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 29 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,930 2,279 2,635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.30% 16.62% 12.95%
As % of the General category 27.07% 27.13% 23.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,873 1,330 1,767
10th Percentile £313 £305 £288
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £613
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 59 112
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.25 £11.23
25th Percentile £16.74 £22.50 £13.24
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.06%
75th Percentile £24.50 £56.59 £47.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £77.69 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £28.25 £21.50
% change year-on-year -16.81% +31.40% -14.00%

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 10,824 8,400 11,274
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.54% 61.26% 55.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,663 4,770 6,866
10th Percentile £204 £210 £208
25th Percentile £363 £357 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,147 481 1,211
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.36 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.62% +6.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.00 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 +2 924 £475 -3.06% 777
South East -1 542 £503 -4.29% 1,468
Midlands -3 527 £492 -6.29% 537
North West +3 456 £450 -5.26% 368
Yorkshire 0 419 £500 -2.68% 305
Scotland 0 384 £488 +4.33% 161
West Midlands -4 322 £525 -4.55% 269
South West -5 286 £525 -1.87% 441
East Midlands 0 203 £447 +5.80% 266
East of England 0 172 £525 - 454
Wales +25 84 £400 -14.67% 169
Northern Ireland -1 59 £506 +44.64% 78
North East -7 50 £488 +1.30% 114
Channel Islands +1 1 - -
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
1 162 (5.53%) Confluence
2 102 (3.48%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (1.02%) Apache
5 26 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.65%) SAS
7 13 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.44%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) JBoss
8 11 (0.38%) TPMS
9 9 (0.31%) IIS
10 8 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
11 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
11 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
11 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
12 6 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 6 (0.20%) CICS
13 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 237 (8.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (5.53%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (3.55%) Microsoft Project
4 91 (3.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.55%) Sketch
8 11 (0.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.20%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.20%) Trello
11 4 (0.14%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.068%) Camtasia
12 2 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.068%) Snagit
13 1 (0.034%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.034%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 133 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (1.95%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.57%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
5 37 (1.26%) Oracle General Ledger
6 35 (1.19%) SAP FI
7 31 (1.06%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (0.99%) Oracle Assets
9 28 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 26 (0.89%) SAP CO
11 25 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
11 25 (0.85%) SAP FI/CO
12 23 (0.78%) Oracle EBS R12
13 22 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
14 18 (0.61%) SAP ERP
15 16 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
15 16 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
15 16 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
16 15 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
17 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 386 (13.17%) AWS
2 373 (12.73%) Azure
3 181 (6.18%) Power Platform
4 163 (5.56%) GCP
5 119 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
7 76 (2.59%) GitHub
8 73 (2.49%) Serverless
9 62 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
10 61 (2.08%) SaaS
11 49 (1.67%) Entra ID
12 44 (1.50%) OCI
13 39 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
13 39 (1.33%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.30%) Snowflake
15 37 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
15 37 (1.26%) Figma
16 30 (1.02%) Amazon S3
17 29 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.89%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 63 (2.15%) Firewall
2 33 (1.13%) WAN
3 23 (0.78%) Network Security
4 22 (0.75%) Skype
4 22 (0.75%) VPN
4 22 (0.75%) Wireless
5 19 (0.65%) DNS
6 18 (0.61%) LAN
6 18 (0.61%) SSH
7 16 (0.55%) Kerberos
7 16 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 15 (0.51%) SSL
9 12 (0.41%) DHCP
10 11 (0.38%) Internet
10 11 (0.38%) SNMP
11 10 (0.34%) TCP/IP
12 8 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (0.24%) HTTP
13 7 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (5.84%) Power BI
2 73 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (2.15%) NoSQL
5 51 (1.74%) Relational Database
6 39 (1.33%) Tableau
7 33 (1.13%) SQL Server
8 29 (0.99%) Metadata
9 27 (0.92%) Big Data
9 27 (0.92%) Data Lake
10 26 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 22 (0.75%) Power Query
12 20 (0.68%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.68%) DynamoDB
13 18 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (0.61%) MongoDB
13 18 (0.61%) Oracle Database
14 16 (0.55%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.55%) MySQL
15 13 (0.44%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 290 (9.90%) JIRA
2 145 (4.95%) Jenkins
3 87 (2.97%) GitLab
4 69 (2.35%) Git
5 43 (1.47%) JUnit
6 40 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
7 35 (1.19%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.92%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.82%) Selenium
10 22 (0.75%) Liquibase
11 15 (0.51%) Gradle
12 13 (0.44%) Postman
13 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.38%) Maven
14 10 (0.34%) JMeter
14 10 (0.34%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
15 8 (0.27%) CA Release Automation
15 8 (0.27%) Hudson
15 8 (0.27%) Jaeger
General
1 1,100 (37.54%) Social Skills
2 518 (17.68%) Banking
3 390 (13.31%) Analytical Skills
4 338 (11.54%) Public Sector
5 194 (6.62%) Manufacturing
6 182 (6.21%) Telecoms
7 163 (5.56%) Marketing
8 124 (4.23%) Electronics
9 116 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
10 102 (3.48%) Financial Institution
11 98 (3.34%) Legal
12 89 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
13 62 (2.12%) General Ledger
14 58 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
15 55 (1.88%) Retail
16 53 (1.81%) Investment Banking
17 50 (1.71%) Local Government
18 44 (1.50%) Billing
18 44 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
19 33 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 455 (15.53%) Analyst
2 285 (9.73%) Project Manager
3 227 (7.75%) Architect
4 224 (7.65%) Senior
5 216 (7.37%) Consultant
6 209 (7.13%) Developer
7 192 (6.55%) Business Analyst
8 187 (6.38%) Lead
9 101 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
10 95 (3.24%) Programme Manager
11 80 (2.73%) Data Analyst
12 63 (2.15%) Senior Manager
13 59 (2.01%) SAP Consultant
14 57 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 56 (1.91%) Finance Manager
16 55 (1.88%) Accountant
16 55 (1.88%) Designer
17 53 (1.81%) IT Manager
18 52 (1.77%) Functional Consultant
19 50 (1.71%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.37%) REST
2 92 (3.14%) Spring
3 81 (2.76%) Spring Boot
4 75 (2.56%) RESTful
5 66 (2.25%) Oracle Fusion
6 60 (2.05%) Kafka
7 52 (1.77%) .NET
8 45 (1.54%) React
9 39 (1.33%) Middleware
10 37 (1.26%) Node.js
11 34 (1.16%) SOAP
12 33 (1.13%) OAuth
13 31 (1.06%) Elastic Stack
14 30 (1.02%) JSON
15 29 (0.99%) AngularJS
16 28 (0.96%) HTML
17 24 (0.82%) CSS
17 24 (0.82%) JMS
18 23 (0.78%) XML
19 19 (0.65%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 142 (4.85%) Onboarding
2 131 (4.47%) Product Ownership
3 88 (3.00%) Cloud Native
4 78 (2.66%) Data Centre
5 68 (2.32%) Public Cloud
6 67 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (2.25%) Management Information System
8 62 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 56 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
10 49 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
11 37 (1.26%) Data Structures
12 35 (1.19%) Mobile App
13 32 (1.09%) CMDB
14 31 (1.06%) Virtual Team
15 30 (1.02%) PMI
15 30 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
16 25 (0.85%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 22 (0.75%) NHS
18 21 (0.72%) Credit Risk
19 18 (0.61%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 137 (4.68%) Linux
2 126 (4.30%) Windows
3 43 (1.47%) Mac OS
4 40 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 38 (1.30%) Unix
6 31 (1.06%) Android
7 19 (0.65%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.10%) VMS
10 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.068%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.068%) Windows 8
12 1 (0.034%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.034%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (23.28%) Agile
2 568 (19.39%) Stakeholder Management
3 489 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
4 381 (13.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 379 (12.94%) Migration
6 338 (11.54%) Project Management
7 325 (11.09%) DevOps
8 324 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
9 313 (10.68%) ERP
10 300 (10.24%) CI/CD
11 296 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 258 (8.81%) Change Management
13 230 (7.85%) Programme Management
14 215 (7.34%) Decision-Making
15 211 (7.20%) Analytics
16 208 (7.10%) Project Delivery
17 191 (6.52%) User Acceptance Testing
18 184 (6.28%) Roadmaps
19 180 (6.14%) Risk Management
20 170 (5.80%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 342 (11.67%) SQL
2 281 (9.59%) Python
3 198 (6.76%) Java
4 77 (2.63%) PowerShell
5 44 (1.50%) TypeScript
6 43 (1.47%) JavaScript
7 41 (1.40%) C#
8 36 (1.23%) Go
9 25 (0.85%) PL/SQL
9 25 (0.85%) Shell Script
10 21 (0.72%) Bash
11 18 (0.61%) R
11 18 (0.61%) VBA
12 14 (0.48%) Groovy
13 12 (0.41%) Perl
14 11 (0.38%) Rust
15 9 (0.31%) ABAP
15 9 (0.31%) Ruby
16 8 (0.27%) C++
16 8 (0.27%) JCL
Qualifications
1 322 (10.99%) Degree
2 265 (9.04%) Security Cleared
3 185 (6.31%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.56%) Master's Degree
5 73 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (2.46%) PMI Certification
6 72 (2.46%) PMP
7 69 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 66 (2.25%) ACCA
9 60 (2.05%) CIMA
10 51 (1.74%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.64%) DV Cleared
12 46 (1.57%) CISSP
13 40 (1.37%) CISM
14 34 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 21 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.51%) MBA
17 14 (0.48%) FFIEC
18 13 (0.44%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 145 (4.95%) PMO
2 134 (4.57%) QA
3 110 (3.75%) Data Quality
4 103 (3.52%) GDPR
5 55 (1.88%) NIST
6 50 (1.71%) SLA
7 45 (1.54%) PCI DSS
8 44 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 40 (1.37%) Accessibility
10 32 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 30 (1.02%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.89%) PSD2
13 23 (0.78%) IFRS
14 22 (0.75%) GRC
15 18 (0.61%) SEPA
16 14 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.41%) Basel III
17 12 (0.41%) COBIT
18 11 (0.38%) GLBA
18 11 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 132 (4.51%) Docker
2 104 (3.55%) Active Directory
3 26 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
5 12 (0.41%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
7 8 (0.27%) NFS
7 8 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) Firmware
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.10%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.10%) HDFS
11 3 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.068%) ACF2
12 2 (0.068%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.068%) RACF
12 2 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 154 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 101 (3.45%) Terraform
3 85 (2.90%) Ansible
4 57 (1.95%) Grafana
5 52 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.82%) SCCM
7 18 (0.61%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.31%) vRealize
12 8 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.27%) Kiali
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) Control-M
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 446 (15.22%) Microsoft
2 390 (13.31%) SAP
3 269 (9.18%) Oracle
4 146 (4.98%) ServiceNow
5 94 (3.21%) Splunk
6 84 (2.87%) Cisco
7 80 (2.73%) Google
8 48 (1.64%) IBM
9 47 (1.60%) Salesforce
10 40 (1.37%) VMware
10 40 (1.37%) Workday
11 35 (1.19%) Databricks
11 35 (1.19%) Dell
11 35 (1.19%) HP
12 29 (0.99%) Apple
13 27 (0.92%) Adobe
14 24 (0.82%) Citrix
14 24 (0.82%) Sage
15 20 (0.68%) Remedy
16 19 (0.65%) IFS