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 28 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 504 410 449
Rank change year-on-year -94 +39 +83
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 80 76 86
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.20% 0.31% 0.23%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.61% 0.91% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 57 37 60
10th Percentile £388 £453 £457
25th Percentile £500 £537 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -6.15% - +4.00%
75th Percentile £738 £750 £925
90th Percentile £825 £860 -
UK median daily rate £595 £640 £650
% change year-on-year -7.03% -1.54% +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 13,037 8,342 11,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.46% 34.11% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,261 5,463 7,445
10th Percentile £306 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 325 821
10th Percentile £16.07 £16.49 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.46 £34.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.71% +13.33% +33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.45 £83.76 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £28.75
% change year-on-year +39.88% +13.04% +27.86%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -72 58 £625 -6.72% 14
East of England -26 10 £525 -
North of England -70 7 £610 -6.15% 2
Yorkshire -57 6 £610 -6.15%
West Midlands -60 2 £650 - 1
Midlands -66 2 £650 - 3
South East -63 1 £500 - 3
North West - 1 £700 - 2
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 (6.25%) Confluence
2 1 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 7 (8.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.50%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (7.50%) Finacle
2 5 (6.25%) Aladdin
2 5 (6.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (2.50%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (1.25%) Endur
4 1 (1.25%) Loan IQ
4 1 (1.25%) Markit EDM
4 1 (1.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (1.25%) SAP MDG
4 1 (1.25%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 12 (15.00%) Azure
2 10 (12.50%) AWS
3 7 (8.75%) Power Platform
4 6 (7.50%) GCP
5 5 (6.25%) Amazon S3
6 4 (5.00%) dbt
7 3 (3.75%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (1.25%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.25%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (1.25%) Boomi
9 1 (1.25%) Collibra
9 1 (1.25%) Datadog
9 1 (1.25%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.25%) GitHub
9 1 (1.25%) Lucidchart
9 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Purview
9 1 (1.25%) Prefect
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (31.25%) Metadata
2 7 (8.75%) Power BI
3 6 (7.50%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (5.00%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (5.00%) Relational Database
5 3 (3.75%) BigQuery
6 2 (2.50%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (2.50%) Data Lake
6 2 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (2.50%) RDBMS
6 2 (2.50%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.50%) Tableau
7 1 (1.25%) Apache Hudi
7 1 (1.25%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (1.25%) Ataccama
7 1 (1.25%) Data Vault
7 1 (1.25%) DataStage
7 1 (1.25%) Metadata Repository
7 1 (1.25%) Power Query
7 1 (1.25%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 11 (13.75%) ERwin
2 7 (8.75%) JIRA
3 4 (5.00%) ER Studio
3 4 (5.00%) PowerDesigner
4 1 (1.25%) Deequ
4 1 (1.25%) Git
General
1 36 (45.00%) Finance
2 22 (27.50%) Analytical Skills
2 22 (27.50%) Social Skills
3 18 (22.50%) Banking
4 13 (16.25%) Front Office
5 8 (10.00%) Retail
6 6 (7.50%) Private Banking
7 5 (6.25%) Public Sector
7 5 (6.25%) Publishing
8 4 (5.00%) Investment Banking
9 3 (3.75%) Financial Institution
10 2 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (2.50%) Law
10 2 (2.50%) Legal
10 2 (2.50%) Marketing
10 2 (2.50%) Wholesale Banking
11 1 (1.25%) Manufacturing
11 1 (1.25%) Military
11 1 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 15 (18.75%) Lead
2 14 (17.50%) Analyst
2 14 (17.50%) Architect
3 12 (15.00%) Business Analyst
3 12 (15.00%) Data Architect
4 9 (11.25%) Data Modeller
4 9 (11.25%) Developer
5 7 (8.75%) Data Engineer
6 6 (7.50%) Data Analyst
6 6 (7.50%) Data Migration Lead
6 6 (7.50%) Python Developer
7 4 (5.00%) Senior
8 3 (3.75%) Perl Developer
8 3 (3.75%) Project Manager
9 2 (2.50%) Designer
9 2 (2.50%) Perl Software Engineer
9 2 (2.50%) Product Owner
9 2 (2.50%) Software Developer
9 2 (2.50%) Software Engineer
9 2 (2.50%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (6.25%) JSON
2 4 (5.00%) REST
3 2 (2.50%) Kafka
3 2 (2.50%) XML
4 1 (1.25%) Great Expectations
4 1 (1.25%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (1.25%) Middleware
4 1 (1.25%) NumPy
4 1 (1.25%) Pandas
4 1 (1.25%) PySpark
4 1 (1.25%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 14 (17.50%) Data Structures
2 12 (15.00%) Fixed Income
3 8 (10.00%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (8.75%) Product Ownership
5 6 (7.50%) Cloud Native
5 6 (7.50%) Management Information System
5 6 (7.50%) Onboarding
6 5 (6.25%) Equities
7 4 (5.00%) Derivative
7 4 (5.00%) Life Science
8 2 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (2.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (2.50%) Marketing Technology
8 2 (2.50%) Pricing Data
8 2 (2.50%) Reinsurance
9 1 (1.25%) Clustering
9 1 (1.25%) Credit Risk
9 1 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (1.25%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (50.00%) Data Modelling
2 22 (27.50%) Data Governance
2 22 (27.50%) Data Management
3 20 (25.00%) Validation
4 19 (23.75%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (21.25%) Data Analysis
6 16 (20.00%) Migration
6 16 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
7 14 (17.50%) Analytics
7 14 (17.50%) Data Mapping
7 14 (17.50%) Metadata Management
8 13 (16.25%) Data Lineage
9 12 (15.00%) Data Architecture
9 12 (15.00%) Data Migration
9 12 (15.00%) ETL
9 12 (15.00%) User Acceptance Testing
9 12 (15.00%) Workshop Facilitation
10 11 (13.75%) Agile
10 11 (13.75%) Data Transformation
10 11 (13.75%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 27 (33.75%) SQL
2 17 (21.25%) Python
3 6 (7.50%) Java
4 5 (6.25%) C#
4 5 (6.25%) Perl
4 5 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.50%) Bash
6 1 (1.25%) Apex Code
6 1 (1.25%) C
6 1 (1.25%) Groovy
6 1 (1.25%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8 (10.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (5.00%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.75%) Degree
4 2 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.25%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (38.75%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.75%) GDPR
2 3 (3.75%) QA
3 2 (2.50%) SLA
4 1 (1.25%) AIFMD
4 1 (1.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (1.25%) EMIR
4 1 (1.25%) IFRS
4 1 (1.25%) IFRS 9
4 1 (1.25%) MiFID
Systems Management
1 3 (3.75%) Grafana
2 1 (1.25%) Kibana
2 1 (1.25%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (10.00%) Databricks
2 7 (8.75%) GoldenSource
2 7 (8.75%) Murex
3 6 (7.50%) Avaloq
3 6 (7.50%) Temenos
4 5 (6.25%) Microsoft
4 5 (6.25%) Sparx
5 3 (3.75%) Charles River
5 3 (3.75%) Informatica
5 3 (3.75%) SAP
6 2 (2.50%) Bloomberg
6 2 (2.50%) IDERA
6 2 (2.50%) Oracle
6 2 (2.50%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.25%) Calypso
7 1 (1.25%) Google
7 1 (1.25%) ION Trading
7 1 (1.25%) OpenLink
7 1 (1.25%) Refinitiv
7 1 (1.25%) Reuters