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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,712 2,362 2,680
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.44% 17.64% 12.57%
As % of the General category 28.54% 28.22% 23.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,276 1,530 1,606
10th Percentile £333 £308 £281
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £604 £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 168 70 216
10th Percentile £14.78 £15.25 £12.56
25th Percentile £17.24 £18.86 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £30.79 £29.41
Median % change year-on-year +37.38% +4.68% -39.08%
75th Percentile £53.81 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £58.13
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £38.11 £27.50
% change year-on-year -8.16% +38.58% -1.72%

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 13,008 8,371 11,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.60% 62.53% 53.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,450 5,119 6,342
10th Percentile £275 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £473 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.82% -3.08% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £592
90th Percentile £681 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £514 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -4.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,568 676 1,718
10th Percentile £13.64 £13.08 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.23 £15.62 £15.00
Median hourly rate £31.48 £24.34 £29.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.33% -18.18% +12.26%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.11 £75.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.85 £31.00
% change year-on-year +14.90% -10.16% +1.51%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +2 1,273 £494 +6.81% 826
South East -1 675 £500 -4.31% 906
North West +4 671 £465 +3.33% 452
Midlands 0 634 £500 +9.29% 450
Yorkshire 0 553 £525 +10.53% 287
Scotland 0 464 £500 +4.11% 199
West Midlands +1 458 £509 +1.85% 257
South West -3 377 £525 -3.00% 321
East of England +3 197 £513 -10.87% 238
East Midlands -1 169 £473 +10.20% 190
Wales +8 91 £525 +19.66% 98
Northern Ireland -1 53 £525 +23.53% 120
North East -14 50 £500 +13.64% 98
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
1 163 (4.39%) Confluence
2 103 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.51%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.38%) Apache
6 11 (0.30%) CICS
7 9 (0.24%) CMS
7 9 (0.24%) SAS
8 6 (0.16%) IIS
9 5 (0.13%) TPMS
9 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.081%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.054%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.054%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.054%) JBoss
12 2 (0.054%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 246 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (2.72%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) InVision
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 2 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.054%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.054%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.054%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.027%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.027%) UXPin
10 1 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 199 (5.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.16%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.97%) NetSuite
4 36 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 35 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
6 21 (0.57%) SAP FI
7 20 (0.54%) Unit4 Business World
8 19 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
9 17 (0.46%) SAP GRC
10 16 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
11 15 (0.40%) SAP CO
12 14 (0.38%) SAP FI/CO
12 14 (0.38%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.35%) NEC Housing
13 13 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 13 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
14 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
15 11 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
15 11 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 451 (12.15%) Azure
2 317 (8.54%) AWS
3 223 (6.01%) Power Platform
4 184 (4.96%) GCP
5 104 (2.80%) SaaS
6 96 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
7 87 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.05%) GitHub
9 71 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
10 63 (1.70%) Entra ID
11 43 (1.16%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.13%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
14 38 (1.02%) Serverless
15 35 (0.94%) OCI
16 25 (0.67%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.62%) OneDrive
18 21 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.57%) Google Workspace
18 21 (0.57%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.10%) Firewall
2 55 (1.48%) Network Security
3 38 (1.02%) WAN
4 37 (1.00%) DNS
5 32 (0.86%) VPN
6 22 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.54%) SSL
8 19 (0.51%) SD-WAN
9 17 (0.46%) LAN
10 14 (0.38%) DHCP
11 11 (0.30%) VSAN
12 9 (0.24%) MPLS
13 8 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.19%) BGP
14 7 (0.19%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.19%) Internet
14 7 (0.19%) SSH
15 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
15 6 (0.16%) Skype
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (5.17%) Power BI
2 76 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 65 (1.75%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.62%) Metadata
4 60 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
5 52 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
6 49 (1.32%) SQL Server
7 36 (0.97%) Tableau
8 34 (0.92%) NoSQL
9 31 (0.84%) Data Lake
10 25 (0.67%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.65%) DynamoDB
12 23 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 18 (0.48%) Db2
16 17 (0.46%) Big Data
16 17 (0.46%) Power Query
17 15 (0.40%) Data Vault
17 15 (0.40%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 282 (7.60%) JIRA
2 74 (1.99%) Git
3 73 (1.97%) Jenkins
4 28 (0.75%) JUnit
5 23 (0.62%) GitLab
6 20 (0.54%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 18 (0.48%) Selenium
9 13 (0.35%) Hudson
9 13 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.32%) Postman
11 11 (0.30%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.19%) Liquibase
14 6 (0.16%) Gradle
14 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.16%) Jaeger
14 6 (0.16%) Maven
15 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
15 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,194 (32.17%) Social Skills
2 519 (13.98%) Banking
3 485 (13.07%) Analytical Skills
4 259 (6.98%) Public Sector
5 172 (4.63%) Legal
6 156 (4.20%) Organisational Skills
7 126 (3.39%) Retail
8 107 (2.88%) Manufacturing
9 102 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 102 (2.75%) Local Government
10 96 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
11 79 (2.13%) Investment Banking
12 78 (2.10%) Financial Institution
13 71 (1.91%) General Ledger
14 63 (1.70%) Billing
15 55 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 55 (1.48%) Telecoms
16 50 (1.35%) Marketing
17 46 (1.24%) Law
18 43 (1.16%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 529 (14.25%) Analyst
2 354 (9.54%) Project Manager
3 341 (9.19%) Architect
4 336 (9.05%) Lead
5 333 (8.97%) Senior
6 262 (7.06%) Developer
7 247 (6.65%) Consultant
8 239 (6.44%) Business Analyst
9 161 (4.34%) Solutions Architect
10 147 (3.96%) Accountant
11 99 (2.67%) Senior Manager
12 94 (2.53%) Systems Accountant
13 93 (2.51%) IT Manager
14 89 (2.40%) Programme Manager
15 79 (2.13%) Java Developer
16 75 (2.02%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.99%) Financial Analyst
18 65 (1.75%) Administrator
18 65 (1.75%) Data Engineer
19 62 (1.67%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (3.13%) Oracle Fusion
2 89 (2.40%) Middleware
3 82 (2.21%) REST
4 70 (1.89%) Kafka
5 69 (1.86%) Spring Boot
6 66 (1.78%) Spring
7 58 (1.56%) React
8 51 (1.37%) .NET
9 43 (1.16%) RESTful
10 31 (0.84%) JSON
10 31 (0.84%) OAuth
11 26 (0.70%) Node.js
12 25 (0.67%) OpenID
12 25 (0.67%) XML
13 24 (0.65%) AngularJS
14 23 (0.62%) Redux
15 21 (0.57%) SAP Fiori
16 19 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
17 18 (0.48%) SAML
18 17 (0.46%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 147 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 128 (3.45%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 108 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
6 92 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.13%) Data Centre
8 70 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.80%) Public Cloud
10 63 (1.70%) Data Structures
11 50 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
12 41 (1.10%) Mainframe
12 41 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
13 40 (1.08%) Security Posture
14 34 (0.92%) Web Conferencing
15 33 (0.89%) Podcast
16 28 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
17 27 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
18 24 (0.65%) PMI
19 23 (0.62%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.34%) Windows
2 102 (2.75%) Linux
3 56 (1.51%) Unix
4 31 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.73%) Solaris
6 23 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.46%) zOS
8 13 (0.35%) AIX
9 11 (0.30%) Windows 10
10 10 (0.27%) Android
11 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.11%) HPUX
14 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.11%) MVS
14 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.11%) SUSE
14 4 (0.11%) VMS
15 1 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 820 (22.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 689 (18.56%) Agile
3 543 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
4 540 (14.55%) Migration
5 497 (13.39%) ERP
6 495 (13.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 491 (13.23%) Continuous Improvement
8 409 (11.02%) Project Management
9 352 (9.48%) DevOps
10 332 (8.94%) Change Management
11 323 (8.70%) Decision-Making
12 321 (8.65%) CI/CD
13 302 (8.14%) Project Delivery
14 288 (7.76%) AI
15 281 (7.57%) User Acceptance Testing
16 274 (7.38%) Roadmaps
17 269 (7.25%) Validation
18 247 (6.65%) Risk Management
19 237 (6.38%) Data Modelling
20 230 (6.20%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 357 (9.62%) SQL
2 276 (7.44%) Python
3 223 (6.01%) Java
4 78 (2.10%) PowerShell
5 48 (1.29%) C#
6 42 (1.13%) JavaScript
7 36 (0.97%) Bash
8 35 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.89%) TypeScript
10 23 (0.62%) C++
11 20 (0.54%) Go
12 18 (0.48%) Shell Script
13 17 (0.46%) VBA
14 15 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.30%) Rust
17 10 (0.27%) COBOL
17 10 (0.27%) PHP
18 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
19 8 (0.22%) Perl
Qualifications
1 333 (8.97%) Security Cleared
2 317 (8.54%) Degree
3 211 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 137 (3.69%) ACCA
5 133 (3.58%) CIMA
6 121 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (3.13%) PMP
8 102 (2.75%) PMI Certification
9 76 (2.05%) CISSP
10 59 (1.59%) DV Cleared
11 48 (1.29%) CISM
12 39 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 36 (0.97%) Master's Degree
14 29 (0.78%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.73%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
17 25 (0.67%) Azure Certification
18 18 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 18 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
19 17 (0.46%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (5.12%) Data Quality
2 163 (4.39%) PMO
3 146 (3.93%) GDPR
4 139 (3.74%) QA
5 62 (1.67%) NIST
6 49 (1.32%) SLA
7 44 (1.19%) GRC
8 41 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (1.02%) IFRS
10 37 (1.00%) PCI DSS
11 35 (0.94%) Accessibility
11 35 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 16 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.40%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.30%) PSD2
16 9 (0.24%) GAAP
16 9 (0.24%) SEPA
17 8 (0.22%) Basel III
17 8 (0.22%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 92 (2.48%) Docker
2 72 (1.94%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.38%) vSphere
6 13 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.32%) RACF
8 11 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.19%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.16%) GPFS
10 6 (0.16%) NFS
11 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
12 4 (0.11%) KVM
13 3 (0.081%) Firmware
14 2 (0.054%) ACF2
14 2 (0.054%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.054%) SRDF
15 1 (0.027%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 163 (4.39%) Kubernetes
2 81 (2.18%) Terraform
3 71 (1.91%) Ansible
4 40 (1.08%) Grafana
5 34 (0.92%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.54%) SCCM
7 20 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.35%) FortiGate
9 12 (0.32%) Control-M
9 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.27%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.27%) Nessus
11 9 (0.24%) Istio
11 9 (0.24%) OMEGAMON
12 8 (0.22%) Argo
12 8 (0.22%) vRealize
13 6 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
13 6 (0.16%) Kiali
13 6 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 457 (12.31%) Microsoft
2 396 (10.67%) SAP
3 340 (9.16%) Oracle
4 141 (3.80%) ServiceNow
5 102 (2.75%) Google
6 68 (1.83%) Databricks
7 65 (1.75%) IBM
8 56 (1.51%) VMware
9 55 (1.48%) Sage
10 52 (1.40%) Splunk
11 51 (1.37%) Cisco
12 38 (1.02%) Salesforce
13 35 (0.94%) IFS
14 34 (0.92%) Ariba
15 28 (0.75%) Workday
16 24 (0.65%) HP
17 22 (0.59%) Red Hat
18 19 (0.51%) Adobe
19 18 (0.48%) MuleSoft
20 17 (0.46%) Atlassian