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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 273 384
Rank change year-on-year +88 +111 +5
Contract jobs citing Metadata 818 301 191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.52% 0.93% 0.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.94% 5.15% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 205 123
10th Percentile £400 £334 £408
25th Percentile £456 £450 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £744
90th Percentile £750 £750 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £548 £467 £488
% change year-on-year +17.36% -4.31% -10.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 4 7
10th Percentile £20.00 - £13.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £13.25 £16.40
Median hourly rate £67.50 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.82% -2.22% -51.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.69 £40.97
90th Percentile - £70.78 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £13.50 £19.30
% change year-on-year +400.00% -30.05% -55.12%

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 8,232 5,846 6,844
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 17.97% 18.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,501 3,904 4,769
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -2.75%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £651
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 262 94 90
10th Percentile £15.94 £21.73 £16.83
25th Percentile £23.05 £29.50 £19.87
Median hourly rate £39.50 £38.90 £33.22
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% +17.12% -39.06%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £56.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £71.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.50 £34.74 £30.00
% change year-on-year +10.82% +15.80% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +79 704 £550 +4.76% 562
London +53 408 £550 -4.35% 354
UK excluding London +68 317 £548 +17.36% 289
Work from Home +58 233 £525 -11.58% 271
North of England +3 87 £500 - 66
Midlands -3 75 £600 +100.00% 29
West Midlands +2 68 £612 +471.96% 24
South East -38 58 £550 +17.52% 76
Yorkshire +9 55 £500 -15.79% 18
Scotland -3 43 £533 +13.30% 32
East of England +1 32 £450 -18.18% 18
North West -42 28 £578 +41.84% 41
South West -15 27 £575 -4.17% 50
East Midlands -17 7 £494 +18.98% 5
North East -33 7 £463 +2.78% 7
Wales -19 3 £750 +76.47% 5

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 50 (6.11%) SharePoint
2 39 (4.77%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.79%) Apache
4 27 (3.30%) CMS
5 24 (2.93%) Apache Spark
6 20 (2.44%) Confluence
7 16 (1.96%) SAS
8 10 (1.22%) Headless CMS
9 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
11 4 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 2 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
13 1 (0.12%) Liferay
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 23 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.86%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.86%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.86%) Revit
3 6 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.12%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.12%) Notion
7 1 (0.12%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 18 (2.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.49%) Summit
4 3 (0.37%) Maximo
4 3 (0.37%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.24%) HFM
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.24%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.24%) Workfront
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.12%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 249 (30.44%) Azure
2 195 (23.84%) AWS
3 111 (13.57%) Power Platform
4 91 (11.12%) GCP
5 72 (8.80%) Microsoft Purview
6 65 (7.95%) Collibra
7 51 (6.23%) Azure Data Factory
8 43 (5.26%) dbt
9 42 (5.13%) GitHub
9 42 (5.13%) Snowflake
10 41 (5.01%) Amazon S3
10 41 (5.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 36 (4.40%) Serverless
12 34 (4.16%) AWS Lambda
12 34 (4.16%) Azure DevOps
13 31 (3.79%) Microsoft 365
14 27 (3.30%) Azure Databricks
15 23 (2.81%) Power Automate
16 21 (2.57%) Entra ID
16 21 (2.57%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.86%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.86%) 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%) Firewall
5 2 (0.24%) DNS
6 1 (0.12%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.12%) SAN
6 1 (0.12%) SMS
6 1 (0.12%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (14.91%) Data Warehouse
2 97 (11.86%) Power BI
3 94 (11.49%) Data Lake
4 39 (4.77%) Relational Database
5 36 (4.40%) NoSQL
6 35 (4.28%) Delta Lake
7 31 (3.79%) Tableau
8 28 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
9 27 (3.30%) Semantic Layer
10 26 (3.18%) Data Vault
11 25 (3.06%) BigQuery
12 21 (2.57%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (2.20%) SQL Server
14 16 (1.96%) Elasticsearch
15 14 (1.71%) Db2
15 14 (1.71%) Parquet
16 13 (1.59%) MongoDB
17 12 (1.47%) Amazon Athena
17 12 (1.47%) Big Data
17 12 (1.47%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 38 (4.65%) Git
2 34 (4.16%) ERwin
3 25 (3.06%) ER Studio
4 24 (2.93%) JIRA
5 17 (2.08%) Jenkins
6 15 (1.83%) Maven
7 13 (1.59%) PowerDesigner
8 12 (1.47%) GitLab
9 10 (1.22%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.73%) Selenium
11 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.37%) MLflow
12 2 (0.24%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.24%) TestRail
13 1 (0.12%) Deequ
13 1 (0.12%) git-flow
13 1 (0.12%) Postman
13 1 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
13 1 (0.12%) VersionOne
13 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 243 (29.71%) Social Skills
2 210 (25.67%) Finance
3 162 (19.80%) Analytical Skills
4 103 (12.59%) Public Sector
5 101 (12.35%) Banking
6 38 (4.65%) Investment Banking
7 36 (4.40%) Influencing Skills
8 27 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.81%) Publishing
9 23 (2.81%) Retail
10 22 (2.69%) Marketing
11 18 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (2.20%) Legal
12 15 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (1.71%) Manufacturing
14 12 (1.47%) Front Office
15 11 (1.34%) Aerospace
16 10 (1.22%) Law
16 10 (1.22%) Military
17 8 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 213 (26.04%) Architect
2 155 (18.95%) Data Architect
3 132 (16.14%) Data Engineer
4 107 (13.08%) Lead
5 93 (11.37%) Analyst
6 74 (9.05%) Senior
7 53 (6.48%) Data Analyst
8 43 (5.26%) Data Modeller
9 36 (4.40%) Developer
10 35 (4.28%) Business Analyst
11 29 (3.55%) Senior Data Engineer
12 25 (3.06%) Consultant
13 24 (2.93%) Data Manager
14 21 (2.57%) Product Owner
14 21 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
15 20 (2.44%) Data Business Analyst
15 20 (2.44%) Lead Data Engineer
16 19 (2.32%) Enterprise Architect
17 17 (2.08%) DevOps Engineer
18 16 (1.96%) Information Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.21%) PySpark
2 44 (5.38%) JSON
3 41 (5.01%) Terraform
4 37 (4.52%) REST
5 32 (3.91%) Kafka
6 19 (2.32%) YAML
7 15 (1.83%) Spring Boot
8 14 (1.71%) XML
9 12 (1.47%) Node.js
10 10 (1.22%) React
10 10 (1.22%) SLSA
10 10 (1.22%) Spring
11 9 (1.10%) .NET
11 9 (1.10%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.10%) Playwright
12 8 (0.98%) Middleware
12 8 (0.98%) OAuth
13 7 (0.86%) Apache NiFi
13 7 (0.86%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.86%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 75 (9.17%) Cloud Native
2 71 (8.68%) Onboarding
3 67 (8.19%) Data Structures
4 64 (7.82%) Taxonomies
5 59 (7.21%) Management Information System
6 54 (6.60%) Product Ownership
7 46 (5.62%) Legacy Systems
8 43 (5.26%) Reference Data
9 19 (2.32%) Data Fabric
9 19 (2.32%) Derivative
10 17 (2.08%) AI Agents
10 17 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.59%) Life Science
13 12 (1.47%) Distributed Computing
13 12 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.47%) Equity Derivative
14 10 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (1.10%) Clustering
15 9 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.32%) Unix
2 13 (1.59%) 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
1 436 (53.30%) Data Governance
2 388 (47.43%) Data Modelling
3 318 (38.88%) Metadata Management
4 263 (32.15%) Analytics
5 227 (27.75%) Data Architecture
6 219 (26.77%) AI
7 209 (25.55%) Stakeholder Management
8 196 (23.96%) Agile
9 183 (22.37%) Data Pipeline
10 180 (22.00%) Data Engineering
11 178 (21.76%) Migration
12 172 (21.03%) ETL
13 169 (20.66%) CI/CD
14 152 (18.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 143 (17.48%) Data Management
16 140 (17.11%) Roadmaps
17 139 (16.99%) Data Lineage
18 131 (16.01%) Business Intelligence
18 131 (16.01%) Validation
19 130 (15.89%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 296 (36.19%) SQL
2 211 (25.79%) Python
3 64 (7.82%) Java
4 22 (2.69%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.83%) Shell Script
6 14 (1.71%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.59%) C#
7 13 (1.59%) Groovy
7 13 (1.59%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.10%) Bash
9 9 (1.10%) C++
10 7 (0.86%) Bicep
10 7 (0.86%) SPARQL
11 6 (0.73%) TypeScript
12 5 (0.61%) Scala
12 5 (0.61%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.49%) Apex Code
13 4 (0.49%) Cypher
13 4 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 193 (23.59%) Security Cleared
2 145 (17.73%) SC Cleared
3 54 (6.60%) Degree
4 44 (5.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.57%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.71%) Azure Certification
8 12 (1.47%) TOGAF Certification
9 10 (1.22%) AWS Certification
10 9 (1.10%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.73%) PRINCE2 Certification
13 5 (0.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.37%) CISSP
14 3 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.37%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.24%) ACCA
15 2 (0.24%) CIMA
15 2 (0.24%) CISM
15 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (45.23%) Data Quality
2 67 (8.19%) GDPR
3 45 (5.50%) Accessibility
3 45 (5.50%) QA
4 8 (0.98%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 8 (0.98%) WCAG
5 7 (0.86%) NCSC
6 6 (0.73%) GRC
6 6 (0.73%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.73%) MiFID
7 5 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.61%) NIST
7 5 (0.61%) SNOMED CT
7 5 (0.61%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.49%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.24%) IFRS
10 2 (0.24%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 22 (2.69%) Docker
2 9 (1.10%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 23 (2.81%) Kubernetes
2 12 (1.47%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (0.86%) Grafana
4 5 (0.61%) Ansible
4 5 (0.61%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.49%) PingFederate
6 3 (0.37%) Control-M
7 2 (0.24%) Kibana
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.12%) Istio
8 1 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 151 (18.46%) Microsoft
2 137 (16.75%) Databricks
3 60 (7.33%) Informatica
4 56 (6.85%) Oracle
5 33 (4.03%) Google
6 18 (2.20%) Sparx
7 17 (2.08%) SAP
8 16 (1.96%) IBM
8 16 (1.96%) Talend
9 15 (1.83%) Salesforce
10 13 (1.59%) Autodesk
10 13 (1.59%) ServiceNow
11 11 (1.34%) Sybase
11 11 (1.34%) Teradata
12 10 (1.22%) Denodo
12 10 (1.22%) Palantir
12 10 (1.22%) Sonatype
13 9 (1.10%) Foundry
14 8 (0.98%) Adobe
14 8 (0.98%) CA Agile Central