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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,899 2,563 2,799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.52% 17.51% 13.30%
As % of the General category 28.20% 28.60% 24.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,358 1,674 1,705
10th Percentile £340 £308 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 75 207
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.11 £17.80 £14.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.25% -13.64% -13.95%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.28 £32.70 £30.00
% change year-on-year +29.30% +8.98% -

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 13,826 8,960 11,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.48% 61.22% 53.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,807 5,448 6,372
10th Percentile £265 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% -3.62% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £678 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,713 760 1,656
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.08 £12.70
25th Percentile £17.57 £15.48 £15.40
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -26.40% +20.42%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £27.13 £31.97
% change year-on-year +19.82% -15.15% +6.57%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 1,314 £500 +7.53% 713
South East 0 733 £500 -4.76% 881
North West +4 683 £475 +5.56% 366
Midlands +1 667 £500 +11.11% 418
Yorkshire 0 581 £525 +7.42% 253
Scotland 0 494 £475 -2.86% 136
West Midlands +1 493 £500 - 233
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 260
East of England +6 211 £525 -8.70% 229
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 184
Wales +4 86 £525 +13.51% 58
Northern Ireland -1 60 £475 +11.76% 78
North East -16 51 £500 +13.64% 99
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1
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
1 159 (4.08%) Confluence
2 99 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.28%) CICS
7 11 (0.28%) CMS
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) nginx
13 2 (0.051%) TPMS
Applications
1 237 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.051%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 206 (5.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.03%) NetSuite
3 40 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
3 40 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
4 38 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 22 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
6 19 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
7 18 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.46%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
8 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
9 14 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
10 13 (0.33%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.28%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.28%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.26%) Azure
2 334 (8.57%) AWS
3 222 (5.69%) Power Platform
4 213 (5.46%) GCP
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 93 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
6 93 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
7 88 (2.26%) GitHub
8 74 (1.90%) Dynamics 365
9 72 (1.85%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.18%) Snowflake
11 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.08%) Serverless
13 41 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
14 39 (1.00%) OCI
15 25 (0.64%) PaaS
15 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
16 24 (0.62%) Amazon S3
16 24 (0.62%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (0.62%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.15%) Firewall
2 65 (1.67%) Network Security
3 38 (0.97%) DNS
4 37 (0.95%) VPN
5 30 (0.77%) WAN
6 27 (0.69%) SSL
7 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.46%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) DHCP
10 12 (0.31%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.31%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.15%) Wireless
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.72%) Power BI
2 80 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 75 (1.92%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
5 62 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
5 62 (1.59%) SQL Server
6 53 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.90%) Tableau
9 31 (0.80%) NoSQL
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.64%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.54%) Db2
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
15 19 (0.49%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
17 16 (0.41%) Power Query
18 15 (0.38%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 275 (7.05%) JIRA
2 93 (2.39%) Git
3 74 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.69%) JUnit
5 23 (0.59%) Selenium
6 22 (0.56%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.54%) GitLab
8 19 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 14 (0.36%) Postman
10 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) Gradle
12 8 (0.21%) Maven
12 8 (0.21%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
14 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,243 (31.88%) Social Skills
2 540 (13.85%) Banking
3 527 (13.52%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.31%) Public Sector
5 198 (5.08%) Legal
6 177 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 137 (3.51%) Retail
8 114 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 112 (2.87%) Local Government
10 111 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.18%) Financial Institution
13 84 (2.15%) General Ledger
14 82 (2.10%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.85%) Billing
16 61 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
18 52 (1.33%) Marketing
19 47 (1.21%) Aerospace
20 46 (1.18%) Law
Job Titles
1 536 (13.75%) Analyst
2 388 (9.95%) Lead
3 350 (8.98%) Architect
4 347 (8.90%) Senior
5 342 (8.77%) Project Manager
6 293 (7.51%) Developer
7 255 (6.54%) Consultant
8 249 (6.39%) Business Analyst
9 171 (4.39%) Accountant
10 151 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.74%) Systems Accountant
12 102 (2.62%) IT Manager
13 100 (2.56%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.28%) Programme Manager
15 88 (2.26%) Java Developer
16 85 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
17 70 (1.80%) Finance Manager
18 68 (1.74%) Administrator
19 66 (1.69%) Data Engineer
20 65 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (3.44%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.36%) Middleware
3 89 (2.28%) REST
4 70 (1.80%) Kafka
4 70 (1.80%) Spring
5 69 (1.77%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.54%) React
7 58 (1.49%) .NET
8 43 (1.10%) RESTful
9 36 (0.92%) OAuth
10 32 (0.82%) JSON
11 30 (0.77%) Node.js
12 29 (0.74%) OpenID
13 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.67%) SailPoint
14 26 (0.67%) XML
15 23 (0.59%) Redux
16 22 (0.56%) AngularJS
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
18 20 (0.51%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.10%) Onboarding
2 159 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 150 (3.85%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.03%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
5 107 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
6 89 (2.28%) Virtual Team
7 75 (1.92%) Data Centre
8 70 (1.80%) Data Structures
9 67 (1.72%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.31%) Mainframe
11 49 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
12 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
13 45 (1.15%) Web Conferencing
14 44 (1.13%) Podcast
15 42 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
16 32 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
17 31 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
18 29 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
19 28 (0.72%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.10%) Windows
2 104 (2.67%) Linux
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.64%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.15%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.10%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.026%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 888 (22.78%) Stakeholder Management
2 717 (18.39%) Agile
3 565 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
4 551 (14.13%) Migration
5 530 (13.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 522 (13.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 507 (13.00%) ERP
8 399 (10.23%) Project Management
9 373 (9.57%) DevOps
10 358 (9.18%) CI/CD
10 358 (9.18%) Decision-Making
11 346 (8.87%) Change Management
12 322 (8.26%) Project Delivery
13 316 (8.10%) AI
14 300 (7.69%) User Acceptance Testing
15 292 (7.49%) Roadmaps
16 272 (6.98%) Validation
17 262 (6.72%) Risk Management
18 248 (6.36%) Analytics
19 241 (6.18%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 360 (9.23%) SQL
2 302 (7.75%) Python
3 230 (5.90%) Java
4 75 (1.92%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) C#
6 45 (1.15%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.00%) Bash
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
9 34 (0.87%) TypeScript
10 26 (0.67%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.62%) Go
12 20 (0.51%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.38%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
18 9 (0.23%) Rust
Qualifications
1 357 (9.16%) Security Cleared
2 305 (7.82%) Degree
3 222 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 129 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (3.23%) ACCA
6 123 (3.15%) CIMA
7 115 (2.95%) PMP
8 101 (2.59%) PMI Certification
9 77 (1.97%) CISSP
10 66 (1.69%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.18%) CISM
12 39 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.77%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.77%) Master's Degree
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
16 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
17 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
18 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 211 (5.41%) Data Quality
2 167 (4.28%) PMO
3 147 (3.77%) GDPR
3 147 (3.77%) QA
4 55 (1.41%) NIST
5 48 (1.23%) SLA
6 47 (1.21%) GRC
7 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 36 (0.92%) IFRS
9 34 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
10 31 (0.80%) PCI DSS
11 18 (0.46%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 11 (0.28%) GAAP
13 11 (0.28%) PSD2
14 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
14 10 (0.26%) SEPA
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) EMIR
System Software
1 89 (2.28%) Docker
2 78 (2.00%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.51%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) GPFS
9 6 (0.15%) NFS
9 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.051%) ACF2
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.051%) SRDF
11 2 (0.051%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 173 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 101 (2.59%) Terraform
3 80 (2.05%) Ansible
4 36 (0.92%) Grafana
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (0.77%) Prometheus
7 23 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (0.51%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 8 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 487 (12.49%) Microsoft
2 405 (10.39%) SAP
3 368 (9.44%) Oracle
4 167 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 109 (2.80%) Google
6 77 (1.97%) IBM
7 75 (1.92%) Databricks
8 62 (1.59%) VMware
9 55 (1.41%) Sage
10 47 (1.21%) Salesforce
11 46 (1.18%) Cisco
12 45 (1.15%) Splunk
13 34 (0.87%) IFS
14 33 (0.85%) Ariba
15 31 (0.80%) Workday
16 24 (0.62%) HP
17 22 (0.56%) Red Hat
18 20 (0.51%) MuleSoft
19 19 (0.49%) Sybase
20 18 (0.46%) Foundry