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 1 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,803 2,433 2,752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.43% 17.57% 13.06%
As % of the General category 28.29% 28.43% 24.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,314 1,586 1,667
10th Percentile £333 £308 £281
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £586 £619
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 73 209
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.05 £12.70
25th Percentile £17.87 £17.80 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.55 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +48.16% -7.38% -31.50%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.60 £75.00 £58.50
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £33.45 £28.00
% change year-on-year +4.65% +19.45% -7.83%

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 13,444 8,558 11,254
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.03% 61.80% 53.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,605 5,213 6,307
10th Percentile £270 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £684 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £517 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.34% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,662 711 1,689
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.52
25th Percentile £17.24 £15.50 £15.17
Median hourly rate £31.53 £23.00 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +37.08% -24.27% +20.88%
75th Percentile £63.28 £50.00 £54.55
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.39 £31.61
% change year-on-year +16.84% -13.34% +4.48%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +1 1,298 £500 +7.53% 840
South East -1 698 £500 -5.88% 1,002
North West +4 679 £473 +5.11% 455
Midlands 0 657 £500 +11.11% 474
Yorkshire 0 574 £525 +7.69% 287
West Midlands +1 485 £500 +1.63% 271
Scotland 0 479 £483 +0.47% 195
South West -3 381 £525 - 344
East of England +5 197 £513 -10.87% 256
East Midlands 0 165 £475 +11.76% 202
Wales +7 87 £530 +13.98% 177
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +8.57% 88
North East -16 46 £500 +13.96% 107
Channel Islands - 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
1 166 (4.36%) Confluence
2 102 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.47%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 13 (0.34%) Apache
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
8 10 (0.26%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.079%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.079%) TPMS
13 2 (0.053%) JBoss
13 2 (0.053%) Mule
13 2 (0.053%) nginx
13 2 (0.053%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 239 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.42%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.053%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.053%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.16%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.08%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (1.05%) NetSuite
5 37 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 37 (0.97%) Oracle Receivables
6 21 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
7 19 (0.50%) SAP FI
8 18 (0.47%) Unit4 Business World
9 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
11 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.29%) SAP CO
12 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 472 (12.41%) Azure
2 325 (8.55%) AWS
3 225 (5.92%) Power Platform
4 199 (5.23%) GCP
5 103 (2.71%) SaaS
6 95 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
7 91 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
8 83 (2.18%) GitHub
9 71 (1.87%) Entra ID
10 69 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
12 44 (1.16%) OpenShift
13 40 (1.05%) Serverless
14 36 (0.95%) OCI
15 25 (0.66%) PowerApps
16 24 (0.63%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 23 (0.60%) PaaS
18 22 (0.58%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.18%) Firewall
2 64 (1.68%) Network Security
3 36 (0.95%) DNS
4 34 (0.89%) WAN
5 33 (0.87%) VPN
6 23 (0.60%) SSL
7 21 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.47%) LAN
9 15 (0.39%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.32%) DHCP
11 11 (0.29%) VSAN
12 9 (0.24%) BGP
12 9 (0.24%) MPLS
13 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.18%) Internet
15 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
16 5 (0.13%) Intranet
16 5 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (4.94%) Power BI
2 78 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.79%) Metadata
5 58 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
6 57 (1.50%) SQL Server
7 53 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
8 35 (0.92%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.92%) Tableau
9 32 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 26 (0.68%) MongoDB
11 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
11 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
12 21 (0.55%) DynamoDB
12 21 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (0.53%) Db2
14 17 (0.45%) Data Vault
14 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
14 17 (0.45%) Power Query
15 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 279 (7.34%) JIRA
2 86 (2.26%) Git
3 74 (1.95%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.71%) JUnit
5 22 (0.58%) GitLab
6 20 (0.53%) Selenium
7 19 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.37%) Hudson
9 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.32%) Postman
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.24%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Gradle
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Maven
13 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
14 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,219 (32.05%) Social Skills
2 527 (13.86%) Banking
3 502 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
4 276 (7.26%) Public Sector
5 182 (4.79%) Legal
6 160 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 131 (3.44%) Retail
8 109 (2.87%) Local Government
8 109 (2.87%) Manufacturing
9 106 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
10 104 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (2.26%) Financial Institution
12 83 (2.18%) General Ledger
13 82 (2.16%) Investment Banking
14 67 (1.76%) Billing
15 60 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 54 (1.42%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.26%) Marketing
18 45 (1.18%) Aerospace
19 44 (1.16%) Law
Job Titles
1 524 (13.78%) Analyst
2 361 (9.49%) Lead
3 356 (9.36%) Architect
4 346 (9.10%) Project Manager
5 338 (8.89%) Senior
6 279 (7.34%) Developer
7 255 (6.71%) Consultant
8 236 (6.21%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.18%) Solutions Architect
10 158 (4.15%) Accountant
11 100 (2.63%) Systems Accountant
12 98 (2.58%) Senior Manager
13 97 (2.55%) IT Manager
14 90 (2.37%) Programme Manager
15 80 (2.10%) Financial Analyst
16 79 (2.08%) Java Developer
17 70 (1.84%) Finance Manager
18 65 (1.71%) Administrator
19 63 (1.66%) SAP Consultant
20 62 (1.63%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (3.26%) Oracle Fusion
2 89 (2.34%) Middleware
3 88 (2.31%) REST
4 70 (1.84%) Kafka
5 68 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 67 (1.76%) Spring
7 59 (1.55%) .NET
8 57 (1.50%) React
9 40 (1.05%) RESTful
10 34 (0.89%) JSON
11 33 (0.87%) OAuth
12 29 (0.76%) Node.js
13 27 (0.71%) XML
14 26 (0.68%) OpenID
14 26 (0.68%) SailPoint
14 26 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
15 23 (0.60%) Redux
16 22 (0.58%) AngularJS
17 19 (0.50%) SAML
18 18 (0.47%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.21%) Onboarding
2 153 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 141 (3.71%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 103 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
6 101 (2.66%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.08%) Data Centre
8 74 (1.95%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 67 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 49 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
11 47 (1.24%) Mainframe
12 45 (1.18%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
14 34 (0.89%) Web Conferencing
15 33 (0.87%) Podcast
16 29 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
17 28 (0.74%) AI Agents
18 27 (0.71%) CMDB
19 26 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.18%) Windows
2 101 (2.66%) Linux
3 58 (1.53%) Unix
4 31 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.71%) Solaris
6 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.55%) zOS
8 13 (0.34%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
9 10 (0.26%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.11%) HPUX
13 4 (0.11%) MVS
13 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.11%) SUSE
14 3 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 868 (22.82%) Stakeholder Management
2 699 (18.38%) Agile
3 555 (14.59%) Problem-Solving
4 551 (14.49%) Migration
5 514 (13.52%) Continuous Improvement
5 514 (13.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 494 (12.99%) ERP
7 406 (10.68%) Project Management
8 363 (9.55%) DevOps
9 346 (9.10%) Decision-Making
10 342 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 339 (8.91%) Change Management
12 317 (8.34%) Project Delivery
13 305 (8.02%) AI
14 290 (7.63%) User Acceptance Testing
15 288 (7.57%) Roadmaps
16 268 (7.05%) Validation
17 260 (6.84%) Risk Management
18 243 (6.39%) Analytics
19 238 (6.26%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 357 (9.39%) SQL
2 290 (7.63%) Python
3 218 (5.73%) Java
4 77 (2.02%) PowerShell
5 54 (1.42%) C#
6 43 (1.13%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.00%) Bash
8 36 (0.95%) PL/SQL
9 32 (0.84%) TypeScript
10 23 (0.60%) Go
11 22 (0.58%) C++
12 21 (0.55%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.42%) VBA
14 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.29%) COBOL
16 11 (0.29%) Rust
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
18 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 351 (9.23%) Security Cleared
2 307 (8.07%) Degree
3 220 (5.78%) SC Cleared
4 131 (3.44%) ACCA
5 128 (3.37%) CIMA
6 120 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (3.05%) PMP
8 100 (2.63%) PMI Certification
9 77 (2.02%) CISSP
10 63 (1.66%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.21%) CISM
12 40 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 31 (0.82%) Master's Degree
15 30 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 29 (0.76%) Azure Certification
17 27 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
18 20 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
19 18 (0.47%) DBS Check
20 17 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (5.29%) Data Quality
2 164 (4.31%) PMO
3 149 (3.92%) GDPR
4 136 (3.58%) QA
5 57 (1.50%) NIST
6 50 (1.31%) SLA
7 46 (1.21%) GRC
8 39 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.92%) IFRS
10 34 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 33 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.76%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.32%) IFRS 17
16 11 (0.29%) PSD2
17 10 (0.26%) NCSC
17 10 (0.26%) SEPA
18 9 (0.24%) GAAP
19 7 (0.18%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 88 (2.31%) Docker
2 79 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.42%) RACF
6 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.34%) vSphere
7 12 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) KVM
11 2 (0.053%) ACF2
11 2 (0.053%) Firmware
11 2 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.053%) SRDF
11 2 (0.053%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 168 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 93 (2.45%) Terraform
3 79 (2.08%) Ansible
4 37 (0.97%) Grafana
5 31 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 29 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.50%) SCCM
9 13 (0.34%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.32%) Control-M
10 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Argo
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.24%) FortiGate
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 7 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
16 6 (0.16%) VxRail
17 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 475 (12.49%) Microsoft
2 399 (10.49%) SAP
3 353 (9.28%) Oracle
4 165 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 106 (2.79%) Google
6 74 (1.95%) IBM
7 72 (1.89%) Databricks
8 57 (1.50%) VMware
9 56 (1.47%) Sage
10 50 (1.31%) Cisco
11 48 (1.26%) Splunk
12 38 (1.00%) Salesforce
13 35 (0.92%) IFS
14 32 (0.84%) Ariba
14 32 (0.84%) Workday
15 23 (0.60%) HP
16 22 (0.58%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.53%) MuleSoft
18 19 (0.50%) Foundry
19 18 (0.47%) Sybase