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

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,834 2,519 2,787
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.45% 17.51% 13.23%
As % of the General category 28.22% 28.49% 24.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,325 1,645 1,699
10th Percentile £336 £308 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £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 181 75 205
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.80 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.42% -11.26% -26.59%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% -8.96%

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 13,585 8,843 11,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.19% 61.48% 53.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,647 5,376 6,351
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £471 £488
Median % change year-on-year +6.27% -3.48% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,692 743 1,664
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.72
25th Percentile £17.24 £15.49 £15.39
Median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +39.13% -26.40% +20.19%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.22 £31.89
% change year-on-year +17.56% -14.63% +4.40%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +1 1,287 £500 +7.53% 852
South East 0 721 £500 -4.76% 1,008
North West +4 669 £475 +5.56% 456
Midlands +1 655 £500 +11.11% 463
Yorkshire 0 574 £525 +7.69% 295
Scotland 0 487 £475 -2.06% 190
West Midlands +1 483 £500 - 264
South West -3 382 £525 -4.55% 354
East of England +5 204 £520 -9.57% 258
East Midlands 0 165 £500 +17.65% 198
Wales +7 89 £525 +12.90% 73
Northern Ireland -1 57 £475 +11.76% 83
North East -22 45 £500 +13.64% 111
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
1 158 (4.12%) Confluence
2 101 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.31%) Apache
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
7 11 (0.29%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.078%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) TPMS
13 2 (0.052%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.052%) Hyperledger
13 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 238 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.79%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.35%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.052%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.12%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.02%) NetSuite
5 38 (0.99%) Oracle Receivables
6 37 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
8 18 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.47%) Unit4 Business World
9 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.44%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.29%) Workday HCM
13 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 471 (12.28%) Azure
2 323 (8.42%) AWS
3 221 (5.76%) Power Platform
4 204 (5.32%) GCP
5 101 (2.63%) SaaS
6 95 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
7 91 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (2.22%) GitHub
9 73 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 70 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.17%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.15%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
14 40 (1.04%) Serverless
15 36 (0.94%) OCI
16 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.63%) PaaS
17 24 (0.63%) Power Automate
18 23 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.24%) Firewall
2 65 (1.70%) Network Security
3 38 (0.99%) DNS
4 36 (0.94%) VPN
5 34 (0.89%) WAN
6 28 (0.73%) SSL
7 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.47%) LAN
9 16 (0.42%) SD-WAN
10 14 (0.37%) DHCP
11 12 (0.31%) VSAN
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) MPLS
13 8 (0.21%) Internet
13 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
15 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
15 6 (0.16%) Wireless
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
16 5 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.77%) Power BI
2 78 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.93%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.77%) Metadata
5 60 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
5 60 (1.56%) SQL Server
6 54 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
7 36 (0.94%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.91%) Tableau
9 31 (0.81%) NoSQL
10 27 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
11 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
12 21 (0.55%) Db2
12 21 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (0.50%) DynamoDB
14 18 (0.47%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.42%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 272 (7.09%) JIRA
2 88 (2.30%) Git
3 73 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.70%) JUnit
5 23 (0.60%) Selenium
6 22 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.55%) GitLab
8 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.37%) Hudson
10 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 12 (0.31%) Postman
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 8 (0.21%) Gradle
13 8 (0.21%) Maven
14 7 (0.18%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
16 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
16 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,213 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 524 (13.67%) Banking
3 510 (13.30%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.33%) Public Sector
5 187 (4.88%) Legal
6 162 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 130 (3.39%) Retail
8 112 (2.92%) Local Government
8 112 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 108 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
10 106 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
11 84 (2.19%) Financial Institution
12 83 (2.16%) General Ledger
13 80 (2.09%) Investment Banking
14 69 (1.80%) Billing
15 60 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.49%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.25%) Marketing
18 47 (1.23%) Aerospace
19 46 (1.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 525 (13.69%) Analyst
2 368 (9.60%) Lead
3 355 (9.26%) Architect
4 336 (8.76%) Project Manager
4 336 (8.76%) Senior
5 287 (7.49%) Developer
6 254 (6.62%) Consultant
7 240 (6.26%) Business Analyst
8 166 (4.33%) Accountant
9 155 (4.04%) Solutions Architect
10 104 (2.71%) Systems Accountant
11 99 (2.58%) IT Manager
12 97 (2.53%) Senior Manager
13 90 (2.35%) Programme Manager
14 84 (2.19%) Java Developer
15 82 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
16 71 (1.85%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.83%) Administrator
18 64 (1.67%) Data Analyst
19 62 (1.62%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (3.34%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.40%) Middleware
3 88 (2.30%) REST
4 69 (1.80%) Kafka
5 68 (1.77%) Spring
5 68 (1.77%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.56%) React
7 57 (1.49%) .NET
8 42 (1.10%) RESTful
9 33 (0.86%) OAuth
10 32 (0.83%) JSON
11 30 (0.78%) Node.js
12 27 (0.70%) OpenID
13 26 (0.68%) SailPoint
13 26 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.68%) XML
14 23 (0.60%) Redux
15 21 (0.55%) AngularJS
16 20 (0.52%) SAML
17 19 (0.50%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 154 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 142 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
6 104 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
7 76 (1.98%) Data Centre
7 76 (1.98%) Virtual Team
8 67 (1.75%) Data Structures
8 67 (1.75%) Public Cloud
9 51 (1.33%) Mainframe
10 48 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
11 47 (1.23%) Security Posture
12 41 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 34 (0.89%) Web Conferencing
14 33 (0.86%) Podcast
15 29 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
15 29 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
16 28 (0.73%) AI Agents
17 27 (0.70%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.23%) Windows
2 103 (2.69%) Linux
3 60 (1.56%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.70%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.34%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) HPUX
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 4 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.10%) SUSE
15 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 866 (22.59%) Stakeholder Management
2 701 (18.28%) Agile
3 560 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
4 543 (14.16%) Migration
5 523 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
6 515 (13.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 491 (12.81%) ERP
8 394 (10.28%) Project Management
9 363 (9.47%) DevOps
10 353 (9.21%) Decision-Making
11 346 (9.02%) CI/CD
12 342 (8.92%) Change Management
13 317 (8.27%) Project Delivery
14 306 (7.98%) AI
15 290 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
16 288 (7.51%) Roadmaps
17 267 (6.96%) Validation
18 261 (6.81%) Risk Management
19 244 (6.36%) Analytics
20 235 (6.13%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 354 (9.23%) SQL
2 294 (7.67%) Python
3 225 (5.87%) Java
4 75 (1.96%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.43%) C#
6 44 (1.15%) JavaScript
7 38 (0.99%) Bash
8 36 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.86%) TypeScript
10 25 (0.65%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.60%) Go
12 20 (0.52%) C++
13 16 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.39%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.29%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Rust
18 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 354 (9.23%) Security Cleared
2 301 (7.85%) Degree
3 220 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.39%) ACCA
5 127 (3.31%) CIMA
6 116 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.97%) PMP
8 100 (2.61%) PMI Certification
9 77 (2.01%) CISSP
10 66 (1.72%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.20%) CISM
12 39 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.91%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.76%) Master's Degree
16 28 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.50%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (5.32%) Data Quality
2 164 (4.28%) PMO
3 148 (3.86%) GDPR
4 142 (3.70%) QA
5 56 (1.46%) NIST
6 49 (1.28%) SLA
7 46 (1.20%) GRC
8 38 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.91%) IFRS
10 33 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 32 (0.83%) PCI DSS
12 31 (0.81%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.29%) PSD2
16 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
16 10 (0.26%) NCSC
16 10 (0.26%) SEPA
17 8 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (2.27%) Docker
2 81 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.52%) RACF
5 19 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.37%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.16%) GPFS
9 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 6 (0.16%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) ACF2
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) SRDF
11 2 (0.052%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 169 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 95 (2.48%) Terraform
3 79 (2.06%) Ansible
4 36 (0.94%) Grafana
5 31 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (0.78%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.50%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Argo
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) FortiGate
14 8 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
15 6 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 477 (12.44%) Microsoft
2 397 (10.35%) SAP
3 357 (9.31%) Oracle
4 168 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 108 (2.82%) Google
6 78 (2.03%) IBM
7 72 (1.88%) Databricks
8 61 (1.59%) VMware
9 55 (1.43%) Sage
10 50 (1.30%) Cisco
11 47 (1.23%) Splunk
12 43 (1.12%) Salesforce
13 34 (0.89%) IFS
14 31 (0.81%) Ariba
14 31 (0.81%) Workday
15 23 (0.60%) HP
16 22 (0.57%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.52%) MuleSoft
18 19 (0.50%) Sybase
19 18 (0.47%) Foundry