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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 496 407 445
Rank change year-on-year -89 +38 +70
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 94 72 95
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.22% 0.29% 0.25%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.67% 0.84% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 36 67
10th Percentile £438 £453 £429
25th Percentile £514 £525 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -2.40% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £738 £753 £925
90th Percentile £813 £800 -
UK median daily rate £600 £600 £650
% change year-on-year - -7.69% +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 14,053 8,610 11,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.60% 34.62% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,769 5,532 7,351
10th Percentile £313 £303 £275
25th Percentile £415 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.48%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.14% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 390 859
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.14 £20.07 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.89 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.73% -7.16% +62.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £86.52 £82.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £35.65
% change year-on-year +37.16% -10.10% +58.55%

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 19 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 19 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 71 £625 -1.22% 12
East of England -23 10 £575 - 2
North of England -65 6 £610 +10.91% 1
Yorkshire -57 5 £610 +10.91%
Midlands -57 2 £650 +18.18% 3
South East - 2 £500 - 5
West Midlands - 2 £650 - 1
North West - 1 £350 - 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 4 (4.26%) Confluence
2 1 (1.06%) Apache
2 1 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.06%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.06%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 8 (8.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.13%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (9.57%) Aladdin
2 6 (6.38%) Finacle
3 3 (3.19%) SimCorp Dimension
4 2 (2.13%) Endur
4 2 (2.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (2.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (1.06%) Loan IQ
5 1 (1.06%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 25 (26.60%) Azure
2 13 (13.83%) AWS
3 11 (11.70%) Power Platform
4 9 (9.57%) GCP
5 5 (5.32%) Amazon S3
5 5 (5.32%) dbt
6 4 (4.26%) Azure Data Factory
6 4 (4.26%) Microsoft Purview
6 4 (4.26%) Snowflake
7 3 (3.19%) Azure AI
7 3 (3.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (3.19%) Datadog
8 2 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (2.13%) Azure Machine Learning
8 2 (2.13%) Collibra
8 2 (2.13%) GitHub
9 1 (1.06%) Boomi
9 1 (1.06%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.06%) Lucidchart
9 1 (1.06%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (29.79%) Metadata
2 11 (11.70%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (11.70%) Power BI
3 8 (8.51%) Data Lake
4 5 (5.32%) Relational Database
5 4 (4.26%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (3.19%) Neo4j
6 3 (3.19%) SQL Server
6 3 (3.19%) Tableau
7 2 (2.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (2.13%) Ataccama
7 2 (2.13%) BigQuery
7 2 (2.13%) NoSQL
7 2 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (2.13%) TigerGraph
8 1 (1.06%) Apache Hudi
8 1 (1.06%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (1.06%) Data Vault
8 1 (1.06%) Power Query
8 1 (1.06%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 13 (13.83%) ERwin
2 8 (8.51%) JIRA
3 7 (7.45%) ER Studio
4 6 (6.38%) PowerDesigner
5 2 (2.13%) GitLab
6 1 (1.06%) Deequ
6 1 (1.06%) Git
6 1 (1.06%) Jenkins
6 1 (1.06%) MLflow
6 1 (1.06%) Postman
6 1 (1.06%) Robot Framework
6 1 (1.06%) SonarQube
General
1 48 (51.06%) Finance
2 27 (28.72%) Banking
3 25 (26.60%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (19.15%) Social Skills
5 12 (12.77%) Front Office
6 7 (7.45%) Investment Banking
6 7 (7.45%) Publishing
7 6 (6.38%) Financial Institution
7 6 (6.38%) Private Banking
7 6 (6.38%) Retail
8 5 (5.32%) Legal
8 5 (5.32%) Public Sector
9 2 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (2.13%) Law
9 2 (2.13%) Marketing
9 2 (2.13%) Wholesale Banking
10 1 (1.06%) Back Office
10 1 (1.06%) Billing
10 1 (1.06%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 19 (20.21%) Architect
2 18 (19.15%) Data Architect
3 16 (17.02%) Analyst
3 16 (17.02%) Business Analyst
4 13 (13.83%) Lead
5 10 (10.64%) Data Modeller
6 9 (9.57%) Data Engineer
6 9 (9.57%) Developer
6 9 (9.57%) Senior
7 6 (6.38%) Data Migration Lead
8 5 (5.32%) Python Developer
8 5 (5.32%) Python Engineer
9 4 (4.26%) Python Data Engineer
9 4 (4.26%) Senior Data Engineer
10 3 (3.19%) Data Analyst
10 3 (3.19%) Data Business Analyst
10 3 (3.19%) Financial Analyst
10 3 (3.19%) Senior Analyst
10 3 (3.19%) Senior Python Developer
10 3 (3.19%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (6.38%) PySpark
2 4 (4.26%) JSON
2 4 (4.26%) REST
3 2 (2.13%) Great Expectations
3 2 (2.13%) Kafka
3 2 (2.13%) Middleware
3 2 (2.13%) Pandas
4 1 (1.06%) Hugging Face
4 1 (1.06%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (1.06%) NumPy
4 1 (1.06%) pytest
4 1 (1.06%) Ruby on Rails
4 1 (1.06%) SOAP
4 1 (1.06%) Swagger
4 1 (1.06%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (15.96%) Data Structures
2 13 (13.83%) Fixed Income
3 10 (10.64%) Equities
4 8 (8.51%) Derivative
4 8 (8.51%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (8.51%) Onboarding
5 7 (7.45%) Product Ownership
6 6 (6.38%) Cloud Native
6 6 (6.38%) Management Information System
7 5 (5.32%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (3.19%) Algorithms
9 2 (2.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 2 (2.13%) Marketing Technology
9 2 (2.13%) Pricing Data
10 1 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (1.06%) Clustering
10 1 (1.06%) Credit Risk
10 1 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (1.06%) Life Science
10 1 (1.06%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (55.32%) Data Modelling
2 27 (28.72%) Data Governance
3 23 (24.47%) Data Management
4 22 (23.40%) Validation
5 19 (20.21%) Migration
6 18 (19.15%) Analytics
6 18 (19.15%) Data Architecture
6 18 (19.15%) Problem-Solving
7 17 (18.09%) Integration Patterns
8 16 (17.02%) Data Analysis
8 16 (17.02%) Data Mapping
9 15 (15.96%) ETL
9 15 (15.96%) Logical Data Model
10 14 (14.89%) Data Integration
10 14 (14.89%) Data Migration
10 14 (14.89%) Data Pipeline
10 14 (14.89%) Stakeholder Management
11 13 (13.83%) Physical Data Model
11 13 (13.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 13 (13.83%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 37 (39.36%) SQL
2 21 (22.34%) Python
3 6 (6.38%) Java
4 5 (5.32%) C#
4 5 (5.32%) Perl
4 5 (5.32%) PowerShell
5 3 (3.19%) SPARQL
6 2 (2.13%) Bash
7 1 (1.06%) Apex Code
7 1 (1.06%) C
7 1 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (1.06%) PL/SQL
7 1 (1.06%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 10 (10.64%) Security Cleared
2 6 (6.38%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (3.19%) Degree
5 2 (2.13%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (36.17%) Data Quality
2 4 (4.26%) GDPR
2 4 (4.26%) MiFID
3 3 (3.19%) QA
4 2 (2.13%) SLA
5 1 (1.06%) AIFMD
5 1 (1.06%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (1.06%) EMIR
5 1 (1.06%) GRC
5 1 (1.06%) IFRS
5 1 (1.06%) IFRS 9
5 1 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
Systems Management
1 3 (3.19%) Grafana
2 1 (1.06%) Kibana
2 1 (1.06%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 20 (21.28%) Microsoft
2 18 (19.15%) Databricks
3 6 (6.38%) Avaloq
3 6 (6.38%) GoldenSource
3 6 (6.38%) Murex
3 6 (6.38%) Temenos
4 4 (4.26%) Informatica
4 4 (4.26%) Salesforce
4 4 (4.26%) SimCorp
5 3 (3.19%) Charles River
6 2 (2.13%) IDERA
6 2 (2.13%) Oracle
6 2 (2.13%) Sparx
7 1 (1.06%) Bloomberg
7 1 (1.06%) Calypso
7 1 (1.06%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.06%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.06%) OpenLink
7 1 (1.06%) Reuters
7 1 (1.06%) SAP