 17
10th Percentile £33.48 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £22.50 £19.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.73% -15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £73.75 £82.25 £46.18
90th Percentile £82.95 £83.30 £46.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £26.47 £40.25
% change year-on-year +141.83% -34.25% +11.03%

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 7,550 5,511 7,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.13% 18.76% 17.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,049 3,742 5,323
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £635 £650
90th Percentile £700 £762 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 104 156
10th Percentile £14.60 £19.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £23.50 £20.77
Median hourly rate £42.11 £34.58 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.78% -13.56% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.99 £65.62 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.31 £78.34 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +23.26% -9.60% -40.26%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +66 525 £525 -3.67% 158
London +59 302 £520 -13.33% 87
UK excluding London +31 252 £525 +11.11% 98
Work from Home +44 181 £525 -8.70% 87
Midlands -19 65 £571 +433.64% 16
West Midlands -14 63 £575 +437.38% 13
North of England -47 56 £524 +4.75% 21
Scotland +28 49 £488 +2.63% 1
South East -39 46 £506 +6.02% 42
East of England -5 31 £525 +63.36% 8
Yorkshire -29 26 £567 +51.13% 3
North West -37 26 £575 +7.48% 17
South West -19 10 £563 -4.21% 6
North East -24 7 £419 -9.46% 1
Wales -13 3 £750 +184.67% 4
East Midlands -26 2 £474 +15.49% 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 33 (5.28%) Apache Spark
1 33 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 26 (4.16%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (3.04%) Confluence
4 16 (2.56%) Apache
4 16 (2.56%) SAS
5 10 (1.60%) CMS
6 4 (0.64%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.32%) Alfresco
7 2 (0.32%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.32%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.32%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (3.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.28%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.12%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.12%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.12%) Revit
4 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.32%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (1.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.96%) Summit
3 2 (0.32%) Maximo
3 2 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 180 (28.80%) Azure
2 130 (20.80%) AWS
3 86 (13.76%) Power Platform
4 64 (10.24%) GCP
5 55 (8.80%) Collibra
6 45 (7.20%) Microsoft Purview
7 38 (6.08%) GitHub
8 37 (5.92%) Azure Data Factory
9 33 (5.28%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.12%) Serverless
11 31 (4.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 31 (4.96%) dbt
12 29 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
13 27 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (4.00%) Snowflake
15 15 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
16 14 (2.24%) Entra ID
17 13 (2.08%) ChatGPT
17 13 (2.08%) ShareGate
18 12 (1.92%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.12%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.12%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.80%) Intranet
3 4 (0.64%) Firewall
3 4 (0.64%) SSL
4 3 (0.48%) HTTP
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (17.12%) Data Warehouse
2 77 (12.32%) Data Lake
3 76 (12.16%) Power BI
4 34 (5.44%) Relational Database
5 32 (5.12%) Data Vault
5 32 (5.12%) Metadata Repository
6 29 (4.64%) NoSQL
7 27 (4.32%) Tableau
8 26 (4.16%) SQL Server
9 22 (3.52%) Delta Lake
10 21 (3.36%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (3.20%) Big Data
11 20 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
12 19 (3.04%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (2.56%) Amazon Athena
13 16 (2.56%) Hadoop
14 14 (2.24%) Oracle Database
15 13 (2.08%) Db2
16 12 (1.92%) MongoDB
16 12 (1.92%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 36 (5.76%) ERwin
2 27 (4.32%) Git
3 19 (3.04%) JIRA
4 17 (2.72%) ER Studio
5 15 (2.40%) Jenkins
5 15 (2.40%) PowerDesigner
6 12 (1.92%) GitLab
7 11 (1.76%) Maven
8 10 (1.60%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.48%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.32%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.32%) git-flow
10 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) Deequ
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.16%) VersionOne
General
1 178 (28.48%) Social Skills
2 176 (28.16%) Finance
3 119 (19.04%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (14.24%) Banking
5 70 (11.20%) Public Sector
6 38 (6.08%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (5.60%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.88%) Legal
9 15 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.40%) Publishing
10 13 (2.08%) Retail
11 12 (1.92%) Front Office
11 12 (1.92%) Marketing
11 12 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.76%) Aviation
13 7 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.12%) Law
14 5 (0.80%) Military
15 4 (0.64%) Automotive
15 4 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 144 (23.04%) Architect
2 102 (16.32%) Data Architect
3 95 (15.20%) Data Engineer
4 77 (12.32%) Analyst
5 62 (9.92%) Lead
6 51 (8.16%) Data Analyst
7 50 (8.00%) Senior
8 45 (7.20%) Data Modeller
9 44 (7.04%) Developer
10 31 (4.96%) Business Analyst
11 24 (3.84%) Consultant
12 19 (3.04%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.88%) Data Business Analyst
14 16 (2.56%) DevOps Engineer
15 14 (2.24%) Software Engineer
16 13 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
17 12 (1.92%) AWS Engineer
17 12 (1.92%) Enterprise Architect
17 12 (1.92%) Governance Analyst
18 11 (1.76%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.04%) PySpark
2 29 (4.64%) JSON
3 27 (4.32%) Kafka
4 22 (3.52%) REST
5 19 (3.04%) .NET
6 16 (2.56%) YAML
7 14 (2.24%) React
8 12 (1.92%) Node.js
9 11 (1.76%) OAuth
9 11 (1.76%) XML
10 10 (1.60%) SLSA
11 9 (1.44%) Middleware
11 9 (1.44%) SOAP
12 8 (1.28%) RESTful
13 7 (1.12%) OAuth2
14 6 (0.96%) ADO
14 6 (0.96%) CSS
14 6 (0.96%) SPFx
15 5 (0.80%) Playwright
15 5 (0.80%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 62 (9.92%) Cloud Native
2 47 (7.52%) Onboarding
3 44 (7.04%) Management Information System
4 41 (6.56%) Data Structures
5 38 (6.08%) Taxonomies
6 36 (5.76%) Reference Data
7 35 (5.60%) Product Ownership
8 33 (5.28%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (3.20%) Derivative
10 18 (2.88%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.92%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.92%) Equity Derivative
11 12 (1.92%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.44%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.44%) Fixed Income
14 8 (1.28%) Clustering
14 8 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.28%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.04%) Unix
2 7 (1.12%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (49.44%) Data Governance
2 288 (46.08%) Data Modelling
3 217 (34.72%) Metadata Management
4 214 (34.24%) Analytics
5 154 (24.64%) Data Architecture
6 153 (24.48%) ETL
7 147 (23.52%) AI
8 129 (20.64%) Data Pipeline
9 126 (20.16%) CI/CD
10 125 (20.00%) Data Engineering
11 118 (18.88%) Migration
12 114 (18.24%) Agile
13 108 (17.28%) Data Lineage
14 107 (17.12%) Stakeholder Management
15 106 (16.96%) Business Intelligence
16 103 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
17 98 (15.68%) Data Management
17 98 (15.68%) DevOps
18 96 (15.36%) Decision-Making
19 90 (14.40%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 241 (38.56%) SQL
2 164 (26.24%) Python
3 46 (7.36%) Java
4 29 (4.64%) C#
5 25 (4.00%) PL/SQL
6 15 (2.40%) PowerShell
7 13 (2.08%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.92%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.60%) Groovy
9 10 (1.60%) Perl
10 9 (1.44%) C++
10 9 (1.44%) TypeScript
11 6 (0.96%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.80%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (0.64%) Bash
13 4 (0.64%) Bicep
14 3 (0.48%) Scala
15 2 (0.32%) R
15 2 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 135 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 100 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 39 (6.24%) Degree
4 22 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.08%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.44%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.44%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 8 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.80%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.32%) Analytics IQ
10 2 (0.32%) CISM
10 2 (0.32%) CISSP
10 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.32%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.32%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CBAP
11 1 (0.16%) CSPO
11 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 252 (40.32%) Data Quality
2 63 (10.08%) GDPR
3 33 (5.28%) QA
4 22 (3.52%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.76%) GRC
6 7 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.12%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.96%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.96%) NIST
8 5 (0.80%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.80%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.64%) ISO 22301
9 4 (0.64%) MiFID
10 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.48%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.32%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 12 (1.92%) Docker
2 9 (1.44%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 26 (4.16%) Terraform
2 11 (1.76%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.28%) Grafana
4 6 (0.96%) Prometheus
4 6 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.64%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.16%) Ansible
6 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 115 (18.40%) Microsoft
2 89 (14.24%) Databricks
3 60 (9.60%) Oracle
4 38 (6.08%) Informatica
5 21 (3.36%) Salesforce
6 19 (3.04%) Google
7 17 (2.72%) Talend
8 15 (2.40%) SAP
9 14 (2.24%) IBM
9 14 (2.24%) ServiceNow
10 13 (2.08%) Autodesk
11 11 (1.76%) Sybase
12 10 (1.60%) Sonatype
13 9 (1.44%) Sparx
14 7 (1.12%) OpenAI
15 5 (0.80%) Adobe
15 5 (0.80%) Denodo
16 4 (0.64%) Foundry
16 4 (0.64%) Ping Identity
16 4 (0.64%) Teradata