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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 337 293
Rank change year-on-year +99 -44 +21
Contract jobs citing Metadata 451 199 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 0.63% 0.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.09% 3.44% 4.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 135 235
10th Percentile £363 £320 £389
25th Percentile £421 £460 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -5.45% -3.51%
75th Percentile £597 £650 £686
90th Percentile £688 £799 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £575
% change year-on-year +2.56% -15.22% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 8 25
10th Percentile £29.83 £21.69 £14.61
25th Percentile £48.71 £22.72 £20.50
Median hourly rate £69.00 £28.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +140.00% -37.74% +10.61%
75th Percentile £83.13 £51.13 -
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £63.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.75 £27.50 £43.22
% change year-on-year +171.82% -36.36% -30.86%

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 6,363 5,791 7,324
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.51% 18.44% 16.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,387 3,800 5,214
10th Percentile £335 £356 £350
25th Percentile £411 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.80% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 89 184
10th Percentile £18.25 £21.25 £15.92
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.75 £21.00
Median hourly rate £49.36 £35.00 £42.35
Median % change year-on-year +41.03% -17.35% -25.53%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.73 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.55 £77.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £29.80 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.56% -25.50% -28.48%

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 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 1 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 1 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 +101 386 £513 -1.44% 234
London +91 231 £525 -4.55% 132
UK excluding London +23 174 £500 +2.56% 184
Work from Home +42 122 £525 +0.72% 203
Midlands -16 45 £548 +41.29% 22
South East +4 39 £506 +1.25% 80
West Midlands -12 36 £560 +44.52% 13
Scotland +22 30 £458 -33.21% 16
North of England -52 29 £475 -12.84% 19
East of England -9 20 £496 +55.79% 31
North West -24 17 £474 -13.07% 7
South West -20 12 £568 +16.41% 20
Yorkshire -43 12 £525 +35.48% 6
East Midlands - 9 £436 - 9
Wales +1 8 £700 +229.21% 2
North East -17 2 £314 -54.38% 6

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 31 (6.87%) Apache Spark
2 30 (6.65%) SharePoint
3 23 (5.10%) SAS
4 20 (4.43%) Confluence
5 15 (3.33%) Apache
6 11 (2.44%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (2.22%) CMS
8 7 (1.55%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.33%) Drupal
9 6 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (1.11%) GeoServer
10 5 (1.11%) Smallworld
11 4 (0.89%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.22%) Alfresco
13 1 (0.22%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.22%) Headless CMS
13 1 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
13 1 (0.22%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 26 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.22%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.22%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.22%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.10%) SAP S/4HANA
1 14 (3.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 6 (1.33%) OpenText VIM for SAP
2 6 (1.33%) SAP FI
2 6 (1.33%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.67%) Actimize
3 3 (0.67%) Maximo
4 2 (0.44%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 2 (0.44%) Summit
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.22%) Hyperion Planning
5 1 (0.22%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 144 (31.93%) Azure
2 100 (22.17%) AWS
3 74 (16.41%) Power Platform
4 52 (11.53%) GCP
5 42 (9.31%) Azure Data Factory
6 41 (9.09%) Collibra
6 41 (9.09%) Microsoft Purview
7 39 (8.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 31 (6.87%) Snowflake
9 20 (4.43%) dbt
10 17 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (3.55%) Serverless
12 15 (3.33%) Microsoft 365
13 14 (3.10%) Amazon S3
14 12 (2.66%) GitHub
15 10 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
16 8 (1.77%) Alation
16 8 (1.77%) Entra ID
16 8 (1.77%) SaaS
17 7 (1.55%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.67%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.44%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.44%) Intranet
3 1 (0.22%) Firewall
3 1 (0.22%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (20.62%) Data Warehouse
2 68 (15.08%) Power BI
3 55 (12.20%) Data Lake
4 36 (7.98%) Metadata Repository
5 25 (5.54%) Big Data
5 25 (5.54%) NoSQL
6 22 (4.88%) Relational Database
7 21 (4.66%) SQL Server
8 20 (4.43%) Snowflake Schema
9 19 (4.21%) Data Vault
9 19 (4.21%) Tableau
10 18 (3.99%) Azure SQL Database
10 18 (3.99%) PostgreSQL
11 17 (3.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 15 (3.33%) Amazon Redshift
12 15 (3.33%) BigQuery
13 14 (3.10%) Oracle Database
14 12 (2.66%) Delta Lake
14 12 (2.66%) Hadoop
15 10 (2.22%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 26 (5.76%) JIRA
2 25 (5.54%) ERwin
3 22 (4.88%) Git
4 11 (2.44%) ER Studio
5 8 (1.77%) PowerDesigner
6 7 (1.55%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.89%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.67%) Maven
9 2 (0.44%) Subversion
9 2 (0.44%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.22%) GitLab
10 1 (0.22%) gulp
10 1 (0.22%) Poetry
10 1 (0.22%) Pylint
10 1 (0.22%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.22%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.22%) Yeoman
General
1 166 (36.81%) Social Skills
2 114 (25.28%) Finance
3 87 (19.29%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (14.63%) Public Sector
5 32 (7.10%) Banking
6 31 (6.87%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (3.77%) Publishing
8 15 (3.33%) Retail
9 13 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.44%) Legal
11 10 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (1.77%) Military
14 7 (1.55%) Financial Institution
15 6 (1.33%) Aviation
15 6 (1.33%) Marketing
15 6 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (1.33%) Retail Banking
16 5 (1.11%) Corporate Banking
16 5 (1.11%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 111 (24.61%) Architect
2 81 (17.96%) Data Architect
3 68 (15.08%) Analyst
4 56 (12.42%) Data Engineer
5 48 (10.64%) Data Analyst
6 38 (8.43%) Lead
7 33 (7.32%) Data Modeller
8 31 (6.87%) Senior
9 30 (6.65%) Developer
10 24 (5.32%) Business Analyst
10 24 (5.32%) Consultant
11 17 (3.77%) Azure Engineer
12 13 (2.88%) Azure Data Engineer
12 13 (2.88%) Data Business Analyst
12 13 (2.88%) Software Engineer
13 10 (2.22%) Data Analytics Engineer
13 10 (2.22%) Senior Data Engineer
14 9 (2.00%) Data Quality Analyst
14 9 (2.00%) Governance Analyst
14 9 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (7.76%) PySpark
2 26 (5.76%) REST
3 25 (5.54%) Kafka
4 15 (3.33%) JSON
5 12 (2.66%) XML
6 11 (2.44%) .NET
6 11 (2.44%) SOAP
7 10 (2.22%) React
7 10 (2.22%) YAML
8 6 (1.33%) OAuth
8 6 (1.33%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.33%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.33%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.33%) VML
9 5 (1.11%) HTML
9 5 (1.11%) Pandas
9 5 (1.11%) RESTful
10 4 (0.89%) Node.js
11 3 (0.67%) NumPy
11 3 (0.67%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.76%) Cloud Native
2 29 (6.43%) Management Information System
3 28 (6.21%) Data Structures
4 22 (4.88%) Taxonomies
5 21 (4.66%) Legacy Systems
5 21 (4.66%) Reference Data
6 19 (4.21%) Onboarding
7 18 (3.99%) Product Ownership
8 11 (2.44%) Distributed Computing
9 8 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.77%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.33%) Data Fabric
11 5 (1.11%) CMDB
11 5 (1.11%) Credit Risk
12 4 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.89%) Genomics
12 4 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (0.89%) IoT
12 4 (0.89%) Omics
12 4 (0.89%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.55%) Unix
2 4 (0.89%) Linux
3 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (52.11%) Data Governance
2 222 (49.22%) Data Modelling
3 217 (48.12%) Metadata Management
4 154 (34.15%) Analytics
5 129 (28.60%) Data Architecture
6 117 (25.94%) ETL
7 111 (24.61%) Business Intelligence
8 89 (19.73%) Agile
9 87 (19.29%) Data Lineage
10 84 (18.63%) Data Engineering
11 83 (18.40%) Problem-Solving
12 79 (17.52%) Data Pipeline
13 76 (16.85%) AI
14 70 (15.52%) Validation
15 69 (15.30%) Data Management
15 69 (15.30%) Decision-Making
15 69 (15.30%) Stakeholder Management
16 67 (14.86%) Migration
17 66 (14.63%) Data Integration
17 66 (14.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 166 (36.81%) SQL
2 114 (25.28%) Python
3 22 (4.88%) Java
4 21 (4.66%) PowerShell
5 19 (4.21%) C#
6 9 (2.00%) JavaScript
6 9 (2.00%) PL/SQL
7 7 (1.55%) R
7 7 (1.55%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.33%) ABAP
8 6 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.33%) Perl
8 6 (1.33%) Scala
9 5 (1.11%) Groovy
9 5 (1.11%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.89%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.89%) C++
11 3 (0.67%) Bicep
11 3 (0.67%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.44%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 105 (23.28%) Security Cleared
2 78 (17.29%) SC Cleared
3 32 (7.10%) Degree
4 18 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (2.00%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.77%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.33%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.67%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Analytics IQ
12 1 (0.22%) CISSP
12 1 (0.22%) CSPO
12 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.22%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.22%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.22%) PMP
12 1 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (43.90%) Data Quality
2 47 (10.42%) GDPR
3 18 (3.99%) QA
4 13 (2.88%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.77%) GRC
6 6 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.11%) IFRS
7 5 (1.11%) Solvency II
8 4 (0.89%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.89%) MiFID
9 3 (0.67%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.44%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.44%) FINREP
10 2 (0.44%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.44%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.44%) NIST
11 1 (0.22%) Basel III
11 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (3.10%) Docker
2 5 (1.11%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 18 (3.99%) Kubernetes
1 18 (3.99%) Terraform
2 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
2 3 (0.67%) SCCM
3 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 1 (0.22%) Hadoop YARN
3 1 (0.22%) Oozie
3 1 (0.22%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 94 (20.84%) Microsoft
2 71 (15.74%) Databricks
3 42 (9.31%) Oracle
4 36 (7.98%) Informatica
5 22 (4.88%) ServiceNow
6 17 (3.77%) SAP
7 14 (3.10%) Google
7 14 (3.10%) Talend
8 13 (2.88%) Sparx
9 12 (2.66%) Salesforce
10 10 (2.22%) Teradata
11 9 (2.00%) OpenText
12 7 (1.55%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.33%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.33%) Remedy
14 5 (1.11%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.11%) ESRI
14 5 (1.11%) Intergraph
14 5 (1.11%) Palantir
15 4 (0.89%) Adobe