Reference Data Contract Job Trends in Scotland

Reference Data
UK > Scotland

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Reference Data in contract job vacancies in Scotland. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Reference Data over the 6 months leading up to 28 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 105 113 133
Rank change year-on-year +8 +20 +24
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 3 1 2
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 0.20% 0.062% 0.085%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.53% 0.17% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile £352 - -
25th Percentile £354 £604 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £358 £608 £375
Median % change year-on-year -41.12% +62.13% -26.47%
75th Percentile - £612 £388
90th Percentile - - -
UK median daily rate £650 £604 £625
% change year-on-year +7.62% -3.36% -

All Generic Skills
Scotland

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 Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 564 585 797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 37.18% 36.43% 33.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 312 440
10th Percentile £200 £192 £250
25th Percentile £371 £368 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £484
Median % change year-on-year - -6.93% +0.73%
75th Percentile £571 £546 £600
90th Percentile £675 £661 £689
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 27 38
10th Percentile £15.19 £20.34 £15.83
25th Percentile £16.17 £21.61 £16.50
Median hourly rate £23.75 £23.59 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.68% +20.97% +48.18%
75th Percentile £40.00 £26.21 £56.05
90th Percentile £66.47 £69.25 £60.75
UK median hourly rate £28.11 £35.00 £34.61
% change year-on-year -19.69% +1.14% +53.90%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Reference Data relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland.

Reference Data job vacancy trend in Scotland

Reference Data
Daily Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Reference Data.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Reference Data

Reference Data
Contract Job Locations in Scotland

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 Scotland region over the 6 months to 28 January 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
Glasgow - 3 £358 - 1
Reference Data
UK

Reference Data
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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 3 (100.00%) Apache Spark
1 3 (100.00%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (100.00%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 3 (100.00%) Azure
1 3 (100.00%) Azure DevOps
1 3 (100.00%) Collibra
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (100.00%) Big Data
1 3 (100.00%) Hadoop
1 3 (100.00%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 3 (100.00%) Git
1 3 (100.00%) JIRA
General
1 3 (100.00%) Banking
Job Titles
1 3 (100.00%) Scrum Master
2 1 (33.33%) Agile Scrum Master
Miscellaneous
1 3 (100.00%) Cloud Native
1 3 (100.00%) Onboarding
1 3 (100.00%) Product Ownership
1 3 (100.00%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (100.00%) Agile
1 3 (100.00%) Analytics
1 3 (100.00%) Capacity Planning
1 3 (100.00%) Change Management
1 3 (100.00%) Coaching
1 3 (100.00%) Continuous Improvement
1 3 (100.00%) Data Architecture
1 3 (100.00%) Data Governance
1 3 (100.00%) Data Modelling
1 3 (100.00%) DevOps
1 3 (100.00%) ETL
1 3 (100.00%) ETL Development
1 3 (100.00%) Information Security
1 3 (100.00%) Kanban
1 3 (100.00%) Migration
1 3 (100.00%) Scrum
1 3 (100.00%) Stakeholder Management
1 3 (100.00%) Test Automation
1 3 (100.00%) User Stories
1 3 (100.00%) Validation
Qualifications
1 3 (100.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (100.00%) Data Quality
1 3 (100.00%) GDPR
Vendors
1 1 (33.33%) Microsoft