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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 332 297
Rank change year-on-year +111 -35 +19
Contract jobs citing Metadata 511 195 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 0.66% 0.77%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.53% 3.44% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 356 140 234
10th Percentile £358 £269 £353
25th Percentile £414 £412 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £519 £554
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -6.32% +0.68%
75th Percentile £588 £650 £725
90th Percentile £694 £799 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £550
% change year-on-year +5.82% -14.09% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 8 25
10th Percentile £38.47 £22.65 £13.70
25th Percentile £63.38 £22.72 £20.49
Median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +140.77% -28.57% +15.00%
75th Percentile £82.69 £51.13 £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 6,786 5,668 7,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.07% 19.05% 16.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,680 3,902 5,147
10th Percentile £345 £351 £340
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 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 96 178
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.59 £14.36
25th Percentile £28.93 £24.06 £20.78
Median hourly rate £51.25 £30.11 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.24% -25.67% -29.57%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.56 £62.31
90th Percentile £84.90 £69.38 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -29.08%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +103 436 £519 -0.29% 246
London +97 249 £524 -14.91% 122
UK excluding London +22 200 £500 +5.82% 194
Work from Home +42 142 £525 - 133
Midlands -16 52 £560 +51.86% 22
West Midlands -16 46 £569 +54.24% 9
South East -17 44 £513 +7.89% 84
North of England -44 39 £469 -10.24% 26
Scotland +32 36 £447 -34.74% 10
North West -22 21 £463 -15.14% 10
East of England -23 20 £492 +54.78% 23
Yorkshire -44 17 £525 +35.48% 13
South West -17 16 £539 +6.37% 29
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 13
North East -12 4 £475 -23.91% 3
Wales -10 3 £700 +196.61% 5

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 38 (7.44%) Apache Spark
2 31 (6.07%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.89%) SAS
4 17 (3.33%) Confluence
5 15 (2.94%) Apache
5 15 (2.94%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (1.76%) CMS
7 7 (1.37%) Drupal
7 7 (1.37%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (0.98%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.98%) GeoServer
9 5 (0.98%) Smallworld
10 3 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.20%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (5.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.35%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 16 (3.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.17%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.17%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.17%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.59%) Actimize
4 3 (0.59%) Maximo
5 2 (0.39%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.39%) Summit
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.20%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.20%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.20%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 164 (32.09%) Azure
2 114 (22.31%) AWS
3 84 (16.44%) Power Platform
4 62 (12.13%) GCP
5 50 (9.78%) Collibra
6 44 (8.61%) Azure Data Factory
7 43 (8.41%) Microsoft Purview
8 37 (7.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 33 (6.46%) Snowflake
10 25 (4.89%) Serverless
11 22 (4.31%) Amazon S3
12 20 (3.91%) dbt
13 19 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
14 18 (3.52%) Microsoft 365
15 15 (2.94%) GitHub
16 9 (1.76%) Entra ID
16 9 (1.76%) SaaS
17 8 (1.57%) ShareGate
18 7 (1.37%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.59%) Intranet
1 3 (0.59%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.39%) Firewall
2 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.20%) 4G
3 1 (0.20%) 5G
3 1 (0.20%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (21.53%) Data Warehouse
2 78 (15.26%) Power BI
3 68 (13.31%) Data Lake
4 41 (8.02%) Metadata Repository
5 29 (5.68%) SQL Server
6 28 (5.48%) Big Data
7 26 (5.09%) Data Vault
8 25 (4.89%) Snowflake Schema
9 23 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (4.31%) NoSQL
11 21 (4.11%) Tableau
12 20 (3.91%) Relational Database
13 19 (3.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (3.33%) BigQuery
14 17 (3.33%) Hadoop
15 16 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
15 16 (3.13%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (2.94%) Oracle Database
17 12 (2.35%) MySQL
18 11 (2.15%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (5.28%) ERwin
2 24 (4.70%) Git
3 20 (3.91%) JIRA
4 11 (2.15%) PowerDesigner
5 10 (1.96%) ER Studio
5 10 (1.96%) Jenkins
6 5 (0.98%) Maven
6 5 (0.98%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.59%) GitLab
8 2 (0.39%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.39%) Subversion
8 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.20%) git-flow
9 1 (0.20%) gulp
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.20%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.20%) Yeoman
General
1 169 (33.07%) Social Skills
2 135 (26.42%) Finance
3 99 (19.37%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (13.11%) Public Sector
5 51 (9.98%) Banking
6 40 (7.83%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.94%) Publishing
8 13 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.54%) Legal
8 13 (2.54%) Retail
9 11 (2.15%) Aviation
10 10 (1.96%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.57%) Marketing
12 7 (1.37%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.37%) Military
13 6 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.17%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.98%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 136 (26.61%) Architect
2 103 (20.16%) Data Architect
3 71 (13.89%) Data Engineer
4 68 (13.31%) Analyst
5 48 (9.39%) Data Analyst
6 40 (7.83%) Lead
7 39 (7.63%) Senior
8 37 (7.24%) Data Modeller
8 37 (7.24%) Developer
9 25 (4.89%) Consultant
10 23 (4.50%) Business Analyst
11 17 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (2.74%) Software Engineer
13 13 (2.54%) Azure Data Engineer
13 13 (2.54%) Data Business Analyst
14 12 (2.35%) Principal Engineer
15 11 (2.15%) AWS Engineer
15 11 (2.15%) Data Analytics Engineer
15 11 (2.15%) Governance Analyst
15 11 (2.15%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (7.63%) PySpark
2 29 (5.68%) Kafka
2 29 (5.68%) REST
3 18 (3.52%) JSON
4 15 (2.94%) .NET
5 12 (2.35%) React
5 12 (2.35%) YAML
6 11 (2.15%) SOAP
6 11 (2.15%) XML
7 10 (1.96%) OAuth
8 6 (1.17%) Node.js
8 6 (1.17%) RESTful
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.17%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.17%) VML
9 5 (0.98%) Pandas
9 5 (0.98%) SLSA
10 4 (0.78%) HTML
11 3 (0.59%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 46 (9.00%) Cloud Native
2 39 (7.63%) Data Structures
3 31 (6.07%) Management Information System
3 31 (6.07%) Reference Data
3 31 (6.07%) Taxonomies
4 25 (4.89%) Onboarding
5 21 (4.11%) Product Ownership
6 20 (3.91%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (2.15%) Virtual Team
9 7 (1.37%) Credit Risk
9 7 (1.37%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.37%) Distributed Computing
10 5 (0.98%) CMDB
10 5 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.78%) IoT
11 4 (0.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.37%) Unix
2 5 (0.98%) Linux
3 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (51.27%) Data Governance
2 255 (49.90%) Data Modelling
3 208 (40.70%) Metadata Management
4 187 (36.59%) Analytics
5 152 (29.75%) Data Architecture
6 141 (27.59%) ETL
7 120 (23.48%) Business Intelligence
8 101 (19.77%) Data Engineering
9 96 (18.79%) Agile
10 94 (18.40%) Validation
11 90 (17.61%) Data Lineage
11 90 (17.61%) Data Pipeline
12 88 (17.22%) AI
13 87 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
14 80 (15.66%) Migration
15 77 (15.07%) Data Integration
16 75 (14.68%) Data Management
17 71 (13.89%) CI/CD
18 70 (13.70%) Decision-Making
19 69 (13.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 200 (39.14%) SQL
2 132 (25.83%) Python
3 24 (4.70%) C#
4 23 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 18 (3.52%) Java
6 11 (2.15%) PL/SQL
7 10 (1.96%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.57%) T-SQL
9 7 (1.37%) Groovy
9 7 (1.37%) R
10 6 (1.17%) ABAP
10 6 (1.17%) Perl
11 5 (0.98%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.98%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.98%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.78%) Scala
13 3 (0.59%) SOQL
14 2 (0.39%) Bicep
14 2 (0.39%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 123 (24.07%) Security Cleared
2 92 (18.00%) SC Cleared
3 31 (6.07%) Degree
4 23 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.35%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.57%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.57%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.98%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.20%) Analytics IQ
10 1 (0.20%) CISSP
10 1 (0.20%) CSPO
10 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.20%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (42.86%) Data Quality
2 52 (10.18%) GDPR
3 22 (4.31%) QA
4 18 (3.52%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.96%) GRC
6 8 (1.57%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (1.17%) IFRS
9 4 (0.78%) MiFID
9 4 (0.78%) NIST
10 2 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.39%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.39%) FINREP
10 2 (0.39%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.39%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 19650
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 11 (2.15%) Docker
2 7 (1.37%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 19 (3.72%) Terraform
2 17 (3.33%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.78%) Grafana
3 4 (0.78%) Prometheus
4 3 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.59%) SCCM
5 1 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (0.20%) Ansible
5 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 103 (20.16%) Microsoft
2 75 (14.68%) Databricks
3 47 (9.20%) Oracle
4 41 (8.02%) Informatica
5 23 (4.50%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.52%) SAP
6 18 (3.52%) Talend
7 16 (3.13%) Salesforce
8 15 (2.94%) Google
8 15 (2.94%) Sparx
9 11 (2.15%) Teradata
10 8 (1.57%) OpenText
11 7 (1.37%) Remedy
11 7 (1.37%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.17%) ESRI
12 6 (1.17%) Optimizely
13 5 (0.98%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.98%) Intergraph
13 5 (0.98%) Palantir
13 5 (0.98%) Sonatype