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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,352 2,232 2,635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.33% 17.47% 12.67%
As % of the General category 27.79% 28.08% 23.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,091 1,429 1,631
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 -7.72% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 147 68 196
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.20 £11.94
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.10
Median hourly rate £22.08 £53.75 £31.47
Median % change year-on-year -58.93% +70.80% -33.75%
75th Percentile £38.63 £74.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.47 £53.50
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -14.73%

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 12,061 7,949 11,391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.54% 62.23% 54.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,210 4,923 6,555
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 £597
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 1,362 567 1,618
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.02 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.55 £16.95 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.20 £26.50 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -4.92% -0.60% -13.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.98 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £27.72 £28.60 £28.42
% change year-on-year -3.08% +0.63% -18.80%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 1,105 £475 - 643
South East -1 644 £503 -4.06% 915
North West +6 594 £465 - 360
Midlands -2 582 £475 -5.00% 417
Yorkshire 0 466 £500 +2.04% 215
Scotland 0 394 £500 +2.67% 145
West Midlands 0 387 £492 -6.29% 230
South West -3 334 £525 +2.94% 310
East of England -1 201 £525 -4.55% 224
East Midlands 0 190 £450 +1.18% 184
Wales +25 101 £413 +10.00% 71
North East -10 45 £488 +11.94% 80
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +46.43% 56
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 (4.56%) Confluence
2 111 (3.31%) 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 (0.089%) Camunda
12 3 (0.089%) IIS
12 3 (0.089%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.060%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 252 (7.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 132 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (3.31%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.57%) 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 (4.74%) 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 (1.07%) 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 (12.26%) Azure
2 346 (10.32%) AWS
3 211 (6.29%) Power Platform
4 156 (4.65%) GCP
5 117 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 91 (2.71%) 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 35 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
16 32 (0.95%) Amazon S3
16 32 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
16 32 (0.95%) 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 38 (1.13%) DNS
4 35 (1.04%) WAN
5 32 (0.95%) 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%) DHCP
11 12 (0.36%) Internet
12 10 (0.30%) SSH
13 9 (0.27%) MPLS
14 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
14 8 (0.24%) SNMP
14 8 (0.24%) VSAN
15 6 (0.18%) BGP
15 6 (0.18%) OSPF
15 6 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (5.76%) 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 (1.10%) Tableau
9 35 (1.04%) SQL Server
10 30 (0.89%) 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 (8.80%) JIRA
2 93 (2.77%) Jenkins
3 58 (1.73%) Git
4 46 (1.37%) GitLab
5 35 (1.04%) 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 1,123 (33.50%) Social Skills
2 484 (14.44%) Banking
3 452 (13.48%) Analytical Skills
4 306 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 145 (4.33%) Manufacturing
6 131 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
7 113 (3.37%) Legal
8 106 (3.16%) Telecoms
9 102 (3.04%) Marketing
10 101 (3.01%) 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 60 (1.79%) Electronics
17 51 (1.52%) Investment Banking
18 47 (1.40%) Billing
19 43 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
20 34 (1.01%) Law
Job Titles
1 487 (14.53%) Analyst
2 335 (9.99%) Project Manager
3 300 (8.95%) Architect
4 293 (8.74%) Lead
5 265 (7.91%) Senior
6 236 (7.04%) Consultant
7 220 (6.56%) Business Analyst
8 213 (6.35%) 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%) Data Engineer
17 61 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 56 (1.67%) IT Manager
19 55 (1.64%) 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 (1.10%) .NET
9 34 (1.01%) React
10 33 (0.98%) Node.js
11 30 (0.89%) 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 (3.16%) Cloud Native
4 104 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.36%) Data Centre
6 79 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
7 60 (1.79%) Public Cloud
8 54 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
9 51 (1.52%) Data Structures
10 41 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
11 35 (1.04%) Virtual Team
12 34 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
12 34 (1.01%) Mainframe
12 34 (1.01%) PMI
13 31 (0.92%) CMDB
14 29 (0.87%) Mobile App
15 24 (0.72%) Security Posture
16 18 (0.54%) Operational Technology
17 17 (0.51%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 114 (3.40%) Linux
2 108 (3.22%) Windows
3 50 (1.49%) Unix
4 27 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 26 (0.78%) Windows Server
6 18 (0.54%) Solaris
7 17 (0.51%) Android
8 15 (0.45%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 11 (0.33%) AIX
11 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.21%) zOS
12 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.12%) MVS
13 4 (0.12%) VMS
14 3 (0.089%) HPUX
14 3 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.089%) SUSE
15 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 656 (19.57%) Stakeholder Management
2 639 (19.06%) Agile
3 538 (16.05%) Problem-Solving
4 491 (14.65%) Migration
5 450 (13.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 423 (12.62%) ERP
7 410 (12.23%) Project Management
8 405 (12.08%) Continuous Improvement
9 337 (10.05%) DevOps
10 298 (8.89%) CI/CD
11 296 (8.83%) Project Delivery
12 294 (8.77%) Change Management
13 292 (8.71%) Business Intelligence
14 259 (7.73%) Decision-Making
15 245 (7.31%) User Acceptance Testing
16 231 (6.89%) AI
17 228 (6.80%) Roadmaps
18 227 (6.77%) Analytics
19 223 (6.65%) Risk Management
20 218 (6.50%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 329 (9.82%) SQL
2 242 (7.22%) 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 (9.82%) Security Cleared
2 323 (9.64%) Degree
3 205 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 114 (3.40%) ACCA
5 112 (3.34%) PMP
6 110 (3.28%) CIMA
7 105 (3.13%) PMI Certification
8 94 (2.80%) 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 (1.04%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 24 (0.72%) 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 (5.46%) PMO
2 166 (4.95%) Data Quality
3 143 (4.27%) 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 (3.25%) Docker
2 72 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.25%) 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%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.12%) ACF2
10 4 (0.12%) KVM
10 4 (0.12%) RACF
11 3 (0.089%) Firmware
11 3 (0.089%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.089%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.060%) HDFS
12 2 (0.060%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 2 (0.060%) SRDF
12 2 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 156 (4.65%) Kubernetes
2 76 (2.27%) Terraform
3 68 (2.03%) Ansible
4 43 (1.28%) Grafana
5 33 (0.98%) 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
1 441 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 358 (10.68%) SAP
3 297 (8.86%) Oracle
4 167 (4.98%) ServiceNow
5 92 (2.74%) Google
6 66 (1.97%) Cisco
7 59 (1.76%) Sage
8 56 (1.67%) IBM
9 55 (1.64%) Splunk
10 53 (1.58%) Databricks
10 53 (1.58%) VMware
11 42 (1.25%) Salesforce
12 37 (1.10%) IFS
13 32 (0.95%) Workday
14 23 (0.69%) HP
15 20 (0.60%) Citrix
15 20 (0.60%) Dell
16 19 (0.57%) Adobe
16 19 (0.57%) Ariba
16 19 (0.57%) Remedy