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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,803 2,468 2,772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.41% 17.51% 13.09%
As % of the General category 28.20% 28.42% 24.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,310 1,609 1,680
10th Percentile £335 £308 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £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 180 74 206
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.08 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.93 £17.98 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.53 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.29% -11.18% -28.63%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £75.00 £61.88
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year +7.05% +16.77% -8.96%

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 13,486 8,684 11,318
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.10% 61.60% 53.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,610 5,284 6,354
10th Percentile £265 £213 £207
25th Percentile £400 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% -3.62% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £597
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £519 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.60% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,679 727 1,672
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.71
25th Percentile £17.20 £15.50 £15.29
Median hourly rate £31.56 £23.00 £30.60
Median % change year-on-year +37.20% -24.83% +21.78%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £54.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.31 £31.76
% change year-on-year +17.19% -14.01% +4.11%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 1,287 £500 +7.53% 852
South East -1 704 £500 -4.76% 1,008
North West +3 669 £475 +5.56% 456
Midlands 0 650 £500 +11.11% 463
Yorkshire 0 574 £525 +7.69% 295
Scotland 0 484 £475 -1.61% 190
West Midlands +1 479 £500 +2.15% 264
South West -3 381 £525 - 354
East of England +6 200 £513 -10.87% 258
East Midlands 0 164 £488 +14.71% 198
Wales +4 89 £525 +12.90% 73
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +11.76% 83
North East -22 45 £500 +13.64% 111
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
1 159 (4.18%) Confluence
2 99 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.47%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) Apache
5 13 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.29%) CICS
6 11 (0.29%) CMS
7 10 (0.26%) SAS
8 6 (0.16%) IIS
9 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.079%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.079%) TPMS
12 2 (0.053%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.053%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.053%) Mule
12 2 (0.053%) nginx
Applications
1 235 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.79%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.34%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (2.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.16%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.053%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.053%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 201 (5.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (1.10%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 37 (0.97%) Oracle Receivables
6 36 (0.95%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 21 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
8 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
8 17 (0.45%) SAP FI
8 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
9 16 (0.42%) Unit4 Business World
10 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
11 12 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.29%) Workday HCM
13 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 468 (12.31%) Azure
2 324 (8.52%) AWS
3 221 (5.81%) Power Platform
4 200 (5.26%) GCP
5 100 (2.63%) SaaS
6 92 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
7 90 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (2.24%) GitHub
9 70 (1.84%) Entra ID
10 69 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.16%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
14 40 (1.05%) Serverless
15 36 (0.95%) OCI
16 25 (0.66%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.63%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.63%) PaaS
17 24 (0.63%) Power Automate
18 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.16%) Firewall
2 64 (1.68%) Network Security
3 36 (0.95%) DNS
4 33 (0.87%) WAN
5 32 (0.84%) VPN
6 27 (0.71%) SSL
7 21 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.45%) LAN
9 15 (0.39%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.32%) DHCP
10 12 (0.32%) VSAN
11 9 (0.24%) BGP
11 9 (0.24%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.18%) Internet
14 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
15 5 (0.13%) Intranet
15 5 (0.13%) OSPF
15 5 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.84%) Power BI
2 77 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.87%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.79%) Metadata
5 61 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
6 58 (1.53%) SQL Server
7 53 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
8 35 (0.92%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.89%) Tableau
10 31 (0.82%) NoSQL
11 27 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.53%) Db2
14 20 (0.53%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.45%) Data Vault
15 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.42%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 272 (7.15%) JIRA
2 86 (2.26%) Git
3 73 (1.92%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.71%) JUnit
5 23 (0.60%) Selenium
6 22 (0.58%) Cucumber
6 22 (0.58%) GitLab
7 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.37%) Hudson
9 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.32%) Postman
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Gradle
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Maven
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
14 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,204 (31.66%) Social Skills
2 522 (13.73%) Banking
3 506 (13.31%) Analytical Skills
4 280 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 187 (4.92%) Legal
6 161 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 130 (3.42%) Retail
8 110 (2.89%) Local Government
9 108 (2.84%) Manufacturing
10 107 (2.81%) Influencing Skills
11 105 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.24%) Financial Institution
13 83 (2.18%) General Ledger
14 81 (2.13%) Investment Banking
15 68 (1.79%) Billing
16 60 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (1.45%) Telecoms
18 49 (1.29%) Marketing
19 46 (1.21%) Aerospace
20 44 (1.16%) Law
Job Titles
1 518 (13.62%) Analyst
2 362 (9.52%) Lead
3 357 (9.39%) Architect
4 338 (8.89%) Project Manager
5 335 (8.81%) Senior
6 281 (7.39%) Developer
7 253 (6.65%) Consultant
8 237 (6.23%) Business Analyst
9 161 (4.23%) Accountant
10 156 (4.10%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.66%) Systems Accountant
12 98 (2.58%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.58%) Senior Manager
13 89 (2.34%) Programme Manager
14 80 (2.10%) Financial Analyst
15 79 (2.08%) Java Developer
16 70 (1.84%) Finance Manager
17 69 (1.81%) Administrator
18 62 (1.63%) Data Analyst
18 62 (1.63%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 125 (3.29%) Oracle Fusion
2 93 (2.45%) Middleware
3 88 (2.31%) REST
4 69 (1.81%) Kafka
5 66 (1.74%) Spring
5 66 (1.74%) Spring Boot
6 59 (1.55%) React
7 57 (1.50%) .NET
8 42 (1.10%) RESTful
9 33 (0.87%) JSON
9 33 (0.87%) OAuth
10 30 (0.79%) Node.js
11 27 (0.71%) XML
12 26 (0.68%) OpenID
12 26 (0.68%) SailPoint
12 26 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
13 22 (0.58%) Redux
14 21 (0.55%) AngularJS
15 20 (0.53%) SOAP
16 19 (0.50%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.21%) Onboarding
2 153 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 142 (3.73%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 104 (2.73%) Data Protection Act
6 103 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
7 76 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 75 (1.97%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 67 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.34%) Mainframe
11 48 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
12 47 (1.24%) Security Posture
13 40 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
14 34 (0.89%) Web Conferencing
15 33 (0.87%) Podcast
16 29 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
17 28 (0.74%) AI Agents
17 28 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
18 27 (0.71%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.18%) Windows
2 102 (2.68%) Linux
3 59 (1.55%) Unix
4 31 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.71%) Solaris
6 25 (0.66%) zOS
7 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.34%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.24%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.11%) HPUX
13 4 (0.11%) MVS
13 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.11%) SUSE
14 3 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 861 (22.64%) Stakeholder Management
2 696 (18.30%) Agile
3 553 (14.54%) Problem-Solving
4 541 (14.23%) Migration
5 519 (13.65%) Continuous Improvement
6 510 (13.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 490 (12.88%) ERP
8 394 (10.36%) Project Management
9 359 (9.44%) DevOps
10 349 (9.18%) Decision-Making
11 343 (9.02%) CI/CD
12 339 (8.91%) Change Management
13 317 (8.34%) Project Delivery
14 304 (7.99%) AI
15 286 (7.52%) Roadmaps
15 286 (7.52%) User Acceptance Testing
16 266 (6.99%) Validation
17 263 (6.92%) Risk Management
18 242 (6.36%) Analytics
19 236 (6.21%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 351 (9.23%) SQL
2 291 (7.65%) Python
3 220 (5.78%) Java
4 75 (1.97%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.45%) C#
6 43 (1.13%) JavaScript
7 37 (0.97%) Bash
8 36 (0.95%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.87%) TypeScript
10 24 (0.63%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.60%) Go
12 20 (0.53%) C++
13 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 15 (0.39%) VBA
14 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
15 11 (0.29%) COBOL
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) PHP
16 10 (0.26%) Rust
17 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 350 (9.20%) Security Cleared
2 300 (7.89%) Degree
3 219 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 129 (3.39%) ACCA
5 126 (3.31%) CIMA
6 119 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (3.02%) PMP
8 100 (2.63%) PMI Certification
9 77 (2.02%) CISSP
10 64 (1.68%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.21%) CISM
12 40 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.92%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.76%) Azure Certification
16 28 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
16 28 (0.74%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.50%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (5.29%) Data Quality
2 163 (4.29%) PMO
3 148 (3.89%) GDPR
4 139 (3.66%) QA
5 56 (1.47%) NIST
6 49 (1.29%) SLA
7 46 (1.21%) GRC
8 38 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.92%) IFRS
10 32 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 32 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 30 (0.79%) Accessibility
12 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.29%) PSD2
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
15 10 (0.26%) NCSC
15 10 (0.26%) SEPA
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 87 (2.29%) Docker
2 79 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.53%) RACF
5 18 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.37%) vSphere
7 12 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
8 6 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.11%) KVM
10 2 (0.053%) ACF2
10 2 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.053%) SRDF
10 2 (0.053%) zsh
11 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
11 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 168 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 94 (2.47%) Terraform
3 78 (2.05%) Ansible
4 36 (0.95%) Grafana
5 30 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 29 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (0.50%) SCCM
7 19 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.45%) OMEGAMON
9 12 (0.32%) Control-M
9 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.29%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.26%) Nessus
12 9 (0.24%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 7 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
15 6 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 471 (12.38%) Microsoft
2 396 (10.41%) SAP
3 351 (9.23%) Oracle
4 166 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 107 (2.81%) Google
6 77 (2.02%) IBM
7 73 (1.92%) Databricks
8 59 (1.55%) VMware
9 55 (1.45%) Sage
10 50 (1.31%) Cisco
11 47 (1.24%) Splunk
12 41 (1.08%) Salesforce
13 34 (0.89%) IFS
14 32 (0.84%) Workday
15 31 (0.82%) Ariba
16 23 (0.60%) HP
17 22 (0.58%) Red Hat
18 20 (0.53%) MuleSoft
19 18 (0.47%) Foundry
19 18 (0.47%) Sybase