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

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 513 401 452
Rank change year-on-year -112 +51 +66
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 81 74 83
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.21% 0.30% 0.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.63% 0.89% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 37 59
10th Percentile £388 £443 £453
25th Percentile £500 £525 £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 £588 £630 £650
% change year-on-year -6.75% -3.08% +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 12,856 8,306 11,569
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.79% 34.09% 30.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,163 5,460 7,564
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £547 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.35% -0.50% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £749 £788 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 652 312 820
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.68 £12.28
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.72 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.46 £35.45 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +28.26% +25.47% +25.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £58.71
90th Percentile £85.49 £85.00 £67.55
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £28.13
% change year-on-year +38.46% +15.56% +25.08%

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 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 12 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 -69 60 £625 -6.72% 14
East of England -35 10 £525 - 4
North of England -70 7 £610 -6.15% 3
Yorkshire -53 6 £610 -6.15%
West Midlands -65 2 £650 - 2
Midlands -66 2 £650 - 4
North West -35 1 £700 +96.63% 3
South East -53 1 £500 - 7
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 (6.17%) Confluence
2 1 (1.23%) Apache
2 1 (1.23%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 7 (8.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.47%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (7.41%) Finacle
2 5 (6.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 4 (4.94%) Aladdin
4 2 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (1.23%) Endur
5 1 (1.23%) Loan IQ
5 1 (1.23%) Markit EDM
5 1 (1.23%) SAP MDG
5 1 (1.23%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 12 (14.81%) Azure
2 10 (12.35%) AWS
3 7 (8.64%) Power Platform
4 6 (7.41%) GCP
5 5 (6.17%) Amazon S3
6 4 (4.94%) dbt
7 3 (3.70%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (1.23%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.23%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (1.23%) Boomi
9 1 (1.23%) Collibra
9 1 (1.23%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.23%) GitHub
9 1 (1.23%) Lucidchart
9 1 (1.23%) Microsoft Purview
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (32.10%) Metadata
2 7 (8.64%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (8.64%) Power BI
3 5 (6.17%) Relational Database
4 4 (4.94%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (3.70%) BigQuery
5 3 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (3.70%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (2.47%) Big Data
6 2 (2.47%) Data Lake
6 2 (2.47%) NoSQL
6 2 (2.47%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.23%) Apache Hudi
7 1 (1.23%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (1.23%) Ataccama
7 1 (1.23%) Metadata Repository
7 1 (1.23%) Parquet
7 1 (1.23%) Power Query
7 1 (1.23%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 12 (14.81%) ERwin
2 6 (7.41%) JIRA
3 5 (6.17%) PowerDesigner
4 4 (4.94%) ER Studio
5 1 (1.23%) Git
General
1 37 (45.68%) Finance
2 24 (29.63%) Social Skills
3 23 (28.40%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (22.22%) Banking
5 12 (14.81%) Front Office
6 8 (9.88%) Retail
7 6 (7.41%) Private Banking
7 6 (7.41%) Public Sector
8 5 (6.17%) Publishing
9 4 (4.94%) Investment Banking
10 3 (3.70%) Financial Institution
11 2 (2.47%) Back Office
11 2 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (2.47%) Law
11 2 (2.47%) Legal
11 2 (2.47%) Wholesale Banking
12 1 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 1 (1.23%) Military
12 1 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 15 (18.52%) Architect
1 15 (18.52%) Lead
2 14 (17.28%) Analyst
3 13 (16.05%) Data Architect
4 12 (14.81%) Business Analyst
5 10 (12.35%) Data Modeller
6 9 (11.11%) Developer
7 7 (8.64%) Data Engineer
8 6 (7.41%) Data Analyst
8 6 (7.41%) Data Migration Lead
8 6 (7.41%) Python Developer
9 3 (3.70%) Data Business Analyst
9 3 (3.70%) Perl Developer
9 3 (3.70%) Project Manager
9 3 (3.70%) Senior
10 2 (2.47%) Asset Management Business Analyst
10 2 (2.47%) DataOps Engineer
10 2 (2.47%) Python Data Engineer
10 2 (2.47%) Python Engineer
10 2 (2.47%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (6.17%) JSON
2 4 (4.94%) REST
3 2 (2.47%) Kafka
3 2 (2.47%) XML
4 1 (1.23%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (1.23%) Middleware
4 1 (1.23%) NumPy
4 1 (1.23%) Pandas
4 1 (1.23%) PySpark
4 1 (1.23%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 14 (17.28%) Data Structures
2 12 (14.81%) Fixed Income
3 8 (9.88%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (8.64%) Product Ownership
5 6 (7.41%) Cloud Native
5 6 (7.41%) Management Information System
5 6 (7.41%) Onboarding
6 5 (6.17%) Equities
7 4 (4.94%) Derivative
7 4 (4.94%) Life Science
8 2 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (2.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (2.47%) Marketing Technology
8 2 (2.47%) Pricing Data
8 2 (2.47%) Reinsurance
9 1 (1.23%) Clustering
9 1 (1.23%) Credit Risk
9 1 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (50.62%) Data Modelling
2 24 (29.63%) Data Management
3 22 (27.16%) Data Governance
4 20 (24.69%) Problem-Solving
5 18 (22.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 18 (22.22%) Validation
6 17 (20.99%) Migration
7 16 (19.75%) Data Analysis
8 14 (17.28%) Data Mapping
8 14 (17.28%) Metadata Management
9 13 (16.05%) Analytics
9 13 (16.05%) Data Architecture
9 13 (16.05%) Data Lineage
9 13 (16.05%) Data Transformation
10 12 (14.81%) Agile
10 12 (14.81%) Data Migration
10 12 (14.81%) ETL
10 12 (14.81%) User Acceptance Testing
10 12 (14.81%) Workshop Facilitation
11 11 (13.58%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 27 (33.33%) SQL
2 16 (19.75%) Python
3 6 (7.41%) Java
4 5 (6.17%) C#
4 5 (6.17%) Perl
4 5 (6.17%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.47%) Bash
6 1 (1.23%) Apex Code
6 1 (1.23%) C
6 1 (1.23%) Groovy
6 1 (1.23%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8 (9.88%) Security Cleared
2 4 (4.94%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.70%) Degree
4 2 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.23%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (38.27%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.70%) GDPR
2 3 (3.70%) QA
3 2 (2.47%) IFRS
3 2 (2.47%) SLA
4 1 (1.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (1.23%) IFRS 17
4 1 (1.23%) IFRS 9
4 1 (1.23%) Solvency II
Systems Management
1 2 (2.47%) Grafana
Vendors
1 8 (9.88%) Databricks
2 7 (8.64%) GoldenSource
2 7 (8.64%) Murex
3 6 (7.41%) Avaloq
3 6 (7.41%) Temenos
4 5 (6.17%) Microsoft
4 5 (6.17%) Sparx
5 3 (3.70%) Bloomberg
5 3 (3.70%) Informatica
5 3 (3.70%) Oracle
5 3 (3.70%) SAP
6 2 (2.47%) Charles River
6 2 (2.47%) IDERA
6 2 (2.47%) Refinitiv
7 1 (1.23%) Google
7 1 (1.23%) ION Trading
7 1 (1.23%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.23%) OpenLink
7 1 (1.23%) SimCorp
7 1 (1.23%) Talend