Metadata Contract Job Trends

Metadata
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Metadata skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 281 384 374
Rank change year-on-year +103 -10 +27
Contract jobs citing Metadata 309 192 281
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.94% 0.50% 0.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 5.18% 2.80% 3.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 123 194
10th Percentile £363 £401 £412
25th Percentile £461 £467 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -
75th Percentile £638 £731 £729
90th Percentile £749 £898 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £533
% change year-on-year -2.56% -8.45% -1.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 10
10th Percentile - £20.08 £11.77
25th Percentile £13.25 £21.25 £21.61
Median hourly rate £22.00 £39.50 £46.09
Median % change year-on-year -44.30% -14.30% -30.17%
75th Percentile £45.69 £48.18 £60.50
90th Percentile £70.78 - £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.50 £48.18 £46.00
% change year-on-year -71.98% +4.74% +240.74%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 5,967 6,865 8,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.12% 17.95% 16.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,995 4,734 5,804
10th Percentile £340 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £543
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% -1.43% -1.32%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 86 158
10th Percentile £22.85 £17.50 £20.76
25th Percentile £29.33 £20.88 £32.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -36.36% +22.66%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.19 £73.70
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.49 £30.00 £54.75
% change year-on-year +18.30% -45.21% +56.43%

Metadata
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Metadata as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Metadata 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 September 2025.

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 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Top 18 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 September 2025. 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 +107 263 £550 - 178
London +88 179 £563 -7.18% 103
UK excluding London +40 102 £475 -2.56% 116
Work from Home +40 89 £588 +17.50% 94
Midlands +9 23 £300 - 10
South East +24 21 £463 -26.00% 66
North of England -2 18 £513 +17.14% 17
West Midlands +4 17 £107 - 4
Scotland -7 15 £475 -30.53% 2
North West -8 13 £448 +6.87% 9
East of England +13 9 £550 +50.68% 5
Wales - 9 £700 - 1
South West +12 7 £575 +17.95% 16
East Midlands - 6 £415 - 6
Yorkshire -8 4 £531 -33.59% 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 -
North East - 1 £450 - 1
Channel Islands - 1 £760 -

Metadata
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 32 (10.36%) SharePoint
2 18 (5.83%) Apache Spark
3 15 (4.85%) Apache
3 15 (4.85%) CMS
4 14 (4.53%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (3.56%) Confluence
6 5 (1.62%) SAS
7 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.97%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.97%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.65%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.32%) Alfresco
10 1 (0.32%) Documentum
10 1 (0.32%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 14 (4.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.27%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.65%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.65%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.32%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.32%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.32%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 5 (1.62%) Salesforce CRM
2 4 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) HFM
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Primavera
3 1 (0.32%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 83 (26.86%) Azure
2 64 (20.71%) AWS
3 40 (12.94%) Power Platform
4 34 (11.00%) Collibra
5 33 (10.68%) GCP
6 29 (9.39%) Microsoft Purview
7 21 (6.80%) dbt
8 20 (6.47%) Azure DevOps
8 20 (6.47%) Microsoft 365
9 16 (5.18%) Amazon S3
10 14 (4.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 14 (4.53%) GitHub
10 14 (4.53%) Snowflake
11 12 (3.88%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (3.24%) PowerApps
12 10 (3.24%) Serverless
13 9 (2.91%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (2.91%) SaaS
14 7 (2.27%) Alation
15 6 (1.94%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.65%) Kerberos
2 1 (0.32%) FTP
2 1 (0.32%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (18.77%) Data Warehouse
2 41 (13.27%) Data Lake
3 30 (9.71%) Power BI
4 22 (7.12%) NoSQL
5 19 (6.15%) Big Data
6 17 (5.50%) Delta Lake
7 15 (4.85%) SQL Server
8 13 (4.21%) PostgreSQL
9 12 (3.88%) Tableau
10 11 (3.56%) Amazon Athena
11 10 (3.24%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (3.24%) Data Vault
11 10 (3.24%) Relational Database
12 8 (2.59%) BigQuery
12 8 (2.59%) Spark SQL
13 7 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
13 7 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
14 6 (1.94%) GIS
14 6 (1.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 6 (1.94%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (7.44%) ERwin
2 15 (4.85%) ER Studio
2 15 (4.85%) JIRA
3 11 (3.56%) Git
4 7 (2.27%) PowerDesigner
5 5 (1.62%) GitLab
6 2 (0.65%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.32%) MLflow
7 1 (0.32%) Poetry
7 1 (0.32%) Postman
7 1 (0.32%) Pylint
7 1 (0.32%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 119 (38.51%) Social Skills
2 55 (17.80%) Analytical Skills
2 55 (17.80%) Finance
3 38 (12.30%) Public Sector
4 31 (10.03%) Banking
5 20 (6.47%) Legal
6 17 (5.50%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (4.53%) Publishing
8 11 (3.56%) Retail
9 8 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (2.59%) Pharmaceutical
9 8 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (2.27%) Investment Banking
11 6 (1.94%) Marketing
12 5 (1.62%) Welsh Language
13 4 (1.29%) Billing
13 4 (1.29%) Law
13 4 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (1.29%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 59 (19.09%) Architect
2 45 (14.56%) Analyst
3 41 (13.27%) Data Architect
4 33 (10.68%) Data Engineer
5 30 (9.71%) Lead
6 26 (8.41%) Data Modeller
7 23 (7.44%) Data Analyst
8 21 (6.80%) Developer
9 17 (5.50%) Senior
10 14 (4.53%) Consultant
10 14 (4.53%) Governance Analyst
11 10 (3.24%) Azure Data Engineer
11 10 (3.24%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (3.24%) Business Analyst
11 10 (3.24%) Technical Architect
12 9 (2.91%) Data Manager
12 9 (2.91%) Project Manager
13 6 (1.94%) Administrator
13 6 (1.94%) Scrum Master
13 6 (1.94%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (7.44%) Kafka
2 21 (6.80%) PySpark
3 6 (1.94%) RESTful
4 5 (1.62%) .NET
4 5 (1.62%) Lightning Web Components
4 5 (1.62%) React
4 5 (1.62%) REST
4 5 (1.62%) Visualforce
5 4 (1.29%) HTML
5 4 (1.29%) LDAP
5 4 (1.29%) OAuth
5 4 (1.29%) Regular Expression
6 3 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
6 3 (0.97%) Hugging Face
6 3 (0.97%) OpenCV
6 3 (0.97%) PyTorch
6 3 (0.97%) SAML
6 3 (0.97%) SpaCy
6 3 (0.97%) TensorFlow
7 2 (0.65%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.44%) Data Structures
2 18 (5.83%) Onboarding
3 15 (4.85%) Taxonomies
4 13 (4.21%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (3.88%) Reference Data
6 8 (2.59%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.59%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.94%) Distributed Computing
8 6 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.94%) Low-Code
8 6 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (1.62%) Digital Media
10 4 (1.29%) Data Fabric
10 4 (1.29%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.97%) Data Centre
11 3 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.27%) Unix
2 6 (1.94%) Linux
3 1 (0.32%) Android
3 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.32%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (50.81%) Data Governance
2 135 (43.69%) Metadata Management
3 134 (43.37%) Data Modelling
4 77 (24.92%) Analytics
5 67 (21.68%) ETL
6 66 (21.36%) Agile
7 64 (20.71%) Data Architecture
8 63 (20.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 58 (18.77%) Data Lineage
9 58 (18.77%) Problem-Solving
10 53 (17.15%) Business Intelligence
10 53 (17.15%) Data Management
11 51 (16.50%) Data Engineering
12 50 (16.18%) Data Pipeline
13 39 (12.62%) Migration
14 36 (11.65%) DevOps
15 35 (11.33%) Artificial Intelligence
16 34 (11.00%) Data Transformation
16 34 (11.00%) Stakeholder Management
17 33 (10.68%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 87 (28.16%) SQL
2 70 (22.65%) Python
3 13 (4.21%) Java
4 11 (3.56%) Scala
5 9 (2.91%) T-SQL
6 8 (2.59%) PowerShell
7 7 (2.27%) C++
8 6 (1.94%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.62%) Apex Code
9 5 (1.62%) C#
10 4 (1.29%) SOQL
11 3 (0.97%) Bash
11 3 (0.97%) PROC SQL
11 3 (0.97%) R
11 3 (0.97%) SAS Macro
11 3 (0.97%) SOSL
12 2 (0.65%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.32%) VBA
13 1 (0.32%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 36 (11.65%) Security Cleared
2 23 (7.44%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.47%) Degree
4 8 (2.59%) AWS Certification
5 6 (1.94%) Azure Certification
5 6 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.29%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Developer
7 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (0.65%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.65%) PMI Certification
7 2 (0.65%) PMP
8 1 (0.32%) ACCA
8 1 (0.32%) CIMA
8 1 (0.32%) CIPFA
8 1 (0.32%) SnowPro
8 1 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
8 1 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (31.07%) Data Quality
2 38 (12.30%) GDPR
3 19 (6.15%) QA
4 13 (4.21%) Accessibility
5 7 (2.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 4 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.97%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.97%) Solvency II
8 2 (0.65%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.65%) MiFID
9 1 (0.32%) Basel III
9 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.32%) GMP
9 1 (0.32%) IFRS
9 1 (0.32%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.32%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 11 (3.56%) Docker
2 5 (1.62%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.97%) HDFS
4 1 (0.32%) NFS
Systems Management
1 14 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 11 (3.56%) Terraform
3 4 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.97%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.97%) Oozie
5 2 (0.65%) SCCM
6 1 (0.32%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.32%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 62 (20.06%) Microsoft
2 38 (12.30%) Databricks
3 30 (9.71%) Informatica
4 22 (7.12%) Google
5 16 (5.18%) Oracle
6 8 (2.59%) Salesforce
6 8 (2.59%) SAP
7 7 (2.27%) Adobe
8 5 (1.62%) Alteryx
8 5 (1.62%) OpenText
8 5 (1.62%) Sparx
8 5 (1.62%) Talend
9 3 (0.97%) Duck Creek
9 3 (0.97%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.97%) OpenAI
10 2 (0.65%) Ab Initio
10 2 (0.65%) Hyperion
10 2 (0.65%) IBM
10 2 (0.65%) iManage
10 2 (0.65%) ServiceNow