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 13 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 482 449 510
Rank change year-on-year -33 +61 +101
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 62 58 61
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.20% 0.19% 0.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.55% 0.60% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 36 41
10th Percentile £452 £305 £463
25th Percentile £494 £464 £518
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £650 £595
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +9.24% -4.80%
75th Percentile £729 £750 £725
90th Percentile £800 £825 £750
UK median daily rate £625 £650 £590
% change year-on-year -3.85% +10.17% -5.60%

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 11,187 9,716 12,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.13% 32.04% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,048 5,852 8,375
10th Percentile £285 £294 £270
25th Percentile £408 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.68% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £748 £800 £775
UK median daily rate £503 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -6.51% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 568 306 460
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.82 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.24 £23.59 £21.05
Median hourly rate £27.21 £38.54 £43.92
Median % change year-on-year -29.39% -12.26% +25.49%
75th Percentile £57.63 £67.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.58 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £34.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.06% -20.00% +21.43%

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 13 December 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 13 December 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 -6 45 £625 -6.72% 10
Yorkshire -36 6 £500 -23.08% 1
North of England -39 6 £500 -4.76% 1
South East -13 4 £575 - 6
Midlands -34 2 £475 -26.92% 3
South West -12 1 - -
East Midlands -17 1 - -
West Midlands -28 1 £475 -26.92% 3
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 (8.06%) Confluence
2 1 (1.61%) Apache
2 1 (1.61%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.61%) Appian
2 1 (1.61%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (4.84%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (1.61%) Aladdin
2 1 (1.61%) Markit EDM
2 1 (1.61%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 16 (25.81%) Azure
2 12 (19.35%) Power Platform
3 9 (14.52%) AWS
4 5 (8.06%) GCP
5 4 (6.45%) Snowflake
6 3 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (4.84%) Collibra
7 2 (3.23%) Amazon S3
7 2 (3.23%) dbt
8 1 (1.61%) Amazon EMR
8 1 (1.61%) Amazon SageMaker
8 1 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.61%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 1 (1.61%) Datadog
8 1 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (1.61%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.61%) PowerApps
8 1 (1.61%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (24.19%) Metadata
2 11 (17.74%) Power BI
3 7 (11.29%) Power Query
4 6 (9.68%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (4.84%) Relational Database
7 2 (3.23%) Big Data
7 2 (3.23%) BigQuery
7 2 (3.23%) Data Lake
7 2 (3.23%) DataStage
7 2 (3.23%) DB2
7 2 (3.23%) Delta Lake
7 2 (3.23%) SQL Server
7 2 (3.23%) Tableau
8 1 (1.61%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (1.61%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (1.61%) Data Vault
8 1 (1.61%) KDB
8 1 (1.61%) NoSQL
8 1 (1.61%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 9 (14.52%) ERwin
2 5 (8.06%) JIRA
2 5 (8.06%) PowerDesigner
3 1 (1.61%) ER Studio
3 1 (1.61%) Postman
General
1 27 (43.55%) Finance
1 27 (43.55%) Social Skills
2 15 (24.19%) Banking
3 10 (16.13%) Investment Banking
4 9 (14.52%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (12.90%) Front Office
6 6 (9.68%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (8.06%) Public Sector
8 3 (4.84%) Back Office
8 3 (4.84%) Retail
9 2 (3.23%) Financial Institution
9 2 (3.23%) Law
9 2 (3.23%) Legal
9 2 (3.23%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 14 (22.58%) Analyst
2 12 (19.35%) Developer
3 10 (16.13%) Architect
4 9 (14.52%) Business Analyst
4 9 (14.52%) Data Modeller
5 7 (11.29%) Data Architect
5 7 (11.29%) Senior
6 6 (9.68%) Business Intelligence Developer
7 5 (8.06%) Data Analyst
7 5 (8.06%) Data Business Analyst
7 5 (8.06%) Power BI Developer
8 4 (6.45%) Lead
9 3 (4.84%) Asset Management Analyst
9 3 (4.84%) Asset Management Business Analyst
9 3 (4.84%) Consultant
9 3 (4.84%) Python Developer
9 3 (4.84%) Senior Developer
10 2 (3.23%) Front Office Developer
10 2 (3.23%) Project Manager
10 2 (3.23%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.45%) FIX Protocol
2 3 (4.84%) JSON
3 2 (3.23%) REST
3 2 (3.23%) XML
4 1 (1.61%) .NET
4 1 (1.61%) Boost C++ Libraries
4 1 (1.61%) GraphQL
4 1 (1.61%) JSON Schema
4 1 (1.61%) LangChain
4 1 (1.61%) QuickFIX
4 1 (1.61%) STL
Miscellaneous
1 8 (12.90%) Fixed Income
2 6 (9.68%) Derivative
2 6 (9.68%) Equities
3 5 (8.06%) Product Ownership
4 4 (6.45%) Data Structures
5 3 (4.84%) Cloud Native
5 3 (4.84%) Onboarding
6 2 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (3.23%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (3.23%) Management Information System
6 2 (3.23%) NHS
6 2 (3.23%) Reinsurance
7 1 (1.61%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.61%) Credit Risk
7 1 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (1.61%) Market Risk
7 1 (1.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.45%) Linux
2 1 (1.61%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (41.94%) Data Modelling
2 24 (38.71%) Data Governance
3 18 (29.03%) Data Management
4 14 (22.58%) Agile
4 14 (22.58%) Business Intelligence
5 12 (19.35%) Analytics
5 12 (19.35%) Data Lineage
5 12 (19.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 11 (17.74%) Problem-Solving
7 10 (16.13%) Data Architecture
7 10 (16.13%) Migration
7 10 (16.13%) Reference Data Management
8 9 (14.52%) Data Migration
8 9 (14.52%) Metadata Management
8 9 (14.52%) User Acceptance Testing
9 8 (12.90%) Business Analysis
9 8 (12.90%) DevOps
10 7 (11.29%) Data Transformation
10 7 (11.29%) Logical Data Model
10 7 (11.29%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 26 (41.94%) SQL
2 19 (30.65%) Python
3 4 (6.45%) C++
3 4 (6.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
3 4 (6.45%) Java
4 2 (3.23%) C#
4 2 (3.23%) Groovy
5 1 (1.61%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.61%) Korn
5 1 (1.61%) Perl
Qualifications
1 6 (9.68%) Degree
2 4 (6.45%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (4.84%) Master's Degree
4 2 (3.23%) Security Cleared
5 1 (1.61%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.61%) PhD
5 1 (1.61%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (29.03%) Data Quality
2 5 (8.06%) GDPR
3 3 (4.84%) QA
4 2 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (3.23%) MiFID
5 1 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 1 (1.61%) EMIR
5 1 (1.61%) FATCA
5 1 (1.61%) IFRS
5 1 (1.61%) IFRS 17
5 1 (1.61%) Solvency II
Vendors
1 9 (14.52%) Databricks
2 5 (8.06%) Informatica
3 4 (6.45%) Bloomberg
3 4 (6.45%) Oracle
4 3 (4.84%) Microsoft
4 3 (4.84%) Sparx
5 2 (3.23%) Murex
5 2 (3.23%) Refinitiv
5 2 (3.23%) Reuters
5 2 (3.23%) Trayport
6 1 (1.61%) Alteryx
6 1 (1.61%) Charles River
6 1 (1.61%) GoldenSource
6 1 (1.61%) Pega
6 1 (1.61%) Salesforce