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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 2
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 +4
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,893 2,607 2,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.74% 16.79% 15.07%
As % of the General category 26.27% 27.64% 27.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,299 1,731 1,571
10th Percentile £339 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -1.38% -3.43%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £620
90th Percentile £700 £688 £719
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £575
% change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 63 104
10th Percentile £14.65 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.69 £15.49 £20.29
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -21.19% +22.74%
75th Percentile - £31.86 £55.06
90th Percentile £75.00 £62.72 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £33.00
% change year-on-year +54.11% -13.56% +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 14,820 9,432 9,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.32% 60.75% 55.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,935 5,694 5,407
10th Percentile £263 £210 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £594
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,235 924 895
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.60
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.96 £21.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.07% -38.89% +29.63%
75th Percentile £55.50 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.43 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 1,335 £514 +9.89% 1,938
South East -1 741 £500 -2.72% 2,150
North West -1 640 £503 +11.78% 1,078
Yorkshire 0 616 £525 +5.00% 652
Midlands -3 603 £507 +6.74% 1,161
Scotland 0 553 £463 -6.57% 1,022
West Midlands -2 452 £518 -0.43% 712
South West -5 354 £525 -4.55% 948
East of England +3 204 £553 -3.91% 659
East Midlands -2 148 £500 +19.05% 447
North East -7 72 £538 +22.51% 219
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 448
Wales 0 60 £525 +20.69% 219
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 14
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
1 140 (3.60%) Confluence
2 93 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.49%) Apache
4 15 (0.39%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 13 (0.33%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) JBoss
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 257 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.80%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 202 (5.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (0.92%) NetSuite
5 34 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
6 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
7 27 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 23 (0.59%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) Workday HCM
12 18 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
13 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
14 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
15 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
15 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 472 (12.12%) Azure
2 353 (9.07%) AWS
3 253 (6.50%) GCP
4 224 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 106 (2.72%) GitHub
6 103 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
7 96 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
7 96 (2.47%) SaaS
8 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
9 74 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
10 46 (1.18%) OpenShift
10 46 (1.18%) Serverless
10 46 (1.18%) Snowflake
11 44 (1.13%) OCI
12 36 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
14 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
15 28 (0.72%) Amazon S3
15 28 (0.72%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.08%) Firewall
2 79 (2.03%) Network Security
3 42 (1.08%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.21%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco Nexus
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.62%) Power BI
2 72 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.80%) Metadata
4 70 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 42 (1.08%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 33 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
9 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
11 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
11 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 15 (0.39%) Data Vault
14 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
15 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 218 (5.60%) JIRA
2 119 (3.06%) Git
3 64 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 25 (0.64%) GitLab
5 23 (0.59%) JUnit
6 18 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.39%) Selenium
7 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Maven
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Gradle
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Hudson
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 8 (0.21%) Mockito
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,354 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 602 (15.46%) Banking
3 546 (14.03%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (7.27%) Public Sector
5 281 (7.22%) Organisational Skills
6 259 (6.65%) Legal
7 160 (4.11%) Retail
8 147 (3.78%) Influencing Skills
9 103 (2.65%) Manufacturing
10 89 (2.29%) General Ledger
10 89 (2.29%) Local Government
11 86 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.18%) Billing
13 78 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 72 (1.85%) Investment Banking
15 66 (1.70%) Marketing
16 64 (1.64%) Financial Institution
17 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
18 56 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
19 47 (1.21%) Law
Job Titles
1 484 (12.43%) Analyst
2 395 (10.15%) Lead
3 379 (9.74%) Senior
4 315 (8.09%) Developer
5 300 (7.71%) Architect
6 299 (7.68%) Project Manager
7 275 (7.06%) Consultant
8 225 (5.78%) Business Analyst
9 150 (3.85%) Accountant
10 144 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.57%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.47%) Java Developer
13 93 (2.39%) Financial Analyst
14 89 (2.29%) Systems Accountant
15 87 (2.23%) Administrator
15 87 (2.23%) Senior Manager
16 77 (1.98%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.75%) Programme Manager
19 67 (1.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (3.78%) Terraform
2 144 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
3 114 (2.93%) REST
4 81 (2.08%) Kafka
5 74 (1.90%) React
6 72 (1.85%) Spring Boot
7 70 (1.80%) Middleware
8 67 (1.72%) Spring
9 58 (1.49%) .NET
10 54 (1.39%) RESTful
11 48 (1.23%) OAuth
12 44 (1.13%) JSON
13 37 (0.95%) OpenID
14 33 (0.85%) Node.js
15 29 (0.74%) HTML
15 29 (0.74%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
15 29 (0.74%) SOAP
15 29 (0.74%) XML
16 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 171 (4.39%) Onboarding
2 168 (4.32%) Cloud Native
3 159 (4.08%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.98%) Virtual Team
5 128 (3.29%) Data Protection Act
6 120 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 95 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
10 69 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 66 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 64 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 61 (1.57%) AI Agents
14 55 (1.41%) Mainframe
15 51 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
16 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
17 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (1.21%) Public Cloud
18 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
19 40 (1.03%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 114 (2.93%) Linux
2 109 (2.80%) Windows
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,047 (26.89%) Stakeholder Management
2 725 (18.62%) Agile
3 538 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
4 536 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
5 491 (12.61%) Migration
5 491 (12.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 470 (12.07%) ERP
7 418 (10.74%) CI/CD
8 415 (10.66%) AI
9 376 (9.66%) Decision-Making
10 348 (8.94%) DevOps
11 344 (8.84%) Project Management
12 332 (8.53%) Change Management
13 313 (8.04%) Roadmaps
14 295 (7.58%) Project Delivery
15 288 (7.40%) Risk Management
16 287 (7.37%) Analytics
17 276 (7.09%) Validation
18 266 (6.83%) User Acceptance Testing
19 228 (5.86%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 356 (9.14%) SQL
2 354 (9.09%) Python
3 252 (6.47%) Java
4 80 (2.05%) JavaScript
5 78 (2.00%) PowerShell
6 65 (1.67%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 49 (1.26%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 38 (0.98%) Go
11 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.57%) C++
13 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 18 (0.46%) Scala
14 15 (0.39%) Perl
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 350 (8.99%) Security Cleared
2 251 (6.45%) Degree
3 215 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (2.65%) ACCA
6 101 (2.59%) CIMA
7 96 (2.47%) PMP
8 86 (2.21%) DV Cleared
9 78 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 65 (1.67%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 41 (1.05%) CISM
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
14 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 24 (0.62%) CCSP
16 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 23 (0.59%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.47%) PMO
3 141 (3.62%) QA
4 94 (2.41%) GDPR
5 57 (1.46%) GRC
6 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
6 43 (1.10%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 33 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 30 (0.77%) IFRS
10 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 76 (1.95%) Docker
2 68 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.28%) vSphere
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.051%) IAG
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 214 (5.50%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.93%) Ansible
3 38 (0.98%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) Kibana
16 4 (0.10%) logstash
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 583 (14.98%) Microsoft
2 426 (10.94%) SAP
3 369 (9.48%) Oracle
4 170 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.88%) Google
6 97 (2.49%) IBM
7 84 (2.16%) Databricks
8 66 (1.70%) Salesforce
8 66 (1.70%) VMware
9 45 (1.16%) Splunk
9 45 (1.16%) Workday
10 44 (1.13%) Ariba
11 41 (1.05%) Cisco
12 30 (0.77%) Sage
13 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
14 24 (0.62%) Adobe
14 24 (0.62%) Snow
15 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
16 19 (0.49%) Foundry
17 18 (0.46%) IFS