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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 322 303
Rank change year-on-year +119 -19 +32
Contract jobs citing Metadata 609 215 307
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.29% 0.73% 0.70%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.37% 3.87% 4.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 419 158 206
10th Percentile £352 £233 £400
25th Percentile £414 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -10.43% +4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £634 £775
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £470 £575
% change year-on-year +9.04% -18.26% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 7 16
10th Percentile £35.91 £22.63 £13.50
25th Percentile £58.94 £22.72 £17.75
Median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.73% -15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £75.88 £56.13 £43.09
90th Percentile £83.13 £82.25 £46.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £27.50 £20.97
% change year-on-year +132.73% +31.14% -42.15%

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 7,273 5,550 7,317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.39% 18.97% 16.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,956 3,833 5,210
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £640 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £480
% change year-on-year -2.86% +1.88% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 104 143
10th Percentile £16.72 £19.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £28.56 £24.06 £20.98
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.70% -17.60% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.15 £58.62
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.13 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.40% -25.00% -31.09%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 +98 514 £500 -3.85% 155
London +90 288 £500 -16.67% 65
UK excluding London +31 244 £513 +9.04% 110
Work from Home +54 165 £525 -1.87% 53
Midlands -23 65 £537 +401.40% 21
West Midlands -16 58 £569 +431.54% 8
North of England -39 53 £488 -7.14% 23
South East -30 47 £500 +4.71% 30
Scotland +34 43 £470 -11.15% 5
East of England -10 29 £575 +79.74% 17
North West -30 28 £511 -6.19% 6
Yorkshire -32 23 £563 +50.00% 14
South West -27 12 £563 +2.32% 15
East Midlands - 7 £447 - 13
North East -20 5 £419 -22.94% 3
Wales -11 3 £750 +234.35% 3

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 36 (5.91%) Apache Spark
1 36 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 23 (3.78%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (3.61%) SAS
4 21 (3.45%) Confluence
5 16 (2.63%) Apache
6 9 (1.48%) CMS
7 4 (0.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 4 (0.66%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.49%) Drupal
8 3 (0.49%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.33%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.33%) Headless CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.33%) Smallworld
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.16%) Jupyter
Applications
1 29 (4.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.81%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.15%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.15%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.15%) Revit
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 14 (2.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 8 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.99%) Summit
4 3 (0.49%) Maximo
5 2 (0.33%) Actimize
5 2 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
6 1 (0.16%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.16%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.16%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 184 (30.21%) Azure
2 130 (21.35%) AWS
3 96 (15.76%) Power Platform
4 75 (12.32%) GCP
5 57 (9.36%) Collibra
6 49 (8.05%) Azure Data Factory
7 45 (7.39%) Microsoft Purview
8 35 (5.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (5.58%) GitHub
10 32 (5.25%) Amazon S3
10 32 (5.25%) Serverless
11 27 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
12 26 (4.27%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (4.11%) dbt
14 24 (3.94%) Snowflake
15 18 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
16 12 (1.97%) Amazon EMR
17 11 (1.81%) Power Automate
18 10 (1.64%) ChatGPT
19 9 (1.48%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.15%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.15%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.82%) Intranet
3 4 (0.66%) Firewall
3 4 (0.66%) HTTP
3 4 (0.66%) SSL
4 2 (0.33%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.16%) 4G
5 1 (0.16%) 5G
5 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (19.87%) Data Warehouse
2 87 (14.29%) Power BI
3 74 (12.15%) Data Lake
4 34 (5.58%) Metadata Repository
4 34 (5.58%) Relational Database
5 29 (4.76%) Tableau
6 28 (4.60%) NoSQL
6 28 (4.60%) SQL Server
7 26 (4.27%) Data Vault
8 25 (4.11%) Big Data
9 22 (3.61%) Snowflake Schema
10 21 (3.45%) Delta Lake
10 21 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
11 19 (3.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 19 (3.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 16 (2.63%) Hadoop
13 15 (2.46%) Oracle Database
14 14 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
14 14 (2.30%) BigQuery
15 13 (2.13%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 31 (5.09%) Git
2 29 (4.76%) ERwin
3 21 (3.45%) JIRA
4 16 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 12 (1.97%) GitLab
6 11 (1.81%) PowerDesigner
7 10 (1.64%) ER Studio
8 9 (1.48%) Maven
9 8 (1.31%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.33%) git-flow
11 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.33%) Subversion
12 1 (0.16%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
12 1 (0.16%) ScriptRunner
12 1 (0.16%) Selenium
12 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.16%) Yeoman
General
1 196 (32.18%) Social Skills
2 164 (26.93%) Finance
3 124 (20.36%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (12.64%) Public Sector
5 71 (11.66%) Banking
6 39 (6.40%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (3.12%) Legal
8 18 (2.96%) Investment Banking
9 16 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.46%) Publishing
11 13 (2.13%) Marketing
12 10 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.48%) Aviation
13 9 (1.48%) Front Office
13 9 (1.48%) Retail
14 7 (1.15%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (1.15%) Military
15 6 (0.99%) Law
16 4 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 137 (22.50%) Architect
2 100 (16.42%) Data Architect
3 95 (15.60%) Data Engineer
4 85 (13.96%) Analyst
5 56 (9.20%) Data Analyst
6 51 (8.37%) Senior
7 50 (8.21%) Lead
8 42 (6.90%) Developer
9 36 (5.91%) Data Modeller
10 34 (5.58%) Business Analyst
11 24 (3.94%) Consultant
12 18 (2.96%) Data Business Analyst
13 17 (2.79%) Data Manager
14 15 (2.46%) Senior Data Engineer
15 14 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
16 13 (2.13%) AWS Engineer
16 13 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 12 (1.97%) Governance Analyst
17 12 (1.97%) Software Engineer
18 11 (1.81%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (7.22%) PySpark
2 33 (5.42%) Kafka
3 29 (4.76%) JSON
3 29 (4.76%) REST
4 18 (2.96%) YAML
5 17 (2.79%) .NET
6 14 (2.30%) XML
7 12 (1.97%) OAuth
7 12 (1.97%) React
7 12 (1.97%) SOAP
8 10 (1.64%) Node.js
9 9 (1.48%) Middleware
10 8 (1.31%) SLSA
11 7 (1.15%) ADO
11 7 (1.15%) OAuth2
11 7 (1.15%) RESTful
12 6 (0.99%) HTML
13 5 (0.82%) CSS
13 5 (0.82%) Playwright
13 5 (0.82%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 60 (9.85%) Cloud Native
2 47 (7.72%) Data Structures
3 45 (7.39%) Management Information System
4 40 (6.57%) Onboarding
5 35 (5.75%) Taxonomies
6 32 (5.25%) Product Ownership
7 31 (5.09%) Reference Data
8 26 (4.27%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (2.46%) Derivative
11 12 (1.97%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.97%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.48%) Clustering
13 9 (1.48%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.48%) Equity Derivative
14 8 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (1.31%) Market Risk
15 6 (0.99%) AI Agents
15 6 (0.99%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.45%) Unix
2 10 (1.64%) Linux
3 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 306 (50.25%) Data Governance
2 277 (45.48%) Data Modelling
3 228 (37.44%) Metadata Management
4 210 (34.48%) Analytics
5 174 (28.57%) ETL
6 158 (25.94%) Data Architecture
7 137 (22.50%) AI
8 128 (21.02%) Data Pipeline
9 125 (20.53%) Data Engineering
10 121 (19.87%) Business Intelligence
11 120 (19.70%) CI/CD
12 118 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
13 114 (18.72%) Migration
14 111 (18.23%) Agile
15 107 (17.57%) Data Lineage
16 104 (17.08%) Validation
17 100 (16.42%) Stakeholder Management
18 94 (15.44%) Data Management
19 93 (15.27%) Decision-Making
19 93 (15.27%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 247 (40.56%) SQL
2 159 (26.11%) Python
3 37 (6.08%) Java
4 28 (4.60%) C#
5 25 (4.11%) PL/SQL
6 19 (3.12%) PowerShell
7 15 (2.46%) Shell Script
8 14 (2.30%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.48%) Groovy
9 9 (1.48%) Perl
9 9 (1.48%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.31%) C++
11 7 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 7 (1.15%) R
11 7 (1.15%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.99%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.99%) Scala
13 4 (0.66%) Bicep
14 3 (0.49%) Bash
15 2 (0.33%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 145 (23.81%) Security Cleared
2 102 (16.75%) SC Cleared
3 42 (6.90%) Degree
4 25 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.13%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 10 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (1.64%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.31%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.82%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.49%) CISSP
11 2 (0.33%) Analytics IQ
11 2 (0.33%) CISM
11 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.33%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.16%) CBAP
12 1 (0.16%) CSPO
12 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.16%) MySQL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (41.71%) Data Quality
2 62 (10.18%) GDPR
3 32 (5.25%) QA
4 18 (2.96%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.81%) GRC
6 10 (1.64%) Solvency II
7 8 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 8 (1.31%) NIST
8 7 (1.15%) ISO 19650
9 5 (0.82%) IFRS
10 4 (0.66%) ISO 22301
11 3 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.49%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.49%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.49%) MiFID
12 2 (0.33%) IFRS 9
12 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (2.13%) Docker
2 8 (1.31%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 23 (3.78%) Terraform
2 15 (2.46%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.15%) Grafana
4 6 (0.99%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) CA Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.66%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.16%) Ansible
7 1 (0.16%) Kibana
Vendors
1 115 (18.88%) Microsoft
2 86 (14.12%) Databricks
3 59 (9.69%) Oracle
4 53 (8.70%) Informatica
5 26 (4.27%) Salesforce
6 24 (3.94%) Talend
7 20 (3.28%) Google
8 19 (3.12%) SAP
8 19 (3.12%) ServiceNow
9 14 (2.30%) Autodesk
9 14 (2.30%) Sparx
10 10 (1.64%) IBM
11 8 (1.31%) Sonatype
11 8 (1.31%) Sybase
12 7 (1.15%) Adobe
12 7 (1.15%) OpenAI
12 7 (1.15%) Teradata
13 5 (0.82%) Denodo
13 5 (0.82%) Sitecore
14 4 (0.66%) Hortonworks