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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,910 2,654 2,660
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.87% 17.16% 14.94%
As % of the General category 26.58% 28.17% 27.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,339 1,758 1,555
10th Percentile £340 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £494 £515
Median % change year-on-year +3.04% -4.13% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 58 117
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.35 £13.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £15.49 £18.89
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%
75th Percentile - £32.08 £54.00
90th Percentile £75.36 £61.02 £72.25
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%

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 14,711 9,422 9,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.20% 60.91% 55.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,977 5,665 5,394
10th Percentile £263 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,170 903 939
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.50 £21.39 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +42.59% -39.51% +34.70%
75th Percentile £56.21 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.47 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £36.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -30.14% +30.91%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 1,342 £513 +11.41% 1,917
South East -2 738 £500 -2.82% 2,127
North West -1 662 £500 +11.11% 1,076
Midlands -2 607 £500 +6.61% 1,095
Yorkshire 0 598 £519 +6.19% 612
Scotland 0 548 £465 -4.91% 964
West Midlands -1 452 £515 +2.90% 688
South West -7 357 £525 -8.70% 906
East of England +2 214 £553 +0.45% 676
East Midlands -4 152 £500 +19.76% 407
North East -7 75 £500 +14.29% 244
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 370
Wales +1 62 £525 +13.51% 202
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 13
South Coast - 1 £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
1 148 (3.79%) Confluence
2 96 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.43%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.15%) Camunda
7 6 (0.15%) CICS
7 6 (0.15%) IIS
7 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
8 4 (0.10%) nginx
9 3 (0.077%) IBM Transformation Extender
9 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.051%) Mule
10 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 259 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (2.02%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.84%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 205 (5.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
4 37 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
6 27 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
6 27 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
11 17 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.25%) Azure
2 353 (9.03%) AWS
3 252 (6.45%) GCP
4 226 (5.78%) Power Platform
5 103 (2.63%) SaaS
6 101 (2.58%) Dynamics 365
7 100 (2.56%) GitHub
8 95 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
9 94 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
10 74 (1.89%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.20%) OCI
12 46 (1.18%) Serverless
13 45 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
14 43 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
15 35 (0.90%) Power Automate
16 34 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
17 33 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
18 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.97%) Firewall
2 74 (1.89%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 21 (0.54%) WAN
7 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.43%) Broadband
8 17 (0.43%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 9 (0.23%) BIG-IP
10 9 (0.23%) DHCP
10 9 (0.23%) VSAN
11 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco IOS
14 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (4.63%) Power BI
2 74 (1.89%) Relational Database
3 71 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) SQL Server
4 65 (1.66%) Metadata
5 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 33 (0.84%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.74%) Db2
10 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (0.49%) BigQuery
11 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
14 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
14 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 231 (5.91%) JIRA
2 114 (2.92%) Git
3 61 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.56%) GitLab
4 22 (0.56%) JUnit
5 17 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.38%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 12 (0.31%) Maven
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Hudson
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,351 (34.55%) Social Skills
2 590 (15.09%) Banking
3 553 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 282 (7.21%) Organisational Skills
4 282 (7.21%) Public Sector
5 259 (6.62%) Legal
6 166 (4.25%) Retail
7 149 (3.81%) Influencing Skills
8 99 (2.53%) Manufacturing
9 94 (2.40%) Local Government
10 88 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (2.20%) General Ledger
12 78 (1.99%) Investment Banking
13 77 (1.97%) Billing
13 77 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 71 (1.82%) Financial Institution
15 65 (1.66%) Marketing
16 57 (1.46%) Telecoms
17 54 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 502 (12.84%) Analyst
2 394 (10.08%) Lead
3 370 (9.46%) Senior
4 309 (7.90%) Developer
5 308 (7.88%) Project Manager
6 307 (7.85%) Architect
7 271 (6.93%) Consultant
8 235 (6.01%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.86%) Accountant
10 145 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
11 102 (2.61%) IT Manager
12 97 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
13 92 (2.35%) Java Developer
13 92 (2.35%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.30%) Systems Accountant
15 85 (2.17%) Administrator
16 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.79%) Data Analyst
18 69 (1.76%) Programme Manager
19 67 (1.71%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.79%) Terraform
2 147 (3.76%) Oracle Fusion
3 105 (2.69%) REST
4 80 (2.05%) Kafka
5 71 (1.82%) Middleware
6 69 (1.76%) Spring Boot
7 68 (1.74%) React
8 65 (1.66%) Spring
9 58 (1.48%) .NET
10 50 (1.28%) RESTful
11 47 (1.20%) OAuth
12 37 (0.95%) JSON
12 37 (0.95%) OpenID
13 33 (0.84%) Node.js
14 31 (0.79%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 28 (0.72%) SOAP
16 28 (0.72%) XML
17 27 (0.69%) HTML
17 27 (0.69%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.27%) Onboarding
2 163 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 162 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.07%) Virtual Team
5 125 (3.20%) Data Protection Act
6 120 (3.07%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 101 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
10 67 (1.71%) Data Structures
11 64 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
12 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
13 55 (1.41%) AI Agents
13 55 (1.41%) Mainframe
14 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
15 48 (1.23%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
16 47 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
17 41 (1.05%) Mobile App
18 38 (0.97%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.94%) Linux
2 112 (2.86%) Windows
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.38%) Android
8 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,030 (26.34%) Stakeholder Management
2 729 (18.64%) Agile
3 542 (13.86%) Continuous Improvement
4 537 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
5 506 (12.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 496 (12.69%) Migration
7 486 (12.43%) ERP
8 407 (10.41%) CI/CD
9 398 (10.18%) AI
10 379 (9.69%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.00%) Project Management
12 348 (8.90%) Change Management
12 348 (8.90%) DevOps
13 305 (7.80%) Roadmaps
14 292 (7.47%) Project Delivery
15 291 (7.44%) Risk Management
16 284 (7.26%) Analytics
17 273 (6.98%) Validation
18 264 (6.75%) User Acceptance Testing
19 232 (5.93%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 346 (8.85%) SQL
2 344 (8.80%) Python
3 247 (6.32%) Java
4 80 (2.05%) PowerShell
5 75 (1.92%) JavaScript
6 63 (1.61%) C#
7 60 (1.53%) Bash
8 44 (1.13%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 16 (0.41%) Scala
14 13 (0.33%) ABAP
14 13 (0.33%) Perl
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 8 (0.20%) JCL
Qualifications
1 358 (9.16%) Security Cleared
2 255 (6.52%) Degree
3 220 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (2.71%) ACCA
6 103 (2.63%) CIMA
7 96 (2.46%) PMP
8 89 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 79 (2.02%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.74%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
12 43 (1.10%) CISM
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 33 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
15 31 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) CCSP
18 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (6.29%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.48%) PMO
3 139 (3.55%) QA
4 99 (2.53%) GDPR
5 56 (1.43%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) NIST
7 41 (1.05%) Accessibility
7 41 (1.05%) SLA
8 37 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.79%) IFRS
10 26 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 7 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 79 (2.02%) Docker
2 70 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.18%) vSphere
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.051%) IAG
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 213 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.92%) Ansible
3 40 (1.02%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.49%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 13 (0.33%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Tivoli
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 582 (14.88%) Microsoft
2 427 (10.92%) SAP
3 375 (9.59%) Oracle
4 172 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.92%) Google
6 95 (2.43%) IBM
7 79 (2.02%) Databricks
8 68 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 63 (1.61%) VMware
10 47 (1.20%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Ariba
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 42 (1.07%) Cisco
13 33 (0.84%) Sage
14 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
14 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
15 23 (0.59%) Adobe
15 23 (0.59%) Snow
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase
17 19 (0.49%) IFS