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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,863 2,592 2,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.32% 17.42% 13.68%
As % of the General category 27.90% 28.68% 25.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,326 1,696 1,663
10th Percentile £344 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
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 196 75 179
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.78 £13.49
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.98 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +6.25%
75th Percentile £50.94 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%

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 13,846 9,038 10,667
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.33% 60.74% 53.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,770 5,468 6,079
10th Percentile £263 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £524 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.80% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,742 796 1,424
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £15.62
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% -35.71% +34.62%
75th Percentile £64.77 £50.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.81 £25.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +28.65% -27.14% +14.60%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 22 July 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 1,305 £500 +6.50% 825
South East 0 735 £503 -4.29% 965
North West +1 687 £492 +9.33% 442
Midlands +1 646 £500 +11.11% 448
Yorkshire 0 567 £522 +7.08% 288
West Midlands +1 495 £500 +4.17% 254
Scotland 0 491 £475 -2.46% 197
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 312
East of England +8 208 £530 -3.64% 229
East Midlands -1 145 £500 +19.05% 192
Wales +4 84 £525 +18.31% 75
Northern Ireland -1 61 £475 +5.56% 64
North East -17 51 £500 +13.96% 102
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2
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
1 145 (3.75%) Confluence
2 100 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.34%) CMS
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
15 2 (0.052%) JBoss
15 2 (0.052%) Mule
15 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
15 2 (0.052%) nginx
Applications
1 239 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.38%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 194 (5.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.09%) NetSuite
4 41 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
5 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
6 34 (0.88%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 23 (0.60%) Unit4 Business World
8 21 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
8 21 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.52%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.47%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
12 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
14 11 (0.28%) NEC Housing
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
15 10 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 482 (12.48%) Azure
2 331 (8.57%) AWS
3 225 (5.82%) Power Platform
4 212 (5.49%) GCP
5 104 (2.69%) SaaS
6 95 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.33%) Microsoft 365
8 87 (2.25%) GitHub
9 83 (2.15%) Dynamics 365
10 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
13 40 (1.04%) OCI
14 39 (1.01%) Serverless
15 26 (0.67%) Power Automate
15 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
16 25 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 23 (0.60%) Amazon S3
17 23 (0.60%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.23%) Firewall
2 65 (1.68%) Network Security
3 40 (1.04%) DNS
3 40 (1.04%) VPN
4 25 (0.65%) SSL
4 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
4 25 (0.65%) WAN
5 18 (0.47%) LAN
6 15 (0.39%) DHCP
7 11 (0.28%) VSAN
8 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 8 (0.21%) Internet
10 8 (0.21%) MPLS
10 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
11 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (0.16%) HTTP
11 6 (0.16%) Wireless
12 5 (0.13%) Intranet
12 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.79%) Power BI
2 79 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.89%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 62 (1.60%) SQL Server
6 55 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
7 51 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 37 (0.96%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
13 23 (0.60%) Db2
13 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
14 20 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
15 19 (0.49%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
17 16 (0.41%) Power Query
18 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 254 (6.58%) JIRA
2 90 (2.33%) Git
3 62 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
7 16 (0.41%) GitLab
7 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 12 (0.31%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 5 (0.13%) Toad
General
1 1,228 (31.79%) Social Skills
2 536 (13.88%) Analytical Skills
3 530 (13.72%) Banking
4 284 (7.35%) Public Sector
5 206 (5.33%) Legal
6 194 (5.02%) Organisational Skills
7 140 (3.62%) Retail
8 121 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 106 (2.74%) Local Government
11 103 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 79 (2.05%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.05%) Investment Banking
14 70 (1.81%) Billing
15 63 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.48%) Marketing
17 53 (1.37%) Telecoms
18 49 (1.27%) Aerospace
18 49 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 538 (13.93%) Analyst
2 399 (10.33%) Lead
3 359 (9.29%) Senior
4 334 (8.65%) Project Manager
5 315 (8.15%) Architect
6 286 (7.40%) Developer
7 252 (6.52%) Business Analyst
8 239 (6.19%) Consultant
9 175 (4.53%) Accountant
10 132 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
11 108 (2.80%) Systems Accountant
12 105 (2.72%) Senior Manager
13 102 (2.64%) IT Manager
14 89 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 85 (2.20%) Java Developer
15 85 (2.20%) Programme Manager
16 71 (1.84%) Finance Manager
17 69 (1.79%) Data Analyst
18 67 (1.73%) Administrator
19 63 (1.63%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.49%) Oracle Fusion
2 83 (2.15%) Middleware
3 82 (2.12%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Spring Boot
5 69 (1.79%) Kafka
6 68 (1.76%) Spring
7 59 (1.53%) .NET
8 56 (1.45%) React
9 39 (1.01%) RESTful
10 36 (0.93%) OAuth
11 31 (0.80%) Node.js
12 30 (0.78%) JSON
13 28 (0.72%) XML
14 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
15 24 (0.62%) OpenID
15 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
16 22 (0.57%) Redux
16 22 (0.57%) SAML
17 20 (0.52%) AngularJS
18 18 (0.47%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.99%) Product Ownership
2 151 (3.91%) Onboarding
3 149 (3.86%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 109 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
6 105 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.69%) Virtual Team
8 68 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 66 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 59 (1.53%) Public Cloud
11 56 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
12 55 (1.42%) Podcast
13 52 (1.35%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.35%) Security Posture
14 50 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
15 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 36 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 33 (0.85%) AI Agents
17 33 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
18 31 (0.80%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.18%) Windows
2 109 (2.82%) Linux
3 64 (1.66%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
15 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 898 (23.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 708 (18.33%) Agile
3 553 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
4 542 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
5 540 (13.98%) Migration
6 518 (13.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 500 (12.94%) ERP
8 379 (9.81%) Project Management
9 361 (9.35%) DevOps
10 357 (9.24%) Decision-Making
11 351 (9.09%) Change Management
12 344 (8.90%) CI/CD
13 326 (8.44%) AI
14 322 (8.34%) Project Delivery
15 292 (7.56%) Roadmaps
16 280 (7.25%) User Acceptance Testing
17 270 (6.99%) Validation
18 263 (6.81%) Risk Management
19 247 (6.39%) Analytics
20 235 (6.08%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 339 (8.78%) SQL
2 304 (7.87%) Python
3 225 (5.82%) Java
4 75 (1.94%) PowerShell
5 58 (1.50%) C#
6 45 (1.16%) Bash
6 45 (1.16%) JavaScript
7 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
8 34 (0.88%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.65%) Go
11 21 (0.54%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
16 10 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 365 (9.45%) Security Cleared
2 293 (7.58%) Degree
3 229 (5.93%) SC Cleared
4 126 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 120 (3.11%) ACCA
6 116 (3.00%) CIMA
7 110 (2.85%) PMP
8 95 (2.46%) PMI Certification
9 73 (1.89%) CISSP
10 72 (1.86%) DV Cleared
11 43 (1.11%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
16 23 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
18 18 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 213 (5.51%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.56%) PMO
3 143 (3.70%) QA
4 139 (3.60%) GDPR
5 48 (1.24%) NIST
6 46 (1.19%) GRC
6 46 (1.19%) SLA
7 37 (0.96%) IFRS
8 36 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 34 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 14 (0.36%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) GAAP
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
17 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 86 (2.23%) Docker
2 77 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.10%) KVM
12 3 (0.078%) ACF2
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) SRDF
13 2 (0.052%) zsh
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 172 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.80%) Terraform
3 78 (2.02%) Ansible
4 35 (0.91%) Grafana
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.70%) Prometheus
7 26 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) SCCM
9 14 (0.36%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 507 (13.12%) Microsoft
2 388 (10.04%) SAP
3 370 (9.58%) Oracle
4 161 (4.17%) ServiceNow
5 106 (2.74%) Google
6 83 (2.15%) IBM
7 75 (1.94%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 55 (1.42%) Sage
10 50 (1.29%) Salesforce
11 42 (1.09%) Cisco
12 39 (1.01%) Splunk
13 34 (0.88%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Ariba
15 28 (0.72%) Workday
16 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 19 (0.49%) Adobe