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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 249 348 289
Rank change year-on-year +99 -59 +28
Contract jobs citing Metadata 423 192 332
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 0.61% 0.77%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.72% 3.30% 4.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 294 128 232
10th Percentile £371 £318 £400
25th Percentile £429 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £521 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.68% -5.23% -3.93%
75th Percentile £600 £646 £680
90th Percentile £688 £799 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +2.56% -15.22% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 7 24
10th Percentile £29.71 £21.35 £14.46
25th Percentile £35.91 £22.72 £20.50
Median hourly rate £80.50 £27.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +192.73% -40.37% +10.46%
75th Percentile £84.00 £61.50 £46.91
90th Percentile £84.20 £82.25 £65.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.50 £26.47 £40.25
% change year-on-year +204.18% -34.25% -35.60%

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 6,295 5,810 7,051
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.65% 18.33% 16.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,340 3,827 5,000
10th Percentile £336 £350 £350
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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 84 166
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.26 £16.06
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £44.25 £30.40 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.56% -28.47% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.56 £62.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.43 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.86 £27.50 £41.38
% change year-on-year +70.40% -33.53% -24.77%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 +109 369 £515 -0.96% 280
London +96 228 £525 - 100
UK excluding London -6 152 £500 +2.56% 250
Work from Home +36 111 £525 +0.48% 151
South East -13 36 £500 -6.98% 98
Midlands -19 36 £537 +43.20% 33
North of England -52 27 £500 -8.26% 40
West Midlands -25 25 £561 +49.60% 14
Scotland +6 21 £465 -32.12% 17
East of England -7 21 £500 +57.01% 26
North West -24 17 £500 -8.26% 14
South West -10 12 £568 +16.41% 33
Yorkshire -43 11 £525 +31.25% 18
East Midlands - 11 £425 - 18
Wales -1 8 £700 +229.21% 10
North East -14 1 £475 -23.91% 8

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 29 (6.86%) SharePoint
2 28 (6.62%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.02%) SAS
4 16 (3.78%) Confluence
5 14 (3.31%) Apache
6 10 (2.36%) CMS
7 9 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
8 7 (1.65%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.42%) Drupal
9 6 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (1.18%) ArcGIS
10 5 (1.18%) GeoServer
10 5 (1.18%) Smallworld
11 2 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.24%) Documentum
12 1 (0.24%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 24 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.36%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.24%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.24%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.24%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.31%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.42%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.42%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.42%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.71%) Actimize
3 3 (0.71%) Maximo
4 2 (0.47%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.24%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.24%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Shopify
5 1 (0.24%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 131 (30.97%) Azure
2 102 (24.11%) AWS
3 75 (17.73%) Power Platform
4 50 (11.82%) GCP
5 39 (9.22%) Azure Data Factory
5 39 (9.22%) Collibra
6 37 (8.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 36 (8.51%) Microsoft Purview
8 29 (6.86%) Snowflake
9 18 (4.26%) Serverless
10 16 (3.78%) dbt
10 16 (3.78%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (3.55%) Amazon S3
12 13 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (2.60%) GitHub
14 8 (1.89%) Alation
15 7 (1.65%) Contentful
15 7 (1.65%) SaaS
16 6 (1.42%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.71%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.47%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.47%) Intranet
3 1 (0.24%) Firewall
3 1 (0.24%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (18.44%) Data Warehouse
2 68 (16.08%) Power BI
3 51 (12.06%) Data Lake
4 31 (7.33%) Metadata Repository
5 26 (6.15%) NoSQL
6 21 (4.96%) Big Data
6 21 (4.96%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.49%) Data Vault
7 19 (4.49%) Snowflake Schema
7 19 (4.49%) Tableau
8 18 (4.26%) SQL Server
9 17 (4.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 16 (3.78%) Azure SQL Database
10 16 (3.78%) PostgreSQL
11 14 (3.31%) Amazon Redshift
12 13 (3.07%) BigQuery
13 11 (2.60%) Oracle Database
14 10 (2.36%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.36%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (2.36%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 23 (5.44%) ERwin
2 22 (5.20%) JIRA
3 21 (4.96%) Git
4 10 (2.36%) ER Studio
5 9 (2.13%) PowerDesigner
6 6 (1.42%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.47%) Maven
8 2 (0.47%) Subversion
8 2 (0.47%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.24%) GitLab
9 1 (0.24%) gulp
9 1 (0.24%) Poetry
9 1 (0.24%) Pylint
9 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.24%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.24%) Yeoman
General
1 166 (39.24%) Social Skills
2 111 (26.24%) Finance
3 87 (20.57%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (13.95%) Public Sector
5 31 (7.33%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (7.09%) Banking
7 18 (4.26%) Publishing
8 14 (3.31%) Retail
9 12 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.60%) Legal
11 10 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.89%) Military
13 7 (1.65%) Financial Institution
14 6 (1.42%) Aviation
14 6 (1.42%) Law
14 6 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (1.42%) Retail Banking
15 5 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 5 (1.18%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 89 (21.04%) Architect
2 68 (16.08%) Analyst
3 64 (15.13%) Data Architect
4 56 (13.24%) Data Engineer
5 46 (10.87%) Data Analyst
6 34 (8.04%) Data Modeller
6 34 (8.04%) Lead
7 30 (7.09%) Developer
8 28 (6.62%) Senior
9 25 (5.91%) Consultant
10 22 (5.20%) Business Analyst
11 17 (4.02%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (3.07%) Azure Data Engineer
13 12 (2.84%) Software Engineer
14 11 (2.60%) Data Business Analyst
14 11 (2.60%) Governance Analyst
15 10 (2.36%) Senior Data Engineer
16 9 (2.13%) Data Analytics Engineer
16 9 (2.13%) Data Quality Analyst
16 9 (2.13%) Quality Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (8.75%) PySpark
2 24 (5.67%) Kafka
3 22 (5.20%) REST
4 14 (3.31%) JSON
5 11 (2.60%) XML
6 9 (2.13%) React
6 9 (2.13%) YAML
7 8 (1.89%) .NET
7 8 (1.89%) SOAP
8 6 (1.42%) OAuth
8 6 (1.42%) RESTful
8 6 (1.42%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.42%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.42%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.42%) VML
9 5 (1.18%) HTML
9 5 (1.18%) Node.js
9 5 (1.18%) Pandas
10 3 (0.71%) SAML
10 3 (0.71%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.09%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.62%) Data Structures
3 26 (6.15%) Management Information System
4 20 (4.73%) Legacy Systems
4 20 (4.73%) Taxonomies
5 17 (4.02%) Onboarding
5 17 (4.02%) Reference Data
6 15 (3.55%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.60%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (1.65%) Data Fabric
9 6 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.95%) CMDB
11 4 (0.95%) Credit Risk
11 4 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.95%) Low-Code
11 4 (0.95%) Omics
11 4 (0.95%) Replication
11 4 (0.95%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 6 (1.42%) Unix
2 4 (0.95%) Linux
3 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 223 (52.72%) Data Governance
2 207 (48.94%) Metadata Management
3 205 (48.46%) Data Modelling
4 144 (34.04%) Analytics
5 110 (26.00%) Data Architecture
6 107 (25.30%) ETL
7 106 (25.06%) Business Intelligence
8 85 (20.09%) Data Lineage
9 81 (19.15%) Agile
10 80 (18.91%) Data Pipeline
11 79 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
12 78 (18.44%) Data Engineering
13 71 (16.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 67 (15.84%) Data Management
14 67 (15.84%) Validation
15 65 (15.37%) AI
16 62 (14.66%) Decision-Making
17 61 (14.42%) Migration
17 61 (14.42%) Stakeholder Management
18 59 (13.95%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 157 (37.12%) SQL
2 113 (26.71%) Python
3 23 (5.44%) Java
4 19 (4.49%) PowerShell
5 15 (3.55%) C#
6 9 (2.13%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.89%) PL/SQL
7 8 (1.89%) Scala
8 7 (1.65%) R
8 7 (1.65%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.42%) ABAP
9 6 (1.42%) Perl
10 5 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.18%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.95%) C++
11 4 (0.95%) Groovy
12 3 (0.71%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.71%) Bicep
12 3 (0.71%) SOQL
12 3 (0.71%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 90 (21.28%) Security Cleared
2 66 (15.60%) SC Cleared
3 25 (5.91%) Degree
4 17 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.65%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.42%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.18%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.95%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.47%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.24%) Analytics IQ
11 1 (0.24%) CSPO
11 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.24%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.24%) MySQL Certification
11 1 (0.24%) PMP
11 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (44.92%) Data Quality
2 43 (10.17%) GDPR
3 15 (3.55%) QA
4 13 (3.07%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.65%) GRC
6 6 (1.42%) IFRS
6 6 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.18%) MiFID
7 5 (1.18%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.95%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.47%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.47%) FINREP
10 2 (0.47%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.47%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.47%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.47%) NIST
11 1 (0.24%) GMP
11 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.24%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (3.31%) Docker
2 3 (0.71%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.71%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 18 (4.26%) Kubernetes
1 18 (4.26%) Terraform
2 3 (0.71%) Hadoop YARN
2 3 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 3 (0.71%) Oozie
2 3 (0.71%) SCCM
3 1 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 83 (19.62%) Microsoft
2 61 (14.42%) Databricks
3 37 (8.75%) Oracle
4 33 (7.80%) Informatica
5 20 (4.73%) ServiceNow
6 17 (4.02%) SAP
7 14 (3.31%) Sparx
8 12 (2.84%) Google
9 11 (2.60%) Talend
10 10 (2.36%) Salesforce
10 10 (2.36%) Teradata
11 9 (2.13%) OpenText
12 7 (1.65%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.42%) ESRI
13 6 (1.42%) IBM
13 6 (1.42%) Optimizely
14 5 (1.18%) Intergraph
14 5 (1.18%) Palantir
15 4 (0.95%) Atlassian
15 4 (0.95%) Remedy