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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 330 293
Rank change year-on-year +110 -37 +24
Contract jobs citing Metadata 491 203 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 0.66% 0.75%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.55% 3.58% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 138 231
10th Percentile £358 £305 £375
25th Percentile £415 £436 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% -5.68% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £676 £720
90th Percentile £688 £799 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £560
% change year-on-year +2.56% -12.95% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 23
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.72 £19.30
25th Percentile £61.50 £24.48 £34.18
Median hourly rate £69.00 £30.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% -35.04% +31.94%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.50 £47.63
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £67.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +140.77% -37.74% +31.94%

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 6,507 5,676 7,319
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.31% 18.50% 16.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,470 3,779 5,200
10th Percentile £340 £350 £350
25th Percentile £412 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 90 177
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.81 £15.96
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.81 £21.64
Median hourly rate £53.25 £38.31 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.02% -9.87% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.93 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.23 £70.38 £76.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £30.00 £40.25
% change year-on-year +82.33% -25.47% -28.04%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 +102 414 £513 -1.44% 132
London +94 249 £525 -12.50% 62
UK excluding London +21 192 £500 +2.56% 103
Work from Home +38 131 £525 +0.48% 69
Midlands -12 48 £548 +41.29% 16
South East -10 40 £506 +3.58% 46
West Midlands -15 40 £560 +44.52% 12
Scotland +31 38 £450 -34.31% 10
North of England -49 35 £475 -12.84% 17
East of England -13 20 £492 +54.67% 5
North West -26 19 £469 -13.94% 6
Yorkshire -47 14 £525 +35.48% 5
South West -16 12 £568 +16.41% 8
Wales -1 8 £700 +196.61% 2
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 4
North East -12 4 £475 -30.87% 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 36 (7.33%) Apache Spark
2 31 (6.31%) SharePoint
3 23 (4.68%) SAS
4 22 (4.48%) Confluence
5 16 (3.26%) Apache
6 15 (3.05%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (2.04%) CMS
8 7 (1.43%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.22%) Drupal
9 6 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (1.02%) ArcGIS
10 5 (1.02%) GeoServer
10 5 (1.02%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.61%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.20%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.20%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.20%) Documentum
12 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 27 (5.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.04%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.20%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (2.85%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.22%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.22%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.22%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.61%) Actimize
4 3 (0.61%) Maximo
5 2 (0.41%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.41%) Summit
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.20%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.20%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 163 (33.20%) Azure
2 113 (23.01%) AWS
3 77 (15.68%) Power Platform
4 60 (12.22%) GCP
5 45 (9.16%) Collibra
6 44 (8.96%) Microsoft Purview
7 43 (8.76%) Azure Data Factory
8 39 (7.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 31 (6.31%) Snowflake
10 21 (4.28%) dbt
11 20 (4.07%) Serverless
12 18 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
13 17 (3.46%) Amazon S3
14 15 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
15 14 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (2.85%) GitHub
16 9 (1.83%) Entra ID
17 8 (1.63%) SaaS
17 8 (1.63%) ShareGate
18 7 (1.43%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.61%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.41%) Intranet
3 1 (0.20%) Firewall
3 1 (0.20%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (20.98%) Data Warehouse
2 70 (14.26%) Power BI
3 64 (13.03%) Data Lake
4 37 (7.54%) Metadata Repository
5 30 (6.11%) Big Data
6 28 (5.70%) NoSQL
7 24 (4.89%) SQL Server
8 22 (4.48%) Data Vault
8 22 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (4.28%) Relational Database
9 21 (4.28%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (4.07%) Tableau
11 18 (3.67%) Hadoop
12 17 (3.46%) Azure SQL Database
12 17 (3.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (3.05%) BigQuery
13 15 (3.05%) Oracle Database
14 14 (2.85%) Amazon Redshift
15 12 (2.44%) Delta Lake
15 12 (2.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 29 (5.91%) ERwin
2 26 (5.30%) JIRA
3 24 (4.89%) Git
4 11 (2.24%) ER Studio
5 10 (2.04%) PowerDesigner
6 8 (1.63%) Jenkins
7 5 (1.02%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.81%) Maven
9 2 (0.41%) GitLab
9 2 (0.41%) Subversion
9 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.20%) gulp
10 1 (0.20%) Poetry
10 1 (0.20%) Pylint
10 1 (0.20%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.20%) Yeoman
General
1 178 (36.25%) Social Skills
2 123 (25.05%) Finance
3 91 (18.53%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (13.44%) Public Sector
5 42 (8.55%) Banking
6 38 (7.74%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.67%) Publishing
8 15 (3.05%) Retail
9 12 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
9 12 (2.44%) Legal
10 10 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.83%) Military
12 8 (1.63%) Aviation
13 7 (1.43%) Financial Institution
13 7 (1.43%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.43%) Marketing
14 6 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (1.22%) Retail Banking
15 5 (1.02%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 129 (26.27%) Architect
2 95 (19.35%) Data Architect
3 67 (13.65%) Analyst
4 63 (12.83%) Data Engineer
5 49 (9.98%) Data Analyst
6 38 (7.74%) Data Modeller
6 38 (7.74%) Lead
7 36 (7.33%) Developer
8 34 (6.92%) Senior
9 22 (4.48%) Consultant
10 21 (4.28%) Business Analyst
11 17 (3.46%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (2.65%) Azure Data Engineer
12 13 (2.65%) Software Engineer
13 12 (2.44%) Data Business Analyst
14 11 (2.24%) Senior Data Engineer
15 10 (2.04%) Data Analytics Engineer
15 10 (2.04%) Data Quality Analyst
15 10 (2.04%) Enterprise Architect
15 10 (2.04%) Governance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.74%) PySpark
2 28 (5.70%) Kafka
3 27 (5.50%) REST
4 16 (3.26%) JSON
5 14 (2.85%) .NET
6 12 (2.44%) XML
7 11 (2.24%) SOAP
7 11 (2.24%) YAML
8 10 (2.04%) React
9 8 (1.63%) OAuth
10 6 (1.22%) RESTful
10 6 (1.22%) SAP Basis
10 6 (1.22%) SAP Business Workflow
10 6 (1.22%) SAP Fiori
10 6 (1.22%) VML
11 5 (1.02%) Pandas
12 4 (0.81%) HTML
12 4 (0.81%) Node.js
12 4 (0.81%) SLSA
13 3 (0.61%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 40 (8.15%) Cloud Native
2 33 (6.72%) Data Structures
3 31 (6.31%) Management Information System
4 27 (5.50%) Reference Data
4 27 (5.50%) Taxonomies
5 21 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
6 20 (4.07%) Onboarding
7 19 (3.87%) Product Ownership
8 10 (2.04%) Distributed Computing
8 10 (2.04%) Virtual Team
9 8 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.22%) Data Fabric
11 5 (1.02%) CMDB
11 5 (1.02%) Credit Risk
11 5 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.81%) Genomics
12 4 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.81%) IoT
12 4 (0.81%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.43%) Unix
2 4 (0.81%) Linux
3 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (52.34%) Data Governance
2 243 (49.49%) Data Modelling
3 231 (47.05%) Metadata Management
4 167 (34.01%) Analytics
5 143 (29.12%) Data Architecture
6 130 (26.48%) ETL
7 112 (22.81%) Business Intelligence
8 96 (19.55%) Data Engineering
9 93 (18.94%) Agile
9 93 (18.94%) Data Lineage
10 91 (18.53%) Problem-Solving
11 86 (17.52%) AI
12 84 (17.11%) Data Pipeline
13 81 (16.50%) Validation
14 79 (16.09%) Data Management
15 75 (15.27%) Data Integration
16 74 (15.07%) Migration
17 72 (14.66%) Decision-Making
18 71 (14.46%) Stakeholder Management
19 67 (13.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 178 (36.25%) SQL
2 124 (25.25%) Python
3 22 (4.48%) C#
3 22 (4.48%) PowerShell
4 20 (4.07%) Java
5 10 (2.04%) PL/SQL
6 8 (1.63%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.43%) R
7 7 (1.43%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.22%) ABAP
8 6 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.22%) Groovy
8 6 (1.22%) Perl
9 5 (1.02%) Scala
9 5 (1.02%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.81%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.81%) C++
11 3 (0.61%) Bicep
11 3 (0.61%) SOQL
11 3 (0.61%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 113 (23.01%) Security Cleared
2 86 (17.52%) SC Cleared
3 37 (7.54%) Degree
4 22 (4.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.65%) Master's Degree
6 10 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.63%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.22%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.02%) AWS Certification
11 4 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.20%) Analytics IQ
12 1 (0.20%) CISSP
12 1 (0.20%) CSPO
12 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.20%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.20%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.20%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (43.79%) Data Quality
2 48 (9.78%) GDPR
3 20 (4.07%) QA
4 16 (3.26%) Accessibility
5 10 (2.04%) GRC
6 8 (1.63%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.02%) IFRS
9 4 (0.81%) MiFID
9 4 (0.81%) NIST
10 3 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.61%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.41%) CRD IV
11 2 (0.41%) FINREP
11 2 (0.41%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.41%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.41%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.41%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.20%) SLA
System Software
1 13 (2.65%) Docker
2 5 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 19 (3.87%) Kubernetes
2 18 (3.67%) Terraform
3 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.61%) Prometheus
3 3 (0.61%) SCCM
4 2 (0.41%) Grafana
5 1 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
5 1 (0.20%) Oozie
5 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 98 (19.96%) Microsoft
2 79 (16.09%) Databricks
3 45 (9.16%) Oracle
4 40 (8.15%) Informatica
5 23 (4.68%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.67%) Talend
7 17 (3.46%) SAP
8 16 (3.26%) Google
9 14 (2.85%) Salesforce
10 13 (2.65%) Sparx
11 10 (2.04%) Teradata
12 9 (1.83%) OpenText
13 7 (1.43%) Sitecore
14 6 (1.22%) Optimizely
14 6 (1.22%) Remedy
15 5 (1.02%) Atlassian
15 5 (1.02%) ESRI
15 5 (1.02%) Intergraph
15 5 (1.02%) Palantir
16 4 (0.81%) Sonatype