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

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 478 434 495
Rank change year-on-year -44 +61 +119
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 62 61 54
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.20% 0.22% 0.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.56% 0.67% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 34 32
10th Percentile £451 £358 £463
25th Percentile £481 £512 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £638 £635 £598
Median % change year-on-year +0.39% +6.28% -4.40%
75th Percentile £738 £750 £725
90th Percentile £800 £825 £749
UK median daily rate £650 £608 £595
% change year-on-year +6.91% +2.18% -4.80%
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 11,156 9,168 11,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.37% 32.47% 31.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,055 5,531 7,831
10th Percentile £283 £275 £263
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £784 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £530 £548
% change year-on-year -4.81% -3.20% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 265 471
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.15 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.80 £20.50
Median hourly rate £28.13 £37.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.99% -12.94% +28.79%
75th Percentile £63.05 £66.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.82 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.21 £33.75 £41.50
% change year-on-year -19.38% -18.67% +29.69%

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 29 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 29 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 -18 42 £700 +9.38% 41
North of England -44 7 £500 -4.76%
Yorkshire -40 6 £500 -23.08%
East of England -19 5 - - 8
South East -4 4 £575 - 15
South West -5 1 - -
North West -22 1 £700 +85.19%
West Midlands -30 1 £475 -26.92% 3
Midlands -45 1 £475 -26.92% 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 4 (6.45%) Confluence
2 1 (1.61%) Apache
2 1 (1.61%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (6.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (3.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (1.61%) Aladdin
3 1 (1.61%) Finacle
3 1 (1.61%) Markit EDM
3 1 (1.61%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 12 (19.35%) Azure
2 9 (14.52%) AWS
2 9 (14.52%) Power Platform
3 5 (8.06%) GCP
4 4 (6.45%) Snowflake
5 3 (4.84%) Collibra
6 2 (3.23%) Amazon S3
7 1 (1.61%) Amazon Bedrock
7 1 (1.61%) Amazon EMR
7 1 (1.61%) Amazon SageMaker
7 1 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.61%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (1.61%) Datadog
7 1 (1.61%) dbt
7 1 (1.61%) Lucidchart
7 1 (1.61%) Power Automate
7 1 (1.61%) PowerApps
7 1 (1.61%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (30.65%) Metadata
2 9 (14.52%) Power BI
3 6 (9.68%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (6.45%) Power Query
4 4 (6.45%) Relational Database
5 2 (3.23%) Big Data
5 2 (3.23%) BigQuery
5 2 (3.23%) Data Lake
5 2 (3.23%) DataStage
5 2 (3.23%) DB2
5 2 (3.23%) Delta Lake
5 2 (3.23%) RDBMS
5 2 (3.23%) SQL Server
5 2 (3.23%) Tableau
6 1 (1.61%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (1.61%) Data Vault
6 1 (1.61%) KDB
6 1 (1.61%) NoSQL
6 1 (1.61%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 10 (16.13%) ERwin
2 5 (8.06%) PowerDesigner
3 4 (6.45%) JIRA
4 2 (3.23%) ER Studio
5 1 (1.61%) Postman
General
1 25 (40.32%) Social Skills
2 23 (37.10%) Finance
3 11 (17.74%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (16.13%) Banking
5 7 (11.29%) Front Office
6 5 (8.06%) Investment Banking
6 5 (8.06%) Public Sector
7 4 (6.45%) Publishing
8 3 (4.84%) Back Office
8 3 (4.84%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (4.84%) Retail
9 2 (3.23%) Financial Institution
10 1 (1.61%) Law
10 1 (1.61%) Legal
10 1 (1.61%) Local Government
10 1 (1.61%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (1.61%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 13 (20.97%) Developer
2 12 (19.35%) Analyst
3 11 (17.74%) Architect
4 10 (16.13%) Data Modeller
5 8 (12.90%) Business Analyst
6 7 (11.29%) Data Architect
7 6 (9.68%) Lead
8 5 (8.06%) Data Analyst
8 5 (8.06%) Data Business Analyst
8 5 (8.06%) Python Developer
9 4 (6.45%) Perl Developer
9 4 (6.45%) Senior
10 3 (4.84%) Asset Management Analyst
10 3 (4.84%) Asset Management Business Analyst
10 3 (4.84%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 3 (4.84%) Consultant
10 3 (4.84%) Power BI Developer
11 2 (3.23%) Market Data Business Analyst
11 2 (3.23%) Project Manager
11 2 (3.23%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.45%) JSON
2 3 (4.84%) XML
3 2 (3.23%) REST
4 1 (1.61%) .NET
4 1 (1.61%) GraphQL
4 1 (1.61%) JSON Schema
4 1 (1.61%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 8 (12.90%) Fixed Income
2 6 (9.68%) Management Information System
3 4 (6.45%) Data Structures
3 4 (6.45%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (4.84%) Cloud Native
4 3 (4.84%) Derivative
4 3 (4.84%) Equities
4 3 (4.84%) Life Science
5 2 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.23%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (3.23%) NHS
5 2 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 2 (3.23%) Product Ownership
5 2 (3.23%) Reinsurance
6 1 (1.61%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.61%) Credit Risk
6 1 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (1.61%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.61%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (50.00%) Data Modelling
2 22 (35.48%) Data Governance
3 15 (24.19%) Data Management
3 15 (24.19%) Metadata Management
4 14 (22.58%) Data Architecture
5 13 (20.97%) Data Lineage
5 13 (20.97%) Problem-Solving
5 13 (20.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 12 (19.35%) Business Intelligence
7 11 (17.74%) Agile
7 11 (17.74%) Analytics
7 11 (17.74%) Migration
8 10 (16.13%) Data Migration
8 10 (16.13%) Data Strategy
9 9 (14.52%) Data Mapping
9 9 (14.52%) Logical Data Model
10 8 (12.90%) Reference Data Management
10 8 (12.90%) User Acceptance Testing
11 7 (11.29%) Data Visualisation
11 7 (11.29%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 26 (41.94%) SQL
2 14 (22.58%) Python
3 7 (11.29%) Java
4 6 (9.68%) C#
5 5 (8.06%) Perl
6 4 (6.45%) PowerShell
7 2 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (3.23%) Groovy
8 1 (1.61%) Korn
Qualifications
1 5 (8.06%) Degree
2 3 (4.84%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (4.84%) Master's Degree
2 3 (4.84%) Security Cleared
3 2 (3.23%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.61%) DBS Check
4 1 (1.61%) PhD
4 1 (1.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (29.03%) Data Quality
2 4 (6.45%) GDPR
3 2 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.61%) IFRS
4 1 (1.61%) IFRS 17
4 1 (1.61%) QA
4 1 (1.61%) Solvency II
Vendors
1 9 (14.52%) Databricks
2 4 (6.45%) Oracle
2 4 (6.45%) Sparx
3 3 (4.84%) Bloomberg
3 3 (4.84%) Murex
4 2 (3.23%) GoldenSource
4 2 (3.23%) Informatica
4 2 (3.23%) Microsoft
4 2 (3.23%) Refinitiv
4 2 (3.23%) SAP
5 1 (1.61%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.61%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.61%) Avaloq
5 1 (1.61%) Charles River
5 1 (1.61%) Reuters
5 1 (1.61%) Temenos
5 1 (1.61%) Trayport