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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,887 2,578 2,789
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.45% 17.46% 13.46%
As % of the General category 28.14% 28.62% 25.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,348 1,682 1,694
10th Percentile £341 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £494 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.27% -1.25% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
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 190 75 199
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.82 £17.67 £15.70
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.40 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.44% -21.71% -13.42%
75th Percentile £54.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £32.41 £32.20
% change year-on-year +30.54% +0.63% -0.92%

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 13,813 9,008 11,154
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.36% 61.02% 53.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,772 5,467 6,279
10th Percentile £266 £213 £208
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% -3.67% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,731 781 1,618
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.08 £12.79
25th Percentile £17.57 £15.48 £15.50
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +45.82% -29.53% +23.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £55.52
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £26.50 £32.90
% change year-on-year +24.53% -19.44% +7.71%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 1,303 £500 +6.61% 1,177
South East 0 731 £500 -4.76% 1,304
North West +3 684 £475 +5.56% 587
Midlands +1 662 £500 +11.11% 730
Yorkshire 0 569 £525 +7.69% 443
Scotland 0 500 £475 -2.86% 458
West Midlands +1 489 £500 +1.63% 373
South West -4 381 £525 -4.55% 491
East of England +4 209 £530 -7.83% 518
East Midlands -1 165 £500 +15.61% 354
Wales +4 85 £525 +13.51% 200
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +11.76% 194
North East -19 51 £500 +13.96% 155
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
1 160 (4.12%) Confluence
2 93 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.33%) CMS
7 12 (0.31%) SAS
8 11 (0.28%) CICS
9 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
15 2 (0.051%) JBoss
15 2 (0.051%) Mule
15 2 (0.051%) Mule ESB
15 2 (0.051%) nginx
Applications
1 237 (6.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.32%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.13%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
8 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.051%) Trello
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.026%) Maple
9 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.026%) UXPin
9 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 204 (5.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.16%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.05%) NetSuite
3 41 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 36 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
7 20 (0.51%) Unit4 Business World
8 19 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
8 19 (0.49%) SAP GRC
9 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
10 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
11 14 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
12 13 (0.33%) NEC Housing
12 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
13 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.30%) Azure
2 334 (8.59%) AWS
3 222 (5.71%) Power Platform
4 209 (5.38%) GCP
5 105 (2.70%) SaaS
6 93 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
7 91 (2.34%) GitHub
8 88 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
9 75 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
10 70 (1.80%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) OpenShift
12 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.08%) Serverless
14 39 (1.00%) OCI
15 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
16 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.62%) Amazon S3
17 24 (0.62%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (0.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 23 (0.59%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 88 (2.26%) Firewall
2 69 (1.78%) Network Security
3 40 (1.03%) VPN
4 39 (1.00%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 26 (0.67%) SSL
7 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.49%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) DHCP
10 11 (0.28%) VSAN
11 10 (0.26%) SD-WAN
11 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) MPLS
13 8 (0.21%) Internet
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
15 5 (0.13%) BIG-IP
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco Firepower
15 5 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.71%) Power BI
2 80 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
3 76 (1.96%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.75%) Metadata
5 62 (1.60%) SQL Server
6 60 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
7 52 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
8 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.87%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 27 (0.69%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
13 23 (0.59%) Db2
13 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
14 22 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
15 19 (0.49%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
17 16 (0.41%) Power Query
18 14 (0.36%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 274 (7.05%) JIRA
2 94 (2.42%) Git
3 70 (1.80%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.69%) JUnit
5 19 (0.49%) GitLab
5 19 (0.49%) Selenium
6 18 (0.46%) Cucumber
6 18 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.31%) Postman
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.21%) Gradle
11 8 (0.21%) Maven
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,239 (31.88%) Social Skills
2 539 (13.87%) Banking
3 533 (13.71%) Analytical Skills
4 292 (7.51%) Public Sector
5 197 (5.07%) Legal
6 179 (4.61%) Organisational Skills
7 136 (3.50%) Retail
8 116 (2.98%) Manufacturing
9 114 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
9 114 (2.93%) Local Government
10 101 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
11 87 (2.24%) Financial Institution
12 84 (2.16%) General Ledger
13 81 (2.08%) Investment Banking
14 72 (1.85%) Billing
15 61 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
17 54 (1.39%) Marketing
18 48 (1.23%) Aerospace
19 46 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 536 (13.79%) Analyst
2 395 (10.16%) Lead
3 355 (9.13%) Senior
4 340 (8.75%) Project Manager
5 338 (8.70%) Architect
6 294 (7.56%) Developer
7 253 (6.51%) Business Analyst
8 245 (6.30%) Consultant
9 173 (4.45%) Accountant
10 146 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
11 108 (2.78%) Systems Accountant
12 103 (2.65%) Senior Manager
13 102 (2.62%) IT Manager
14 89 (2.29%) Financial Analyst
15 88 (2.26%) Programme Manager
16 87 (2.24%) Java Developer
17 73 (1.88%) Finance Manager
18 66 (1.70%) Administrator
19 65 (1.67%) Data Engineer
20 63 (1.62%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.47%) Oracle Fusion
2 90 (2.32%) Middleware
3 88 (2.26%) REST
4 71 (1.83%) Kafka
5 70 (1.80%) Spring
5 70 (1.80%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.54%) React
7 56 (1.44%) .NET
8 42 (1.08%) RESTful
9 36 (0.93%) OAuth
10 32 (0.82%) JSON
11 31 (0.80%) Node.js
12 27 (0.69%) OpenID
12 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.67%) XML
14 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
15 23 (0.59%) Redux
16 22 (0.57%) AngularJS
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
18 20 (0.51%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.01%) Product Ownership
2 154 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 150 (3.86%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.04%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 106 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
7 94 (2.42%) Virtual Team
8 71 (1.83%) Data Centre
9 69 (1.78%) Public Cloud
10 68 (1.75%) Data Structures
11 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
12 51 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
13 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
14 45 (1.16%) Web Conferencing
15 44 (1.13%) Podcast
16 40 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
17 34 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
18 32 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
19 29 (0.75%) AI Agents
20 28 (0.72%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 120 (3.09%) Windows
2 106 (2.73%) Linux
3 63 (1.62%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 26 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.64%) zOS
8 14 (0.36%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) 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
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
15 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 892 (22.95%) Stakeholder Management
2 714 (18.37%) Agile
3 567 (14.59%) Problem-Solving
4 548 (14.10%) Migration
5 536 (13.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 525 (13.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 501 (12.89%) ERP
8 389 (10.01%) Project Management
9 369 (9.49%) DevOps
10 356 (9.16%) CI/CD
11 355 (9.13%) Change Management
12 354 (9.11%) Decision-Making
13 321 (8.26%) AI
14 320 (8.23%) Project Delivery
15 298 (7.67%) User Acceptance Testing
16 289 (7.44%) Roadmaps
17 273 (7.02%) Validation
18 264 (6.79%) Risk Management
19 250 (6.43%) Analytics
20 239 (6.15%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 351 (9.03%) SQL
2 301 (7.74%) Python
3 225 (5.79%) Java
4 74 (1.90%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.41%) C#
6 46 (1.18%) JavaScript
7 42 (1.08%) Bash
8 39 (1.00%) PL/SQL
9 34 (0.87%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.64%) Go
12 19 (0.49%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.36%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
18 9 (0.23%) Rust
Qualifications
1 355 (9.13%) Security Cleared
2 298 (7.67%) Degree
3 217 (5.58%) SC Cleared
4 127 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 124 (3.19%) ACCA
6 120 (3.09%) CIMA
7 114 (2.93%) PMP
8 100 (2.57%) PMI Certification
9 77 (1.98%) CISSP
10 67 (1.72%) DV Cleared
11 48 (1.23%) CISM
12 37 (0.95%) AWS Certification
12 37 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 31 (0.80%) Azure Certification
15 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
16 25 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (5.40%) Data Quality
2 169 (4.35%) PMO
3 146 (3.76%) QA
4 141 (3.63%) GDPR
5 53 (1.36%) NIST
6 48 (1.23%) GRC
7 47 (1.21%) SLA
8 37 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.90%) IFRS
10 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
12 28 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 18 (0.46%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.28%) GAAP
16 10 (0.26%) EMIR
16 10 (0.26%) PSD2
16 10 (0.26%) SEPA
17 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
17 9 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 87 (2.24%) Docker
2 77 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 18 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) KVM
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
14 2 (0.051%) zsh
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 171 (4.40%) Kubernetes
2 104 (2.68%) Terraform
3 81 (2.08%) Ansible
4 37 (0.95%) Grafana
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (0.77%) Prometheus
7 23 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.46%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) CEMLI
Vendors
1 489 (12.58%) Microsoft
2 401 (10.32%) SAP
3 369 (9.49%) Oracle
4 163 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 105 (2.70%) Google
6 81 (2.08%) IBM
7 76 (1.96%) Databricks
8 63 (1.62%) VMware
9 55 (1.41%) Sage
10 48 (1.23%) Salesforce
11 46 (1.18%) Splunk
12 45 (1.16%) Cisco
13 34 (0.87%) IFS
14 32 (0.82%) Ariba
15 30 (0.77%) Workday
16 23 (0.59%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe
19 19 (0.49%) Sybase