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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,508 2,208 2,569
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.09% 17.31% 12.50%
As % of the General category 28.06% 27.74% 23.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,137 1,427 1,568
10th Percentile £333 £300 £280
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year - -0.25% -4.52%
75th Percentile £601 £580 £625
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 142 64 204
10th Percentile £13.98 £16.54 £12.36
25th Percentile £17.00 £23.42 £14.43
Median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year -52.25% +64.08% -37.93%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.90 £75.88 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £41.50 £26.99
% change year-on-year -38.84% +53.79% -6.92%

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 12,504 7,961 11,084
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.22% 62.42% 53.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,192 4,926 6,320
10th Percentile £263 £209 £210
25th Percentile £395 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -3.60% -1.45%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £594
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,487 588 1,675
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.64 £15.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £24.34 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +19.17% -13.86% +2.36%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.02 £75.00 £66.90
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 +3 1,199 £492 +4.24% 787
South East -2 645 £500 -2.91% 882
North West +5 631 £465 - 474
Midlands -1 599 £492 +3.58% 446
Yorkshire +2 530 £519 +8.98% 253
Scotland 0 426 £500 +4.06% 185
West Midlands 0 410 £500 -3.80% 269
South West -2 360 £525 - 338
East of England +2 198 £516 -10.22% 227
East Midlands 0 185 £465 +4.55% 177
Wales +11 85 £475 +22.58% 69
Northern Ireland -1 47 £513 +22.75% 81
North East -17 39 £488 +4.84% 69
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 159 (4.53%) Confluence
2 109 (3.11%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.46%) Apache
5 13 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.31%) CICS
6 11 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
7 8 (0.23%) CMS
7 8 (0.23%) SAS
8 6 (0.17%) IIS
9 5 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.14%) TPMS
9 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.086%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.057%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.057%) Camunda
12 2 (0.057%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.057%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 240 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (3.11%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.34%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) InVision
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 3 (0.086%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.086%) Trello
10 2 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.057%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.029%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.029%) UXPin
11 1 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 188 (5.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.17%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 35 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 30 (0.86%) NetSuite
7 23 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.57%) SAP FI
9 19 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 17 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
10 17 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
11 15 (0.43%) SAP CO
11 15 (0.43%) SAP GRC
12 14 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
12 14 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
14 12 (0.34%) NEC Housing
14 12 (0.34%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
15 11 (0.31%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 418 (11.92%) Azure
2 318 (9.06%) AWS
3 206 (5.87%) Power Platform
4 163 (4.65%) GCP
5 100 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
6 94 (2.68%) SaaS
7 88 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
8 82 (2.34%) GitHub
9 69 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
10 63 (1.80%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.31%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.17%) Snowflake
13 38 (1.08%) Serverless
14 33 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
14 33 (0.94%) OCI
15 24 (0.68%) Google Workspace
15 24 (0.68%) Power Automate
16 23 (0.66%) Amazon S3
17 22 (0.63%) AWS CloudFormation
17 22 (0.63%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.28%) Firewall
2 49 (1.40%) Network Security
3 40 (1.14%) DNS
4 38 (1.08%) WAN
5 35 (1.00%) VPN
6 22 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.54%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.46%) LAN
9 15 (0.43%) DHCP
9 15 (0.43%) SSL
10 12 (0.34%) VSAN
11 9 (0.26%) MPLS
11 9 (0.26%) Skype
12 7 (0.20%) BGP
12 7 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
12 7 (0.20%) Internet
12 7 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
13 5 (0.14%) FTP
13 5 (0.14%) SAN
13 5 (0.14%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (5.16%) Power BI
2 66 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.74%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
5 59 (1.68%) Metadata
6 46 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
7 41 (1.17%) SQL Server
8 38 (1.08%) Tableau
9 34 (0.97%) NoSQL
10 26 (0.74%) DynamoDB
11 25 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 24 (0.68%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.63%) Oracle ODI
14 19 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
15 18 (0.51%) Big Data
16 17 (0.48%) DB2
16 17 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.43%) Power Query
18 14 (0.40%) Data Vault
19 11 (0.31%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 289 (8.24%) JIRA
2 72 (2.05%) Jenkins
3 64 (1.82%) Git
4 29 (0.83%) GitLab
5 24 (0.68%) JUnit
6 22 (0.63%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 19 (0.54%) Selenium
9 14 (0.40%) Hudson
9 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.37%) Postman
11 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
12 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
12 7 (0.20%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.17%) Gradle
13 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.17%) Maven
14 5 (0.14%) Axure RP
General
1 1,122 (31.98%) Social Skills
2 491 (14.00%) Banking
3 454 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
4 258 (7.35%) Public Sector
5 130 (3.71%) Legal
5 130 (3.71%) Organisational Skills
6 118 (3.36%) Retail
7 116 (3.31%) Manufacturing
8 103 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
9 94 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (2.57%) Local Government
11 78 (2.22%) Financial Institution
12 67 (1.91%) General Ledger
12 67 (1.91%) Telecoms
13 63 (1.80%) Investment Banking
14 61 (1.74%) Marketing
15 52 (1.48%) Billing
16 43 (1.23%) Law
17 36 (1.03%) Aerospace
17 36 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 515 (14.68%) Analyst
2 349 (9.95%) Project Manager
3 323 (9.21%) Architect
4 315 (8.98%) Lead
5 300 (8.55%) Senior
6 241 (6.87%) Consultant
7 236 (6.73%) Business Analyst
8 234 (6.67%) Developer
9 151 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
10 133 (3.79%) Accountant
11 97 (2.77%) Senior Manager
12 87 (2.48%) Programme Manager
13 83 (2.37%) Systems Accountant
14 77 (2.19%) Finance Manager
15 75 (2.14%) IT Manager
16 65 (1.85%) Financial Analyst
17 64 (1.82%) Data Analyst
17 64 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 61 (1.74%) Data Engineer
19 57 (1.62%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (2.79%) Oracle Fusion
2 87 (2.48%) REST
3 83 (2.37%) Middleware
4 70 (2.00%) Spring Boot
5 68 (1.94%) Spring
6 65 (1.85%) Kafka
7 44 (1.25%) RESTful
8 43 (1.23%) .NET
9 41 (1.17%) React
10 35 (1.00%) OAuth
11 31 (0.88%) Node.js
12 27 (0.77%) JSON
13 26 (0.74%) OpenID
14 25 (0.71%) AngularJS
14 25 (0.71%) XML
15 22 (0.63%) OpenTelemetry
16 21 (0.60%) OAuth2
17 19 (0.54%) SailPoint
18 18 (0.51%) SAML
18 18 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.19%) Product Ownership
2 144 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 119 (3.39%) Cloud Native
4 108 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 86 (2.45%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.77%) Data Structures
9 61 (1.74%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 38 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
12 37 (1.05%) Mainframe
13 36 (1.03%) Virtual Team
14 34 (0.97%) Security Posture
15 28 (0.80%) PMI
16 24 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
16 24 (0.68%) CMDB
16 24 (0.68%) Mobile App
17 21 (0.60%) Operational Technology
18 16 (0.46%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 114 (3.25%) Windows
2 99 (2.82%) Linux
3 50 (1.43%) Unix
4 30 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.77%) Solaris
6 19 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (0.51%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.37%) AIX
9 12 (0.34%) zOS
10 10 (0.29%) Android
11 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.11%) HPUX
14 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.11%) MVS
14 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.11%) SUSE
14 4 (0.11%) VMS
15 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 730 (20.81%) Stakeholder Management
2 656 (18.70%) Agile
3 536 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
4 522 (14.88%) Migration
5 466 (13.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 465 (13.26%) ERP
7 453 (12.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 401 (11.43%) Project Management
9 342 (9.75%) DevOps
10 309 (8.81%) Change Management
11 303 (8.64%) CI/CD
12 290 (8.27%) Decision-Making
13 286 (8.15%) Project Delivery
14 268 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
15 259 (7.38%) AI
16 254 (7.24%) Roadmaps
17 249 (7.10%) Risk Management
18 246 (7.01%) Validation
19 233 (6.64%) Business Intelligence
20 216 (6.16%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 324 (9.24%) SQL
2 248 (7.07%) Python
3 207 (5.90%) Java
4 76 (2.17%) PowerShell
5 34 (0.97%) Bash
6 28 (0.80%) JavaScript
7 27 (0.77%) C#
8 23 (0.66%) TypeScript
9 22 (0.63%) PL/SQL
10 19 (0.54%) Go
11 17 (0.48%) C++
11 17 (0.48%) Shell Script
11 17 (0.48%) VBA
12 15 (0.43%) Kotlin
13 14 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 12 (0.34%) Rust
15 10 (0.29%) COBOL
16 9 (0.26%) Perl
16 9 (0.26%) T-SQL
17 8 (0.23%) VB
Qualifications
1 326 (9.29%) Security Cleared
2 319 (9.09%) Degree
3 207 (5.90%) SC Cleared
4 131 (3.73%) ACCA
5 127 (3.62%) CIMA
6 110 (3.14%) PMP
7 98 (2.79%) PMI Certification
8 87 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 71 (2.02%) CISSP
10 56 (1.60%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.31%) CISM
12 39 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 36 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
14 29 (0.83%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 22 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
17 17 (0.48%) Azure Certification
18 15 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 15 (0.43%) MBA
18 15 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (4.96%) Data Quality
2 159 (4.53%) PMO
3 134 (3.82%) QA
4 130 (3.71%) GDPR
5 64 (1.82%) NIST
6 48 (1.37%) SLA
7 43 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 42 (1.20%) GRC
9 39 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 35 (1.00%) IFRS
10 35 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 34 (0.97%) Accessibility
12 15 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.37%) IFRS 17
13 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.34%) PSD2
15 11 (0.31%) Basel III
15 11 (0.31%) NCSC
16 9 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 95 (2.71%) Docker
2 69 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.46%) vSphere
6 14 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.20%) GPFS
9 7 (0.20%) NFS
9 7 (0.20%) RACF
10 5 (0.14%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.11%) KVM
12 3 (0.086%) Firmware
13 2 (0.057%) ACF2
13 2 (0.057%) HDFS
13 2 (0.057%) ISA Server
13 2 (0.057%) SRDF
14 1 (0.029%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.029%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 162 (4.62%) Kubernetes
2 80 (2.28%) Terraform
3 69 (1.97%) Ansible
4 41 (1.17%) Grafana
5 33 (0.94%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.43%) SCCM
9 12 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 10 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.29%) Nessus
11 9 (0.26%) vRealize
12 8 (0.23%) Istio
12 8 (0.23%) Kiali
13 7 (0.20%) Control-M
13 7 (0.20%) Progress Chef
13 7 (0.20%) VxRail
14 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.17%) Argo
15 5 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 436 (12.43%) Microsoft
2 381 (10.86%) SAP
3 310 (8.84%) Oracle
4 142 (4.05%) ServiceNow
5 92 (2.62%) Google
6 58 (1.65%) IBM
7 54 (1.54%) Sage
8 52 (1.48%) Cisco
8 52 (1.48%) Splunk
9 50 (1.43%) Databricks
9 50 (1.43%) VMware
10 39 (1.11%) IFS
11 37 (1.05%) Salesforce
12 32 (0.91%) Workday
13 30 (0.86%) Ariba
14 24 (0.68%) HP
15 19 (0.54%) Red Hat
16 18 (0.51%) Adobe
16 18 (0.51%) Citrix
16 18 (0.51%) Palo Alto