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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,897 2,679 2,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.10% 17.49% 14.55%
As % of the General category 27.44% 28.68% 26.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,329 1,773 1,602
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -4.00% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £737
UK median daily rate £550 £540 £575
% change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 69 145
10th Percentile £15.09 £13.46 £14.11
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 - £53.75 £44.04
90th Percentile £75.58 £75.00 £70.82
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
% change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +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 14,203 9,341 9,804
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.37% 60.99% 53.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,824 5,623 5,582
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £683 £655 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,986 873 1,077
10th Percentile £13.52 £13.08 £13.81
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.53% -36.74% +34.74%
75th Percentile £57.50 £45.80 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.60 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +28.58%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,340 £500 +6.61% 1,139
South East -2 736 £505 -3.81% 823
North West -1 695 £500 +11.11% 694
Midlands 0 628 £500 +11.11% 513
Yorkshire 0 566 £514 +5.98% 303
Scotland 0 514 £475 -1.04% 653
West Midlands +1 473 £500 - 321
South West -5 375 £550 -2.22% 841
East of England +5 207 £525 -7.89% 379
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +21.21% 191
North East -6 72 £500 +12.36% 155
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 268
Wales -1 59 £525 +13.51% 113
Channel Islands +3 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
1 155 (3.98%) Confluence
2 96 (2.46%) 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 (0.21%) IIS
7 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.051%) JBoss
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 251 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 115 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (1.00%) 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
1 196 (5.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.98%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
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%) SAP PSCD
14 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 483 (12.39%) Azure
2 330 (8.47%) AWS
3 228 (5.85%) GCP
4 226 (5.80%) Power Platform
5 98 (2.51%) SaaS
6 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
6 95 (2.44%) GitHub
7 93 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
8 91 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 72 (1.85%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.18%) OCI
11 44 (1.13%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
13 40 (1.03%) Serverless
14 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.77%) Power Automate
16 29 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
18 25 (0.64%) Anthropic Claude
18 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.03%) Firewall
2 69 (1.77%) Network Security
3 46 (1.18%) 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
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) Broadband
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) 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
1 187 (4.80%) Power BI
2 75 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.87%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 66 (1.69%) Metadata
6 44 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
7 41 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
8 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 35 (0.90%) Tableau
10 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 26 (0.67%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
15 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
17 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
18 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
19 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 248 (6.36%) JIRA
2 107 (2.75%) Git
3 53 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 17 (0.44%) GitLab
6 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.38%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
9 9 (0.23%) Gradle
9 9 (0.23%) Maven
9 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
9 9 (0.23%) Postman
10 8 (0.21%) ERwin
11 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,302 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 560 (14.37%) Banking
3 552 (14.16%) Analytical Skills
4 276 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 265 (6.80%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.62%) Legal
7 167 (4.29%) Retail
8 140 (3.59%) Influencing Skills
9 109 (2.80%) Manufacturing
10 99 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
11 96 (2.46%) Local Government
12 84 (2.16%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Investment Banking
14 76 (1.95%) Financial Institution
15 74 (1.90%) Billing
15 74 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (1.41%) Marketing
18 52 (1.33%) Telecoms
19 49 (1.26%) Law
Job Titles
1 507 (13.01%) Analyst
2 418 (10.73%) Lead
3 356 (9.14%) Senior
4 323 (8.29%) Project Manager
5 309 (7.93%) Architect
6 282 (7.24%) Developer
7 265 (6.80%) Consultant
8 240 (6.16%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.08%) Accountant
10 140 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
11 97 (2.49%) Systems Accountant
12 95 (2.44%) IT Manager
13 94 (2.41%) Senior Manager
14 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
15 85 (2.18%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.95%) Administrator
16 76 (1.95%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.80%) Programme Manager
18 66 (1.69%) Software Engineer
19 65 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.90%) Oracle Fusion
2 126 (3.23%) Terraform
3 86 (2.21%) REST
4 75 (1.92%) Middleware
5 70 (1.80%) Kafka
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.64%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 58 (1.49%) React
10 39 (1.00%) OAuth
10 39 (1.00%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 31 (0.80%) JSON
13 30 (0.77%) XML
14 29 (0.74%) SAML
15 28 (0.72%) OpenID
16 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
17 24 (0.62%) HTML
18 23 (0.59%) Redux
18 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 166 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 160 (4.11%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.95%) Virtual Team
4 143 (3.67%) Cloud Native
5 113 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
6 112 (2.87%) Podcast
6 112 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
7 110 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 101 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 65 (1.67%) Data Structures
10 63 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
12 51 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
13 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
14 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
15 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 41 (1.05%) AI Agents
17 39 (1.00%) CMDB
18 38 (0.98%) Mobile App
19 36 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.03%) Windows
2 103 (2.64%) Linux
3 58 (1.49%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) Solaris
6 24 (0.62%) zOS
7 12 (0.31%) Android
7 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 11 (0.28%) 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
1 984 (25.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 717 (18.40%) Agile
3 543 (13.93%) Continuous Improvement
4 524 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
5 519 (13.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 509 (13.06%) Migration
7 506 (12.98%) ERP
8 366 (9.39%) Decision-Making
9 363 (9.31%) CI/CD
10 360 (9.24%) AI
11 354 (9.08%) Project Management
12 349 (8.96%) Change Management
13 346 (8.88%) DevOps
14 303 (7.78%) Project Delivery
15 288 (7.39%) Roadmaps
16 279 (7.16%) Risk Management
17 274 (7.03%) User Acceptance Testing
18 272 (6.98%) Analytics
19 263 (6.75%) Validation
20 233 (5.98%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 329 (8.44%) SQL
2 316 (8.11%) Python
3 227 (5.82%) Java
4 74 (1.90%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) C#
5 57 (1.46%) JavaScript
6 54 (1.39%) Bash
7 39 (1.00%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 35 (0.90%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.64%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 15 (0.38%) Bicep
13 13 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 12 (0.31%) Scala
15 11 (0.28%) ABAP
16 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 356 (9.14%) Security Cleared
2 266 (6.83%) Degree
3 215 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.87%) ACCA
6 108 (2.77%) CIMA
7 101 (2.59%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.23%) PMI Certification
10 71 (1.82%) CISSP
11 46 (1.18%) CISM
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
13 36 (0.92%) Azure Certification
14 31 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
15 29 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
19 20 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 234 (6.00%) Data Quality
2 179 (4.59%) PMO
3 134 (3.44%) QA
4 120 (3.08%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 50 (1.28%) NIST
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 41 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (0.98%) 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
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
16 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
2 67 (1.72%) Docker
3 45 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) 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%) ACF2
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 2 (0.051%) KVM
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 178 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 72 (1.85%) Ansible
3 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (0.82%) Grafana
5 31 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
6 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
7 15 (0.38%) Progress Chef
7 15 (0.38%) SCCM
8 11 (0.28%) Istio
9 10 (0.26%) Argo
9 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
11 7 (0.18%) vRealize
12 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 5 (0.13%) VxRail
14 4 (0.10%) Puppet
14 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 567 (14.55%) Microsoft
2 411 (10.55%) SAP
3 390 (10.01%) Oracle
4 170 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 111 (2.85%) Google
6 88 (2.26%) IBM
7 80 (2.05%) Databricks
8 66 (1.69%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.57%) VMware
10 43 (1.10%) Cisco
11 42 (1.08%) Sage
12 37 (0.95%) Ariba
12 37 (0.95%) Splunk
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 29 (0.74%) IFS
14 24 (0.62%) MuleSoft
14 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
15 20 (0.51%) Adobe
15 20 (0.51%) Sybase
16 18 (0.46%) HP