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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,900 2,695 2,619
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.14% 17.62% 14.37%
As % of the General category 27.48% 28.76% 26.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,351 1,784 1,607
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £498 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.11% -2.93% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £543 £575
% change year-on-year +1.38% -5.65% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 70 152
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.85 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.69 £22.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +18.86%
75th Percentile - £57.00 £41.31
90th Percentile £76.60 £75.00 £70.16
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £37.50
% change year-on-year +50.19% -21.95% +44.23%

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 14,193 9,371 9,799
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.46% 61.27% 53.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,872 5,634 5,621
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,952 856 1,129
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.00 £13.83
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.53% -41.92% +52.48%
75th Percentile £60.00 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.07
% change year-on-year +25.25% -33.94% +38.44%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 1,345 £500 +6.61% 1,340
South East -1 737 £505 -3.81% 1,395
North West 0 696 £500 +11.11% 785
Midlands 0 632 £500 +11.11% 619
Yorkshire 0 574 £514 +7.31% 384
Scotland 0 502 £475 -5.00% 687
West Midlands +1 477 £507 +1.40% 359
South West -4 381 £540 -3.48% 663
East of England +4 205 £525 -8.70% 454
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +21.21% 260
North East -10 68 £500 +11.11% 191
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 - 279
Wales -1 62 £525 +13.51% 146
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 2
South Coast - 1 £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
1 154 (3.95%) Confluence
2 95 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.38%) Apache
3 15 (0.38%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 247 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 193 (4.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.05%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 26 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
14 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 483 (12.38%) Azure
2 328 (8.41%) AWS
3 230 (5.90%) GCP
4 228 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 101 (2.59%) SaaS
6 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
7 94 (2.41%) GitHub
8 92 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
9 91 (2.33%) Microsoft 365
10 71 (1.82%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.21%) OCI
12 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.05%) Serverless
14 39 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
15 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (0.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
18 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.10%) Firewall
2 73 (1.87%) Network Security
3 45 (1.15%) VPN
4 34 (0.87%) DNS
5 27 (0.69%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.56%) LAN
7 22 (0.56%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
11 8 (0.21%) Broadband
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (4.85%) Power BI
2 76 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.72%) Metadata
4 67 (1.72%) SQL Server
5 46 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
6 42 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
7 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 24 (0.62%) Db2
11 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
11 23 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
12 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
12 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
12 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
16 14 (0.36%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 250 (6.41%) JIRA
2 105 (2.69%) Git
3 56 (1.44%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.38%) GitLab
6 15 (0.38%) Hudson
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
15 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,272 (32.62%) Social Skills
2 557 (14.28%) Analytical Skills
3 555 (14.23%) Banking
4 278 (7.13%) Public Sector
5 247 (6.33%) Organisational Skills
6 245 (6.28%) Legal
7 165 (4.23%) Retail
8 136 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
9 113 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 99 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
11 97 (2.49%) Local Government
12 83 (2.13%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.00%) Investment Banking
14 76 (1.95%) Financial Institution
15 74 (1.90%) Billing
16 73 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (1.41%) Marketing
18 54 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (1.38%) Telecoms
19 51 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 514 (13.18%) Analyst
2 419 (10.74%) Lead
3 358 (9.18%) Senior
4 325 (8.33%) Project Manager
5 304 (7.79%) Architect
6 276 (7.08%) Developer
7 267 (6.85%) Consultant
8 242 (6.21%) Business Analyst
9 164 (4.21%) Accountant
10 136 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.56%) IT Manager
11 100 (2.56%) Systems Accountant
12 97 (2.49%) Senior Manager
13 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
14 81 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 79 (2.03%) Finance Manager
16 75 (1.92%) Administrator
17 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
18 66 (1.69%) Software Engineer
19 63 (1.62%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.79%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.15%) REST
3 75 (1.92%) Middleware
4 66 (1.69%) Kafka
5 62 (1.59%) Spring Boot
6 61 (1.56%) Spring
7 60 (1.54%) .NET
8 54 (1.38%) React
9 38 (0.97%) OAuth
10 34 (0.87%) RESTful
11 33 (0.85%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) JSON
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 28 (0.72%) SAML
14 27 (0.69%) OpenID
14 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
15 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
16 20 (0.51%) HTML
16 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
16 20 (0.51%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 164 (4.21%) Onboarding
2 160 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 150 (3.85%) Cloud Native
4 145 (3.72%) Virtual Team
5 115 (2.95%) Management Information System
6 108 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
7 103 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 101 (2.59%) Podcast
8 101 (2.59%) Web Conferencing
9 63 (1.62%) Data Structures
10 60 (1.54%) Data Centre
11 54 (1.38%) Public Cloud
12 52 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
13 51 (1.31%) Security Posture
14 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
15 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
16 38 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
17 37 (0.95%) AI Agents
17 37 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 122 (3.13%) Windows
2 108 (2.77%) Linux
3 58 (1.49%) Unix
4 33 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.62%) Solaris
6 24 (0.62%) zOS
7 11 (0.28%) Android
7 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.26%) AIX
9 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
12 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.051%) CentOS
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 969 (24.85%) Stakeholder Management
2 718 (18.41%) Agile
3 547 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
4 530 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
5 520 (13.33%) Migration
6 517 (13.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 511 (13.10%) ERP
8 371 (9.51%) Decision-Making
9 362 (9.28%) CI/CD
10 360 (9.23%) AI
11 354 (9.08%) Change Management
12 352 (9.03%) DevOps
13 349 (8.95%) Project Management
14 310 (7.95%) Project Delivery
15 286 (7.33%) Roadmaps
16 279 (7.15%) Risk Management
17 276 (7.08%) User Acceptance Testing
18 273 (7.00%) Analytics
19 264 (6.77%) Validation
20 234 (6.00%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 328 (8.41%) SQL
2 324 (8.31%) Python
3 220 (5.64%) Java
4 77 (1.97%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) Bash
5 57 (1.46%) C#
6 53 (1.36%) JavaScript
7 38 (0.97%) PL/SQL
7 38 (0.97%) Shell Script
8 36 (0.92%) TypeScript
9 23 (0.59%) C++
9 23 (0.59%) Go
10 15 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 14 (0.36%) Bicep
12 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
13 12 (0.31%) ABAP
13 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 11 (0.28%) Scala
14 11 (0.28%) VBA
15 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 367 (9.41%) Security Cleared
2 269 (6.90%) Degree
3 225 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 157 (4.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 113 (2.90%) ACCA
6 109 (2.79%) CIMA
7 99 (2.54%) PMP
8 89 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 85 (2.18%) PMI Certification
10 75 (1.92%) CISSP
11 45 (1.15%) CISM
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.00%) AWS Certification
14 37 (0.95%) Azure Certification
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
17 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
20 20 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 228 (5.85%) Data Quality
2 178 (4.56%) PMO
3 132 (3.38%) QA
4 127 (3.26%) GDPR
5 53 (1.36%) NIST
6 51 (1.31%) GRC
7 49 (1.26%) SLA
8 40 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (0.95%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) COBIT
15 9 (0.23%) GAAP
16 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
17 7 (0.18%) NCSC
17 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 73 (1.87%) Active Directory
1 73 (1.87%) Docker
2 45 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (0.54%) RACF
4 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) vSphere
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) ACF2
13 2 (0.051%) KVM
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.051%) SRDF
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 178 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 123 (3.15%) Terraform
3 75 (1.92%) Ansible
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 32 (0.82%) Grafana
6 31 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.49%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 18 (0.46%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 12 (0.31%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Argo
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 5 (0.13%) Puppet
15 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 558 (14.31%) Microsoft
2 404 (10.36%) SAP
3 389 (9.97%) Oracle
4 177 (4.54%) ServiceNow
5 116 (2.97%) Google
6 83 (2.13%) IBM
7 78 (2.00%) Databricks
8 65 (1.67%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.56%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Sage
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco
12 36 (0.92%) Splunk
12 36 (0.92%) Workday
13 33 (0.85%) Ariba
14 31 (0.79%) IFS
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 18 (0.46%) Adobe