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 5 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,827 2,516 2,778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.44% 17.54% 13.18%
As % of the General category 28.23% 28.51% 24.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,321 1,643 1,695
10th Percentile £335 £308 £283
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
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 181 75 203
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.80 £14.75
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.42% -11.26% -26.59%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% -8.96%

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 13,558 8,826 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.15% 61.51% 53.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,640 5,372 6,342
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £488
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -3.74% -2.35%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £597
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,684 737 1,662
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.71
25th Percentile £17.24 £15.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £31.95 £23.00 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.91% -26.98% +21.39%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.21 £31.97
% change year-on-year +17.60% -14.89% +4.68%

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 5 July 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 5 July 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 5 July 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 +1 1,284 £500 +7.53% 852
South East 0 718 £500 -4.76% 1,008
North West +4 668 £475 +5.56% 456
Midlands +1 654 £500 +11.11% 463
Yorkshire 0 572 £525 +7.69% 295
Scotland 0 487 £475 -1.61% 190
West Midlands +1 482 £500 - 264
South West -2 383 £525 -4.55% 354
East of England +5 203 £520 -9.57% 258
East Midlands 0 165 £500 +17.65% 198
Wales +6 89 £525 +12.90% 73
Northern Ireland -1 57 £475 +11.76% 83
North East -22 45 £500 +13.64% 111
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
1 158 (4.13%) Confluence
2 100 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.31%) Apache
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
7 11 (0.29%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.078%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) TPMS
13 2 (0.052%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.052%) Hyperledger
13 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 237 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.35%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.052%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.12%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.02%) NetSuite
5 38 (0.99%) Oracle Receivables
6 37 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
8 18 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.44%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
9 17 (0.44%) Unit4 Business World
10 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.29%) Workday HCM
13 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 469 (12.26%) Azure
2 323 (8.44%) AWS
3 220 (5.75%) Power Platform
4 203 (5.30%) GCP
5 101 (2.64%) SaaS
6 94 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
7 91 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (2.22%) GitHub
9 72 (1.88%) Entra ID
10 70 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.15%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
14 40 (1.05%) Serverless
15 36 (0.94%) OCI
16 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.63%) PaaS
17 24 (0.63%) Power Automate
18 23 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.19%) Firewall
2 65 (1.70%) Network Security
3 37 (0.97%) DNS
4 34 (0.89%) VPN
4 34 (0.89%) WAN
5 28 (0.73%) SSL
6 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 18 (0.47%) LAN
8 16 (0.42%) SD-WAN
9 13 (0.34%) DHCP
10 12 (0.31%) VSAN
11 9 (0.24%) BGP
11 9 (0.24%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) SSH
15 5 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.76%) Power BI
2 78 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.91%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.78%) Metadata
5 60 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
6 59 (1.54%) SQL Server
7 54 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
8 36 (0.94%) Data Lake
9 35 (0.91%) Tableau
10 31 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 27 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.55%) Db2
13 21 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.50%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.47%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.44%) Data Vault
17 16 (0.42%) Power Query
18 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 272 (7.11%) JIRA
2 88 (2.30%) Git
3 73 (1.91%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.71%) JUnit
5 23 (0.60%) Selenium
6 22 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.55%) GitLab
8 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.37%) Hudson
10 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 12 (0.31%) Postman
12 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 8 (0.21%) Gradle
13 8 (0.21%) Maven
14 7 (0.18%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
16 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
16 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,211 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 523 (13.67%) Banking
3 510 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.34%) Public Sector
5 187 (4.89%) Legal
6 162 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 129 (3.37%) Retail
8 111 (2.90%) Local Government
8 111 (2.90%) Manufacturing
9 108 (2.82%) Influencing Skills
10 106 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
11 84 (2.19%) Financial Institution
12 83 (2.17%) General Ledger
13 80 (2.09%) Investment Banking
14 69 (1.80%) Billing
15 60 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.49%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.25%) Marketing
18 47 (1.23%) Aerospace
19 46 (1.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 524 (13.69%) Analyst
2 366 (9.56%) Lead
3 355 (9.28%) Architect
4 336 (8.78%) Project Manager
4 336 (8.78%) Senior
5 285 (7.45%) Developer
6 254 (6.64%) Consultant
7 240 (6.27%) Business Analyst
8 165 (4.31%) Accountant
9 155 (4.05%) Solutions Architect
10 103 (2.69%) Systems Accountant
11 99 (2.59%) IT Manager
12 97 (2.53%) Senior Manager
13 90 (2.35%) Programme Manager
14 83 (2.17%) Java Developer
15 82 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
16 71 (1.86%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.83%) Administrator
18 63 (1.65%) Data Analyst
19 62 (1.62%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (3.34%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.40%) Middleware
3 88 (2.30%) REST
4 69 (1.80%) Kafka
5 68 (1.78%) Spring
5 68 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.57%) React
7 57 (1.49%) .NET
8 42 (1.10%) RESTful
9 33 (0.86%) OAuth
10 32 (0.84%) JSON
11 30 (0.78%) Node.js
12 27 (0.71%) OpenID
13 26 (0.68%) SailPoint
13 26 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.68%) XML
14 23 (0.60%) Redux
15 21 (0.55%) AngularJS
16 20 (0.52%) SAML
17 19 (0.50%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 154 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 142 (3.71%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
6 104 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
7 76 (1.99%) Data Centre
7 76 (1.99%) Virtual Team
8 67 (1.75%) Data Structures
8 67 (1.75%) Public Cloud
9 51 (1.33%) Mainframe
10 48 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
11 47 (1.23%) Security Posture
12 41 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
13 34 (0.89%) Web Conferencing
14 33 (0.86%) Podcast
15 29 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
15 29 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
16 28 (0.73%) AI Agents
17 27 (0.71%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.21%) Windows
2 103 (2.69%) Linux
3 60 (1.57%) Unix
4 31 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.71%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.34%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.24%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) HPUX
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 4 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.10%) SUSE
15 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 866 (22.63%) Stakeholder Management
2 700 (18.29%) Agile
3 559 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
4 542 (14.16%) Migration
5 522 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
6 515 (13.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 491 (12.83%) ERP
8 394 (10.30%) Project Management
9 362 (9.46%) DevOps
10 352 (9.20%) Decision-Making
11 345 (9.01%) CI/CD
12 342 (8.94%) Change Management
13 317 (8.28%) Project Delivery
14 306 (8.00%) AI
15 290 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
16 288 (7.53%) Roadmaps
17 266 (6.95%) Validation
18 261 (6.82%) Risk Management
19 244 (6.38%) Analytics
20 234 (6.11%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 353 (9.22%) SQL
2 293 (7.66%) Python
3 224 (5.85%) Java
4 75 (1.96%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.44%) C#
6 44 (1.15%) JavaScript
7 38 (0.99%) Bash
8 36 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.86%) TypeScript
10 25 (0.65%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.60%) Go
12 20 (0.52%) C++
13 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 15 (0.39%) VBA
14 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 11 (0.29%) COBOL
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) PHP
16 10 (0.26%) Rust
17 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 354 (9.25%) Security Cleared
2 301 (7.87%) Degree
3 220 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.40%) ACCA
5 127 (3.32%) CIMA
6 116 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.98%) PMP
8 100 (2.61%) PMI Certification
9 77 (2.01%) CISSP
10 66 (1.72%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.20%) CISM
12 39 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.91%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.76%) Master's Degree
16 28 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 20 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.50%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (5.30%) Data Quality
2 164 (4.29%) PMO
3 148 (3.87%) GDPR
4 142 (3.71%) QA
5 56 (1.46%) NIST
6 49 (1.28%) SLA
7 46 (1.20%) GRC
8 38 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.91%) IFRS
10 33 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 32 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 31 (0.81%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.29%) PSD2
16 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
16 10 (0.26%) NCSC
16 10 (0.26%) SEPA
17 8 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (2.27%) Docker
2 80 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.52%) RACF
5 18 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.37%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
8 6 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.10%) KVM
10 2 (0.052%) ACF2
10 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.052%) SRDF
10 2 (0.052%) zsh
11 1 (0.026%) Firmware
11 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
11 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 169 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 95 (2.48%) Terraform
3 79 (2.06%) Ansible
4 36 (0.94%) Grafana
5 30 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.50%) SCCM
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
9 12 (0.31%) Control-M
9 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.29%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.26%) Nessus
12 9 (0.24%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
14 6 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 476 (12.44%) Microsoft
2 397 (10.37%) SAP
3 357 (9.33%) Oracle
4 167 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 108 (2.82%) Google
6 78 (2.04%) IBM
7 72 (1.88%) Databricks
8 60 (1.57%) VMware
9 55 (1.44%) Sage
10 50 (1.31%) Cisco
11 47 (1.23%) Splunk
12 43 (1.12%) Salesforce
13 34 (0.89%) IFS
14 31 (0.81%) Ariba
14 31 (0.81%) Workday
15 23 (0.60%) HP
16 22 (0.57%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.52%) MuleSoft
18 19 (0.50%) Sybase
19 18 (0.47%) Foundry