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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,918 2,667 2,593
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.38% 17.61% 13.87%
As % of the General category 27.86% 28.86% 26.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,358 1,761 1,594
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £626
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 74 162
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.74 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.69 £19.17
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +60.51% -28.15% +15.72%
75th Percentile £45.75 £60.00 £38.59
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £37.81
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.33% +30.42%

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 14,065 9,241 9,974
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.62% 61.02% 53.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,838 5,575 5,738
10th Percentile £264 £213 £213
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 £593 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,843 829 1,252
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.06 £13.60
25th Percentile £17.11 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +49.05% -41.92% +46.62%
75th Percentile £63.56 £48.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £82.22 £72.75 £70.16
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -32.93% +25.00%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 1,339 £500 +6.50% 967
South East -1 759 £501 -5.42% 1,066
North West 0 703 £495 +9.45% 517
Midlands -1 640 £514 +14.22% 530
Yorkshire 0 573 £519 +8.64% 336
Scotland 0 495 £475 -5.00% 254
West Midlands +1 493 £525 +7.80% 316
South West -3 384 £525 -5.01% 434
East of England +7 210 £525 -8.70% 270
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 214
Wales +3 73 £525 +13.51% 213
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 138
North East -13 56 £500 +13.64% 123
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2
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
1 142 (3.62%) Confluence
2 99 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
9 8 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 3 (0.077%) Camunda
13 3 (0.077%) Mule
13 3 (0.077%) Mule ESB
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.051%) Jupyter
Applications
1 243 (6.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.37%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
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%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 201 (5.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.17%) Oracle ERP
3 45 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.07%) NetSuite
5 41 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
6 33 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
9 20 (0.51%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
11 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
11 14 (0.36%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.20%) Azure
2 323 (8.24%) AWS
3 225 (5.74%) Power Platform
4 224 (5.72%) GCP
5 103 (2.63%) SaaS
6 91 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
8 88 (2.25%) Microsoft 365
9 86 (2.19%) GitHub
10 70 (1.79%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.23%) OCI
12 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 43 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 40 (1.02%) Microsoft Copilot
15 39 (1.00%) Serverless
16 26 (0.66%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.66%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.61%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (0.61%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 22 (0.56%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.07%) Firewall
2 65 (1.66%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 37 (0.94%) DNS
5 26 (0.66%) SSL
5 26 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.66%) WAN
6 19 (0.48%) LAN
7 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 11 (0.28%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.20%) BGP
11 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) MPLS
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.72%) Power BI
2 79 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.76%) Metadata
5 64 (1.63%) SQL Server
6 52 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
6 52 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
7 37 (0.94%) Data Lake
8 36 (0.92%) Tableau
9 29 (0.74%) MongoDB
10 24 (0.61%) Db2
10 24 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
11 23 (0.59%) NoSQL
11 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 22 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 16 (0.41%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 251 (6.41%) JIRA
2 97 (2.48%) Git
3 60 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.61%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.38%) GitLab
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 11 (0.28%) Claude Code
10 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Liquibase
15 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
15 5 (0.13%) Gradle
15 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,248 (31.85%) Social Skills
2 551 (14.06%) Analytical Skills
3 535 (13.65%) Banking
4 295 (7.53%) Public Sector
5 230 (5.87%) Legal
6 219 (5.59%) Organisational Skills
7 145 (3.70%) Retail
8 131 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.83%) Local Government
9 111 (2.83%) Manufacturing
10 101 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
11 81 (2.07%) General Ledger
12 79 (2.02%) Financial Institution
13 78 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.86%) Billing
15 70 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 55 (1.40%) Marketing
17 53 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (1.35%) Telecoms
18 50 (1.28%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 528 (13.48%) Analyst
2 424 (10.82%) Lead
3 360 (9.19%) Senior
4 333 (8.50%) Project Manager
5 319 (8.14%) Architect
6 294 (7.50%) Developer
7 256 (6.53%) Consultant
8 246 (6.28%) Business Analyst
9 175 (4.47%) Accountant
10 140 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.73%) Systems Accountant
12 103 (2.63%) IT Manager
13 99 (2.53%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.27%) Financial Analyst
15 88 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.94%) Programme Manager
17 72 (1.84%) Administrator
18 69 (1.76%) Data Analyst
18 69 (1.76%) Finance Manager
19 64 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.14%) Middleware
3 83 (2.12%) REST
4 68 (1.74%) Kafka
5 65 (1.66%) Spring Boot
6 63 (1.61%) Spring
7 60 (1.53%) React
8 59 (1.51%) .NET
9 37 (0.94%) OAuth
9 37 (0.94%) RESTful
10 34 (0.87%) Node.js
11 31 (0.79%) JSON
12 29 (0.74%) XML
13 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.66%) OpenID
15 25 (0.64%) SAML
16 24 (0.61%) SailPoint
17 22 (0.56%) Redux
18 21 (0.54%) HTML
19 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 156 (3.98%) Onboarding
2 155 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.93%) Cloud Native
4 126 (3.22%) Virtual Team
5 113 (2.88%) Management Information System
6 107 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
8 79 (2.02%) Web Conferencing
9 78 (1.99%) Podcast
10 70 (1.79%) Data Structures
11 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
12 55 (1.40%) Public Cloud
13 53 (1.35%) Mainframe
14 52 (1.33%) Security Posture
15 50 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
16 39 (1.00%) AI Agents
16 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 37 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 34 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
18 34 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.14%) Windows
2 110 (2.81%) Linux
3 64 (1.63%) Unix
4 31 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (0.69%) Solaris
7 26 (0.66%) zOS
8 13 (0.33%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
15 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 917 (23.40%) Stakeholder Management
2 715 (18.25%) Agile
3 561 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
4 552 (14.09%) Continuous Improvement
5 537 (13.71%) Migration
6 515 (13.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 514 (13.12%) ERP
8 372 (9.49%) Project Management
9 364 (9.29%) Decision-Making
10 353 (9.01%) CI/CD
11 352 (8.98%) DevOps
12 346 (8.83%) Change Management
13 340 (8.68%) AI
14 320 (8.17%) Project Delivery
15 294 (7.50%) Roadmaps
16 285 (7.27%) User Acceptance Testing
17 279 (7.12%) Validation
18 271 (6.92%) Risk Management
19 263 (6.71%) Analytics
20 241 (6.15%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 330 (8.42%) SQL
2 313 (7.99%) Python
3 221 (5.64%) Java
4 70 (1.79%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.45%) C#
6 52 (1.33%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.20%) Bash
8 37 (0.94%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.94%) TypeScript
9 30 (0.77%) Shell Script
10 24 (0.61%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.28%) PHP
15 11 (0.28%) VBA
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 376 (9.60%) Security Cleared
2 285 (7.27%) Degree
3 229 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 147 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 120 (3.06%) ACCA
6 116 (2.96%) CIMA
7 109 (2.78%) PMP
8 95 (2.42%) PMI Certification
9 87 (2.22%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.79%) CISSP
11 43 (1.10%) CISM
12 35 (0.89%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.84%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 32 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.61%) Master's Degree
16 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
18 20 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 220 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 177 (4.52%) PMO
3 146 (3.73%) QA
4 136 (3.47%) GDPR
5 49 (1.25%) SLA
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 46 (1.17%) GRC
8 37 (0.94%) IFRS
9 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 34 (0.87%) Accessibility
11 33 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.33%) GAAP
13 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
17 8 (0.20%) WCAG
18 7 (0.18%) COBIT
18 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 77 (1.97%) Docker
2 74 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.28%) vSphere
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
11 3 (0.077%) KVM
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) SRDF
12 2 (0.051%) zsh
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 167 (4.26%) Kubernetes
2 107 (2.73%) Terraform
3 74 (1.89%) Ansible
4 31 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (0.77%) Grafana
6 25 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (0.56%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 13 (0.33%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
12 10 (0.26%) Control-M
12 10 (0.26%) Istio
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
14 7 (0.18%) Nessus
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
16 5 (0.13%) CASB
16 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 522 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 402 (10.26%) SAP
3 386 (9.85%) Oracle
4 176 (4.49%) ServiceNow
5 105 (2.68%) Google
6 86 (2.19%) IBM
7 78 (1.99%) Databricks
8 59 (1.51%) Salesforce
8 59 (1.51%) VMware
9 53 (1.35%) Sage
10 42 (1.07%) Cisco
11 37 (0.94%) Workday
12 33 (0.84%) Ariba
12 33 (0.84%) IFS
12 33 (0.84%) Splunk
13 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
14 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
15 20 (0.51%) HP
15 20 (0.51%) Sybase
16 19 (0.48%) CyberArk