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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,947 2,260 2,731
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.12% 16.62% 12.92%
As % of the General category 26.96% 27.14% 23.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,875 1,308 1,813
10th Percentile £313 £305 £285
25th Percentile £402 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -1.44%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £688 £697 £706
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 61 126
10th Percentile £13.84 £17.25 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £13.31
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -43.61%
75th Percentile £25.00 £58.75 £44.74
90th Percentile £54.00 £78.47 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £22.93 £29.62 £20.25
% change year-on-year -22.59% +46.25% -19.00%

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 10,929 8,328 11,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.06% 61.23% 55.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,701 4,767 7,076
10th Percentile £204 £210 £206
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,184 464 1,343
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.13 £12.64
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.59 £27.06 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.24% +10.46% +2.08%
75th Percentile £45.46 £57.53 £54.78
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £66.65
UK median hourly rate £22.80 £29.00 £25.44
% change year-on-year -21.38% +13.99% -1.24%

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 7 February 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 7 February 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 7 February 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 +2 934 £475 -2.56% 668
South East -1 552 £500 -4.76% 1,004
Midlands -3 524 £475 -6.36% 415
North West +3 461 £450 -5.26% 372
Yorkshire 0 425 £500 -3.38% 233
Scotland 0 375 £475 +1.60% 152
West Midlands -3 332 £500 -9.09% 252
South West -6 297 £525 - 292
East Midlands 0 190 £447 +5.18% 163
East of England -2 175 £525 - 236
Wales +29 91 £413 -12.00% 74
Northern Ireland -1 53 £513 +57.69% 37
North East -6 49 £481 +6.94% 73
Channel Islands +2 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
1 157 (5.33%) Confluence
2 105 (3.56%) SharePoint
3 36 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.92%) Apache
5 26 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.64%) SAS
7 13 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
8 11 (0.37%) CMS
8 11 (0.37%) TPMS
9 7 (0.24%) CICS
9 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
9 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 6 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.20%) JBoss
11 5 (0.17%) IIS
12 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
12 4 (0.14%) iPlanet
12 4 (0.14%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 236 (8.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (5.46%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (3.73%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (2.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (1.70%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.54%) Sketch
8 11 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.20%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.20%) Trello
11 4 (0.14%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.034%) Camtasia
13 1 (0.034%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.034%) Snagit
13 1 (0.034%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 126 (4.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.80%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (1.22%) Oracle EBS
5 35 (1.19%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.09%) SAP FI
7 29 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 28 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
8 28 (0.95%) Oracle Cash Management
9 24 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
10 23 (0.78%) SAP CO
11 22 (0.75%) SAP FI/CO
12 21 (0.71%) Oracle EBS R12
13 17 (0.58%) SAP BRIM
13 17 (0.58%) SAP Hybris
13 17 (0.58%) SAP PSCD
14 16 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
15 15 (0.51%) SAP ERP
16 13 (0.44%) Oracle AGIS
17 12 (0.41%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 393 (13.34%) AWS
2 376 (12.76%) Azure
3 173 (5.87%) GCP
3 173 (5.87%) Power Platform
4 126 (4.28%) Microsoft 365
5 80 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
6 77 (2.61%) GitHub
7 74 (2.51%) Serverless
8 66 (2.24%) SaaS
9 62 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
10 52 (1.76%) Entra ID
11 41 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
11 41 (1.39%) OpenShift
12 38 (1.29%) OCI
13 36 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
13 36 (1.22%) Snowflake
14 34 (1.15%) Figma
15 31 (1.05%) Amazon S3
16 29 (0.98%) OneDrive
17 28 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 67 (2.27%) Firewall
2 34 (1.15%) WAN
3 24 (0.81%) DNS
4 23 (0.78%) Skype
4 23 (0.78%) VPN
5 22 (0.75%) Wireless
6 21 (0.71%) Network Security
7 18 (0.61%) LAN
8 16 (0.54%) SD-WAN
9 15 (0.51%) SSH
9 15 (0.51%) SSL
10 13 (0.44%) DHCP
10 13 (0.44%) Kerberos
11 11 (0.37%) Internet
11 11 (0.37%) SNMP
11 11 (0.37%) TCP/IP
12 8 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.20%) BGP
14 6 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (5.53%) Power BI
2 74 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 71 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 64 (2.17%) NoSQL
5 51 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.29%) Tableau
7 33 (1.12%) Metadata
8 31 (1.05%) SQL Server
9 27 (0.92%) Big Data
10 23 (0.78%) Data Lake
10 23 (0.78%) DynamoDB
10 23 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
11 19 (0.64%) BigQuery
11 19 (0.64%) Power Query
12 18 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
13 16 (0.54%) MongoDB
13 16 (0.54%) MySQL
13 16 (0.54%) Oracle Database
14 15 (0.51%) Hadoop
15 12 (0.41%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 285 (9.67%) JIRA
2 143 (4.85%) Jenkins
3 87 (2.95%) GitLab
4 62 (2.10%) Git
5 39 (1.32%) JUnit
6 38 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
7 35 (1.19%) Cucumber
8 24 (0.81%) Bitbucket
8 24 (0.81%) Selenium
9 21 (0.71%) Liquibase
10 14 (0.48%) Gradle
11 13 (0.44%) Postman
12 11 (0.37%) Maven
12 11 (0.37%) REST Assured
13 10 (0.34%) JMeter
14 9 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 8 (0.27%) Hudson
15 8 (0.27%) Jaeger
16 7 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 6 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,099 (37.29%) Social Skills
2 502 (17.03%) Banking
3 370 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
4 345 (11.71%) Public Sector
5 186 (6.31%) Manufacturing
6 174 (5.90%) Telecoms
7 162 (5.50%) Marketing
8 122 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
9 118 (4.00%) Electronics
10 102 (3.46%) Financial Institution
11 90 (3.05%) Legal
12 88 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
13 60 (2.04%) General Ledger
14 57 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
14 57 (1.93%) Local Government
15 54 (1.83%) Retail
16 49 (1.66%) Investment Banking
17 47 (1.59%) Billing
18 42 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
19 33 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 459 (15.58%) Analyst
2 274 (9.30%) Project Manager
3 233 (7.91%) Architect
4 218 (7.40%) Senior
5 203 (6.89%) Business Analyst
5 203 (6.89%) Developer
6 202 (6.85%) Consultant
7 197 (6.68%) Lead
8 103 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
9 93 (3.16%) Programme Manager
10 83 (2.82%) Data Analyst
11 60 (2.04%) Senior Manager
12 59 (2.00%) Finance Manager
13 57 (1.93%) SAP Consultant
14 56 (1.90%) Java Developer
15 55 (1.87%) Accountant
15 55 (1.87%) Designer
16 53 (1.80%) Functional Consultant
17 49 (1.66%) Administrator
18 47 (1.59%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 125 (4.24%) REST
2 90 (3.05%) Spring
3 81 (2.75%) Spring Boot
4 76 (2.58%) RESTful
5 66 (2.24%) Kafka
6 57 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
7 50 (1.70%) .NET
8 44 (1.49%) React
9 41 (1.39%) Middleware
10 37 (1.26%) Node.js
11 34 (1.15%) SOAP
12 32 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
12 32 (1.09%) JSON
13 30 (1.02%) OAuth
14 29 (0.98%) AngularJS
15 28 (0.95%) HTML
16 24 (0.81%) CSS
17 22 (0.75%) OpenTelemetry
17 22 (0.75%) XML
18 20 (0.68%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.99%) Onboarding
2 128 (4.34%) Product Ownership
3 95 (3.22%) Cloud Native
4 84 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 71 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
6 69 (2.34%) Public Cloud
7 67 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 64 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
9 56 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
10 42 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
11 36 (1.22%) Data Structures
12 34 (1.15%) Mobile App
13 33 (1.12%) CMDB
14 32 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
15 30 (1.02%) PMI
15 30 (1.02%) Virtual Team
16 23 (0.78%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 22 (0.75%) NHS
18 21 (0.71%) Credit Risk
19 19 (0.64%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 128 (4.34%) Linux
2 120 (4.07%) Windows
3 43 (1.46%) Mac OS
4 39 (1.32%) Windows 10
5 36 (1.22%) Unix
6 30 (1.02%) Android
7 18 (0.61%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.14%) VMS
10 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.10%) AIX
11 3 (0.10%) Solaris
12 1 (0.034%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.034%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 680 (23.07%) Agile
2 556 (18.87%) Stakeholder Management
3 503 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
4 389 (13.20%) Migration
5 376 (12.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 345 (11.71%) Project Management
7 324 (10.99%) DevOps
8 315 (10.69%) Business Intelligence
9 305 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
9 305 (10.35%) ERP
10 300 (10.18%) CI/CD
11 256 (8.69%) Change Management
12 220 (7.47%) Programme Management
13 214 (7.26%) Project Delivery
14 212 (7.19%) Decision-Making
15 204 (6.92%) Analytics
16 191 (6.48%) Roadmaps
16 191 (6.48%) User Acceptance Testing
17 178 (6.04%) AI
17 178 (6.04%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 337 (11.44%) SQL
2 290 (9.84%) Python
3 201 (6.82%) Java
4 82 (2.78%) PowerShell
5 42 (1.43%) TypeScript
6 40 (1.36%) JavaScript
7 37 (1.26%) C#
8 35 (1.19%) Go
9 23 (0.78%) Bash
10 22 (0.75%) PL/SQL
10 22 (0.75%) Shell Script
11 18 (0.61%) R
11 18 (0.61%) VBA
12 12 (0.41%) Perl
13 11 (0.37%) Rust
14 9 (0.31%) COBOL
14 9 (0.31%) Ruby
15 7 (0.24%) ABAP
15 7 (0.24%) C++
15 7 (0.24%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 316 (10.72%) Degree
2 280 (9.50%) Security Cleared
3 192 (6.52%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
4 75 (2.54%) Master's Degree
5 74 (2.51%) PMP
6 73 (2.48%) PMI Certification
7 71 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.31%) ACCA
9 61 (2.07%) CIMA
10 49 (1.66%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.63%) DV Cleared
12 44 (1.49%) CISSP
13 38 (1.29%) CISM
14 33 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
15 21 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 17 (0.58%) MBA
17 16 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 14 (0.48%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (4.89%) PMO
2 138 (4.68%) QA
3 115 (3.90%) Data Quality
4 103 (3.50%) GDPR
5 52 (1.76%) NIST
6 46 (1.56%) PCI DSS
7 44 (1.49%) SLA
8 41 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (1.29%) Accessibility
10 34 (1.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 29 (0.98%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.88%) PSD2
13 23 (0.78%) IFRS
14 20 (0.68%) GRC
15 17 (0.58%) SEPA
16 15 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.44%) Basel III
18 11 (0.37%) GAAP
18 11 (0.37%) GLBA
19 10 (0.34%) NCSC
System Software
1 129 (4.38%) Docker
2 100 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 32 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (0.58%) vSphere
6 10 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.31%) GPFS
8 8 (0.27%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.27%) NFS
9 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.10%) HDFS
12 3 (0.10%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 3 (0.10%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.068%) ACF2
13 2 (0.068%) Firmware
13 2 (0.068%) KVM
13 2 (0.068%) RACF
13 2 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 160 (5.43%) Kubernetes
2 99 (3.36%) Terraform
3 85 (2.88%) Ansible
4 60 (2.04%) Grafana
5 55 (1.87%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.78%) SCCM
7 16 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (0.51%) Progress Chef
9 10 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.31%) vRealize
11 8 (0.27%) Kiali
12 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
12 7 (0.24%) SCOM
13 5 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.17%) Control-M
13 5 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 5 (0.17%) Nessus
13 5 (0.17%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 453 (15.37%) Microsoft
2 376 (12.76%) SAP
3 243 (8.25%) Oracle
4 152 (5.16%) ServiceNow
5 89 (3.02%) Splunk
6 83 (2.82%) Cisco
6 83 (2.82%) Google
7 49 (1.66%) Salesforce
8 48 (1.63%) VMware
9 46 (1.56%) IBM
10 40 (1.36%) Workday
11 36 (1.22%) Databricks
12 34 (1.15%) HP
13 32 (1.09%) Dell
14 29 (0.98%) Apple
15 27 (0.92%) Sage
16 26 (0.88%) Adobe
17 25 (0.85%) Citrix
18 20 (0.68%) Remedy
19 19 (0.64%) IFS