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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,895 2,622 2,683
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.35% 17.38% 13.90%
As % of the General category 27.85% 28.57% 25.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,346 1,718 1,650
10th Percentile £341 £307 £300
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 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £549 £575
% change year-on-year +0.14% -4.48% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 74 172
10th Percentile £15.10 £14.74 £13.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.69 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +15.72%
75th Percentile £48.75 £59.69 £38.28
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +36.24%

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 13,984 9,176 10,353
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.53% 60.82% 53.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,849 5,551 5,949
10th Percentile £263 £213 £212
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £493
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,778 816 1,332
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.08 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.14 £36.11
Median % change year-on-year +49.05% -38.68% +38.87%
75th Percentile £63.75 £48.75 £57.63
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £36.05
% change year-on-year +31.21% -30.23% +18.03%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 0 1,326 £500 +6.50% 767
South East -1 739 £501 -4.52% 886
North West +1 701 £492 +9.33% 400
Midlands +1 644 £500 +11.11% 440
Yorkshire 0 571 £518 +6.73% 268
West Midlands +1 495 £509 +7.21% 261
Scotland 0 492 £475 -4.52% 166
South West -4 387 £525 -4.55% 300
East of England +8 212 £530 -7.83% 202
East Midlands -2 144 £500 +19.05% 178
Wales +2 79 £525 +13.51% 79
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 68
North East -19 54 £500 +14.29% 107
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 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
1 144 (3.70%) Confluence
2 102 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
10 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
11 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.077%) Camunda
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
14 2 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.051%) Apache Superset
14 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 244 (6.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.41%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 199 (5.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
2 43 (1.10%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.08%) NetSuite
4 40 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 34 (0.87%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
7 22 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.51%) SAP GRC
9 18 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
9 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
10 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
11 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 12 (0.31%) Workday HCM
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 10 (0.26%) NEC Housing
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 483 (12.40%) Azure
2 333 (8.55%) AWS
3 225 (5.78%) Power Platform
4 217 (5.57%) GCP
5 104 (2.67%) SaaS
6 94 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
7 89 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
8 87 (2.23%) GitHub
9 73 (1.87%) Entra ID
10 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
10 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
11 42 (1.08%) OCI
12 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
12 40 (1.03%) Serverless
13 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
14 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 25 (0.64%) Power Automate
15 23 (0.59%) Amazon S3
15 23 (0.59%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.21%) Firewall
2 63 (1.62%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 38 (0.98%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
6 25 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.64%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) LAN
8 13 (0.33%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) MPLS
11 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
12 7 (0.18%) HTTP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) Wireless
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.75%) Power BI
2 79 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.90%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
5 64 (1.64%) SQL Server
6 56 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (1.28%) Oracle Reports
8 39 (1.00%) Tableau
9 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.64%) NoSQL
12 23 (0.59%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 255 (6.55%) JIRA
2 92 (2.36%) Git
3 63 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
6 17 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.39%) GitLab
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 12 (0.31%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 1,242 (31.89%) Social Skills
2 544 (13.97%) Analytical Skills
3 541 (13.89%) Banking
4 289 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 215 (5.52%) Legal
6 210 (5.39%) Organisational Skills
7 145 (3.72%) Retail
8 123 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.88%) Manufacturing
10 108 (2.77%) Local Government
11 104 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (2.16%) Financial Institution
13 79 (2.03%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.03%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.87%) Billing
15 64 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 59 (1.51%) Marketing
17 54 (1.39%) Telecoms
18 51 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.28%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 535 (13.74%) Analyst
2 411 (10.55%) Lead
3 357 (9.17%) Senior
4 335 (8.60%) Project Manager
5 319 (8.19%) Architect
6 291 (7.47%) Developer
7 253 (6.50%) Business Analyst
8 245 (6.29%) Consultant
9 176 (4.52%) Accountant
10 132 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
11 108 (2.77%) Systems Accountant
12 101 (2.59%) IT Manager
12 101 (2.59%) Senior Manager
13 89 (2.28%) Financial Analyst
14 88 (2.26%) Java Developer
15 78 (2.00%) Programme Manager
16 70 (1.80%) Finance Manager
17 68 (1.75%) Administrator
17 68 (1.75%) Data Analyst
18 63 (1.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (3.62%) Oracle Fusion
2 86 (2.21%) Middleware
3 83 (2.13%) REST
4 71 (1.82%) Kafka
4 71 (1.82%) Spring Boot
5 69 (1.77%) Spring
6 58 (1.49%) .NET
6 58 (1.49%) React
7 40 (1.03%) RESTful
8 36 (0.92%) OAuth
9 31 (0.80%) Node.js
10 30 (0.77%) JSON
11 28 (0.72%) XML
12 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
13 24 (0.62%) OpenID
13 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
14 22 (0.56%) Redux
14 22 (0.56%) SAML
15 19 (0.49%) AngularJS
15 19 (0.49%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.95%) Onboarding
1 154 (3.95%) Product Ownership
2 153 (3.93%) Cloud Native
3 117 (3.00%) Management Information System
4 115 (2.95%) Virtual Team
5 106 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
6 103 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
7 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
8 67 (1.72%) Web Conferencing
9 66 (1.69%) Data Centre
9 66 (1.69%) Podcast
10 57 (1.46%) Public Cloud
11 52 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
11 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
11 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 41 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 37 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
14 36 (0.92%) AI Agents
15 35 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
16 32 (0.82%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.18%) Windows
2 111 (2.85%) Linux
3 65 (1.67%) Unix
4 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.64%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.15%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 903 (23.18%) Stakeholder Management
2 716 (18.38%) Agile
3 566 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
4 547 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 542 (13.92%) Migration
6 519 (13.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 513 (13.17%) ERP
8 381 (9.78%) Project Management
9 364 (9.35%) DevOps
10 363 (9.32%) Decision-Making
11 349 (8.96%) Change Management
11 349 (8.96%) CI/CD
12 330 (8.47%) AI
13 319 (8.19%) Project Delivery
14 295 (7.57%) Roadmaps
15 287 (7.37%) User Acceptance Testing
16 273 (7.01%) Validation
17 264 (6.78%) Risk Management
18 252 (6.47%) Analytics
19 242 (6.21%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 331 (8.50%) SQL
2 308 (7.91%) Python
3 229 (5.88%) Java
4 72 (1.85%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) C#
6 46 (1.18%) Bash
6 46 (1.18%) JavaScript
7 36 (0.92%) PL/SQL
8 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.74%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.64%) Go
11 22 (0.56%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.28%) PHP
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 373 (9.58%) Security Cleared
2 289 (7.42%) Degree
3 228 (5.85%) SC Cleared
4 138 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 122 (3.13%) ACCA
6 118 (3.03%) CIMA
7 110 (2.82%) PMP
8 96 (2.46%) PMI Certification
9 81 (2.08%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.80%) CISSP
11 42 (1.08%) CISM
12 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 29 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
16 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
18 18 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 213 (5.47%) Data Quality
2 183 (4.70%) PMO
3 145 (3.72%) QA
4 139 (3.57%) GDPR
5 47 (1.21%) NIST
6 46 (1.18%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) SLA
7 38 (0.98%) IFRS
8 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 32 (0.82%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 14 (0.36%) GAAP
13 13 (0.33%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) COBIT
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 87 (2.23%) Docker
2 75 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.33%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) SRDF
12 2 (0.051%) zsh
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 173 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.77%) Terraform
3 79 (2.03%) Ansible
4 35 (0.90%) Grafana
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.69%) Prometheus
7 25 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
9 16 (0.41%) SCCM
10 14 (0.36%) Progress Chef
11 12 (0.31%) Control-M
12 11 (0.28%) Argo
12 11 (0.28%) Istio
13 10 (0.26%) Nessus
14 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
14 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
15 7 (0.18%) vRealize
16 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
16 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
17 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 521 (13.38%) Microsoft
2 395 (10.14%) SAP
3 381 (9.78%) Oracle
4 165 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 101 (2.59%) Google
6 84 (2.16%) IBM
7 75 (1.93%) Databricks
8 63 (1.62%) VMware
9 54 (1.39%) Sage
9 54 (1.39%) Salesforce
10 42 (1.08%) Cisco
11 39 (1.00%) Splunk
12 33 (0.85%) IFS
13 32 (0.82%) Ariba
14 31 (0.80%) Workday
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 22 (0.56%) HP
17 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.51%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe