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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 264 385 340
Rank change year-on-year +121 -45 +18
Contract jobs citing Metadata 383 177 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 0.49% 0.66%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.03% 2.77% 3.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 257 111 205
10th Percentile £383 £356 £364
25th Percentile £450 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £688
90th Percentile £725 £775 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £488 £533
% change year-on-year +1.54% -8.45% +1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 20
10th Percentile £19.65 £24.99 £15.15
25th Percentile £29.25 £33.51 £28.17
Median hourly rate £63.00 £43.84 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +43.70% -5.07% +129.52%
75th Percentile £85.00 £48.18 £49.50
90th Percentile £86.50 - £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £48.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +30.76% +4.33% +242.07%

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 6,347 6,396 7,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.73% 17.53% 16.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,333 4,238 5,367
10th Percentile £333 £338 £350
25th Percentile £411 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £533
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.56% -3.09%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £720 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 85 149
10th Percentile £21.02 £17.70 £16.93
25th Percentile £29.00 £21.25 £22.50
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.00% -36.84% +5.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £48.18 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.25 £64.89 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.10 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +78.55% -40.45% +13.38%

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 20 November 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 20 November 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 20 November 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 +113 327 £525 +3.70% 300
London +90 205 £550 -8.33% 187
UK excluding London +34 138 £495 +1.54% 159
Work from Home +61 111 £561 +9.46% 137
Midlands +8 38 £537 +40.85% 26
West Midlands -10 27 £561 +47.15% 19
South East +4 23 £475 -17.39% 74
North of England -33 23 £500 +14.29% 19
Scotland +5 21 £480 -29.93% 16
East of England -10 15 £496 +58.63% 13
North West -14 15 £448 +11.88% 9
South West -8 12 £568 +16.41% 9
East Midlands - 11 £423 - 7
Wales +12 10 £700 +29.63% 2
Yorkshire -31 8 £525 +5.00% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1
Channel Islands - 1 £760 -

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 (9.92%) SharePoint
2 29 (7.57%) Apache Spark
3 22 (5.74%) Apache
4 19 (4.96%) Confluence
5 18 (4.70%) CMS
6 11 (2.87%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (2.35%) SAS
8 6 (1.57%) Drupal
8 6 (1.57%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (1.04%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.78%) GeoServer
11 3 (0.78%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.78%) Umbraco
12 2 (0.52%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.26%) Alfresco
13 1 (0.26%) Documentum
13 1 (0.26%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 17 (4.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.35%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.52%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.26%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.26%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.26%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.26%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (2.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.61%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 6 (1.57%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.57%) Salesforce CRM
3 6 (1.57%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.57%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.78%) Maximo
5 2 (0.52%) Actimize
6 1 (0.26%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.26%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.26%) Primavera
6 1 (0.26%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 112 (29.24%) Azure
2 89 (23.24%) AWS
3 65 (16.97%) Power Platform
4 46 (12.01%) GCP
5 35 (9.14%) Collibra
6 34 (8.88%) Microsoft Purview
7 31 (8.09%) Snowflake
8 27 (7.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 26 (6.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 24 (6.27%) Microsoft 365
11 18 (4.70%) dbt
12 17 (4.44%) Amazon S3
12 17 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (3.39%) GitHub
13 13 (3.39%) Serverless
14 11 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
15 9 (2.35%) PowerApps
15 9 (2.35%) SaaS
16 8 (2.09%) Alation
17 6 (1.57%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.78%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.52%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.26%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (18.80%) Data Warehouse
2 54 (14.10%) Power BI
3 42 (10.97%) Data Lake
4 24 (6.27%) NoSQL
5 23 (6.01%) Big Data
6 19 (4.96%) SQL Server
7 18 (4.70%) Data Vault
7 18 (4.70%) Relational Database
8 17 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
9 16 (4.18%) BigQuery
10 15 (3.92%) Metadata Repository
10 15 (3.92%) Snowflake Schema
10 15 (3.92%) Tableau
11 14 (3.66%) Amazon Redshift
12 11 (2.87%) Delta Lake
13 10 (2.61%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (2.61%) Hadoop
13 10 (2.61%) Spark SQL
14 9 (2.35%) Amazon Athena
14 9 (2.35%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 28 (7.31%) ERwin
2 24 (6.27%) JIRA
3 16 (4.18%) Git
4 15 (3.92%) ER Studio
5 13 (3.39%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (0.78%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.52%) GitLab
7 2 (0.52%) Subversion
8 1 (0.26%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.26%) MLflow
8 1 (0.26%) Poetry
8 1 (0.26%) Postman
8 1 (0.26%) Pylint
8 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 161 (42.04%) Social Skills
2 93 (24.28%) Finance
3 65 (16.97%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (12.79%) Public Sector
5 36 (9.40%) Banking
6 28 (7.31%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (4.18%) Retail
8 15 (3.92%) Publishing
9 14 (3.66%) Legal
10 11 (2.87%) Presentation Skills
11 10 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (2.35%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (1.57%) Aviation
14 6 (1.57%) Corporate Banking
14 6 (1.57%) Financial Institution
14 6 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (1.57%) Retail Banking
15 5 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (1.31%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 86 (22.45%) Architect
2 61 (15.93%) Data Architect
3 58 (15.14%) Analyst
4 40 (10.44%) Data Analyst
5 38 (9.92%) Data Modeller
6 31 (8.09%) Data Engineer
7 28 (7.31%) Developer
8 24 (6.27%) Consultant
8 24 (6.27%) Lead
8 24 (6.27%) Senior
9 18 (4.70%) Business Analyst
10 14 (3.66%) Governance Analyst
11 12 (3.13%) Technical Architect
12 10 (2.61%) Data Manager
13 9 (2.35%) SAP Consultant
14 8 (2.09%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.09%) Data Business Analyst
14 8 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
15 7 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
15 7 (1.83%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (6.79%) PySpark
2 21 (5.48%) Kafka
3 17 (4.44%) REST
4 8 (2.09%) JSON
4 8 (2.09%) XML
5 7 (1.83%) Lightning Web Components
5 7 (1.83%) React
5 7 (1.83%) RESTful
6 6 (1.57%) SAP Basis
6 6 (1.57%) SAP Business Workflow
6 6 (1.57%) SAP Fiori
6 6 (1.57%) Visualforce
6 6 (1.57%) VML
7 5 (1.31%) .NET
7 5 (1.31%) Apache NiFi
7 5 (1.31%) SOAP
8 4 (1.04%) HTML
8 4 (1.04%) OAuth
8 4 (1.04%) Regular Expression
8 4 (1.04%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 32 (8.36%) Data Structures
2 25 (6.53%) Taxonomies
3 22 (5.74%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.18%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (4.18%) Management Information System
5 15 (3.92%) Onboarding
6 14 (3.66%) Reference Data
7 11 (2.87%) Product Ownership
8 9 (2.35%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (1.83%) Low-Code
10 6 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.31%) Data Fabric
12 4 (1.04%) Genomics
12 4 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (1.04%) NHS
12 4 (1.04%) Omics
13 3 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
13 3 (0.78%) FMCG
13 3 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (0.78%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.31%) Linux
1 5 (1.31%) Unix
2 1 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 1 (0.26%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (53.52%) Data Governance
2 190 (49.61%) Data Modelling
2 190 (49.61%) Metadata Management
3 121 (31.59%) Analytics
4 96 (25.07%) Data Architecture
5 90 (23.50%) Business Intelligence
6 80 (20.89%) ETL
7 79 (20.63%) Agile
7 79 (20.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 76 (19.84%) Data Lineage
9 68 (17.75%) Problem-Solving
10 60 (15.67%) Data Pipeline
11 58 (15.14%) Data Engineering
12 55 (14.36%) Data Management
13 53 (13.84%) Migration
14 49 (12.79%) AI
14 49 (12.79%) Validation
15 48 (12.53%) Data Integration
15 48 (12.53%) DevOps
16 47 (12.27%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 119 (31.07%) SQL
2 84 (21.93%) Python
3 17 (4.44%) PowerShell
4 16 (4.18%) Java
5 10 (2.61%) T-SQL
6 7 (1.83%) Apex Code
6 7 (1.83%) R
7 6 (1.57%) ABAP
7 6 (1.57%) C#
7 6 (1.57%) Scala
7 6 (1.57%) SOQL
8 5 (1.31%) C++
8 5 (1.31%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.31%) SOSL
9 4 (1.04%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.52%) Bicep
11 2 (0.52%) Korn
11 2 (0.52%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.26%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 69 (18.02%) Security Cleared
2 46 (12.01%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.27%) Degree
4 10 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (1.83%) AWS Certification
6 7 (1.83%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.83%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.04%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.52%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.52%) PMP
8 2 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.26%) CISSP
9 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.26%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 1 (0.26%) MCP
9 1 (0.26%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (37.08%) Data Quality
2 44 (11.49%) GDPR
3 22 (5.74%) QA
4 17 (4.44%) Accessibility
5 8 (2.09%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (1.04%) IFRS
8 4 (1.04%) MiFID
9 3 (0.78%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.52%) Basel III
10 2 (0.52%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.52%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.52%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.26%) GMP
11 1 (0.26%) NIST
11 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 7 (1.83%) Docker
2 5 (1.31%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.78%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 15 (3.92%) Terraform
2 14 (3.66%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.78%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.78%) Oozie
4 3 (0.78%) SCCM
5 1 (0.26%) Kubeflow
5 1 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 78 (20.37%) Microsoft
2 46 (12.01%) Databricks
3 33 (8.62%) Oracle
4 31 (8.09%) Informatica
5 15 (3.92%) SAP
6 14 (3.66%) Google
7 13 (3.39%) Salesforce
7 13 (3.39%) ServiceNow
8 12 (3.13%) Sparx
9 11 (2.87%) OpenText
10 9 (2.35%) Talend
11 6 (1.57%) Adobe
11 6 (1.57%) IBM
11 6 (1.57%) Optimizely
11 6 (1.57%) Sitecore
11 6 (1.57%) Teradata
12 5 (1.31%) Alteryx
12 5 (1.31%) Palantir
13 4 (1.04%) Atlassian
13 4 (1.04%) ESRI