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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 340 300
Rank change year-on-year +117 -40 +8
Contract jobs citing Metadata 471 200 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 0.65% 0.74%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.29% 3.54% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 325 134 233
10th Percentile £363 £305 £377
25th Percentile £415 £436 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -6.36% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £651 £715
90th Percentile £688 £799 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £570
% change year-on-year +2.56% -14.47% +14.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 23
10th Percentile £31.05 £22.72 £19.30
25th Percentile £61.50 £24.48 £34.18
Median hourly rate £69.00 £30.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% -35.04% +10.61%
75th Percentile £82.25 £61.50 £47.63
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.25 £67.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +140.77% -37.74% -26.11%

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 6,460 5,655 7,338
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.41% 18.42% 16.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,439 3,732 5,226
10th Percentile £336 £355 £350
25th Percentile £412 £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 £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 87 178
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.97
25th Percentile £29.00 £25.17 £21.16
Median hourly rate £53.25 £38.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.31% -9.41% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.86 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.50 £76.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £30.21 £40.25
% change year-on-year +81.07% -24.94% -29.21%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +100 400 £500 -3.57% 124
London +82 237 £524 -8.91% 62
UK excluding London +26 184 £500 +2.56% 105
Work from Home +26 127 £525 +0.72% 66
Midlands -17 47 £545 +40.71% 17
South East +1 40 £506 +1.25% 49
West Midlands -17 39 £560 +44.52% 13
North of England -52 34 £475 -12.84% 18
Scotland +24 32 £458 -33.21% 11
East of England -7 20 £492 +54.56% 4
North West -24 19 £469 -13.94% 7
Yorkshire -46 13 £525 +35.48% 6
South West -9 12 £568 +16.41% 5
Wales -4 8 £700 +196.61% 2
East Midlands - 8 £436 - 4
North East -11 4 £475 -30.87% 5

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 (7.43%) Apache Spark
2 27 (5.73%) SharePoint
3 23 (4.88%) SAS
4 20 (4.25%) Confluence
5 17 (3.61%) Apache
6 16 (3.40%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (2.12%) CMS
8 7 (1.49%) Sitecore CMS
9 6 (1.27%) Drupal
9 6 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (1.06%) ArcGIS
10 5 (1.06%) GeoServer
10 5 (1.06%) Smallworld
11 3 (0.64%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.21%) Alfresco
12 1 (0.21%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
12 1 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.21%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 26 (5.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.12%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.21%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.21%) FrameMaker
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle Smart View
5 1 (0.21%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 14 (2.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 12 (2.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.27%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 6 (1.27%) SAP FI
3 6 (1.27%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.64%) Actimize
4 3 (0.64%) Maximo
5 2 (0.42%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 2 (0.42%) Summit
6 1 (0.21%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.21%) Hyperion Planning
6 1 (0.21%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.21%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.21%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 156 (33.12%) Azure
2 109 (23.14%) AWS
3 75 (15.92%) Power Platform
4 58 (12.31%) GCP
5 44 (9.34%) Azure Data Factory
6 42 (8.92%) Collibra
7 41 (8.70%) Microsoft Purview
8 40 (8.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 30 (6.37%) Snowflake
10 21 (4.46%) dbt
11 19 (4.03%) Serverless
12 17 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
13 16 (3.40%) Amazon S3
14 13 (2.76%) GitHub
14 13 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
16 8 (1.70%) Alation
16 8 (1.70%) Entra ID
16 8 (1.70%) SaaS
17 7 (1.49%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.64%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.42%) Hyperconnected
2 2 (0.42%) Intranet
3 1 (0.21%) Firewall
3 1 (0.21%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (20.59%) Data Warehouse
2 69 (14.65%) Power BI
3 61 (12.95%) Data Lake
4 36 (7.64%) Metadata Repository
5 28 (5.94%) Big Data
6 25 (5.31%) NoSQL
7 24 (5.10%) SQL Server
8 22 (4.67%) Snowflake Schema
9 21 (4.46%) PostgreSQL
9 21 (4.46%) Relational Database
10 20 (4.25%) Data Vault
10 20 (4.25%) Tableau
11 18 (3.82%) Azure SQL Database
12 17 (3.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (3.18%) Amazon Redshift
13 15 (3.18%) BigQuery
13 15 (3.18%) Hadoop
13 15 (3.18%) Oracle Database
14 12 (2.55%) Delta Lake
14 12 (2.55%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 27 (5.73%) ERwin
2 25 (5.31%) JIRA
3 23 (4.88%) Git
4 10 (2.12%) ER Studio
5 9 (1.91%) PowerDesigner
6 8 (1.70%) Jenkins
7 5 (1.06%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.85%) Maven
9 2 (0.42%) GitLab
9 2 (0.42%) Subversion
9 2 (0.42%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.21%) gulp
10 1 (0.21%) Poetry
10 1 (0.21%) Pylint
10 1 (0.21%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.21%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.21%) Yeoman
General
1 168 (35.67%) Social Skills
2 122 (25.90%) Finance
3 86 (18.26%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (13.59%) Public Sector
5 38 (8.07%) Banking
6 35 (7.43%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (3.82%) Publishing
8 15 (3.18%) Retail
9 13 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.34%) Legal
11 10 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.91%) Military
13 8 (1.70%) Aviation
14 7 (1.49%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.49%) Investment Banking
14 7 (1.49%) Marketing
15 6 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (1.27%) Retail Banking
16 5 (1.06%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 120 (25.48%) Architect
2 88 (18.68%) Data Architect
3 65 (13.80%) Analyst
4 60 (12.74%) Data Engineer
5 47 (9.98%) Data Analyst
6 39 (8.28%) Lead
7 35 (7.43%) Data Modeller
7 35 (7.43%) Developer
8 32 (6.79%) Senior
9 21 (4.46%) Business Analyst
10 20 (4.25%) Consultant
11 18 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (2.97%) Azure Data Engineer
13 13 (2.76%) Software Engineer
14 12 (2.55%) Data Business Analyst
15 10 (2.12%) Data Analytics Engineer
15 10 (2.12%) Data Quality Analyst
15 10 (2.12%) Senior Data Engineer
16 9 (1.91%) Enterprise Architect
16 9 (1.91%) Governance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (7.86%) PySpark
2 29 (6.16%) Kafka
3 26 (5.52%) REST
4 16 (3.40%) JSON
5 12 (2.55%) .NET
5 12 (2.55%) XML
6 11 (2.34%) SOAP
6 11 (2.34%) YAML
7 10 (2.12%) React
8 6 (1.27%) OAuth
8 6 (1.27%) SAP Basis
8 6 (1.27%) SAP Business Workflow
8 6 (1.27%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.27%) VML
9 5 (1.06%) HTML
9 5 (1.06%) Pandas
9 5 (1.06%) RESTful
10 4 (0.85%) Node.js
10 4 (0.85%) SLSA
11 3 (0.64%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 39 (8.28%) Cloud Native
2 31 (6.58%) Management Information System
3 30 (6.37%) Data Structures
4 24 (5.10%) Reference Data
5 23 (4.88%) Taxonomies
6 21 (4.46%) Legacy Systems
7 19 (4.03%) Onboarding
8 16 (3.40%) Product Ownership
9 11 (2.34%) Distributed Computing
10 9 (1.91%) Virtual Team
11 8 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.27%) Data Fabric
13 5 (1.06%) CMDB
13 5 (1.06%) Credit Risk
14 4 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
14 4 (0.85%) Genomics
14 4 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
14 4 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 4 (0.85%) IoT
14 4 (0.85%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.49%) Unix
2 4 (0.85%) Linux
3 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 246 (52.23%) Data Governance
2 232 (49.26%) Data Modelling
3 226 (47.98%) Metadata Management
4 160 (33.97%) Analytics
5 134 (28.45%) Data Architecture
6 123 (26.11%) ETL
7 110 (23.35%) Business Intelligence
8 91 (19.32%) Agile
8 91 (19.32%) Data Engineering
9 89 (18.90%) Data Lineage
10 88 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
11 83 (17.62%) AI
12 81 (17.20%) Data Pipeline
13 78 (16.56%) Data Management
14 76 (16.14%) Validation
15 71 (15.07%) Decision-Making
16 69 (14.65%) Data Integration
16 69 (14.65%) Stakeholder Management
17 67 (14.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 66 (14.01%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 174 (36.94%) SQL
2 119 (25.27%) Python
3 22 (4.67%) PowerShell
4 20 (4.25%) C#
4 20 (4.25%) Java
5 10 (2.12%) PL/SQL
6 9 (1.91%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.49%) R
7 7 (1.49%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.27%) ABAP
8 6 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.27%) Groovy
8 6 (1.27%) Perl
8 6 (1.27%) Scala
9 5 (1.06%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.85%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.85%) C++
11 3 (0.64%) Bicep
11 3 (0.64%) SOQL
11 3 (0.64%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 108 (22.93%) Security Cleared
2 82 (17.41%) SC Cleared
3 36 (7.64%) Degree
4 21 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.76%) Master's Degree
6 10 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.27%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.21%) Analytics IQ
12 1 (0.21%) CISSP
12 1 (0.21%) CSPO
12 1 (0.21%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.21%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.21%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.21%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.21%) PMP
12 1 (0.21%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (43.74%) Data Quality
2 48 (10.19%) GDPR
3 19 (4.03%) QA
4 14 (2.97%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.91%) GRC
6 6 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.27%) Solvency II
7 5 (1.06%) IFRS
8 4 (0.85%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.85%) MiFID
9 3 (0.64%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.64%) NIST
10 2 (0.42%) CRD IV
10 2 (0.42%) FINREP
10 2 (0.42%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.42%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.21%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.21%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (2.97%) Docker
2 5 (1.06%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.21%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 20 (4.25%) Kubernetes
2 19 (4.03%) Terraform
3 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (0.64%) SCCM
4 1 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (0.21%) Hadoop YARN
4 1 (0.21%) Oozie
4 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 93 (19.75%) Microsoft
2 79 (16.77%) Databricks
3 45 (9.55%) Oracle
4 41 (8.70%) Informatica
5 23 (4.88%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.82%) Talend
7 16 (3.40%) Google
7 16 (3.40%) SAP
8 14 (2.97%) Salesforce
9 13 (2.76%) Sparx
10 10 (2.12%) Teradata
11 9 (1.91%) OpenText
12 7 (1.49%) Sitecore
13 6 (1.27%) Optimizely
13 6 (1.27%) Remedy
14 5 (1.06%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.06%) ESRI
14 5 (1.06%) Intergraph
14 5 (1.06%) Palantir
15 4 (0.85%) Sonatype