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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,304 2,192 2,672
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.63% 17.34% 12.73%
As % of the General category 27.71% 27.97% 23.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,070 1,393 1,678
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £402 £400 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £743
UK median daily rate £530 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -7.02% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 69 191
10th Percentile £13.98 £18.12 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.13
Median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.95% +94.44% -36.47%
75th Percentile £34.25 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £73.00 £78.47 £51.50
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £26.73
% change year-on-year -40.44% +49.64% -17.12%

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 11,925 7,837 11,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.79% 62.01% 54.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,201 4,880 6,688
10th Percentile £230 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,317 529 1,566
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.36 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.10 £15.00
Median hourly rate £24.46 £27.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.05% +10.00% -18.71%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -11.14% +11.54% -25.71%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 1,086 £475 - 695
South East -1 644 £503 -6.07% 1,010
Midlands 0 582 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 577 £455 -2.10% 371
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 388 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 374 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 326 £523 +4.40% 302
East of England -2 196 £513 -5.75% 271
East Midlands 0 189 £450 +1.69% 171
Wales +26 105 £413 +6.45% 89
North East -4 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4
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
1 154 (4.66%) Confluence
2 113 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.85%) Apache Spark
3 28 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 21 (0.64%) Apache
5 11 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.27%) CICS
6 9 (0.27%) TPMS
7 8 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.24%) CMS
8 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.091%) Camunda
11 3 (0.091%) IIS
12 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
12 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 254 (7.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 132 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.48%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (1.27%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.27%) 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 2 (0.061%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.030%) UXPin
11 1 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 152 (4.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.60%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.42%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
4 39 (1.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 33 (1.00%) Oracle General Ledger
6 31 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 31 (0.94%) SAP FI
7 29 (0.88%) Oracle Assets
8 26 (0.79%) Oracle Cash Management
9 23 (0.70%) NetSuite
10 21 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 20 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
12 19 (0.58%) Oracle EBS R12
13 18 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
14 15 (0.45%) SAP BRIM
14 15 (0.45%) SAP Hybris
14 15 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.39%) NEC Housing
16 12 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 404 (12.23%) Azure
2 357 (10.81%) AWS
3 196 (5.93%) Power Platform
4 162 (4.90%) GCP
5 116 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
6 90 (2.72%) GitHub
7 86 (2.60%) SaaS
8 79 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
9 77 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
10 70 (2.12%) Serverless
11 52 (1.57%) Entra ID
12 47 (1.42%) OpenShift
13 44 (1.33%) OCI
14 36 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
15 35 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
15 35 (1.06%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
17 31 (0.94%) Amazon S3
18 29 (0.88%) Microsoft Copilot
19 25 (0.76%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.48%) Firewall
2 40 (1.21%) WAN
3 36 (1.09%) DNS
3 36 (1.09%) Network Security
4 30 (0.91%) VPN
5 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
6 20 (0.61%) LAN
7 18 (0.54%) Skype
8 17 (0.51%) SSL
9 16 (0.48%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.42%) Internet
11 13 (0.39%) Wireless
12 12 (0.36%) SSH
13 11 (0.33%) DHCP
14 9 (0.27%) MPLS
14 9 (0.27%) SNMP
15 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.21%) OSPF
16 7 (0.21%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (5.51%) Power BI
2 85 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
4 54 (1.63%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.51%) Oracle Reports
6 48 (1.45%) Metadata
7 44 (1.33%) Relational Database
8 37 (1.12%) SQL Server
9 33 (1.00%) Tableau
10 29 (0.88%) DynamoDB
11 27 (0.82%) Data Lake
12 26 (0.79%) Big Data
13 23 (0.70%) Power Query
14 19 (0.58%) Oracle ODI
15 16 (0.48%) BigQuery
16 13 (0.39%) MongoDB
16 13 (0.39%) MySQL
16 13 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
17 12 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
17 12 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 304 (9.20%) JIRA
2 119 (3.60%) Jenkins
3 69 (2.09%) GitLab
4 54 (1.63%) Git
5 35 (1.06%) JUnit
6 34 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
7 28 (0.85%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.61%) Selenium
9 13 (0.39%) Hudson
9 13 (0.39%) Postman
10 12 (0.36%) Bitbucket
10 12 (0.36%) Liquibase
10 12 (0.36%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.27%) JMeter
12 8 (0.24%) Gradle
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.18%) Maven
13 6 (0.18%) Snyk
13 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,127 (34.11%) Social Skills
2 505 (15.28%) Banking
3 424 (12.83%) Analytical Skills
4 344 (10.41%) Public Sector
5 158 (4.78%) Manufacturing
6 141 (4.27%) Telecoms
7 128 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
8 123 (3.72%) Marketing
9 113 (3.42%) Legal
10 101 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
11 91 (2.75%) Financial Institution
12 84 (2.54%) Local Government
13 80 (2.42%) Electronics
14 73 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
15 72 (2.18%) Retail
16 61 (1.85%) General Ledger
17 50 (1.51%) Billing
18 48 (1.45%) Investment Banking
19 42 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
20 33 (1.00%) Law
Job Titles
1 500 (15.13%) Analyst
2 329 (9.96%) Project Manager
3 282 (8.54%) Architect
4 279 (8.44%) Lead
5 259 (7.84%) Senior
6 238 (7.20%) Consultant
7 222 (6.72%) Business Analyst
8 197 (5.96%) Developer
9 120 (3.63%) Solutions Architect
10 101 (3.06%) Accountant
11 91 (2.75%) Programme Manager
12 88 (2.66%) Senior Manager
13 79 (2.39%) Finance Manager
14 71 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 70 (2.12%) SAP Consultant
16 60 (1.82%) Systems Accountant
17 58 (1.76%) Functional Consultant
18 57 (1.73%) Data Engineer
18 57 (1.73%) IT Manager
19 55 (1.66%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (3.33%) REST
2 82 (2.48%) Spring
3 78 (2.36%) Spring Boot
4 73 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 70 (2.12%) Kafka
6 65 (1.97%) Middleware
7 54 (1.63%) RESTful
8 36 (1.09%) Node.js
9 33 (1.00%) .NET
10 32 (0.97%) React
11 31 (0.94%) JSON
12 29 (0.88%) OAuth
13 28 (0.85%) SOAP
14 27 (0.82%) XML
15 23 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
15 23 (0.70%) HTML
16 21 (0.64%) AngularJS
17 19 (0.58%) CSS
17 19 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
18 18 (0.54%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 153 (4.63%) Onboarding
2 125 (3.78%) Product Ownership
3 106 (3.21%) Cloud Native
4 101 (3.06%) Management Information System
5 83 (2.51%) Data Centre
6 76 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
7 75 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
8 69 (2.09%) Public Cloud
9 68 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
10 45 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
13 34 (1.03%) PMI
14 33 (1.00%) Virtual Team
15 31 (0.94%) Mobile App
16 30 (0.91%) CMDB
16 30 (0.91%) Mainframe
17 20 (0.61%) Operational Technology
17 20 (0.61%) Security Posture
18 19 (0.58%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 128 (3.87%) Linux
2 106 (3.21%) Windows
3 45 (1.36%) Unix
4 27 (0.82%) Windows 10
5 23 (0.70%) Android
5 23 (0.70%) Windows Server
6 21 (0.64%) Mac OS
7 10 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.24%) AIX
8 8 (0.24%) Solaris
9 6 (0.18%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.12%) VMS
12 3 (0.091%) zOS
13 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.030%) MVS
13 1 (0.030%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 657 (19.88%) Stakeholder Management
2 652 (19.73%) Agile
3 525 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
4 480 (14.53%) Migration
5 442 (13.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 400 (12.11%) Project Management
7 397 (12.02%) ERP
8 383 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
9 353 (10.68%) DevOps
10 312 (9.44%) Business Intelligence
11 297 (8.99%) CI/CD
12 288 (8.72%) Change Management
13 287 (8.69%) Project Delivery
14 244 (7.38%) Decision-Making
15 232 (7.02%) User Acceptance Testing
16 222 (6.72%) Analytics
17 221 (6.69%) Roadmaps
18 204 (6.17%) Risk Management
19 203 (6.14%) AI
20 202 (6.11%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 328 (9.93%) SQL
2 255 (7.72%) Python
3 191 (5.78%) Java
4 69 (2.09%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.88%) Go
6 28 (0.85%) TypeScript
7 26 (0.79%) JavaScript
8 23 (0.70%) Bash
8 23 (0.70%) VBA
9 20 (0.61%) C#
9 20 (0.61%) PL/SQL
10 16 (0.48%) Shell Script
11 12 (0.36%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.33%) COBOL
12 11 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 10 (0.30%) ABAP
13 10 (0.30%) Perl
13 10 (0.30%) R
14 9 (0.27%) C++
15 8 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 349 (10.56%) Security Cleared
2 331 (10.02%) Degree
3 217 (6.57%) SC Cleared
4 105 (3.18%) PMP
5 101 (3.06%) PMI Certification
6 99 (3.00%) ACCA
7 98 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 93 (2.81%) CIMA
9 72 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 67 (2.03%) Master's Degree
11 60 (1.82%) CISSP
12 59 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
13 40 (1.21%) CISM
14 36 (1.09%) AWS Certification
15 28 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
16 19 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
17 18 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 16 (0.48%) MBA
19 15 (0.45%) Azure Certification
20 13 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (5.57%) PMO
2 154 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 138 (4.18%) QA
4 134 (4.06%) GDPR
5 62 (1.88%) NIST
6 51 (1.54%) SLA
7 47 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 47 (1.42%) PCI DSS
8 29 (0.88%) IFRS
9 25 (0.76%) Accessibility
10 24 (0.73%) ISO 20022
11 23 (0.70%) GRC
11 23 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.58%) PSD2
13 14 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
14 13 (0.39%) GAAP
14 13 (0.39%) SEPA
15 12 (0.36%) Basel III
15 12 (0.36%) SOC 2
16 9 (0.27%) NCSC
System Software
1 116 (3.51%) Docker
2 73 (2.21%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.61%) vSphere
5 14 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.33%) GPFS
8 10 (0.30%) NFS
9 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.091%) Firmware
12 3 (0.091%) KVM
12 3 (0.091%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.061%) ACF2
13 2 (0.061%) HDFS
13 2 (0.061%) RACF
13 2 (0.061%) SRDF
13 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 166 (5.02%) Kubernetes
2 88 (2.66%) Terraform
3 80 (2.42%) Ansible
4 54 (1.63%) Grafana
5 46 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.45%) SCCM
8 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.39%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.39%) vRealize
10 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.27%) Nessus
11 8 (0.24%) Kiali
12 7 (0.21%) HP ALM
13 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.15%) CASB
14 5 (0.15%) Istio
14 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
14 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 436 (13.20%) Microsoft
2 368 (11.14%) SAP
3 283 (8.57%) Oracle
4 158 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.85%) Google
6 76 (2.30%) Cisco
7 72 (2.18%) Splunk
8 55 (1.66%) Sage
9 54 (1.63%) IBM
10 52 (1.57%) VMware
11 50 (1.51%) Databricks
12 45 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 32 (0.97%) Workday
14 31 (0.94%) IFS
15 27 (0.82%) Dell
15 27 (0.82%) HP
16 21 (0.64%) Adobe
17 19 (0.58%) Ariba
17 19 (0.58%) Citrix
17 19 (0.58%) Remedy