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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,889 2,638 2,688
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.75% 16.81% 15.35%
As % of the General category 26.11% 27.70% 27.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,279 1,757 1,560
10th Percentile £339 £308 £302
25th Percentile £413 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.52% -6.70% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 69 100
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £15.50 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +22.74%
75th Percentile - £30.25 £55.06
90th Percentile £72.50 £58.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.52 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.74% -16.61% +28.35%

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 14,892 9,522 9,841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.64% 60.68% 56.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,909 5,751 5,354
10th Percentile £258 £209 £205
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £598 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,303 945 839
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.29 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.94 £15.56 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.50 £21.39 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.24% -35.18% +25.71%
75th Percentile £54.11 £42.25 £60.56
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.26 £25.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year +12.68% -28.36% +27.27%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 1,347 £514 +9.36% 2,370
South East -1 741 £500 -2.72% 2,470
North West -2 643 £506 +12.44% 1,267
Yorkshire +1 625 £517 +3.36% 798
Midlands -3 614 £520 +9.47% 1,376
Scotland 0 542 £463 -7.04% 1,809
West Midlands -2 458 £518 -0.43% 823
South West -6 344 £538 -2.27% 1,173
East of England +2 204 £550 -4.35% 821
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 553
North East -9 72 £500 +13.96% 325
Wales -1 62 £525 +20.00% 559
Northern Ireland 0 60 £510 -2.86% 593
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 18
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
1 141 (3.63%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.64%) Apache
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) SAS
5 11 (0.28%) CMS
5 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
6 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
8 6 (0.15%) CICS
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
9 4 (0.10%) nginx
10 3 (0.077%) JBoss
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
10 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 260 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 211 (5.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 34 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
5 31 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
6 30 (0.77%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.64%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.51%) Workday HCM
12 16 (0.41%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
14 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
14 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 476 (12.24%) Azure
2 357 (9.18%) AWS
3 257 (6.61%) GCP
4 224 (5.76%) Power Platform
5 110 (2.83%) GitHub
6 103 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
7 100 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
8 97 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 93 (2.39%) SaaS
10 77 (1.98%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.23%) Serverless
12 47 (1.21%) Snowflake
13 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
14 42 (1.08%) OCI
14 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
15 38 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 32 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (0.75%) Anthropic Claude
18 29 (0.75%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.11%) Firewall
1 82 (2.11%) Network Security
2 41 (1.05%) VPN
3 27 (0.69%) DNS
4 21 (0.54%) SSL
5 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.49%) WAN
7 17 (0.44%) Broadband
8 15 (0.39%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 11 (0.28%) BIG-IP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 8 (0.21%) VSAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.68%) Power BI
2 75 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) SQL Server
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
4 69 (1.77%) Relational Database
5 45 (1.16%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.87%) Tableau
8 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.75%) Db2
10 26 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
11 21 (0.54%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.41%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.39%) Data Vault
15 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 220 (5.66%) JIRA
2 120 (3.09%) Git
3 68 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.77%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) JUnit
6 19 (0.49%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,362 (35.02%) Social Skills
2 612 (15.74%) Banking
3 544 (13.99%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.38%) Organisational Skills
5 279 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 254 (6.53%) Legal
7 162 (4.17%) Retail
8 145 (3.73%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.44%) Billing
11 91 (2.34%) General Ledger
12 90 (2.31%) Local Government
13 81 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
13 81 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 72 (1.85%) Investment Banking
15 68 (1.75%) Marketing
16 66 (1.70%) Financial Institution
17 60 (1.54%) Telecoms
18 58 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 44 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 480 (12.34%) Analyst
2 394 (10.13%) Lead
3 389 (10.00%) Senior
4 305 (7.84%) Developer
5 302 (7.77%) Architect
6 290 (7.46%) Project Manager
7 264 (6.79%) Consultant
8 227 (5.84%) Business Analyst
9 149 (3.83%) Accountant
10 146 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.52%) IT Manager
12 94 (2.42%) Administrator
13 93 (2.39%) Java Developer
14 92 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
15 89 (2.29%) Systems Accountant
16 87 (2.24%) Senior Manager
17 82 (2.11%) Finance Manager
18 75 (1.93%) Data Analyst
19 73 (1.88%) Programme Manager
20 67 (1.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.83%) Terraform
2 147 (3.78%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.03%) REST
4 79 (2.03%) Kafka
5 75 (1.93%) React
6 72 (1.85%) Middleware
7 71 (1.83%) Spring Boot
8 65 (1.67%) Spring
9 60 (1.54%) .NET
10 52 (1.34%) RESTful
11 46 (1.18%) OAuth
12 45 (1.16%) JSON
13 35 (0.90%) OpenID
14 32 (0.82%) Node.js
14 32 (0.82%) SAP Fiori
15 31 (0.80%) HTML
16 30 (0.77%) SOAP
16 30 (0.77%) XML
17 28 (0.72%) AngularJS
17 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 179 (4.60%) Onboarding
2 173 (4.45%) Cloud Native
3 161 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.09%) Virtual Team
5 128 (3.29%) Data Protection Act
6 125 (3.21%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.91%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 91 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.75%) Data Structures
12 66 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 66 (1.70%) Data Centre
13 55 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
14 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
15 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
16 49 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
18 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 116 (2.98%) Linux
2 107 (2.75%) Windows
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 34 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 27 (0.69%) Windows Server
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 17 (0.44%) Android
9 16 (0.41%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,074 (27.62%) Stakeholder Management
2 740 (19.03%) Agile
3 540 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
3 540 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
4 495 (12.73%) Migration
5 487 (12.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 462 (11.88%) ERP
7 427 (10.98%) CI/CD
8 426 (10.95%) AI
9 383 (9.85%) Decision-Making
10 350 (9.00%) DevOps
11 347 (8.92%) Project Management
12 332 (8.54%) Change Management
13 320 (8.23%) Roadmaps
14 300 (7.71%) Project Delivery
15 290 (7.46%) Analytics
16 285 (7.33%) Validation
17 283 (7.28%) Risk Management
18 274 (7.05%) User Acceptance Testing
19 226 (5.81%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 362 (9.31%) Python
2 356 (9.15%) SQL
3 250 (6.43%) Java
4 83 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 77 (1.98%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.70%) C#
7 62 (1.59%) Bash
8 51 (1.31%) TypeScript
9 38 (0.98%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 18 (0.46%) Bicep
15 16 (0.41%) Perl
16 14 (0.36%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 347 (8.92%) Security Cleared
2 245 (6.30%) Degree
3 212 (5.45%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (2.60%) ACCA
6 99 (2.55%) CIMA
7 94 (2.42%) PMP
8 90 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 80 (2.06%) PMI Certification
10 61 (1.57%) CISSP
11 43 (1.11%) AWS Certification
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.00%) Azure Certification
14 38 (0.98%) CISM
15 31 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
17 27 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.59%) CCSP
20 22 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 257 (6.61%) Data Quality
2 181 (4.65%) PMO
3 139 (3.57%) QA
4 87 (2.24%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 45 (1.16%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 29 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.72%) IFRS
10 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 10 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.26%) COBIT
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
14 9 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 79 (2.03%) Docker
2 69 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.051%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 214 (5.50%) Kubernetes
2 78 (2.01%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) Kibana
16 4 (0.10%) logstash
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 592 (15.22%) Microsoft
2 446 (11.47%) SAP
3 364 (9.36%) Oracle
4 164 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.91%) Google
6 96 (2.47%) IBM
7 84 (2.16%) Databricks
8 68 (1.75%) VMware
9 66 (1.70%) Salesforce
10 49 (1.26%) Ariba
11 48 (1.23%) Splunk
12 46 (1.18%) Workday
13 42 (1.08%) Cisco
14 30 (0.77%) Sage
15 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.62%) Adobe
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 17 (0.44%) Dynatrace
19 17 (0.44%) Sybase