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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 266 364 313
Rank change year-on-year +98 -51 +41
Contract jobs citing Metadata 387 183 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 0.54% 0.72%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.10% 2.98% 4.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 124 225
10th Percentile £400 £334 £389
25th Percentile £447 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -5.98%
75th Percentile £625 £639 £688
90th Percentile £700 £784 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £560
% change year-on-year -1.54% -12.95% +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 21
10th Percentile £35.70 £20.32 £14.00
25th Percentile £45.38 £21.86 £20.50
Median hourly rate £63.00 £25.43 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +147.74% -44.93% +119.90%
75th Percentile £74.75 £31.30 £49.08
90th Percentile £80.90 £36.97 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £25.43 £46.18
% change year-on-year +190.99% -44.93% +21.53%

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 6,341 6,133 7,432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.33% 17.94% 16.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,364 4,048 5,230
10th Percentile £326 £340 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £767 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 84 140
10th Percentile £20.70 £18.15 £16.11
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.27 £21.56
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.11 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.49% -34.81% -7.73%
75th Percentile £69.25 £61.69 £64.65
90th Percentile £85.00 £65.89 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.35 £27.13 £46.18
% change year-on-year +93.00% -41.26% +2.62%

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 18 December 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 18 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Metadata in the UK

Metadata
Top 17 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 18 December 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 +105 333 £525 +5.00% 179
London +97 208 £538 -0.46% 84
UK excluding London +6 135 £480 -1.54% 141
Work from Home +35 105 £550 +8.11% 104
Midlands -14 32 £480 +28.00% 16
South East -9 28 £475 -11.63% 55
North of England -39 25 £475 -5.00% 36
West Midlands -17 22 £558 +48.67% 14
Scotland +6 19 £465 -32.12% 11
East of England -10 15 £496 +56.01% 16
North West -12 15 £448 -0.56% 8
South West -8 12 £568 +16.41% 11
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 1
Wales +12 9 £700 +239.29% 2
Yorkshire -33 9 £525 +16.67% 21
North East -8 1 £475 -23.91% 7
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1

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 32 (8.27%) SharePoint
2 29 (7.49%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.39%) Confluence
4 16 (4.13%) Apache
4 16 (4.13%) CMS
5 15 (3.88%) SAS
6 9 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
7 7 (1.81%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.55%) Drupal
9 4 (1.03%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.78%) GeoServer
10 3 (0.78%) Smallworld
11 2 (0.52%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.52%) Umbraco
12 1 (0.26%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.26%) Documentum
12 1 (0.26%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.26%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 20 (5.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.58%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.52%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.26%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.26%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.26%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (3.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.55%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.55%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.55%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.78%) Actimize
4 3 (0.78%) Maximo
4 3 (0.78%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.52%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.26%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.26%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.26%) Primavera
6 1 (0.26%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 120 (31.01%) Azure
2 88 (22.74%) AWS
3 73 (18.86%) Power Platform
4 45 (11.63%) GCP
5 38 (9.82%) Collibra
6 35 (9.04%) Microsoft Purview
7 33 (8.53%) Azure Data Factory
8 32 (8.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 29 (7.49%) Snowflake
10 21 (5.43%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (3.88%) Amazon S3
11 15 (3.88%) Serverless
12 14 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (3.36%) dbt
14 10 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
14 10 (2.58%) PowerApps
15 9 (2.33%) GitHub
16 7 (1.81%) Contentful
16 7 (1.81%) Entra ID
16 7 (1.81%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.78%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.52%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.52%) Intranet
3 1 (0.26%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (18.86%) Data Warehouse
2 61 (15.76%) Power BI
3 43 (11.11%) Data Lake
4 22 (5.68%) Big Data
4 22 (5.68%) NoSQL
5 21 (5.43%) Metadata Repository
5 21 (5.43%) Relational Database
6 19 (4.91%) Data Vault
7 17 (4.39%) Snowflake Schema
8 16 (4.13%) PostgreSQL
8 16 (4.13%) Tableau
9 15 (3.88%) SQL Server
10 13 (3.36%) BigQuery
10 13 (3.36%) Spark SQL
11 12 (3.10%) Amazon Redshift
11 12 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
11 12 (3.10%) Delta Lake
11 12 (3.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 10 (2.58%) Star Schema
13 9 (2.33%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 23 (5.94%) ERwin
1 23 (5.94%) JIRA
2 22 (5.68%) Git
3 11 (2.84%) ER Studio
3 11 (2.84%) PowerDesigner
4 3 (0.78%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.52%) GitLab
5 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 2 (0.52%) Subversion
5 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.26%) gulp
6 1 (0.26%) Poetry
6 1 (0.26%) Postman
6 1 (0.26%) Pylint
6 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.26%) Yeoman
General
1 163 (42.12%) Social Skills
2 104 (26.87%) Finance
3 76 (19.64%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (13.18%) Public Sector
5 35 (9.04%) Banking
6 27 (6.98%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (3.62%) Publishing
7 14 (3.62%) Retail
8 10 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (2.33%) Legal
10 8 (2.07%) Investment Banking
11 7 (1.81%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (1.55%) Aviation
12 6 (1.55%) Military
12 6 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.55%) Retail Banking
13 5 (1.29%) Corporate Banking
13 5 (1.29%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 85 (21.96%) Architect
2 67 (17.31%) Analyst
3 63 (16.28%) Data Architect
4 45 (11.63%) Data Analyst
5 40 (10.34%) Data Engineer
6 33 (8.53%) Data Modeller
7 28 (7.24%) Lead
8 23 (5.94%) Consultant
9 21 (5.43%) Developer
9 21 (5.43%) Senior
10 19 (4.91%) Business Analyst
11 15 (3.88%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (3.36%) Governance Analyst
13 11 (2.84%) Azure Data Engineer
14 10 (2.58%) Data Manager
15 9 (2.33%) Data Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.33%) Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.33%) SAP Consultant
16 8 (2.07%) Software Engineer
16 8 (2.07%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (9.30%) PySpark
2 25 (6.46%) Kafka
3 18 (4.65%) REST
4 12 (3.10%) JSON
5 10 (2.58%) XML
6 6 (1.55%) SAP Basis
6 6 (1.55%) SAP Business Workflow
6 6 (1.55%) SAP Fiori
6 6 (1.55%) VML
7 5 (1.29%) React
7 5 (1.29%) SOAP
7 5 (1.29%) YAML
8 4 (1.03%) HTML
8 4 (1.03%) Hugging Face
8 4 (1.03%) LDAP
8 4 (1.03%) OAuth
8 4 (1.03%) PyTorch
8 4 (1.03%) RESTful
8 4 (1.03%) SAML
8 4 (1.03%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 28 (7.24%) Data Structures
2 23 (5.94%) Cloud Native
2 23 (5.94%) Taxonomies
3 16 (4.13%) Reference Data
4 15 (3.88%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.62%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (3.62%) Management Information System
5 14 (3.62%) Product Ownership
6 11 (2.84%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (1.81%) Data Fabric
8 7 (1.81%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.03%) Genomics
9 4 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.03%) NHS
9 4 (1.03%) Omics
9 4 (1.03%) Replication
10 3 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.78%) FMCG
10 3 (0.78%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.29%) Unix
2 4 (1.03%) Linux
3 1 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (54.01%) Data Governance
2 198 (51.16%) Data Modelling
3 191 (49.35%) Metadata Management
4 138 (35.66%) Analytics
5 100 (25.84%) Data Architecture
6 95 (24.55%) Business Intelligence
7 91 (23.51%) ETL
8 82 (21.19%) Data Lineage
9 75 (19.38%) Agile
10 74 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
10 74 (19.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 70 (18.09%) Data Pipeline
12 69 (17.83%) Data Engineering
13 61 (15.76%) Validation
14 56 (14.47%) Data Management
14 56 (14.47%) Stakeholder Management
15 54 (13.95%) Migration
16 52 (13.44%) AI
17 51 (13.18%) Data Integration
18 49 (12.66%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 126 (32.56%) SQL
2 90 (23.26%) Python
3 17 (4.39%) Java
4 16 (4.13%) PowerShell
5 8 (2.07%) T-SQL
6 7 (1.81%) Scala
7 6 (1.55%) ABAP
7 6 (1.55%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.55%) R
8 5 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.03%) C++
9 4 (1.03%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.03%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.78%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.78%) Bicep
10 3 (0.78%) C#
10 3 (0.78%) SOQL
10 3 (0.78%) SOSL
11 2 (0.52%) Groovy
11 2 (0.52%) Korn
Qualifications
1 82 (21.19%) Security Cleared
2 55 (14.21%) SC Cleared
3 25 (6.46%) Degree
4 11 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.07%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.81%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.55%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.29%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.52%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.52%) PMP
11 2 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.26%) CSPO
12 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.26%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.26%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.26%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (41.86%) Data Quality
2 45 (11.63%) GDPR
3 18 (4.65%) QA
4 15 (3.88%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.55%) IFRS
5 6 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.29%) MiFID
6 5 (1.29%) Solvency II
7 4 (1.03%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.78%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.52%) Basel III
9 2 (0.52%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.52%) FINREP
9 2 (0.52%) GRC
9 2 (0.52%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.52%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.52%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.52%) NIST
10 1 (0.26%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 9 (2.33%) Docker
2 5 (1.29%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.78%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (4.39%) Terraform
2 15 (3.88%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.78%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.78%) Oozie
4 3 (0.78%) SCCM
5 1 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 80 (20.67%) Microsoft
2 61 (15.76%) Databricks
3 35 (9.04%) Oracle
4 32 (8.27%) Informatica
5 15 (3.88%) SAP
5 15 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 15 (3.88%) Sparx
6 11 (2.84%) Google
7 10 (2.58%) Salesforce
7 10 (2.58%) Talend
8 9 (2.33%) OpenText
9 8 (2.07%) Teradata
10 7 (1.81%) Sitecore
11 6 (1.55%) IBM
11 6 (1.55%) Optimizely
12 5 (1.29%) Adobe
12 5 (1.29%) Alteryx
12 5 (1.29%) Palantir
13 4 (1.03%) Atlassian
13 4 (1.03%) Cognos