Reference Data Contracts

Reference Data
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Reference Data in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Reference Data over the 6 months leading up to 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 469 482 546
Rank change year-on-year +13 +64 +64
Contract jobs citing Reference Data 81 92 133
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.25% 0.21% 0.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.74% 0.70% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 71 98
10th Percentile £453 £425 £421
25th Percentile £525 £513 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +8.33% -2.24%
75th Percentile £750 £925 £723
90th Percentile £800 - £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £568 £513
% change year-on-year -3.08% +10.73% -1.44%

All Generic Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 11,010 13,126 18,562
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.62% 30.28% 32.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,820 8,335 12,771
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £406 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
75th Percentile £650 £665 £676
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 507 911 574
10th Percentile £15.48 £12.25 £10.63
25th Percentile £18.87 £15.39 £11.87
Median hourly rate £30.00 £36.50 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year -17.81% +52.75% -11.43%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.44
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.50 £77.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £36.05 £24.59
% change year-on-year -16.77% +46.60% +14.36%

Reference Data
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Reference Data in the UK

Reference Data
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Reference Data in the UK

Reference Data
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Reference Data over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Reference Data in the UK

Reference Data
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Reference Data in the UK

Reference Data
Top 12 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 5 July 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
England +42 75 £625 -3.85% 169
London +38 67 £625 -10.71% 144
Work from Home +35 26 £565 -5.83% 45
UK excluding London +40 11 £550 -3.08% 43
North of England -2 3 £550 -3.08% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 £563 - 11
Yorkshire - 3 £550 -
East Midlands - 2 £550 - 2
Midlands - 2 £550 - 3
East of England +26 1 - - 2
Scotland +3 1 £368 -26.40% 2
Wales - 1 - -

Reference Data
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 5 (6.17%) Apache
1 5 (6.17%) Apache Spark
2 4 (4.94%) Jupyter
3 3 (3.70%) Confluence
4 2 (2.47%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (2.47%) SharePoint
5 1 (1.23%) Appian
5 1 (1.23%) MS Project Server
5 1 (1.23%) SAS
Applications
1 5 (6.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (4.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (4.94%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (3.70%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (7.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (3.70%) SAP MDG
3 2 (2.47%) SAP MDG-S
4 1 (1.23%) Actimize
4 1 (1.23%) Endur
4 1 (1.23%) Fidessa
4 1 (1.23%) Orchestrade
4 1 (1.23%) Primavera
4 1 (1.23%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 22 (27.16%) Azure
2 14 (17.28%) Power Platform
3 10 (12.35%) AWS
4 5 (6.17%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (6.17%) GCP
5 3 (3.70%) dbt
6 2 (2.47%) Azure Data Factory
6 2 (2.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 2 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.23%) Collibra
7 1 (1.23%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (1.23%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.94%) SSH
2 1 (1.23%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (16.05%) Metadata
2 12 (14.81%) Data Warehouse
3 11 (13.58%) Power BI
4 10 (12.35%) SQL Server
5 7 (8.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (7.41%) Delta Lake
7 5 (6.17%) Apache Hive
8 4 (4.94%) DB2
8 4 (4.94%) Oracle Database
8 4 (4.94%) Power Query
9 3 (3.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (2.47%) Data Lake
10 2 (2.47%) Oracle Exadata
10 2 (2.47%) SAP HANA
10 2 (2.47%) Tableau
11 1 (1.23%) Data Mining
11 1 (1.23%) QlikView
11 1 (1.23%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 10 (12.35%) JIRA
2 6 (7.41%) Git
3 4 (4.94%) RStudio
4 1 (1.23%) ERwin
4 1 (1.23%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.23%) Postman
4 1 (1.23%) PowerDesigner
4 1 (1.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 41 (50.62%) Finance
2 31 (38.27%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (37.04%) Banking
4 29 (35.80%) Social Skills
5 12 (14.81%) Investment Banking
6 11 (13.58%) Front Office
7 7 (8.64%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (7.41%) Back Office
9 4 (4.94%) Public Sector
10 3 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (3.70%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (2.47%) Law
11 2 (2.47%) Legal
11 2 (2.47%) Local Government
12 1 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (1.23%) Retail
Job Titles
1 23 (28.40%) Analyst
2 16 (19.75%) Developer
3 12 (14.81%) Data Analyst
4 10 (12.35%) Architect
5 9 (11.11%) Business Analyst
6 8 (9.88%) Data Engineer
6 8 (9.88%) Lead
7 7 (8.64%) Database Developer
7 7 (8.64%) Project Manager
7 7 (8.64%) SQL Database Developer
7 7 (8.64%) SQL Developer
8 5 (6.17%) Data Architect
8 5 (6.17%) Fund Data Analyst
8 5 (6.17%) Senior
8 5 (6.17%) SQL Analyst
8 5 (6.17%) SQL Data Analyst
9 4 (4.94%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 4 (4.94%) Data Warehouse Analyst
9 4 (4.94%) Migration Architect
9 4 (4.94%) Performance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.64%) JSON
2 6 (7.41%) PySpark
3 5 (6.17%) pydantic
3 5 (6.17%) YAML
4 4 (4.94%) FIX Protocol
5 2 (2.47%) .NET
5 2 (2.47%) XML
6 1 (1.23%) ASP.NET
6 1 (1.23%) ASP.NET MVC
6 1 (1.23%) Boost C++ Libraries
6 1 (1.23%) Flask
6 1 (1.23%) FpML
6 1 (1.23%) Kafka
6 1 (1.23%) LDAP
6 1 (1.23%) Motif
6 1 (1.23%) QuickFIX
6 1 (1.23%) React
6 1 (1.23%) REST
6 1 (1.23%) STL
6 1 (1.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 12 (14.81%) Data Structures
1 12 (14.81%) Hedge funds
2 7 (8.64%) Derivative
2 7 (8.64%) Legacy Systems
2 7 (8.64%) Product Ownership
3 6 (7.41%) Linux Command Line
4 5 (6.17%) Equities
5 4 (4.94%) Fixed Income
5 4 (4.94%) Market Risk
5 4 (4.94%) Onboarding
6 3 (3.70%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (3.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 3 (3.70%) NHS
6 3 (3.70%) PMI
6 3 (3.70%) Virtual Team
7 2 (2.47%) Credit Risk
8 1 (1.23%) Data Centre
8 1 (1.23%) Equity Derivative
8 1 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 9 (11.11%) Linux
2 2 (2.47%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (34.57%) Data Governance
2 24 (29.63%) Problem-Solving
3 23 (28.40%) Migration
4 19 (23.46%) Data Management
5 16 (19.75%) Agile
6 15 (18.52%) Analytics
7 14 (17.28%) Data Migration
8 13 (16.05%) Data Architecture
8 13 (16.05%) Data Pipeline
9 11 (13.58%) Data Analysis
9 11 (13.58%) DevOps
9 11 (13.58%) Master Data Management
9 11 (13.58%) Project Management
9 11 (13.58%) Reference Data Management
10 10 (12.35%) Data Security
10 10 (12.35%) User Acceptance Testing
11 9 (11.11%) Data Ingestion
11 9 (11.11%) Data Modelling
11 9 (11.11%) ETL
11 9 (11.11%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 41 (50.62%) SQL
2 26 (32.10%) Python
3 5 (6.17%) Bash
3 5 (6.17%) C++
3 5 (6.17%) Scala
4 3 (3.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 2 (2.47%) C#
6 1 (1.23%) C
6 1 (1.23%) Java
6 1 (1.23%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.23%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.23%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.23%) Ruby
6 1 (1.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 14 (17.28%) Degree
2 6 (7.41%) Computer Science Degree
2 6 (7.41%) SC Cleared
2 6 (7.41%) Security Cleared
3 5 (6.17%) PMI Certification
4 3 (3.70%) Master's Degree
5 2 (2.47%) PMP
5 2 (2.47%) SAP Certification
5 2 (2.47%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (28.40%) Data Quality
2 12 (14.81%) GDPR
3 5 (6.17%) MiFID
3 5 (6.17%) QA
4 3 (3.70%) EMIR
4 3 (3.70%) PMO
5 2 (2.47%) Accessibility
6 1 (1.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (1.23%) FATCA
6 1 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1 (1.23%) Active Directory
1 1 (1.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 1 (1.23%) Progress Chef
1 1 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 9 (11.11%) Databricks
2 8 (9.88%) Microsoft
2 8 (9.88%) Oracle
3 7 (8.64%) SAP
4 6 (7.41%) Informatica
5 4 (4.94%) Google
5 4 (4.94%) IBM
6 2 (2.47%) BiZZdesign
6 2 (2.47%) Bloomberg
6 2 (2.47%) Murex
6 2 (2.47%) Reuters
6 2 (2.47%) Trayport
7 1 (1.23%) Alteryx
7 1 (1.23%) CQG
7 1 (1.23%) ION Trading
7 1 (1.23%) OpenLink
7 1 (1.23%) Pega
7 1 (1.23%) Salesforce