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 12 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 482 423 481
Rank change year-on-year -59 +58 +104
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 59 55 62
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.19% 0.21% 0.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.54% 0.63% 0.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 30 36
10th Percentile £455 £350 £465
25th Percentile £488 £512 £522
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £675 £615 £625
Median % change year-on-year +9.76% -1.60% -
75th Percentile £744 £750 £725
90th Percentile £825 £826 £769
UK median daily rate £663 £600 £625
% change year-on-year +10.42% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £78.75 £78.75 -
Median hourly rate £80.50 £80.50 -
75th Percentile £83.13 £82.25 -
90th Percentile £83.65 - -
UK median hourly rate £80.50 £80.50 -

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 10,831 8,702 11,441
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 32.58% 31.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,859 5,236 7,692
10th Percentile £288 £275 £263
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £738 £784 £775
UK median daily rate £501 £535 £545
% change year-on-year -6.45% -1.83% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 541 249 510
10th Percentile £14.54 £17.22 £15.49
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £19.99
Median hourly rate £29.00 £37.00 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -21.62% -3.78% +53.81%
75th Percentile £63.00 £66.50 £64.34
90th Percentile £74.26 £82.44 £75.13
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £33.77 £37.75
% change year-on-year -18.57% -10.54% +51.00%

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 -18 39 £713 +15.85% 14
North of England -43 7 £500 -23.08% 8
East of England -18 6 - - 10
Yorkshire -34 6 £500 -23.08% 4
South East -15 3 £650 - 20
North West -30 1 £700 +96.63% 3
West Midlands -36 1 £475 -26.92% 2
Midlands -47 1 £475 -26.92% 8
South West - 1 - - 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 (5.08%) Confluence
2 1 (1.69%) Apache
2 1 (1.69%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (8.47%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (6.78%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (5.08%) Finacle
3 2 (3.39%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (1.69%) Aladdin
4 1 (1.69%) Markit EDM
Cloud Services
1 8 (13.56%) AWS
1 8 (13.56%) Azure
2 6 (10.17%) Power Platform
3 4 (6.78%) GCP
4 3 (5.08%) Collibra
4 3 (5.08%) Snowflake
5 2 (3.39%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.69%) Amazon Bedrock
6 1 (1.69%) Amazon EMR
6 1 (1.69%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (1.69%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (1.69%) Datadog
6 1 (1.69%) Lucidchart
6 1 (1.69%) Power Automate
6 1 (1.69%) PowerApps
6 1 (1.69%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (30.51%) Metadata
2 6 (10.17%) Power BI
3 5 (8.47%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (6.78%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (6.78%) Relational Database
5 2 (3.39%) Big Data
5 2 (3.39%) BigQuery
5 2 (3.39%) Data Lake
5 2 (3.39%) DataStage
5 2 (3.39%) DB2
5 2 (3.39%) Power Query
5 2 (3.39%) RDBMS
5 2 (3.39%) Tableau
6 1 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (1.69%) Apache Iceberg
6 1 (1.69%) Data Vault
6 1 (1.69%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.69%) Metadata Repository
6 1 (1.69%) Parquet
6 1 (1.69%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (15.25%) ERwin
2 4 (6.78%) PowerDesigner
3 3 (5.08%) JIRA
4 2 (3.39%) ER Studio
General
1 26 (44.07%) Social Skills
2 21 (35.59%) Finance
3 11 (18.64%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (16.95%) Banking
5 8 (13.56%) Front Office
6 5 (8.47%) Public Sector
6 5 (8.47%) Publishing
6 5 (8.47%) Retail
7 3 (5.08%) Investment Banking
7 3 (5.08%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (5.08%) Private Banking
8 2 (3.39%) Back Office
8 2 (3.39%) Financial Institution
8 2 (3.39%) Law
9 1 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.69%) Legal
9 1 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 11 (18.64%) Analyst
1 11 (18.64%) Developer
2 10 (16.95%) Data Modeller
3 9 (15.25%) Architect
4 8 (13.56%) Business Analyst
4 8 (13.56%) Lead
5 6 (10.17%) Data Architect
6 5 (8.47%) Data Analyst
6 5 (8.47%) Python Developer
7 4 (6.78%) Data Business Analyst
7 4 (6.78%) Data Migration Lead
7 4 (6.78%) Perl Developer
8 3 (5.08%) Asset Management Analyst
8 3 (5.08%) Asset Management Business Analyst
8 3 (5.08%) Senior
9 2 (3.39%) Investment Management Business Analyst
9 2 (3.39%) Perl Software Engineer
9 2 (3.39%) Reference Data Specialist
9 2 (3.39%) SQL Analyst
9 2 (3.39%) Subject Matter Expert
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (5.08%) JSON
2 2 (3.39%) REST
2 2 (3.39%) XML
3 1 (1.69%) GraphQL
3 1 (1.69%) JSON Schema
3 1 (1.69%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 8 (13.56%) Fixed Income
2 7 (11.86%) Management Information System
3 6 (10.17%) Data Structures
3 6 (10.17%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (5.08%) Cloud Native
4 3 (5.08%) Life Science
5 2 (3.39%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.39%) NHS
5 2 (3.39%) Reinsurance
6 1 (1.69%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.69%) Credit Risk
6 1 (1.69%) Derivative
6 1 (1.69%) Equities
6 1 (1.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.69%) Market Risk
6 1 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.69%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.69%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (45.76%) Data Modelling
2 20 (33.90%) Data Governance
3 15 (25.42%) Data Management
4 14 (23.73%) Metadata Management
4 14 (23.73%) Problem-Solving
5 13 (22.03%) Data Architecture
5 13 (22.03%) Stakeholder Management
6 12 (20.34%) Migration
7 11 (18.64%) Data Lineage
7 11 (18.64%) Data Migration
8 10 (16.95%) Data Analysis
8 10 (16.95%) Data Mapping
8 10 (16.95%) User Acceptance Testing
9 9 (15.25%) Agile
9 9 (15.25%) Business Intelligence
9 9 (15.25%) Data Strategy
9 9 (15.25%) Data Transformation
9 9 (15.25%) Logical Data Model
10 8 (13.56%) Reference Data Management
10 8 (13.56%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 22 (37.29%) SQL
2 11 (18.64%) Python
3 8 (13.56%) Java
4 6 (10.17%) C#
4 6 (10.17%) Perl
5 5 (8.47%) PowerShell
6 2 (3.39%) Groovy
7 1 (1.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (1.69%) Korn
Qualifications
1 4 (6.78%) Degree
2 3 (5.08%) Security Cleared
3 2 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (3.39%) Master's Degree
3 2 (3.39%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.69%) PhD
4 1 (1.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (30.51%) Data Quality
2 3 (5.08%) GDPR
3 1 (1.69%) IFRS
3 1 (1.69%) IFRS 17
3 1 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.69%) QA
3 1 (1.69%) Solvency II
Vendors
1 6 (10.17%) Databricks
2 4 (6.78%) GoldenSource
2 4 (6.78%) Murex
2 4 (6.78%) Oracle
2 4 (6.78%) Sparx
3 3 (5.08%) Avaloq
3 3 (5.08%) Temenos
4 2 (3.39%) Bloomberg
4 2 (3.39%) Informatica
4 2 (3.39%) Refinitiv
4 2 (3.39%) SAP
5 1 (1.69%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.69%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.69%) Charles River
5 1 (1.69%) Microsoft