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 4 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,526 2,240 2,589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.13% 17.35% 12.48%
As % of the General category 28.05% 27.82% 23.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,151 1,448 1,565
10th Percentile £333 £304 £280
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.81% -0.80% -4.76%
75th Percentile £601 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £577
% change year-on-year - -4.60% -3.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 65 208
10th Percentile £13.95 £16.00 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.00 £19.91 £14.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £36.00 £29.41
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +22.40% -39.04%
75th Percentile £54.00 £66.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.60 £75.00 £57.38
UK median hourly rate £28.55 £40.25 £27.00
% change year-on-year -29.07% +49.07% +0.58%

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 12,570 8,052 11,133
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.39% 62.37% 53.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,209 4,951 6,295
10th Percentile £263 £210 £205
25th Percentile £395 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,505 617 1,687
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.08 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.80 £15.62 £15.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £24.34 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.25% -14.60% +1.53%
75th Percentile £61.50 £51.90 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.25 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.54 £27.97 £30.16
% change year-on-year +9.19% -7.26% -6.91%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 1,210 £492 +5.13% 879
South East -1 645 £500 -4.31% 920
North West +5 638 £465 +3.33% 508
Midlands 0 594 £495 +4.21% 482
Yorkshire +2 530 £519 +7.56% 292
Scotland 0 439 £500 +4.82% 196
West Midlands 0 409 £500 -0.40% 308
South West -2 366 £525 - 356
East of England +2 193 £520 -9.57% 246
East Midlands 0 180 £468 +6.36% 173
Wales +9 83 £483 +18.77% 85
Northern Ireland -1 47 £513 +20.59% 126
North East -16 43 £488 +10.80% 85
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
1 158 (4.48%) Confluence
2 104 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.45%) Apache
5 13 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.31%) CICS
6 11 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
7 8 (0.23%) CMS
7 8 (0.23%) SAS
8 6 (0.17%) IIS
9 5 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.14%) TPMS
9 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.057%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.057%) JBoss
11 2 (0.057%) Mule
11 2 (0.057%) nginx
Applications
1 243 (6.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 114 (3.23%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (2.95%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.11%) InVision
8 4 (0.11%) Sketch
9 3 (0.085%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.057%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.057%) Trello
11 1 (0.028%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.028%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.028%) UXPin
11 1 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 188 (5.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.25%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.13%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 34 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 33 (0.94%) NetSuite
7 20 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
8 19 (0.54%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
9 17 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
10 15 (0.43%) SAP CO
10 15 (0.43%) SAP GRC
11 14 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
12 13 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
13 12 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
13 12 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.31%) NEC Housing
14 11 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
14 11 (0.31%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 434 (12.31%) Azure
2 316 (8.96%) AWS
3 213 (6.04%) Power Platform
4 173 (4.91%) GCP
5 99 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
6 96 (2.72%) SaaS
7 86 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.30%) GitHub
9 69 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
10 59 (1.67%) Entra ID
11 44 (1.25%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.19%) Snowflake
13 37 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
13 37 (1.05%) Serverless
14 32 (0.91%) OCI
15 24 (0.68%) Google Workspace
15 24 (0.68%) Power Automate
16 23 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (0.62%) Amazon S3
17 22 (0.62%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.30%) Firewall
2 51 (1.45%) Network Security
3 40 (1.13%) DNS
4 37 (1.05%) WAN
5 35 (0.99%) VPN
6 23 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.54%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.45%) LAN
8 16 (0.45%) SSL
9 15 (0.43%) DHCP
10 12 (0.34%) VSAN
11 10 (0.28%) MPLS
12 9 (0.26%) Skype
13 8 (0.23%) BGP
13 8 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.20%) Internet
15 5 (0.14%) FTP
15 5 (0.14%) OSPF
15 5 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (5.25%) Power BI
2 70 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.73%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.70%) Metadata
5 59 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
6 47 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
7 45 (1.28%) SQL Server
8 36 (1.02%) Tableau
9 35 (0.99%) NoSQL
10 27 (0.77%) Data Lake
11 25 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 24 (0.68%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
14 20 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
15 19 (0.54%) Big Data
15 19 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 17 (0.48%) DB2
17 16 (0.45%) Power Query
18 14 (0.40%) Data Vault
19 13 (0.37%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 284 (8.05%) JIRA
2 74 (2.10%) Jenkins
3 70 (1.99%) Git
4 29 (0.82%) GitLab
5 26 (0.74%) JUnit
6 21 (0.60%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
8 18 (0.51%) Selenium
9 14 (0.40%) Hudson
9 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.37%) Postman
11 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
11 8 (0.23%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.17%) Maven
14 5 (0.14%) Gradle
14 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,125 (31.91%) Social Skills
2 504 (14.29%) Banking
3 460 (13.05%) Analytical Skills
4 250 (7.09%) Public Sector
5 142 (4.03%) Legal
6 137 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 119 (3.37%) Retail
8 109 (3.09%) Manufacturing
9 102 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
10 95 (2.69%) Local Government
11 92 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (2.16%) Financial Institution
13 68 (1.93%) Investment Banking
14 67 (1.90%) General Ledger
15 59 (1.67%) Telecoms
16 56 (1.59%) Marketing
17 55 (1.56%) Billing
18 45 (1.28%) Law
19 43 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 37 (1.05%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 524 (14.86%) Analyst
2 345 (9.78%) Project Manager
3 321 (9.10%) Architect
4 312 (8.85%) Lead
5 308 (8.74%) Senior
6 243 (6.89%) Consultant
7 238 (6.75%) Business Analyst
8 234 (6.64%) Developer
9 149 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
10 134 (3.80%) Accountant
11 97 (2.75%) Senior Manager
12 87 (2.47%) Programme Manager
13 84 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
14 79 (2.24%) IT Manager
15 75 (2.13%) Finance Manager
16 68 (1.93%) Financial Analyst
16 68 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 65 (1.84%) Data Analyst
18 62 (1.76%) Data Engineer
19 58 (1.64%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
2 85 (2.41%) REST
3 83 (2.35%) Middleware
4 66 (1.87%) Kafka
4 66 (1.87%) Spring Boot
5 65 (1.84%) Spring
6 47 (1.33%) React
7 45 (1.28%) .NET
8 43 (1.22%) RESTful
9 30 (0.85%) Node.js
9 30 (0.85%) OAuth
10 28 (0.79%) JSON
11 26 (0.74%) OpenID
12 25 (0.71%) XML
13 24 (0.68%) AngularJS
14 22 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
15 18 (0.51%) SailPoint
15 18 (0.51%) SAML
15 18 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
16 17 (0.48%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 146 (4.14%) Onboarding
2 144 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 123 (3.49%) Cloud Native
4 113 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
7 83 (2.35%) Data Centre
8 64 (1.82%) Public Cloud
9 60 (1.70%) Data Structures
10 51 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 46 (1.30%) Virtual Team
12 39 (1.11%) Security Posture
12 39 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
13 36 (1.02%) Mainframe
14 26 (0.74%) PMI
15 25 (0.71%) CMDB
16 24 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
17 21 (0.60%) Operational Technology
18 20 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
19 19 (0.54%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.52%) Windows
2 103 (2.92%) Linux
3 53 (1.50%) Unix
4 31 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.77%) Solaris
6 23 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.48%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.37%) AIX
8 13 (0.37%) zOS
9 10 (0.28%) Android
10 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.11%) HPUX
13 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.11%) MVS
13 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.11%) SUSE
14 3 (0.085%) VMS
15 1 (0.028%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (21.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 660 (18.72%) Agile
3 534 (15.14%) Problem-Solving
4 517 (14.66%) Migration
5 466 (13.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 458 (12.99%) ERP
7 448 (12.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 398 (11.29%) Project Management
9 344 (9.76%) DevOps
10 314 (8.91%) Change Management
11 312 (8.85%) CI/CD
12 296 (8.39%) Decision-Making
13 283 (8.03%) Project Delivery
14 265 (7.52%) AI
15 258 (7.32%) User Acceptance Testing
16 254 (7.20%) Roadmaps
17 253 (7.18%) Validation
18 244 (6.92%) Risk Management
19 231 (6.55%) Business Intelligence
20 225 (6.38%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 336 (9.53%) SQL
2 259 (7.35%) Python
3 212 (6.01%) Java
4 82 (2.33%) PowerShell
5 38 (1.08%) Bash
6 35 (0.99%) C#
6 35 (0.99%) JavaScript
7 27 (0.77%) TypeScript
8 24 (0.68%) PL/SQL
9 20 (0.57%) C++
9 20 (0.57%) Shell Script
10 19 (0.54%) Go
11 17 (0.48%) VBA
12 14 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 12 (0.34%) Rust
14 11 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 10 (0.28%) COBOL
15 10 (0.28%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.26%) Perl
16 9 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 320 (9.08%) Security Cleared
2 316 (8.96%) Degree
3 203 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 133 (3.77%) ACCA
5 129 (3.66%) CIMA
6 111 (3.15%) PMP
7 97 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 97 (2.75%) PMI Certification
8 74 (2.10%) CISSP
9 54 (1.53%) DV Cleared
10 46 (1.30%) CISM
11 38 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
12 35 (0.99%) Master's Degree
13 29 (0.82%) AWS Certification
14 25 (0.71%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 24 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
16 21 (0.60%) Azure Certification
17 16 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 16 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
18 15 (0.43%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 182 (5.16%) Data Quality
2 158 (4.48%) PMO
3 139 (3.94%) GDPR
4 136 (3.86%) QA
5 63 (1.79%) NIST
6 45 (1.28%) SLA
7 42 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 41 (1.16%) GRC
9 39 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 37 (1.05%) IFRS
11 35 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.96%) Accessibility
13 15 (0.43%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.40%) IFRS 17
15 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.34%) PSD2
17 10 (0.28%) Basel III
18 9 (0.26%) GAAP
18 9 (0.26%) ISO 8583
18 9 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 100 (2.84%) Docker
2 68 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.45%) vSphere
6 14 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.23%) RACF
9 7 (0.20%) GPFS
9 7 (0.20%) NFS
10 5 (0.14%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.11%) KVM
12 3 (0.085%) Firmware
13 2 (0.057%) ACF2
13 2 (0.057%) SRDF
14 1 (0.028%) HDFS
14 1 (0.028%) ISA Server
14 1 (0.028%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.028%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 166 (4.71%) Kubernetes
2 80 (2.27%) Terraform
3 69 (1.96%) Ansible
4 41 (1.16%) Grafana
5 33 (0.94%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (0.48%) SCCM
7 17 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.37%) FortiGate
9 11 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.28%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.28%) Nessus
11 9 (0.26%) vRealize
12 8 (0.23%) Istio
12 8 (0.23%) Kiali
13 7 (0.20%) Control-M
13 7 (0.20%) VxRail
14 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.17%) Argo
15 5 (0.14%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 436 (12.37%) Microsoft
2 373 (10.58%) SAP
3 306 (8.68%) Oracle
4 144 (4.08%) ServiceNow
5 99 (2.81%) Google
6 64 (1.82%) Databricks
7 58 (1.64%) IBM
8 54 (1.53%) Cisco
8 54 (1.53%) Sage
9 53 (1.50%) Splunk
10 52 (1.47%) VMware
11 38 (1.08%) IFS
12 33 (0.94%) Salesforce
13 31 (0.88%) Ariba
14 29 (0.82%) Workday
15 24 (0.68%) HP
16 23 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 17 (0.48%) Adobe
17 17 (0.48%) Atlassian
17 17 (0.48%) Remedy