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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,898 2,675 2,654
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.09% 17.44% 14.61%
As % of the General category 27.41% 28.54% 27.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,336 1,777 1,599
10th Percentile £350 £306 £287
25th Percentile £413 £394 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £731
UK median daily rate £550 £540 £575
% change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 68 144
10th Percentile £15.08 £13.46 £14.05
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +13.80%
75th Percentile - £54.19 £43.82
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.00 £70.13
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +34.62%

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 14,221 9,372 9,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.42% 61.11% 53.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,839 5,632 5,554
10th Percentile £263 £213 £212
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £652 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,976 885 1,066
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.08 £13.72
25th Percentile £16.60 £15.34 £15.94
Median hourly rate £31.96 £22.14 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.37% -36.74% +34.62%
75th Percentile £56.25 £45.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.46 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.09% -28.87% +26.38%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 £500 +6.61% 1,691
South East -2 737 £505 -3.81% 1,671
North West -1 690 £500 +11.11% 992
Midlands -1 625 £500 +11.11% 776
Yorkshire 0 573 £514 +5.44% 479
Scotland 0 518 £470 -3.89% 845
West Midlands +1 466 £500 - 467
South West -5 374 £550 -1.60% 1,004
East of England +6 210 £530 -6.19% 579
East Midlands -2 155 £500 +21.21% 309
North East -5 72 £500 +13.64% 237
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 -1.30% 336
Wales -1 58 £525 +13.51% 165
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 4
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
1 156 (4.00%) Confluence
2 96 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
4 15 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.33%) SAS
7 12 (0.31%) CMS
8 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.21%) IIS
9 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.10%) CICS
12 4 (0.10%) nginx
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.051%) JBoss
14 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 250 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (5.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 49 (1.26%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.97%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 489 (12.54%) Azure
2 333 (8.54%) AWS
3 232 (5.95%) GCP
4 227 (5.82%) Power Platform
5 98 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
5 98 (2.51%) SaaS
6 97 (2.49%) GitHub
7 94 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
8 93 (2.39%) Dynamics 365
9 74 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.18%) OCI
11 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
13 38 (0.97%) Serverless
14 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
15 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
16 30 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
18 25 (0.64%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.00%) Firewall
2 71 (1.82%) Network Security
3 47 (1.21%) VPN
4 34 (0.87%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.56%) LAN
7 22 (0.56%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) HTTP
9 11 (0.28%) Broadband
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (4.80%) Power BI
2 78 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.87%) Relational Database
4 71 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 66 (1.69%) Metadata
6 41 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
7 40 (1.03%) Data Lake
8 39 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
9 36 (0.92%) Tableau
10 30 (0.77%) MongoDB
11 27 (0.69%) Db2
12 24 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
13 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
13 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 20 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
17 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
18 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 246 (6.31%) JIRA
2 108 (2.77%) Git
3 53 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 17 (0.44%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Maven
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,301 (33.38%) Social Skills
2 572 (14.67%) Banking
3 546 (14.01%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (7.13%) Public Sector
5 266 (6.82%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.62%) Legal
7 168 (4.31%) Retail
8 139 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
9 106 (2.72%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
11 94 (2.41%) Local Government
12 84 (2.15%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.98%) Investment Banking
14 75 (1.92%) Billing
15 73 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.44%) Marketing
17 55 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (1.33%) Telecoms
19 49 (1.26%) Law
Job Titles
1 501 (12.85%) Analyst
2 414 (10.62%) Lead
3 354 (9.08%) Senior
4 319 (8.18%) Project Manager
5 312 (8.00%) Architect
6 290 (7.44%) Developer
7 264 (6.77%) Consultant
8 238 (6.11%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.08%) Accountant
10 142 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 96 (2.46%) IT Manager
13 93 (2.39%) Senior Manager
14 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.23%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.98%) Administrator
17 76 (1.95%) Finance Manager
18 69 (1.77%) Programme Manager
19 68 (1.74%) Software Engineer
20 65 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.90%) Oracle Fusion
2 131 (3.36%) Terraform
3 90 (2.31%) REST
4 72 (1.85%) Middleware
5 69 (1.77%) Kafka
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.64%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 59 (1.51%) React
10 41 (1.05%) OAuth
10 41 (1.05%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 31 (0.80%) JSON
13 30 (0.77%) OpenID
14 29 (0.74%) SAML
14 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
14 29 (0.74%) XML
15 24 (0.62%) HTML
16 23 (0.59%) OAuth2
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 168 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 159 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.95%) Virtual Team
4 148 (3.80%) Cloud Native
5 117 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
6 112 (2.87%) Podcast
6 112 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
7 107 (2.74%) Management Information System
8 101 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 66 (1.69%) Data Structures
10 57 (1.46%) Data Centre
11 54 (1.39%) Public Cloud
12 53 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
13 47 (1.21%) Mainframe
13 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
14 43 (1.10%) AI Agents
14 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
15 39 (1.00%) CMDB
16 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
17 37 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.03%) Windows
2 105 (2.69%) Linux
3 61 (1.56%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.62%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
7 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 9 (0.23%) AIX
9 8 (0.21%) 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
1 991 (25.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 722 (18.52%) Agile
3 545 (13.98%) Continuous Improvement
4 528 (13.55%) Problem-Solving
5 522 (13.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 504 (12.93%) Migration
7 501 (12.85%) ERP
8 366 (9.39%) CI/CD
8 366 (9.39%) Decision-Making
9 363 (9.31%) AI
10 358 (9.18%) Project Management
11 349 (8.95%) Change Management
12 348 (8.93%) DevOps
13 302 (7.75%) Project Delivery
14 291 (7.47%) Roadmaps
15 278 (7.13%) Risk Management
16 276 (7.08%) Analytics
17 266 (6.82%) User Acceptance Testing
18 261 (6.70%) Validation
19 228 (5.85%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 332 (8.52%) SQL
2 322 (8.26%) Python
3 236 (6.05%) Java
4 78 (2.00%) PowerShell
5 62 (1.59%) JavaScript
6 58 (1.49%) C#
7 56 (1.44%) Bash
8 41 (1.05%) PL/SQL
9 38 (0.97%) TypeScript
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 28 (0.72%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Bicep
14 13 (0.33%) ABAP
14 13 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 354 (9.08%) Security Cleared
2 263 (6.75%) Degree
3 214 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 173 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (2.85%) ACCA
6 107 (2.74%) CIMA
7 102 (2.62%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) DV Cleared
8 88 (2.26%) PMI Certification
9 71 (1.82%) CISSP
10 46 (1.18%) CISM
11 41 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
12 38 (0.97%) Azure Certification
13 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
14 31 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
15 29 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 27 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) CCSP
18 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 232 (5.95%) Data Quality
2 180 (4.62%) PMO
3 131 (3.36%) QA
4 119 (3.05%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 49 (1.26%) NIST
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 41 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 39 (1.00%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 10 (0.26%) COBIT
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
13 10 (0.26%) SOC 2
14 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
14 8 (0.21%) WCAG
15 7 (0.18%) P3O
15 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 75 (1.92%) Active Directory
2 67 (1.72%) Docker
3 44 (1.13%) 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 8 (0.21%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) GPFS
11 4 (0.10%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.051%) KVM
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) IAG
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 187 (4.80%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.90%) Ansible
3 34 (0.87%) Grafana
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 20 (0.51%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.15%) vRealize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) VxRail
Vendors
1 568 (14.57%) Microsoft
2 411 (10.54%) SAP
3 389 (9.98%) Oracle
4 174 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 110 (2.82%) Google
6 86 (2.21%) IBM
7 80 (2.05%) Databricks
8 67 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 58 (1.49%) VMware
10 42 (1.08%) Cisco
11 41 (1.05%) Sage
12 39 (1.00%) Splunk
13 38 (0.97%) Ariba
14 37 (0.95%) Workday
15 27 (0.69%) IFS
16 24 (0.62%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 21 (0.54%) Adobe
18 20 (0.51%) Sybase
19 18 (0.46%) Atlassian