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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,905 2,684 2,664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.09% 17.40% 14.80%
As % of the General category 27.33% 28.50% 27.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,338 1,781 1,598
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £575
% change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 63 135
10th Percentile £15.11 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £15.50 £21.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +16.67%
75th Percentile - £34.16 £51.25
90th Percentile £75.40 £72.20 £70.11
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%

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 14,289 9,418 9,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.57% 61.07% 54.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,860 5,666 5,502
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £496
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.30% -0.73%
75th Percentile £598 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £654 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,997 878 1,031
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.48 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £22.05 £37.28
Median % change year-on-year +42.86% -40.85% +48.38%
75th Percentile £56.21 £43.75 £61.28
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.05 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.13 £25.15 £37.04
% change year-on-year +23.77% -32.10% +34.69%

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 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 29 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 29 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 1,348 £500 +7.99% 1,718
South East -3 739 £505 -3.81% 1,638
North West -1 687 £500 +11.11% 1,035
Midlands -1 622 £500 +8.40% 796
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +6.20% 482
Scotland 0 525 £470 -2.49% 926
West Midlands +1 465 £514 +2.80% 488
South West -5 371 £550 -0.97% 1,017
East of England +5 209 £530 -7.83% 561
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +20.85% 307
North East -5 73 £500 +13.64% 220
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +3.90% 377
Wales -2 57 £525 +18.31% 166
Channel Islands +3 5 £550 - 8
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
1 157 (4.02%) Confluence
2 95 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
4 15 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.33%) SAS
7 12 (0.31%) CMS
8 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.20%) IIS
9 8 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.10%) CICS
12 4 (0.10%) nginx
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 250 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 88 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
5 40 (1.02%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
13 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 490 (12.55%) Azure
2 338 (8.66%) AWS
3 235 (6.02%) GCP
4 229 (5.86%) Power Platform
5 100 (2.56%) SaaS
6 98 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
6 98 (2.51%) GitHub
7 96 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
8 94 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
9 74 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.20%) OCI
11 44 (1.13%) Snowflake
12 42 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
13 39 (1.00%) OpenShift
14 38 (0.97%) Serverless
15 31 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
15 31 (0.79%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.05%) Firewall
2 72 (1.84%) Network Security
3 48 (1.23%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.56%) LAN
7 22 (0.56%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) Broadband
9 11 (0.28%) HTTP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.20%) BGP
12 8 (0.20%) BIG-IP
12 8 (0.20%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (4.84%) Power BI
2 79 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.87%) Relational Database
4 71 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.66%) Metadata
6 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
6 39 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 37 (0.95%) Tableau
8 29 (0.74%) MongoDB
9 27 (0.69%) Db2
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle ODI
11 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
12 20 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
13 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
15 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
17 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 245 (6.27%) JIRA
2 107 (2.74%) Git
3 54 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Maven
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,316 (33.70%) Social Skills
2 575 (14.72%) Banking
3 548 (14.03%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.20%) Public Sector
5 268 (6.86%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.61%) Legal
7 170 (4.35%) Retail
8 142 (3.64%) Influencing Skills
9 105 (2.69%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
11 95 (2.43%) Local Government
12 85 (2.18%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.00%) Financial Institution
14 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
15 75 (1.92%) Billing
16 72 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 57 (1.46%) Marketing
17 57 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (1.38%) Telecoms
19 49 (1.25%) Law
Job Titles
1 501 (12.83%) Analyst
2 414 (10.60%) Lead
3 353 (9.04%) Senior
4 322 (8.25%) Project Manager
5 314 (8.04%) Architect
6 291 (7.45%) Developer
7 265 (6.79%) Consultant
8 238 (6.09%) Business Analyst
9 158 (4.05%) Accountant
10 145 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 97 (2.48%) IT Manager
13 93 (2.38%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 86 (2.20%) Java Developer
16 78 (2.00%) Finance Manager
17 77 (1.97%) Administrator
18 69 (1.77%) Programme Manager
19 68 (1.74%) Software Engineer
20 66 (1.69%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.89%) Oracle Fusion
2 134 (3.43%) Terraform
3 91 (2.33%) REST
4 71 (1.82%) Middleware
5 69 (1.77%) Kafka
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.64%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 59 (1.51%) React
10 41 (1.05%) OAuth
10 41 (1.05%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) JSON
12 30 (0.77%) OpenID
13 29 (0.74%) SAML
14 28 (0.72%) SAP Fiori
14 28 (0.72%) XML
15 24 (0.61%) HTML
16 23 (0.59%) Redux
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 163 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.94%) Virtual Team
4 152 (3.89%) Cloud Native
5 116 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
6 112 (2.87%) Podcast
6 112 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
7 111 (2.84%) Management Information System
8 101 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 67 (1.72%) Data Structures
10 56 (1.43%) Data Centre
11 54 (1.38%) Public Cloud
12 53 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
13 47 (1.20%) AI Agents
13 47 (1.20%) Mainframe
13 47 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
15 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
16 39 (1.00%) CMDB
17 38 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.05%) Windows
2 109 (2.79%) Linux
3 61 (1.56%) Unix
4 33 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.61%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 14 (0.36%) Android
8 14 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,003 (25.69%) Stakeholder Management
2 727 (18.62%) Agile
3 548 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
4 528 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
5 524 (13.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 506 (12.96%) Migration
7 502 (12.86%) ERP
8 370 (9.48%) AI
8 370 (9.48%) CI/CD
8 370 (9.48%) Decision-Making
9 363 (9.30%) Project Management
10 351 (8.99%) DevOps
11 350 (8.96%) Change Management
12 301 (7.71%) Project Delivery
13 294 (7.53%) Roadmaps
14 279 (7.14%) Risk Management
15 273 (6.99%) Analytics
16 267 (6.84%) User Acceptance Testing
17 262 (6.71%) Validation
18 229 (5.86%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 335 (8.58%) SQL
2 328 (8.40%) Python
3 237 (6.07%) Java
4 81 (2.07%) PowerShell
5 63 (1.61%) JavaScript
6 58 (1.49%) C#
7 57 (1.46%) Bash
8 41 (1.05%) PL/SQL
9 39 (1.00%) TypeScript
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 29 (0.74%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Bicep
14 14 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.31%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) Scala
17 10 (0.26%) Perl
18 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 358 (9.17%) Security Cleared
2 263 (6.73%) Degree
3 219 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 171 (4.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.87%) ACCA
6 108 (2.77%) CIMA
7 102 (2.61%) PMP
8 88 (2.25%) DV Cleared
8 88 (2.25%) PMI Certification
9 72 (1.84%) CISSP
10 47 (1.20%) CISM
11 43 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
12 38 (0.97%) Azure Certification
13 37 (0.95%) AWS Certification
14 31 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 22 (0.56%) CCSP
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (6.02%) Data Quality
2 177 (4.53%) PMO
3 134 (3.43%) QA
4 118 (3.02%) GDPR
5 56 (1.43%) GRC
6 51 (1.31%) NIST
7 47 (1.20%) SLA
8 42 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 39 (1.00%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 29 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 8 (0.20%) NCSC
16 8 (0.20%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 75 (1.92%) Active Directory
2 68 (1.74%) Docker
3 45 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.20%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) ACF2
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 2 (0.051%) KVM
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 1 (0.026%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 193 (4.94%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.92%) Ansible
3 35 (0.90%) Grafana
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) vRealize
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
16 4 (0.10%) VxRail
Vendors
1 570 (14.60%) Microsoft
2 411 (10.52%) SAP
3 387 (9.91%) Oracle
4 174 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 111 (2.84%) Google
6 86 (2.20%) IBM
7 79 (2.02%) Databricks
8 67 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 59 (1.51%) VMware
10 44 (1.13%) Cisco
11 42 (1.08%) Splunk
12 40 (1.02%) Sage
13 37 (0.95%) Ariba
13 37 (0.95%) Workday
14 27 (0.69%) IFS
15 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) Adobe
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 18 (0.46%) Foundry