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 29 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 501 410 451
Rank change year-on-year -91 +41 +80
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 98 64 90
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.23% 0.27% 0.25%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.73% 0.78% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 67 31 62
10th Percentile £443 £500 £450
25th Percentile £506 £525 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £640 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.69% -1.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £743 £750 £925
90th Percentile £825 £800 -
UK median daily rate £608 £590 £650
% change year-on-year +3.01% -9.23% +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 13,505 8,218 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.29% 34.35% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,486 5,348 7,377
10th Percentile £313 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -3.51%
75th Percentile £631 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 705 336 833
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.98 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.64 £15.17
Median hourly rate £44.50 £34.13 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.40% -3.87% +59.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.80 £82.85 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £32.43 £34.00
% change year-on-year +26.43% -4.62% +54.55%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 -56 73 £638 -4.85% 13
East of England -23 10 £525 - 1
North of England -68 8 £610 +10.91% 4
Yorkshire -51 6 £610 +10.91%
Midlands -57 2 £650 +18.18% 1
North West - 2 £525 - 4
South East - 2 £500 - 6
West Midlands - 2 £650 - 1
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 5 (5.10%) Confluence
2 1 (1.02%) Apache
2 1 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.02%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 8 (8.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.04%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (9.18%) Aladdin
2 6 (6.12%) Finacle
3 4 (4.08%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (3.06%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (2.04%) Endur
5 2 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (1.02%) Loan IQ
6 1 (1.02%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (1.02%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 26 (26.53%) Azure
2 14 (14.29%) AWS
3 12 (12.24%) Power Platform
4 10 (10.20%) GCP
5 5 (5.10%) Amazon S3
5 5 (5.10%) dbt
6 4 (4.08%) Azure Data Factory
7 3 (3.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (3.06%) Datadog
7 3 (3.06%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.04%) Azure AI
8 2 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.04%) Azure Machine Learning
8 2 (2.04%) GitHub
8 2 (2.04%) Microsoft Purview
9 1 (1.02%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (1.02%) Boomi
9 1 (1.02%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.02%) Lucidchart
9 1 (1.02%) Prefect
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (31.63%) Metadata
2 12 (12.24%) Power BI
3 11 (11.22%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (8.16%) Data Lake
5 7 (7.14%) Relational Database
6 4 (4.08%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (3.06%) BigQuery
7 3 (3.06%) RDBMS
8 2 (2.04%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (2.04%) Ataccama
8 2 (2.04%) Neo4j
8 2 (2.04%) NoSQL
8 2 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (2.04%) SQL Server
8 2 (2.04%) Tableau
8 2 (2.04%) TigerGraph
9 1 (1.02%) Data Vault
9 1 (1.02%) Delta Lake
9 1 (1.02%) Metadata Repository
9 1 (1.02%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 15 (15.31%) ERwin
2 9 (9.18%) ER Studio
3 8 (8.16%) JIRA
4 6 (6.12%) PowerDesigner
5 2 (2.04%) GitLab
6 1 (1.02%) Deequ
6 1 (1.02%) Git
6 1 (1.02%) Jenkins
6 1 (1.02%) Postman
6 1 (1.02%) Robot Framework
6 1 (1.02%) SonarQube
General
1 45 (45.92%) Finance
2 27 (27.55%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (26.53%) Banking
4 22 (22.45%) Social Skills
5 15 (15.31%) Front Office
6 7 (7.14%) Investment Banking
7 6 (6.12%) Private Banking
7 6 (6.12%) Publishing
7 6 (6.12%) Retail
8 5 (5.10%) Financial Institution
8 5 (5.10%) Public Sector
9 4 (4.08%) Legal
10 2 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (2.04%) Law
10 2 (2.04%) Marketing
10 2 (2.04%) Wholesale Banking
11 1 (1.02%) Back Office
11 1 (1.02%) Billing
11 1 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 20 (20.41%) Architect
2 18 (18.37%) Data Architect
3 15 (15.31%) Lead
4 14 (14.29%) Analyst
5 13 (13.27%) Business Analyst
6 12 (12.24%) Data Modeller
6 12 (12.24%) Developer
7 10 (10.20%) Data Engineer
8 8 (8.16%) Python Developer
9 7 (7.14%) Senior
10 6 (6.12%) Data Migration Lead
11 5 (5.10%) Data Analyst
11 5 (5.10%) Python Engineer
12 4 (4.08%) Python Data Engineer
12 4 (4.08%) Senior Data Engineer
13 3 (3.06%) Perl Developer
13 3 (3.06%) Senior Developer
13 3 (3.06%) Senior Python Developer
13 3 (3.06%) SQL Developer
13 3 (3.06%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (6.12%) JSON
2 5 (5.10%) PySpark
3 4 (4.08%) REST
4 3 (3.06%) XML
5 2 (2.04%) Great Expectations
5 2 (2.04%) Kafka
5 2 (2.04%) Middleware
5 2 (2.04%) Pandas
6 1 (1.02%) Lightning Web Components
6 1 (1.02%) NumPy
6 1 (1.02%) pytest
6 1 (1.02%) Ruby on Rails
6 1 (1.02%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 16 (16.33%) Fixed Income
2 15 (15.31%) Data Structures
3 10 (10.20%) Equities
4 8 (8.16%) Derivative
4 8 (8.16%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (8.16%) Onboarding
4 8 (8.16%) Product Ownership
5 6 (6.12%) Cloud Native
5 6 (6.12%) Management Information System
6 4 (4.08%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (4.08%) Life Science
7 2 (2.04%) Algorithms
7 2 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (2.04%) Marketing Technology
7 2 (2.04%) Pricing Data
8 1 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.02%) Clustering
8 1 (1.02%) Credit Risk
8 1 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (1.02%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (55.10%) Data Modelling
2 25 (25.51%) Data Governance
3 23 (23.47%) Problem-Solving
4 22 (22.45%) Data Management
4 22 (22.45%) Validation
5 21 (21.43%) Migration
6 20 (20.41%) Analytics
7 18 (18.37%) Data Architecture
8 17 (17.35%) Data Analysis
8 17 (17.35%) Data Mapping
8 17 (17.35%) Integration Patterns
8 17 (17.35%) Logical Data Model
9 16 (16.33%) Data Migration
9 16 (16.33%) ETL
9 16 (16.33%) Physical Data Model
10 15 (15.31%) Stakeholder Management
11 14 (14.29%) Data Integration
12 13 (13.27%) Data Lineage
12 13 (13.27%) Metadata Management
12 13 (13.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 39 (39.80%) SQL
2 23 (23.47%) Python
3 7 (7.14%) Java
4 5 (5.10%) C#
4 5 (5.10%) Perl
4 5 (5.10%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.04%) Bash
5 2 (2.04%) SPARQL
6 1 (1.02%) Apex Code
6 1 (1.02%) C
6 1 (1.02%) Groovy
6 1 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (1.02%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.02%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 10 (10.20%) Security Cleared
2 6 (6.12%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.08%) Degree
4 2 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (2.04%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (34.69%) Data Quality
2 4 (4.08%) GDPR
2 4 (4.08%) MiFID
3 3 (3.06%) QA
4 2 (2.04%) SLA
5 1 (1.02%) AIFMD
5 1 (1.02%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (1.02%) EMIR
5 1 (1.02%) GRC
5 1 (1.02%) IFRS
5 1 (1.02%) IFRS 9
5 1 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
Systems Management
1 3 (3.06%) Grafana
2 1 (1.02%) Kibana
2 1 (1.02%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 18 (18.37%) Databricks
2 17 (17.35%) Microsoft
3 7 (7.14%) Murex
4 6 (6.12%) Avaloq
4 6 (6.12%) GoldenSource
4 6 (6.12%) Temenos
5 4 (4.08%) SimCorp
5 4 (4.08%) Sparx
6 3 (3.06%) Charles River
6 3 (3.06%) Informatica
6 3 (3.06%) SAP
7 2 (2.04%) IDERA
7 2 (2.04%) Oracle
7 2 (2.04%) Salesforce
8 1 (1.02%) Bloomberg
8 1 (1.02%) Calypso
8 1 (1.02%) Google
8 1 (1.02%) MuleSoft
8 1 (1.02%) OpenLink
8 1 (1.02%) Reuters