Reference Data Contract Job Trends in the South West

Reference Data
England > South West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Reference Data in contract job vacancies in the South West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Reference Data over the 6 months leading up to 4 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 - 138
Rank change year-on-year - - +13
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 2 0 2
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.054% - 0.078%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.20% - 0.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 0 2
10th Percentile - - £403
25th Percentile - - £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 - £419
Median % change year-on-year - - -33.00%
75th Percentile - - £433
90th Percentile - - £439
England median daily rate £574 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -4.27% -4.00% +4.17%

All Generic Skills
South West

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 the South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 993 644 707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 26.77% 32.67% 27.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 542 384 384
10th Percentile £313 £225 £213
25th Percentile £419 £363 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year - -2.60% -2.00%
75th Percentile £667 £638 £666
90th Percentile £750 £715 £709
England median daily rate £525 £525 £549
% change year-on-year - -4.30% -0.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 74 98
10th Percentile £14.04 £6.00 £21.70
25th Percentile £17.85 £15.51 £66.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £19.62 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.55% -71.98% -10.26%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.61 £72.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.25 £75.00
England median hourly rate £33.99 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +13.30% -47.69% +25.00%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Reference Data job vacancy trend in the South West

Reference Data
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Reference Data.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Reference Data

Reference Data
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Reference Data.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Reference Data

Reference Data
Contract Job Locations in the South West

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 South West region over the 6 months to 4 October 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
Bristol - 2 £575 - 1
Reference Data
England

Reference Data
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (100.00%) Cloud Functions
1 2 (100.00%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (100.00%) BigQuery
1 2 (100.00%) Data Vault
1 2 (100.00%) Metadata
General
1 2 (100.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 2 (100.00%) Architect
1 2 (100.00%) Data Architect
1 2 (100.00%) GCP Architect
1 2 (100.00%) GCP Data Architect
Miscellaneous
1 2 (100.00%) Cloud Native
1 2 (100.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Architecture Roadmap
1 2 (100.00%) Data Architecture
1 2 (100.00%) Data Governance
1 2 (100.00%) Data Modelling
1 2 (100.00%) Data Stewardship
1 2 (100.00%) Dimensional Modelling
1 2 (100.00%) Logical Data Model
1 2 (100.00%) Physical Data Model
1 2 (100.00%) Roadmaps
1 2 (100.00%) Translating Business Requirements
Vendors
1 2 (100.00%) Google