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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 336 292
Rank change year-on-year +86 -44 +37
Contract jobs citing Metadata 407 188 333
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 0.59% 0.77%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.59% 3.26% 4.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 280 126 235
10th Percentile £386 £329 £396
25th Percentile £436 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £651 £678
90th Percentile £689 £796 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +1.25% -15.22% +10.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 6 23
10th Percentile £48.60 £21.01 £14.30
25th Percentile £70.13 £22.72 £19.74
Median hourly rate £80.50 £32.47 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year +147.96% -29.51% +10.31%
75th Percentile £84.00 £71.88 £47.63
90th Percentile £84.40 £82.25 £67.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.25 £25.43 £46.00
% change year-on-year +223.44% -44.72% -26.40%

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 6,178 5,775 7,116
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.98% 18.17% 16.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,254 3,809 5,028
10th Percentile £329 £350 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
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 87 76 153
10th Percentile £19.60 £19.71 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +39.20% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £73.13 £64.73 £64.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.88 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +100.00% -37.74% -7.73%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 11 January 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 +105 352 £525 +0.48% 296
London +100 217 £538 -2.27% 61
UK excluding London +1 144 £494 +1.25% 287
Work from Home +32 110 £525 +0.96% 103
South East +9 33 £500 -6.98% 93
Midlands -14 32 £509 +35.60% 36
North of England -33 24 £475 -12.84% 56
West Midlands -14 22 £560 +49.33% 14
Scotland +7 21 £465 -32.12% 15
East of England -6 20 £500 +57.23% 41
North West -22 15 £448 -17.89% 20
South West -15 12 £568 +16.41% 34
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 22
Wales +4 8 £700 +229.21% 13
Yorkshire -41 8 £500 +25.00% 26
North East -10 1 £475 -23.91% 10

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 32 (7.86%) SharePoint
2 28 (6.88%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.18%) Confluence
4 15 (3.69%) CMS
4 15 (3.69%) SAS
5 14 (3.44%) Apache
6 7 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (1.72%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (1.47%) Drupal
8 5 (1.23%) GeoServer
8 5 (1.23%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.98%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.25%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.25%) Documentum
12 1 (0.25%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
12 1 (0.25%) Umbraco
Applications
1 25 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.21%) MS Visio
3 8 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.49%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.25%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.25%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.25%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.44%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.47%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.47%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.47%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.74%) Actimize
3 3 (0.74%) Maximo
4 2 (0.49%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.25%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.25%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.25%) Primavera
5 1 (0.25%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 125 (30.71%) Azure
2 92 (22.60%) AWS
3 70 (17.20%) Power Platform
4 46 (11.30%) GCP
5 40 (9.83%) Collibra
6 36 (8.85%) Azure Data Factory
7 35 (8.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 34 (8.35%) Microsoft Purview
9 27 (6.63%) Snowflake
10 20 (4.91%) Microsoft 365
11 18 (4.42%) Serverless
12 15 (3.69%) Amazon S3
13 13 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (2.70%) dbt
14 11 (2.70%) GitHub
15 10 (2.46%) PowerApps
16 7 (1.72%) Contentful
16 7 (1.72%) Entra ID
16 7 (1.72%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.74%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.49%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.49%) Intranet
3 1 (0.25%) Firewall
3 1 (0.25%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (17.94%) Data Warehouse
2 60 (14.74%) Power BI
3 49 (12.04%) Data Lake
4 26 (6.39%) Metadata Repository
5 22 (5.41%) NoSQL
6 20 (4.91%) Big Data
6 20 (4.91%) Relational Database
7 18 (4.42%) Data Vault
7 18 (4.42%) SQL Server
8 17 (4.18%) Snowflake Schema
9 16 (3.93%) Azure SQL Database
9 16 (3.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 15 (3.69%) Tableau
11 14 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
11 14 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
12 13 (3.19%) BigQuery
13 10 (2.46%) Spark SQL
13 10 (2.46%) Star Schema
14 9 (2.21%) Delta Lake
14 9 (2.21%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 23 (5.65%) JIRA
2 21 (5.16%) ERwin
3 19 (4.67%) Git
4 10 (2.46%) ER Studio
4 10 (2.46%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.74%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.49%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.49%) Subversion
6 2 (0.49%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.25%) GitLab
7 1 (0.25%) gulp
7 1 (0.25%) Poetry
7 1 (0.25%) Pylint
7 1 (0.25%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.25%) Yeoman
General
1 154 (37.84%) Social Skills
2 104 (25.55%) Finance
3 80 (19.66%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (13.76%) Public Sector
5 33 (8.11%) Banking
6 30 (7.37%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (4.42%) Publishing
8 12 (2.95%) Retail
9 11 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (2.70%) Legal
10 9 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.97%) Military
12 7 (1.72%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.72%) Investment Banking
12 7 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (1.47%) Aviation
13 6 (1.47%) Retail Banking
14 5 (1.23%) Law
14 5 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (1.23%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 86 (21.13%) Architect
2 68 (16.71%) Analyst
3 61 (14.99%) Data Architect
4 46 (11.30%) Data Analyst
4 46 (11.30%) Data Engineer
5 31 (7.62%) Data Modeller
6 30 (7.37%) Lead
7 27 (6.63%) Developer
8 25 (6.14%) Consultant
9 22 (5.41%) Senior
10 21 (5.16%) Business Analyst
11 15 (3.69%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (3.44%) Governance Analyst
13 11 (2.70%) Azure Data Engineer
13 11 (2.70%) Data Business Analyst
14 10 (2.46%) Software Engineer
15 9 (2.21%) Data Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.21%) Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.21%) SAP Consultant
16 8 (1.97%) Data Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (8.11%) PySpark
2 24 (5.90%) Kafka
3 21 (5.16%) REST
4 11 (2.70%) JSON
5 9 (2.21%) React
5 9 (2.21%) XML
6 6 (1.47%) .NET
6 6 (1.47%) OAuth
6 6 (1.47%) RESTful
6 6 (1.47%) SAP Basis
6 6 (1.47%) SAP Business Workflow
6 6 (1.47%) SAP Fiori
6 6 (1.47%) SOAP
6 6 (1.47%) VML
7 5 (1.23%) HTML
7 5 (1.23%) Pandas
7 5 (1.23%) YAML
8 4 (0.98%) LDAP
8 4 (0.98%) Node.js
8 4 (0.98%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.37%) Data Structures
2 25 (6.14%) Cloud Native
3 24 (5.90%) Management Information System
4 22 (5.41%) Taxonomies
5 19 (4.67%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (4.42%) Reference Data
7 17 (4.18%) Onboarding
8 14 (3.44%) Product Ownership
9 11 (2.70%) Distributed Computing
10 8 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
11 7 (1.72%) Data Fabric
12 5 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.23%) Low-Code
13 4 (0.98%) Genomics
13 4 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
13 4 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.98%) Omics
13 4 (0.98%) Replication
14 3 (0.74%) Data Centre
14 3 (0.74%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.23%) Unix
2 4 (0.98%) Linux
3 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (51.60%) Data Governance
2 199 (48.89%) Data Modelling
3 196 (48.16%) Metadata Management
4 139 (34.15%) Analytics
5 104 (25.55%) Data Architecture
6 100 (24.57%) ETL
7 96 (23.59%) Business Intelligence
8 78 (19.16%) Agile
8 78 (19.16%) Data Lineage
9 75 (18.43%) Data Pipeline
9 75 (18.43%) Problem-Solving
10 73 (17.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 71 (17.44%) Data Engineering
12 64 (15.72%) Validation
13 62 (15.23%) Data Management
14 59 (14.50%) Stakeholder Management
15 58 (14.25%) AI
16 55 (13.51%) Migration
17 54 (13.27%) Data Integration
18 50 (12.29%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 140 (34.40%) SQL
2 98 (24.08%) Python
3 22 (5.41%) PowerShell
4 21 (5.16%) Java
5 13 (3.19%) C#
6 8 (1.97%) JavaScript
6 8 (1.97%) T-SQL
7 7 (1.72%) Scala
8 6 (1.47%) ABAP
8 6 (1.47%) Perl
8 6 (1.47%) PL/SQL
8 6 (1.47%) R
9 5 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (0.98%) C++
10 4 (0.98%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.74%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.74%) Bicep
11 3 (0.74%) SOQL
11 3 (0.74%) SOSL
11 3 (0.74%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 89 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 63 (15.48%) SC Cleared
3 23 (5.65%) Degree
4 14 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (1.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.98%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.98%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.49%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.25%) CSPO
10 1 (0.25%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.25%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.25%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.25%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.25%) PMP
10 1 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (43.98%) Data Quality
2 44 (10.81%) GDPR
3 17 (4.18%) QA
4 15 (3.69%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.47%) IFRS
5 6 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.23%) Solvency II
7 4 (0.98%) MiFID
8 3 (0.74%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.74%) GRC
8 3 (0.74%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.49%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.49%) FINREP
9 2 (0.49%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.49%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.49%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.49%) NIST
10 1 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.25%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 11 (2.70%) Docker
2 5 (1.23%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.74%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 15 (3.69%) Kubernetes
1 15 (3.69%) Terraform
2 4 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.74%) Hadoop YARN
3 3 (0.74%) Oozie
3 3 (0.74%) SCCM
4 1 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 84 (20.64%) Microsoft
2 57 (14.00%) Databricks
3 33 (8.11%) Informatica
3 33 (8.11%) Oracle
4 19 (4.67%) SAP
4 19 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 14 (3.44%) Sparx
6 11 (2.70%) OpenText
7 9 (2.21%) Google
7 9 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 9 (2.21%) Talend
8 8 (1.97%) Teradata
9 7 (1.72%) Sitecore
10 6 (1.47%) ESRI
10 6 (1.47%) IBM
10 6 (1.47%) Optimizely
11 5 (1.23%) Alteryx
11 5 (1.23%) Intergraph
11 5 (1.23%) Palantir
12 4 (0.98%) Atlassian