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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,246 2,204 2,683
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.76% 17.15% 12.78%
As % of the General category 27.52% 27.75% 23.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,039 1,381 1,687
10th Percentile £316 £305 £291
25th Percentile £402 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.04% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 67 188
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.04 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £14.20
Median hourly rate £22.08 £48.82 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year -54.78% +60.51% -13.11%
75th Percentile £33.75 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £68.20 £77.89 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.50
% change year-on-year -35.70% +34.75% -10.58%

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 11,794 7,941 11,538
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.62% 61.78% 54.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,159 4,913 6,750
10th Percentile £220 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,292 506 1,520
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.43 £18.26 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.58 £27.97 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -15.71% +12.46% -19.12%
75th Percentile £57.50 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £25.90
% change year-on-year -16.67% +15.85% -26.01%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +3 1,061 £475 +0.64% 715
South East -1 614 £503 -8.64% 1,034
Midlands -1 589 £475 -5.00% 453
North West +6 565 £452 -2.74% 386
Yorkshire 0 448 £500 +5.04% 247
West Midlands +1 388 £492 -6.29% 266
Scotland 0 366 £475 - 180
South West -4 326 £525 +2.94% 313
East of England -1 198 £520 -5.45% 279
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +1.35% 186
Wales +28 107 £413 +3.13% 92
North East -7 48 £481 +5.19% 96
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 52
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 2
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
1 161 (4.96%) Confluence
2 114 (3.51%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.74%) Apache
6 13 (0.40%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.18%) CMS
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.092%) Camunda
13 3 (0.092%) IIS
14 2 (0.062%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.062%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.062%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.062%) Tomcat
Applications
1 244 (7.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 143 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (3.60%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (2.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.031%) UXPin
11 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 150 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.54%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.36%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 34 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
7 28 (0.86%) Oracle Assets
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle Cash Management
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
9 22 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
10 19 (0.59%) SAP CO
11 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
12 16 (0.49%) NetSuite
13 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 400 (12.32%) Azure
2 370 (11.40%) AWS
3 185 (5.70%) Power Platform
4 162 (4.99%) GCP
5 118 (3.64%) Microsoft 365
6 84 (2.59%) GitHub
7 80 (2.46%) SaaS
8 76 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 73 (2.25%) Serverless
10 52 (1.60%) Entra ID
11 41 (1.26%) OpenShift
12 39 (1.20%) OCI
13 38 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
15 34 (1.05%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.02%) Amazon S3
17 32 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.92%) Microsoft Copilot
19 24 (0.74%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.56%) Firewall
2 44 (1.36%) WAN
3 36 (1.11%) DNS
4 34 (1.05%) Network Security
5 31 (0.96%) VPN
6 24 (0.74%) LAN
7 21 (0.65%) SD-WAN
7 21 (0.65%) Wireless
8 18 (0.55%) Skype
9 17 (0.52%) SSL
10 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.43%) SSH
12 13 (0.40%) Internet
13 11 (0.34%) DHCP
14 10 (0.31%) SNMP
15 9 (0.28%) MPLS
16 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
16 8 (0.25%) Kerberos
16 8 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
17 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (5.42%) Power BI
2 84 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.63%) NoSQL
5 43 (1.32%) Metadata
6 40 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
6 40 (1.23%) Relational Database
7 34 (1.05%) SQL Server
7 34 (1.05%) Tableau
8 26 (0.80%) DynamoDB
9 24 (0.74%) Data Lake
10 23 (0.71%) Big Data
11 22 (0.68%) Power Query
12 19 (0.59%) BigQuery
13 14 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
13 14 (0.43%) MongoDB
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle ODI
14 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (0.37%) MySQL
16 11 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 312 (9.61%) JIRA
2 126 (3.88%) Jenkins
3 75 (2.31%) GitLab
4 53 (1.63%) Git
5 37 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 36 (1.11%) JUnit
7 31 (0.96%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.62%) Selenium
9 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
10 13 (0.40%) Postman
11 12 (0.37%) Gradle
12 10 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.28%) Hudson
13 9 (0.28%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) Maven
16 6 (0.18%) Snyk
17 5 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 1,117 (34.41%) Social Skills
2 512 (15.77%) Banking
3 409 (12.60%) Analytical Skills
4 354 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.42%) Manufacturing
6 160 (4.93%) Telecoms
7 142 (4.37%) Marketing
8 131 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
9 107 (3.30%) Legal
10 101 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
11 98 (3.02%) Financial Institution
12 95 (2.93%) Electronics
13 78 (2.40%) Local Government
14 66 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (1.91%) Retail
16 58 (1.79%) General Ledger
17 50 (1.54%) Billing
17 50 (1.54%) Investment Banking
18 42 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
19 30 (0.92%) Law
Job Titles
1 492 (15.16%) Analyst
2 323 (9.95%) Project Manager
3 278 (8.56%) Architect
4 265 (8.16%) Lead
5 261 (8.04%) Senior
6 229 (7.05%) Consultant
7 218 (6.72%) Business Analyst
8 192 (5.91%) Developer
9 115 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 97 (2.99%) Programme Manager
11 89 (2.74%) Accountant
12 82 (2.53%) Senior Manager
13 75 (2.31%) Data Analyst
13 75 (2.31%) Finance Manager
14 68 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
15 55 (1.69%) Java Developer
16 54 (1.66%) Functional Consultant
16 54 (1.66%) Systems Accountant
17 53 (1.63%) Administrator
17 53 (1.63%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (3.39%) REST
2 81 (2.50%) Spring
3 77 (2.37%) Spring Boot
4 70 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
5 65 (2.00%) Kafka
6 62 (1.91%) Middleware
7 57 (1.76%) RESTful
8 36 (1.11%) Node.js
9 34 (1.05%) .NET
10 33 (1.02%) JSON
11 32 (0.99%) React
12 30 (0.92%) OAuth
12 30 (0.92%) SOAP
13 29 (0.89%) XML
14 25 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
15 24 (0.74%) HTML
16 22 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
17 21 (0.65%) AngularJS
18 20 (0.62%) CSS
19 18 (0.55%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.90%) Onboarding
2 128 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 102 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 101 (3.11%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.65%) Data Centre
6 75 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
7 70 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
8 69 (2.13%) Public Cloud
9 67 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
10 43 (1.32%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
12 38 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
13 35 (1.08%) PMI
14 33 (1.02%) Virtual Team
15 32 (0.99%) Mobile App
16 26 (0.80%) CMDB
17 22 (0.68%) Mainframe
18 19 (0.59%) NHS
19 17 (0.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
20 16 (0.49%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 130 (4.00%) Linux
2 107 (3.30%) Windows
3 43 (1.32%) Unix
4 30 (0.92%) Android
4 30 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 27 (0.83%) Mac OS
6 21 (0.65%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.22%) AIX
8 7 (0.22%) Solaris
9 5 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.12%) VMS
11 3 (0.092%) zOS
12 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.031%) MVS
12 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 666 (20.52%) Agile
2 648 (19.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 520 (16.02%) Problem-Solving
4 468 (14.42%) Migration
5 427 (13.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 388 (11.95%) Project Management
7 361 (11.12%) Continuous Improvement
8 359 (11.06%) ERP
9 347 (10.69%) DevOps
10 325 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
11 298 (9.18%) CI/CD
12 280 (8.63%) Change Management
12 280 (8.63%) Project Delivery
13 239 (7.36%) Decision-Making
14 227 (6.99%) User Acceptance Testing
15 226 (6.96%) Analytics
16 214 (6.59%) Roadmaps
17 203 (6.25%) Data Modelling
18 201 (6.19%) AI
19 197 (6.07%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 328 (10.10%) SQL
2 275 (8.47%) Python
3 194 (5.98%) Java
4 69 (2.13%) PowerShell
5 33 (1.02%) TypeScript
6 31 (0.96%) JavaScript
7 28 (0.86%) Go
8 23 (0.71%) Bash
9 22 (0.68%) VBA
10 21 (0.65%) C#
11 19 (0.59%) PL/SQL
11 19 (0.59%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.37%) Perl
12 12 (0.37%) R
13 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 10 (0.31%) ABAP
14 10 (0.31%) COBOL
14 10 (0.31%) Rust
15 9 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 343 (10.57%) Security Cleared
2 325 (10.01%) Degree
3 221 (6.81%) SC Cleared
4 94 (2.90%) PMI Certification
5 93 (2.87%) PMP
6 89 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 84 (2.59%) ACCA
8 78 (2.40%) CIMA
9 66 (2.03%) DV Cleared
9 66 (2.03%) Master's Degree
10 59 (1.82%) CISSP
10 59 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
11 41 (1.26%) CISM
12 38 (1.17%) AWS Certification
13 28 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
14 23 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 18 (0.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 16 (0.49%) MBA
17 13 (0.40%) DBS Check
17 13 (0.40%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (5.55%) PMO
2 152 (4.68%) Data Quality
3 142 (4.37%) QA
4 127 (3.91%) GDPR
5 53 (1.63%) NIST
5 53 (1.63%) SLA
6 45 (1.39%) PCI DSS
7 38 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 30 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 28 (0.86%) Accessibility
10 26 (0.80%) IFRS
11 24 (0.74%) ISO 20022
12 22 (0.68%) PSD2
13 20 (0.62%) GRC
14 15 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
15 13 (0.40%) SEPA
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
17 10 (0.31%) GLBA
18 9 (0.28%) NCSC
System Software
1 123 (3.79%) Docker
2 75 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.62%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.092%) Firmware
12 3 (0.092%) KVM
12 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.062%) ACF2
13 2 (0.062%) HDFS
13 2 (0.062%) RACF
13 2 (0.062%) SRDF
13 2 (0.062%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 166 (5.11%) Kubernetes
2 87 (2.68%) Terraform
3 84 (2.59%) Ansible
4 56 (1.73%) Grafana
5 50 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.55%) SCCM
6 18 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
8 12 (0.37%) vRealize
9 10 (0.31%) Nessus
10 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.25%) Kiali
12 5 (0.15%) CASB
12 5 (0.15%) Control-M
12 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
12 5 (0.15%) Puppet
12 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 430 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 374 (11.52%) SAP
3 264 (8.13%) Oracle
4 151 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.90%) Google
6 81 (2.50%) Cisco
7 76 (2.34%) Splunk
8 51 (1.57%) Sage
9 50 (1.54%) VMware
10 49 (1.51%) IBM
11 45 (1.39%) Databricks
12 44 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 35 (1.08%) HP
14 34 (1.05%) Dell
15 33 (1.02%) Workday
16 27 (0.83%) IFS
17 23 (0.71%) Adobe
18 18 (0.55%) Ariba
18 18 (0.55%) Citrix
18 18 (0.55%) Remedy