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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 195 322 302
Rank change year-on-year +127 -20 +17
Contract jobs citing Metadata 622 215 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.35% 0.73% 0.71%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.58% 3.83% 4.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 427 158 213
10th Percentile £357 £233 £388
25th Percentile £415 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -9.57% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £775
90th Percentile £725 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £512 £470 £575
% change year-on-year +8.83% -18.26% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 7 20
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £22.72 £20.11
Median hourly rate £67.50 £27.50 £36.38
Median % change year-on-year +145.45% -24.40% +3.93%
75th Percentile £82.25 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +145.45% -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 7,252 5,614 7,283
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.72% 19.08% 16.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,966 3,872 5,181
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.28%
75th Percentile £594 £639 £650
90th Percentile £695 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £483
% change year-on-year -2.56% +0.93% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 109 148
10th Percentile £17.15 £20.60 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.44 £24.25 £20.94
Median hourly rate £51.00 £34.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -13.75% -32.54%
75th Percentile £74.68 £65.62 £53.84
90th Percentile £83.65 £73.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £39.25
% change year-on-year +58.03% -19.39% -31.74%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 +100 521 £500 -4.08% 152
London +99 294 £500 -16.67% 70
UK excluding London +46 253 £512 +8.83% 104
Work from Home +47 161 £525 -4.11% 77
Midlands -16 63 £548 +411.68% 24
West Midlands -21 56 £560 +423.36% 17
North of England -41 53 £500 -4.76% 30
Scotland +45 48 £450 -14.93% 6
South East -17 46 £506 +6.02% 27
East of England -8 34 £486 +52.46% 12
North West -34 29 £523 -4.13% 11
Yorkshire -37 22 £567 +51.13% 18
South West -21 15 £568 +8.10% 6
East Midlands - 7 £447 - 7
North East -14 5 £419 -22.94% 1
Wales -10 4 £750 +217.80%

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 41 (6.59%) Apache Spark
2 34 (5.47%) SharePoint
3 30 (4.82%) SAS
4 26 (4.18%) Confluence
5 22 (3.54%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (2.73%) Apache
7 12 (1.93%) CMS
8 6 (0.96%) Drupal
8 6 (0.96%) Sitecore CMS
9 4 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.64%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.32%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.32%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.32%) Smallworld
11 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 30 (4.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.77%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.13%) Notepad++
4 5 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
7 2 (0.32%) Navisworks
7 2 (0.32%) Revit
Business Applications
1 19 (3.05%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 13 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.96%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (0.96%) SAP FI
3 6 (0.96%) SAP MM
3 6 (0.96%) Summit
4 3 (0.48%) Maximo
5 2 (0.32%) Actimize
5 2 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.16%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.16%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 185 (29.74%) Azure
2 140 (22.51%) AWS
3 95 (15.27%) Power Platform
4 78 (12.54%) GCP
5 57 (9.16%) Collibra
6 47 (7.56%) Azure Data Factory
7 42 (6.75%) Microsoft Purview
8 36 (5.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 33 (5.31%) Amazon S3
9 33 (5.31%) Serverless
10 32 (5.14%) GitHub
11 31 (4.98%) Snowflake
12 27 (4.34%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
13 25 (4.02%) dbt
14 16 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
15 13 (2.09%) Amazon EMR
16 9 (1.45%) Amazon Kinesis
16 9 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
16 9 (1.45%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.13%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.13%) WinSCP
2 4 (0.64%) SSL
3 3 (0.48%) Firewall
3 3 (0.48%) HTTP
3 3 (0.48%) Intranet
4 2 (0.32%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (20.74%) Data Warehouse
2 88 (14.15%) Power BI
3 75 (12.06%) Data Lake
4 39 (6.27%) Metadata Repository
5 34 (5.47%) Relational Database
6 31 (4.98%) NoSQL
7 30 (4.82%) SQL Server
7 30 (4.82%) Tableau
8 28 (4.50%) Big Data
9 26 (4.18%) Data Vault
10 24 (3.86%) Snowflake Schema
11 23 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
12 22 (3.54%) Amazon Redshift
13 19 (3.05%) BigQuery
13 19 (3.05%) Delta Lake
13 19 (3.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 18 (2.89%) Hadoop
14 18 (2.89%) Oracle Database
15 14 (2.25%) Amazon Athena
15 14 (2.25%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 31 (4.98%) ERwin
1 31 (4.98%) Git
2 27 (4.34%) JIRA
3 16 (2.57%) Jenkins
4 13 (2.09%) PowerDesigner
5 12 (1.93%) GitLab
6 10 (1.61%) ER Studio
7 9 (1.45%) Maven
8 8 (1.29%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.48%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.48%) Subversion
10 2 (0.32%) git-flow
10 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.16%) Yeoman
General
1 204 (32.80%) Social Skills
2 171 (27.49%) Finance
3 130 (20.90%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (12.86%) Public Sector
5 69 (11.09%) Banking
6 43 (6.91%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
7 18 (2.89%) Investment Banking
7 18 (2.89%) Legal
8 15 (2.41%) Publishing
9 13 (2.09%) Marketing
10 11 (1.77%) Aviation
11 10 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
11 10 (1.61%) Retail
12 8 (1.29%) Front Office
13 7 (1.13%) Financial Institution
13 7 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.13%) Military
13 7 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 147 (23.63%) Architect
2 115 (18.49%) Data Architect
3 90 (14.47%) Data Engineer
4 86 (13.83%) Analyst
5 57 (9.16%) Data Analyst
6 52 (8.36%) Senior
7 48 (7.72%) Lead
8 43 (6.91%) Developer
9 40 (6.43%) Data Modeller
10 32 (5.14%) Business Analyst
11 28 (4.50%) Consultant
12 16 (2.57%) Data Business Analyst
13 15 (2.41%) AWS Engineer
13 15 (2.41%) Azure Engineer
13 15 (2.41%) Software Engineer
14 14 (2.25%) Data Manager
14 14 (2.25%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.25%) Senior Data Engineer
15 12 (1.93%) Governance Analyst
15 12 (1.93%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.23%) PySpark
2 34 (5.47%) Kafka
2 34 (5.47%) REST
3 28 (4.50%) JSON
4 18 (2.89%) YAML
5 15 (2.41%) .NET
5 15 (2.41%) XML
6 13 (2.09%) SOAP
7 12 (1.93%) OAuth
7 12 (1.93%) React
8 10 (1.61%) Node.js
9 8 (1.29%) SLSA
10 7 (1.13%) ADO
10 7 (1.13%) OAuth2
10 7 (1.13%) RESTful
11 6 (0.96%) HTML
11 6 (0.96%) Middleware
11 6 (0.96%) SAP Basis
11 6 (0.96%) SAP Business Workflow
11 6 (0.96%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 58 (9.32%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.40%) Data Structures
3 39 (6.27%) Onboarding
4 38 (6.11%) Taxonomies
5 36 (5.79%) Management Information System
6 33 (5.31%) Reference Data
7 29 (4.66%) Product Ownership
8 24 (3.86%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (2.73%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (2.25%) Derivative
11 12 (1.93%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.93%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.61%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.45%) Clustering
14 8 (1.29%) Equity Derivative
14 8 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.29%) Market Risk
15 6 (0.96%) Data Fabric
15 6 (0.96%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 23 (3.70%) Unix
2 10 (1.61%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (49.36%) Data Governance
2 292 (46.95%) Data Modelling
3 241 (38.75%) Metadata Management
4 217 (34.89%) Analytics
5 177 (28.46%) ETL
6 171 (27.49%) Data Architecture
7 130 (20.90%) Data Pipeline
8 129 (20.74%) Business Intelligence
9 127 (20.42%) Data Engineering
10 118 (18.97%) AI
10 118 (18.97%) CI/CD
11 117 (18.81%) Agile
12 114 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
13 111 (17.85%) Validation
14 109 (17.52%) Migration
15 106 (17.04%) Data Lineage
16 97 (15.59%) DevOps
17 94 (15.11%) Stakeholder Management
18 92 (14.79%) Data Integration
18 92 (14.79%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 252 (40.51%) SQL
2 163 (26.21%) Python
3 38 (6.11%) Java
4 26 (4.18%) C#
5 24 (3.86%) PL/SQL
6 20 (3.22%) PowerShell
7 15 (2.41%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.93%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.45%) Groovy
9 9 (1.45%) Perl
9 9 (1.45%) T-SQL
10 7 (1.13%) C++
10 7 (1.13%) R
11 6 (0.96%) ABAP
11 6 (0.96%) Apex Code
11 6 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 6 (0.96%) Scala
12 5 (0.80%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.64%) Bicep
14 2 (0.32%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 154 (24.76%) Security Cleared
2 114 (18.33%) SC Cleared
3 37 (5.95%) Degree
4 27 (4.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.09%) Master's Degree
6 12 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.77%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.13%) DV Cleared
10 6 (0.96%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.48%) CISSP
13 2 (0.32%) Analytics IQ
13 2 (0.32%) CISM
13 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
14 1 (0.16%) CSPO
14 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
14 1 (0.16%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
14 1 (0.16%) MySQL Certification
14 1 (0.16%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (41.48%) Data Quality
2 58 (9.32%) GDPR
3 30 (4.82%) QA
4 20 (3.22%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.77%) GRC
5 11 (1.77%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.96%) IFRS
6 6 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.96%) NIST
7 5 (0.80%) ISO 19650
8 4 (0.64%) ISO 22301
9 3 (0.48%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.48%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.48%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.48%) MiFID
10 2 (0.32%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.32%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.32%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.32%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (2.25%) Docker
2 8 (1.29%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 26 (4.18%) Terraform
2 17 (2.73%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.96%) Grafana
4 5 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 5 (0.80%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.64%) PingFederate
6 1 (0.16%) Ansible
Vendors
1 110 (17.68%) Microsoft
2 88 (14.15%) Databricks
3 70 (11.25%) Oracle
4 56 (9.00%) Informatica
5 25 (4.02%) Salesforce
5 25 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 25 (4.02%) Talend
6 23 (3.70%) SAP
7 20 (3.22%) Google
8 17 (2.73%) Sparx
9 12 (1.93%) Teradata
10 9 (1.45%) IBM
11 8 (1.29%) OpenText
11 8 (1.29%) Sitecore
11 8 (1.29%) Sonatype
12 7 (1.13%) Adobe
12 7 (1.13%) OpenAI
12 7 (1.13%) Sybase
13 6 (0.96%) Atlassian
13 6 (0.96%) Palantir