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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,275 2,170 2,704
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.67% 17.24% 12.86%
As % of the General category 27.59% 27.88% 23.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,056 1,371 1,712
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £404 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.01%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 69 192
10th Percentile £13.98 £18.12 £11.88
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.20
Median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £31.47
Median % change year-on-year -57.95% +66.83% -17.94%
75th Percentile £34.25 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £73.00 £78.47 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.25 £29.00
% change year-on-year -40.81% +38.79% -5.71%

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 11,870 7,784 11,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.15% 61.84% 54.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,175 4,864 6,764
10th Percentile £225 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £597
90th Percentile £675 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,306 522 1,540
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.13 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.97 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.82% +11.88% -20.97%
75th Percentile £59.88 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £29.53 £26.00
% change year-on-year -14.82% +13.56% -25.71%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 +3 1,069 £475 - 695
South East -2 631 £503 -7.59% 1,010
Midlands +1 582 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 570 £456 -1.94% 371
Yorkshire 0 451 £500 +3.63% 253
West Midlands +3 382 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 371 £488 +2.74% 161
South West -3 326 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England 0 200 £514 -4.42% 271
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +4.05% 171
Wales +26 108 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -3 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4
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
1 160 (4.89%) Confluence
2 112 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.76%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.70%) Apache
6 13 (0.40%) SAS
7 10 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.31%) TPMS
8 8 (0.24%) CICS
8 8 (0.24%) CMS
9 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.092%) Camunda
11 3 (0.092%) IIS
11 3 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
12 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 244 (7.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 133 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (3.60%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (2.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (1.40%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.092%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.031%) UXPin
11 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 149 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.65%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.47%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 39 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
6 36 (1.10%) Oracle General Ledger
7 30 (0.92%) Oracle Assets
7 30 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
8 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
9 28 (0.85%) Oracle Cash Management
10 22 (0.67%) Oracle EBS R12
11 19 (0.58%) NetSuite
11 19 (0.58%) SAP CO
12 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
12 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
13 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 403 (12.31%) Azure
2 358 (10.93%) AWS
3 190 (5.80%) Power Platform
4 160 (4.89%) GCP
5 113 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
6 85 (2.60%) GitHub
7 81 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
7 81 (2.47%) SaaS
8 75 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
9 68 (2.08%) Serverless
10 53 (1.62%) Entra ID
11 42 (1.28%) OCI
12 39 (1.19%) OpenShift
13 34 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
14 33 (1.01%) Snowflake
15 32 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
15 32 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 31 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
17 29 (0.89%) Amazon S3
18 25 (0.76%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.47%) Firewall
2 42 (1.28%) WAN
3 36 (1.10%) DNS
4 34 (1.04%) Network Security
5 29 (0.89%) VPN
6 22 (0.67%) LAN
7 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
8 18 (0.55%) Skype
9 17 (0.52%) SSL
10 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.43%) Internet
11 14 (0.43%) SSH
11 14 (0.43%) Wireless
12 11 (0.34%) DHCP
13 10 (0.31%) SNMP
14 9 (0.27%) MPLS
15 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.24%) Kerberos
15 8 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.21%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 178 (5.44%) Power BI
2 83 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
4 52 (1.59%) NoSQL
5 45 (1.37%) Oracle Reports
6 44 (1.34%) Metadata
7 42 (1.28%) Relational Database
8 36 (1.10%) SQL Server
8 36 (1.10%) Tableau
9 26 (0.79%) DynamoDB
10 25 (0.76%) Data Lake
11 24 (0.73%) Big Data
12 23 (0.70%) Power Query
13 18 (0.55%) Oracle ODI
14 17 (0.52%) BigQuery
15 13 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 13 (0.40%) MySQL
15 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
16 12 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 311 (9.50%) JIRA
2 122 (3.73%) Jenkins
3 72 (2.20%) GitLab
4 53 (1.62%) Git
5 35 (1.07%) JUnit
5 35 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 29 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 20 (0.61%) Selenium
8 13 (0.40%) Bitbucket
8 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
8 13 (0.40%) Postman
9 11 (0.34%) Gradle
9 11 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.31%) Hudson
11 9 (0.27%) JMeter
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.21%) Maven
14 6 (0.18%) Snyk
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,118 (34.14%) Social Skills
2 508 (15.51%) Banking
3 421 (12.85%) Analytical Skills
4 344 (10.50%) Public Sector
5 163 (4.98%) Manufacturing
6 150 (4.58%) Telecoms
7 128 (3.91%) Marketing
7 128 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
8 111 (3.39%) Legal
9 105 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
10 95 (2.90%) Financial Institution
11 85 (2.60%) Electronics
12 80 (2.44%) Local Government
13 71 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
14 70 (2.14%) Retail
15 61 (1.86%) General Ledger
16 51 (1.56%) Billing
17 46 (1.40%) Investment Banking
18 41 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
19 33 (1.01%) Law
Job Titles
1 499 (15.24%) Analyst
2 330 (10.08%) Project Manager
3 283 (8.64%) Architect
4 270 (8.24%) Lead
5 257 (7.85%) Senior
6 234 (7.15%) Consultant
7 222 (6.78%) Business Analyst
8 195 (5.95%) Developer
9 117 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 93 (2.84%) Accountant
10 93 (2.84%) Programme Manager
11 84 (2.56%) Senior Manager
12 79 (2.41%) Finance Manager
13 74 (2.26%) Data Analyst
14 68 (2.08%) SAP Consultant
15 56 (1.71%) IT Manager
15 56 (1.71%) Systems Accountant
16 55 (1.68%) Administrator
16 55 (1.68%) Data Engineer
17 54 (1.65%) Functional Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (3.36%) REST
2 78 (2.38%) Spring
3 75 (2.29%) Spring Boot
4 73 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
5 65 (1.98%) Kafka
6 62 (1.89%) Middleware
7 56 (1.71%) RESTful
8 35 (1.07%) Node.js
9 33 (1.01%) .NET
10 32 (0.98%) JSON
10 32 (0.98%) OAuth
11 31 (0.95%) React
12 29 (0.89%) SOAP
13 27 (0.82%) XML
14 25 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
15 24 (0.73%) HTML
16 20 (0.61%) AngularJS
16 20 (0.61%) CSS
16 20 (0.61%) OpenTelemetry
17 18 (0.55%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 157 (4.79%) Onboarding
2 127 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 105 (3.21%) Cloud Native
4 100 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 75 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
7 71 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
8 69 (2.11%) Public Cloud
9 68 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
10 45 (1.37%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
12 37 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
13 35 (1.07%) PMI
14 34 (1.04%) Virtual Team
15 31 (0.95%) Mobile App
16 29 (0.89%) CMDB
17 25 (0.76%) Mainframe
18 19 (0.58%) NHS
18 19 (0.58%) Operational Technology
19 17 (0.52%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 128 (3.91%) Linux
2 109 (3.33%) Windows
3 44 (1.34%) Unix
4 28 (0.85%) Windows 10
5 24 (0.73%) Android
6 22 (0.67%) Mac OS
6 22 (0.67%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.21%) AIX
8 7 (0.21%) Solaris
9 5 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.12%) VMS
11 3 (0.092%) zOS
12 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.031%) MVS
12 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 662 (20.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 661 (20.18%) Agile
3 527 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
4 471 (14.38%) Migration
5 437 (13.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 392 (11.97%) Project Management
7 382 (11.66%) ERP
8 368 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
9 351 (10.72%) DevOps
10 319 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
11 294 (8.98%) CI/CD
12 288 (8.79%) Change Management
13 283 (8.64%) Project Delivery
14 244 (7.45%) Decision-Making
15 233 (7.11%) User Acceptance Testing
16 224 (6.84%) Analytics
17 215 (6.56%) Roadmaps
18 205 (6.26%) AI
19 204 (6.23%) Data Modelling
20 200 (6.11%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 326 (9.95%) SQL
2 265 (8.09%) Python
3 185 (5.65%) Java
4 70 (2.14%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.89%) Go
5 29 (0.89%) TypeScript
6 28 (0.85%) JavaScript
7 23 (0.70%) Bash
7 23 (0.70%) VBA
8 22 (0.67%) C#
9 20 (0.61%) PL/SQL
10 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
11 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
11 12 (0.37%) R
12 10 (0.31%) ABAP
12 10 (0.31%) COBOL
12 10 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 10 (0.31%) Perl
13 9 (0.27%) Rust
14 8 (0.24%) C++
Qualifications
1 342 (10.44%) Security Cleared
2 325 (9.92%) Degree
3 214 (6.53%) SC Cleared
4 98 (2.99%) PMI Certification
4 98 (2.99%) PMP
5 92 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 90 (2.75%) ACCA
7 84 (2.56%) CIMA
8 70 (2.14%) DV Cleared
9 67 (2.05%) Master's Degree
10 63 (1.92%) CISSP
11 59 (1.80%) Computer Science Degree
12 44 (1.34%) CISM
13 36 (1.10%) AWS Certification
14 29 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
15 23 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
16 16 (0.49%) MBA
16 16 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 14 (0.43%) Azure Certification
18 13 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 185 (5.65%) PMO
2 153 (4.67%) Data Quality
3 140 (4.27%) QA
4 132 (4.03%) GDPR
5 60 (1.83%) NIST
6 52 (1.59%) SLA
7 46 (1.40%) PCI DSS
8 44 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (0.89%) IFRS
10 28 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 27 (0.82%) Accessibility
12 24 (0.73%) ISO 20022
13 21 (0.64%) GRC
13 21 (0.64%) PSD2
14 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
15 13 (0.40%) SEPA
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
16 12 (0.37%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.31%) GLBA
System Software
1 116 (3.54%) Docker
2 75 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.61%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.092%) Firmware
12 3 (0.092%) KVM
12 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.061%) ACF2
13 2 (0.061%) HDFS
13 2 (0.061%) RACF
13 2 (0.061%) SRDF
13 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 160 (4.89%) Kubernetes
2 86 (2.63%) Terraform
3 83 (2.53%) Ansible
4 55 (1.68%) Grafana
5 48 (1.47%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (0.49%) SCCM
8 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.40%) vRealize
10 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.27%) Nessus
11 8 (0.24%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.24%) Kiali
12 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.15%) CASB
13 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.15%) Puppet
13 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 432 (13.19%) Microsoft
2 366 (11.18%) SAP
3 277 (8.46%) Oracle
4 154 (4.70%) ServiceNow
5 96 (2.93%) Google
6 76 (2.32%) Cisco
7 75 (2.29%) Splunk
8 52 (1.59%) Sage
9 51 (1.56%) VMware
10 48 (1.47%) IBM
11 46 (1.40%) Databricks
12 45 (1.37%) Salesforce
13 33 (1.01%) Workday
14 30 (0.92%) HP
15 29 (0.89%) Dell
16 28 (0.85%) IFS
17 22 (0.67%) Adobe
18 20 (0.61%) CyberArk
19 19 (0.58%) Remedy
20 18 (0.55%) Citrix