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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,909 2,685 2,647
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.11% 17.52% 14.55%
As % of the General category 27.43% 28.67% 26.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,347 1,776 1,612
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -3.90% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £541 £575
% change year-on-year +1.71% -5.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 71 148
10th Percentile £15.18 £13.46 £14.31
25th Percentile £22.20 £16.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -27.70% +8.58%
75th Percentile - £54.62 £43.82
90th Percentile £75.76 £75.00 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +33.33%

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 14,251 9,364 9,821
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.46% 61.11% 53.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,889 5,640 5,610
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £655 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 865 1,109
10th Percentile £13.64 £13.08 £13.69
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.34 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £35.03
Median % change year-on-year +45.55% -36.80% +40.12%
75th Percentile £57.50 £45.80 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.56
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.50
% change year-on-year +25.25% -29.15% +29.09%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 1,350 £500 +6.61% 817
South East -3 734 £505 -3.81% 1,106
North West 0 698 £500 +10.56% 426
Midlands -1 628 £500 +11.11% 423
Yorkshire 0 573 £514 +5.98% 264
Scotland 0 511 £475 -1.04% 188
West Midlands 0 475 £500 - 261
South West -5 382 £550 -4.35% 471
East of England +4 205 £525 -7.89% 296
East Midlands -4 149 £500 +21.21% 161
North East -7 72 £500 +12.36% 139
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 68
Wales -2 61 £525 +13.51% 93
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 2
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 (3.94%) Confluence
2 94 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.38%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.20%) IIS
7 8 (0.20%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) Camunda
11 3 (0.077%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) JBoss
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
12 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 246 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 85 (2.17%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (1.02%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 193 (4.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
5 39 (1.00%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
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%) SAP PSCD
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
14 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 484 (12.38%) Azure
2 331 (8.47%) AWS
3 228 (5.83%) GCP
4 227 (5.81%) Power Platform
5 100 (2.56%) SaaS
6 95 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
7 94 (2.40%) GitHub
8 93 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
9 91 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
10 71 (1.82%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.20%) OCI
12 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
13 40 (1.02%) Serverless
14 39 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
15 36 (0.92%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (0.74%) Power Automate
17 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
18 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.07%) Firewall
2 72 (1.84%) Network Security
3 45 (1.15%) 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%) VSAN
9 11 (0.28%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) Broadband
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.20%) BGP
11 8 (0.20%) BIG-IP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (4.81%) Power BI
2 77 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.74%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.66%) Metadata
6 47 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.97%) Data Lake
9 35 (0.90%) Tableau
10 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.64%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 17 (0.43%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
17 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 249 (6.37%) JIRA
2 105 (2.69%) Git
3 52 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) GitLab
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 10 (0.26%) Postman
9 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) Gradle
13 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
13 6 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 1,297 (33.18%) Social Skills
2 558 (14.27%) Banking
3 557 (14.25%) Analytical Skills
4 278 (7.11%) Public Sector
5 260 (6.65%) Legal
6 258 (6.60%) Organisational Skills
7 167 (4.27%) Retail
8 141 (3.61%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.84%) Manufacturing
10 99 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
11 96 (2.46%) Local Government
12 85 (2.17%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.97%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
14 75 (1.92%) Billing
15 74 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (1.36%) Marketing
18 52 (1.33%) Telecoms
19 51 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 508 (13.00%) Analyst
2 421 (10.77%) Lead
3 356 (9.11%) Senior
4 329 (8.42%) Project Manager
5 311 (7.96%) Architect
6 276 (7.06%) Developer
7 264 (6.75%) Consultant
8 240 (6.14%) Business Analyst
9 162 (4.14%) Accountant
10 139 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.56%) Systems Accountant
12 99 (2.53%) IT Manager
13 95 (2.43%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 82 (2.10%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.97%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.89%) Administrator
18 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.66%) Software Engineer
20 63 (1.61%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (3.97%) Oracle Fusion
2 125 (3.20%) Terraform
3 85 (2.17%) REST
4 75 (1.92%) Middleware
5 67 (1.71%) Kafka
6 63 (1.61%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.59%) Spring
8 60 (1.53%) .NET
9 55 (1.41%) React
10 39 (1.00%) OAuth
10 39 (1.00%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) JSON
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.74%) SAML
14 28 (0.72%) OpenID
15 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
17 21 (0.54%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 162 (4.14%) Onboarding
1 162 (4.14%) Product Ownership
2 155 (3.97%) Virtual Team
3 146 (3.73%) Cloud Native
4 113 (2.89%) Management Information System
5 112 (2.87%) Podcast
5 112 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
6 109 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 102 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 63 (1.61%) Data Structures
9 62 (1.59%) Data Centre
10 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
11 51 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
12 49 (1.25%) Mainframe
12 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
14 39 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 38 (0.97%) CMDB
15 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
15 38 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.10%) Windows
2 105 (2.69%) Linux
3 60 (1.53%) Unix
4 33 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 25 (0.64%) Solaris
7 24 (0.61%) zOS
8 12 (0.31%) Android
8 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.28%) AIX
10 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.051%) CentOS
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 982 (25.12%) Stakeholder Management
2 716 (18.32%) Agile
3 544 (13.92%) Continuous Improvement
4 525 (13.43%) Problem-Solving
5 519 (13.28%) Migration
5 519 (13.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 507 (12.97%) ERP
7 368 (9.41%) Decision-Making
8 362 (9.26%) CI/CD
9 358 (9.16%) AI
9 358 (9.16%) Project Management
10 353 (9.03%) Change Management
11 349 (8.93%) DevOps
12 309 (7.90%) Project Delivery
13 291 (7.44%) Roadmaps
14 282 (7.21%) Risk Management
15 276 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
16 272 (6.96%) Analytics
17 263 (6.73%) Validation
18 233 (5.96%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 328 (8.39%) SQL
2 319 (8.16%) Python
3 222 (5.68%) Java
4 76 (1.94%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) C#
6 55 (1.41%) Bash
7 54 (1.38%) JavaScript
8 39 (1.00%) PL/SQL
9 38 (0.97%) Shell Script
10 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
11 25 (0.64%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 15 (0.38%) Bicep
14 14 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) Scala
17 11 (0.28%) ABAP
18 9 (0.23%) Perl
18 9 (0.23%) VBA
Qualifications
1 363 (9.29%) Security Cleared
2 267 (6.83%) Degree
3 222 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.87%) ACCA
6 108 (2.76%) CIMA
7 101 (2.58%) PMP
8 89 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.23%) PMI Certification
10 75 (1.92%) CISSP
11 47 (1.20%) CISM
12 40 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
13 38 (0.97%) AWS Certification
14 37 (0.95%) Azure Certification
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
17 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
20 20 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 232 (5.94%) Data Quality
2 178 (4.55%) PMO
3 132 (3.38%) QA
4 122 (3.12%) GDPR
5 55 (1.41%) GRC
6 51 (1.30%) NIST
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 41 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (0.95%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) GAAP
16 8 (0.20%) ISO 9001
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS 17
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
17 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (1.89%) Active Directory
2 70 (1.79%) Docker
3 46 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) KVM
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) IAG
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 180 (4.60%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.89%) Ansible
3 33 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (0.82%) Grafana
5 31 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
6 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
7 17 (0.43%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.38%) SCCM
9 11 (0.28%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Argo
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Puppet
14 5 (0.13%) VxRail
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 559 (14.30%) Microsoft
2 406 (10.39%) SAP
3 395 (10.10%) Oracle
4 174 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.89%) Google
6 84 (2.15%) IBM
7 78 (2.00%) Databricks
8 65 (1.66%) Salesforce
9 62 (1.59%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Cisco
11 44 (1.13%) Sage
12 37 (0.95%) Splunk
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 34 (0.87%) Ariba
14 29 (0.74%) IFS
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.61%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) Adobe
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase