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 7 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,340 2,187 2,646
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.53% 17.24% 12.69%
As % of the General category 27.69% 27.83% 23.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,095 1,394 1,662
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £405 £400 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £531 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.61% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 69 189
10th Percentile £14.02 £18.12 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.98 £22.50 £14.13
Median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%
75th Percentile £34.44 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £74.58 £78.47 £51.76
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%

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 12,062 7,858 11,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.47% 61.94% 54.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,264 4,883 6,639
10th Percentile £238 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £587 £600
90th Percentile £675 £664 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,344 539 1,571
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £17.44 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £27.13 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +7.43% -18.23%
75th Percentile £60.00 £59.38 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.93 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.53
% change year-on-year -11.14% +9.31% -24.20%

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 7 April 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 7 April 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 7 April 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 +3 1,092 £475 - 695
South East -1 654 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands 0 585 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +5 583 £459 -1.29% 371
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 395 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 381 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 332 £525 +4.95% 302
East of England -2 201 £513 -6.82% 271
East Midlands 0 185 £449 +1.24% 171
Wales +24 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4
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
1 156 (4.67%) Confluence
2 110 (3.29%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 27 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (0.63%) Apache
6 11 (0.33%) SAS
7 9 (0.27%) CICS
7 9 (0.27%) TPMS
8 8 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.24%) CMS
9 7 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.090%) Camunda
13 3 (0.090%) IIS
14 2 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.060%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.060%) Tomcat
Applications
1 255 (7.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (3.89%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.44%) Microsoft Project
4 85 (2.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (1.26%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.060%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.030%) UXPin
11 1 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 153 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.59%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.41%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
4 40 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 33 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
5 33 (0.99%) Oracle General Ledger
6 30 (0.90%) SAP FI
7 28 (0.84%) Oracle Assets
8 26 (0.78%) Oracle Cash Management
9 24 (0.72%) NetSuite
10 20 (0.60%) SAP CO
11 19 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
11 19 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
12 18 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
13 15 (0.45%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.45%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.39%) NEC Housing
15 12 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 411 (12.31%) Azure
2 355 (10.63%) AWS
3 201 (6.02%) Power Platform
4 159 (4.76%) GCP
5 113 (3.38%) Microsoft 365
6 91 (2.72%) GitHub
7 87 (2.60%) SaaS
8 81 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
9 77 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
10 67 (2.01%) Serverless
11 52 (1.56%) Entra ID
12 48 (1.44%) OpenShift
13 44 (1.32%) OCI
14 37 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
15 36 (1.08%) Snowflake
16 35 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 31 (0.93%) Amazon S3
19 29 (0.87%) Microsoft Copilot
20 26 (0.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.46%) Firewall
2 40 (1.20%) WAN
3 36 (1.08%) DNS
3 36 (1.08%) Network Security
4 31 (0.93%) VPN
5 21 (0.63%) SD-WAN
6 20 (0.60%) LAN
7 18 (0.54%) Skype
8 17 (0.51%) SSL
9 16 (0.48%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.42%) Internet
11 11 (0.33%) DHCP
11 11 (0.33%) SSH
11 11 (0.33%) Wireless
12 9 (0.27%) MPLS
12 9 (0.27%) SNMP
13 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
13 8 (0.24%) VSAN
13 8 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.18%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (5.54%) Power BI
2 80 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 76 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 51 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
5 50 (1.50%) NoSQL
6 49 (1.47%) Metadata
7 45 (1.35%) Relational Database
8 38 (1.14%) SQL Server
9 34 (1.02%) Tableau
10 29 (0.87%) Data Lake
10 29 (0.87%) DynamoDB
11 27 (0.81%) Big Data
12 23 (0.69%) Power Query
13 22 (0.66%) Oracle ODI
14 16 (0.48%) BigQuery
15 14 (0.42%) MongoDB
16 13 (0.39%) MySQL
16 13 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
16 13 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 12 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 305 (9.13%) JIRA
2 114 (3.41%) Jenkins
3 64 (1.92%) GitLab
4 57 (1.71%) Git
5 35 (1.05%) JUnit
6 34 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
7 28 (0.84%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.60%) Selenium
9 13 (0.39%) Hudson
9 13 (0.39%) Postman
10 12 (0.36%) Bitbucket
10 12 (0.36%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.27%) JMeter
11 9 (0.27%) Liquibase
12 8 (0.24%) Gradle
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.18%) Maven
13 6 (0.18%) Snyk
13 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,128 (33.77%) Social Skills
2 503 (15.06%) Banking
3 432 (12.93%) Analytical Skills
4 342 (10.24%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.70%) Manufacturing
6 138 (4.13%) Telecoms
7 127 (3.80%) Organisational Skills
8 119 (3.56%) Marketing
9 112 (3.35%) Legal
10 101 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
11 85 (2.54%) Financial Institution
11 85 (2.54%) Local Government
12 77 (2.31%) Electronics
13 75 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
13 75 (2.25%) Retail
14 62 (1.86%) General Ledger
15 51 (1.53%) Billing
16 48 (1.44%) Investment Banking
17 42 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
18 33 (0.99%) Law
Job Titles
1 504 (15.09%) Analyst
2 333 (9.97%) Project Manager
3 287 (8.59%) Architect
4 285 (8.53%) Lead
5 262 (7.84%) Senior
6 237 (7.10%) Consultant
7 226 (6.77%) Business Analyst
8 205 (6.14%) Developer
9 125 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
10 105 (3.14%) Accountant
11 91 (2.72%) Programme Manager
12 90 (2.69%) Senior Manager
13 82 (2.46%) Finance Manager
14 71 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 69 (2.07%) SAP Consultant
16 62 (1.86%) Systems Accountant
17 61 (1.83%) Data Engineer
18 58 (1.74%) Functional Consultant
19 57 (1.71%) IT Manager
20 56 (1.68%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (3.14%) REST
2 83 (2.49%) Spring
3 79 (2.37%) Spring Boot
4 74 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 72 (2.16%) Kafka
6 68 (2.04%) Middleware
7 50 (1.50%) RESTful
8 36 (1.08%) Node.js
9 35 (1.05%) .NET
10 34 (1.02%) React
11 31 (0.93%) JSON
12 29 (0.87%) OAuth
13 28 (0.84%) SOAP
14 27 (0.81%) XML
15 24 (0.72%) HTML
16 21 (0.63%) AngularJS
16 21 (0.63%) CSS
17 19 (0.57%) Elastic Stack
17 19 (0.57%) OpenTelemetry
17 19 (0.57%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 153 (4.58%) Onboarding
2 127 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 105 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 102 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 81 (2.43%) Data Centre
6 78 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
7 75 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
8 66 (1.98%) Public Cloud
9 63 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
10 46 (1.38%) Data Structures
11 40 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
13 34 (1.02%) PMI
14 33 (0.99%) Virtual Team
15 30 (0.90%) CMDB
15 30 (0.90%) Mainframe
16 29 (0.87%) Mobile App
17 21 (0.63%) Security Posture
18 20 (0.60%) Operational Technology
19 18 (0.54%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 128 (3.83%) Linux
2 106 (3.17%) Windows
3 46 (1.38%) Unix
4 27 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 23 (0.69%) Windows Server
6 20 (0.60%) Android
7 19 (0.57%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (0.24%) AIX
9 8 (0.24%) Solaris
10 6 (0.18%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.12%) VMS
13 3 (0.090%) zOS
14 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.030%) MVS
14 1 (0.030%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 663 (19.85%) Stakeholder Management
2 654 (19.58%) Agile
3 531 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
4 481 (14.40%) Migration
5 444 (13.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 407 (12.19%) ERP
7 403 (12.07%) Project Management
8 386 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
9 356 (10.66%) DevOps
10 313 (9.37%) Business Intelligence
11 296 (8.86%) CI/CD
12 293 (8.77%) Project Delivery
13 289 (8.65%) Change Management
14 249 (7.46%) Decision-Making
15 232 (6.95%) User Acceptance Testing
16 226 (6.77%) Analytics
17 224 (6.71%) Roadmaps
18 209 (6.26%) AI
19 208 (6.23%) Data Modelling
20 207 (6.20%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 333 (9.97%) SQL
2 250 (7.49%) Python
3 191 (5.72%) Java
4 68 (2.04%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.87%) JavaScript
6 28 (0.84%) TypeScript
7 24 (0.72%) Bash
7 24 (0.72%) Go
8 23 (0.69%) VBA
9 20 (0.60%) PL/SQL
10 19 (0.57%) C#
11 16 (0.48%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 12 (0.36%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.33%) COBOL
14 10 (0.30%) ABAP
14 10 (0.30%) Perl
15 9 (0.27%) C++
15 9 (0.27%) R
16 8 (0.24%) Rust
Qualifications
1 350 (10.48%) Security Cleared
2 328 (9.82%) Degree
3 217 (6.50%) SC Cleared
4 106 (3.17%) PMP
5 103 (3.08%) ACCA
6 102 (3.05%) PMI Certification
7 98 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 96 (2.87%) CIMA
9 72 (2.16%) DV Cleared
10 62 (1.86%) Master's Degree
11 60 (1.80%) CISSP
12 53 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
13 40 (1.20%) CISM
14 36 (1.08%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 19 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
17 18 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 16 (0.48%) MBA
19 15 (0.45%) Azure Certification
20 13 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (5.51%) PMO
2 155 (4.64%) Data Quality
3 137 (4.10%) GDPR
3 137 (4.10%) QA
4 63 (1.89%) NIST
5 52 (1.56%) SLA
6 47 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 47 (1.41%) PCI DSS
7 29 (0.87%) IFRS
8 25 (0.75%) Accessibility
9 24 (0.72%) ISO 20022
10 23 (0.69%) GRC
10 23 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.57%) PSD2
12 14 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
13 13 (0.39%) GAAP
13 13 (0.39%) SEPA
14 12 (0.36%) Basel III
14 12 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.27%) GLBA
System Software
1 114 (3.41%) Docker
2 71 (2.13%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.63%) vSphere
5 15 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.36%) GPFS
6 12 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.33%) NFS
8 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.12%) KVM
10 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.090%) Firmware
11 3 (0.090%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.060%) ACF2
12 2 (0.060%) HDFS
12 2 (0.060%) RACF
12 2 (0.060%) SRDF
12 2 (0.060%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 164 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 86 (2.57%) Terraform
3 78 (2.34%) Ansible
4 51 (1.53%) Grafana
5 42 (1.26%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.45%) SCCM
8 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.42%) vRealize
9 13 (0.39%) Progress Chef
10 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.27%) Nessus
11 8 (0.24%) Kiali
12 7 (0.21%) HP ALM
13 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.18%) VxRail
14 5 (0.15%) Argo
14 5 (0.15%) CASB
14 5 (0.15%) Istio
14 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 436 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 367 (10.99%) SAP
3 292 (8.74%) Oracle
4 159 (4.76%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.81%) Google
6 74 (2.22%) Cisco
7 68 (2.04%) Splunk
8 57 (1.71%) Sage
9 54 (1.62%) Databricks
9 54 (1.62%) IBM
9 54 (1.62%) VMware
10 45 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 33 (0.99%) IFS
12 32 (0.96%) Workday
13 25 (0.75%) Dell
13 25 (0.75%) HP
14 21 (0.63%) Adobe
15 19 (0.57%) Ariba
15 19 (0.57%) Citrix
15 19 (0.57%) Remedy