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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 516 447 467
Rank change year-on-year -69 +20 +42
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 119 64 51
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.26% 0.23% 0.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.75% 0.63% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 78 45 34
10th Percentile £404 £475 £303
25th Percentile £447 £525 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -7.29% -4.00% +4.60%
75th Percentile £684 £713 £819
90th Percentile £758 £790 £921
UK median daily rate £563 £600 £593
% change year-on-year -6.25% +1.27% +0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 - -

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 15,959 10,205 10,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.50% 36.38% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,584 6,382 6,052
10th Percentile £325 £300 £294
25th Percentile £425 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £645 £645 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,176 534 364
10th Percentile £13.81 £15.13 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.45 £18.82 £24.42
Median hourly rate £33.99 £30.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.30% -44.44% +16.93%
75th Percentile £67.85 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.38 £73.75 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £27.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +30.91% -42.11% +5.56%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -48 81 £608 -2.76% 120
East of England -25 10 £625 - 4
Midlands -35 10 £434 -15.41% 5
North of England -73 8 £411 -25.36% 15
West Midlands -40 6 £535 +12.63% 2
North West - 6 £418 - 9
East Midlands -11 4 £425 -22.82% 3
South West -25 4 £575 - 11
South East -68 4 £488 -15.22% 9
Yorkshire -34 2 £405 -26.36% 4
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 (4.20%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.68%) Apache
2 2 (1.68%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.68%) CMS
2 2 (1.68%) Confluence
3 1 (0.84%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.84%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.84%) MTS
3 1 (0.84%) PowerExchange
3 1 (0.84%) SharePoint
Applications
1 17 (14.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (3.36%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.84%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.84%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 9 (7.56%) Aladdin
2 4 (3.36%) ResourceLink
3 2 (1.68%) Endur
3 2 (1.68%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (1.68%) SAP MDG
3 2 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (1.68%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (1.68%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.84%) Actimize
4 1 (0.84%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.84%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.84%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.84%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.84%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 37 (31.09%) Azure
2 21 (17.65%) AWS
3 16 (13.45%) GCP
4 15 (12.61%) Power Platform
5 11 (9.24%) Azure Data Factory
6 8 (6.72%) Serverless
6 8 (6.72%) Snowflake
7 7 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (5.88%) Azure Databricks
7 7 (5.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 6 (5.04%) Amazon S3
8 6 (5.04%) dbt
8 6 (5.04%) Microsoft Purview
9 5 (4.20%) Collibra
10 4 (3.36%) Alation
10 4 (3.36%) Cloud Functions
10 4 (3.36%) GitHub
11 3 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (2.52%) Datadog
11 3 (2.52%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.84%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (36.97%) Metadata
2 15 (12.61%) Power BI
3 13 (10.92%) Data Lake
3 13 (10.92%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (8.40%) Relational Database
5 9 (7.56%) Data Mining
6 7 (5.88%) Delta Lake
6 7 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (5.88%) SQL Server
7 6 (5.04%) BigQuery
7 6 (5.04%) Data Vault
8 5 (4.20%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (4.20%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (4.20%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (4.20%) Power Query
9 4 (3.36%) DynamoDB
9 4 (3.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 4 (3.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (2.52%) NoSQL
10 3 (2.52%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (12.61%) ERwin
2 13 (10.92%) ER Studio
3 11 (9.24%) JIRA
4 5 (4.20%) Git
4 5 (4.20%) PowerDesigner
5 4 (3.36%) Jenkins
6 2 (1.68%) GitLab
7 1 (0.84%) Deequ
7 1 (0.84%) Gradle
7 1 (0.84%) Maven
7 1 (0.84%) MLflow
7 1 (0.84%) Postman
7 1 (0.84%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.84%) SonarQube
General
1 53 (44.54%) Finance
2 40 (33.61%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (25.21%) Banking
4 26 (21.85%) Social Skills
5 17 (14.29%) Investment Banking
6 11 (9.24%) Front Office
7 10 (8.40%) Legal
8 7 (5.88%) Financial Institution
9 6 (5.04%) Back Office
9 6 (5.04%) Publishing
10 4 (3.36%) Billing
10 4 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (3.36%) Public Sector
11 3 (2.52%) Marketing
11 3 (2.52%) Retail
12 2 (1.68%) General Ledger
12 2 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 31 (26.05%) Analyst
2 27 (22.69%) Business Analyst
3 26 (21.85%) Architect
4 24 (20.17%) Data Architect
5 17 (14.29%) Senior
6 16 (13.45%) Data Engineer
7 12 (10.08%) Data Business Analyst
8 10 (8.40%) Data Modeller
9 8 (6.72%) Developer
10 7 (5.88%) Senior Analyst
11 6 (5.04%) Consultant
11 6 (5.04%) Lead
11 6 (5.04%) Senior Business Analyst
12 5 (4.20%) Data Analyst
13 4 (3.36%) Data Management Specialist
13 4 (3.36%) GCP Data Architect
13 4 (3.36%) Java Developer
13 4 (3.36%) Python Engineer
13 4 (3.36%) Senior Data Engineer
13 4 (3.36%) Transformation Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (8.40%) PySpark
2 8 (6.72%) REST
3 7 (5.88%) Terraform
4 5 (4.20%) JSON
4 5 (4.20%) Oracle Fusion
4 5 (4.20%) RESTful
4 5 (4.20%) SOAP
5 4 (3.36%) Kafka
5 4 (3.36%) XML
6 3 (2.52%) Middleware
7 2 (1.68%) Great Expectations
7 2 (1.68%) Spring
7 2 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 1 (0.84%) AngularJS
8 1 (0.84%) AWS CDK
8 1 (0.84%) Bootstrap
8 1 (0.84%) Hugging Face
8 1 (0.84%) Pandas
8 1 (0.84%) pytest
8 1 (0.84%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 20 (16.81%) Data Structures
2 14 (11.76%) Legacy Systems
3 12 (10.08%) Product Ownership
4 11 (9.24%) Cloud Native
4 11 (9.24%) Fixed Income
4 11 (9.24%) Onboarding
5 10 (8.40%) Management Information System
6 9 (7.56%) Derivative
6 9 (7.56%) Equities
7 7 (5.88%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (5.04%) Pricing Data
9 4 (3.36%) Algorithms
10 3 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (2.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (2.52%) Reinsurance
10 3 (2.52%) Replication
11 2 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (1.68%) FMCG
11 2 (1.68%) Taxonomies
12 1 (0.84%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.36%) Windows
2 1 (0.84%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (57.98%) Data Modelling
2 58 (48.74%) Data Governance
3 36 (30.25%) Logical Data Model
4 34 (28.57%) Data Architecture
4 34 (28.57%) Data Management
5 32 (26.89%) Migration
6 29 (24.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 29 (24.37%) Validation
7 27 (22.69%) Metadata Management
7 27 (22.69%) Physical Data Model
8 24 (20.17%) Analytics
8 24 (20.17%) ETL
8 24 (20.17%) Integration Patterns
9 23 (19.33%) Data Integration
9 23 (19.33%) Data Migration
10 22 (18.49%) Business Intelligence
10 22 (18.49%) Data Lineage
10 22 (18.49%) Problem-Solving
11 21 (17.65%) Reference Data Management
12 20 (16.81%) Lakehouse
Programming Languages
1 66 (55.46%) SQL
2 17 (14.29%) Python
3 5 (4.20%) Java
3 5 (4.20%) PL/SQL
4 3 (2.52%) SPARQL
5 2 (1.68%) T-SQL
5 2 (1.68%) VBA
6 1 (0.84%) Bicep
6 1 (0.84%) C#
6 1 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (0.84%) JavaScript
6 1 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.84%) Scala
6 1 (0.84%) Tcl
6 1 (0.84%) VB
Qualifications
1 11 (9.24%) Security Cleared
2 10 (8.40%) SC Cleared
3 6 (5.04%) Degree
4 5 (4.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (1.68%) DBS Check
5 2 (1.68%) TOGAF Certification
6 1 (0.84%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.84%) CFA
6 1 (0.84%) HND
6 1 (0.84%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (43.70%) Data Quality
2 5 (4.20%) GDPR
2 5 (4.20%) MiFID
2 5 (4.20%) QA
3 2 (1.68%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.84%) AIFMD
4 1 (0.84%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (0.84%) EMIR
4 1 (0.84%) GRC
4 1 (0.84%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 2 (1.68%) Docker
2 1 (0.84%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 3 (2.52%) Grafana
2 2 (1.68%) Prometheus
2 2 (1.68%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (0.84%) Kibana
3 1 (0.84%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 29 (24.37%) Databricks
2 26 (21.85%) Microsoft
3 9 (7.56%) Informatica
3 9 (7.56%) Oracle
4 7 (5.88%) Bloomberg
4 7 (5.88%) Google
5 3 (2.52%) GoldenSource
5 3 (2.52%) Salesforce
5 3 (2.52%) SAP
5 3 (2.52%) SimCorp
5 3 (2.52%) Talend
6 2 (1.68%) Murex
6 2 (1.68%) Sparx
7 1 (0.84%) BEA
7 1 (0.84%) Charles River
7 1 (0.84%) ION Trading
7 1 (0.84%) MarketAxess
7 1 (0.84%) Refinitiv
7 1 (0.84%) Sybase
7 1 (0.84%) Tradeweb