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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,956 2,686 2,693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.89% 16.79% 15.57%
As % of the General category 25.95% 27.69% 27.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,281 1,785 1,569
10th Percentile £339 £308 £306
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £528 £573
% change year-on-year +4.27% -7.86% -2.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 81 93
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.57 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.00 £15.60 £23.60
Median hourly rate £43.96 £21.50 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +104.47% -30.25% +20.88%
75th Percentile - £29.37 £55.00
90th Percentile £73.55 £57.50 £74.75
UK median hourly rate £42.48 £27.45 £33.00
% change year-on-year +54.74% -16.82% +28.35%

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 15,244 9,702 9,758
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.52% 60.65% 56.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,011 5,886 5,339
10th Percentile £256 £206 £208
25th Percentile £400 £360 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,469 989 756
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.46 £14.73
25th Percentile £15.38 £15.74 £16.00
Median hourly rate £26.50 £21.30 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.41% -29.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £53.87 £41.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.30 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £26.84 £25.00 £32.00
% change year-on-year +7.36% -21.88% +7.56%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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 1,384 £513 +9.73% 315
South East -1 750 £500 -1.23% 421
North West -2 655 £500 +11.11% 156
Yorkshire +1 646 £514 +2.80% 119
Midlands -3 611 £515 +8.42% 188
Scotland +1 556 £463 -6.57% 69
West Midlands -1 453 £515 -1.01% 124
South West -6 342 £525 -4.55% 198
East of England +1 197 £530 -5.78% 77
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.05% 64
Wales +3 76 £525 +13.51% 24
North East -7 76 £575 +31.05% 43
Northern Ireland 0 65 £463 -11.90% 26
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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
1 149 (3.77%) Confluence
2 99 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 26 (0.66%) Apache
4 16 (0.40%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.35%) SAS
6 12 (0.30%) CMS
6 12 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.20%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) IIS
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
12 3 (0.076%) nginx
12 3 (0.076%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 258 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
5 36 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
6 33 (0.83%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.025%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.025%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.025%) Maple
10 1 (0.025%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 203 (5.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 35 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
5 32 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
6 31 (0.78%) SAP FI
7 30 (0.76%) NetSuite
8 25 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
9 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.53%) SAP PSCD
11 21 (0.53%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.43%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
14 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.33%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
14 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 490 (12.39%) Azure
2 359 (9.07%) AWS
3 257 (6.50%) GCP
4 218 (5.51%) Power Platform
5 120 (3.03%) GitHub
6 109 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
7 107 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
8 97 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
9 92 (2.33%) SaaS
10 75 (1.90%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.19%) Serverless
11 47 (1.19%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
13 43 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
13 43 (1.09%) OCI
14 41 (1.04%) OpenShift
15 31 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
15 31 (0.78%) Power Automate
16 30 (0.76%) Azure Data Factory
17 29 (0.73%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 87 (2.20%) Network Security
2 82 (2.07%) Firewall
3 41 (1.04%) VPN
4 28 (0.71%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
5 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.51%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) Broadband
8 15 (0.38%) LAN
9 14 (0.35%) HTTP
10 12 (0.30%) BIG-IP
11 11 (0.28%) BGP
12 10 (0.25%) DHCP
12 10 (0.25%) SAN
13 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 7 (0.18%) OSPF
14 7 (0.18%) VLAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (4.47%) Power BI
2 84 (2.12%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.82%) SQL Server
4 63 (1.59%) Metadata
5 59 (1.49%) Relational Database
6 50 (1.26%) Data Lake
7 38 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.86%) Tableau
9 28 (0.71%) MongoDB
10 25 (0.63%) BigQuery
11 24 (0.61%) Db2
12 22 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
12 22 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
13 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
14 19 (0.48%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
17 16 (0.40%) Data Vault
17 16 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 244 (6.17%) JIRA
2 130 (3.29%) Git
3 75 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 40 (1.01%) GitLab
5 25 (0.63%) Claude Code
6 24 (0.61%) JUnit
7 16 (0.40%) Cucumber
7 16 (0.40%) Maven
7 16 (0.40%) Selenium
8 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.35%) Gradle
9 14 (0.35%) Postman
10 10 (0.25%) REST Assured
11 9 (0.23%) Mockito
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 8 (0.20%) JMeter
12 8 (0.20%) SonarQube
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Toad
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,386 (35.04%) Social Skills
2 640 (16.18%) Banking
3 547 (13.83%) Analytical Skills
4 293 (7.41%) Public Sector
5 292 (7.38%) Organisational Skills
6 268 (6.77%) Legal
7 154 (3.89%) Retail
8 153 (3.87%) Influencing Skills
9 115 (2.91%) Manufacturing
10 98 (2.48%) Billing
11 95 (2.40%) General Ledger
12 86 (2.17%) Local Government
13 85 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 81 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
15 74 (1.87%) Marketing
16 70 (1.77%) Investment Banking
17 65 (1.64%) Financial Institution
18 63 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
18 63 (1.59%) Telecoms
19 47 (1.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 493 (12.46%) Analyst
2 397 (10.04%) Lead
3 386 (9.76%) Senior
4 304 (7.68%) Architect
5 288 (7.28%) Developer
6 285 (7.20%) Project Manager
7 263 (6.65%) Consultant
8 234 (5.92%) Business Analyst
9 150 (3.79%) Accountant
9 150 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
10 104 (2.63%) IT Manager
11 103 (2.60%) Administrator
12 97 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
13 90 (2.28%) Systems Accountant
14 89 (2.25%) Java Developer
15 86 (2.17%) Senior Manager
16 82 (2.07%) Programme Manager
17 80 (2.02%) Finance Manager
18 77 (1.95%) Data Analyst
19 66 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (3.89%) Terraform
2 151 (3.82%) Oracle Fusion
3 129 (3.26%) REST
4 86 (2.17%) Kafka
5 78 (1.97%) React
6 75 (1.90%) Middleware
7 74 (1.87%) Spring Boot
8 68 (1.72%) Spring
9 59 (1.49%) .NET
10 58 (1.47%) RESTful
11 50 (1.26%) JSON
11 50 (1.26%) OAuth
12 37 (0.94%) OpenID
13 35 (0.88%) Node.js
14 33 (0.83%) SAP Fiori
15 32 (0.81%) XML
16 31 (0.78%) OAuth2
17 30 (0.76%) SOAP
18 29 (0.73%) SAML
19 28 (0.71%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 186 (4.70%) Cloud Native
2 185 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 176 (4.45%) Product Ownership
4 162 (4.10%) Virtual Team
5 138 (3.49%) Data Protection Act
6 132 (3.34%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.86%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.81%) Podcast
9 84 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
10 80 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
11 77 (1.95%) AI Agents
12 70 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
13 68 (1.72%) Data Structures
14 66 (1.67%) Data Centre
15 51 (1.29%) Public Cloud
16 49 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
16 49 (1.24%) Mobile App
17 48 (1.21%) Mainframe
18 43 (1.09%) Security Posture
19 40 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 114 (2.88%) Linux
2 109 (2.76%) Windows
3 55 (1.39%) Unix
4 34 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.68%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.61%) zOS
7 16 (0.40%) Android
8 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
8 15 (0.38%) Solaris
9 9 (0.23%) macOS
10 6 (0.15%) AIX
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.076%) CentOS
13 2 (0.051%) HPUX
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.051%) SUSE
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.025%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,149 (29.04%) Stakeholder Management
2 777 (19.64%) Agile
3 559 (14.13%) Continuous Improvement
4 556 (14.05%) Problem-Solving
5 510 (12.89%) Migration
6 491 (12.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 466 (11.78%) ERP
8 443 (11.20%) AI
9 438 (11.07%) CI/CD
10 406 (10.26%) Decision-Making
11 363 (9.18%) DevOps
12 350 (8.85%) Roadmaps
13 342 (8.65%) Project Management
14 327 (8.27%) Change Management
15 317 (8.01%) Project Delivery
16 314 (7.94%) Analytics
16 314 (7.94%) Validation
17 298 (7.53%) Risk Management
18 274 (6.93%) User Acceptance Testing
19 236 (5.97%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 383 (9.68%) Python
2 365 (9.23%) SQL
3 250 (6.32%) Java
4 93 (2.35%) JavaScript
5 81 (2.05%) PowerShell
6 71 (1.79%) C#
7 62 (1.57%) Bash
8 56 (1.42%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.01%) Go
10 36 (0.91%) PL/SQL
10 36 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 20 (0.51%) Scala
12 19 (0.48%) Bicep
13 18 (0.46%) C++
14 15 (0.38%) Perl
15 14 (0.35%) ABAP
16 12 (0.30%) PHP
16 12 (0.30%) T-SQL
17 10 (0.25%) Kotlin
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 364 (9.20%) Security Cleared
2 240 (6.07%) Degree
3 221 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (2.55%) ACCA
6 100 (2.53%) CIMA
7 98 (2.48%) PMP
8 97 (2.45%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.20%) PMI Certification
10 58 (1.47%) CISSP
11 42 (1.06%) Azure Certification
12 41 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 39 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (0.99%) CISM
14 32 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
15 28 (0.71%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 22 (0.56%) CCSP
19 21 (0.53%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 274 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 191 (4.83%) PMO
3 134 (3.39%) QA
4 81 (2.05%) GDPR
5 51 (1.29%) GRC
6 50 (1.26%) Accessibility
7 41 (1.04%) SLA
8 37 (0.94%) NIST
9 30 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.71%) IFRS
11 25 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.30%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.25%) COBIT
15 10 (0.25%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 8 (0.20%) P3O
System Software
1 87 (2.20%) Docker
2 72 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 54 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.53%) RACF
5 18 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 10 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.076%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.051%) ACF2
13 2 (0.051%) IAG
14 1 (0.025%) Firmware
14 1 (0.025%) KVM
14 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.025%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 227 (5.74%) Kubernetes
2 77 (1.95%) Ansible
3 41 (1.04%) Grafana
4 37 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 28 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 12 (0.30%) Istio
11 11 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.25%) Argo
13 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
13 8 (0.20%) Tivoli
14 6 (0.15%) Control-M
14 6 (0.15%) logstash
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) Kibana
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 604 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 461 (11.65%) SAP
3 363 (9.18%) Oracle
4 158 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 117 (2.96%) Google
6 94 (2.38%) IBM
7 85 (2.15%) Databricks
8 71 (1.79%) VMware
9 70 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 57 (1.44%) Splunk
11 52 (1.31%) Ariba
12 46 (1.16%) Workday
13 43 (1.09%) Cisco
14 31 (0.78%) Sage
15 25 (0.63%) Adobe
16 24 (0.61%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.58%) Dynatrace
17 23 (0.58%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.51%) F5
18 20 (0.51%) Snow