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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,348 2,232 2,628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.33% 17.49% 12.63%
As % of the General category 27.79% 28.11% 23.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,091 1,429 1,629
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £526 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -7.68% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 147 68 195
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.20 £11.92
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.07
Median hourly rate £22.08 £53.75 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year -58.93% +74.37% -35.11%
75th Percentile £38.63 £74.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.47 £53.60
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year -40.44% +48.15% -16.28%

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 12,046 7,941 11,410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.56% 62.23% 54.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,207 4,919 6,566
10th Percentile £240 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £580 £580 £595
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,358 567 1,621
10th Percentile £13.49 £14.02 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.51 £16.95 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £26.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% +1.92% -14.81%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £79.30 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £27.71 £28.68 £28.00
% change year-on-year -3.37% +2.41% -20.00%

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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 1,101 £475 - 635
South East -1 644 £503 -3.83% 920
North West +6 591 £464 -0.27% 340
Midlands -2 584 £475 -5.00% 391
Yorkshire 0 465 £500 +2.30% 225
Scotland 0 394 £500 +2.67% 145
West Midlands 0 387 £492 -6.29% 220
South West -3 332 £525 +2.94% 317
East of England -2 201 £525 -4.55% 236
East Midlands 0 192 £450 +1.18% 168
Wales +25 101 £413 +10.00% 75
North East -9 45 £488 +11.94% 82
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +46.43% 51
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 153 (4.57%) Confluence
2 110 (3.29%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 25 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (0.63%) Apache
6 13 (0.39%) SAS
7 9 (0.27%) CICS
8 8 (0.24%) CMS
8 8 (0.24%) TPMS
9 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.090%) Camunda
12 3 (0.090%) IIS
12 3 (0.090%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.060%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 251 (7.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 133 (3.97%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (3.32%) Microsoft Project
4 85 (2.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.15%) Trello
10 4 (0.12%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.060%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.030%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.030%) UXPin
12 1 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 159 (4.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 40 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
6 36 (1.08%) Oracle ERP
7 29 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
8 27 (0.81%) SAP FI
9 25 (0.75%) NetSuite
9 25 (0.75%) Oracle Assets
10 23 (0.69%) Oracle Cash Management
11 19 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
12 18 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
13 17 (0.51%) SAP CO
14 16 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
15 13 (0.39%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.39%) SAP ERP
16 12 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
17 11 (0.33%) Oracle AGIS
17 11 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 411 (12.28%) Azure
2 345 (10.30%) AWS
3 210 (6.27%) Power Platform
4 156 (4.66%) GCP
5 118 (3.52%) Microsoft 365
6 91 (2.72%) GitHub
7 82 (2.45%) SaaS
8 80 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
9 71 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
10 58 (1.73%) Entra ID
11 52 (1.55%) Serverless
12 48 (1.43%) OpenShift
13 43 (1.28%) OCI
14 41 (1.22%) Snowflake
15 34 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
16 32 (0.96%) Amazon S3
16 32 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (0.84%) Microsoft Copilot
18 26 (0.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.39%) Firewall
2 39 (1.16%) Network Security
3 37 (1.11%) DNS
4 35 (1.05%) WAN
5 32 (0.96%) VPN
6 19 (0.57%) SD-WAN
7 18 (0.54%) Skype
8 17 (0.51%) TCP/IP
9 16 (0.48%) SSL
10 15 (0.45%) LAN
11 12 (0.36%) Internet
12 11 (0.33%) DHCP
13 10 (0.30%) SSH
14 9 (0.27%) MPLS
15 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.24%) SNMP
15 8 (0.24%) VSAN
16 7 (0.21%) Wireless
17 6 (0.18%) OSPF
17 6 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (5.73%) Power BI
2 72 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 58 (1.73%) Metadata
5 53 (1.58%) Oracle Reports
6 49 (1.46%) Relational Database
7 39 (1.16%) NoSQL
8 37 (1.11%) Tableau
9 35 (1.05%) SQL Server
10 30 (0.90%) DynamoDB
11 25 (0.75%) Big Data
12 24 (0.72%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.66%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.66%) Power Query
14 19 (0.57%) MongoDB
15 15 (0.45%) BigQuery
16 13 (0.39%) MySQL
16 13 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
16 13 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 12 (0.36%) DB2
Development Applications
1 295 (8.81%) JIRA
2 93 (2.78%) Jenkins
3 58 (1.73%) Git
4 46 (1.37%) GitLab
5 35 (1.05%) JUnit
6 28 (0.84%) Cucumber
7 26 (0.78%) Sonatype Nexus
8 21 (0.63%) Selenium
9 14 (0.42%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.39%) Hudson
10 13 (0.39%) Postman
11 9 (0.27%) Bitbucket
12 8 (0.24%) Gradle
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.21%) JMeter
14 6 (0.18%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.18%) Maven
14 6 (0.18%) Snyk
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,121 (33.48%) Social Skills
2 484 (14.46%) Banking
3 452 (13.50%) Analytical Skills
4 307 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 147 (4.39%) Manufacturing
6 130 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 113 (3.38%) Legal
8 108 (3.23%) Telecoms
9 104 (3.11%) Marketing
10 101 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (2.57%) Retail
12 85 (2.54%) Local Government
13 80 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
14 72 (2.15%) Financial Institution
15 66 (1.97%) General Ledger
16 62 (1.85%) Electronics
17 51 (1.52%) Investment Banking
18 47 (1.40%) Billing
19 43 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
20 33 (0.99%) Law
Job Titles
1 487 (14.55%) Analyst
2 335 (10.01%) Project Manager
3 300 (8.96%) Architect
4 293 (8.75%) Lead
5 264 (7.89%) Senior
6 235 (7.02%) Consultant
7 220 (6.57%) Business Analyst
8 212 (6.33%) Developer
9 126 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
10 115 (3.43%) Accountant
11 88 (2.63%) Programme Manager
12 87 (2.60%) Senior Manager
13 79 (2.36%) Finance Manager
14 69 (2.06%) Data Analyst
15 67 (2.00%) Systems Accountant
16 62 (1.85%) SAP Consultant
17 61 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 60 (1.79%) Data Engineer
19 56 (1.67%) IT Manager
20 54 (1.61%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (2.66%) REST
2 82 (2.45%) Spring
3 80 (2.39%) Spring Boot
4 73 (2.18%) Oracle Fusion
5 70 (2.09%) Kafka
6 68 (2.03%) Middleware
7 43 (1.28%) RESTful
8 37 (1.11%) .NET
9 34 (1.02%) React
10 33 (0.99%) Node.js
11 30 (0.90%) OAuth
12 29 (0.87%) JSON
13 27 (0.81%) XML
14 25 (0.75%) HTML
15 24 (0.72%) AngularJS
16 22 (0.66%) CSS
16 22 (0.66%) SOAP
17 20 (0.60%) OpenID
17 20 (0.60%) OpenTelemetry
18 19 (0.57%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.45%) Onboarding
2 126 (3.76%) Product Ownership
3 106 (3.17%) Cloud Native
4 104 (3.11%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 81 (2.42%) Data Centre
7 79 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
8 60 (1.79%) Public Cloud
9 54 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
10 51 (1.52%) Data Structures
11 41 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.05%) Virtual Team
13 34 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
13 34 (1.02%) Mainframe
13 34 (1.02%) PMI
14 31 (0.93%) CMDB
15 30 (0.90%) Mobile App
16 24 (0.72%) Security Posture
17 18 (0.54%) Operational Technology
18 17 (0.51%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 114 (3.41%) Linux
2 107 (3.20%) Windows
3 50 (1.49%) Unix
4 27 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 25 (0.75%) Windows Server
6 19 (0.57%) Android
7 17 (0.51%) Mac OS
7 17 (0.51%) Solaris
8 13 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.33%) AIX
10 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.21%) zOS
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.12%) MVS
12 4 (0.12%) VMS
13 3 (0.090%) HPUX
13 3 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.090%) SUSE
14 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 656 (19.59%) Stakeholder Management
2 637 (19.03%) Agile
3 538 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
4 491 (14.67%) Migration
5 449 (13.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 423 (12.63%) ERP
7 409 (12.22%) Project Management
8 404 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 337 (10.07%) DevOps
10 298 (8.90%) CI/CD
11 296 (8.84%) Project Delivery
12 294 (8.78%) Business Intelligence
12 294 (8.78%) Change Management
13 258 (7.71%) Decision-Making
14 245 (7.32%) User Acceptance Testing
15 230 (6.87%) AI
16 228 (6.81%) Roadmaps
17 226 (6.75%) Analytics
18 223 (6.66%) Risk Management
19 218 (6.51%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 328 (9.80%) SQL
2 241 (7.20%) Python
3 202 (6.03%) Java
4 66 (1.97%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.87%) JavaScript
6 28 (0.84%) Bash
7 27 (0.81%) TypeScript
8 22 (0.66%) VBA
9 21 (0.63%) C#
10 17 (0.51%) PL/SQL
11 16 (0.48%) Shell Script
12 15 (0.45%) Go
13 13 (0.39%) C++
14 12 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 12 (0.36%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.33%) COBOL
16 10 (0.30%) ABAP
17 9 (0.27%) Perl
18 8 (0.24%) Rust
18 8 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 329 (9.83%) Security Cleared
2 322 (9.62%) Degree
3 205 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 114 (3.41%) ACCA
5 112 (3.35%) PMP
6 110 (3.29%) CIMA
7 105 (3.14%) PMI Certification
8 93 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 65 (1.94%) CISSP
11 52 (1.55%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
13 40 (1.19%) CISM
14 35 (1.05%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.69%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 18 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
18 16 (0.48%) MBA
19 14 (0.42%) APMP
19 14 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (5.47%) PMO
2 165 (4.93%) Data Quality
3 144 (4.30%) QA
4 138 (4.12%) GDPR
5 64 (1.91%) NIST
6 47 (1.40%) SLA
7 46 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 44 (1.31%) PCI DSS
9 28 (0.84%) GRC
10 26 (0.78%) Accessibility
10 26 (0.78%) IFRS
11 23 (0.69%) ISO 20022
11 23 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.54%) PSD2
13 14 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
14 13 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.36%) Basel III
15 12 (0.36%) SEPA
16 10 (0.30%) GAAP
17 9 (0.27%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 109 (3.26%) Docker
2 71 (2.12%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.63%) vSphere
5 15 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 12 (0.36%) GPFS
8 11 (0.33%) NFS
9 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.12%) ACF2
11 4 (0.12%) KVM
11 4 (0.12%) RACF
12 3 (0.090%) Firmware
12 3 (0.090%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.090%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.060%) HDFS
13 2 (0.060%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 2 (0.060%) SRDF
13 2 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 156 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 75 (2.24%) Terraform
3 68 (2.03%) Ansible
4 43 (1.28%) Grafana
5 33 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.45%) SCCM
8 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.42%) vRealize
9 11 (0.33%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.30%) Nessus
11 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.24%) Kiali
13 7 (0.21%) Control-M
13 7 (0.21%) HP ALM
14 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.18%) VxRail
15 5 (0.15%) Argo
15 5 (0.15%) CASB
15 5 (0.15%) Istio
Vendors
1 440 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 359 (10.72%) SAP
3 297 (8.87%) Oracle
4 166 (4.96%) ServiceNow
5 92 (2.75%) Google
6 68 (2.03%) Cisco
7 59 (1.76%) Sage
8 56 (1.67%) IBM
9 55 (1.64%) Splunk
10 53 (1.58%) Databricks
11 52 (1.55%) VMware
12 42 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 37 (1.11%) IFS
14 32 (0.96%) Workday
15 25 (0.75%) HP
16 22 (0.66%) Dell
17 20 (0.60%) Citrix
18 19 (0.57%) Adobe
18 19 (0.57%) Ariba
18 19 (0.57%) Remedy