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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 331 293
Rank change year-on-year +123 -38 +23
Contract jobs citing Metadata 559 194 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.27% 0.67% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.97% 3.52% 4.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 386 143 230
10th Percentile £355 £239 £362
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £640 £743
90th Percentile £691 £775 £856
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £464 £573
% change year-on-year +7.82% -19.00% +14.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 7 25
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.70
25th Percentile £56.98 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +151.71% -31.68% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.69 £56.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £47.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +151.71% -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 7,010 5,506 7,292
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.90% 18.97% 16.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,810 3,831 5,158
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £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 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £488
% change year-on-year -3.06% +0.51% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 102 164
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.99 £14.11
25th Percentile £30.26 £24.38 £20.77
Median hourly rate £51.00 £32.23 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.26% -19.44% -29.08%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.67 £56.81
90th Percentile £85.00 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.11 £38.50
% change year-on-year +66.09% -21.81% -30.00%

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 27 March 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 27 March 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 27 March 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 +88 474 £513 +0.99% 208
London +86 275 £500 -20.00% 89
UK excluding London +19 214 £500 +7.82% 159
Work from Home +40 153 £525 +0.48% 63
Midlands -26 51 £560 +138.55% 15
South East -23 45 £513 +7.33% 60
West Midlands -24 45 £569 +142.28% 6
North of England -53 42 £475 -7.32% 30
Scotland +35 38 £436 -17.58% 7
East of England -12 29 £486 +52.57% 27
North West -29 22 £496 -9.04% 11
Yorkshire -38 19 £525 +40.00% 15
South West -12 16 £570 +16.92% 14
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 9
North East -14 4 £475 -12.58% 4
Wales -15 1 £750 +217.80% 7

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 42 (7.51%) Apache Spark
2 31 (5.55%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.47%) SAS
4 21 (3.76%) Confluence
5 20 (3.58%) Apache Airflow
6 16 (2.86%) Apache
7 13 (2.33%) CMS
8 7 (1.25%) Drupal
8 7 (1.25%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.89%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.72%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.36%) GeoServer
11 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.36%) Smallworld
12 1 (0.18%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.18%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.18%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.18%) SharePoint 2013
12 1 (0.18%) WordPress
Applications
1 31 (5.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.15%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.36%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 17 (3.04%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.07%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.07%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.07%) SAP MM
4 5 (0.89%) Summit
5 3 (0.54%) Actimize
5 3 (0.54%) Maximo
6 2 (0.36%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.18%) Loan IQ
7 1 (0.18%) Misys Midas
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.18%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 169 (30.23%) Azure
2 128 (22.90%) AWS
3 90 (16.10%) Power Platform
4 70 (12.52%) GCP
5 58 (10.38%) Collibra
6 47 (8.41%) Azure Data Factory
7 46 (8.23%) Microsoft Purview
8 33 (5.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (5.72%) Snowflake
10 30 (5.37%) Serverless
11 29 (5.19%) Amazon S3
12 24 (4.29%) AWS Lambda
12 24 (4.29%) GitHub
13 23 (4.11%) dbt
14 21 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
15 17 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
16 10 (1.79%) Amazon EMR
17 8 (1.43%) Power Automate
18 7 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
18 7 (1.25%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.54%) Firewall
1 3 (0.54%) Intranet
2 2 (0.36%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.18%) 4G
3 1 (0.18%) 5G
3 1 (0.18%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (21.65%) Data Warehouse
2 84 (15.03%) Power BI
3 68 (12.16%) Data Lake
4 41 (7.33%) Metadata Repository
5 32 (5.72%) SQL Server
6 30 (5.37%) Tableau
7 28 (5.01%) Big Data
8 24 (4.29%) NoSQL
8 24 (4.29%) Relational Database
9 23 (4.11%) Data Vault
9 23 (4.11%) Snowflake Schema
10 22 (3.94%) PostgreSQL
11 20 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 19 (3.40%) Amazon Redshift
12 19 (3.40%) Oracle Database
13 18 (3.22%) Hadoop
14 16 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (2.86%) BigQuery
15 15 (2.68%) Delta Lake
16 13 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 29 (5.19%) Git
2 27 (4.83%) ERwin
3 24 (4.29%) JIRA
4 15 (2.68%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.97%) PowerDesigner
6 9 (1.61%) GitLab
7 8 (1.43%) ER Studio
7 8 (1.43%) Maven
8 7 (1.25%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.54%) Subversion
10 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.18%) git-flow
11 1 (0.18%) gulp
11 1 (0.18%) Postman
11 1 (0.18%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.18%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.18%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.18%) Yeoman
General
1 186 (33.27%) Social Skills
2 146 (26.12%) Finance
3 122 (21.82%) Analytical Skills
4 72 (12.88%) Public Sector
5 57 (10.20%) Banking
6 40 (7.16%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (3.04%) Publishing
8 13 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.33%) Investment Banking
8 13 (2.33%) Legal
9 12 (2.15%) Aviation
9 12 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
10 11 (1.97%) Marketing
11 8 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
11 8 (1.43%) Retail
12 7 (1.25%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.25%) Military
13 5 (0.89%) Law
14 4 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 139 (24.87%) Architect
2 107 (19.14%) Data Architect
3 80 (14.31%) Analyst
3 80 (14.31%) Data Engineer
4 56 (10.02%) Data Analyst
5 44 (7.87%) Senior
6 43 (7.69%) Lead
7 42 (7.51%) Developer
8 40 (7.16%) Data Modeller
9 26 (4.65%) Business Analyst
10 25 (4.47%) Consultant
11 16 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (2.50%) AWS Engineer
13 13 (2.33%) Data Business Analyst
13 13 (2.33%) Governance Analyst
13 13 (2.33%) Software Engineer
14 12 (2.15%) Azure Data Engineer
14 12 (2.15%) Principal Engineer
15 11 (1.97%) Senior Data Engineer
16 10 (1.79%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (8.05%) PySpark
2 36 (6.44%) REST
3 35 (6.26%) Kafka
4 24 (4.29%) JSON
5 15 (2.68%) .NET
5 15 (2.68%) YAML
6 14 (2.50%) XML
7 13 (2.33%) SOAP
8 12 (2.15%) React
9 9 (1.61%) Node.js
10 7 (1.25%) OAuth
10 7 (1.25%) RESTful
10 7 (1.25%) SLSA
11 6 (1.07%) HTML
11 6 (1.07%) SAP Basis
11 6 (1.07%) SAP Business Workflow
11 6 (1.07%) SAP Fiori
11 6 (1.07%) VML
12 5 (0.89%) Pandas
13 4 (0.72%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 52 (9.30%) Cloud Native
2 45 (8.05%) Data Structures
3 38 (6.80%) Taxonomies
4 35 (6.26%) Management Information System
4 35 (6.26%) Onboarding
4 35 (6.26%) Reference Data
5 24 (4.29%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.58%) Legacy Systems
7 16 (2.86%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (2.15%) Virtual Team
9 11 (1.97%) Credit Risk
10 9 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.43%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (1.25%) Data Fabric
12 7 (1.25%) Derivative
12 7 (1.25%) Market Risk
13 5 (0.89%) CMDB
13 5 (0.89%) Fixed Income
13 5 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.89%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.50%) Unix
2 8 (1.43%) Linux
3 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 285 (50.98%) Data Governance
2 277 (49.55%) Data Modelling
3 231 (41.32%) Metadata Management
4 205 (36.67%) Analytics
5 160 (28.62%) Data Architecture
6 159 (28.44%) ETL
7 130 (23.26%) Business Intelligence
8 116 (20.75%) Data Engineering
9 111 (19.86%) Data Pipeline
10 107 (19.14%) Validation
11 105 (18.78%) Problem-Solving
12 102 (18.25%) Agile
13 97 (17.35%) Data Lineage
14 90 (16.10%) CI/CD
15 89 (15.92%) AI
16 88 (15.74%) Migration
17 87 (15.56%) Data Integration
18 84 (15.03%) Data Management
19 78 (13.95%) Stakeholder Management
20 75 (13.42%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 228 (40.79%) SQL
2 147 (26.30%) Python
3 25 (4.47%) C#
4 23 (4.11%) Java
5 19 (3.40%) PowerShell
6 14 (2.50%) PL/SQL
7 12 (2.15%) JavaScript
8 9 (1.61%) Groovy
9 8 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (1.43%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.43%) T-SQL
10 7 (1.25%) R
11 6 (1.07%) ABAP
11 6 (1.07%) Perl
12 5 (0.89%) Scala
12 5 (0.89%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.72%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.36%) C
14 2 (0.36%) C++
14 2 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 136 (24.33%) Security Cleared
2 101 (18.07%) SC Cleared
3 35 (6.26%) Degree
4 25 (4.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.33%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.79%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.25%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.07%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.36%) Analytics IQ
13 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.18%) CISSP
13 1 (0.18%) CSPO
13 1 (0.18%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.18%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 1 (0.18%) MySQL Certification
13 1 (0.18%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (42.93%) Data Quality
2 54 (9.66%) GDPR
3 27 (4.83%) QA
4 17 (3.04%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.97%) GRC
5 11 (1.97%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.07%) IFRS
6 6 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.07%) NIST
7 4 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.72%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.54%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.54%) MiFID
9 2 (0.36%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.36%) FINREP
9 2 (0.36%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.36%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (2.33%) Docker
2 4 (0.72%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 22 (3.94%) Terraform
2 17 (3.04%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.89%) Grafana
3 5 (0.89%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.18%) Ansible
4 1 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 105 (18.78%) Microsoft
2 80 (14.31%) Databricks
3 60 (10.73%) Oracle
4 48 (8.59%) Informatica
5 23 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 23 (4.11%) Talend
6 18 (3.22%) Google
6 18 (3.22%) SAP
7 17 (3.04%) Salesforce
8 15 (2.68%) Sparx
9 12 (2.15%) Teradata
10 8 (1.43%) OpenText
11 7 (1.25%) Remedy
11 7 (1.25%) Sitecore
11 7 (1.25%) Sonatype
12 6 (1.07%) Adobe
12 6 (1.07%) Atlassian
12 6 (1.07%) Optimizely
12 6 (1.07%) Palantir
13 5 (0.89%) IBM