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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,874 2,281 2,552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.52% 16.69% 12.87%
As % of the General category 27.19% 27.41% 23.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,865 1,337 1,713
10th Percentile £313 £304 £300
25th Percentile £402 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -0.98% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £614 £614
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 64 94
10th Percentile £14.66 £17.54 £11.32
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £13.23
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -41.86%
75th Percentile £24.50 £56.26 £47.88
90th Percentile £50.00 £78.18 £57.83
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.57
% change year-on-year -18.97% +28.47% -9.71%

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 10,570 8,321 10,963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 57.10% 60.87% 55.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,544 4,700 6,746
10th Percentile £204 £213 £210
25th Percentile £363 £358 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,121 496 1,083
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.36 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.20 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.50 £26.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.87% +1.92% +15.56%
75th Percentile £44.94 £55.25 £56.45
90th Percentile £69.65 £71.25 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year -16.36% -2.65% +13.00%

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 20 January 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 20 January 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 20 January 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 +1 915 £475 -4.26% 925
South East -2 535 £503 -4.29% 1,681
Midlands -3 508 £475 -9.52% 641
North West +1 441 £450 -8.16% 396
Yorkshire 0 426 £500 -2.91% 389
Scotland 0 377 £500 +7.30% 193
West Midlands -6 307 £525 -4.55% 260
South West -6 287 £525 -1.41% 584
East Midlands +1 200 £420 -1.18% 370
East of England -3 171 £541 +3.10% 643
Wales +25 74 £413 -12.00% 235
Northern Ireland -1 54 £500 +53.85% 103
North East -4 48 £475 -1.30% 154
Channel Islands +1 1 - -
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
1 146 (5.08%) Confluence
2 101 (3.51%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 32 (1.11%) Apache
5 28 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 18 (0.63%) SAS
7 15 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.45%) CMS
9 11 (0.38%) JBoss
9 11 (0.38%) TPMS
10 9 (0.31%) IIS
11 8 (0.28%) WebSphere
12 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
13 6 (0.21%) CICS
14 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
14 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
14 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 238 (8.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (5.39%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (3.58%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (3.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.56%) Sketch
8 12 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.21%) Trello
11 5 (0.17%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.10%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.10%) Snagit
13 2 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.035%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 129 (4.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (1.91%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.43%) Oracle EBS
5 39 (1.36%) SAP FI
6 37 (1.29%) Oracle General Ledger
7 31 (1.08%) Oracle Cash Management
8 30 (1.04%) SAP CO
9 29 (1.01%) SAP FI/CO
10 28 (0.97%) Oracle Assets
11 26 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
11 26 (0.90%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 24 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
13 23 (0.80%) Oracle EBS R12
14 19 (0.66%) SAP ERP
15 16 (0.56%) SAP BRIM
15 16 (0.56%) SAP Hybris
15 16 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
16 15 (0.52%) Workday HCM
17 14 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 385 (13.40%) AWS
2 363 (12.63%) Azure
3 186 (6.47%) Power Platform
4 170 (5.92%) GCP
5 112 (3.90%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
7 75 (2.61%) Serverless
8 68 (2.37%) GitHub
9 60 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
10 58 (2.02%) SaaS
11 46 (1.60%) Entra ID
12 45 (1.57%) OCI
13 39 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 39 (1.36%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.32%) Figma
14 38 (1.32%) Snowflake
15 37 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
16 31 (1.08%) Amazon S3
17 29 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
18 24 (0.84%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 61 (2.12%) Firewall
2 32 (1.11%) WAN
3 24 (0.84%) Network Security
4 22 (0.77%) Wireless
5 21 (0.73%) Skype
6 19 (0.66%) DNS
6 19 (0.66%) VPN
7 18 (0.63%) SSH
8 17 (0.59%) LAN
8 17 (0.59%) SSL
9 16 (0.56%) SD-WAN
10 14 (0.49%) Kerberos
11 12 (0.42%) DHCP
12 11 (0.38%) SNMP
12 11 (0.38%) TCP/IP
13 10 (0.35%) Internet
14 9 (0.31%) HTTP
15 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
16 6 (0.21%) Unified Communications
16 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (6.12%) Power BI
2 75 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 68 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
4 67 (2.33%) NoSQL
5 51 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.32%) Tableau
7 32 (1.11%) SQL Server
8 29 (1.01%) Big Data
9 28 (0.97%) Metadata
10 25 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 25 (0.87%) Power Query
11 24 (0.84%) Data Lake
12 21 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 20 (0.70%) DynamoDB
13 20 (0.70%) Hadoop
14 18 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
14 18 (0.63%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.56%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.52%) MySQL
17 14 (0.49%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 272 (9.46%) JIRA
2 145 (5.05%) Jenkins
3 85 (2.96%) GitLab
4 72 (2.51%) Git
5 43 (1.50%) JUnit
6 36 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
7 34 (1.18%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.90%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.84%) Liquibase
9 24 (0.84%) Selenium
10 15 (0.52%) Gradle
11 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
11 11 (0.38%) Postman
12 10 (0.35%) JMeter
12 10 (0.35%) Maven
12 10 (0.35%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.28%) Bitbucket Server
13 8 (0.28%) CA Release Automation
13 8 (0.28%) Hudson
13 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,071 (37.27%) Social Skills
2 525 (18.27%) Banking
3 398 (13.85%) Analytical Skills
4 336 (11.69%) Public Sector
5 195 (6.78%) Manufacturing
6 187 (6.51%) Telecoms
7 166 (5.78%) Marketing
8 128 (4.45%) Electronics
9 110 (3.83%) Organisational Skills
10 100 (3.48%) Financial Institution
11 98 (3.41%) Legal
12 91 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
13 58 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
14 56 (1.95%) General Ledger
15 54 (1.88%) Investment Banking
16 51 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
16 51 (1.77%) Retail
17 45 (1.57%) Billing
17 45 (1.57%) Local Government
18 34 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 457 (15.90%) Analyst
2 279 (9.71%) Project Manager
3 225 (7.83%) Architect
4 220 (7.65%) Consultant
5 214 (7.45%) Senior
6 203 (7.06%) Developer
7 186 (6.47%) Business Analyst
8 181 (6.30%) Lead
9 103 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 92 (3.20%) Data Analyst
11 85 (2.96%) Programme Manager
12 59 (2.05%) Java Developer
12 59 (2.05%) SAP Consultant
13 54 (1.88%) Accountant
14 53 (1.84%) Functional Consultant
14 53 (1.84%) Senior Manager
15 52 (1.81%) Designer
16 50 (1.74%) Administrator
16 50 (1.74%) IT Manager
17 49 (1.70%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (4.56%) REST
2 91 (3.17%) Spring
3 81 (2.82%) Spring Boot
4 75 (2.61%) RESTful
5 65 (2.26%) Oracle Fusion
6 61 (2.12%) Kafka
7 51 (1.77%) .NET
8 44 (1.53%) React
9 37 (1.29%) Node.js
10 35 (1.22%) SOAP
11 33 (1.15%) Elastic Stack
11 33 (1.15%) Middleware
11 33 (1.15%) OAuth
12 30 (1.04%) AngularJS
13 28 (0.97%) HTML
14 27 (0.94%) JSON
15 24 (0.84%) CSS
16 23 (0.80%) JMS
17 22 (0.77%) XML
18 20 (0.70%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 149 (5.18%) Onboarding
2 124 (4.31%) Product Ownership
3 96 (3.34%) Cloud Native
4 82 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 76 (2.64%) Public Cloud
6 67 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
7 63 (2.19%) Management Information System
8 55 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
9 50 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
9 50 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
10 37 (1.29%) Mobile App
11 33 (1.15%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
13 30 (1.04%) CMDB
13 30 (1.04%) PMI
14 28 (0.97%) Virtual Team
15 23 (0.80%) Mainframe
16 22 (0.77%) NHS
17 21 (0.73%) SWIFT Messaging Network
18 20 (0.70%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 141 (4.91%) Linux
2 125 (4.35%) Windows
3 43 (1.50%) Mac OS
4 41 (1.43%) Unix
5 39 (1.36%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.11%) Android
7 19 (0.66%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.38%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.10%) VMS
10 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.070%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.070%) Windows 8
11 2 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.035%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 680 (23.66%) Agile
2 537 (18.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 479 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
4 354 (12.32%) Migration
5 350 (12.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 330 (11.48%) Business Intelligence
7 329 (11.45%) Project Management
8 313 (10.89%) DevOps
9 296 (10.30%) ERP
10 294 (10.23%) CI/CD
11 288 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 243 (8.46%) Change Management
13 228 (7.93%) Programme Management
14 214 (7.45%) Decision-Making
15 208 (7.24%) Analytics
15 208 (7.24%) Project Delivery
16 187 (6.51%) Roadmaps
17 181 (6.30%) Risk Management
18 177 (6.16%) User Acceptance Testing
19 170 (5.92%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 332 (11.55%) SQL
2 286 (9.95%) Python
3 194 (6.75%) Java
4 73 (2.54%) PowerShell
5 44 (1.53%) JavaScript
6 43 (1.50%) TypeScript
7 41 (1.43%) C#
8 39 (1.36%) Go
9 25 (0.87%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.80%) Bash
10 23 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 21 (0.73%) R
12 18 (0.63%) VBA
13 17 (0.59%) Groovy
14 14 (0.49%) Perl
15 10 (0.35%) Rust
16 9 (0.31%) ABAP
16 9 (0.31%) Ruby
17 8 (0.28%) C++
17 8 (0.28%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 302 (10.51%) Degree
2 260 (9.05%) Security Cleared
3 176 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 74 (2.57%) Master's Degree
5 69 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 69 (2.40%) PMI Certification
5 69 (2.40%) PMP
6 66 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
7 58 (2.02%) ACCA
8 54 (1.88%) AWS Certification
9 52 (1.81%) CIMA
10 50 (1.74%) DV Cleared
11 49 (1.70%) CISSP
12 39 (1.36%) CISM
13 33 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
14 17 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
15 16 (0.56%) Azure Certification
16 15 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.52%) MBA
17 14 (0.49%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (4.94%) PMO
2 127 (4.42%) QA
3 111 (3.86%) Data Quality
4 101 (3.51%) GDPR
5 54 (1.88%) NIST
6 51 (1.77%) SLA
7 48 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 47 (1.64%) PCI DSS
9 44 (1.53%) Accessibility
10 31 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 28 (0.97%) PSD2
12 27 (0.94%) ISO 20022
13 23 (0.80%) IFRS
14 16 (0.56%) GRC
14 16 (0.56%) SEPA
15 14 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.45%) Basel III
17 12 (0.42%) P3O
18 11 (0.38%) COBIT
18 11 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 129 (4.49%) Docker
2 99 (3.44%) Active Directory
3 25 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
5 12 (0.42%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
7 8 (0.28%) NFS
7 8 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) Firmware
10 4 (0.14%) HDFS
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.10%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.070%) ACF2
12 2 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.070%) RACF
12 2 (0.070%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 150 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 105 (3.65%) Terraform
3 83 (2.89%) Ansible
4 57 (1.98%) Grafana
5 51 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.84%) SCCM
7 17 (0.59%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.35%) vRealize
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) Kiali
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
15 4 (0.14%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 450 (15.66%) Microsoft
2 390 (13.57%) SAP
3 267 (9.29%) Oracle
4 140 (4.87%) ServiceNow
5 87 (3.03%) Splunk
6 81 (2.82%) Cisco
7 70 (2.44%) Google
8 46 (1.60%) IBM
9 45 (1.57%) Salesforce
10 40 (1.39%) Workday
11 38 (1.32%) VMware
12 34 (1.18%) Databricks
12 34 (1.18%) Dell
12 34 (1.18%) HP
13 29 (1.01%) Apple
14 26 (0.90%) Adobe
15 24 (0.84%) Citrix
16 20 (0.70%) Remedy
17 19 (0.66%) IFS
17 19 (0.66%) Sage