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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,449 2,231 2,557
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.09% 17.32% 12.60%
As % of the General category 28.11% 27.80% 23.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,112 1,424 1,561
10th Percentile £331 £305 £281
25th Percentile £411 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £604 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £740
UK median daily rate £549 £553 £581
% change year-on-year -0.77% -4.82% -3.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 68 199
10th Percentile £14.02 £17.25 £12.30
25th Percentile £17.00 £21.00 £14.36
Median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.49% +43.06% -31.43%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £76.92 £57.00
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £26.97
% change year-on-year -39.00% +44.81% +4.90%

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 12,268 8,025 11,037
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.10% 62.29% 54.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,153 4,945 6,308
10th Percentile £263 £210 £208
25th Percentile £390 £361 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.62% -0.40%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £506 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -2.69% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,401 590 1,650
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.55 £16.02 £15.00
Median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.55% -12.06% -3.45%
75th Percentile £61.18 £55.19 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £67.04
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 1,171 £491 +3.37% 741
South East -2 640 £503 -3.83% 972
North West +5 618 £466 +0.11% 404
Midlands -1 584 £492 +3.58% 404
Yorkshire +1 513 £517 +8.22% 252
Scotland 0 418 £500 +4.82% 159
West Midlands 0 394 £500 -4.76% 240
South West -2 354 £525 - 317
East of England 0 203 £523 -5.00% 247
East Midlands 0 186 £465 +4.55% 162
Wales +19 89 £450 +16.13% 76
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 67
North East -14 41 £488 +3.72% 93
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
1 155 (4.49%) Confluence
2 110 (3.19%) SharePoint
3 24 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.52%) Apache
5 17 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
6 10 (0.29%) CICS
7 9 (0.26%) SAS
8 8 (0.23%) CMS
9 7 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.20%) TPMS
10 6 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.17%) IIS
11 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.058%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.058%) Hyperledger
13 2 (0.058%) JBoss
13 2 (0.058%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 238 (6.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 119 (3.45%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (3.22%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.30%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) InVision
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 3 (0.087%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.087%) Trello
10 2 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.058%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.058%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.029%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.029%) UXPin
11 1 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 182 (5.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.45%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.22%) Oracle ERP
3 42 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (1.07%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 31 (0.90%) NetSuite
6 28 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
6 28 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
7 23 (0.67%) Oracle Assets
8 20 (0.58%) Oracle Cash Management
9 18 (0.52%) SAP FI
10 17 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
11 15 (0.43%) SAP CO
12 14 (0.41%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
13 13 (0.38%) NEC Housing
14 12 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
14 12 (0.35%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.35%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.32%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 416 (12.06%) Azure
2 320 (9.28%) AWS
3 210 (6.09%) Power Platform
4 157 (4.55%) GCP
5 106 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
6 90 (2.61%) SaaS
7 88 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
8 78 (2.26%) GitHub
9 77 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
10 61 (1.77%) Entra ID
11 44 (1.28%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.19%) Snowflake
13 37 (1.07%) OCI
13 37 (1.07%) Serverless
14 31 (0.90%) Microsoft Copilot
15 26 (0.75%) Amazon S3
16 24 (0.70%) Google Workspace
16 24 (0.70%) OneDrive
17 23 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
17 23 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 75 (2.17%) Firewall
2 44 (1.28%) Network Security
3 41 (1.19%) DNS
4 37 (1.07%) WAN
5 35 (1.01%) VPN
6 23 (0.67%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.46%) DHCP
8 16 (0.46%) LAN
9 15 (0.43%) SSL
10 12 (0.35%) Skype
11 11 (0.32%) VSAN
12 9 (0.26%) MPLS
12 9 (0.26%) SSH
13 8 (0.23%) Internet
13 8 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.20%) BGP
14 7 (0.20%) SNMP
15 6 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
16 5 (0.14%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (5.42%) Power BI
2 64 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
3 59 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
4 56 (1.62%) Relational Database
5 53 (1.54%) Metadata
6 48 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
7 40 (1.16%) SQL Server
8 39 (1.13%) Tableau
9 33 (0.96%) NoSQL
10 29 (0.84%) DynamoDB
11 23 (0.67%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.64%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.61%) MongoDB
14 18 (0.52%) Big Data
15 16 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
15 16 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.43%) Power Query
17 14 (0.41%) DB2
18 11 (0.32%) Data Vault
18 11 (0.32%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 285 (8.26%) JIRA
2 72 (2.09%) Jenkins
3 60 (1.74%) Git
4 32 (0.93%) GitLab
5 24 (0.70%) JUnit
6 19 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 18 (0.52%) Selenium
7 18 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.41%) Hudson
8 14 (0.41%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.35%) Postman
10 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
11 7 (0.20%) Maven
11 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.17%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.17%) Gradle
12 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.17%) Liquibase
12 6 (0.17%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.14%) Axure RP
General
1 1,105 (32.04%) Social Skills
2 484 (14.03%) Banking
3 451 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 262 (7.60%) Public Sector
5 126 (3.65%) Organisational Skills
6 124 (3.60%) Legal
7 112 (3.25%) Manufacturing
8 111 (3.22%) Retail
9 106 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
10 90 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 86 (2.49%) Local Government
12 75 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 72 (2.09%) Telecoms
14 70 (2.03%) General Ledger
15 65 (1.88%) Marketing
16 59 (1.71%) Investment Banking
17 48 (1.39%) Billing
18 38 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
19 36 (1.04%) Law
20 33 (0.96%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 503 (14.58%) Analyst
2 347 (10.06%) Project Manager
3 312 (9.05%) Architect
4 297 (8.61%) Lead
5 283 (8.21%) Senior
6 237 (6.87%) Business Analyst
6 237 (6.87%) Consultant
7 231 (6.70%) Developer
8 146 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
9 132 (3.83%) Accountant
10 92 (2.67%) Senior Manager
11 88 (2.55%) Programme Manager
12 80 (2.32%) Systems Accountant
13 74 (2.15%) Finance Manager
14 64 (1.86%) Data Analyst
15 63 (1.83%) Data Engineer
15 63 (1.83%) IT Manager
16 61 (1.77%) Java Developer
17 59 (1.71%) Financial Analyst
18 56 (1.62%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (2.44%) REST
2 81 (2.35%) Middleware
3 77 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
4 70 (2.03%) Kafka
4 70 (2.03%) Spring Boot
5 68 (1.97%) Spring
6 43 (1.25%) .NET
7 42 (1.22%) RESTful
8 38 (1.10%) React
9 32 (0.93%) Node.js
10 31 (0.90%) OAuth
11 27 (0.78%) JSON
12 25 (0.72%) AngularJS
12 25 (0.72%) XML
13 24 (0.70%) OpenID
14 20 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
14 20 (0.58%) SailPoint
15 19 (0.55%) HTML
16 18 (0.52%) CSS
16 18 (0.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 144 (4.18%) Product Ownership
3 113 (3.28%) Cloud Native
4 109 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 92 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
7 84 (2.44%) Data Centre
8 61 (1.77%) Data Structures
9 57 (1.65%) Public Cloud
10 53 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
11 39 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 38 (1.10%) Virtual Team
13 36 (1.04%) Mainframe
14 29 (0.84%) PMI
15 28 (0.81%) Security Posture
16 26 (0.75%) CMDB
17 24 (0.70%) Mobile App
18 23 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
19 21 (0.61%) Operational Technology
20 16 (0.46%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 111 (3.22%) Windows
2 99 (2.87%) Linux
3 50 (1.45%) Unix
4 30 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.72%) Solaris
6 20 (0.58%) Windows 10
7 16 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.38%) AIX
9 12 (0.35%) Android
10 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.23%) zOS
12 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.17%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.12%) HPUX
14 4 (0.12%) MVS
14 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.12%) SUSE
15 3 (0.087%) VMS
16 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 707 (20.50%) Stakeholder Management
2 658 (19.08%) Agile
3 535 (15.51%) Problem-Solving
4 509 (14.76%) Migration
5 457 (13.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 455 (13.19%) ERP
7 441 (12.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 405 (11.74%) Project Management
9 333 (9.65%) DevOps
10 303 (8.79%) Change Management
11 291 (8.44%) CI/CD
12 285 (8.26%) Decision-Making
13 284 (8.23%) Project Delivery
14 266 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
15 255 (7.39%) AI
16 244 (7.07%) Roadmaps
17 243 (7.05%) Business Intelligence
18 241 (6.99%) Risk Management
19 225 (6.52%) Validation
20 216 (6.26%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 317 (9.19%) SQL
2 244 (7.07%) Python
3 203 (5.89%) Java
4 69 (2.00%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.84%) Bash
6 25 (0.72%) JavaScript
7 24 (0.70%) PL/SQL
7 24 (0.70%) TypeScript
8 22 (0.64%) C#
9 17 (0.49%) Go
9 17 (0.49%) Shell Script
9 17 (0.49%) VBA
10 15 (0.43%) Kotlin
11 14 (0.41%) C++
11 14 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 11 (0.32%) Rust
13 9 (0.26%) COBOL
13 9 (0.26%) T-SQL
14 8 (0.23%) Perl
14 8 (0.23%) VB
Qualifications
1 330 (9.57%) Security Cleared
2 313 (9.08%) Degree
3 210 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 126 (3.65%) ACCA
5 121 (3.51%) CIMA
6 111 (3.22%) PMP
7 102 (2.96%) PMI Certification
8 89 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (1.94%) CISSP
10 64 (1.86%) DV Cleared
11 45 (1.30%) CISM
12 41 (1.19%) Master's Degree
13 36 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
14 29 (0.84%) AWS Certification
15 24 (0.70%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 19 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
17 18 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
18 16 (0.46%) Azure Certification
18 16 (0.46%) MBA
18 16 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (4.81%) Data Quality
2 163 (4.73%) PMO
3 133 (3.86%) QA
4 126 (3.65%) GDPR
5 66 (1.91%) NIST
6 47 (1.36%) SLA
7 41 (1.19%) GRC
7 41 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 38 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 31 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 30 (0.87%) Accessibility
11 28 (0.81%) IFRS
12 18 (0.52%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.38%) PSD2
13 13 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.29%) Basel III
14 10 (0.29%) GAAP
14 10 (0.29%) NCSC
14 10 (0.29%) SEPA
15 9 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 93 (2.70%) Docker
2 69 (2.00%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (0.52%) vSphere
5 15 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (0.29%) GPFS
7 9 (0.26%) NFS
8 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.12%) KVM
9 4 (0.12%) RACF
9 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 3 (0.087%) Firmware
10 3 (0.087%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.058%) ACF2
11 2 (0.058%) HDFS
11 2 (0.058%) SRDF
12 1 (0.029%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.029%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 154 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 72 (2.09%) Terraform
3 62 (1.80%) Ansible
4 38 (1.10%) Grafana
5 30 (0.87%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.43%) SCCM
9 11 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.32%) vRealize
10 10 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.29%) Nessus
11 8 (0.23%) Kiali
12 7 (0.20%) Istio
12 7 (0.20%) VxRail
13 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.17%) Control-M
14 5 (0.14%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.14%) Puppet
14 5 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 434 (12.58%) Microsoft
2 365 (10.58%) SAP
3 301 (8.73%) Oracle
4 151 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 86 (2.49%) Google
6 56 (1.62%) IBM
7 54 (1.57%) Databricks
7 54 (1.57%) Splunk
8 53 (1.54%) Cisco
8 53 (1.54%) Sage
9 49 (1.42%) VMware
10 40 (1.16%) IFS
11 38 (1.10%) Salesforce
12 32 (0.93%) Workday
13 27 (0.78%) HP
14 22 (0.64%) Ariba
15 19 (0.55%) Adobe
15 19 (0.55%) Citrix
16 18 (0.52%) Dell
16 18 (0.52%) Red Hat