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 18 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 449 475 508
Rank change year-on-year +26 +33 +108
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 63 53 82
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.23% 0.16% 0.20%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.63% 0.52% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 41 57
10th Percentile £455 £450 £400
25th Percentile £510 £515 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £625
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £825 £738
90th Percentile £775 £925 £780
UK median daily rate £595 £645 £595
% change year-on-year -7.75% +8.40% -8.46%

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 9,971 10,152 13,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.88% 30.82% 32.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,272 6,271 9,491
10th Percentile £300 £300 £300
25th Percentile £408 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £792
UK median daily rate £515 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -4.63% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 500 414 412
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.61 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.80 £21.25
Median hourly rate £33.05 £57.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -42.37% +25.00% +76.46%
75th Percentile £58.75 £70.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.16 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £50.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -40.00% +11.11% +69.81%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Reference Data as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Reference Data 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 +29 49 £625 -10.71% 14
North of England -17 5 £550 -5.98% 5
Yorkshire - 5 £550 - 5
South East +22 3 £500 - 11
Midlands -14 3 £513 - 2
East Midlands - 2 £550 -
East of England +5 1 - -
West Midlands -10 1 £475 - 2
Reference Data
UK

Reference Data
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (7.94%) Apache
1 5 (7.94%) Apache Spark
2 4 (6.35%) Jupyter
3 3 (4.76%) Confluence
4 1 (1.59%) Appian
4 1 (1.59%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (1.59%) MS Project Server
4 1 (1.59%) SAS
4 1 (1.59%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (6.35%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (4.76%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (4.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.59%) Actimize
1 1 (1.59%) Endur
1 1 (1.59%) Orchestrade
1 1 (1.59%) Primavera
1 1 (1.59%) SAP MDG
1 1 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 18 (28.57%) Azure
2 16 (25.40%) Power Platform
3 4 (6.35%) AWS
4 3 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
4 3 (4.76%) Snowflake
5 2 (3.17%) dbt
5 2 (3.17%) GCP
6 1 (1.59%) Amazon Bedrock
6 1 (1.59%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.59%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (1.59%) Azure Data Factory
6 1 (1.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 1 (1.59%) Collibra
6 1 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (1.59%) Microsoft 365
6 1 (1.59%) Power Automate
6 1 (1.59%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.35%) SSH
2 1 (1.59%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (23.81%) Power BI
2 11 (17.46%) Metadata
3 7 (11.11%) Delta Lake
3 7 (11.11%) Power Query
4 6 (9.52%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (9.52%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (9.52%) SQL Server
5 5 (7.94%) Apache Hive
6 4 (6.35%) Data Lake
6 4 (6.35%) Tableau
7 3 (4.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (1.59%) Big Data
8 1 (1.59%) Data Mining
8 1 (1.59%) Data Vault
8 1 (1.59%) KDB
8 1 (1.59%) Parquet
8 1 (1.59%) QlikView
8 1 (1.59%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (15.87%) JIRA
2 5 (7.94%) Git
3 4 (6.35%) RStudio
4 2 (3.17%) ERwin
4 2 (3.17%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (1.59%) Postman
General
1 28 (44.44%) Social Skills
2 27 (42.86%) Finance
3 18 (28.57%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (23.81%) Banking
5 9 (14.29%) Front Office
6 8 (12.70%) Investment Banking
7 7 (11.11%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (7.94%) Public Sector
9 4 (6.35%) Back Office
10 3 (4.76%) Local Government
11 2 (3.17%) Law
11 2 (3.17%) Legal
12 1 (1.59%) Financial Institution
12 1 (1.59%) Retail
Job Titles
1 14 (22.22%) Analyst
2 11 (17.46%) Developer
3 8 (12.70%) Business Analyst
4 6 (9.52%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 6 (9.52%) Data Analyst
4 6 (9.52%) Data Engineer
4 6 (9.52%) Project Manager
5 5 (7.94%) Architect
5 5 (7.94%) Power BI Developer
5 5 (7.94%) Senior
6 4 (6.35%) Lead
7 3 (4.76%) Consultant
7 3 (4.76%) Data Architect
7 3 (4.76%) Data Manager
7 3 (4.76%) Senior Developer
7 3 (4.76%) Team Leader
8 2 (3.17%) Data Migration Analyst
8 2 (3.17%) Risk Analyst
8 2 (3.17%) SQL Database Developer
8 2 (3.17%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (9.52%) JSON
2 5 (7.94%) pydantic
2 5 (7.94%) PySpark
2 5 (7.94%) YAML
3 4 (6.35%) FIX Protocol
4 1 (1.59%) .NET
4 1 (1.59%) Boost C++ Libraries
4 1 (1.59%) LangChain
4 1 (1.59%) LDAP
4 1 (1.59%) QuickFIX
4 1 (1.59%) STL
4 1 (1.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (12.70%) Data Structures
2 6 (9.52%) Derivative
2 6 (9.52%) Equities
2 6 (9.52%) Linux Command Line
3 5 (7.94%) Fixed Income
3 5 (7.94%) Product Ownership
4 3 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (4.76%) Market Risk
4 3 (4.76%) NHS
4 3 (4.76%) Onboarding
4 3 (4.76%) PMI
5 2 (3.17%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (3.17%) Credit Risk
5 2 (3.17%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (3.17%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (3.17%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.59%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.59%) Hedge funds
6 1 (1.59%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 8 (12.70%) Linux
2 2 (3.17%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (33.33%) Data Governance
2 20 (31.75%) Data Management
2 20 (31.75%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (25.40%) Agile
4 15 (23.81%) Analytics
5 14 (22.22%) Data Modelling
6 13 (20.63%) Data Migration
6 13 (20.63%) Migration
7 12 (19.05%) Data Pipeline
7 12 (19.05%) Reference Data Management
7 12 (19.05%) User Acceptance Testing
8 11 (17.46%) Business Intelligence
9 10 (15.87%) Data Analysis
10 9 (14.29%) Business Analysis
11 8 (12.70%) Data Ingestion
12 7 (11.11%) Data Lineage
12 7 (11.11%) DevOps
12 7 (11.11%) Low Latency
12 7 (11.11%) Project Management
12 7 (11.11%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 32 (50.79%) SQL
2 26 (41.27%) Python
3 5 (7.94%) Bash
3 5 (7.94%) Scala
4 4 (6.35%) C++
4 4 (6.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 2 (3.17%) C#
5 2 (3.17%) Java
6 1 (1.59%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.59%) Korn
6 1 (1.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 9 (14.29%) Degree
2 5 (7.94%) PMI Certification
3 4 (6.35%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (6.35%) Master's Degree
3 4 (6.35%) SC Cleared
3 4 (6.35%) Security Cleared
4 2 (3.17%) PMP
5 1 (1.59%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.59%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (26.98%) Data Quality
2 11 (17.46%) GDPR
3 3 (4.76%) MiFID
3 3 (4.76%) PMO
4 2 (3.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (3.17%) QA
5 1 (1.59%) Accessibility
5 1 (1.59%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (1.59%) EMIR
5 1 (1.59%) FATCA
5 1 (1.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (1.59%) Active Directory
1 1 (1.59%) NFS
Systems Management
1 1 (1.59%) Progress Chef
1 1 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 14 (22.22%) Databricks
2 6 (9.52%) Microsoft
3 5 (7.94%) Informatica
4 2 (3.17%) Bloomberg
4 2 (3.17%) Reuters
4 2 (3.17%) SAP
4 2 (3.17%) Trayport
5 1 (1.59%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.59%) Murex
5 1 (1.59%) OpenLink
5 1 (1.59%) Oracle
5 1 (1.59%) Pega
5 1 (1.59%) Salesforce