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 26 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 523 419 455
Rank change year-on-year -104 +36 +69
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 91 70 94
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.21% 0.28% 0.25%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.64% 0.80% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 39 68
10th Percentile £430 £454 £425
25th Percentile £506 £531 £514
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -2.40% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £738 £750 £925
90th Percentile £810 £800 -
UK median daily rate £600 £600 £650
% change year-on-year - -7.69% +4.00%

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 14,253 8,762 11,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.84% 34.76% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,885 5,618 7,314
10th Percentile £313 £303 £280
25th Percentile £415 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.57%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £813
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 780 411 846
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.20
25th Percentile £21.14 £19.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.21% -12.00% +66.74%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.12 £63.75
90th Percentile £87.16 £81.01 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £31.00 £36.27
% change year-on-year +40.32% -14.54% +61.59%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -58 70 £625 - 11
East of England -24 6 £575 - 1
North of England -63 6 £610 +10.91%
Yorkshire -45 5 £610 +10.91%
Midlands -61 4 £650 +18.18% 2
West Midlands - 4 £650 -
South East - 3 £575 - 3
North West - 1 £350 -
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 4 (4.40%) Confluence
2 1 (1.10%) Apache
2 1 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.10%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.10%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 4 (4.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.20%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (9.89%) Aladdin
2 5 (5.49%) Finacle
3 3 (3.30%) Endur
3 3 (3.30%) SimCorp Dimension
4 2 (2.20%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (2.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (1.10%) Loan IQ
5 1 (1.10%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 26 (28.57%) Azure
2 13 (14.29%) AWS
3 12 (13.19%) Power Platform
4 9 (9.89%) GCP
5 5 (5.49%) Amazon S3
5 5 (5.49%) dbt
6 4 (4.40%) Azure Data Factory
6 4 (4.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 4 (4.40%) Microsoft Purview
6 4 (4.40%) Snowflake
7 3 (3.30%) Azure AI
7 3 (3.30%) Datadog
8 2 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.20%) Azure Machine Learning
8 2 (2.20%) Collibra
8 2 (2.20%) GitHub
9 1 (1.10%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (1.10%) Power Automate
9 1 (1.10%) PowerApps
9 1 (1.10%) Smartsheet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (27.47%) Metadata
2 12 (13.19%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (13.19%) Power BI
3 8 (8.79%) Data Lake
4 5 (5.49%) Relational Database
5 4 (4.40%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (3.30%) Neo4j
6 3 (3.30%) SQL Server
6 3 (3.30%) Tableau
7 2 (2.20%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (2.20%) Ataccama
7 2 (2.20%) BigQuery
7 2 (2.20%) NoSQL
7 2 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (2.20%) TigerGraph
8 1 (1.10%) Apache Hudi
8 1 (1.10%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (1.10%) Big Data
8 1 (1.10%) Power Query
8 1 (1.10%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 13 (14.29%) ERwin
2 8 (8.79%) JIRA
3 7 (7.69%) ER Studio
4 6 (6.59%) PowerDesigner
5 2 (2.20%) GitLab
6 1 (1.10%) Deequ
6 1 (1.10%) Git
6 1 (1.10%) Jenkins
6 1 (1.10%) MLflow
6 1 (1.10%) Postman
6 1 (1.10%) Robot Framework
6 1 (1.10%) SonarQube
General
1 47 (51.65%) Finance
2 26 (28.57%) Banking
3 21 (23.08%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (18.68%) Social Skills
5 12 (13.19%) Front Office
6 7 (7.69%) Investment Banking
7 6 (6.59%) Financial Institution
7 6 (6.59%) Legal
8 5 (5.49%) Private Banking
8 5 (5.49%) Public Sector
8 5 (5.49%) Retail
9 3 (3.30%) Publishing
10 2 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (2.20%) Manufacturing
10 2 (2.20%) Marketing
10 2 (2.20%) Wholesale Banking
11 1 (1.10%) Back Office
11 1 (1.10%) Billing
11 1 (1.10%) Military
Job Titles
1 19 (20.88%) Architect
2 18 (19.78%) Data Architect
3 17 (18.68%) Analyst
3 17 (18.68%) Business Analyst
4 12 (13.19%) Lead
5 10 (10.99%) Data Modeller
5 10 (10.99%) Senior
6 9 (9.89%) Data Engineer
7 6 (6.59%) Developer
8 5 (5.49%) Data Migration Lead
8 5 (5.49%) Python Engineer
9 4 (4.40%) Consultant
9 4 (4.40%) Python Data Engineer
9 4 (4.40%) Python Developer
9 4 (4.40%) Senior Analyst
9 4 (4.40%) Senior Business Analyst
9 4 (4.40%) Senior Data Engineer
9 4 (4.40%) SQL Developer
10 3 (3.30%) Data Analyst
10 3 (3.30%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (6.59%) PySpark
2 4 (4.40%) JSON
2 4 (4.40%) REST
3 2 (2.20%) Great Expectations
3 2 (2.20%) Kafka
3 2 (2.20%) Middleware
3 2 (2.20%) Pandas
4 1 (1.10%) Hugging Face
4 1 (1.10%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (1.10%) NumPy
4 1 (1.10%) pytest
4 1 (1.10%) Ruby on Rails
4 1 (1.10%) SOAP
4 1 (1.10%) Swagger
4 1 (1.10%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (15.38%) Data Structures
2 12 (13.19%) Fixed Income
3 10 (10.99%) Equities
4 9 (9.89%) Onboarding
5 8 (8.79%) Derivative
6 7 (7.69%) Product Ownership
7 6 (6.59%) Cloud Native
8 5 (5.49%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (4.40%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (3.30%) Algorithms
11 2 (2.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 2 (2.20%) Management Information System
11 2 (2.20%) Marketing Technology
11 2 (2.20%) Pricing Data
12 1 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
12 1 (1.10%) Clustering
12 1 (1.10%) Credit Risk
12 1 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 1 (1.10%) Life Science
12 1 (1.10%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (53.85%) Data Modelling
2 28 (30.77%) Data Governance
3 24 (26.37%) Data Management
4 22 (24.18%) Validation
5 18 (19.78%) Analytics
5 18 (19.78%) Migration
6 17 (18.68%) Integration Patterns
7 15 (16.48%) Data Analysis
7 15 (16.48%) Data Mapping
7 15 (16.48%) ETL
7 15 (16.48%) Logical Data Model
7 15 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
8 14 (15.38%) Data Architecture
8 14 (15.38%) Data Integration
8 14 (15.38%) Data Pipeline
8 14 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
9 13 (14.29%) Data Lineage
9 13 (14.29%) Data Migration
9 13 (14.29%) Physical Data Model
10 12 (13.19%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 34 (37.36%) SQL
2 20 (21.98%) Python
3 3 (3.30%) SPARQL
4 2 (2.20%) Bash
4 2 (2.20%) Java
5 1 (1.10%) Apex Code
5 1 (1.10%) C
5 1 (1.10%) C#
5 1 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
5 1 (1.10%) Perl
5 1 (1.10%) PL/SQL
5 1 (1.10%) PowerShell
5 1 (1.10%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (9.89%) Security Cleared
2 5 (5.49%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (3.30%) Degree
4 2 (2.20%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (36.26%) Data Quality
2 4 (4.40%) GDPR
2 4 (4.40%) MiFID
3 3 (3.30%) QA
4 2 (2.20%) SLA
5 1 (1.10%) AIFMD
5 1 (1.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (1.10%) EMIR
5 1 (1.10%) GRC
5 1 (1.10%) IFRS
5 1 (1.10%) IFRS 9
5 1 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
Systems Management
1 3 (3.30%) Grafana
2 1 (1.10%) Kibana
2 1 (1.10%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 21 (23.08%) Microsoft
2 19 (20.88%) Databricks
3 6 (6.59%) Murex
4 5 (5.49%) Avaloq
4 5 (5.49%) GoldenSource
4 5 (5.49%) Temenos
5 4 (4.40%) Informatica
5 4 (4.40%) Salesforce
5 4 (4.40%) SimCorp
6 3 (3.30%) Charles River
7 2 (2.20%) IDERA
7 2 (2.20%) Oracle
7 2 (2.20%) Sparx
8 1 (1.10%) Calypso
8 1 (1.10%) ION Trading
8 1 (1.10%) MuleSoft
8 1 (1.10%) OpenAI
8 1 (1.10%) OpenLink
8 1 (1.10%) SAP
8 1 (1.10%) Talend