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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,115 2,181 2,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.04% 16.44% 12.94%
As % of the General category 27.23% 26.83% 23.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,966 1,308 1,778
10th Percentile £315 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.72%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £688 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 69 150
10th Percentile £13.87 £17.25 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.60 £22.50 £13.76
Median hourly rate £22.00 £30.00 £23.88
Median % change year-on-year -26.67% +25.65% -31.79%
75th Percentile £25.00 £65.00 £40.06
90th Percentile £56.00 £78.47 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -32.39% +40.00% -2.76%

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 11,438 8,130 11,746
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 55.22% 61.29% 55.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,955 4,834 6,965
10th Percentile £210 £209 £205
25th Percentile £369 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £495
Median % change year-on-year -0.68% -3.38% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £684
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,241 473 1,466
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.03 £12.72
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.90 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.27 £27.35 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.59% +9.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £52.58 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £29.80 £26.00
% change year-on-year -20.05% +14.62% -13.33%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +2 1,013 £475 -2.56% 1,023
Midlands -1 565 £483 -3.50% 679
South East -2 556 £500 -4.76% 1,785
North West +4 509 £450 -5.26% 469
Yorkshire 0 457 £500 -2.68% 414
Scotland 0 385 £475 - 211
West Midlands 0 361 £502 -7.13% 290
South West -5 315 £508 -3.19% 600
East Midlands 0 200 £450 +5.88% 376
East of England -1 187 £525 -2.33% 654
Wales +32 107 £413 +3.13% 218
Northern Ireland -1 49 £525 +61.54% 118
North East -10 47 £488 +4.84% 152
Channel Islands +3 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 (4.98%) Confluence
2 108 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 32 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.80%) Apache Spark
5 22 (0.71%) Apache
6 15 (0.48%) SAS
7 10 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.32%) CICS
7 10 (0.32%) TPMS
8 8 (0.26%) CMS
9 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.096%) IIS
11 3 (0.096%) Mattermost
11 3 (0.096%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.096%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.064%) Camunda
12 2 (0.064%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 249 (7.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 156 (5.01%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.69%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (2.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 57 (1.83%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 10 (0.32%) Sketch
9 8 (0.26%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.22%) InVision
11 6 (0.19%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.16%) Trello
13 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.096%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.032%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.032%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 147 (4.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.64%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.41%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (1.06%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.03%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 31 (1.00%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.90%) Oracle Assets
8 28 (0.90%) Oracle Cash Management
9 22 (0.71%) Oracle EBS R12
10 21 (0.67%) SAP CO
10 21 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
11 18 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
12 17 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
12 17 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
12 17 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
13 16 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 14 (0.45%) NetSuite
14 14 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
14 14 (0.45%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 391 (12.55%) Azure
2 384 (12.33%) AWS
3 175 (5.62%) Power Platform
4 174 (5.59%) GCP
5 126 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.54%) GitHub
7 76 (2.44%) SaaS
7 76 (2.44%) Serverless
8 74 (2.38%) Dynamics 365
9 65 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
10 53 (1.70%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.54%) OCI
12 44 (1.41%) OpenShift
13 39 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (1.16%) Snowflake
15 32 (1.03%) Amazon S3
16 30 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
16 30 (0.96%) Microsoft Copilot
17 28 (0.90%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.66%) Firewall
2 33 (1.06%) WAN
3 30 (0.96%) DNS
4 27 (0.87%) Network Security
5 23 (0.74%) VPN
6 22 (0.71%) Wireless
7 21 (0.67%) Skype
8 17 (0.55%) SSL
9 16 (0.51%) LAN
9 16 (0.51%) SD-WAN
10 15 (0.48%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.45%) SSH
12 11 (0.35%) DHCP
12 11 (0.35%) Kerberos
13 10 (0.32%) Internet
13 10 (0.32%) SNMP
14 8 (0.26%) Cisco IOS
15 7 (0.22%) HTTP
15 7 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
16 6 (0.19%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (5.43%) Power BI
2 85 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (2.09%) NoSQL
5 47 (1.51%) Relational Database
6 39 (1.25%) Metadata
7 38 (1.22%) Tableau
8 35 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
9 26 (0.83%) SQL Server
10 25 (0.80%) Big Data
10 25 (0.80%) Data Lake
10 25 (0.80%) DynamoDB
11 21 (0.67%) Power Query
12 19 (0.61%) BigQuery
12 19 (0.61%) MongoDB
13 16 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
14 14 (0.45%) MySQL
14 14 (0.45%) RDBMS
15 13 (0.42%) Oracle Database
16 12 (0.39%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 292 (9.37%) JIRA
2 138 (4.43%) Jenkins
3 84 (2.70%) GitLab
4 57 (1.83%) Git
5 38 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
6 35 (1.12%) JUnit
7 33 (1.06%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.64%) Selenium
9 19 (0.61%) Liquibase
10 17 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 15 (0.48%) Postman
12 14 (0.45%) Gradle
13 11 (0.35%) Maven
14 10 (0.32%) JMeter
15 8 (0.26%) Hudson
15 8 (0.26%) Jaeger
15 8 (0.26%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.26%) SonarQube
16 6 (0.19%) Cypress.io
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
General
1 1,122 (36.02%) Social Skills
2 515 (16.53%) Banking
3 394 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 339 (10.88%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.65%) Manufacturing
6 162 (5.20%) Telecoms
7 144 (4.62%) Marketing
8 135 (4.33%) Organisational Skills
9 101 (3.24%) Financial Institution
10 100 (3.21%) Legal
11 98 (3.15%) Electronics
12 93 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
13 72 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
14 70 (2.25%) Local Government
15 55 (1.77%) General Ledger
16 52 (1.67%) Retail
17 50 (1.61%) Investment Banking
18 46 (1.48%) Billing
19 44 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
20 33 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 490 (15.73%) Analyst
2 292 (9.37%) Project Manager
3 256 (8.22%) Architect
4 255 (8.19%) Senior
5 232 (7.45%) Lead
6 221 (7.09%) Consultant
7 218 (7.00%) Business Analyst
8 203 (6.52%) Developer
9 108 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 97 (3.11%) Programme Manager
11 82 (2.63%) Data Analyst
12 69 (2.22%) Senior Manager
13 67 (2.15%) Accountant
14 66 (2.12%) Finance Manager
15 60 (1.93%) SAP Consultant
16 55 (1.77%) Designer
16 55 (1.77%) Functional Consultant
16 55 (1.77%) Java Developer
17 53 (1.70%) Administrator
17 53 (1.70%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (3.69%) REST
2 81 (2.60%) Spring
3 75 (2.41%) Spring Boot
4 68 (2.18%) Kafka
5 66 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
5 66 (2.12%) RESTful
6 51 (1.64%) Middleware
7 43 (1.38%) React
8 38 (1.22%) .NET
9 37 (1.19%) Node.js
10 36 (1.16%) JSON
11 31 (1.00%) SOAP
12 30 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
13 29 (0.93%) OAuth
14 28 (0.90%) HTML
15 25 (0.80%) XML
16 24 (0.77%) AngularJS
16 24 (0.77%) CSS
17 23 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
18 19 (0.61%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 150 (4.82%) Onboarding
2 127 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.34%) Cloud Native
4 88 (2.83%) Data Centre
4 88 (2.83%) Management Information System
5 70 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
5 70 (2.25%) Public Cloud
6 67 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 65 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
8 41 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
9 40 (1.28%) Data Structures
10 36 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
11 32 (1.03%) Mobile App
11 32 (1.03%) PMI
11 32 (1.03%) Virtual Team
12 30 (0.96%) CMDB
13 26 (0.83%) Mainframe
14 19 (0.61%) Credit Risk
15 18 (0.58%) NHS
16 17 (0.55%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 129 (4.14%) Linux
2 110 (3.53%) Windows
3 44 (1.41%) Unix
4 36 (1.16%) Mac OS
5 35 (1.12%) Windows 10
6 31 (1.00%) Android
7 16 (0.51%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.13%) VMS
11 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.096%) zOS
13 1 (0.032%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.032%) MVS
13 1 (0.032%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (21.61%) Agile
2 607 (19.49%) Stakeholder Management
3 515 (16.53%) Problem-Solving
4 432 (13.87%) Migration
5 407 (13.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 361 (11.59%) Project Management
7 340 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 336 (10.79%) DevOps
9 335 (10.75%) ERP
10 311 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
11 302 (9.70%) CI/CD
12 273 (8.76%) Change Management
13 239 (7.67%) Project Delivery
14 223 (7.16%) Decision-Making
15 215 (6.90%) Analytics
16 209 (6.71%) Roadmaps
16 209 (6.71%) User Acceptance Testing
17 196 (6.29%) AI
18 195 (6.26%) Programme Management
19 192 (6.16%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 327 (10.50%) SQL
2 289 (9.28%) Python
3 194 (6.23%) Java
4 77 (2.47%) PowerShell
5 41 (1.32%) TypeScript
6 39 (1.25%) JavaScript
7 34 (1.09%) Go
8 27 (0.87%) Bash
8 27 (0.87%) C#
9 21 (0.67%) Shell Script
9 21 (0.67%) VBA
10 20 (0.64%) PL/SQL
11 18 (0.58%) R
12 12 (0.39%) COBOL
12 12 (0.39%) Perl
13 11 (0.35%) Rust
14 10 (0.32%) ABAP
15 9 (0.29%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.29%) Ruby
15 9 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 333 (10.69%) Degree
2 305 (9.79%) Security Cleared
3 203 (6.52%) SC Cleared
4 82 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 79 (2.54%) PMP
6 78 (2.50%) PMI Certification
7 74 (2.38%) ACCA
8 71 (2.28%) Master's Degree
9 69 (2.22%) CIMA
10 66 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
11 58 (1.86%) DV Cleared
12 54 (1.73%) CISSP
13 46 (1.48%) AWS Certification
14 38 (1.22%) CISM
15 29 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
16 24 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
17 17 (0.55%) MBA
17 17 (0.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 15 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 13 (0.42%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (5.33%) PMO
2 139 (4.46%) QA
3 131 (4.21%) Data Quality
4 112 (3.60%) GDPR
5 57 (1.83%) NIST
6 51 (1.64%) SLA
7 47 (1.51%) PCI DSS
8 43 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 34 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 30 (0.96%) Accessibility
11 25 (0.80%) IFRS
11 25 (0.80%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.71%) PSD2
13 18 (0.58%) GRC
14 15 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.42%) Basel III
15 13 (0.42%) GAAP
15 13 (0.42%) SEPA
16 10 (0.32%) GLBA
16 10 (0.32%) NCSC
System Software
1 134 (4.30%) Docker
2 89 (2.86%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.58%) vSphere
5 15 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.32%) GPFS
8 9 (0.29%) NFS
9 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.096%) Firmware
11 3 (0.096%) HDFS
11 3 (0.096%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.064%) ACF2
12 2 (0.064%) KVM
12 2 (0.064%) RACF
12 2 (0.064%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.064%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 166 (5.33%) Kubernetes
2 93 (2.99%) Terraform
3 83 (2.66%) Ansible
4 60 (1.93%) Grafana
5 55 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 20 (0.64%) SCCM
7 18 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.51%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.35%) Nessus
11 10 (0.32%) vRealize
12 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.26%) HP ALM
13 8 (0.26%) Kiali
14 6 (0.19%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
15 5 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
16 4 (0.13%) Argo
Vendors
1 440 (14.13%) Microsoft
2 374 (12.01%) SAP
3 256 (8.22%) Oracle
4 161 (5.17%) ServiceNow
5 88 (2.83%) Google
6 84 (2.70%) Splunk
7 83 (2.66%) Cisco
8 53 (1.70%) IBM
9 50 (1.61%) VMware
10 44 (1.41%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.38%) Databricks
12 42 (1.35%) Sage
13 40 (1.28%) Workday
14 39 (1.25%) HP
15 37 (1.19%) Dell
16 26 (0.83%) Adobe
17 23 (0.74%) Apple
17 23 (0.74%) Citrix
18 21 (0.67%) CyberArk
18 21 (0.67%) Remedy