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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,880 2,700 2,605
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.19% 17.68% 14.22%
As % of the General category 27.50% 28.91% 26.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,337 1,784 1,600
10th Percentile £344 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £545 £575
% change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 228 68 159
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.54 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.81 £16.31 £23.64
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +66.80% -30.86% +23.95%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £39.63
90th Percentile £83.48 £75.00 £70.04
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +46.62%

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 14,109 9,340 9,863
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.61% 61.15% 53.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,810 5,625 5,652
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,929 843 1,179
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.02 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £16.16
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%
75th Percentile £61.18 £45.40 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +31.45%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 0 1,335 £500 +6.72% 1,615
South East -1 731 £500 -5.66% 1,524
North West 0 690 £500 +9.65% 982
Midlands 0 634 £500 +11.11% 766
Yorkshire 0 578 £514 +8.21% 448
Scotland 0 502 £470 -6.00% 852
West Midlands +1 479 £525 +5.85% 463
South West -4 380 £531 -3.41% 790
East of England +5 200 £525 -8.70% 494
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +21.21% 303
Wales 0 67 £530 +14.59% 189
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 353
North East -15 60 £500 +11.11% 202
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 146 (3.76%) Confluence
2 96 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) CMS
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
8 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) Camunda
11 3 (0.077%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.052%) JBoss
12 2 (0.052%) Mule
12 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 242 (6.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 37 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.13%) Trello
10 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (5.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (1.26%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.06%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
9 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
9 21 (0.54%) SAP FI
9 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
10 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
11 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
11 13 (0.34%) SAP CO
11 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
12 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
12 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 477 (12.29%) Azure
2 314 (8.09%) AWS
3 225 (5.80%) GCP
4 223 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 104 (2.68%) SaaS
6 92 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
8 89 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
9 88 (2.27%) GitHub
10 67 (1.73%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) OCI
12 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.06%) Serverless
14 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
15 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 27 (0.70%) Power Automate
17 25 (0.64%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
18 24 (0.62%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.04%) Firewall
2 68 (1.75%) Network Security
3 43 (1.11%) VPN
4 34 (0.88%) DNS
5 27 (0.70%) WAN
6 25 (0.64%) SSL
6 25 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 21 (0.54%) LAN
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
13 6 (0.15%) Broadband
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.69%) Power BI
2 79 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 69 (1.78%) Relational Database
4 66 (1.70%) Metadata
5 65 (1.68%) SQL Server
6 48 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
7 43 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
8 39 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.88%) Tableau
10 27 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
14 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
14 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (0.52%) NoSQL
16 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
16 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
17 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
17 15 (0.39%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 245 (6.31%) JIRA
2 102 (2.63%) Git
3 55 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.57%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) GitLab
6 15 (0.39%) Hudson
7 14 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
15 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) JMeter
15 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,242 (32.01%) Social Skills
2 555 (14.30%) Analytical Skills
3 537 (13.84%) Banking
4 281 (7.24%) Public Sector
5 236 (6.08%) Legal
6 234 (6.03%) Organisational Skills
7 160 (4.12%) Retail
8 134 (3.45%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.89%) Manufacturing
10 102 (2.63%) Local Government
11 100 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
12 82 (2.11%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.01%) Financial Institution
14 76 (1.96%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.86%) Billing
16 69 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 57 (1.47%) Telecoms
18 54 (1.39%) Marketing
19 50 (1.29%) Law
20 49 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 517 (13.32%) Analyst
2 424 (10.93%) Lead
3 356 (9.18%) Senior
4 324 (8.35%) Project Manager
5 303 (7.81%) Architect
6 280 (7.22%) Developer
7 265 (6.83%) Consultant
8 242 (6.24%) Business Analyst
9 173 (4.46%) Accountant
10 134 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
11 104 (2.68%) Systems Accountant
12 100 (2.58%) IT Manager
13 96 (2.47%) Senior Manager
14 91 (2.35%) Financial Analyst
15 81 (2.09%) Java Developer
16 73 (1.88%) Administrator
17 72 (1.86%) Programme Manager
18 71 (1.83%) Finance Manager
19 67 (1.73%) Data Analyst
20 65 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (3.76%) Oracle Fusion
2 82 (2.11%) REST
3 74 (1.91%) Middleware
4 64 (1.65%) Kafka
5 61 (1.57%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.55%) Spring
7 58 (1.49%) .NET
8 56 (1.44%) React
9 37 (0.95%) OAuth
10 34 (0.88%) RESTful
11 33 (0.85%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.75%) JSON
14 28 (0.72%) SAML
15 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
16 26 (0.67%) OpenID
17 22 (0.57%) SailPoint
18 20 (0.52%) HTML
18 20 (0.52%) OAuth2
18 20 (0.52%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.07%) Onboarding
2 155 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 149 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 135 (3.48%) Virtual Team
5 111 (2.86%) Management Information System
6 107 (2.76%) Data Protection Act
7 105 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
8 90 (2.32%) Podcast
8 90 (2.32%) Web Conferencing
9 69 (1.78%) Data Structures
10 58 (1.49%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 53 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 50 (1.29%) Mainframe
14 49 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
15 40 (1.03%) AI Agents
15 40 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
17 37 (0.95%) Mobile App
18 35 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.20%) Windows
2 107 (2.76%) Linux
3 59 (1.52%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
8 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) CentOS
15 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 937 (24.15%) Stakeholder Management
2 702 (18.09%) Agile
3 549 (14.15%) Continuous Improvement
4 533 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
5 519 (13.38%) Migration
6 514 (13.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (13.09%) ERP
8 367 (9.46%) Decision-Making
9 363 (9.36%) AI
10 352 (9.07%) CI/CD
11 350 (9.02%) Project Management
12 347 (8.94%) DevOps
13 341 (8.79%) Change Management
14 309 (7.96%) Project Delivery
15 286 (7.37%) Roadmaps
16 277 (7.14%) Risk Management
17 276 (7.11%) User Acceptance Testing
18 274 (7.06%) Analytics
19 270 (6.96%) Validation
20 238 (6.13%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 324 (8.35%) SQL
2 320 (8.25%) Python
3 218 (5.62%) Java
4 72 (1.86%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.42%) C#
6 53 (1.37%) Bash
7 52 (1.34%) JavaScript
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 33 (0.85%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.59%) C++
10 23 (0.59%) Go
11 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 12 (0.31%) ABAP
13 12 (0.31%) Bicep
13 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 10 (0.26%) VBA
15 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 361 (9.30%) Security Cleared
2 271 (6.98%) Degree
3 221 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 150 (3.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (2.86%) ACCA
6 108 (2.78%) CIMA
7 99 (2.55%) PMP
8 87 (2.24%) DV Cleared
9 86 (2.22%) PMI Certification
10 72 (1.86%) CISSP
11 42 (1.08%) CISM
12 34 (0.88%) AWS Certification
12 34 (0.88%) Azure Certification
12 34 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
13 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 22 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
18 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (5.80%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.51%) PMO
3 132 (3.40%) QA
4 130 (3.35%) GDPR
5 49 (1.26%) GRC
5 49 (1.26%) NIST
6 46 (1.19%) SLA
7 34 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 33 (0.85%) Accessibility
9 32 (0.82%) IFRS
9 32 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 17 (0.44%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
12 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 9 (0.23%) GAAP
14 8 (0.21%) COBIT
15 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
15 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
15 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
15 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (1.91%) Active Directory
2 71 (1.83%) Docker
3 40 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) ACF2
13 2 (0.052%) KVM
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 166 (4.28%) Kubernetes
2 111 (2.86%) Terraform
3 72 (1.86%) Ansible
4 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 29 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
6 26 (0.67%) Grafana
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 16 (0.41%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.39%) SCCM
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Argo
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.15%) CASB
14 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) Puppet
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 541 (13.94%) Microsoft
2 406 (10.46%) SAP
3 384 (9.90%) Oracle
4 179 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.91%) Google
6 87 (2.24%) IBM
7 79 (2.04%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) Salesforce
9 56 (1.44%) VMware
10 49 (1.26%) Sage
11 45 (1.16%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 33 (0.85%) Splunk
14 31 (0.80%) IFS
15 30 (0.77%) Ariba
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.52%) HP
18 20 (0.52%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe