Reference Data Contracts 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 20 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 399 443 526
Rank change year-on-year +44 +83 +39
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 72 90 114
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.30% 0.25% 0.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.87% 0.81% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 62 92
10th Percentile £505 £451 £428
25th Percentile £531 £531 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £670 £650 £625
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +4.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £750 £925 £731
90th Percentile £890 - £798
UK median daily rate £625 £650 £625
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £78.75 - -
Median hourly rate £80.50 - -
75th Percentile £82.25 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £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 8,291 11,152 16,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.13% 30.64% 33.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,406 7,312 11,357
10th Percentile £300 £266 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £570
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -3.51% +3.64%
75th Percentile £674 £675 £696
90th Percentile £788 £800 £800
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 817 576
10th Percentile £15.84 £12.25 £9.80
25th Percentile £19.97 £15.17 £10.63
Median hourly rate £33.00 £34.00 £22.49
Median % change year-on-year -2.94% +51.21% -16.66%
75th Percentile £64.50 £61.30 £63.88
90th Percentile £83.76 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £31.76 £31.50 £22.41
% change year-on-year +0.83% +40.56% -18.51%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Reference Data as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Reference Data in England

Reference Data
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Reference Data in England.

Daily rate trend for Reference Data in England

Reference Data
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Reference Data in England over the 6 months to 20 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Reference Data in England

Reference Data
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Reference Data in England.

Hourly rate trend for Reference Data in England

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 20 May 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 +38 62 £670 -5.96% 54
East of England +30 5 - - 3
Yorkshire +18 3 £550 - 1
North of England +5 3 £550 -3.08% 1
East Midlands - 1 £550 -
Midlands - 1 £550 -
South East - 1 - - 17
Reference Data
UK

Reference Data
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (9.72%) Apache
1 7 (9.72%) Apache Spark
2 6 (8.33%) Jupyter
3 5 (6.94%) SAS
4 3 (4.17%) Confluence
5 2 (2.78%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (1.39%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 11 (15.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (5.56%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (4.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (4.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (11.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (6.94%) SAP MDG
3 4 (5.56%) SAP MDG-S
4 2 (2.78%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (1.39%) Actimize
5 1 (1.39%) Endur
5 1 (1.39%) Fidessa
5 1 (1.39%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 16 (22.22%) Azure
2 12 (16.67%) Power Platform
3 9 (12.50%) AWS
4 4 (5.56%) Collibra
4 4 (5.56%) GCP
5 2 (2.78%) Snowflake
6 1 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (1.39%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 6 (8.33%) SSH
2 1 (1.39%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (19.44%) Metadata
2 11 (15.28%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (15.28%) Power BI
3 10 (13.89%) SQL Server
4 8 (11.11%) Data Mining
5 7 (9.72%) Apache Hive
5 7 (9.72%) Azure SQL Database
5 7 (9.72%) Delta Lake
6 5 (6.94%) Tableau
7 4 (5.56%) DB2
7 4 (5.56%) Oracle Database
7 4 (5.56%) QlikView
7 4 (5.56%) SAP HANA
8 3 (4.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (2.78%) Data Lake
9 2 (2.78%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (1.39%) Big Data
10 1 (1.39%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 1 (1.39%) Hadoop
10 1 (1.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (16.67%) JIRA
2 8 (11.11%) Git
3 6 (8.33%) RStudio
4 2 (2.78%) ERwin
5 1 (1.39%) Jenkins
5 1 (1.39%) Visual Studio
General
1 32 (44.44%) Finance
2 28 (38.89%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (34.72%) Banking
4 21 (29.17%) Social Skills
5 8 (11.11%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (8.33%) Front Office
6 6 (8.33%) Investment Banking
7 5 (6.94%) Back Office
7 5 (6.94%) Public Sector
8 3 (4.17%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (4.17%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.39%) Law
9 1 (1.39%) Legal
9 1 (1.39%) Local Government
9 1 (1.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 22 (30.56%) Analyst
2 18 (25.00%) Architect
3 12 (16.67%) Data Architect
4 11 (15.28%) Data Analyst
5 10 (13.89%) Business Analyst
5 10 (13.89%) Developer
6 8 (11.11%) Data Engineer
7 7 (9.72%) Database Developer
7 7 (9.72%) SQL Database Developer
7 7 (9.72%) SQL Developer
8 6 (8.33%) Lead
8 6 (8.33%) Project Manager
9 5 (6.94%) Fund Data Analyst
9 5 (6.94%) SQL Analyst
9 5 (6.94%) SQL Data Analyst
10 4 (5.56%) Banking Analyst
10 4 (5.56%) Data Warehouse Analyst
10 4 (5.56%) Migration Architect
10 4 (5.56%) Performance Analyst
10 4 (5.56%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (11.11%) JSON
1 8 (11.11%) PySpark
2 7 (9.72%) pydantic
2 7 (9.72%) YAML
3 2 (2.78%) Kafka
4 1 (1.39%) .NET
4 1 (1.39%) ASP.NET
4 1 (1.39%) ASP.NET MVC
4 1 (1.39%) Flask
4 1 (1.39%) FpML
4 1 (1.39%) LDAP
4 1 (1.39%) Motif
4 1 (1.39%) React
4 1 (1.39%) REST
4 1 (1.39%) RESTful
4 1 (1.39%) Web Services
4 1 (1.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (16.67%) Data Structures
1 12 (16.67%) Hedge funds
2 10 (13.89%) Legacy Systems
3 8 (11.11%) Linux Command Line
4 5 (6.94%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (5.56%) Equities
5 4 (5.56%) Management Information System
6 3 (4.17%) Credit Risk
6 3 (4.17%) Derivative
6 3 (4.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 3 (4.17%) Market Risk
6 3 (4.17%) NHS
6 3 (4.17%) PMI
6 3 (4.17%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (4.17%) Taxonomies
6 3 (4.17%) Virtual Team
7 2 (2.78%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.39%) Data Centre
8 1 (1.39%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 7 (9.72%) Linux
2 2 (2.78%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (33.33%) Data Governance
1 24 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
2 20 (27.78%) Data Architecture
3 18 (25.00%) Data Management
4 17 (23.61%) Migration
5 16 (22.22%) Agile
6 15 (20.83%) Reference Data Management
7 14 (19.44%) Data Analysis
8 13 (18.06%) Master Data Management
9 12 (16.67%) Data Modelling
10 10 (13.89%) Analytics
10 10 (13.89%) Data Security
11 9 (12.50%) Data Migration
11 9 (12.50%) Data Pipeline
11 9 (12.50%) Metadata Management
11 9 (12.50%) Roadmaps
12 8 (11.11%) Computer Science
12 8 (11.11%) Conceptual Models
12 8 (11.11%) Data Visualisation
12 8 (11.11%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 41 (56.94%) SQL
2 20 (27.78%) Python
3 8 (11.11%) Scala
4 7 (9.72%) Bash
5 2 (2.78%) C++
6 1 (1.39%) C
6 1 (1.39%) C#
6 1 (1.39%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.39%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.39%) Ruby
6 1 (1.39%) SPARQL
6 1 (1.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 16 (22.22%) Degree
2 9 (12.50%) Security Cleared
3 8 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 5 (6.94%) PMI Certification
5 4 (5.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (5.56%) TOGAF Certification
6 3 (4.17%) SAP Certification
7 2 (2.78%) Master's Degree
7 2 (2.78%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (25.00%) Data Quality
2 14 (19.44%) GDPR
3 4 (5.56%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 3 (4.17%) MiFID
4 3 (4.17%) PMO
4 3 (4.17%) QA
5 2 (2.78%) EMIR
6 1 (1.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (1.39%) Active Directory
1 1 (1.39%) NFS
Systems Management
1 1 (1.39%) Progress Chef
1 1 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 9 (12.50%) SAP
2 8 (11.11%) Oracle
3 7 (9.72%) Databricks
3 7 (9.72%) IBM
4 6 (8.33%) Informatica
5 4 (5.56%) BiZZdesign
5 4 (5.56%) Google
6 3 (4.17%) Ab Initio
6 3 (4.17%) Microsoft
7 2 (2.78%) Murex
7 2 (2.78%) Salesforce
7 2 (2.78%) Sparx
8 1 (1.39%) Bloomberg
8 1 (1.39%) CQG
8 1 (1.39%) ION Trading
8 1 (1.39%) OpenLink
8 1 (1.39%) Reuters