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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,253 2,184 2,684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.79% 17.13% 12.79%
As % of the General category 27.50% 27.76% 23.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,045 1,367 1,699
10th Percentile £315 £306 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £624
90th Percentile £688 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 67 180
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.04 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £14.43
Median hourly rate £22.04 £48.82 £31.47
Median % change year-on-year -54.86% +55.12% -10.09%
75th Percentile £32.34 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £68.50 £77.89 £53.13
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £28.00
% change year-on-year -35.70% +32.34% -4.24%

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 11,829 7,867 11,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.80% 61.69% 54.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,191 4,871 6,768
10th Percentile £220 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year - -3.60% -1.45%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,290 498 1,507
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.74 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.39 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.97 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.98% +11.88% -16.67%
75th Percentile £57.25 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 21 March 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 1,061 £475 - 710
South East -2 616 £503 -8.64% 1,041
Midlands -1 591 £475 -5.00% 443
North West +6 564 £455 -2.26% 387
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 +4.82% 246
West Midlands +2 390 £496 -5.52% 270
Scotland 0 368 £475 - 187
South West -3 327 £525 +4.95% 307
East of England -1 200 £520 -5.45% 274
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +4.05% 172
Wales +28 107 £413 +3.13% 93
North East -6 48 £481 +3.49% 90
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +61.54% 52
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 3
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
1 162 (4.98%) Confluence
2 114 (3.50%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.74%) Apache
6 13 (0.40%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.18%) CMS
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.092%) Camunda
13 3 (0.092%) IIS
14 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 248 (7.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 144 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (3.66%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (2.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
11 2 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.031%) UXPin
12 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 149 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.54%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.35%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 34 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
7 28 (0.86%) Oracle Assets
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle Cash Management
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
9 22 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
10 19 (0.58%) SAP CO
11 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
12 16 (0.49%) NetSuite
13 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 402 (12.36%) Azure
2 375 (11.53%) AWS
3 186 (5.72%) Power Platform
4 162 (4.98%) GCP
5 119 (3.66%) Microsoft 365
6 84 (2.58%) GitHub
7 79 (2.43%) SaaS
8 76 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 73 (2.24%) Serverless
10 52 (1.60%) Entra ID
11 44 (1.35%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.26%) OCI
13 38 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
15 34 (1.05%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.01%) Amazon S3
17 32 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.92%) Microsoft Copilot
19 25 (0.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.55%) Firewall
2 44 (1.35%) WAN
3 36 (1.11%) DNS
4 35 (1.08%) Network Security
5 31 (0.95%) VPN
6 24 (0.74%) LAN
7 21 (0.65%) SD-WAN
7 21 (0.65%) Wireless
8 18 (0.55%) Skype
9 17 (0.52%) SSL
10 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.43%) Internet
11 14 (0.43%) SSH
12 11 (0.34%) DHCP
13 10 (0.31%) SNMP
14 9 (0.28%) MPLS
15 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.25%) Kerberos
15 8 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (5.44%) Power BI
2 84 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.63%) NoSQL
5 43 (1.32%) Metadata
6 40 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
6 40 (1.23%) Relational Database
7 37 (1.14%) Tableau
8 34 (1.05%) SQL Server
9 26 (0.80%) DynamoDB
10 24 (0.74%) Data Lake
11 23 (0.71%) Big Data
11 23 (0.71%) Power Query
12 19 (0.58%) BigQuery
13 14 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
13 14 (0.43%) MongoDB
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle ODI
14 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (0.37%) MySQL
16 11 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 315 (9.68%) JIRA
2 126 (3.87%) Jenkins
3 75 (2.31%) GitLab
4 53 (1.63%) Git
5 37 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 36 (1.11%) JUnit
7 31 (0.95%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.61%) Selenium
9 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
10 13 (0.40%) Postman
11 12 (0.37%) Gradle
12 10 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.28%) Hudson
13 9 (0.28%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) Maven
16 6 (0.18%) Snyk
17 5 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 1,125 (34.58%) Social Skills
2 512 (15.74%) Banking
3 411 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
4 357 (10.97%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.41%) Manufacturing
6 160 (4.92%) Telecoms
7 141 (4.33%) Marketing
8 131 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
9 107 (3.29%) Legal
10 99 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
11 98 (3.01%) Financial Institution
12 95 (2.92%) Electronics
13 78 (2.40%) Local Government
14 67 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
15 61 (1.88%) Retail
16 59 (1.81%) General Ledger
17 50 (1.54%) Billing
17 50 (1.54%) Investment Banking
18 44 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
19 30 (0.92%) Law
Job Titles
1 491 (15.09%) Analyst
2 326 (10.02%) Project Manager
3 278 (8.55%) Architect
4 264 (8.12%) Lead
5 261 (8.02%) Senior
6 230 (7.07%) Consultant
7 218 (6.70%) Business Analyst
8 193 (5.93%) Developer
9 115 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 98 (3.01%) Programme Manager
11 87 (2.67%) Accountant
12 82 (2.52%) Senior Manager
13 75 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 75 (2.31%) Finance Manager
14 68 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
15 55 (1.69%) Java Developer
16 54 (1.66%) Functional Consultant
17 53 (1.63%) Administrator
17 53 (1.63%) IT Manager
17 53 (1.63%) Systems Accountant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (3.41%) REST
2 81 (2.49%) Spring
3 77 (2.37%) Spring Boot
4 72 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 65 (2.00%) Kafka
6 62 (1.91%) Middleware
7 57 (1.75%) RESTful
8 36 (1.11%) Node.js
9 34 (1.05%) .NET
10 33 (1.01%) JSON
11 32 (0.98%) React
12 30 (0.92%) OAuth
12 30 (0.92%) SOAP
13 29 (0.89%) XML
14 25 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
15 24 (0.74%) HTML
16 22 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
17 21 (0.65%) AngularJS
18 20 (0.61%) CSS
19 18 (0.55%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 161 (4.95%) Onboarding
2 128 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 103 (3.17%) Cloud Native
4 101 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.67%) Data Centre
6 75 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
7 70 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 70 (2.15%) Public Cloud
8 67 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
9 43 (1.32%) Data Structures
10 38 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
10 38 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
11 35 (1.08%) PMI
12 33 (1.01%) Mobile App
12 33 (1.01%) Virtual Team
13 26 (0.80%) CMDB
14 22 (0.68%) Mainframe
15 19 (0.58%) NHS
16 17 (0.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 16 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 130 (4.00%) Linux
2 107 (3.29%) Windows
3 43 (1.32%) Unix
4 31 (0.95%) Android
5 30 (0.92%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.83%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.65%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 6 (0.18%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.12%) VMS
13 3 (0.092%) zOS
14 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.031%) MVS
14 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (20.63%) Agile
2 653 (20.07%) Stakeholder Management
3 524 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
4 469 (14.42%) Migration
5 429 (13.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 391 (12.02%) Project Management
7 362 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 358 (11.01%) ERP
9 347 (10.67%) DevOps
10 325 (9.99%) Business Intelligence
11 298 (9.16%) CI/CD
12 282 (8.67%) Change Management
13 280 (8.61%) Project Delivery
14 239 (7.35%) Decision-Making
15 225 (6.92%) Analytics
15 225 (6.92%) User Acceptance Testing
16 218 (6.70%) Roadmaps
17 202 (6.21%) Data Modelling
18 200 (6.15%) AI
19 196 (6.03%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 328 (10.08%) SQL
2 276 (8.48%) Python
3 196 (6.03%) Java
4 69 (2.12%) PowerShell
5 33 (1.01%) TypeScript
6 32 (0.98%) JavaScript
7 28 (0.86%) Go
8 23 (0.71%) Bash
9 22 (0.68%) VBA
10 21 (0.65%) C#
11 19 (0.58%) PL/SQL
11 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.37%) Perl
12 12 (0.37%) R
13 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 10 (0.31%) ABAP
14 10 (0.31%) COBOL
14 10 (0.31%) Rust
15 9 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 343 (10.54%) Security Cleared
2 326 (10.02%) Degree
3 221 (6.79%) SC Cleared
4 97 (2.98%) PMI Certification
5 96 (2.95%) PMP
6 89 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 83 (2.55%) ACCA
8 77 (2.37%) CIMA
9 66 (2.03%) DV Cleared
9 66 (2.03%) Master's Degree
10 60 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
11 59 (1.81%) CISSP
12 41 (1.26%) CISM
13 38 (1.17%) AWS Certification
14 28 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
15 23 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 18 (0.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 16 (0.49%) MBA
18 13 (0.40%) DBS Check
18 13 (0.40%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 182 (5.59%) PMO
2 152 (4.67%) Data Quality
3 142 (4.37%) QA
4 126 (3.87%) GDPR
5 53 (1.63%) NIST
5 53 (1.63%) SLA
6 45 (1.38%) PCI DSS
7 38 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 31 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 29 (0.89%) Accessibility
10 26 (0.80%) IFRS
11 24 (0.74%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.68%) PSD2
13 20 (0.61%) GRC
14 15 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
15 13 (0.40%) SEPA
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
17 10 (0.31%) GLBA
18 9 (0.28%) NCSC
System Software
1 123 (3.78%) Docker
2 75 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.61%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.092%) Firmware
12 3 (0.092%) KVM
12 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.061%) ACF2
13 2 (0.061%) HDFS
13 2 (0.061%) RACF
13 2 (0.061%) SRDF
13 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 166 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 87 (2.67%) Terraform
3 84 (2.58%) Ansible
4 56 (1.72%) Grafana
5 50 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.55%) SCCM
6 18 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
8 12 (0.37%) vRealize
9 10 (0.31%) Nessus
10 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.25%) Kiali
12 5 (0.15%) CASB
12 5 (0.15%) Control-M
12 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
12 5 (0.15%) Puppet
12 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 434 (13.34%) Microsoft
2 375 (11.53%) SAP
3 268 (8.24%) Oracle
4 151 (4.64%) ServiceNow
5 96 (2.95%) Google
6 81 (2.49%) Cisco
7 76 (2.34%) Splunk
8 51 (1.57%) Sage
9 50 (1.54%) VMware
10 49 (1.51%) IBM
11 45 (1.38%) Databricks
12 44 (1.35%) Salesforce
13 35 (1.08%) HP
14 34 (1.05%) Dell
14 34 (1.05%) Workday
15 26 (0.80%) IFS
16 23 (0.71%) Adobe
17 18 (0.55%) Ariba
17 18 (0.55%) Citrix
17 18 (0.55%) Remedy