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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,919 2,668 2,665
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.97% 17.41% 14.99%
As % of the General category 26.94% 28.53% 27.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,346 1,762 1,574
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -3.41% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £729
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £575
% change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 260 60 124
10th Percentile £14.87 £13.42 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.28 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +25.09%
75th Percentile - £33.23 £53.19
90th Percentile £75.40 £73.75 £70.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%

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 14,548 9,350 9,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.84% 61.00% 54.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,965 5,612 5,395
10th Percentile £263 £213 £212
25th Percentile £400 £360 £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 £682 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,066 880 968
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.13 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.48 £16.17
Median hourly rate £30.74 £21.40 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +43.68% -43.87% +46.62%
75th Percentile £56.21 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.00 £71.33
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £38.07
% change year-on-year +19.28% -33.94% +38.44%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 1,349 £506 +10.66% 1,719
South East -1 749 £500 -4.76% 1,675
North West -1 684 £500 +11.11% 1,049
Midlands -2 617 £507 +6.74% 845
Yorkshire 0 583 £519 +6.63% 494
Scotland 0 532 £465 -3.53% 1,011
West Midlands 0 460 £525 +2.19% 531
South West -7 362 £550 -4.35% 952
East of England +3 211 £550 -1.12% 648
East Midlands -4 154 £500 +19.05% 314
North East -7 75 £500 +14.29% 198
Northern Ireland -1 66 £505 +3.59% 445
Wales +1 59 £525 +23.53% 147
Channel Islands +3 7 £550 - 3
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
1 154 (3.93%) Confluence
2 96 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.33%) Apache
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.20%) WebSphere
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
8 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (6.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 115 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (2.17%) Microsoft Project
5 35 (0.89%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.20%) 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
1 202 (5.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
5 38 (0.97%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
8 25 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
9 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
9 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 17 (0.43%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
13 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
13 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 492 (12.55%) Azure
2 348 (8.88%) AWS
3 245 (6.25%) GCP
4 229 (5.84%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.60%) SaaS
6 101 (2.58%) GitHub
7 100 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
8 98 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
9 97 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
10 75 (1.91%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.17%) OCI
12 43 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
12 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.07%) Serverless
14 39 (1.00%) OpenShift
15 34 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
16 33 (0.84%) Power Automate
17 29 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
18 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
19 26 (0.66%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 78 (1.99%) Firewall
2 75 (1.91%) Network Security
3 43 (1.10%) VPN
4 28 (0.71%) DNS
5 25 (0.64%) WAN
6 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.51%) LAN
8 15 (0.38%) Broadband
9 11 (0.28%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) HTTP
10 10 (0.26%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.20%) BGP
12 8 (0.20%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.18%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (4.77%) Power BI
2 74 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.86%) Relational Database
4 72 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.61%) Metadata
6 39 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
7 38 (0.97%) Data Lake
8 34 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.71%) Db2
11 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.48%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.43%) Data Vault
14 17 (0.43%) NoSQL
14 17 (0.43%) Oracle ODI
15 15 (0.38%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 238 (6.07%) JIRA
2 108 (2.76%) Git
3 54 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.66%) JUnit
5 19 (0.48%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.26%) Maven
10 9 (0.23%) Gradle
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
13 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,337 (34.12%) Social Skills
2 582 (14.85%) Banking
3 555 (14.16%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.17%) Organisational Skills
5 280 (7.14%) Public Sector
6 265 (6.76%) Legal
7 170 (4.34%) Retail
8 145 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
9 101 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 97 (2.48%) Local Government
11 93 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
12 83 (2.12%) General Ledger
13 78 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 76 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 74 (1.89%) Billing
16 72 (1.84%) Financial Institution
17 63 (1.61%) Marketing
18 56 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (1.33%) Telecoms
20 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 505 (12.89%) Analyst
2 406 (10.36%) Lead
3 359 (9.16%) Senior
4 318 (8.11%) Project Manager
5 309 (7.88%) Architect
6 302 (7.71%) Developer
7 277 (7.07%) Consultant
8 237 (6.05%) Business Analyst
9 155 (3.96%) Accountant
10 144 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
11 96 (2.45%) Systems Accountant
12 93 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
12 93 (2.37%) IT Manager
12 93 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 89 (2.27%) Java Developer
14 80 (2.04%) Administrator
14 80 (2.04%) Finance Manager
15 72 (1.84%) Data Analyst
16 69 (1.76%) Programme Manager
17 66 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
2 139 (3.55%) Terraform
3 96 (2.45%) REST
4 72 (1.84%) Kafka
5 68 (1.74%) Middleware
5 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
6 64 (1.63%) Spring
7 60 (1.53%) React
8 57 (1.45%) .NET
9 45 (1.15%) OAuth
9 45 (1.15%) RESTful
10 33 (0.84%) JSON
10 33 (0.84%) OpenID
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.74%) SAML
13 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.66%) HTML
14 26 (0.66%) OAuth2
15 25 (0.64%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 169 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 166 (4.24%) Product Ownership
3 157 (4.01%) Cloud Native
3 157 (4.01%) Virtual Team
4 122 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
5 120 (3.06%) Management Information System
6 112 (2.86%) Podcast
6 112 (2.86%) Web Conferencing
7 100 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 67 (1.71%) Data Structures
9 58 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
10 56 (1.43%) Data Centre
11 53 (1.35%) Public Cloud
12 49 (1.25%) Mainframe
12 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 48 (1.22%) AI Agents
14 45 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
15 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
16 42 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
17 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.93%) Windows
2 111 (2.83%) Linux
3 60 (1.53%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.71%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.66%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.38%) Android
8 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
12 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (25.95%) Stakeholder Management
2 725 (18.50%) Agile
3 556 (14.19%) Continuous Improvement
4 540 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
5 516 (13.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 508 (12.96%) Migration
7 498 (12.71%) ERP
8 385 (9.82%) CI/CD
9 377 (9.62%) AI
10 371 (9.47%) Decision-Making
11 359 (9.16%) Project Management
12 350 (8.93%) Change Management
13 349 (8.91%) DevOps
14 304 (7.76%) Roadmaps
15 292 (7.45%) Risk Management
16 289 (7.37%) Project Delivery
17 274 (6.99%) Analytics
18 273 (6.97%) User Acceptance Testing
19 269 (6.86%) Validation
20 234 (5.97%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 332 (8.47%) SQL
2 331 (8.45%) Python
3 242 (6.18%) Java
4 80 (2.04%) PowerShell
5 69 (1.76%) JavaScript
6 60 (1.53%) C#
7 59 (1.51%) Bash
8 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
9 39 (1.00%) TypeScript
10 37 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 34 (0.87%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 17 (0.43%) Bicep
14 16 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 13 (0.33%) Scala
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 11 (0.28%) Perl
18 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 345 (8.80%) Security Cleared
2 259 (6.61%) Degree
3 209 (5.33%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 110 (2.81%) ACCA
6 106 (2.70%) CIMA
7 100 (2.55%) PMP
8 86 (2.19%) DV Cleared
9 84 (2.14%) PMI Certification
10 74 (1.89%) CISSP
11 47 (1.20%) CISM
12 44 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 24 (0.61%) CCSP
17 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (6.12%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.49%) PMO
3 137 (3.50%) QA
4 111 (2.83%) GDPR
5 55 (1.40%) GRC
6 50 (1.28%) NIST
7 43 (1.10%) SLA
8 40 (1.02%) Accessibility
9 39 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 28 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) WCAG
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
15 9 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.20%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 72 (1.84%) Active Directory
2 70 (1.79%) Docker
3 46 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) KVM
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 198 (5.05%) Kubernetes
2 72 (1.84%) Ansible
3 37 (0.94%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
7 18 (0.46%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.41%) SCCM
9 10 (0.26%) Argo
9 10 (0.26%) Istio
9 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
13 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.10%) logstash
13 4 (0.10%) QRadar
13 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 578 (14.75%) Microsoft
2 419 (10.69%) SAP
3 380 (9.70%) Oracle
4 171 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.86%) Google
6 86 (2.19%) IBM
7 79 (2.02%) Databricks
8 68 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 60 (1.53%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Splunk
11 42 (1.07%) Ariba
11 42 (1.07%) Cisco
12 39 (1.00%) Workday
13 35 (0.89%) Sage
14 26 (0.66%) MuleSoft
14 26 (0.66%) Red Hat
15 24 (0.61%) IFS
16 21 (0.54%) Adobe
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 18 (0.46%) Foundry