Finance Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Financial
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Finance in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Finance over the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,892 2,715 2,570
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.25% 17.68% 14.11%
As % of the General category 27.55% 28.94% 26.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 1,794 1,588
10th Percentile £342 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.57% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £545 £575
% change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 70 158
10th Percentile £15.14 £14.85 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.06 £16.69 £23.64
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +23.95%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £40.06
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £70.05
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +46.62%

All General Skills
UK excluding London

Finance falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 14,127 9,381 9,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.71% 61.10% 53.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,820 5,652 5,644
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.99% -1.05%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £650 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,928 842 1,179
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +46.90%
75th Percentile £61.18 £46.27 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.63 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%

Finance
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Finance relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Finance job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Finance
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance

Finance
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Finance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Finance in the UK excluding London

Finance
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance

Finance
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Finance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Finance in the UK excluding London

Finance
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Finance within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 10 August 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
North of England 0 1,329 £500 +6.61% 1,044
South East -1 740 £500 -5.66% 1,127
North West 0 696 £500 +9.29% 590
Midlands 0 634 £515 +14.33% 549
Yorkshire 0 567 £515 +8.42% 332
Scotland 0 507 £475 -5.00% 292
West Midlands +1 485 £525 +5.00% 334
South West -4 376 £525 -4.55% 439
East of England +6 208 £528 -8.26% 298
East Midlands -3 143 £500 +21.21% 215
Wales +1 69 £530 +14.59% 113
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 115
North East -14 59 £500 +11.11% 131
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 -
Finance
UK

Finance
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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
1 142 (3.65%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) CMS
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (0.28%) SAS
6 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
7 7 (0.18%) IIS
7 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
10 3 (0.077%) Camunda
10 3 (0.077%) Mule
10 3 (0.077%) Mule ESB
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
10 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.051%) JBoss
11 2 (0.051%) nginx
Applications
1 247 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (5.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.05%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
9 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
9 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
10 20 (0.51%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
13 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
13 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
14 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 473 (12.15%) Azure
2 308 (7.91%) AWS
3 223 (5.73%) Power Platform
4 218 (5.60%) GCP
5 104 (2.67%) SaaS
6 93 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.31%) Microsoft 365
8 87 (2.24%) Dynamics 365
9 85 (2.18%) GitHub
10 68 (1.75%) Entra ID
11 51 (1.31%) OCI
12 44 (1.13%) Snowflake
13 40 (1.03%) Serverless
14 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
14 38 (0.98%) OpenShift
15 27 (0.69%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.62%) Anthropic Claude
18 23 (0.59%) AWS CloudFormation
18 23 (0.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.03%) Firewall
2 66 (1.70%) Network Security
3 43 (1.10%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.64%) WAN
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Broadband
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.68%) Power BI
2 78 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) Relational Database
4 66 (1.70%) Metadata
5 65 (1.67%) SQL Server
6 51 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
7 47 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 36 (0.92%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.51%) Data Vault
15 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.39%) Power Query
17 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 244 (6.27%) JIRA
2 100 (2.57%) Git
3 52 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 15 (0.39%) GitLab
5 15 (0.39%) Hudson
5 15 (0.39%) Selenium
6 14 (0.36%) Claude Code
6 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
9 9 (0.23%) Postman
10 8 (0.21%) ERwin
11 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
12 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
12 5 (0.13%) Liquibase
12 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,241 (31.89%) Social Skills
2 557 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
3 535 (13.75%) Banking
4 285 (7.32%) Public Sector
5 237 (6.09%) Legal
6 236 (6.06%) Organisational Skills
7 159 (4.09%) Retail
8 130 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.88%) Manufacturing
10 104 (2.67%) Local Government
11 99 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
12 82 (2.11%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.00%) Financial Institution
13 78 (2.00%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.88%) Billing
15 69 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.44%) Marketing
16 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
17 53 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 521 (13.39%) Analyst
2 422 (10.84%) Lead
3 359 (9.22%) Senior
4 324 (8.32%) Project Manager
5 311 (7.99%) Architect
6 284 (7.30%) Developer
7 265 (6.81%) Consultant
8 244 (6.27%) Business Analyst
9 174 (4.47%) Accountant
10 138 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
11 105 (2.70%) Systems Accountant
12 98 (2.52%) IT Manager
13 96 (2.47%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.29%) Financial Analyst
15 83 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.95%) Administrator
17 70 (1.80%) Finance Manager
18 69 (1.77%) Programme Manager
19 68 (1.75%) Data Analyst
20 64 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
2 81 (2.08%) REST
3 76 (1.95%) Middleware
4 63 (1.62%) Kafka
5 61 (1.57%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.54%) Spring
7 59 (1.52%) .NET
8 56 (1.44%) React
9 37 (0.95%) OAuth
10 34 (0.87%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 31 (0.80%) XML
13 28 (0.72%) JSON
13 28 (0.72%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.67%) SAML
15 25 (0.64%) OpenID
16 22 (0.57%) SailPoint
17 20 (0.51%) HTML
17 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
17 20 (0.51%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 157 (4.03%) Onboarding
2 156 (4.01%) Product Ownership
3 148 (3.80%) Cloud Native
4 136 (3.49%) Virtual Team
5 113 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 105 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
8 90 (2.31%) Podcast
8 90 (2.31%) Web Conferencing
9 70 (1.80%) Data Structures
10 55 (1.41%) Data Centre
10 55 (1.41%) Public Cloud
11 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
13 48 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
14 40 (1.03%) AI Agents
14 40 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
15 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (0.95%) Mobile App
17 34 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.16%) Windows
2 106 (2.72%) Linux
3 60 (1.54%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.64%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 12 (0.31%) Android
9 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
11 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) VMS
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
15 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
16 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 924 (23.74%) Stakeholder Management
2 710 (18.24%) Agile
3 549 (14.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 545 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
5 527 (13.54%) Migration
6 518 (13.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (13.05%) ERP
8 361 (9.28%) Decision-Making
9 353 (9.07%) AI
10 350 (8.99%) Project Management
11 347 (8.92%) CI/CD
11 347 (8.92%) DevOps
12 337 (8.66%) Change Management
13 309 (7.94%) Project Delivery
14 282 (7.25%) Roadmaps
14 282 (7.25%) User Acceptance Testing
15 273 (7.01%) Validation
16 269 (6.91%) Risk Management
17 267 (6.86%) Analytics
18 242 (6.22%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 326 (8.38%) SQL
2 310 (7.97%) Python
3 216 (5.55%) Java
4 70 (1.80%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) C#
6 51 (1.31%) Bash
7 49 (1.26%) JavaScript
8 38 (0.98%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 33 (0.85%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 22 (0.57%) Go
13 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
16 11 (0.28%) Bicep
16 11 (0.28%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) VBA
18 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 359 (9.22%) Security Cleared
2 280 (7.19%) Degree
3 217 (5.58%) SC Cleared
4 153 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (3.01%) ACCA
6 114 (2.93%) CIMA
7 100 (2.57%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) PMI Certification
9 87 (2.24%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.80%) CISSP
11 39 (1.00%) CISM
12 33 (0.85%) AWS Certification
12 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 32 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
16 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
18 20 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (5.78%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.52%) PMO
3 136 (3.49%) QA
4 134 (3.44%) GDPR
5 50 (1.28%) SLA
6 48 (1.23%) GRC
7 47 (1.21%) NIST
8 35 (0.90%) IFRS
9 34 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 33 (0.85%) Accessibility
10 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 17 (0.44%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 11 (0.28%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 8 (0.21%) IFRS 17
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) NCSC
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 75 (1.93%) Active Directory
2 71 (1.82%) Docker
3 38 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) ACF2
13 2 (0.051%) KVM
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.051%) SRDF
14 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 163 (4.19%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.77%) Terraform
3 71 (1.82%) Ansible
4 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
6 26 (0.67%) Grafana
7 19 (0.49%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.39%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.39%) SCCM
10 10 (0.26%) Control-M
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Argo
11 9 (0.23%) Istio
12 7 (0.18%) CASB
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) Nessus
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.15%) Puppet
Vendors
1 532 (13.67%) Microsoft
2 403 (10.35%) SAP
3 386 (9.92%) Oracle
4 176 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 108 (2.77%) Google
6 82 (2.11%) IBM
7 79 (2.03%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) Salesforce
9 54 (1.39%) VMware
10 50 (1.28%) Sage
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 32 (0.82%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Ariba
14 31 (0.80%) Splunk
15 23 (0.59%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) CyberArk