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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 348 283
Rank change year-on-year +115 -65 +51
Contract jobs citing Metadata 419 191 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 0.60% 0.80%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.70% 3.29% 4.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 290 129 239
10th Percentile £375 £331 £399
25th Percentile £430 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% -5.00% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £680
90th Percentile £700 £799 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +1.25% -15.22% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 6 22
10th Percentile £29.66 £21.01 £14.15
25th Percentile £53.58 £22.72 £19.37
Median hourly rate £80.50 £32.47 £44.28
Median % change year-on-year +147.96% -26.68% +6.05%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.88 £48.36
90th Percentile £84.30 £82.25 £69.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.50 £25.43 £35.85
% change year-on-year +216.56% -29.07% -42.64%

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 6,257 5,814 6,999
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.87% 18.26% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,316 3,838 4,938
10th Percentile £330 £350 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
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% - -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 78 150
10th Percentile £20.05 £19.76 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £22.61
Median hourly rate £46.50 £32.80 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.79% -28.98% -16.04%
75th Percentile £72.00 £64.67 £64.50
90th Percentile £84.20 £68.33 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.10 £28.65 £46.18
% change year-on-year +95.81% -37.96% -16.04%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +99 364 £521 - 167
London +86 224 £538 -0.46% 57
UK excluding London -1 149 £494 +1.25% 149
Work from Home +46 112 £525 +0.48% 71
South East +4 37 £500 -6.98% 60
Midlands -11 32 £509 +35.60% 21
North of England -35 24 £475 -12.84% 27
West Midlands -18 22 £560 +49.33% 14
Scotland +10 21 £465 -32.12% 10
East of England -8 21 £500 +57.23% 14
North West -20 15 £448 -17.89% 8
South West -19 12 £568 +16.41% 12
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 7
Wales +1 8 £700 +229.21% 7
Yorkshire -41 8 £500 +25.00% 13
North East -12 1 £475 -23.91% 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 30 (7.16%) SharePoint
2 29 (6.92%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.06%) Confluence
4 15 (3.58%) CMS
4 15 (3.58%) SAS
5 14 (3.34%) Apache
6 7 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (1.67%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (1.43%) Drupal
8 5 (1.19%) GeoServer
8 5 (1.19%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.95%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.72%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.24%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.24%) Documentum
12 1 (0.24%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
12 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
Applications
1 23 (5.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.48%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.24%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.24%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.24%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.34%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.43%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.43%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.43%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.72%) Actimize
3 3 (0.72%) Maximo
4 2 (0.48%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.24%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.24%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Primavera
5 1 (0.24%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 128 (30.55%) Azure
2 94 (22.43%) AWS
3 72 (17.18%) Power Platform
4 47 (11.22%) GCP
5 40 (9.55%) Collibra
6 38 (9.07%) Azure Data Factory
7 37 (8.83%) Microsoft Purview
8 36 (8.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 27 (6.44%) Snowflake
10 18 (4.30%) Microsoft 365
10 18 (4.30%) Serverless
11 15 (3.58%) Amazon S3
12 14 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (3.10%) dbt
14 11 (2.63%) GitHub
15 9 (2.15%) PowerApps
16 7 (1.67%) Contentful
16 7 (1.67%) Entra ID
16 7 (1.67%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.72%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.48%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.48%) Intranet
3 1 (0.24%) Firewall
3 1 (0.24%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (18.38%) Data Warehouse
2 63 (15.04%) Power BI
3 49 (11.69%) Data Lake
4 29 (6.92%) Metadata Repository
5 23 (5.49%) NoSQL
6 21 (5.01%) Big Data
6 21 (5.01%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.53%) SQL Server
8 18 (4.30%) Data Vault
8 18 (4.30%) Tableau
9 17 (4.06%) Snowflake Schema
9 17 (4.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 16 (3.82%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
12 14 (3.34%) Amazon Redshift
13 13 (3.10%) BigQuery
14 11 (2.63%) Delta Lake
14 11 (2.63%) Spark SQL
15 10 (2.39%) Oracle Database
15 10 (2.39%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (5.49%) JIRA
2 22 (5.25%) ERwin
3 20 (4.77%) Git
4 10 (2.39%) ER Studio
4 10 (2.39%) PowerDesigner
5 4 (0.95%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.48%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.48%) Subversion
6 2 (0.48%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.24%) GitLab
7 1 (0.24%) gulp
7 1 (0.24%) Poetry
7 1 (0.24%) Pylint
7 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.24%) Yeoman
General
1 161 (38.42%) Social Skills
2 109 (26.01%) Finance
3 82 (19.57%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (13.84%) Public Sector
5 32 (7.64%) Banking
6 31 (7.40%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (4.30%) Publishing
8 12 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
8 12 (2.86%) Legal
8 12 (2.86%) Retail
9 11 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (1.91%) Military
11 7 (1.67%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.67%) Investment Banking
12 6 (1.43%) Aviation
12 6 (1.43%) Law
12 6 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (1.43%) Retail Banking
13 5 (1.19%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 88 (21.00%) Architect
2 67 (15.99%) Analyst
3 63 (15.04%) Data Architect
4 49 (11.69%) Data Engineer
5 45 (10.74%) Data Analyst
6 32 (7.64%) Data Modeller
6 32 (7.64%) Lead
7 28 (6.68%) Developer
8 25 (5.97%) Consultant
8 25 (5.97%) Senior
9 21 (5.01%) Business Analyst
10 16 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
11 13 (3.10%) Governance Analyst
12 12 (2.86%) Azure Data Engineer
13 11 (2.63%) Data Business Analyst
14 10 (2.39%) Software Engineer
15 9 (2.15%) Data Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.15%) Quality Analyst
16 8 (1.91%) Data Manager
16 8 (1.91%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (8.59%) PySpark
2 25 (5.97%) Kafka
3 22 (5.25%) REST
4 11 (2.63%) JSON
5 10 (2.39%) XML
6 9 (2.15%) React
7 7 (1.67%) .NET
7 7 (1.67%) SOAP
8 6 (1.43%) OAuth
8 6 (1.43%) RESTful
8 6 (1.43%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.43%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.43%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.43%) VML
8 6 (1.43%) YAML
9 5 (1.19%) HTML
9 5 (1.19%) Pandas
10 4 (0.95%) LDAP
10 4 (0.95%) Node.js
10 4 (0.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 28 (6.68%) Data Structures
2 26 (6.21%) Cloud Native
2 26 (6.21%) Management Information System
3 23 (5.49%) Taxonomies
4 19 (4.53%) Legacy Systems
4 19 (4.53%) Onboarding
5 18 (4.30%) Reference Data
6 15 (3.58%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.63%) Distributed Computing
8 8 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.67%) Data Fabric
10 5 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.19%) Low-Code
11 4 (0.95%) Genomics
11 4 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.95%) Omics
11 4 (0.95%) Replication
11 4 (0.95%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.72%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.19%) Unix
2 4 (0.95%) Linux
3 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (52.74%) Data Governance
2 205 (48.93%) Metadata Management
3 203 (48.45%) Data Modelling
4 140 (33.41%) Analytics
5 108 (25.78%) Data Architecture
6 104 (24.82%) ETL
7 101 (24.11%) Business Intelligence
8 82 (19.57%) Agile
8 82 (19.57%) Data Lineage
9 78 (18.62%) Problem-Solving
10 77 (18.38%) Data Pipeline
11 75 (17.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 74 (17.66%) Data Engineering
13 65 (15.51%) Data Management
13 65 (15.51%) Validation
14 60 (14.32%) AI
15 59 (14.08%) Stakeholder Management
16 58 (13.84%) Migration
17 57 (13.60%) Data Integration
18 55 (13.13%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 147 (35.08%) SQL
2 104 (24.82%) Python
3 22 (5.25%) PowerShell
4 21 (5.01%) Java
5 14 (3.34%) C#
6 9 (2.15%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.91%) Scala
7 8 (1.91%) T-SQL
8 7 (1.67%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.67%) R
9 6 (1.43%) ABAP
9 6 (1.43%) Perl
10 5 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 4 (0.95%) C++
11 4 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.72%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.72%) Bicep
12 3 (0.72%) SOQL
12 3 (0.72%) SOSL
12 3 (0.72%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 94 (22.43%) Security Cleared
2 68 (16.23%) SC Cleared
3 23 (5.49%) Degree
4 15 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.67%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.43%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.95%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.95%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.24%) CSPO
10 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.24%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.24%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.24%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.24%) PMP
10 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 186 (44.39%) Data Quality
2 47 (11.22%) GDPR
3 17 (4.06%) QA
4 15 (3.58%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.43%) GRC
6 6 (1.43%) IFRS
7 5 (1.19%) MiFID
7 5 (1.19%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.72%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.48%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.48%) FINREP
9 2 (0.48%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.48%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.48%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.48%) NIST
10 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 13 (3.10%) Docker
2 5 (1.19%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.72%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (4.06%) Kubernetes
2 15 (3.58%) Terraform
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.72%) Hadoop YARN
4 3 (0.72%) Oozie
4 3 (0.72%) SCCM
5 1 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 84 (20.05%) Microsoft
2 59 (14.08%) Databricks
3 35 (8.35%) Oracle
4 33 (7.88%) Informatica
5 20 (4.77%) ServiceNow
6 18 (4.30%) SAP
7 14 (3.34%) Sparx
8 11 (2.63%) Google
8 11 (2.63%) Salesforce
9 10 (2.39%) OpenText
9 10 (2.39%) Talend
10 8 (1.91%) Teradata
11 7 (1.67%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.43%) ESRI
12 6 (1.43%) IBM
12 6 (1.43%) Optimizely
13 5 (1.19%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.19%) Intergraph
13 5 (1.19%) Palantir
14 4 (0.95%) Atlassian