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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,756 2,406 2,743
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.44% 17.72% 12.94%
As % of the General category 28.31% 28.43% 24.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,301 1,553 1,655
10th Percentile £333 £308 £281
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £601 £580 £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 176 72 213
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.58 £18.43 £14.50
Median hourly rate £43.13 £29.27 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +47.35% -8.86% -32.94%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £86.50 £75.00 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £36.00 £28.00
% change year-on-year -2.78% +28.57% -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 13,268 8,462 11,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.01% 62.31% 53.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,541 5,159 6,323
10th Percentile £275 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -2.00%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £594
90th Percentile £685 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,632 689 1,700
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.53
25th Percentile £17.11 £15.50 £15.17
Median hourly rate £31.50 £23.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +36.96% -26.40% +22.07%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.76
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.45 £31.89
% change year-on-year +16.58% -13.91% +6.28%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 1,275 £500 +7.53% 627
South East -1 693 £500 -4.76% 918
North West +4 675 £469 +4.22% 328
Midlands 0 651 £500 +11.11% 384
Yorkshire 0 555 £525 +9.95% 226
West Midlands +1 479 £504 +3.44% 229
Scotland 0 470 £495 +4.13% 158
South West -3 378 £525 - 321
East of England +3 194 £513 -10.87% 220
East Midlands 0 165 £475 +13.77% 154
Wales +7 89 £530 +13.98% 76
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +11.76% 80
North East -15 46 £500 +13.96% 82
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
1 167 (4.45%) Confluence
2 101 (2.69%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.51%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Apache
6 13 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
8 10 (0.27%) CMS
9 9 (0.24%) SAS
10 6 (0.16%) IIS
11 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.11%) TPMS
13 3 (0.080%) Apache Airflow
14 2 (0.053%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.053%) Camunda
14 2 (0.053%) Ethereum
14 2 (0.053%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 243 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.50%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.20%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.053%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.053%) InVision
9 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.053%) Sketch
9 2 (0.053%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.027%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.027%) UXPin
10 1 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.01%) NetSuite
5 37 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 36 (0.96%) Oracle Receivables
7 20 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
8 18 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
9 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.45%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.35%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 13 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.32%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.29%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 465 (12.38%) Azure
2 325 (8.65%) AWS
3 221 (5.88%) Power Platform
4 195 (5.19%) GCP
5 103 (2.74%) SaaS
6 93 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
7 90 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
8 82 (2.18%) GitHub
9 69 (1.84%) Entra ID
10 68 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 44 (1.17%) OpenShift
11 44 (1.17%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.09%) Serverless
13 40 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
14 36 (0.96%) OCI
15 23 (0.61%) PaaS
15 23 (0.61%) Power Automate
16 22 (0.59%) Amazon S3
16 22 (0.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 21 (0.56%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.16%) Firewall
2 64 (1.70%) Network Security
3 35 (0.93%) DNS
3 35 (0.93%) WAN
4 32 (0.85%) VPN
5 23 (0.61%) SSL
6 21 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.45%) LAN
7 17 (0.45%) SD-WAN
8 12 (0.32%) DHCP
9 11 (0.29%) VSAN
10 9 (0.24%) BGP
10 9 (0.24%) MPLS
11 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.19%) Cisco Nexus
12 7 (0.19%) Internet
13 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
13 6 (0.16%) SSH
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
14 5 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (5.01%) Power BI
2 76 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (1.78%) Metadata
3 67 (1.78%) Relational Database
4 59 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
5 53 (1.41%) SQL Server
6 52 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
7 35 (0.93%) Tableau
8 33 (0.88%) Data Lake
8 33 (0.88%) NoSQL
9 25 (0.67%) MongoDB
10 24 (0.64%) DynamoDB
11 23 (0.61%) Oracle ODI
11 23 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
12 20 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (0.51%) Db2
14 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
15 16 (0.43%) Data Vault
15 16 (0.43%) Power Query
16 15 (0.40%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 283 (7.53%) JIRA
2 83 (2.21%) Git
3 75 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 29 (0.77%) JUnit
5 24 (0.64%) GitLab
6 19 (0.51%) Cucumber
6 19 (0.51%) Selenium
6 19 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.37%) Hudson
8 13 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.32%) Postman
10 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.24%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.19%) ERwin
11 7 (0.19%) Gradle
11 7 (0.19%) Liquibase
11 7 (0.19%) Maven
12 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
13 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
13 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,198 (31.90%) Social Skills
2 524 (13.95%) Banking
3 494 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 266 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 181 (4.82%) Legal
6 156 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
7 129 (3.43%) Retail
8 110 (2.93%) Manufacturing
9 108 (2.88%) Local Government
10 103 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
10 103 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (2.26%) Financial Institution
12 83 (2.21%) Investment Banking
13 80 (2.13%) General Ledger
14 66 (1.76%) Billing
15 59 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 55 (1.46%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.28%) Marketing
18 45 (1.20%) Aerospace
18 45 (1.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 523 (13.92%) Analyst
2 352 (9.37%) Lead
3 348 (9.27%) Architect
4 346 (9.21%) Project Manager
5 337 (8.97%) Senior
6 271 (7.22%) Developer
7 253 (6.74%) Consultant
8 235 (6.26%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
10 153 (4.07%) Accountant
11 99 (2.64%) Systems Accountant
12 98 (2.61%) Senior Manager
13 95 (2.53%) IT Manager
14 89 (2.37%) Programme Manager
15 80 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 77 (2.05%) Financial Analyst
17 71 (1.89%) Finance Manager
18 66 (1.76%) Administrator
19 64 (1.70%) Data Engineer
20 62 (1.65%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.22%) Oracle Fusion
2 90 (2.40%) Middleware
3 87 (2.32%) REST
4 70 (1.86%) Kafka
5 68 (1.81%) Spring Boot
6 67 (1.78%) Spring
7 57 (1.52%) React
8 52 (1.38%) .NET
9 40 (1.06%) RESTful
10 34 (0.91%) OAuth
11 33 (0.88%) JSON
12 30 (0.80%) Node.js
13 28 (0.75%) XML
14 26 (0.69%) OpenID
14 26 (0.69%) SailPoint
15 25 (0.67%) SAP Fiori
16 23 (0.61%) Redux
17 22 (0.59%) AngularJS
18 19 (0.51%) SAML
19 17 (0.45%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 153 (4.07%) Product Ownership
3 138 (3.67%) Cloud Native
4 119 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 106 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
6 97 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
7 80 (2.13%) Data Centre
8 73 (1.94%) Virtual Team
9 66 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 65 (1.73%) Data Structures
11 51 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
12 46 (1.22%) Mainframe
13 45 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 40 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.91%) Web Conferencing
16 33 (0.88%) Podcast
17 29 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
18 26 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
19 25 (0.67%) CMDB
20 24 (0.64%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 122 (3.25%) Windows
2 101 (2.69%) Linux
3 56 (1.49%) Unix
4 31 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.72%) Solaris
6 24 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.56%) zOS
8 13 (0.35%) AIX
9 10 (0.27%) Android
9 10 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) HPUX
12 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.11%) MVS
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.11%) SUSE
12 4 (0.11%) VMS
13 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 842 (22.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 694 (18.48%) Agile
3 550 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
4 547 (14.56%) Migration
5 511 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
6 499 (13.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 497 (13.23%) ERP
8 406 (10.81%) Project Management
9 360 (9.58%) DevOps
10 338 (9.00%) Change Management
11 337 (8.97%) CI/CD
12 335 (8.92%) Decision-Making
13 311 (8.28%) Project Delivery
14 298 (7.93%) AI
15 288 (7.67%) User Acceptance Testing
16 278 (7.40%) Roadmaps
17 272 (7.24%) Validation
18 261 (6.95%) Risk Management
19 239 (6.36%) Analytics
20 235 (6.26%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 356 (9.48%) SQL
2 282 (7.51%) Python
3 219 (5.83%) Java
4 78 (2.08%) PowerShell
5 49 (1.30%) C#
6 42 (1.12%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.01%) Bash
8 36 (0.96%) PL/SQL
9 32 (0.85%) TypeScript
10 22 (0.59%) Go
11 21 (0.56%) C++
12 20 (0.53%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.43%) VBA
14 14 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.29%) Rust
17 10 (0.27%) ABAP
17 10 (0.27%) COBOL
17 10 (0.27%) PHP
18 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 344 (9.16%) Security Cleared
2 313 (8.33%) Degree
3 214 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 134 (3.57%) ACCA
5 131 (3.49%) CIMA
6 125 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (3.06%) PMP
8 100 (2.66%) PMI Certification
9 78 (2.08%) CISSP
10 62 (1.65%) DV Cleared
11 47 (1.25%) CISM
12 41 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.88%) Master's Degree
14 32 (0.85%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
17 24 (0.64%) Azure Certification
18 20 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
19 18 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 18 (0.48%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 192 (5.11%) Data Quality
2 167 (4.45%) PMO
3 148 (3.94%) GDPR
4 134 (3.57%) QA
5 58 (1.54%) NIST
6 49 (1.30%) SLA
7 46 (1.22%) GRC
8 39 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (0.96%) IFRS
10 35 (0.93%) PCI DSS
11 33 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.85%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.48%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.35%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.29%) NCSC
15 11 (0.29%) PSD2
16 10 (0.27%) SEPA
17 9 (0.24%) GAAP
18 7 (0.19%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 88 (2.34%) Docker
2 79 (2.10%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.43%) RACF
6 13 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.35%) 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 (0.027%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 166 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 88 (2.34%) Terraform
3 76 (2.02%) Ansible
4 36 (0.96%) Grafana
5 30 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 27 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.51%) SCCM
9 13 (0.35%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.32%) Control-M
10 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.27%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.27%) Nessus
13 9 (0.24%) Argo
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
15 6 (0.16%) VxRail
16 5 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 463 (12.33%) Microsoft
2 402 (10.70%) SAP
3 351 (9.35%) Oracle
4 156 (4.15%) ServiceNow
5 104 (2.77%) Google
6 73 (1.94%) Databricks
7 72 (1.92%) IBM
8 57 (1.52%) VMware
9 56 (1.49%) Sage
10 52 (1.38%) Cisco
11 49 (1.30%) Splunk
12 37 (0.99%) Salesforce
13 35 (0.93%) IFS
14 32 (0.85%) Ariba
15 29 (0.77%) Workday
16 23 (0.61%) HP
17 22 (0.59%) Red Hat
18 21 (0.56%) MuleSoft
19 17 (0.45%) CyberArk
20 16 (0.43%) Fortinet