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 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 253 384 320
Rank change year-on-year +131 -64 +30
Contract jobs citing Metadata 384 181 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 0.52% 0.71%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.06% 2.90% 4.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 123 222
10th Percentile £393 £334 £385
25th Percentile £447 £463 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -5.17%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £688
90th Percentile £700 £785 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £488 £560
% change year-on-year -0.97% -12.95% +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 20
10th Percentile £35.70 £20.32 £15.15
25th Percentile £45.38 £21.86 £28.17
Median hourly rate £63.00 £25.43 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +147.74% -44.93% +119.90%
75th Percentile £74.75 £31.30 £49.50
90th Percentile £80.90 £36.97 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £25.43 £46.18
% change year-on-year +190.99% -44.93% +21.53%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,332 6,233 7,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.38% 18.02% 16.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,369 4,126 5,243
10th Percentile £329 £340 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £709 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 84 139
10th Percentile £20.71 £18.15 £16.51
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.46 £21.64
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.40 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +43.09% -34.17% -7.73%
75th Percentile £68.19 £60.15 £64.77
90th Percentile £85.00 £65.89 £77.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.24 £46.18
% change year-on-year +83.57% -41.02% +1.49%

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025. 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 +105 330 £525 +5.00% 181
London +100 210 £550 +3.77% 85
UK excluding London +9 132 £483 -0.97% 159
Work from Home +60 103 £550 +8.11% 140
Midlands -13 32 £480 +28.00% 17
South East +12 26 £475 -11.63% 71
North of England -24 25 £475 -5.00% 30
West Midlands -21 22 £558 +48.67% 10
Scotland +5 19 £465 -32.12% 9
North West -12 16 £447 +11.81% 8
East of England -12 14 £496 +58.63% 12
South West -13 12 £568 +16.41% 18
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 6
Wales +4 9 £700 +239.29% 4
Yorkshire -36 9 £525 +5.00% 17
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1

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 (9.11%) SharePoint
2 30 (7.81%) Apache Spark
3 17 (4.43%) Apache
4 16 (4.17%) CMS
4 16 (4.17%) Confluence
5 15 (3.91%) SAS
6 9 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
7 7 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
7 7 (1.82%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (1.56%) Drupal
9 4 (1.04%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 3 (0.78%) GeoServer
10 3 (0.78%) Smallworld
11 2 (0.52%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.52%) Umbraco
12 1 (0.26%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.26%) Documentum
12 1 (0.26%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.26%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 20 (5.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (2.86%) MS Visio
3 9 (2.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.52%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.26%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.26%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle Smart View
6 1 (0.26%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (3.65%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 11 (2.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.56%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.56%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.56%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.78%) Actimize
4 3 (0.78%) Maximo
4 3 (0.78%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.52%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.26%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.26%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.26%) Primavera
6 1 (0.26%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 117 (30.47%) Azure
2 91 (23.70%) AWS
3 70 (18.23%) Power Platform
4 45 (11.72%) GCP
5 38 (9.90%) Collibra
5 38 (9.90%) Microsoft Purview
6 32 (8.33%) Azure Data Factory
7 31 (8.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 29 (7.55%) Snowflake
9 23 (5.99%) Microsoft 365
10 18 (4.69%) Amazon S3
11 15 (3.91%) Serverless
12 13 (3.39%) dbt
13 12 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
15 10 (2.60%) GitHub
15 10 (2.60%) PowerApps
16 7 (1.82%) Contentful
16 7 (1.82%) Entra ID
16 7 (1.82%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.78%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.52%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.52%) Intranet
3 1 (0.26%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (19.53%) Data Warehouse
2 58 (15.10%) Power BI
3 39 (10.16%) Data Lake
4 23 (5.99%) NoSQL
5 22 (5.73%) Big Data
6 21 (5.47%) Relational Database
7 19 (4.95%) Data Vault
8 18 (4.69%) Metadata Repository
8 18 (4.69%) PostgreSQL
9 17 (4.43%) Snowflake Schema
10 16 (4.17%) Tableau
11 15 (3.91%) SQL Server
12 14 (3.65%) BigQuery
13 13 (3.39%) Amazon Redshift
14 12 (3.13%) Spark SQL
14 12 (3.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 11 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
15 11 (2.86%) Delta Lake
16 10 (2.60%) Hadoop
17 9 (2.34%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 23 (5.99%) ERwin
2 22 (5.73%) JIRA
3 21 (5.47%) Git
4 11 (2.86%) ER Studio
4 11 (2.86%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.78%) GitLab
5 3 (0.78%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.52%) Subversion
6 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.26%) gulp
7 1 (0.26%) Poetry
7 1 (0.26%) Postman
7 1 (0.26%) Pylint
7 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.26%) Yeoman
General
1 161 (41.93%) Social Skills
2 103 (26.82%) Finance
3 73 (19.01%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (13.54%) Public Sector
5 36 (9.38%) Banking
6 26 (6.77%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (3.65%) Publishing
7 14 (3.65%) Retail
8 10 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 10 (2.60%) Legal
9 8 (2.08%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.82%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.56%) Aviation
11 6 (1.56%) Military
11 6 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.56%) Retail Banking
12 5 (1.30%) Corporate Banking
12 5 (1.30%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 84 (21.88%) Architect
2 64 (16.67%) Analyst
3 62 (16.15%) Data Architect
4 45 (11.72%) Data Analyst
5 38 (9.90%) Data Engineer
6 33 (8.59%) Data Modeller
7 27 (7.03%) Lead
8 23 (5.99%) Consultant
9 22 (5.73%) Senior
10 21 (5.47%) Developer
11 18 (4.69%) Business Analyst
12 14 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (3.65%) Governance Analyst
13 13 (3.39%) Data Manager
14 10 (2.60%) Azure Data Engineer
15 9 (2.34%) AWS Engineer
15 9 (2.34%) Data Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.34%) Quality Analyst
15 9 (2.34%) SAP Consultant
16 8 (2.08%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (8.59%) PySpark
2 26 (6.77%) Kafka
3 17 (4.43%) REST
4 10 (2.60%) JSON
4 10 (2.60%) XML
5 6 (1.56%) SAP Basis
5 6 (1.56%) SAP Business Workflow
5 6 (1.56%) SAP Fiori
5 6 (1.56%) VML
6 5 (1.30%) React
6 5 (1.30%) SOAP
6 5 (1.30%) YAML
7 4 (1.04%) Apache NiFi
7 4 (1.04%) HTML
7 4 (1.04%) LDAP
7 4 (1.04%) OAuth
7 4 (1.04%) Regular Expression
7 4 (1.04%) RESTful
7 4 (1.04%) SAML
7 4 (1.04%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 28 (7.29%) Data Structures
2 25 (6.51%) Taxonomies
3 22 (5.73%) Cloud Native
4 15 (3.91%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.91%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (3.65%) Reference Data
6 13 (3.39%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.60%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (1.82%) Data Fabric
8 7 (1.82%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.04%) Genomics
9 4 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.04%) NHS
9 4 (1.04%) Omics
9 4 (1.04%) Replication
10 3 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (0.78%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.30%) Linux
1 5 (1.30%) Unix
2 1 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (53.65%) Data Governance
2 197 (51.30%) Data Modelling
3 190 (49.48%) Metadata Management
4 131 (34.11%) Analytics
5 100 (26.04%) Data Architecture
6 93 (24.22%) Business Intelligence
7 92 (23.96%) ETL
8 80 (20.83%) Data Lineage
9 76 (19.79%) Agile
9 76 (19.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
11 67 (17.45%) Data Engineering
11 67 (17.45%) Data Pipeline
12 59 (15.36%) Validation
13 53 (13.80%) Data Management
14 52 (13.54%) Migration
15 51 (13.28%) AI
15 51 (13.28%) Data Integration
15 51 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
16 49 (12.76%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 124 (32.29%) SQL
2 89 (23.18%) Python
3 17 (4.43%) Java
4 16 (4.17%) PowerShell
5 8 (2.08%) Scala
5 8 (2.08%) T-SQL
6 6 (1.56%) ABAP
6 6 (1.56%) JavaScript
6 6 (1.56%) R
7 5 (1.30%) C++
7 5 (1.30%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 3 (0.78%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.78%) C#
9 3 (0.78%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.78%) SOQL
9 3 (0.78%) SOSL
10 2 (0.52%) Bicep
10 2 (0.52%) Groovy
10 2 (0.52%) Korn
Qualifications
1 80 (20.83%) Security Cleared
2 54 (14.06%) SC Cleared
3 26 (6.77%) Degree
4 11 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.82%) AWS Certification
6 7 (1.82%) Azure Certification
6 7 (1.82%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.04%) DV Cleared
8 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.52%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.52%) PMP
9 2 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.26%) CSPO
10 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.26%) MySQL Certification
10 1 (0.26%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (41.41%) Data Quality
2 45 (11.72%) GDPR
3 17 (4.43%) QA
4 15 (3.91%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.56%) IFRS
5 6 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.30%) MiFID
6 5 (1.30%) Solvency II
7 4 (1.04%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.78%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.52%) Basel III
9 2 (0.52%) CRD IV
9 2 (0.52%) FINREP
9 2 (0.52%) GRC
9 2 (0.52%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.52%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.52%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.52%) NIST
10 1 (0.26%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 10 (2.60%) Docker
2 5 (1.30%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.78%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 16 (4.17%) Kubernetes
1 16 (4.17%) Terraform
2 4 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.78%) Hadoop YARN
3 3 (0.78%) Oozie
3 3 (0.78%) SCCM
4 1 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 81 (21.09%) Microsoft
2 58 (15.10%) Databricks
3 36 (9.38%) Oracle
4 32 (8.33%) Informatica
5 15 (3.91%) ServiceNow
5 15 (3.91%) Sparx
6 14 (3.65%) SAP
7 11 (2.86%) Google
7 11 (2.86%) Talend
8 10 (2.60%) Salesforce
9 9 (2.34%) OpenText
10 8 (2.08%) Teradata
11 7 (1.82%) Sitecore
12 6 (1.56%) IBM
12 6 (1.56%) Optimizely
13 5 (1.30%) Adobe
13 5 (1.30%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.30%) Palantir
14 4 (1.04%) Atlassian
14 4 (1.04%) Cognos