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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 216 333 296
Rank change year-on-year +117 -37 +21
Contract jobs citing Metadata 555 192 333
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.26% 0.66% 0.75%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.94% 3.48% 4.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 384 141 228
10th Percentile £358 £236 £362
25th Percentile £413 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £738
90th Percentile £693 £775 £869
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £456 £573
% change year-on-year +12.33% -20.31% +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 6,990 5,512 7,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.92% 18.95% 16.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,800 3,816 5,149
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 152 99 172
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.60 £14.36
25th Percentile £29.86 £24.25 £20.70
Median hourly rate £50.50 £31.64 £40.13
Median % change year-on-year +59.61% -21.15% -28.86%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.50 £58.55
90th Percentile £84.90 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -14.29% -36.36%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +96 471 £513 +2.50% 205
London +88 276 £500 -20.00% 88
UK excluding London +15 210 £513 +12.33% 157
Work from Home +59 156 £525 +0.96% 63
Midlands -28 51 £560 +138.55% 14
South East -17 48 £513 +7.33% 60
West Midlands -18 45 £569 +142.28% 5
North of England -54 41 £475 -5.00% 29
Scotland +43 38 £436 -17.58% 7
East of England -21 23 £492 +54.78% 27
North West -31 22 £496 -9.04% 10
Yorkshire -45 18 £525 +35.48% 15
South West -9 16 £570 +12.59% 14
East Midlands - 6 £447 - 9
North East -13 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 (7.57%) Apache Spark
2 31 (5.59%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.50%) SAS
4 21 (3.78%) Confluence
5 19 (3.42%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (3.06%) Apache
7 13 (2.34%) CMS
8 7 (1.26%) Drupal
8 7 (1.26%) Sitecore CMS
9 5 (0.90%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.90%) GeoServer
9 5 (0.90%) Smallworld
10 4 (0.72%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
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 (5.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (2.34%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.36%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (3.06%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.08%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.08%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.08%) SAP MM
4 5 (0.90%) 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 (30.45%) Azure
2 123 (22.16%) AWS
3 90 (16.22%) Power Platform
4 64 (11.53%) GCP
5 56 (10.09%) Collibra
6 48 (8.65%) Azure Data Factory
7 46 (8.29%) Microsoft Purview
8 34 (6.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (5.77%) Snowflake
10 30 (5.41%) Serverless
11 28 (5.05%) Amazon S3
12 24 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (4.14%) GitHub
14 21 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
15 19 (3.42%) dbt
16 17 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
17 10 (1.80%) Amazon EMR
18 8 (1.44%) Power Automate
19 7 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
19 7 (1.26%) 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
1 119 (21.44%) Data Warehouse
2 84 (15.14%) Power BI
3 70 (12.61%) Data Lake
4 42 (7.57%) Metadata Repository
5 31 (5.59%) SQL Server
6 29 (5.23%) Big Data
6 29 (5.23%) Tableau
7 26 (4.68%) Relational Database
8 25 (4.50%) NoSQL
9 24 (4.32%) Data Vault
10 22 (3.96%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (3.96%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (3.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 19 (3.42%) Oracle Database
13 18 (3.24%) Hadoop
14 17 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
15 16 (2.88%) Azure SQL Database
15 16 (2.88%) BigQuery
16 14 (2.52%) Delta Lake
17 13 (2.34%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 28 (5.05%) ERwin
2 27 (4.86%) Git
3 23 (4.14%) JIRA
4 12 (2.16%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.98%) PowerDesigner
6 9 (1.62%) ER Studio
6 9 (1.62%) GitLab
7 6 (1.08%) Maven
8 5 (0.90%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.54%) Subversion
10 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.36%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.18%) gulp
11 1 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
11 1 (0.18%) Selenium
11 1 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.18%) VersionOne
11 1 (0.18%) Yeoman
General
1 185 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 148 (26.67%) Finance
3 118 (21.26%) Analytical Skills
4 73 (13.15%) Public Sector
5 59 (10.63%) Banking
6 40 (7.21%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.70%) Publishing
8 14 (2.52%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
9 13 (2.34%) Legal
10 12 (2.16%) Aviation
11 11 (1.98%) Marketing
11 11 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.62%) Retail
13 7 (1.26%) Financial Institution
13 7 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.26%) Military
13 7 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.90%) Law
15 4 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 141 (25.41%) Architect
2 107 (19.28%) Data Architect
3 80 (14.41%) Analyst
4 79 (14.23%) Data Engineer
5 56 (10.09%) Data Analyst
6 43 (7.75%) Senior
7 41 (7.39%) Data Modeller
7 41 (7.39%) Developer
7 41 (7.39%) Lead
8 26 (4.68%) Business Analyst
9 25 (4.50%) Consultant
10 16 (2.88%) Azure Engineer
11 14 (2.52%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (2.52%) Software Engineer
12 13 (2.34%) Data Business Analyst
12 13 (2.34%) Governance Analyst
13 12 (2.16%) Azure Data Engineer
13 12 (2.16%) Principal Engineer
14 11 (1.98%) Senior Data Engineer
15 10 (1.80%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (8.11%) PySpark
2 33 (5.95%) REST
3 32 (5.77%) Kafka
4 19 (3.42%) JSON
5 15 (2.70%) .NET
6 14 (2.52%) XML
7 13 (2.34%) SOAP
7 13 (2.34%) YAML
8 12 (2.16%) React
9 7 (1.26%) Node.js
9 7 (1.26%) OAuth
9 7 (1.26%) RESTful
10 6 (1.08%) HTML
10 6 (1.08%) SAP Basis
10 6 (1.08%) SAP Business Workflow
10 6 (1.08%) SAP Fiori
10 6 (1.08%) VML
11 5 (0.90%) Pandas
11 5 (0.90%) SLSA
12 4 (0.72%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 51 (9.19%) Cloud Native
2 45 (8.11%) Data Structures
3 38 (6.85%) Taxonomies
4 34 (6.13%) Management Information System
5 32 (5.77%) Reference Data
6 30 (5.41%) Onboarding
7 23 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
8 22 (3.96%) Product Ownership
9 14 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (2.16%) Virtual Team
11 11 (1.98%) Credit Risk
12 9 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
13 7 (1.26%) Data Fabric
13 7 (1.26%) Derivative
13 7 (1.26%) Distributed Computing
13 7 (1.26%) Market Risk
14 5 (0.90%) CMDB
14 5 (0.90%) Fixed Income
14 5 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
14 5 (0.90%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.52%) Unix
2 8 (1.44%) Linux
3 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 281 (50.63%) Data Governance
2 273 (49.19%) Data Modelling
3 231 (41.62%) Metadata Management
4 205 (36.94%) Analytics
5 160 (28.83%) Data Architecture
6 152 (27.39%) ETL
7 128 (23.06%) Business Intelligence
8 115 (20.72%) Data Engineering
9 106 (19.10%) Data Pipeline
10 105 (18.92%) Validation
11 102 (18.38%) Agile
11 102 (18.38%) Problem-Solving
12 97 (17.48%) Data Lineage
13 92 (16.58%) AI
14 90 (16.22%) Migration
15 85 (15.32%) CI/CD
15 85 (15.32%) Data Integration
16 82 (14.77%) Data Management
17 74 (13.33%) DevOps
18 73 (13.15%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 226 (40.72%) SQL
2 144 (25.95%) Python
3 25 (4.50%) C#
4 21 (3.78%) Java
5 19 (3.42%) PowerShell
6 14 (2.52%) PL/SQL
7 12 (2.16%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.44%) Shell Script
8 8 (1.44%) T-SQL
9 7 (1.26%) Groovy
9 7 (1.26%) R
10 6 (1.08%) ABAP
10 6 (1.08%) Perl
11 5 (0.90%) Scala
11 5 (0.90%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.72%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.36%) C++
13 2 (0.36%) SOQL
13 2 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 134 (24.14%) Security Cleared
2 101 (18.20%) SC Cleared
3 35 (6.31%) Degree
4 25 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.52%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.80%) Azure Certification
6 10 (1.80%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.44%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.08%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.36%) Analytics IQ
11 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.18%) CISSP
11 1 (0.18%) CSPO
11 1 (0.18%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.18%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.18%) MySQL Certification
11 1 (0.18%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (42.34%) Data Quality
2 52 (9.37%) GDPR
3 27 (4.86%) QA
4 17 (3.06%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.98%) GRC
5 11 (1.98%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.08%) IFRS
6 6 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.08%) NIST
7 4 (0.72%) ISO 22301
8 3 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.54%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.54%) MiFID
9 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.36%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.36%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.36%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.36%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.36%) PMO
System Software
1 12 (2.16%) Docker
2 4 (0.72%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (3.60%) Terraform
2 15 (2.70%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.72%) Grafana
3 4 (0.72%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.18%) Ansible
4 1 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 103 (18.56%) Microsoft
2 80 (14.41%) Databricks
3 60 (10.81%) Oracle
4 45 (8.11%) Informatica
5 23 (4.14%) ServiceNow
6 20 (3.60%) Talend
7 18 (3.24%) Google
7 18 (3.24%) SAP
8 17 (3.06%) Salesforce
9 16 (2.88%) Sparx
10 11 (1.98%) Teradata
11 8 (1.44%) OpenText
12 7 (1.26%) Remedy
12 7 (1.26%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.08%) Adobe
13 6 (1.08%) Atlassian
13 6 (1.08%) ESRI
13 6 (1.08%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.08%) Palantir
14 5 (0.90%) Sonatype