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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 218 332 293
Rank change year-on-year +114 -39 +11
Contract jobs citing Metadata 514 191 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 0.65% 0.77%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.55% 3.39% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 358 138 234
10th Percentile £358 £294 £353
25th Percentile £413 £418 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £554
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -6.09% +0.68%
75th Percentile £588 £650 £725
90th Percentile £688 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £550
% change year-on-year +5.82% -14.09% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 7 25
10th Percentile £38.47 £22.63 £13.70
25th Percentile £63.38 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.69 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £47.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +11.03%

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 6,805 5,640 7,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.04% 19.08% 16.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,687 3,884 5,147
10th Percentile £344 £351 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 95 178
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.59 £14.36
25th Percentile £28.72 £23.88 £20.78
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.93% -29.57%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.61 £62.31
90th Percentile £84.80 £69.50 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -29.08%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 March 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 +105 440 £523 - 220
London +104 254 £525 -16.00% 112
UK excluding London +16 197 £500 +5.82% 148
Work from Home +37 142 £525 - 127
Midlands -23 52 £560 +51.86% 11
West Midlands -23 46 £569 +54.24% 5
South East -13 45 £513 +7.89% 70
North of England -46 39 £469 -10.24% 18
Scotland +29 34 £425 -37.96% 8
North West -28 21 £463 -15.14% 7
East of England -22 20 £492 +54.78% 17
Yorkshire -43 17 £525 +35.48% 9
South West -17 14 £554 +9.33% 23
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 6
North East -14 4 £475 -23.91% 2
Wales -8 1 £750 +217.80% 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 38 (7.39%) Apache Spark
2 29 (5.64%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.86%) SAS
4 17 (3.31%) Confluence
5 16 (3.11%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (2.92%) Apache
7 9 (1.75%) CMS
8 7 (1.36%) Drupal
8 7 (1.36%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.97%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.97%) GeoServer
9 5 (0.97%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.19%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 27 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.33%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 16 (3.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.17%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.17%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.17%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.58%) Actimize
4 3 (0.58%) Maximo
5 2 (0.39%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.39%) Summit
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.19%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.19%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.19%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.19%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 160 (31.13%) Azure
2 116 (22.57%) AWS
3 84 (16.34%) Power Platform
4 62 (12.06%) GCP
5 50 (9.73%) Collibra
6 44 (8.56%) Azure Data Factory
7 41 (7.98%) Microsoft Purview
8 35 (6.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (6.61%) Snowflake
10 26 (5.06%) Serverless
11 23 (4.47%) Amazon S3
12 21 (4.09%) dbt
13 20 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
15 16 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
16 15 (2.92%) GitHub
17 7 (1.36%) Amazon EMR
17 7 (1.36%) Contentful
17 7 (1.36%) Entra ID
17 7 (1.36%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.58%) Intranet
2 2 (0.39%) Firewall
2 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.19%) 4G
3 1 (0.19%) 5G
3 1 (0.19%) HTTP
3 1 (0.19%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (21.01%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (15.18%) Power BI
3 66 (12.84%) Data Lake
4 41 (7.98%) Metadata Repository
5 29 (5.64%) SQL Server
6 28 (5.45%) Big Data
7 26 (5.06%) Data Vault
8 25 (4.86%) Snowflake Schema
9 23 (4.47%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (4.28%) NoSQL
10 22 (4.28%) Tableau
11 20 (3.89%) Relational Database
12 19 (3.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (3.31%) BigQuery
13 17 (3.31%) Hadoop
14 16 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
14 16 (3.11%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (3.11%) Oracle Database
15 12 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
15 12 (2.33%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 27 (5.25%) ERwin
2 24 (4.67%) Git
3 21 (4.09%) JIRA
4 11 (2.14%) Jenkins
4 11 (2.14%) PowerDesigner
5 10 (1.95%) ER Studio
6 5 (0.97%) Maven
6 5 (0.97%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.78%) GitLab
8 2 (0.39%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.39%) Subversion
8 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.19%) git-flow
9 1 (0.19%) gulp
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.19%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.19%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.19%) Yeoman
General
1 169 (32.88%) Social Skills
2 137 (26.65%) Finance
3 102 (19.84%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (13.04%) Public Sector
5 52 (10.12%) Banking
6 38 (7.39%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.92%) Publishing
8 13 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.53%) Legal
8 13 (2.53%) Retail
9 11 (2.14%) Aviation
10 10 (1.95%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.56%) Marketing
12 7 (1.36%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.36%) Military
13 6 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.17%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.97%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 137 (26.65%) Architect
2 104 (20.23%) Data Architect
3 70 (13.62%) Analyst
3 70 (13.62%) Data Engineer
4 49 (9.53%) Data Analyst
5 40 (7.78%) Lead
6 39 (7.59%) Senior
7 37 (7.20%) Data Modeller
7 37 (7.20%) Developer
8 25 (4.86%) Consultant
9 23 (4.47%) Business Analyst
10 17 (3.31%) Azure Engineer
11 14 (2.72%) Software Engineer
12 13 (2.53%) Azure Data Engineer
12 13 (2.53%) Data Business Analyst
13 12 (2.33%) Principal Engineer
14 11 (2.14%) AWS Engineer
14 11 (2.14%) Data Analytics Engineer
14 11 (2.14%) Governance Analyst
14 11 (2.14%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.39%) PySpark
2 29 (5.64%) Kafka
2 29 (5.64%) REST
3 18 (3.50%) JSON
4 15 (2.92%) .NET
5 12 (2.33%) React
5 12 (2.33%) YAML
6 11 (2.14%) SOAP
6 11 (2.14%) XML
7 8 (1.56%) OAuth
8 6 (1.17%) Node.js
8 6 (1.17%) RESTful
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.17%) VML
9 5 (0.97%) Pandas
9 5 (0.97%) SLSA
10 4 (0.78%) HTML
11 3 (0.58%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 47 (9.14%) Cloud Native
2 41 (7.98%) Data Structures
3 31 (6.03%) Management Information System
3 31 (6.03%) Reference Data
3 31 (6.03%) Taxonomies
4 26 (5.06%) Onboarding
5 21 (4.09%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.89%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (2.14%) Virtual Team
9 7 (1.36%) Credit Risk
9 7 (1.36%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.36%) Distributed Computing
10 5 (0.97%) CMDB
10 5 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.78%) IoT
11 4 (0.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.56%) Unix
2 5 (0.97%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (51.56%) Data Governance
2 255 (49.61%) Data Modelling
3 210 (40.86%) Metadata Management
4 188 (36.58%) Analytics
5 152 (29.57%) Data Architecture
6 139 (27.04%) ETL
7 121 (23.54%) Business Intelligence
8 103 (20.04%) Data Engineering
9 97 (18.87%) Agile
10 95 (18.48%) Validation
11 91 (17.70%) Data Pipeline
12 90 (17.51%) Data Lineage
13 89 (17.32%) Problem-Solving
14 88 (17.12%) AI
15 79 (15.37%) Migration
16 77 (14.98%) Data Integration
17 75 (14.59%) Data Management
18 72 (14.01%) CI/CD
19 70 (13.62%) Decision-Making
20 67 (13.04%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 201 (39.11%) SQL
2 132 (25.68%) Python
3 24 (4.67%) C#
4 21 (4.09%) PowerShell
5 18 (3.50%) Java
6 11 (2.14%) PL/SQL
7 10 (1.95%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (1.36%) Groovy
9 7 (1.36%) R
10 6 (1.17%) ABAP
10 6 (1.17%) Perl
10 6 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 5 (0.97%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.97%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.78%) Scala
13 3 (0.58%) SOQL
14 2 (0.39%) Bicep
14 2 (0.39%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 123 (23.93%) Security Cleared
2 92 (17.90%) SC Cleared
3 32 (6.23%) Degree
4 23 (4.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.33%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.56%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.56%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.56%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.97%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.19%) Analytics IQ
10 1 (0.19%) CISSP
10 1 (0.19%) CSPO
10 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.19%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.19%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 221 (43.00%) Data Quality
2 50 (9.73%) GDPR
3 23 (4.47%) QA
4 18 (3.50%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.95%) GRC
6 8 (1.56%) Solvency II
7 6 (1.17%) IFRS
8 5 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.78%) MiFID
9 4 (0.78%) NIST
10 2 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.39%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.39%) FINREP
10 2 (0.39%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.39%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 19650
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 11 (2.14%) Docker
2 5 (0.97%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 19 (3.70%) Terraform
2 17 (3.31%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.78%) Grafana
3 4 (0.78%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.19%) Ansible
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.19%) SCCM
4 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 101 (19.65%) Microsoft
2 74 (14.40%) Databricks
3 48 (9.34%) Oracle
4 41 (7.98%) Informatica
5 23 (4.47%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.50%) SAP
6 18 (3.50%) Talend
7 16 (3.11%) Salesforce
8 15 (2.92%) Google
8 15 (2.92%) Sparx
9 11 (2.14%) Teradata
10 8 (1.56%) OpenText
11 7 (1.36%) Remedy
11 7 (1.36%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.17%) ESRI
12 6 (1.17%) Optimizely
13 5 (0.97%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.97%) Intergraph
13 5 (0.97%) Palantir
13 5 (0.97%) Sonatype