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 13 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,905 2,649 2,690
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.79% 16.77% 15.59%
As % of the General category 25.96% 27.67% 27.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,254 1,760 1,560
10th Percentile £347 £307 £302
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £574
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.50% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 75 94
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.51 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.56 £15.50 £23.62
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +25.15%
75th Percentile - £29.76 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.10 £56.70 £74.63
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%

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 15,044 9,575 9,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.14% 60.62% 56.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,916 5,810 5,299
10th Percentile £257 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £477
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -0.42% -4.60%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £662 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,396 971 768
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.37 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.66 £15.92
Median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.56% -28.70% +11.11%
75th Percentile £54.23 £42.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £71.80
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.01 £32.14
% change year-on-year +9.98% -22.20% +11.79%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 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
North of England 0 1,361 £513 +9.20% 1,084
South East -1 743 £500 -2.58% 1,007
North West -2 648 £502 +11.44% 570
Yorkshire +1 634 £514 +2.80% 387
Midlands -3 606 £523 +10.00% 528
Scotland +1 543 £463 -7.50% 561
West Midlands -2 450 £500 -4.76% 335
South West -5 340 £525 -4.55% 404
East of England +2 202 £530 -6.19% 325
East Midlands -2 150 £525 +25.00% 193
North East -9 72 £538 +22.86% 132
Wales +2 71 £525 +16.67% 113
Northern Ireland 0 63 £463 -11.90% 268
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 3
South Coast - 1 £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
1 147 (3.76%) Confluence
2 98 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.64%) Apache
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) SAS
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.20%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) IIS
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 261 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
Business Applications
1 207 (5.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
5 32 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.82%) Oracle General Ledger
6 31 (0.79%) SAP FI
7 29 (0.74%) NetSuite
8 26 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
9 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
11 21 (0.54%) Workday HCM
12 20 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 17 (0.44%) SAP BRIM
14 14 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
15 13 (0.33%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
15 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.24%) Azure
2 355 (9.09%) AWS
3 253 (6.48%) GCP
4 216 (5.53%) Power Platform
5 112 (2.87%) GitHub
6 107 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
8 96 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 88 (2.25%) SaaS
10 76 (1.95%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) Serverless
12 45 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
12 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.08%) OCI
14 41 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (1.00%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (0.79%) Power Automate
18 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
18 29 (0.74%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.15%) Network Security
2 82 (2.10%) Firewall
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 28 (0.72%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
5 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.51%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) Broadband
8 15 (0.38%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 11 (0.28%) BGP
11 10 (0.26%) DHCP
12 9 (0.23%) SAN
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 7 (0.18%) OSPF
13 7 (0.18%) VLAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (4.51%) Power BI
2 78 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) Metadata
3 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
4 64 (1.64%) Relational Database
5 48 (1.23%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.87%) Tableau
8 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
9 28 (0.72%) Db2
10 25 (0.64%) BigQuery
11 23 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
12 22 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
13 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 16 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
16 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 241 (6.17%) JIRA
2 125 (3.20%) Git
3 76 (1.95%) Jenkins
4 32 (0.82%) GitLab
5 21 (0.54%) JUnit
6 20 (0.51%) Claude Code
7 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.38%) Maven
8 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 13 (0.33%) Postman
10 11 (0.28%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Mockito
11 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 8 (0.20%) SonarQube
13 7 (0.18%) JMeter
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Toad
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,367 (35.01%) Social Skills
2 624 (15.98%) Banking
3 541 (13.85%) Analytical Skills
4 288 (7.38%) Organisational Skills
5 287 (7.35%) Public Sector
6 259 (6.63%) Legal
7 157 (4.02%) Retail
8 146 (3.74%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.46%) Billing
11 95 (2.43%) General Ledger
12 87 (2.23%) Local Government
13 83 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 80 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
15 72 (1.84%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.84%) Marketing
16 65 (1.66%) Financial Institution
17 63 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
18 62 (1.59%) Telecoms
19 46 (1.18%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 481 (12.32%) Analyst
2 393 (10.06%) Lead
3 383 (9.81%) Senior
4 296 (7.58%) Architect
5 291 (7.45%) Developer
6 283 (7.25%) Project Manager
7 263 (6.73%) Consultant
8 229 (5.86%) Business Analyst
9 153 (3.92%) Accountant
10 145 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.59%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.51%) Administrator
13 94 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
14 91 (2.33%) Systems Accountant
15 90 (2.30%) Java Developer
16 82 (2.10%) Senior Manager
17 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
18 78 (2.00%) Programme Manager
19 74 (1.90%) Data Analyst
20 65 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.87%) Oracle Fusion
1 151 (3.87%) Terraform
2 122 (3.12%) REST
3 81 (2.07%) Kafka
4 75 (1.92%) React
5 70 (1.79%) Middleware
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 61 (1.56%) Spring
8 56 (1.43%) .NET
9 52 (1.33%) RESTful
10 47 (1.20%) JSON
10 47 (1.20%) OAuth
11 34 (0.87%) OpenID
12 33 (0.85%) Node.js
12 33 (0.85%) SAP Fiori
13 32 (0.82%) XML
14 30 (0.77%) SOAP
15 28 (0.72%) HTML
15 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
15 28 (0.72%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 183 (4.69%) Onboarding
2 178 (4.56%) Cloud Native
3 170 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.07%) Virtual Team
5 136 (3.48%) Data Protection Act
6 127 (3.25%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.84%) Podcast
9 85 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
10 72 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 71 (1.82%) AI Agents
12 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
13 67 (1.72%) Data Centre
14 64 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
15 52 (1.33%) Public Cloud
16 48 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.23%) Mainframe
17 44 (1.13%) Mobile App
18 43 (1.10%) Security Posture
19 40 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 113 (2.89%) Linux
2 108 (2.77%) Windows
3 54 (1.38%) Unix
4 34 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (0.67%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.67%) zOS
6 17 (0.44%) Solaris
7 15 (0.38%) Android
8 14 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) macOS
10 7 (0.18%) AIX
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) HPUX
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.077%) SUSE
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) MVS
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,123 (28.76%) Stakeholder Management
2 755 (19.33%) Agile
3 549 (14.06%) Continuous Improvement
4 541 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
5 502 (12.86%) Migration
6 487 (12.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 456 (11.68%) ERP
8 430 (11.01%) AI
9 429 (10.99%) CI/CD
10 396 (10.14%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.01%) DevOps
12 344 (8.81%) Roadmaps
13 340 (8.71%) Project Management
14 327 (8.37%) Change Management
15 311 (7.96%) Project Delivery
16 305 (7.81%) Analytics
17 302 (7.73%) Validation
18 291 (7.45%) Risk Management
19 275 (7.04%) User Acceptance Testing
20 231 (5.92%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 382 (9.78%) Python
2 364 (9.32%) SQL
3 246 (6.30%) Java
4 85 (2.18%) JavaScript
5 82 (2.10%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.72%) C#
7 63 (1.61%) Bash
8 51 (1.31%) TypeScript
9 41 (1.05%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 17 (0.44%) Perl
15 14 (0.36%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.20%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 359 (9.19%) Security Cleared
2 237 (6.07%) Degree
3 219 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 178 (4.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (2.66%) ACCA
6 103 (2.64%) CIMA
7 95 (2.43%) DV Cleared
8 93 (2.38%) PMP
9 82 (2.10%) PMI Certification
10 59 (1.51%) CISSP
11 42 (1.08%) AWS Certification
12 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 39 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.00%) CISM
14 29 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
15 27 (0.69%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 22 (0.56%) CCSP
19 20 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 190 (4.87%) PMO
3 132 (3.38%) QA
4 83 (2.13%) GDPR
5 52 (1.33%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.00%) SLA
8 37 (0.95%) NIST
9 30 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.72%) IFRS
11 25 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.26%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 9 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 82 (2.10%) Docker
2 71 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 54 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 18 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) GPFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 220 (5.63%) Kubernetes
2 80 (2.05%) Ansible
3 40 (1.02%) Grafana
4 37 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.69%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.26%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
12 8 (0.20%) Control-M
12 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.20%) Tivoli
13 6 (0.15%) logstash
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) Kibana
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 598 (15.31%) Microsoft
2 456 (11.68%) SAP
3 362 (9.27%) Oracle
4 160 (4.10%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.92%) Google
6 96 (2.46%) IBM
7 80 (2.05%) Databricks
8 71 (1.82%) VMware
9 69 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.41%) Splunk
11 50 (1.28%) Ariba
12 46 (1.18%) Workday
13 43 (1.10%) Cisco
14 30 (0.77%) Sage
15 25 (0.64%) Adobe
16 24 (0.61%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.56%) Dynatrace
18 22 (0.56%) Snow
19 20 (0.51%) F5