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 26 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 456 472 510
Rank change year-on-year +16 +38 +97
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 61 46 74
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.21% 0.15% 0.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.59% 0.47% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 29 50
10th Percentile £466 £300 £419
25th Percentile £521 £431 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £585 £613
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -4.49% -2.00%
75th Percentile £716 £775 £725
90th Percentile £793 £828 £754
UK median daily rate £600 £585 £595
% change year-on-year +2.56% -1.68% -4.80%

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 10,367 9,808 13,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.34% 31.26% 32.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,475 5,895 9,033
10th Percentile £290 £295 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £526 £550
% change year-on-year -2.57% -4.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 314 449
10th Percentile £14.37 £17.13 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.25 £25.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £27.53 £51.25 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.28% +15.17% +66.85%
75th Percentile £53.13 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.16 £78.07
UK median hourly rate £26.64 £45.00 £43.63
% change year-on-year -40.80% +3.15% +61.69%

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 26 October 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 26 October 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 +8 41 £625 -10.71% 36
North of England -29 8 £525 +25.37% 5
Yorkshire - 8 £525 - 5
South East +14 4 £575 - 24
Midlands -25 3 £513 +43.96% 4
East Midlands -6 2 £550 +54.49%
South West +15 1 - - 1
West Midlands -19 1 £475 - 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 (8.20%) Confluence
2 1 (1.64%) Appian
2 1 (1.64%) IBM HTTP Server
2 1 (1.64%) MS Project Server
2 1 (1.64%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Actimize
1 1 (1.64%) Aladdin
1 1 (1.64%) Endur
1 1 (1.64%) Orchestrade
1 1 (1.64%) Primavera
1 1 (1.64%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 15 (24.59%) Azure
2 11 (18.03%) Power Platform
3 8 (13.11%) AWS
4 4 (6.56%) GCP
4 4 (6.56%) Snowflake
5 3 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (3.28%) Amazon S3
6 2 (3.28%) Collibra
6 2 (3.28%) dbt
7 1 (1.64%) Amazon Bedrock
7 1 (1.64%) Amazon EMR
7 1 (1.64%) Amazon SageMaker
7 1 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (1.64%) Datadog
7 1 (1.64%) Lucidchart
7 1 (1.64%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.64%) Power Automate
7 1 (1.64%) PowerApps
7 1 (1.64%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (18.03%) Metadata
2 10 (16.39%) Power BI
3 7 (11.48%) Power Query
4 6 (9.84%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (4.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (4.92%) Tableau
6 2 (3.28%) Data Lake
6 2 (3.28%) Delta Lake
6 2 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (1.64%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (1.64%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.64%) Big Data
7 1 (1.64%) Data Vault
7 1 (1.64%) DataStage
7 1 (1.64%) DB2
7 1 (1.64%) KDB
7 1 (1.64%) Parquet
7 1 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 1 (1.64%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (8.20%) ERwin
1 5 (8.20%) JIRA
2 2 (3.28%) PowerDesigner
3 1 (1.64%) Postman
General
1 26 (42.62%) Finance
2 25 (40.98%) Social Skills
3 15 (24.59%) Banking
4 13 (21.31%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (16.39%) Front Office
6 9 (14.75%) Investment Banking
7 6 (9.84%) Public Sector
8 5 (8.20%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (4.92%) Back Office
9 3 (4.92%) Legal
9 3 (4.92%) Local Government
10 2 (3.28%) Law
11 1 (1.64%) Financial Institution
11 1 (1.64%) Retail
Job Titles
1 14 (22.95%) Analyst
2 11 (18.03%) Developer
3 10 (16.39%) Architect
4 9 (14.75%) Business Analyst
5 7 (11.48%) Data Architect
5 7 (11.48%) Senior
6 6 (9.84%) Business Intelligence Developer
6 6 (9.84%) Lead
7 5 (8.20%) Data Analyst
7 5 (8.20%) Data Business Analyst
7 5 (8.20%) Data Modeller
7 5 (8.20%) Power BI Developer
8 3 (4.92%) Asset Management Analyst
8 3 (4.92%) Asset Management Business Analyst
8 3 (4.92%) Consultant
8 3 (4.92%) Senior Developer
8 3 (4.92%) Team Leader
9 2 (3.28%) Applications Support
9 2 (3.28%) Front Office Developer
9 2 (3.28%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.56%) FIX Protocol
2 2 (3.28%) JSON
3 1 (1.64%) .NET
3 1 (1.64%) Boost C++ Libraries
3 1 (1.64%) GraphQL
3 1 (1.64%) JSON Schema
3 1 (1.64%) LangChain
3 1 (1.64%) QuickFIX
3 1 (1.64%) REST
3 1 (1.64%) STL
3 1 (1.64%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (11.48%) Derivative
1 7 (11.48%) Equities
2 6 (9.84%) Fixed Income
3 5 (8.20%) NHS
3 5 (8.20%) Product Ownership
4 3 (4.92%) Cloud Native
4 3 (4.92%) Data Structures
4 3 (4.92%) Market Risk
4 3 (4.92%) Onboarding
5 2 (3.28%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (3.28%) Credit Risk
5 2 (3.28%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (3.28%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (3.28%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.64%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.56%) Linux
2 1 (1.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (36.07%) Data Governance
2 21 (34.43%) Data Modelling
3 16 (26.23%) Data Management
4 14 (22.95%) Migration
5 13 (21.31%) Agile
5 13 (21.31%) Data Migration
6 12 (19.67%) Analytics
6 12 (19.67%) Business Intelligence
6 12 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
7 10 (16.39%) User Acceptance Testing
8 9 (14.75%) Business Analysis
8 9 (14.75%) Data Architecture
8 9 (14.75%) Stakeholder Management
9 8 (13.11%) Data Analysis
9 8 (13.11%) Data Lineage
9 8 (13.11%) DevOps
9 8 (13.11%) Reference Data Management
10 7 (11.48%) Data Pipeline
10 7 (11.48%) Low Latency
10 7 (11.48%) Metadata Management
Programming Languages
1 26 (42.62%) SQL
2 19 (31.15%) Python
3 4 (6.56%) C++
3 4 (6.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 3 (4.92%) Java
5 2 (3.28%) C#
6 1 (1.64%) Groovy
6 1 (1.64%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.64%) Korn
6 1 (1.64%) Perl
Qualifications
1 6 (9.84%) Degree
2 4 (6.56%) Computer Science Degree
2 4 (6.56%) Master's Degree
3 2 (3.28%) Security Cleared
4 1 (1.64%) DBS Check
4 1 (1.64%) PhD
4 1 (1.64%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (29.51%) Data Quality
2 5 (8.20%) GDPR
3 3 (4.92%) MiFID
4 2 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (3.28%) QA
5 1 (1.64%) Accessibility
5 1 (1.64%) EMIR
5 1 (1.64%) FATCA
5 1 (1.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
Vendors
1 9 (14.75%) Databricks
2 5 (8.20%) Informatica
3 3 (4.92%) Bloomberg
3 3 (4.92%) Microsoft
3 3 (4.92%) Oracle
4 2 (3.28%) Murex
4 2 (3.28%) Reuters
4 2 (3.28%) Trayport
5 1 (1.64%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.64%) Charles River
5 1 (1.64%) OpenLink
5 1 (1.64%) Pega
5 1 (1.64%) Refinitiv
5 1 (1.64%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.64%) SAP