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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 214 332 303
Rank change year-on-year +118 -29 +11
Contract jobs citing Metadata 518 201 324
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 0.66% 0.74%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.68% 3.51% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 360 140 227
10th Percentile £358 £305 £375
25th Percentile £413 £430 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £685 £720
90th Percentile £688 £799 £810
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 20
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.65 £18.65
25th Percentile £61.50 £22.72 £28.17
Median hourly rate £69.00 £28.75 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +140.00% -37.66% +31.76%
75th Percentile £82.25 £51.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £49.33
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 6,744 5,731 7,126
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.27% 18.68% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,650 3,859 5,066
10th Percentile £342 £350 £350
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 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 94 167
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.96
25th Percentile £29.06 £25.02 £20.98
Median hourly rate £54.00 £36.56 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.72% -13.99% -22.73%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.93 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.33 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £29.80 £40.00
% change year-on-year +76.17% -25.50% -27.27%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +98 434 £513 -1.91% 139
London +111 257 £525 -12.50% 65
UK excluding London +25 204 £500 +4.71% 109
Work from Home +46 140 £525 +0.48% 64
Midlands -10 51 £551 +42.26% 16
West Midlands -16 43 £561 +44.65% 9
Scotland +36 41 £450 -34.31% 8
South East -10 41 £500 +2.30% 49
North of England -50 39 £475 -9.09% 19
North West -26 21 £458 -15.92% 7
East of England -10 20 £492 +54.67% 5
Yorkshire -50 17 £525 +35.48% 8
South West -16 14 £553 +9.14% 11
Wales -3 8 £700 +196.61% 2
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 7
North East -14 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 (7.14%) Apache Spark
2 30 (5.79%) SharePoint
3 25 (4.83%) SAS
4 23 (4.44%) Confluence
5 17 (3.28%) Apache
6 15 (2.90%) Apache Airflow
7 11 (2.12%) CMS
8 7 (1.35%) Drupal
8 7 (1.35%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.97%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.97%) GeoServer
10 5 (0.97%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.19%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.19%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.19%) Documentum
12 1 (0.19%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 28 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (2.12%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.19%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.19%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (2.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.16%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.16%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.16%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.58%) Actimize
4 3 (0.58%) Maximo
5 2 (0.39%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.39%) Summit
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.19%) Hyperion Planning
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
1 164 (31.66%) Azure
2 114 (22.01%) AWS
3 80 (15.44%) Power Platform
4 59 (11.39%) GCP
5 48 (9.27%) Collibra
6 45 (8.69%) Azure Data Factory
7 44 (8.49%) Microsoft Purview
8 38 (7.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (6.56%) Snowflake
10 24 (4.63%) dbt
10 24 (4.63%) Serverless
11 20 (3.86%) Amazon S3
12 18 (3.47%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
13 17 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
14 14 (2.70%) GitHub
15 8 (1.54%) Amazon EMR
15 8 (1.54%) Entra ID
15 8 (1.54%) SaaS
15 8 (1.54%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.58%) Intranet
1 3 (0.58%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.39%) Firewall
2 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
3 1 (0.19%) 4G
3 1 (0.19%) 5G
3 1 (0.19%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (21.04%) Data Warehouse
2 73 (14.09%) Power BI
3 62 (11.97%) Data Lake
4 41 (7.92%) Metadata Repository
5 30 (5.79%) Big Data
6 27 (5.21%) NoSQL
6 27 (5.21%) SQL Server
7 26 (5.02%) Data Vault
7 26 (5.02%) Snowflake Schema
8 23 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
9 20 (3.86%) Relational Database
9 20 (3.86%) Tableau
10 18 (3.47%) Hadoop
10 18 (3.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 17 (3.28%) BigQuery
12 16 (3.09%) Azure SQL Database
13 15 (2.90%) Amazon Redshift
13 15 (2.90%) Oracle Database
14 12 (2.32%) Delta Lake
14 12 (2.32%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 30 (5.79%) ERwin
2 27 (5.21%) JIRA
3 25 (4.83%) Git
4 11 (2.12%) PowerDesigner
5 10 (1.93%) ER Studio
6 9 (1.74%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.77%) Maven
7 4 (0.77%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.58%) GitLab
9 2 (0.39%) Subversion
9 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio
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
1 184 (35.52%) Social Skills
2 132 (25.48%) Finance
3 101 (19.50%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (12.55%) Public Sector
5 49 (9.46%) Banking
6 43 (8.30%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.47%) Publishing
8 15 (2.90%) Retail
9 12 (2.32%) Legal
10 11 (2.12%) Aviation
10 11 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
11 10 (1.93%) Investment Banking
12 9 (1.74%) Military
13 8 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (1.54%) Marketing
14 7 (1.35%) Financial Institution
15 6 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (1.16%) Retail Banking
16 5 (0.97%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 135 (26.06%) Architect
2 101 (19.50%) Data Architect
3 71 (13.71%) Analyst
4 68 (13.13%) Data Engineer
5 52 (10.04%) Data Analyst
6 42 (8.11%) Data Modeller
7 39 (7.53%) Lead
8 38 (7.34%) Developer
8 38 (7.34%) Senior
9 23 (4.44%) Consultant
10 22 (4.25%) Business Analyst
11 18 (3.47%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (2.70%) Azure Data Engineer
13 13 (2.51%) Software Engineer
14 12 (2.32%) Data Business Analyst
15 11 (2.12%) Scrum Master
15 11 (2.12%) Senior Data Engineer
16 10 (1.93%) AWS Engineer
16 10 (1.93%) Data Analytics Engineer
16 10 (1.93%) Data Quality Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (7.14%) PySpark
2 27 (5.21%) Kafka
2 27 (5.21%) REST
3 16 (3.09%) JSON
4 14 (2.70%) .NET
5 12 (2.32%) React
5 12 (2.32%) XML
6 11 (2.12%) SOAP
6 11 (2.12%) YAML
7 10 (1.93%) OAuth
8 6 (1.16%) Node.js
8 6 (1.16%) RESTful
8 6 (1.16%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.16%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.16%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.16%) VML
9 5 (0.97%) HTML
9 5 (0.97%) Pandas
10 4 (0.77%) SLSA
11 3 (0.58%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 46 (8.88%) Cloud Native
2 36 (6.95%) Data Structures
3 32 (6.18%) Management Information System
4 30 (5.79%) Taxonomies
5 29 (5.60%) Reference Data
6 22 (4.25%) Legacy Systems
7 21 (4.05%) Onboarding
7 21 (4.05%) Product Ownership
8 11 (2.12%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.74%) Distributed Computing
11 6 (1.16%) Credit Risk
11 6 (1.16%) Data Fabric
12 5 (0.97%) CMDB
12 5 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.77%) Genomics
13 4 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.77%) IoT
13 4 (0.77%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.35%) Unix
2 5 (0.97%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (51.74%) Data Governance
2 261 (50.39%) Data Modelling
3 231 (44.59%) Metadata Management
4 182 (35.14%) Analytics
5 149 (28.76%) Data Architecture
6 137 (26.45%) ETL
7 117 (22.59%) Business Intelligence
8 99 (19.11%) Agile
8 99 (19.11%) Data Engineering
8 99 (19.11%) Data Lineage
9 94 (18.15%) Problem-Solving
10 88 (16.99%) Data Pipeline
11 87 (16.80%) AI
12 86 (16.60%) Validation
13 80 (15.44%) Data Management
14 78 (15.06%) Migration
15 75 (14.48%) Data Integration
16 74 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
17 73 (14.09%) Decision-Making
18 71 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 189 (36.49%) SQL
2 125 (24.13%) Python
3 23 (4.44%) PowerShell
4 22 (4.25%) C#
5 19 (3.67%) Java
6 10 (1.93%) JavaScript
6 10 (1.93%) PL/SQL
7 7 (1.35%) R
7 7 (1.35%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.16%) ABAP
8 6 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.16%) Groovy
8 6 (1.16%) Perl
9 5 (0.97%) Scala
9 5 (0.97%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.97%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.77%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.58%) C++
11 3 (0.58%) SOQL
12 2 (0.39%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 121 (23.36%) Security Cleared
2 91 (17.57%) SC Cleared
3 38 (7.34%) Degree
4 22 (4.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.51%) Master's Degree
6 10 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.54%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.54%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.97%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.19%) Analytics IQ
11 1 (0.19%) CISSP
11 1 (0.19%) CSPO
11 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.19%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.19%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 221 (42.66%) Data Quality
2 48 (9.27%) GDPR
3 22 (4.25%) QA
4 17 (3.28%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.93%) GRC
6 8 (1.54%) Solvency II
7 7 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.97%) IFRS
9 4 (0.77%) MiFID
9 4 (0.77%) NIST
10 3 (0.58%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.58%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.39%) CRD IV
11 2 (0.39%) FINREP
11 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 19650
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.39%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 12 (2.32%) Docker
2 5 (0.97%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 19 (3.67%) Kubernetes
1 19 (3.67%) Terraform
2 4 (0.77%) Prometheus
3 3 (0.58%) Grafana
3 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.58%) SCCM
4 1 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.19%) Ansible
4 1 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
4 1 (0.19%) Oozie
4 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 102 (19.69%) Microsoft
2 82 (15.83%) Databricks
3 46 (8.88%) Oracle
4 42 (8.11%) Informatica
5 23 (4.44%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.47%) SAP
6 18 (3.47%) Talend
7 16 (3.09%) Google
8 15 (2.90%) Salesforce
9 13 (2.51%) Sparx
10 11 (2.12%) Teradata
11 9 (1.74%) OpenText
12 7 (1.35%) Remedy
12 7 (1.35%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.16%) Optimizely
14 5 (0.97%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.97%) ESRI
14 5 (0.97%) Intergraph
14 5 (0.97%) Palantir
15 4 (0.77%) IBM