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 6 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,569 2,283 2,616
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.18% 17.52% 12.54%
As % of the General category 28.10% 28.05% 23.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,188 1,478 1,574
10th Percentile £333 £306 £277
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £605 £588 £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 66 213
10th Percentile £13.98 £15.63 £12.51
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.86 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.50 £36.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.94% +28.57% -42.86%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.90 £75.00 £59.25
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £40.25 £27.00
% change year-on-year -25.47% +49.07% -3.50%

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 12,702 8,139 11,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.46% 62.47% 53.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,296 4,994 6,311
10th Percentile £263 £210 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,510 628 1,696
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.08 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.00 £15.62 £15.00
Median hourly rate £30.50 £24.50 £28.46
Median % change year-on-year +24.49% -13.91% +1.72%
75th Percentile £63.38 £51.93 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.13 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £31.16 £28.00 £30.12
% change year-on-year +11.27% -7.04% -7.04%

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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6 June 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 1,230 £492 +5.81% 824
South East -2 651 £500 -4.31% 930
North West +5 649 £465 +3.33% 478
Midlands -1 607 £500 +6.95% 469
Yorkshire 0 538 £525 +9.95% 271
Scotland 0 438 £500 +4.28% 178
West Midlands +1 424 £500 - 293
South West -2 368 £525 - 344
East of England +2 193 £520 -9.57% 224
East Midlands 0 178 £468 +6.86% 176
Wales +8 85 £500 +21.21% 82
Northern Ireland -1 48 £513 +20.59% 108
North East -14 44 £488 +7.73% 83
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
1 161 (4.51%) Confluence
2 105 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 20 (0.56%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.42%) Apache
5 13 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
7 11 (0.31%) CICS
8 9 (0.25%) CMS
9 8 (0.22%) SAS
10 6 (0.17%) IIS
11 5 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.14%) TPMS
11 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.084%) Apache Airflow
14 2 (0.056%) Ethereum
14 2 (0.056%) Hyperledger
14 2 (0.056%) JBoss
14 2 (0.056%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 243 (6.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (2.89%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.32%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) InVision
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.084%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.056%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.056%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.056%) Trello
11 1 (0.028%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.028%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.028%) UXPin
11 1 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 191 (5.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (1.32%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.15%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
5 35 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 34 (0.95%) NetSuite
7 22 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 18 (0.50%) Unit4 Business World
10 17 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
11 15 (0.42%) SAP CO
11 15 (0.42%) SAP GRC
12 14 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
12 14 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
12 14 (0.39%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
14 12 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 11 (0.31%) NEC Housing
15 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
15 11 (0.31%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 440 (12.33%) Azure
2 318 (8.91%) AWS
3 216 (6.05%) Power Platform
4 179 (5.02%) GCP
5 98 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
6 97 (2.72%) SaaS
7 87 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
8 82 (2.30%) GitHub
9 69 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
10 60 (1.68%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.26%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 39 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
14 37 (1.04%) Serverless
15 34 (0.95%) OCI
16 25 (0.70%) Power Automate
17 24 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.67%) Google Workspace
18 22 (0.62%) Amazon S3
18 22 (0.62%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.33%) Firewall
2 53 (1.49%) Network Security
3 39 (1.09%) DNS
4 37 (1.04%) WAN
5 33 (0.92%) VPN
6 23 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.56%) SSL
8 19 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 16 (0.45%) LAN
10 14 (0.39%) DHCP
11 11 (0.31%) VSAN
12 10 (0.28%) MPLS
13 8 (0.22%) BGP
13 8 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.20%) Internet
14 7 (0.20%) Skype
14 7 (0.20%) SSH
15 5 (0.14%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.14%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (5.24%) Power BI
2 72 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.71%) Metadata
3 61 (1.71%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
5 48 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
6 45 (1.26%) SQL Server
7 36 (1.01%) Tableau
8 35 (0.98%) NoSQL
9 28 (0.78%) Data Lake
10 25 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.67%) DynamoDB
12 22 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 18 (0.50%) Big Data
16 17 (0.48%) Db2
17 16 (0.45%) Power Query
18 15 (0.42%) Data Vault
19 14 (0.39%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 288 (8.07%) JIRA
2 75 (2.10%) Jenkins
3 70 (1.96%) Git
4 29 (0.81%) GitLab
5 27 (0.76%) JUnit
6 21 (0.59%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 18 (0.50%) Selenium
9 14 (0.39%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.36%) Hudson
10 13 (0.36%) Postman
11 9 (0.25%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.22%) Jaeger
13 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
14 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.17%) Maven
15 5 (0.14%) Gradle
15 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,139 (31.91%) Social Skills
2 512 (14.35%) Banking
3 465 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
4 252 (7.06%) Public Sector
5 148 (4.15%) Legal
6 133 (3.73%) Organisational Skills
7 121 (3.39%) Retail
8 108 (3.03%) Manufacturing
9 103 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
10 98 (2.75%) Local Government
11 92 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (2.16%) Financial Institution
13 71 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 69 (1.93%) General Ledger
15 57 (1.60%) Billing
16 56 (1.57%) Telecoms
17 53 (1.49%) Marketing
18 47 (1.32%) Law
19 45 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 37 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 523 (14.65%) Analyst
2 350 (9.81%) Project Manager
3 326 (9.13%) Architect
4 322 (9.02%) Lead
5 312 (8.74%) Senior
6 244 (6.84%) Consultant
7 237 (6.64%) Business Analyst
8 235 (6.58%) Developer
9 152 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
10 136 (3.81%) Accountant
11 97 (2.72%) Senior Manager
12 88 (2.47%) Programme Manager
13 85 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
14 82 (2.30%) IT Manager
15 75 (2.10%) Finance Manager
16 69 (1.93%) Financial Analyst
17 68 (1.91%) Java Developer
18 65 (1.82%) Data Analyst
19 62 (1.74%) Data Engineer
20 60 (1.68%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (2.94%) Oracle Fusion
2 89 (2.49%) Middleware
3 86 (2.41%) REST
4 68 (1.91%) Kafka
5 67 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 66 (1.85%) Spring
7 47 (1.32%) React
8 46 (1.29%) .NET
9 43 (1.20%) RESTful
10 30 (0.84%) Node.js
10 30 (0.84%) OAuth
11 29 (0.81%) JSON
12 26 (0.73%) OpenID
13 25 (0.70%) XML
14 24 (0.67%) AngularJS
15 22 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
16 18 (0.50%) HTML
16 18 (0.50%) SailPoint
16 18 (0.50%) SAML
16 18 (0.50%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.12%) Onboarding
2 145 (4.06%) Product Ownership
3 125 (3.50%) Cloud Native
4 113 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 102 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
6 89 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
7 81 (2.27%) Data Centre
8 65 (1.82%) Public Cloud
9 61 (1.71%) Data Structures
10 52 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
11 46 (1.29%) Virtual Team
12 41 (1.15%) Mainframe
13 39 (1.09%) Security Posture
13 39 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 26 (0.73%) PMI
15 25 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
15 25 (0.70%) CMDB
16 21 (0.59%) Operational Technology
17 20 (0.56%) Greenfield Project
18 19 (0.53%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.47%) Windows
2 102 (2.86%) Linux
3 54 (1.51%) Unix
4 31 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.76%) Solaris
6 23 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.48%) zOS
8 15 (0.42%) Windows 10
9 13 (0.36%) AIX
10 10 (0.28%) Android
11 9 (0.25%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.14%) VMS
15 4 (0.11%) HPUX
15 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.11%) MVS
15 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.11%) SUSE
16 1 (0.028%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 762 (21.35%) Stakeholder Management
2 666 (18.66%) Agile
3 535 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
4 525 (14.71%) Migration
5 476 (13.34%) ERP
6 472 (13.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 453 (12.69%) Continuous Improvement
8 400 (11.21%) Project Management
9 347 (9.72%) DevOps
10 318 (8.91%) Change Management
11 317 (8.88%) CI/CD
12 298 (8.35%) Decision-Making
13 289 (8.10%) Project Delivery
14 268 (7.51%) User Acceptance Testing
15 266 (7.45%) AI
16 262 (7.34%) Roadmaps
17 257 (7.20%) Validation
18 244 (6.84%) Risk Management
19 230 (6.44%) Business Intelligence
20 227 (6.36%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 343 (9.61%) SQL
2 265 (7.43%) Python
3 214 (6.00%) Java
4 82 (2.30%) PowerShell
5 38 (1.06%) Bash
6 36 (1.01%) C#
6 36 (1.01%) JavaScript
7 27 (0.76%) TypeScript
8 24 (0.67%) PL/SQL
9 21 (0.59%) C++
9 21 (0.59%) Go
10 20 (0.56%) Shell Script
11 17 (0.48%) VBA
12 14 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 12 (0.34%) Rust
14 11 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 10 (0.28%) COBOL
15 10 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 10 (0.28%) PHP
16 9 (0.25%) Perl
Qualifications
1 320 (8.97%) Security Cleared
2 312 (8.74%) Degree
3 202 (5.66%) SC Cleared
4 136 (3.81%) ACCA
5 132 (3.70%) CIMA
6 111 (3.11%) PMP
7 97 (2.72%) PMI Certification
8 96 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
9 74 (2.07%) CISSP
10 54 (1.51%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.29%) CISM
12 38 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 29 (0.81%) AWS Certification
15 25 (0.70%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 24 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.59%) Azure Certification
18 16 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 16 (0.45%) DBS Check
18 16 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 186 (5.21%) Data Quality
2 160 (4.48%) PMO
3 140 (3.92%) GDPR
3 140 (3.92%) QA
4 63 (1.77%) NIST
5 45 (1.26%) SLA
6 42 (1.18%) GRC
6 42 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 39 (1.09%) PCI DSS
8 38 (1.06%) IFRS
9 35 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 34 (0.95%) Accessibility
11 15 (0.42%) IFRS 17
11 15 (0.42%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.36%) SOC 2
13 12 (0.34%) PSD2
14 10 (0.28%) Basel III
15 9 (0.25%) GAAP
15 9 (0.25%) ISO 8583
15 9 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 100 (2.80%) Docker
2 68 (1.91%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.42%) vSphere
6 13 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.34%) RACF
8 11 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.17%) GPFS
10 6 (0.17%) NFS
11 5 (0.14%) VMware NSX
12 4 (0.11%) KVM
13 3 (0.084%) Firmware
14 2 (0.056%) ACF2
14 2 (0.056%) SRDF
15 1 (0.028%) HDFS
15 1 (0.028%) ISA Server
15 1 (0.028%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.028%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 169 (4.74%) Kubernetes
2 84 (2.35%) Terraform
3 71 (1.99%) Ansible
4 44 (1.23%) Grafana
5 35 (0.98%) Prometheus
6 25 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.48%) SCCM
9 13 (0.36%) FortiGate
10 11 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.28%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.28%) Nessus
12 9 (0.25%) OMEGAMON
13 8 (0.22%) Argo
13 8 (0.22%) Istio
13 8 (0.22%) Kiali
13 8 (0.22%) vRealize
14 7 (0.20%) Control-M
15 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 6 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 441 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 377 (10.56%) SAP
3 318 (8.91%) Oracle
4 143 (4.01%) ServiceNow
5 101 (2.83%) Google
6 63 (1.77%) Databricks
7 62 (1.74%) IBM
8 55 (1.54%) Sage
9 54 (1.51%) Splunk
10 51 (1.43%) Cisco
10 51 (1.43%) VMware
11 37 (1.04%) IFS
12 34 (0.95%) Salesforce
13 31 (0.87%) Ariba
14 28 (0.78%) Workday
15 24 (0.67%) HP
16 22 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 17 (0.48%) Adobe
17 17 (0.48%) Atlassian
18 16 (0.45%) CyberArk