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 8 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 499 398 456
Rank change year-on-year -101 +58 +78
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 82 75 89
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.20% 0.31% 0.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.63% 0.91% 0.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 37 61
10th Percentile £442 £482 £450
25th Percentile £500 £537 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £610 £670 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.96% +3.08% +4.00%
75th Percentile £740 £750 £925
90th Percentile £825 £860 -
UK median daily rate £600 £640 £650
% change year-on-year -6.29% -1.50% +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 13,102 8,282 11,347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.34% 34.18% 30.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,308 5,415 7,443
10th Percentile £308 £300 £265
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.48% -0.36% -4.14%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £501 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.60% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 661 326 822
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.71 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.25 £15.17
Median hourly rate £47.50 £35.45 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +34.01% +10.37% +42.83%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.69 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £84.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £31.13
% change year-on-year +38.46% +4.42% +38.43%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -64 59 £625 -6.72% 14
East of England -25 10 £525 -
North of England -57 7 £610 -6.15% 2
Yorkshire -44 6 £610 -6.15%
West Midlands -56 2 £650 -
South East -66 2 £500 - 5
Midlands -70 2 £650 -
North West - 1 £700 - 2
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 (6.10%) Confluence
2 1 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 7 (8.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.44%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (7.32%) Aladdin
1 6 (7.32%) Finacle
2 3 (3.66%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (1.22%) Endur
4 1 (1.22%) Loan IQ
4 1 (1.22%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (1.22%) SAP MDG
4 1 (1.22%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 16 (19.51%) Azure
2 13 (15.85%) AWS
3 9 (10.98%) GCP
4 8 (9.76%) Power Platform
5 5 (6.10%) Amazon S3
6 4 (4.88%) dbt
7 3 (3.66%) Snowflake
8 2 (2.44%) Azure Machine Learning
8 2 (2.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 2 (2.44%) Microsoft Purview
9 1 (1.22%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.22%) Boomi
9 1 (1.22%) Collibra
9 1 (1.22%) Datadog
9 1 (1.22%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.22%) GitHub
9 1 (1.22%) Lucidchart
9 1 (1.22%) Prefect
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (31.71%) Metadata
2 9 (10.98%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (9.76%) Power BI
4 5 (6.10%) Data Lake
5 4 (4.88%) Amazon Athena
5 4 (4.88%) Relational Database
6 3 (3.66%) BigQuery
7 2 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (2.44%) Ataccama
7 2 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (2.44%) RDBMS
7 2 (2.44%) SQL Server
7 2 (2.44%) Tableau
8 1 (1.22%) Apache Hudi
8 1 (1.22%) Apache Iceberg
8 1 (1.22%) Data Vault
8 1 (1.22%) DataStage
8 1 (1.22%) Metadata Repository
8 1 (1.22%) Power Query
8 1 (1.22%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 13 (15.85%) ERwin
2 7 (8.54%) ER Studio
2 7 (8.54%) JIRA
3 5 (6.10%) PowerDesigner
4 1 (1.22%) Deequ
4 1 (1.22%) Git
General
1 36 (43.90%) Finance
2 22 (26.83%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (25.61%) Banking
4 20 (24.39%) Social Skills
5 13 (15.85%) Front Office
6 6 (7.32%) Investment Banking
6 6 (7.32%) Private Banking
6 6 (7.32%) Retail
7 5 (6.10%) Public Sector
7 5 (6.10%) Publishing
8 3 (3.66%) Financial Institution
9 2 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (2.44%) Law
9 2 (2.44%) Legal
9 2 (2.44%) Marketing
9 2 (2.44%) Wholesale Banking
10 1 (1.22%) Back Office
10 1 (1.22%) Manufacturing
10 1 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 16 (19.51%) Architect
2 15 (18.29%) Lead
3 14 (17.07%) Data Architect
4 13 (15.85%) Analyst
5 12 (14.63%) Business Analyst
6 10 (12.20%) Data Modeller
7 9 (10.98%) Developer
8 7 (8.54%) Data Engineer
9 6 (7.32%) Data Migration Lead
9 6 (7.32%) Python Developer
10 5 (6.10%) Data Analyst
11 4 (4.88%) Senior
12 3 (3.66%) Perl Developer
12 3 (3.66%) Technical Business Analyst
13 2 (2.44%) Data Business Analyst
13 2 (2.44%) Project Manager
13 2 (2.44%) Software Developer
13 2 (2.44%) Software Engineer
13 2 (2.44%) Solutions Architect
13 2 (2.44%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (6.10%) JSON
2 4 (4.88%) REST
3 2 (2.44%) Kafka
3 2 (2.44%) Middleware
3 2 (2.44%) XML
4 1 (1.22%) Great Expectations
4 1 (1.22%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (1.22%) NumPy
4 1 (1.22%) Pandas
4 1 (1.22%) PySpark
4 1 (1.22%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 14 (17.07%) Fixed Income
2 13 (15.85%) Data Structures
3 8 (9.76%) Equities
3 8 (9.76%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (8.54%) Derivative
4 7 (8.54%) Product Ownership
5 6 (7.32%) Cloud Native
5 6 (7.32%) Management Information System
6 5 (6.10%) Onboarding
7 4 (4.88%) Life Science
8 2 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (2.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (2.44%) Marketing Technology
8 2 (2.44%) Pricing Data
9 1 (1.22%) Clustering
9 1 (1.22%) Credit Risk
9 1 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (1.22%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (51.22%) Data Modelling
2 21 (25.61%) Data Governance
3 20 (24.39%) Data Management
4 19 (23.17%) Validation
5 18 (21.95%) Problem-Solving
6 16 (19.51%) Data Analysis
6 16 (19.51%) Migration
6 16 (19.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 15 (18.29%) Analytics
8 14 (17.07%) Data Architecture
8 14 (17.07%) Data Mapping
9 13 (15.85%) Integration Patterns
9 13 (15.85%) Metadata Management
10 12 (14.63%) Data Lineage
10 12 (14.63%) Data Migration
10 12 (14.63%) Design Patterns
10 12 (14.63%) ETL
11 11 (13.41%) Data Transformation
11 11 (13.41%) Logical Data Model
11 11 (13.41%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 29 (35.37%) SQL
2 17 (20.73%) Python
3 6 (7.32%) Java
4 5 (6.10%) C#
4 5 (6.10%) Perl
4 5 (6.10%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.44%) Bash
6 1 (1.22%) Apex Code
6 1 (1.22%) C
6 1 (1.22%) Groovy
6 1 (1.22%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.22%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8 (9.76%) Security Cleared
2 4 (4.88%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.66%) Degree
4 2 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (35.37%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.66%) GDPR
2 3 (3.66%) MiFID
3 2 (2.44%) QA
3 2 (2.44%) SLA
4 1 (1.22%) AIFMD
4 1 (1.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (1.22%) EMIR
4 1 (1.22%) IFRS
4 1 (1.22%) IFRS 9
Systems Management
1 3 (3.66%) Grafana
2 1 (1.22%) Kibana
2 1 (1.22%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (10.98%) Databricks
2 7 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.54%) Murex
3 6 (7.32%) Avaloq
3 6 (7.32%) GoldenSource
3 6 (7.32%) Temenos
4 3 (3.66%) Charles River
4 3 (3.66%) Informatica
4 3 (3.66%) SAP
4 3 (3.66%) Sparx
5 2 (2.44%) IDERA
5 2 (2.44%) Oracle
5 2 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.22%) Bloomberg
6 1 (1.22%) Calypso
6 1 (1.22%) Google
6 1 (1.22%) ION Trading
6 1 (1.22%) OpenLink
6 1 (1.22%) Reuters
6 1 (1.22%) SimCorp