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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 330 296
Rank change year-on-year +113 -34 +22
Contract jobs citing Metadata 503 202 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.24% 0.66% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.58% 3.56% 4.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 350 138 232
10th Percentile £358 £305 £375
25th Percentile £415 £436 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% -5.68% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £676 £715
90th Percentile £689 £799 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £560
% change year-on-year +2.56% -12.95% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 23
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.72 £19.30
25th Percentile £61.50 £24.48 £34.18
Median hourly rate £69.00 £30.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% -35.04% +31.94%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.50 £47.63
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £67.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +140.77% -37.74% +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 6,633 5,672 7,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.35% 18.49% 16.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,551 3,781 5,132
10th Percentile £340 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £424 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 90 176
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.81 £16.06
25th Percentile £28.86 £24.81 £21.64
Median hourly rate £52.50 £38.31 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.06% -9.87% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.93 £63.00
90th Percentile £85.20 £70.38 £77.02
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.60 £30.00 £40.25
% change year-on-year +78.67% -25.47% -28.04%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 +106 424 £515 -0.96% 136
London +96 252 £525 -12.50% 68
UK excluding London +26 200 £500 +2.56% 106
Work from Home +37 136 £525 +0.48% 72
Midlands -14 50 £548 +41.29% 18
West Midlands -15 42 £560 +44.52% 12
Scotland +31 40 £450 -34.31% 9
South East -8 40 £506 +3.58% 50
North of England -42 38 £475 -12.84% 15
North West -23 21 £496 -9.04% 3
East of England -17 20 £492 +54.67% 4
Yorkshire -41 15 £525 +35.48% 6
South West -13 13 £568 +16.41% 9
Wales -2 8 £700 +196.61% 2
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 6
North East -12 4 £475 -30.87% 6

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 (7.36%) Apache Spark
2 30 (5.96%) SharePoint
3 23 (4.57%) SAS
4 22 (4.37%) Confluence
5 17 (3.38%) Apache
6 16 (3.18%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.99%) CMS
8 7 (1.39%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.19%) Drupal
9 6 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.99%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.99%) GeoServer
10 5 (0.99%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.20%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.20%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (5.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.99%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.20%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (2.78%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.19%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.19%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.60%) Actimize
4 3 (0.60%) Maximo
5 2 (0.40%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.40%) Summit
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.20%) Hyperion Planning
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
1 165 (32.80%) Azure
2 116 (23.06%) AWS
3 79 (15.71%) Power Platform
4 60 (11.93%) GCP
5 46 (9.15%) Collibra
6 44 (8.75%) Microsoft Purview
7 43 (8.55%) Azure Data Factory
8 39 (7.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (6.36%) Snowflake
10 22 (4.37%) dbt
10 22 (4.37%) Serverless
11 19 (3.78%) Amazon S3
12 18 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
13 16 (3.18%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
15 14 (2.78%) GitHub
16 9 (1.79%) Entra ID
17 8 (1.59%) SaaS
17 8 (1.59%) ShareGate
18 7 (1.39%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.60%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.40%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.40%) Intranet
3 1 (0.20%) 4G
3 1 (0.20%) 5G
3 1 (0.20%) Firewall
3 1 (0.20%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (21.47%) Data Warehouse
2 71 (14.12%) Power BI
3 65 (12.92%) Data Lake
4 39 (7.75%) Metadata Repository
5 31 (6.16%) Big Data
6 28 (5.57%) NoSQL
7 24 (4.77%) SQL Server
8 23 (4.57%) Data Vault
8 23 (4.57%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (4.17%) Relational Database
9 21 (4.17%) Snowflake Schema
10 20 (3.98%) Tableau
11 18 (3.58%) Hadoop
12 17 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
12 17 (3.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
13 15 (2.98%) BigQuery
13 15 (2.98%) Oracle Database
14 12 (2.39%) Delta Lake
14 12 (2.39%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 30 (5.96%) ERwin
2 26 (5.17%) JIRA
3 25 (4.97%) Git
4 11 (2.19%) ER Studio
5 10 (1.99%) PowerDesigner
6 8 (1.59%) Jenkins
7 5 (0.99%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.80%) Maven
9 2 (0.40%) GitLab
9 2 (0.40%) Subversion
9 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.20%) gulp
10 1 (0.20%) Poetry
10 1 (0.20%) Pylint
10 1 (0.20%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.20%) Yeoman
General
1 181 (35.98%) Social Skills
2 126 (25.05%) Finance
3 96 (19.09%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (13.12%) Public Sector
5 43 (8.55%) Banking
6 38 (7.55%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.58%) Publishing
8 15 (2.98%) Retail
9 12 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
9 12 (2.39%) Legal
10 11 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.79%) Military
12 8 (1.59%) Aviation
13 7 (1.39%) Financial Institution
13 7 (1.39%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.39%) Marketing
14 6 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (1.19%) Retail Banking
15 5 (0.99%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 132 (26.24%) Architect
2 98 (19.48%) Data Architect
3 68 (13.52%) Analyst
4 65 (12.92%) Data Engineer
5 49 (9.74%) Data Analyst
6 40 (7.95%) Data Modeller
6 40 (7.95%) Lead
7 37 (7.36%) Developer
8 35 (6.96%) Senior
9 22 (4.37%) Business Analyst
9 22 (4.37%) Consultant
10 17 (3.38%) Azure Engineer
11 13 (2.58%) Azure Data Engineer
11 13 (2.58%) Software Engineer
12 12 (2.39%) Data Business Analyst
13 11 (2.19%) Scrum Master
13 11 (2.19%) Senior Data Engineer
14 10 (1.99%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (1.99%) Data Analytics Engineer
14 10 (1.99%) Data Quality Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.55%) PySpark
2 29 (5.77%) Kafka
3 27 (5.37%) REST
4 16 (3.18%) JSON
5 14 (2.78%) .NET
6 12 (2.39%) XML
7 11 (2.19%) React
7 11 (2.19%) SOAP
7 11 (2.19%) YAML
8 9 (1.79%) OAuth
9 6 (1.19%) RESTful
9 6 (1.19%) SAP Basis
9 6 (1.19%) SAP Business Workflow
9 6 (1.19%) SAP Fiori
9 6 (1.19%) VML
10 5 (0.99%) Node.js
10 5 (0.99%) Pandas
11 4 (0.80%) HTML
11 4 (0.80%) SLSA
12 3 (0.60%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 41 (8.15%) Cloud Native
2 35 (6.96%) Data Structures
3 32 (6.36%) Management Information System
4 29 (5.77%) Reference Data
5 28 (5.57%) Taxonomies
6 21 (4.17%) Product Ownership
7 20 (3.98%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (3.98%) Onboarding
8 11 (2.19%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.99%) Distributed Computing
10 8 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.19%) Data Fabric
12 5 (0.99%) CMDB
12 5 (0.99%) Credit Risk
12 5 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
13 4 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.80%) Genomics
13 4 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
13 4 (0.80%) Omics
13 4 (0.80%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.39%) Unix
2 4 (0.80%) Linux
3 1 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (52.09%) Data Governance
2 252 (50.10%) Data Modelling
3 233 (46.32%) Metadata Management
4 169 (33.60%) Analytics
5 147 (29.22%) Data Architecture
6 133 (26.44%) ETL
7 114 (22.66%) Business Intelligence
8 97 (19.28%) Data Engineering
9 96 (19.09%) Agile
9 96 (19.09%) Data Lineage
10 94 (18.69%) Problem-Solving
11 87 (17.30%) AI
12 86 (17.10%) Data Pipeline
13 84 (16.70%) Validation
14 79 (15.71%) Data Management
15 76 (15.11%) Data Integration
16 73 (14.51%) Decision-Making
16 73 (14.51%) Migration
16 73 (14.51%) Stakeholder Management
17 70 (13.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 183 (36.38%) SQL
2 126 (25.05%) Python
3 23 (4.57%) PowerShell
4 22 (4.37%) C#
5 20 (3.98%) Java
6 10 (1.99%) PL/SQL
7 9 (1.79%) JavaScript
8 7 (1.39%) R
8 7 (1.39%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.19%) ABAP
9 6 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.19%) Groovy
9 6 (1.19%) Perl
10 5 (0.99%) Scala
10 5 (0.99%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.80%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.80%) C++
11 4 (0.80%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.60%) Bicep
12 3 (0.60%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 116 (23.06%) Security Cleared
2 88 (17.50%) SC Cleared
3 37 (7.36%) Degree
4 23 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.58%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.39%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.99%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.20%) Analytics IQ
11 1 (0.20%) CISSP
11 1 (0.20%) CSPO
11 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.20%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.20%) MySQL Certification
11 1 (0.20%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.20%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 220 (43.74%) Data Quality
2 49 (9.74%) GDPR
3 21 (4.17%) QA
4 16 (3.18%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.99%) GRC
6 8 (1.59%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.99%) IFRS
9 4 (0.80%) MiFID
9 4 (0.80%) NIST
10 3 (0.60%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.40%) CRD IV
11 2 (0.40%) FINREP
11 2 (0.40%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.40%) ISO 19650
11 2 (0.40%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.40%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.40%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.20%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 13 (2.58%) Docker
2 5 (0.99%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 19 (3.78%) Kubernetes
1 19 (3.78%) Terraform
2 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
2 3 (0.60%) Prometheus
2 3 (0.60%) SCCM
3 2 (0.40%) Grafana
4 1 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
4 1 (0.20%) Oozie
4 1 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 100 (19.88%) Microsoft
2 80 (15.90%) Databricks
3 45 (8.95%) Oracle
4 40 (7.95%) Informatica
5 23 (4.57%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.58%) SAP
6 18 (3.58%) Talend
7 16 (3.18%) Google
8 14 (2.78%) Salesforce
9 13 (2.58%) Sparx
10 10 (1.99%) Teradata
11 9 (1.79%) OpenText
12 7 (1.39%) Remedy
12 7 (1.39%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.19%) Optimizely
14 5 (0.99%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.99%) ESRI
14 5 (0.99%) Intergraph
14 5 (0.99%) Palantir
15 4 (0.80%) IBM