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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 346 285
Rank change year-on-year +105 -61 +41
Contract jobs citing Metadata 425 193 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 0.61% 0.79%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.79% 3.31% 4.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 294 130 239
10th Percentile £375 £318 £399
25th Percentile £426 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £680
90th Percentile £696 £799 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +0.96% -15.22% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 6 22
10th Percentile £29.71 £21.01 £14.15
25th Percentile £35.91 £22.72 £19.37
Median hourly rate £80.50 £32.47 £44.28
Median % change year-on-year +147.96% -26.68% +6.05%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.88 £48.36
90th Percentile £84.20 £82.25 £69.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.50 £25.43 £35.85
% change year-on-year +216.56% -29.07% -42.64%

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 6,255 5,834 7,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.82% 18.31% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,324 3,848 4,984
10th Percentile £331 £350 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £761 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 79 150
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.78 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £22.61
Median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +24.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £70.50 £64.61 £64.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £67.55 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £29.80 £46.18
% change year-on-year +67.79% -35.47% -16.04%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 +100 370 £516 -0.24% 167
London +104 229 £531 +1.19% 54
UK excluding London +11 150 £492 +0.96% 152
Work from Home +28 113 £525 +0.48% 77
South East 0 38 £500 -6.98% 62
Midlands -20 31 £509 +35.60% 21
North of England -41 24 £475 -12.84% 28
East of England -6 22 £500 +57.01% 14
Scotland +8 21 £465 -32.12% 11
West Midlands -23 21 £560 +49.33% 14
North West -14 15 £448 -17.89% 8
South West -14 12 £568 +16.41% 12
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 7
Wales +4 8 £700 +229.21% 6
Yorkshire -46 8 £500 +25.00% 14
North East -15 1 £475 -23.91% 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 30 (7.06%) SharePoint
2 29 (6.82%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.00%) Confluence
4 15 (3.53%) CMS
4 15 (3.53%) SAS
5 14 (3.29%) Apache
6 8 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
7 7 (1.65%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.41%) Drupal
9 5 (1.18%) GeoServer
9 5 (1.18%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.94%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.24%) Alfresco
13 1 (0.24%) Documentum
13 1 (0.24%) Headless CMS
13 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
13 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
Applications
1 23 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.88%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.47%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.24%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.24%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.24%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.29%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.41%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.41%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.41%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.71%) Actimize
3 3 (0.71%) Maximo
4 2 (0.47%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.24%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.24%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Primavera
5 1 (0.24%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 130 (30.59%) Azure
2 97 (22.82%) AWS
3 73 (17.18%) Power Platform
4 47 (11.06%) GCP
5 40 (9.41%) Collibra
6 39 (9.18%) Azure Data Factory
7 37 (8.71%) Microsoft Purview
8 36 (8.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 28 (6.59%) Snowflake
10 18 (4.24%) Microsoft 365
10 18 (4.24%) Serverless
11 15 (3.53%) Amazon S3
11 15 (3.53%) dbt
12 14 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
14 12 (2.82%) GitHub
15 8 (1.88%) PowerApps
16 7 (1.65%) Alation
16 7 (1.65%) Contentful
16 7 (1.65%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.71%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.47%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.47%) Intranet
3 1 (0.24%) Firewall
3 1 (0.24%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (18.35%) Data Warehouse
2 64 (15.06%) Power BI
3 50 (11.76%) Data Lake
4 30 (7.06%) Metadata Repository
5 23 (5.41%) NoSQL
6 21 (4.94%) Big Data
6 21 (4.94%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.47%) Data Vault
8 18 (4.24%) Snowflake Schema
8 18 (4.24%) SQL Server
9 17 (4.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 17 (4.00%) Tableau
10 16 (3.76%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
12 14 (3.29%) Amazon Redshift
13 13 (3.06%) BigQuery
14 11 (2.59%) Delta Lake
14 11 (2.59%) Spark SQL
15 10 (2.35%) Oracle Database
15 10 (2.35%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (5.41%) JIRA
2 22 (5.18%) ERwin
3 20 (4.71%) Git
4 10 (2.35%) ER Studio
4 10 (2.35%) PowerDesigner
5 4 (0.94%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.47%) Subversion
6 2 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.24%) GitLab
7 1 (0.24%) gulp
7 1 (0.24%) Poetry
7 1 (0.24%) Pylint
7 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.24%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.24%) Yeoman
General
1 165 (38.82%) Social Skills
2 110 (25.88%) Finance
3 83 (19.53%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (13.88%) Public Sector
5 32 (7.53%) Banking
6 31 (7.29%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (4.24%) Publishing
8 13 (3.06%) Retail
9 12 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (2.59%) Legal
11 8 (1.88%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.88%) Military
12 6 (1.41%) Aviation
12 6 (1.41%) Investment Banking
12 6 (1.41%) Law
12 6 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (1.41%) Retail Banking
13 5 (1.18%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 89 (20.94%) Architect
2 65 (15.29%) Analyst
3 64 (15.06%) Data Architect
4 54 (12.71%) Data Engineer
5 45 (10.59%) Data Analyst
6 32 (7.53%) Data Modeller
6 32 (7.53%) Lead
7 28 (6.59%) Developer
7 28 (6.59%) Senior
8 25 (5.88%) Consultant
9 21 (4.94%) Business Analyst
10 17 (4.00%) Azure Engineer
11 13 (3.06%) Azure Data Engineer
12 12 (2.82%) Governance Analyst
13 11 (2.59%) Data Business Analyst
13 11 (2.59%) Software Engineer
14 10 (2.35%) Senior Data Engineer
15 9 (2.12%) Data Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.12%) Quality Analyst
16 8 (1.88%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (8.71%) PySpark
2 25 (5.88%) Kafka
3 21 (4.94%) REST
4 12 (2.82%) JSON
5 10 (2.35%) XML
6 9 (2.12%) React
7 7 (1.65%) .NET
7 7 (1.65%) SOAP
7 7 (1.65%) YAML
8 6 (1.41%) OAuth
8 6 (1.41%) RESTful
8 6 (1.41%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.41%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.41%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.41%) VML
9 5 (1.18%) HTML
9 5 (1.18%) Pandas
10 4 (0.94%) LDAP
10 4 (0.94%) Node.js
10 4 (0.94%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.82%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.59%) Data Structures
3 26 (6.12%) Management Information System
4 23 (5.41%) Taxonomies
5 19 (4.47%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (4.24%) Onboarding
6 18 (4.24%) Reference Data
7 15 (3.53%) Product Ownership
8 11 (2.59%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.65%) Data Fabric
10 5 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.18%) Low-Code
11 4 (0.94%) Genomics
11 4 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.94%) Omics
11 4 (0.94%) Replication
11 4 (0.94%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.71%) Biopharmaceutical
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.18%) Unix
2 4 (0.94%) Linux
3 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (52.94%) Data Governance
2 208 (48.94%) Metadata Management
3 207 (48.71%) Data Modelling
4 144 (33.88%) Analytics
5 110 (25.88%) Data Architecture
6 106 (24.94%) ETL
7 102 (24.00%) Business Intelligence
8 83 (19.53%) Data Lineage
9 82 (19.29%) Agile
10 79 (18.59%) Data Pipeline
11 78 (18.35%) Problem-Solving
12 77 (18.12%) Data Engineering
13 76 (17.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 66 (15.53%) Validation
15 64 (15.06%) Data Management
16 63 (14.82%) AI
17 60 (14.12%) Migration
17 60 (14.12%) Stakeholder Management
18 58 (13.65%) Data Integration
18 58 (13.65%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 149 (35.06%) SQL
2 106 (24.94%) Python
3 22 (5.18%) Java
4 21 (4.94%) PowerShell
5 14 (3.29%) C#
6 9 (2.12%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.88%) Scala
8 7 (1.65%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.65%) R
8 7 (1.65%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.41%) ABAP
9 6 (1.41%) Perl
10 5 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.18%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.94%) C++
12 3 (0.71%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.71%) Bicep
12 3 (0.71%) SOQL
12 3 (0.71%) SOSL
12 3 (0.71%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 95 (22.35%) Security Cleared
2 69 (16.24%) SC Cleared
3 23 (5.41%) Degree
4 16 (3.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.65%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.41%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.94%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.94%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.47%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.24%) CISSP
10 1 (0.24%) CSPO
10 1 (0.24%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.24%) MCP
10 1 (0.24%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.24%) PMP
10 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 189 (44.47%) Data Quality
2 47 (11.06%) GDPR
3 17 (4.00%) QA
4 15 (3.53%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.41%) GRC
6 6 (1.41%) IFRS
7 5 (1.18%) MiFID
7 5 (1.18%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.71%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.47%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.47%) FINREP
9 2 (0.47%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.47%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.47%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.47%) NIST
10 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.24%) ISO 20022
10 1 (0.24%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (3.29%) Docker
2 4 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.71%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 18 (4.24%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.76%) Terraform
3 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.71%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.71%) Oozie
4 3 (0.71%) SCCM
5 1 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 83 (19.53%) Microsoft
2 61 (14.35%) Databricks
3 35 (8.24%) Oracle
4 33 (7.76%) Informatica
5 20 (4.71%) ServiceNow
6 18 (4.24%) SAP
7 14 (3.29%) Sparx
8 12 (2.82%) Google
8 12 (2.82%) Salesforce
9 11 (2.59%) Talend
10 10 (2.35%) OpenText
11 8 (1.88%) Teradata
12 7 (1.65%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.41%) ESRI
13 6 (1.41%) IBM
13 6 (1.41%) Optimizely
14 5 (1.18%) Intergraph
14 5 (1.18%) Palantir
15 4 (0.94%) Alteryx
15 4 (0.94%) Atlassian