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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,874 2,572 2,772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.40% 17.37% 13.59%
As % of the General category 27.99% 28.53% 25.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,328 1,680 1,692
10th Percentile £340 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £491 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.83% -1.80% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £621
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 197 74 187
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.74 £13.40
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.69 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.51% -21.75% -8.74%
75th Percentile £50.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £32.31 £34.61
% change year-on-year +36.06% -6.63% +6.48%

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 13,842 9,014 10,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.45% 60.88% 53.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,773 5,461 6,217
10th Percentile £265 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £489
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -4.09% -2.20%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,735 786 1,525
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.08 £12.88
25th Percentile £17.60 £15.25 £15.62
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% -31.82% +24.62%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.13 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £26.21 £33.29
% change year-on-year +25.91% -21.26% +8.61%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 0 1,299 £500 +6.61% 885
South East 0 728 £500 -4.76% 913
North West +3 684 £490 +8.89% 455
Midlands +1 654 £500 +11.11% 513
Yorkshire 0 564 £525 +7.69% 325
Scotland 0 497 £475 -2.46% 241
West Midlands 0 490 £500 +4.17% 271
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 316
East of England +7 211 £530 -7.83% 278
East Midlands -1 157 £500 +17.65% 241
Wales +3 85 £525 +13.51% 100
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +5.56% 142
North East -17 52 £500 +14.29% 113
Channel Islands +4 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
1 153 (3.95%) Confluence
2 94 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.34%) CMS
7 12 (0.31%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
9 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
15 2 (0.052%) JBoss
15 2 (0.052%) Mule
15 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
15 2 (0.052%) nginx
Applications
1 238 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.27%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.06%) NetSuite
3 41 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 35 (0.90%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 21 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
7 20 (0.52%) Unit4 Business World
8 19 (0.49%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
10 15 (0.39%) SAP PSCD
11 14 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
12 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
13 11 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 10 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.36%) Azure
2 329 (8.49%) AWS
3 222 (5.73%) Power Platform
4 209 (5.39%) GCP
5 107 (2.76%) SaaS
6 94 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.30%) GitHub
8 88 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
9 79 (2.04%) Dynamics 365
10 72 (1.86%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 39 (1.01%) OCI
12 39 (1.01%) Serverless
13 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
14 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
15 24 (0.62%) Amazon S3
16 23 (0.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 23 (0.59%) Power Automate
17 22 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Firewall
2 65 (1.68%) Network Security
3 40 (1.03%) VPN
4 39 (1.01%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 24 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 14 (0.36%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 5 (0.13%) HTTP
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) OSPF
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.70%) Power BI
2 80 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
3 76 (1.96%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 61 (1.57%) SQL Server
6 57 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
7 52 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 35 (0.90%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 26 (0.67%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
13 23 (0.59%) Db2
13 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
14 22 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
16 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
17 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 16 (0.41%) Power Query
19 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 261 (6.74%) JIRA
2 92 (2.37%) Git
3 64 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 25 (0.65%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
6 17 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) GitLab
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.31%) Postman
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
11 7 (0.18%) ERwin
11 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
11 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.15%) Gradle
12 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 1,245 (32.14%) Social Skills
2 535 (13.81%) Analytical Skills
3 531 (13.71%) Banking
4 285 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 207 (5.34%) Legal
6 190 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
7 137 (3.54%) Retail
8 116 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.89%) Manufacturing
10 108 (2.79%) Local Government
11 103 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.22%) Financial Institution
13 82 (2.12%) General Ledger
14 80 (2.07%) Investment Banking
15 71 (1.83%) Billing
16 62 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 56 (1.45%) Marketing
17 56 (1.45%) Telecoms
18 48 (1.24%) Aerospace
19 47 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 540 (13.94%) Analyst
2 392 (10.12%) Lead
3 353 (9.11%) Senior
4 338 (8.72%) Project Manager
5 325 (8.39%) Architect
6 291 (7.51%) Developer
7 257 (6.63%) Business Analyst
8 241 (6.22%) Consultant
9 174 (4.49%) Accountant
10 140 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
11 108 (2.79%) Systems Accountant
12 103 (2.66%) Senior Manager
13 102 (2.63%) IT Manager
14 90 (2.32%) Financial Analyst
15 88 (2.27%) Programme Manager
16 84 (2.17%) Java Developer
17 72 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 65 (1.68%) Administrator
18 65 (1.68%) Data Analyst
18 65 (1.68%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.48%) Oracle Fusion
2 86 (2.22%) Middleware
2 86 (2.22%) REST
3 69 (1.78%) Kafka
4 67 (1.73%) Spring Boot
5 66 (1.70%) Spring
6 59 (1.52%) React
7 57 (1.47%) .NET
8 42 (1.08%) RESTful
9 37 (0.96%) OAuth
10 33 (0.85%) JSON
11 31 (0.80%) Node.js
12 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
12 27 (0.70%) XML
13 26 (0.67%) OpenID
14 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
15 23 (0.59%) Redux
16 21 (0.54%) SAML
17 20 (0.52%) AngularJS
18 19 (0.49%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.03%) Product Ownership
2 150 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 142 (3.67%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 111 (2.87%) Data Protection Act
6 108 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.68%) Virtual Team
8 69 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 68 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 61 (1.57%) Public Cloud
11 56 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
12 55 (1.42%) Podcast
13 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
14 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
15 46 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
16 44 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
17 34 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
18 32 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
19 30 (0.77%) AI Agents
19 30 (0.77%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.07%) Windows
2 106 (2.74%) Linux
3 64 (1.65%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 26 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.65%) zOS
8 14 (0.36%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.15%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
15 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 896 (23.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 710 (18.33%) Agile
3 564 (14.56%) Problem-Solving
4 544 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
4 544 (14.04%) Migration
5 531 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 505 (13.04%) ERP
7 386 (9.96%) Project Management
8 363 (9.37%) DevOps
9 359 (9.27%) Decision-Making
10 355 (9.16%) Change Management
11 349 (9.01%) CI/CD
12 319 (8.23%) AI
13 318 (8.21%) Project Delivery
14 289 (7.46%) Roadmaps
15 288 (7.43%) User Acceptance Testing
16 274 (7.07%) Validation
17 263 (6.79%) Risk Management
18 247 (6.38%) Analytics
19 233 (6.01%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 347 (8.96%) SQL
2 304 (7.85%) Python
3 219 (5.65%) Java
4 74 (1.91%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.45%) C#
6 45 (1.16%) JavaScript
7 43 (1.11%) Bash
8 39 (1.01%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.65%) Go
12 20 (0.52%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.36%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.26%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 358 (9.24%) Security Cleared
2 295 (7.61%) Degree
3 223 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 124 (3.20%) ACCA
6 120 (3.10%) CIMA
7 112 (2.89%) PMP
8 99 (2.56%) PMI Certification
9 72 (1.86%) CISSP
10 67 (1.73%) DV Cleared
11 43 (1.11%) CISM
12 37 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
13 34 (0.88%) AWS Certification
14 32 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 31 (0.80%) Azure Certification
16 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
17 25 (0.65%) Master's Degree
18 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
20 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 211 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 170 (4.39%) PMO
3 145 (3.74%) QA
4 142 (3.67%) GDPR
5 51 (1.32%) NIST
6 47 (1.21%) GRC
6 47 (1.21%) SLA
7 37 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 36 (0.93%) IFRS
9 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 27 (0.70%) PCI DSS
12 16 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.31%) GAAP
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
17 8 (0.21%) NCSC
17 8 (0.21%) SEPA
17 8 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 83 (2.14%) Docker
2 76 (1.96%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) KVM
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 2 (0.052%) zsh
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 167 (4.31%) Kubernetes
2 104 (2.68%) Terraform
3 81 (2.09%) Ansible
4 36 (0.93%) Grafana
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 29 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 24 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.46%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 494 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 390 (10.07%) SAP
3 367 (9.47%) Oracle
4 165 (4.26%) ServiceNow
5 105 (2.71%) Google
6 83 (2.14%) IBM
7 76 (1.96%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 55 (1.42%) Sage
10 50 (1.29%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.11%) Cisco
11 43 (1.11%) Splunk
12 34 (0.88%) IFS
13 31 (0.80%) Ariba
14 30 (0.77%) Workday
15 23 (0.59%) Red Hat
16 22 (0.57%) HP
17 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.52%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe