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 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,844 2,450 2,677
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.46% 16.58% 13.61%
As % of the General category 26.83% 27.70% 24.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,855 1,463 1,832
10th Percentile £311 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £520
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -2.88% -0.95%
75th Percentile £598 £625 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £706
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 71 70
10th Percentile £14.65 £17.13 £13.08
25th Percentile £16.85 £23.05 £15.89
Median hourly rate £22.00 £29.00 £26.33
Median % change year-on-year -24.14% +10.14% -18.36%
75th Percentile £24.50 £62.50 £49.00
90th Percentile £40.00 £75.00 £60.50
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £29.12 £27.25
% change year-on-year -18.17% +6.84% +5.99%

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 common skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 10,599 8,846 10,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 57.61% 59.88% 55.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,509 5,022 6,898
10th Percentile £204 £210 £210
25th Percentile £363 £358 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,163 544 917
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.36 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £17.39 £15.72
Median hourly rate £22.00 £26.23 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.13% -12.57% +36.36%
75th Percentile £44.87 £55.25 £57.33
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £27.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -14.27% -15.38% +30.00%

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 26 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 +1 897 £475 -5.00% 1,497
South East -1 541 £511 -3.08% 1,985
Midlands -4 476 £475 -9.52% 1,099
North West +1 436 £455 -7.19% 787
Yorkshire 0 420 £500 -3.38% 596
Scotland +1 392 £500 +11.11% 291
West Midlands -7 298 £525 -4.55% 584
South West -3 284 £525 - 704
East Midlands +1 179 £425 +1.92% 460
East of England -1 166 £550 +4.76% 841
Wales +18 72 £396 -13.15% 160
Northern Ireland -1 61 £494 +51.92% 89
North East -8 41 £475 - 126
Channel Islands +2 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
1 130 (4.57%) Confluence
2 95 (3.34%) SharePoint
3 31 (1.09%) Apache
4 30 (1.05%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
6 18 (0.63%) SAS
7 17 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.56%) CMS
9 13 (0.46%) JBoss
10 10 (0.35%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.32%) IIS
12 7 (0.25%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.25%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.25%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.25%) TPMS
12 7 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.18%) CICS
13 5 (0.18%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.11%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 240 (8.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 150 (5.27%) Microsoft Office
3 96 (3.38%) Microsoft Project
4 91 (3.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.56%) Sketch
8 12 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.25%) InVision
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
10 6 (0.21%) Trello
11 5 (0.18%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.11%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.11%) Snagit
13 2 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 108 (3.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.83%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.55%) Oracle EBS
4 43 (1.51%) Oracle Receivables
5 36 (1.27%) Oracle General Ledger
5 36 (1.27%) SAP FI
6 32 (1.13%) Oracle Cash Management
7 28 (0.98%) Oracle ERP
8 27 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
8 27 (0.95%) SAP CO
9 26 (0.91%) SAP FI/CO
10 23 (0.81%) Oracle EBS R12
11 20 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 19 (0.67%) SAP ERP
13 16 (0.56%) NetSuite
14 14 (0.49%) Workday HCM
15 13 (0.46%) Oracle AGIS
15 13 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
15 13 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 389 (13.68%) AWS
2 355 (12.48%) Azure
3 188 (6.61%) Power Platform
4 182 (6.40%) GCP
5 101 (3.55%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
7 76 (2.67%) Serverless
8 70 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
9 66 (2.32%) GitHub
10 51 (1.79%) SaaS
11 50 (1.76%) OCI
12 42 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
13 40 (1.41%) Entra ID
13 40 (1.41%) Figma
14 39 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 35 (1.23%) Snowflake
16 32 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (0.98%) Amazon S3
18 21 (0.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 62 (2.18%) Firewall
2 25 (0.88%) DNS
3 21 (0.74%) Network Security
3 21 (0.74%) Wireless
4 20 (0.70%) Skype
5 19 (0.67%) VPN
5 19 (0.67%) WAN
6 18 (0.63%) SSL
6 18 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.56%) Kerberos
7 16 (0.56%) SSH
8 15 (0.53%) LAN
9 14 (0.49%) DHCP
10 11 (0.39%) HTTP
11 10 (0.35%) Internet
12 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (0.25%) SNMP
14 6 (0.21%) SD-WAN
14 6 (0.21%) Unified Communications
14 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (6.22%) Power BI
2 75 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
4 69 (2.43%) NoSQL
5 57 (2.00%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.62%) Tableau
7 36 (1.27%) SQL Server
8 34 (1.20%) Big Data
9 32 (1.13%) Power Query
10 30 (1.05%) Metadata
11 26 (0.91%) Data Lake
12 25 (0.88%) Hadoop
12 25 (0.88%) MongoDB
12 25 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
13 20 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 20 (0.70%) MySQL
14 18 (0.63%) DB2
14 18 (0.63%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.53%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 254 (8.93%) JIRA
2 153 (5.38%) Jenkins
3 87 (3.06%) GitLab
4 80 (2.81%) Git
5 42 (1.48%) JUnit
6 37 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 34 (1.20%) Bitbucket
8 32 (1.13%) Liquibase
9 30 (1.05%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.77%) Selenium
11 13 (0.46%) Postman
12 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
12 11 (0.39%) Gradle
12 11 (0.39%) PyCharm
12 11 (0.39%) SonarQube
13 10 (0.35%) JMeter
13 10 (0.35%) Visual Studio
14 9 (0.32%) Hudson
14 9 (0.32%) IntelliJ
14 9 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 1,061 (37.31%) Social Skills
2 527 (18.53%) Banking
3 430 (15.12%) Analytical Skills
4 335 (11.78%) Public Sector
5 211 (7.42%) Manufacturing
6 197 (6.93%) Telecoms
7 176 (6.19%) Marketing
8 140 (4.92%) Electronics
9 119 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
10 110 (3.87%) Financial Institution
11 93 (3.27%) Legal
12 88 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
13 63 (2.22%) Investment Banking
14 60 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
15 54 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
16 50 (1.76%) General Ledger
17 49 (1.72%) Retail
18 42 (1.48%) Billing
19 39 (1.37%) Local Government
20 38 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 475 (16.70%) Analyst
2 266 (9.35%) Project Manager
3 232 (8.16%) Senior
4 208 (7.31%) Developer
5 205 (7.21%) Consultant
6 186 (6.54%) Architect
7 180 (6.33%) Business Analyst
8 167 (5.87%) Lead
9 106 (3.73%) Data Analyst
10 88 (3.09%) Programme Manager
11 76 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
12 64 (2.25%) Accountant
13 59 (2.07%) IT Support
14 56 (1.97%) Java Developer
15 55 (1.93%) Senior Manager
16 54 (1.90%) IT Manager
17 53 (1.86%) DevOps Engineer
17 53 (1.86%) Software Engineer
18 52 (1.83%) Designer
18 52 (1.83%) Functional Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (4.57%) REST
2 88 (3.09%) Spring
3 84 (2.95%) RESTful
4 76 (2.67%) Spring Boot
5 64 (2.25%) Oracle Fusion
6 57 (2.00%) Kafka
7 53 (1.86%) .NET
8 43 (1.51%) Elastic Stack
9 41 (1.44%) React
10 37 (1.30%) Node.js
10 37 (1.30%) SOAP
11 34 (1.20%) HTML
12 32 (1.13%) OAuth
13 30 (1.05%) AngularJS
13 30 (1.05%) CSS
14 27 (0.95%) JSON
15 25 (0.88%) JMS
16 22 (0.77%) Middleware
17 21 (0.74%) PySpark
17 21 (0.74%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 146 (5.13%) Onboarding
2 119 (4.18%) Product Ownership
3 92 (3.23%) Cloud Native
4 80 (2.81%) Data Centre
5 76 (2.67%) Public Cloud
6 61 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 60 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
8 54 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 51 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
10 47 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
11 38 (1.34%) Mobile App
12 35 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
13 33 (1.16%) Data Structures
14 31 (1.09%) CMDB
15 30 (1.05%) Virtual Team
16 25 (0.88%) Mainframe
17 23 (0.81%) NHS
17 23 (0.81%) PMI
18 20 (0.70%) Enterprise Software
19 19 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 169 (5.94%) Linux
2 132 (4.64%) Windows
3 48 (1.69%) Unix
4 43 (1.51%) Mac OS
5 38 (1.34%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.13%) Android
7 18 (0.63%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 8 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.14%) VMS
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.070%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.070%) Windows 8
12 2 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.035%) MVS
13 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.035%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 681 (23.95%) Agile
2 500 (17.58%) Stakeholder Management
3 489 (17.19%) Problem-Solving
4 350 (12.31%) Migration
5 344 (12.10%) Business Intelligence
6 334 (11.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 317 (11.15%) DevOps
7 317 (11.15%) Project Management
8 296 (10.41%) CI/CD
9 292 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
10 277 (9.74%) ERP
11 240 (8.44%) Change Management
12 236 (8.30%) Programme Management
13 215 (7.56%) Decision-Making
14 205 (7.21%) Project Delivery
15 199 (7.00%) Analytics
16 182 (6.40%) Roadmaps
17 177 (6.22%) Risk Management
18 171 (6.01%) ITIL
19 166 (5.84%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 330 (11.60%) SQL
2 320 (11.25%) Python
3 194 (6.82%) Java
4 68 (2.39%) PowerShell
5 52 (1.83%) JavaScript
6 51 (1.79%) TypeScript
7 49 (1.72%) C#
8 48 (1.69%) Go
9 30 (1.05%) Shell Script
10 27 (0.95%) Bash
11 26 (0.91%) PL/SQL
12 22 (0.77%) R
13 21 (0.74%) VBA
14 18 (0.63%) Perl
15 17 (0.60%) Groovy
16 10 (0.35%) ABAP
17 9 (0.32%) PHP
17 9 (0.32%) Ruby
18 8 (0.28%) COBOL
18 8 (0.28%) JCL
Qualifications
1 284 (9.99%) Degree
2 261 (9.18%) Security Cleared
3 175 (6.15%) SC Cleared
4 73 (2.57%) Master's Degree
5 68 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 65 (2.29%) PMP
7 63 (2.22%) PMI Certification
8 62 (2.18%) AWS Certification
9 52 (1.83%) ACCA
9 52 (1.83%) CISSP
10 51 (1.79%) DV Cleared
11 49 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
12 45 (1.58%) CIMA
13 38 (1.34%) CISM
14 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 20 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 19 (0.67%) Azure Certification
17 14 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
18 13 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
19 12 (0.42%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (4.89%) PMO
2 128 (4.50%) QA
3 113 (3.97%) Data Quality
4 107 (3.76%) GDPR
5 57 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 55 (1.93%) NIST
7 52 (1.83%) SLA
8 46 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 43 (1.51%) PCI DSS
10 31 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 24 (0.84%) PSD2
12 23 (0.81%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.70%) IFRS
14 14 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
14 14 (0.49%) GRC
15 13 (0.46%) NCSC
16 12 (0.42%) COBIT
16 12 (0.42%) SEPA
17 9 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
17 9 (0.32%) Basel III
System Software
1 129 (4.54%) Docker
2 103 (3.62%) Active Directory
3 25 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.39%) vSphere
6 8 (0.28%) GPFS
6 8 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.25%) NFS
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.18%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) HDFS
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.11%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.11%) Firmware
11 3 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.11%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.070%) ACF2
12 2 (0.070%) RACF
Systems Management
1 162 (5.70%) Kubernetes
2 127 (4.47%) Terraform
3 101 (3.55%) Ansible
4 61 (2.14%) Grafana
5 54 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.84%) SCCM
7 19 (0.67%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
9 13 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.32%) vRealize
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.25%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.25%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.25%) Tivoli
14 6 (0.21%) Argo
15 5 (0.18%) CA Endevor
15 5 (0.18%) Puppet
15 5 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 463 (16.28%) Microsoft
2 379 (13.33%) SAP
3 274 (9.63%) Oracle
4 145 (5.10%) ServiceNow
5 90 (3.16%) Splunk
6 74 (2.60%) Google
7 71 (2.50%) Cisco
8 50 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 44 (1.55%) IBM
10 40 (1.41%) VMware
11 37 (1.30%) Workday
12 34 (1.20%) Dell
12 34 (1.20%) HP
13 31 (1.09%) Databricks
14 30 (1.05%) Adobe
15 29 (1.02%) Apple
16 27 (0.95%) Citrix
17 23 (0.81%) IFS
18 21 (0.74%) CyberArk
18 21 (0.74%) Remedy