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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 299 345
Rank change year-on-year +95 +46 +38
Contract jobs citing Metadata 681 256 258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.31% 0.80% 0.60%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.57% 4.40% 3.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 448 179 162
10th Percentile £358 £269 £376
25th Percentile £438 £436 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -9.13% +4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £825
90th Percentile £750 £775 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £465 £499
% change year-on-year +12.90% -6.88% -0.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 6 16
10th Percentile £31.05 £13.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £35.91 £15.56 £20.11
Median hourly rate £60.50 £26.25 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +130.48% -19.23% -7.14%
75th Percentile £64.00 £29.69 £46.18
90th Percentile £69.35 £58.75 £47.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.50 £25.00 £40.25
% change year-on-year +142.00% -37.89% +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 7,946 5,822 7,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 18.29% 17.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,243 3,941 5,416
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 103 153
10th Percentile £15.57 £19.82 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.38 £20.49
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -6.67% -34.78%
75th Percentile £63.88 £63.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £76.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +18.52% +5.47% -45.45%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 +88 563 £525 - 237
London +51 323 £521 -13.13% 122
UK excluding London +37 272 £525 +12.90% 158
Work from Home +43 197 £525 -8.70% 129
Midlands -7 69 £570 +432.59% 20
West Midlands -11 67 £573 +435.51% 12
North of England -21 66 £525 +15.07% 18
Scotland +30 53 £525 +10.53% 12
South East -41 49 £506 +6.02% 67
Yorkshire -17 33 £563 +23.29% 9
North West -26 29 £575 +82.54% 8
East of England -10 26 £475 +49.16% 17
South West -25 14 £588 +0.04% 12
North East -33 7 £413 -10.81% 1
Wales -19 3 £750 +184.67% 6
East Midlands -14 2 £474 +15.49% 8

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 35 (5.14%) SharePoint
2 33 (4.85%) Apache Spark
3 32 (4.70%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (2.94%) Confluence
5 19 (2.79%) Apache
6 16 (2.35%) SAS
7 14 (2.06%) CMS
8 3 (0.44%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.29%) Alfresco
9 2 (0.29%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.15%) Apache Solr
10 1 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.15%) Drupal
10 1 (0.15%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.15%) Liferay
10 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 17 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.03%) Navisworks
3 7 (1.03%) Notepad++
3 7 (1.03%) Revit
4 4 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (1.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (0.88%) Summit
3 3 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.29%) Maximo
4 2 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.15%) HFM
5 1 (0.15%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.15%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.15%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 199 (29.22%) Azure
2 145 (21.29%) AWS
3 93 (13.66%) Power Platform
4 71 (10.43%) GCP
5 61 (8.96%) Collibra
6 54 (7.93%) Microsoft Purview
7 39 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
8 38 (5.58%) Amazon S3
9 37 (5.43%) GitHub
10 36 (5.29%) dbt
11 32 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 31 (4.55%) Serverless
13 29 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
13 29 (4.26%) Snowflake
14 28 (4.11%) AWS Lambda
15 20 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
16 16 (2.35%) Microsoft Copilot
17 15 (2.20%) Entra ID
17 15 (2.20%) Power Automate
18 13 (1.91%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.03%) PuTTY
1 7 (1.03%) WinSCP
2 5 (0.73%) Intranet
3 4 (0.59%) SSL
4 3 (0.44%) Firewall
4 3 (0.44%) HTTP
5 1 (0.15%) 4G
5 1 (0.15%) 5G
5 1 (0.15%) Broadband
5 1 (0.15%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (17.33%) Data Warehouse
2 82 (12.04%) Power BI
3 74 (10.87%) Data Lake
4 36 (5.29%) Relational Database
5 34 (4.99%) Data Vault
6 31 (4.55%) Tableau
7 27 (3.96%) NoSQL
8 23 (3.38%) Delta Lake
8 23 (3.38%) Metadata Repository
9 22 (3.23%) SQL Server
10 21 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
10 21 (3.08%) Snowflake Schema
11 20 (2.94%) Big Data
12 17 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
12 17 (2.50%) Amazon Redshift
12 17 (2.50%) Hadoop
12 17 (2.50%) Semantic Layer
13 15 (2.20%) BigQuery
14 13 (1.91%) Db2
15 12 (1.76%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 39 (5.73%) ERwin
2 33 (4.85%) Git
3 21 (3.08%) JIRA
4 20 (2.94%) ER Studio
5 16 (2.35%) Jenkins
6 15 (2.20%) PowerDesigner
7 14 (2.06%) GitLab
7 14 (2.06%) Maven
8 10 (1.47%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.44%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.29%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.29%) git-flow
10 2 (0.29%) Selenium
11 1 (0.15%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) ScriptRunner
11 1 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
General
1 207 (30.40%) Finance
2 189 (27.75%) Social Skills
3 126 (18.50%) Analytical Skills
4 98 (14.39%) Banking
5 74 (10.87%) Public Sector
6 38 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
6 38 (5.58%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.79%) Legal
7 19 (2.79%) Retail
8 16 (2.35%) Marketing
9 15 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
10 13 (1.91%) Publishing
11 12 (1.76%) Aviation
11 12 (1.76%) Front Office
12 11 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.03%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.88%) Military
15 5 (0.73%) Automotive
15 5 (0.73%) Law
Job Titles
1 169 (24.82%) Architect
2 122 (17.91%) Data Architect
3 98 (14.39%) Data Engineer
4 83 (12.19%) Analyst
5 75 (11.01%) Lead
6 60 (8.81%) Senior
7 53 (7.78%) Data Analyst
8 50 (7.34%) Data Modeller
9 43 (6.31%) Developer
10 32 (4.70%) Business Analyst
11 28 (4.11%) Consultant
12 19 (2.79%) Data Manager
13 18 (2.64%) Data Business Analyst
14 17 (2.50%) DevOps Engineer
15 16 (2.35%) Senior Data Engineer
15 16 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (2.06%) Governance Analyst
17 13 (1.91%) Enterprise Architect
17 13 (1.91%) Lead Data Engineer
17 13 (1.91%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.46%) PySpark
2 35 (5.14%) JSON
3 30 (4.41%) Kafka
4 23 (3.38%) REST
5 17 (2.50%) YAML
6 15 (2.20%) .NET
7 12 (1.76%) XML
8 11 (1.62%) Node.js
8 11 (1.62%) Spring Boot
9 10 (1.47%) React
9 10 (1.47%) SLSA
10 9 (1.32%) OAuth
10 9 (1.32%) SOAP
11 8 (1.17%) Middleware
12 7 (1.03%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.03%) SPFx
13 6 (0.88%) ADO
13 6 (0.88%) GraphQL
13 6 (0.88%) RESTful
13 6 (0.88%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 68 (9.99%) Cloud Native
2 57 (8.37%) Onboarding
3 50 (7.34%) Taxonomies
4 47 (6.90%) Data Structures
5 42 (6.17%) Management Information System
6 36 (5.29%) Product Ownership
7 32 (4.70%) Reference Data
8 31 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (2.94%) Derivative
10 15 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.76%) Credit Risk
11 12 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 12 (1.76%) Equity Derivative
12 11 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 11 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.47%) Clustering
14 9 (1.32%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (1.32%) Fixed Income
14 9 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
14 9 (1.32%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.79%) Unix
2 8 (1.17%) Linux
3 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 345 (50.66%) Data Governance
2 311 (45.67%) Data Modelling
3 231 (33.92%) Analytics
4 228 (33.48%) Metadata Management
5 171 (25.11%) Data Architecture
6 170 (24.96%) AI
7 154 (22.61%) ETL
8 145 (21.29%) Data Engineering
9 141 (20.70%) Data Pipeline
10 133 (19.53%) Agile
10 133 (19.53%) CI/CD
11 132 (19.38%) Migration
12 117 (17.18%) Business Intelligence
13 116 (17.03%) Stakeholder Management
14 113 (16.59%) Data Lineage
15 109 (16.01%) Decision-Making
16 106 (15.57%) Validation
17 105 (15.42%) Data Management
18 103 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
19 100 (14.68%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 254 (37.30%) SQL
2 171 (25.11%) Python
3 49 (7.20%) Java
4 22 (3.23%) PL/SQL
5 20 (2.94%) C#
6 15 (2.20%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.76%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.76%) PowerShell
8 10 (1.47%) Groovy
9 9 (1.32%) C++
10 8 (1.17%) TypeScript
11 7 (1.03%) Bash
11 7 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 6 (0.88%) Apex Code
12 6 (0.88%) Bicep
12 6 (0.88%) SPARQL
13 5 (0.73%) Scala
13 5 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.59%) Perl
14 4 (0.59%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 143 (21.00%) Security Cleared
2 108 (15.86%) SC Cleared
3 47 (6.90%) Degree
4 30 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (2.35%) Master's Degree
7 13 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.62%) DV Cleared
8 11 (1.62%) TOGAF Certification
9 8 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.29%) Analytics IQ
12 2 (0.29%) CBAP
12 2 (0.29%) CISM
12 2 (0.29%) CISSP
12 2 (0.29%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.29%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.29%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 264 (38.77%) Data Quality
2 65 (9.54%) GDPR
3 39 (5.73%) QA
4 32 (4.70%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.47%) GRC
6 7 (1.03%) Solvency II
7 6 (0.88%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (0.88%) ISO 19650
7 6 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.88%) NIST
8 4 (0.59%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.59%) ISO 22301
8 4 (0.59%) MiFID
9 3 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.44%) ISO 31000
9 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.29%) IFRS
10 2 (0.29%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.29%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.29%) PMO
System Software
1 13 (1.91%) Docker
2 10 (1.47%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 30 (4.41%) Terraform
2 14 (2.06%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.32%) Grafana
4 7 (1.03%) Prometheus
4 7 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (0.59%) CA Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.59%) PingFederate
6 2 (0.29%) Ansible
7 1 (0.15%) Kibana
Vendors
1 127 (18.65%) Microsoft
2 107 (15.71%) Databricks
3 63 (9.25%) Oracle
4 43 (6.31%) Informatica
5 23 (3.38%) Salesforce
6 22 (3.23%) Google
7 19 (2.79%) Talend
8 14 (2.06%) IBM
9 13 (1.91%) Autodesk
10 11 (1.62%) Sparx
10 11 (1.62%) Sybase
11 10 (1.47%) SAP
11 10 (1.47%) Sonatype
12 9 (1.32%) ServiceNow
13 8 (1.17%) Adobe
14 6 (0.88%) Foundry
14 6 (0.88%) OpenAI
15 5 (0.73%) CA Agile Central
15 5 (0.73%) Denodo
15 5 (0.73%) Palantir