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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 281 384
Rank change year-on-year +96 +103 -10
Contract jobs citing Metadata 819 309 192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.51% 0.94% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.00% 5.18% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 518 214 123
10th Percentile £400 £363 £401
25th Percentile £456 £461 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year - +3.77% -7.83%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £731
90th Percentile £766 £749 £898
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +15.79% -2.56% -8.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 5
10th Percentile £19.28 - £20.08
25th Percentile £58.94 £13.25 £21.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £22.00 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.82% -44.30% -14.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.69 £48.18
90th Percentile £70.15 £70.78 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £48.18
% change year-on-year +400.00% -71.98% +4.74%

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 8,189 5,967 6,865
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.09% 18.12% 17.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,468 3,995 4,734
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -1.47%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £705 £738 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 93 86
10th Percentile £16.35 £22.85 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.88 £29.33 £20.88
Median hourly rate £40.18 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +14.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £59.88 £65.00 £61.19
90th Percentile £75.50 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.30% +18.30% -45.21%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +75 705 £550 - 919
London +46 400 £550 -2.22% 547
UK excluding London +68 327 £550 +15.79% 457
Work from Home +59 228 £525 -10.64% 392
North of England 0 94 £500 -2.44% 108
Midlands +11 77 £610 +103.33% 54
West Midlands 0 70 £626 +485.05% 42
Yorkshire +10 59 £500 -5.88% 37
South East -32 57 £563 +21.62% 109
Scotland +7 44 £543 +14.21% 51
East of England 0 31 £450 -18.18% 41
North West -26 31 £625 +39.66% 63
South West -25 28 £575 - 66
East Midlands -9 7 £494 +18.98% 12
North East -33 7 £463 +2.78% 8
Wales -16 4 £750 +7.14% 7

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 47 (5.74%) SharePoint
2 40 (4.88%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.79%) Apache
4 23 (2.81%) CMS
5 21 (2.56%) Apache Spark
5 21 (2.56%) Confluence
6 18 (2.20%) SAS
7 10 (1.22%) Headless CMS
8 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.12%) Camunda
12 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.12%) Liferay
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 19 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.85%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.85%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.85%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.85%) Revit
3 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
5 1 (0.12%) Notion
5 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.37%) Maximo
3 3 (0.37%) SAP HR
3 3 (0.37%) Summit
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%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 247 (30.16%) Azure
2 194 (23.69%) AWS
3 110 (13.43%) Power Platform
4 102 (12.45%) GCP
5 74 (9.04%) Microsoft Purview
6 69 (8.42%) Collibra
7 49 (5.98%) Azure Data Factory
8 44 (5.37%) dbt
9 43 (5.25%) Amazon S3
9 43 (5.25%) Snowflake
10 41 (5.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 39 (4.76%) GitHub
12 35 (4.27%) Serverless
13 34 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
14 33 (4.03%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (3.66%) Microsoft 365
16 25 (3.05%) Azure Databricks
17 22 (2.69%) Entra ID
18 21 (2.56%) Power Automate
19 20 (2.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.85%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.85%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.61%) Broadband
3 4 (0.49%) HTTP
3 4 (0.49%) Intranet
3 4 (0.49%) SSL
4 3 (0.37%) DNS
4 3 (0.37%) Firewall
5 2 (0.24%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (15.26%) Data Warehouse
2 96 (11.72%) Data Lake
2 96 (11.72%) Power BI
3 37 (4.52%) Relational Database
4 36 (4.40%) BigQuery
4 36 (4.40%) NoSQL
5 33 (4.03%) Delta Lake
6 30 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
7 28 (3.42%) Semantic Layer
8 25 (3.05%) Data Vault
9 23 (2.81%) Tableau
10 20 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
11 18 (2.20%) SQL Server
12 17 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
13 14 (1.71%) Db2
13 14 (1.71%) Neo4j
13 14 (1.71%) Parquet
14 12 (1.47%) Big Data
14 12 (1.47%) Geospatial Data
14 12 (1.47%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 37 (4.52%) Git
2 31 (3.79%) ERwin
3 25 (3.05%) JIRA
4 24 (2.93%) ER Studio
5 15 (1.83%) Jenkins
5 15 (1.83%) Maven
6 12 (1.47%) GitLab
7 11 (1.34%) PowerDesigner
8 10 (1.22%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.61%) Selenium
10 3 (0.37%) MLflow
11 2 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.24%) TestRail
12 1 (0.12%) Deequ
12 1 (0.12%) Gemini Tracker
12 1 (0.12%) git-flow
12 1 (0.12%) Subversion
12 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 243 (29.67%) Social Skills
2 205 (25.03%) Finance
3 155 (18.93%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (12.94%) Public Sector
5 100 (12.21%) Banking
6 38 (4.64%) Influencing Skills
7 37 (4.52%) Investment Banking
8 26 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.05%) Publishing
10 23 (2.81%) Retail
11 22 (2.69%) Legal
12 20 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 20 (2.44%) Marketing
13 14 (1.71%) Manufacturing
13 14 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (1.59%) Aerospace
15 12 (1.47%) Front Office
16 11 (1.34%) Military
17 10 (1.22%) Law
18 8 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 218 (26.62%) Architect
2 158 (19.29%) Data Architect
3 135 (16.48%) Data Engineer
4 108 (13.19%) Lead
5 87 (10.62%) Analyst
6 73 (8.91%) Senior
7 49 (5.98%) Data Analyst
8 42 (5.13%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.40%) Business Analyst
10 34 (4.15%) Developer
11 29 (3.54%) Senior Data Engineer
12 26 (3.17%) Consultant
13 22 (2.69%) Data Manager
13 22 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
14 21 (2.56%) Enterprise Architect
14 21 (2.56%) Lead Data Engineer
15 20 (2.44%) Data Business Analyst
15 20 (2.44%) Product Owner
16 17 (2.08%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.08%) Enterprise Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.08%) PySpark
2 44 (5.37%) JSON
3 42 (5.13%) Terraform
4 36 (4.40%) REST
5 32 (3.91%) Kafka
6 18 (2.20%) YAML
7 15 (1.83%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.59%) XML
9 12 (1.47%) Node.js
10 11 (1.34%) React
11 10 (1.22%) SLSA
11 10 (1.22%) Spring
12 9 (1.10%) .NET
12 9 (1.10%) GraphQL
12 9 (1.10%) OAuth
12 9 (1.10%) Playwright
13 8 (0.98%) OAuth2
14 7 (0.85%) Apache NiFi
14 7 (0.85%) Middleware
14 7 (0.85%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.40%) Cloud Native
2 74 (9.04%) Onboarding
3 64 (7.81%) Data Structures
4 62 (7.57%) Taxonomies
5 57 (6.96%) Management Information System
6 55 (6.72%) Product Ownership
7 44 (5.37%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (5.13%) Reference Data
9 23 (2.81%) Data Fabric
10 18 (2.20%) AI Agents
10 18 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (2.20%) Derivative
11 13 (1.59%) Life Science
12 12 (1.47%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.47%) Equity Derivative
13 11 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (1.71%) Unix
2 11 (1.34%) Linux
3 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.12%) VMS
3 1 (0.12%) Windows
3 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 444 (54.21%) Data Governance
2 391 (47.74%) Data Modelling
3 318 (38.83%) Metadata Management
4 268 (32.72%) Analytics
5 231 (28.21%) Data Architecture
6 229 (27.96%) AI
7 218 (26.62%) Stakeholder Management
8 200 (24.42%) Agile
9 188 (22.95%) Data Pipeline
10 182 (22.22%) Data Engineering
11 173 (21.12%) CI/CD
11 173 (21.12%) ETL
12 172 (21.00%) Migration
13 155 (18.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 146 (17.83%) Roadmaps
15 145 (17.70%) Data Management
16 143 (17.46%) Data Lineage
17 129 (15.75%) Validation
18 128 (15.63%) Decision-Making
18 128 (15.63%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 293 (35.78%) SQL
2 214 (26.13%) Python
3 66 (8.06%) Java
4 21 (2.56%) PL/SQL
5 14 (1.71%) PowerShell
6 13 (1.59%) C#
6 13 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 13 (1.59%) Groovy
7 12 (1.47%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.47%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.10%) Bash
8 9 (1.10%) C++
9 7 (0.85%) Bicep
9 7 (0.85%) SPARQL
10 6 (0.73%) Scala
10 6 (0.73%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.61%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.49%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.49%) Perl
12 4 (0.49%) R
Qualifications
1 197 (24.05%) Security Cleared
2 148 (18.07%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.59%) Degree
4 43 (5.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (2.69%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
8 10 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.98%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 5 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.49%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.37%) CISSP
13 3 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
14 2 (0.24%) ACCA
14 2 (0.24%) CBAP
14 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
14 2 (0.24%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (46.89%) Data Quality
2 63 (7.69%) GDPR
3 46 (5.62%) Accessibility
4 43 (5.25%) QA
5 8 (0.98%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 8 (0.98%) WCAG
6 7 (0.85%) NCSC
7 6 (0.73%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.73%) MiFID
8 5 (0.61%) GRC
8 5 (0.61%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.49%) NIST
9 4 (0.49%) SNOMED CT
10 3 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS
11 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.24%) SLA
11 2 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 25 (3.05%) Docker
2 9 (1.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 27 (3.30%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
3 9 (1.10%) Grafana
4 7 (0.85%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.61%) Ansible
6 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.49%) PingFederate
7 3 (0.37%) Control-M
8 2 (0.24%) Kibana
8 2 (0.24%) systemd
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 156 (19.05%) Microsoft
2 135 (16.48%) Databricks
3 61 (7.45%) Informatica
4 50 (6.11%) Oracle
5 39 (4.76%) Google
6 18 (2.20%) Sparx
7 17 (2.08%) SAP
8 16 (1.95%) IBM
9 15 (1.83%) Talend
10 14 (1.71%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.71%) ServiceNow
11 13 (1.59%) Autodesk
12 11 (1.34%) Denodo
12 11 (1.34%) Sybase
12 11 (1.34%) Teradata
13 10 (1.22%) Palantir
13 10 (1.22%) Sonatype
14 9 (1.10%) Foundry
15 8 (0.98%) CA Agile Central
16 7 (0.85%) Signiant