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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 206 298 348
Rank change year-on-year +92 +50 +47
Contract jobs citing Metadata 718 269 237
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 0.82% 0.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.85% 4.52% 3.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 467 186 154
10th Percentile £363 £303 £377
25th Percentile £450 £436 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £819
90th Percentile £750 £750 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £481
% change year-on-year +16.67% -6.49% -3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 10
10th Percentile £43.55 - £13.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £13.25 £15.44
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +156.00% -23.08% -8.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £30.00 £43.07
90th Percentile - £64.50 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £19.25 £29.84
% change year-on-year +232.47% -35.49% -25.40%

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 8,113 5,951 7,385
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.38% 18.24% 17.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,367 4,031 5,266
10th Percentile £351 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 95 118
10th Percentile £16.42 £19.39 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.25 £25.67 £20.19
Median hourly rate £41.71 £38.11 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.45% +0.29% -30.91%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £77.50 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.25 £32.05 £30.00
% change year-on-year +25.59% +6.83% -42.86%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +84 597 £525 - 192
London +61 341 £525 -12.50% 118
UK excluding London +51 289 £525 +16.67% 96
Work from Home +56 211 £525 -8.70% 87
Midlands -5 70 £564 +427.45% 10
North of England -22 69 £515 +12.80% 17
West Midlands -10 66 £575 +437.38% 7
Scotland +30 55 £525 +10.53% 5
South East -40 48 £525 +12.18% 46
Yorkshire -15 35 £520 +13.93% 5
East of England +1 28 £475 +49.37% 5
North West -31 28 £575 +82.54% 9
South West -19 23 £545 -7.28% 11
North East -31 8 £463 - 3
East Midlands -9 4 £500 +21.95% 3
Wales -17 3 £750 +191.91% 1

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 40 (5.57%) SharePoint
2 36 (5.01%) Apache Spark
3 34 (4.74%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (3.90%) Apache
5 21 (2.92%) Confluence
6 17 (2.37%) CMS
7 15 (2.09%) SAS
8 4 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.42%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.28%) Alfresco
10 2 (0.28%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.14%) Drupal
11 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.14%) Liferay
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 20 (2.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.97%) Navisworks
2 7 (0.97%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.97%) Revit
3 5 (0.70%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.14%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (1.67%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.70%) Summit
3 4 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.42%) SAP HR
5 2 (0.28%) HFM
5 2 (0.28%) Maximo
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.28%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.28%) Workfront
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.14%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 207 (28.83%) Azure
2 155 (21.59%) AWS
3 93 (12.95%) Power Platform
4 76 (10.58%) GCP
5 63 (8.77%) Collibra
6 51 (7.10%) Microsoft Purview
7 45 (6.27%) Amazon S3
8 42 (5.85%) Azure Data Factory
9 38 (5.29%) GitHub
10 37 (5.15%) dbt
11 33 (4.60%) Serverless
11 33 (4.60%) Snowflake
12 31 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
12 31 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 30 (4.18%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
15 16 (2.23%) Amazon EMR
15 16 (2.23%) Power Automate
16 15 (2.09%) Entra ID
16 15 (2.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.97%) PuTTY
1 7 (0.97%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.70%) Intranet
3 4 (0.56%) SSL
4 3 (0.42%) Firewall
4 3 (0.42%) HTTP
5 2 (0.28%) Broadband
6 1 (0.14%) 4G
6 1 (0.14%) 5G
6 1 (0.14%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (16.85%) Data Warehouse
2 81 (11.28%) Power BI
3 80 (11.14%) Data Lake
4 34 (4.74%) Relational Database
5 33 (4.60%) Data Vault
6 29 (4.04%) Tableau
7 26 (3.62%) Delta Lake
7 26 (3.62%) NoSQL
8 22 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (2.92%) Big Data
9 21 (2.92%) Semantic Layer
10 20 (2.79%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (2.79%) SQL Server
11 19 (2.65%) BigQuery
12 18 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
12 18 (2.51%) Metadata Repository
13 17 (2.37%) Hadoop
14 15 (2.09%) Amazon Athena
15 14 (1.95%) Db2
16 12 (1.67%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 39 (5.43%) ERwin
2 35 (4.87%) Git
3 23 (3.20%) ER Studio
4 22 (3.06%) JIRA
5 18 (2.51%) Jenkins
6 16 (2.23%) Maven
7 15 (2.09%) PowerDesigner
8 14 (1.95%) GitLab
9 11 (1.53%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.28%) git-flow
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.28%) Selenium
12 1 (0.14%) ScriptRunner
12 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.14%) TestRail
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 204 (28.41%) Finance
2 190 (26.46%) Social Skills
3 140 (19.50%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (13.51%) Banking
5 75 (10.45%) Public Sector
6 37 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
6 37 (5.15%) Investment Banking
7 18 (2.51%) Legal
8 17 (2.37%) Retail
9 16 (2.23%) Marketing
9 16 (2.23%) Publishing
10 15 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
11 12 (1.67%) Aviation
11 12 (1.67%) Front Office
12 11 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.97%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.97%) Military
14 6 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.70%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 181 (25.21%) Architect
2 130 (18.11%) Data Architect
3 103 (14.35%) Data Engineer
4 86 (11.98%) Analyst
5 84 (11.70%) Lead
6 59 (8.22%) Senior
7 53 (7.38%) Data Analyst
8 49 (6.82%) Data Modeller
9 46 (6.41%) Developer
10 35 (4.87%) Business Analyst
11 25 (3.48%) Consultant
12 21 (2.92%) Data Business Analyst
13 20 (2.79%) Data Manager
14 19 (2.65%) DevOps Engineer
15 18 (2.51%) Product Owner
16 17 (2.37%) Lead Data Engineer
17 16 (2.23%) Solutions Architect
18 15 (2.09%) Enterprise Architect
18 15 (2.09%) Senior Data Engineer
19 13 (1.81%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (6.41%) PySpark
2 39 (5.43%) JSON
3 35 (4.87%) Kafka
4 27 (3.76%) REST
5 17 (2.37%) YAML
6 13 (1.81%) .NET
6 13 (1.81%) Node.js
6 13 (1.81%) Spring Boot
6 13 (1.81%) XML
7 11 (1.53%) SLSA
8 10 (1.39%) OAuth
8 10 (1.39%) React
9 8 (1.11%) GraphQL
9 8 (1.11%) Middleware
9 8 (1.11%) OAuth2
9 8 (1.11%) Spring
10 7 (0.97%) RESTful
10 7 (0.97%) SOAP
10 7 (0.97%) SPFx
11 6 (0.84%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.33%) Cloud Native
2 61 (8.50%) Onboarding
3 57 (7.94%) Data Structures
4 56 (7.80%) Taxonomies
5 47 (6.55%) Product Ownership
6 44 (6.13%) Management Information System
7 40 (5.57%) Reference Data
8 39 (5.43%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (2.65%) Derivative
10 13 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 12 (1.67%) AI Agents
11 12 (1.67%) Equity Derivative
12 11 (1.53%) Distributed Computing
12 11 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.39%) Life Science
14 9 (1.25%) Clustering
14 9 (1.25%) Credit Risk
14 9 (1.25%) Data Fabric
14 9 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.65%) Unix
2 12 (1.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (49.16%) Data Governance
2 343 (47.77%) Data Modelling
3 244 (33.98%) Metadata Management
4 237 (33.01%) Analytics
5 184 (25.63%) Data Architecture
6 173 (24.09%) AI
7 161 (22.42%) ETL
8 158 (22.01%) Data Pipeline
9 157 (21.87%) Data Engineering
10 148 (20.61%) Agile
11 140 (19.50%) CI/CD
12 137 (19.08%) Migration
13 129 (17.97%) Stakeholder Management
14 117 (16.30%) Business Intelligence
15 113 (15.74%) Data Lineage
15 113 (15.74%) Validation
16 108 (15.04%) DevOps
17 107 (14.90%) Decision-Making
18 105 (14.62%) Data Management
19 104 (14.48%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 273 (38.02%) SQL
2 181 (25.21%) Python
3 56 (7.80%) Java
4 24 (3.34%) PL/SQL
5 18 (2.51%) C#
6 15 (2.09%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.95%) Groovy
8 13 (1.81%) PowerShell
9 11 (1.53%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.25%) Bash
10 9 (1.25%) C++
10 9 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.11%) TypeScript
12 7 (0.97%) Apex Code
12 7 (0.97%) SPARQL
13 6 (0.84%) Bicep
13 6 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.70%) Scala
15 4 (0.56%) Cypher
15 4 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 162 (22.56%) Security Cleared
2 122 (16.99%) SC Cleared
3 46 (6.41%) Degree
4 29 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.51%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (1.95%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.67%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.53%) TOGAF Certification
10 7 (0.97%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.28%) ACCA
13 2 (0.28%) CBAP
13 2 (0.28%) CIMA
13 2 (0.28%) CISM
13 2 (0.28%) CISSP
13 2 (0.28%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.28%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.28%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 281 (39.14%) Data Quality
2 66 (9.19%) GDPR
3 39 (5.43%) QA
4 38 (5.29%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.97%) GRC
5 7 (0.97%) Solvency II
6 6 (0.84%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (0.84%) ISO 19650
6 6 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.84%) NIST
7 4 (0.56%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.42%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.42%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.42%) MiFID
8 3 (0.42%) NCSC
8 3 (0.42%) WCAG
9 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 14 (1.95%) Docker
2 10 (1.39%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 31 (4.32%) Terraform
2 18 (2.51%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.39%) Grafana
4 8 (1.11%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 4 (0.56%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.56%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.28%) Ansible
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Ranger
Vendors
1 126 (17.55%) Microsoft
2 115 (16.02%) Databricks
3 60 (8.36%) Oracle
4 52 (7.24%) Informatica
5 22 (3.06%) Salesforce
6 21 (2.92%) Google
7 18 (2.51%) Talend
8 15 (2.09%) IBM
9 14 (1.95%) SAP
10 13 (1.81%) Autodesk
11 12 (1.67%) Sparx
12 11 (1.53%) Sonatype
12 11 (1.53%) Sybase
13 9 (1.25%) Adobe
14 8 (1.11%) Palantir
15 7 (0.97%) CA Agile Central
15 7 (0.97%) Foundry
15 7 (0.97%) ServiceNow
16 6 (0.84%) Aspera
16 6 (0.84%) Signiant