Reference Data Contract Job Trends in England

Reference Data
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Reference Data in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Reference Data over the 6 months leading up to 15 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 515 434 471
Rank change year-on-year -81 +37 +39
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 111 69 57
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.24% 0.25% 0.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.72% 0.70% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 45 46
10th Percentile £411 £452 £428
25th Percentile £452 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £595 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% -3.85% +10.26%
75th Percentile £710 £750 £913
90th Percentile £809 £800 £925
UK median daily rate £575 £600 £650
% change year-on-year -4.17% -7.69% +10.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 - -

All Generic Skills
England

Reference Data falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 15,371 9,822 10,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.55% 35.48% 30.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,431 6,193 6,639
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £425 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £680
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 905 492 536
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.48 £12.88
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.87 £19.22
Median hourly rate £42.71 £31.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.59% -33.69% +13.10%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £29.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +44.07% -34.44% +12.04%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Reference Data relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Reference Data job vacancy trend in England

Reference Data
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Reference Data.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Reference Data

Reference Data
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Reference Data in England over the 6 months to 15 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Reference Data in England

Reference Data
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Reference Data.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Reference Data

Reference Data
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Reference Data within the England region over the 6 months to 15 August 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
London -53 76 £608 -2.76% 117
East of England -8 12 £550 - 3
North of England -58 11 £610 +10.91% 7
Yorkshire -40 6 £610 +10.91%
North West - 5 £426 - 6
South East -64 4 £500 - 4
Midlands -45 3 £650 +18.18% 6
West Midlands - 3 £650 - 4
South West - 2 £575 - 6
Reference Data
UK

Reference Data
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 3 (2.70%) Confluence
2 2 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.80%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.90%) Apache
3 1 (0.90%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.90%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.90%) MTS
3 1 (0.90%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 12 (10.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.90%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (9.01%) Aladdin
2 3 (2.70%) Endur
2 3 (2.70%) SimCorp Dimension
2 3 (2.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (1.80%) Finacle
3 2 (1.80%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (1.80%) SAP MDG
3 2 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.90%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.90%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.90%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.90%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.90%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.90%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.90%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 32 (28.83%) Azure
2 17 (15.32%) AWS
3 14 (12.61%) Power Platform
4 13 (11.71%) GCP
5 9 (8.11%) Azure Data Factory
6 7 (6.31%) Snowflake
7 6 (5.41%) dbt
8 5 (4.50%) Amazon S3
8 5 (4.50%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (2.70%) Alation
10 3 (2.70%) Azure AI
10 3 (2.70%) Collibra
10 3 (2.70%) Datadog
10 3 (2.70%) SaaS
11 2 (1.80%) Azure DevOps
11 2 (1.80%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (1.80%) Cloud Functions
11 2 (1.80%) GitHub
11 2 (1.80%) Prefect
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (36.94%) Metadata
2 14 (12.61%) Data Warehouse
2 14 (12.61%) Power BI
3 11 (9.91%) Data Lake
4 9 (8.11%) Data Mining
5 7 (6.31%) Relational Database
6 6 (5.41%) Delta Lake
7 5 (4.50%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (4.50%) BigQuery
7 5 (4.50%) Data Vault
8 4 (3.60%) SQL Server
9 3 (2.70%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (2.70%) Neo4j
9 3 (2.70%) NoSQL
9 3 (2.70%) Tableau
10 2 (1.80%) Ataccama
10 2 (1.80%) MongoDB
10 2 (1.80%) RDBMS
10 2 (1.80%) SAP BW
10 2 (1.80%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 20 (18.02%) ERwin
2 14 (12.61%) ER Studio
3 7 (6.31%) JIRA
3 7 (6.31%) PowerDesigner
4 3 (2.70%) Git
5 2 (1.80%) GitLab
6 1 (0.90%) Deequ
6 1 (0.90%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.90%) MLflow
6 1 (0.90%) Postman
6 1 (0.90%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.90%) SonarQube
General
1 56 (50.45%) Finance
2 36 (32.43%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (23.42%) Banking
4 21 (18.92%) Social Skills
5 11 (9.91%) Front Office
6 8 (7.21%) Investment Banking
7 6 (5.41%) Financial Institution
7 6 (5.41%) Legal
8 5 (4.50%) Public Sector
8 5 (4.50%) Retail
9 3 (2.70%) Marketing
10 2 (1.80%) Back Office
10 2 (1.80%) General Ledger
10 2 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.80%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.80%) Private Banking
10 2 (1.80%) Publishing
10 2 (1.80%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 24 (21.62%) Analyst
1 24 (21.62%) Architect
2 23 (20.72%) Data Architect
3 20 (18.02%) Business Analyst
4 19 (17.12%) Data Engineer
5 14 (12.61%) Data Modeller
6 12 (10.81%) Senior
7 10 (9.01%) Lead
8 6 (5.41%) Consultant
8 6 (5.41%) Data Analyst
8 6 (5.41%) Data Business Analyst
9 5 (4.50%) Developer
9 5 (4.50%) Python Engineer
9 5 (4.50%) Senior Analyst
9 5 (4.50%) Senior Data Engineer
10 4 (3.60%) Data Management Specialist
10 4 (3.60%) Designer
10 4 (3.60%) Python Data Engineer
10 4 (3.60%) Senior Business Analyst
10 4 (3.60%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (9.01%) PySpark
2 6 (5.41%) JSON
2 6 (5.41%) REST
3 5 (4.50%) Kafka
4 3 (2.70%) Middleware
5 2 (1.80%) Great Expectations
5 2 (1.80%) XML
6 1 (0.90%) FpML
6 1 (0.90%) Hugging Face
6 1 (0.90%) Lightning Web Components
6 1 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
6 1 (0.90%) Pandas
6 1 (0.90%) pytest
6 1 (0.90%) Ruby on Rails
6 1 (0.90%) SOAP
6 1 (0.90%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 19 (17.12%) Data Structures
2 12 (10.81%) Fixed Income
3 11 (9.91%) Onboarding
3 11 (9.91%) Product Ownership
4 10 (9.01%) Equities
5 9 (8.11%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (8.11%) Management Information System
6 8 (7.21%) Derivative
7 7 (6.31%) Pricing Data
8 6 (5.41%) Cloud Native
9 5 (4.50%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (2.70%) Algorithms
10 3 (2.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 2 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (1.80%) FMCG
11 2 (1.80%) Marketing Technology
12 1 (0.90%) CESG
12 1 (0.90%) Hedge funds
12 1 (0.90%) Life Science
12 1 (0.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.90%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (60.36%) Data Modelling
2 45 (40.54%) Data Governance
3 34 (30.63%) Logical Data Model
4 33 (29.73%) Data Management
5 28 (25.23%) Data Architecture
6 27 (24.32%) Validation
7 25 (22.52%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (21.62%) Metadata Management
8 24 (21.62%) Physical Data Model
9 21 (18.92%) Analytics
9 21 (18.92%) Stakeholder Management
10 20 (18.02%) Data Integration
11 19 (17.12%) Integration Patterns
11 19 (17.12%) Reference Data Management
12 18 (16.22%) ETL
12 18 (16.22%) Migration
13 17 (15.32%) Data Lineage
13 17 (15.32%) Data Pipeline
13 17 (15.32%) Data Strategy
14 16 (14.41%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 53 (47.75%) SQL
2 23 (20.72%) Python
3 3 (2.70%) SPARQL
4 2 (1.80%) Bash
4 2 (1.80%) PL/SQL
4 2 (1.80%) T-SQL
5 1 (0.90%) Apex Code
5 1 (0.90%) C
5 1 (0.90%) Java
5 1 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
5 1 (0.90%) Scala
5 1 (0.90%) Tcl
5 1 (0.90%) VBA
Qualifications
1 10 (9.01%) Security Cleared
2 7 (6.31%) Degree
2 7 (6.31%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (1.80%) DBS Check
5 1 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.90%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (40.54%) Data Quality
2 6 (5.41%) GDPR
3 5 (4.50%) MiFID
4 2 (1.80%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 2 (1.80%) QA
4 2 (1.80%) SLA
5 1 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.90%) AIFMD
5 1 (0.90%) EMIR
5 1 (0.90%) GRC
5 1 (0.90%) IFRS
5 1 (0.90%) IFRS 9
5 1 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (0.90%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 3 (2.70%) Grafana
2 1 (0.90%) Kibana
2 1 (0.90%) Prometheus
2 1 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (0.90%) Terraform
Vendors
1 25 (22.52%) Databricks
2 18 (16.22%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.31%) Informatica
4 5 (4.50%) Oracle
5 4 (3.60%) Bloomberg
5 4 (3.60%) Murex
5 4 (3.60%) Salesforce
5 4 (3.60%) SimCorp
6 3 (2.70%) Charles River
6 3 (2.70%) Google
6 3 (2.70%) SAP
6 3 (2.70%) Sparx
7 2 (1.80%) Avaloq
7 2 (1.80%) GoldenSource
7 2 (1.80%) Temenos
8 1 (0.90%) ION Trading
8 1 (0.90%) MarketAxess
8 1 (0.90%) Sybase
8 1 (0.90%) Talend
8 1 (0.90%) Tradeweb