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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,883 2,281 2,629
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.36% 16.69% 12.82%
As % of the General category 27.17% 27.27% 23.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,852 1,340 1,757
10th Percentile £313 £305 £288
25th Percentile £405 £406 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £609
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 60 111
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.25 £11.18
25th Percentile £16.82 £22.50 £13.23
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%
75th Percentile £24.50 £56.26 £47.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £77.60 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £27.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -14.55% +27.91% -14.00%

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 10,610 8,363 11,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.54% 61.20% 55.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,534 4,749 6,904
10th Percentile £204 £210 £208
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
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 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,132 483 1,212
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.36 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.48 £26.50 £25.22
Median % change year-on-year -18.94% +5.10% +12.52%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.00 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.00 £67.49
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.36% +5.77% +4.00%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 +1 903 £475 -3.06% 903
South East -1 537 £503 -4.29% 1,674
Midlands -3 514 £492 -6.29% 622
North West +2 444 £450 -5.26% 402
Yorkshire 0 411 £500 -2.91% 369
Scotland 0 381 £500 +7.01% 188
West Midlands -5 313 £525 -4.55% 282
South West -6 288 £525 -1.87% 536
East Midlands 0 199 £446 +6.19% 333
East of England -2 170 £525 - 581
Wales +26 80 £406 -13.33% 218
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +42.86% 98
North East -7 49 £481 - 146
Channel Islands +1 1 - -
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
1 156 (5.41%) Confluence
2 100 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (1.04%) Apache
5 26 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.66%) SAS
7 13 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.45%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) JBoss
8 11 (0.38%) TPMS
9 9 (0.31%) IIS
10 8 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
11 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
11 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
11 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
12 6 (0.21%) CICS
13 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 231 (8.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 156 (5.41%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (3.54%) Microsoft Project
4 85 (2.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.55%) Sketch
8 12 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.21%) Trello
11 5 (0.17%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.069%) Camtasia
12 2 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.069%) Snagit
13 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.035%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 134 (4.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (1.98%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.60%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.39%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (1.32%) SAP FI
6 37 (1.28%) Oracle General Ledger
7 31 (1.08%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (1.01%) Oracle Assets
8 29 (1.01%) SAP CO
9 28 (0.97%) SAP FI/CO
10 27 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 25 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
12 24 (0.83%) Oracle ERP
13 23 (0.80%) Oracle EBS R12
14 18 (0.62%) SAP ERP
15 16 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
15 16 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
15 16 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
16 15 (0.52%) Workday HCM
17 14 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 382 (13.25%) AWS
2 362 (12.56%) Azure
3 180 (6.24%) Power Platform
4 163 (5.65%) GCP
5 117 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
7 75 (2.60%) Serverless
8 71 (2.46%) GitHub
9 61 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
10 59 (2.05%) SaaS
11 46 (1.60%) Entra ID
12 45 (1.56%) OCI
13 39 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
13 39 (1.35%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.32%) Figma
14 38 (1.32%) Snowflake
15 37 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
16 30 (1.04%) Amazon S3
17 29 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.90%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 60 (2.08%) Firewall
2 33 (1.14%) WAN
3 23 (0.80%) Network Security
4 22 (0.76%) Wireless
5 21 (0.73%) Skype
6 20 (0.69%) DNS
6 20 (0.69%) VPN
7 18 (0.62%) LAN
7 18 (0.62%) SSH
8 16 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.55%) SSL
9 14 (0.49%) Kerberos
10 13 (0.45%) DHCP
11 11 (0.38%) Internet
11 11 (0.38%) SNMP
11 11 (0.38%) TCP/IP
12 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (0.28%) HTTP
13 6 (0.21%) VoIP
13 6 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (5.90%) Power BI
2 73 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
3 68 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
4 65 (2.25%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.32%) Tableau
7 33 (1.14%) SQL Server
8 29 (1.01%) Metadata
9 27 (0.94%) Big Data
10 25 (0.87%) Data Lake
10 25 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
11 23 (0.80%) Power Query
12 20 (0.69%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.69%) DynamoDB
13 18 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (0.62%) MongoDB
14 16 (0.55%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.55%) MySQL
14 16 (0.55%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 279 (9.68%) JIRA
2 141 (4.89%) Jenkins
3 87 (3.02%) GitLab
4 69 (2.39%) Git
5 43 (1.49%) JUnit
6 37 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 34 (1.18%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.90%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.83%) Liquibase
9 24 (0.83%) Selenium
10 15 (0.52%) Gradle
11 13 (0.45%) Postman
12 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 10 (0.35%) JMeter
13 10 (0.35%) Maven
13 10 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.28%) Bitbucket Server
14 8 (0.28%) CA Release Automation
14 8 (0.28%) Hudson
14 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,074 (37.25%) Social Skills
2 505 (17.52%) Banking
3 388 (13.46%) Analytical Skills
4 338 (11.72%) Public Sector
5 195 (6.76%) Manufacturing
6 185 (6.42%) Telecoms
7 162 (5.62%) Marketing
8 127 (4.41%) Electronics
9 113 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
10 101 (3.50%) Financial Institution
11 99 (3.43%) Legal
12 92 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
13 61 (2.12%) General Ledger
14 56 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
15 52 (1.80%) Investment Banking
16 50 (1.73%) Retail
17 48 (1.66%) Local Government
18 45 (1.56%) Billing
18 45 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 34 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 450 (15.61%) Analyst
2 281 (9.75%) Project Manager
3 222 (7.70%) Architect
4 217 (7.53%) Senior
5 216 (7.49%) Consultant
6 205 (7.11%) Developer
7 186 (6.45%) Lead
8 184 (6.38%) Business Analyst
9 100 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 94 (3.26%) Programme Manager
11 82 (2.84%) Data Analyst
12 58 (2.01%) SAP Consultant
12 58 (2.01%) Senior Manager
13 56 (1.94%) Designer
13 56 (1.94%) Java Developer
14 54 (1.87%) Accountant
15 53 (1.84%) Finance Manager
15 53 (1.84%) IT Manager
16 52 (1.80%) Functional Consultant
17 49 (1.70%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.47%) REST
2 88 (3.05%) Spring
3 77 (2.67%) Spring Boot
4 74 (2.57%) RESTful
5 66 (2.29%) Oracle Fusion
6 59 (2.05%) Kafka
7 52 (1.80%) .NET
8 45 (1.56%) React
9 37 (1.28%) Middleware
9 37 (1.28%) Node.js
10 35 (1.21%) SOAP
11 33 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
11 33 (1.14%) OAuth
12 30 (1.04%) AngularJS
12 30 (1.04%) JSON
13 28 (0.97%) HTML
14 24 (0.83%) CSS
15 23 (0.80%) JMS
15 23 (0.80%) XML
16 19 (0.66%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 142 (4.93%) Onboarding
2 127 (4.41%) Product Ownership
3 90 (3.12%) Cloud Native
4 77 (2.67%) Data Centre
5 71 (2.46%) Public Cloud
6 66 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
7 62 (2.15%) Management Information System
8 61 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 53 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
10 50 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
11 36 (1.25%) Mobile App
12 35 (1.21%) Data Structures
13 33 (1.14%) CMDB
14 30 (1.04%) PMI
14 30 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
14 30 (1.04%) Virtual Team
15 23 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 22 (0.76%) NHS
17 21 (0.73%) Credit Risk
18 19 (0.66%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 139 (4.82%) Linux
2 125 (4.34%) Windows
3 43 (1.49%) Mac OS
4 39 (1.35%) Unix
4 39 (1.35%) Windows 10
5 31 (1.08%) Android
6 20 (0.69%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.10%) VMS
9 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.069%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.069%) Windows 8
11 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.035%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 676 (23.45%) Agile
2 546 (18.94%) Stakeholder Management
3 475 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
4 372 (12.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 368 (12.76%) Migration
6 330 (11.45%) Project Management
7 324 (11.24%) Business Intelligence
8 315 (10.93%) DevOps
9 306 (10.61%) ERP
10 293 (10.16%) CI/CD
11 290 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
12 249 (8.64%) Change Management
13 231 (8.01%) Programme Management
14 213 (7.39%) Decision-Making
15 207 (7.18%) Project Delivery
16 206 (7.15%) Analytics
17 185 (6.42%) User Acceptance Testing
18 184 (6.38%) Roadmaps
19 180 (6.24%) Risk Management
20 167 (5.79%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 338 (11.72%) SQL
2 281 (9.75%) Python
3 193 (6.69%) Java
4 75 (2.60%) PowerShell
5 44 (1.53%) JavaScript
5 44 (1.53%) TypeScript
6 41 (1.42%) C#
7 38 (1.32%) Go
8 25 (0.87%) PL/SQL
8 25 (0.87%) Shell Script
9 21 (0.73%) Bash
10 19 (0.66%) VBA
11 18 (0.62%) R
12 14 (0.49%) Groovy
13 13 (0.45%) Perl
14 10 (0.35%) Rust
15 9 (0.31%) ABAP
15 9 (0.31%) Ruby
16 8 (0.28%) C++
16 8 (0.28%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 314 (10.89%) Degree
2 263 (9.12%) Security Cleared
3 183 (6.35%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.60%) Master's Degree
5 71 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 71 (2.46%) PMI Certification
5 71 (2.46%) PMP
6 68 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
7 62 (2.15%) ACCA
8 56 (1.94%) CIMA
9 50 (1.73%) AWS Certification
10 49 (1.70%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.60%) CISSP
12 40 (1.39%) CISM
13 33 (1.14%) ITIL Certification
14 21 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 15 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.52%) MBA
16 14 (0.49%) FFIEC
17 13 (0.45%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (4.79%) PMO
2 133 (4.61%) QA
3 110 (3.82%) Data Quality
4 99 (3.43%) GDPR
5 52 (1.80%) NIST
6 51 (1.77%) SLA
7 45 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 43 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 41 (1.42%) Accessibility
10 32 (1.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 28 (0.97%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.90%) PSD2
13 22 (0.76%) IFRS
14 19 (0.66%) GRC
15 17 (0.59%) SEPA
16 14 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.42%) Basel III
18 11 (0.38%) COBIT
18 11 (0.38%) GLBA
18 11 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 125 (4.34%) Docker
2 101 (3.50%) Active Directory
3 26 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.45%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
7 8 (0.28%) NFS
7 8 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) Firmware
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.10%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.10%) HDFS
11 3 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.069%) ACF2
12 2 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.069%) RACF
12 2 (0.069%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 146 (5.06%) Kubernetes
2 101 (3.50%) Terraform
3 83 (2.88%) Ansible
4 56 (1.94%) Grafana
5 51 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.83%) SCCM
7 17 (0.59%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.35%) vRealize
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) Kiali
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
15 4 (0.14%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 440 (15.26%) Microsoft
2 392 (13.60%) SAP
3 265 (9.19%) Oracle
4 144 (4.99%) ServiceNow
5 90 (3.12%) Splunk
6 82 (2.84%) Cisco
7 78 (2.71%) Google
8 48 (1.66%) IBM
9 47 (1.63%) Salesforce
10 41 (1.42%) Workday
11 40 (1.39%) VMware
12 34 (1.18%) Databricks
12 34 (1.18%) Dell
12 34 (1.18%) HP
13 29 (1.01%) Apple
14 25 (0.87%) Adobe
15 24 (0.83%) Citrix
16 21 (0.73%) Sage
17 20 (0.69%) Remedy
18 19 (0.66%) IFS