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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 216 322 299
Rank change year-on-year +106 -23 +18
Contract jobs citing Metadata 521 202 327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.22% 0.67% 0.74%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.57% 3.54% 4.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 363 143 227
10th Percentile £358 £305 £363
25th Percentile £414 £436 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £523 £558
Median % change year-on-year -1.91% -6.28% +1.36%
75th Percentile £588 £685 £727
90th Percentile £688 £797 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £560
% change year-on-year +4.71% -14.73% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 8 19
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.65 £18.30
25th Percentile £61.50 £22.72 £29.06
Median hourly rate £69.00 £28.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +140.00% -37.74% +31.94%
75th Percentile £82.25 £51.13 -
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £49.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +151.71% -40.45% +31.94%

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 6,883 5,712 7,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.17% 18.87% 16.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,744 3,896 5,036
10th Percentile £344 £350 £346
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 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £490
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 93 166
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.13 £15.95
25th Percentile £29.19 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £52.50 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.01% -22.80% -24.65%
75th Percentile £74.76 £64.73 £62.85
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -28.19%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +104 443 £523 -0.24% 191
London +87 260 £525 -12.94% 99
UK excluding London +13 201 £500 +4.71% 126
Work from Home +40 140 £525 +0.48% 87
Midlands -18 51 £560 +49.33% 17
West Midlands -18 45 £565 +50.63% 9
South East -20 43 £513 +4.86% 52
North of England -47 38 £472 -9.67% 21
Scotland +34 37 £447 -34.74% 9
East of England -17 20 £492 +54.78% 4
North West -32 20 £458 -15.92% 10
Yorkshire -53 17 £525 +35.48% 7
South West -16 16 £539 +6.37% 23
Wales -4 6 £700 +196.61% 5
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 8
North East -11 4 £475 -23.91% 4

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 37 (7.10%) Apache Spark
2 30 (5.76%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.80%) SAS
4 18 (3.45%) Confluence
5 15 (2.88%) Apache
5 15 (2.88%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.92%) CMS
7 7 (1.34%) Drupal
7 7 (1.34%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.96%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.96%) GeoServer
9 5 (0.96%) Smallworld
10 3 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.19%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.30%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.19%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 15 (2.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.15%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.15%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.15%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.58%) Actimize
4 3 (0.58%) Maximo
5 2 (0.38%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.38%) Summit
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.19%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.19%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.19%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.19%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 169 (32.44%) Azure
2 113 (21.69%) AWS
3 85 (16.31%) Power Platform
4 61 (11.71%) GCP
5 51 (9.79%) Collibra
6 47 (9.02%) Microsoft Purview
7 46 (8.83%) Azure Data Factory
8 38 (7.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 35 (6.72%) Snowflake
10 25 (4.80%) Serverless
11 21 (4.03%) Amazon S3
11 21 (4.03%) dbt
12 19 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
14 17 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
15 15 (2.88%) GitHub
16 9 (1.73%) Entra ID
17 8 (1.54%) SaaS
17 8 (1.54%) ShareGate
18 7 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.58%) Intranet
1 3 (0.58%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.38%) Firewall
2 2 (0.38%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.19%) 4G
3 1 (0.19%) 5G
3 1 (0.19%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (21.11%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (14.97%) Power BI
3 67 (12.86%) Data Lake
4 41 (7.87%) Metadata Repository
5 29 (5.57%) Big Data
5 29 (5.57%) SQL Server
6 28 (5.37%) Data Vault
7 26 (4.99%) Snowflake Schema
8 24 (4.61%) PostgreSQL
9 23 (4.41%) NoSQL
10 21 (4.03%) Tableau
11 20 (3.84%) Relational Database
12 18 (3.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (3.26%) BigQuery
13 17 (3.26%) Hadoop
14 16 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
14 16 (3.07%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (2.88%) Oracle Database
16 13 (2.50%) Star Schema
17 12 (2.30%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 29 (5.57%) ERwin
2 24 (4.61%) Git
3 22 (4.22%) JIRA
4 12 (2.30%) PowerDesigner
5 11 (2.11%) ER Studio
6 10 (1.92%) Jenkins
7 5 (0.96%) Maven
7 5 (0.96%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.58%) GitLab
9 2 (0.38%) Subversion
9 2 (0.38%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.19%) git-flow
10 1 (0.19%) gulp
10 1 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
10 1 (0.19%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.19%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.19%) Yeoman
General
1 175 (33.59%) Social Skills
2 136 (26.10%) Finance
3 104 (19.96%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (12.67%) Public Sector
5 50 (9.60%) Banking
6 40 (7.68%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.45%) Publishing
8 14 (2.69%) Retail
9 12 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
9 12 (2.30%) Legal
10 11 (2.11%) Aviation
11 10 (1.92%) Investment Banking
11 10 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.54%) Marketing
13 7 (1.34%) Financial Institution
13 7 (1.34%) Military
14 6 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (1.15%) Retail Banking
15 5 (0.96%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 136 (26.10%) Architect
2 104 (19.96%) Data Architect
3 70 (13.44%) Analyst
3 70 (13.44%) Data Engineer
4 50 (9.60%) Data Analyst
5 40 (7.68%) Data Modeller
5 40 (7.68%) Lead
5 40 (7.68%) Senior
6 37 (7.10%) Developer
7 25 (4.80%) Consultant
8 23 (4.41%) Business Analyst
9 18 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (2.88%) Software Engineer
11 14 (2.69%) Azure Data Engineer
12 13 (2.50%) Data Business Analyst
13 11 (2.11%) AWS Engineer
13 11 (2.11%) Data Analytics Engineer
13 11 (2.11%) Governance Analyst
13 11 (2.11%) Principal Engineer
13 11 (2.11%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (7.68%) PySpark
2 29 (5.57%) REST
3 28 (5.37%) Kafka
4 18 (3.45%) JSON
5 14 (2.69%) .NET
6 12 (2.30%) React
6 12 (2.30%) YAML
7 11 (2.11%) SOAP
7 11 (2.11%) XML
8 10 (1.92%) OAuth
9 6 (1.15%) Node.js
9 6 (1.15%) RESTful
9 6 (1.15%) SAP Basis
9 6 (1.15%) SAP Business Workflow
9 6 (1.15%) SAP Fiori
9 6 (1.15%) VML
10 5 (0.96%) HTML
10 5 (0.96%) Pandas
10 5 (0.96%) SLSA
11 3 (0.58%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 47 (9.02%) Cloud Native
2 41 (7.87%) Data Structures
3 32 (6.14%) Management Information System
3 32 (6.14%) Reference Data
3 32 (6.14%) Taxonomies
4 25 (4.80%) Onboarding
5 21 (4.03%) Product Ownership
6 19 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (2.11%) Virtual Team
8 10 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.34%) Credit Risk
9 7 (1.34%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.15%) Data Fabric
11 5 (0.96%) CMDB
11 5 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
12 4 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.77%) IoT
12 4 (0.77%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.34%) Unix
2 5 (0.96%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (51.44%) Data Governance
2 263 (50.48%) Data Modelling
3 220 (42.23%) Metadata Management
4 188 (36.08%) Analytics
5 154 (29.56%) Data Architecture
6 143 (27.45%) ETL
7 122 (23.42%) Business Intelligence
8 103 (19.77%) Data Engineering
9 99 (19.00%) Agile
10 92 (17.66%) Data Lineage
11 91 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
11 91 (17.47%) Validation
12 90 (17.27%) Data Pipeline
13 87 (16.70%) AI
14 79 (15.16%) Data Management
15 78 (14.97%) Migration
16 77 (14.78%) Data Integration
17 73 (14.01%) Decision-Making
18 70 (13.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 70 (13.44%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 201 (38.58%) SQL
2 132 (25.34%) Python
3 23 (4.41%) PowerShell
4 22 (4.22%) C#
5 19 (3.65%) Java
6 11 (2.11%) PL/SQL
7 10 (1.92%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.54%) T-SQL
9 7 (1.34%) Groovy
9 7 (1.34%) R
10 6 (1.15%) ABAP
10 6 (1.15%) Perl
11 5 (0.96%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.96%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.77%) Scala
13 3 (0.58%) SOQL
14 2 (0.38%) Korn
14 2 (0.38%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 122 (23.42%) Security Cleared
2 91 (17.47%) SC Cleared
3 35 (6.72%) Degree
4 23 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.30%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.54%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.54%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.96%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.19%) Analytics IQ
10 1 (0.19%) CISSP
10 1 (0.19%) CSPO
10 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.19%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.19%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (42.99%) Data Quality
2 49 (9.40%) GDPR
3 23 (4.41%) QA
4 18 (3.45%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.92%) GRC
6 8 (1.54%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (1.15%) IFRS
9 4 (0.77%) MiFID
9 4 (0.77%) NIST
10 2 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.38%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.38%) FINREP
10 2 (0.38%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.38%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.38%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.38%) ISO 19650
10 2 (0.38%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.38%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 12 (2.30%) Docker
2 6 (1.15%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 19 (3.65%) Terraform
2 18 (3.45%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.77%) Grafana
3 4 (0.77%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.58%) SCCM
5 1 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (0.19%) Ansible
5 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 104 (19.96%) Microsoft
2 82 (15.74%) Databricks
3 47 (9.02%) Oracle
4 41 (7.87%) Informatica
5 23 (4.41%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.45%) SAP
6 18 (3.45%) Talend
7 16 (3.07%) Google
7 16 (3.07%) Salesforce
8 14 (2.69%) Sparx
9 11 (2.11%) Teradata
10 8 (1.54%) OpenText
11 7 (1.34%) Remedy
11 7 (1.34%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.15%) Optimizely
13 5 (0.96%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.96%) ESRI
13 5 (0.96%) Intergraph
13 5 (0.96%) Palantir
13 5 (0.96%) Sonatype