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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,868 2,584 2,719
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.33% 17.39% 13.67%
As % of the General category 27.92% 28.65% 25.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 1,686 1,663
10th Percentile £344 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -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 198 75 179
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.78 £13.49
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.98 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +6.25%
75th Percentile £50.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%

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 13,852 9,019 10,673
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.33% 60.71% 53.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,773 5,447 6,079
10th Percentile £270 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.05% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,744 795 1,427
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £15.62
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% -35.71% +34.62%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +29.41% -27.14% +14.75%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 1,306 £500 +5.26% 780
South East -1 734 £503 -4.29% 837
North West +2 689 £492 +9.33% 411
Midlands +1 644 £500 +11.11% 429
Yorkshire 0 568 £525 +7.69% 272
Scotland 0 496 £475 -1.04% 169
West Midlands 0 494 £500 +4.17% 233
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 277
East of England +7 209 £528 -4.09% 206
East Midlands -2 144 £500 +19.05% 194
Wales +3 84 £525 +18.31% 65
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +8.33% 57
North East -22 50 £500 +13.96% 104
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2
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
1 150 (3.88%) Confluence
2 100 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.34%) CMS
7 12 (0.31%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
9 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
11 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
14 2 (0.052%) JBoss
14 2 (0.052%) Mule
14 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
14 2 (0.052%) nginx
Applications
1 237 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 105 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 193 (4.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
6 34 (0.88%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
8 21 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
10 19 (0.49%) SAP GRC
11 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
13 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) NEC Housing
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
16 10 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 485 (12.54%) Azure
2 332 (8.58%) AWS
3 225 (5.82%) Power Platform
4 212 (5.48%) GCP
5 105 (2.71%) SaaS
6 96 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
8 87 (2.25%) GitHub
9 83 (2.15%) Dynamics 365
10 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
13 40 (1.03%) OCI
13 40 (1.03%) Serverless
14 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
15 25 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 25 (0.65%) Power Automate
16 23 (0.59%) Amazon S3
16 23 (0.59%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.22%) Firewall
2 65 (1.68%) Network Security
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 40 (1.03%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 25 (0.65%) SSL
6 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 15 (0.39%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
13 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.16%) HTTP
13 6 (0.16%) Wireless
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.78%) Power BI
2 79 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.91%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.78%) Metadata
5 63 (1.63%) SQL Server
6 56 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
7 52 (1.34%) Oracle Reports
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
8 38 (0.98%) Tableau
9 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
10 26 (0.67%) NoSQL
11 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 20 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 259 (6.70%) JIRA
2 91 (2.35%) Git
3 62 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
6 17 (0.44%) GitLab
7 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,228 (31.75%) Social Skills
2 536 (13.86%) Analytical Skills
3 531 (13.73%) Banking
4 283 (7.32%) Public Sector
5 207 (5.35%) Legal
6 192 (4.96%) Organisational Skills
7 140 (3.62%) Retail
8 120 (3.10%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 106 (2.74%) Local Government
11 104 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 80 (2.07%) Investment Banking
14 78 (2.02%) General Ledger
15 71 (1.84%) Billing
16 63 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 58 (1.50%) Marketing
18 53 (1.37%) Telecoms
19 48 (1.24%) Aerospace
19 48 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 539 (13.93%) Analyst
2 397 (10.26%) Lead
3 355 (9.18%) Senior
4 335 (8.66%) Project Manager
5 317 (8.20%) Architect
6 291 (7.52%) Developer
7 251 (6.49%) Business Analyst
8 241 (6.23%) Consultant
9 174 (4.50%) Accountant
10 132 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.77%) Systems Accountant
12 104 (2.69%) IT Manager
12 104 (2.69%) Senior Manager
13 89 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
14 85 (2.20%) Java Developer
14 85 (2.20%) Programme Manager
15 70 (1.81%) Finance Manager
16 67 (1.73%) Data Analyst
17 66 (1.71%) Administrator
18 63 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.49%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.17%) REST
3 81 (2.09%) Middleware
4 70 (1.81%) Spring Boot
5 69 (1.78%) Kafka
6 68 (1.76%) Spring
7 59 (1.53%) .NET
8 58 (1.50%) React
9 41 (1.06%) RESTful
10 36 (0.93%) OAuth
11 33 (0.85%) JSON
12 31 (0.80%) Node.js
13 29 (0.75%) XML
14 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
15 25 (0.65%) OpenID
16 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
17 23 (0.59%) Redux
17 23 (0.59%) SAML
18 20 (0.52%) AngularJS
19 19 (0.49%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 155 (4.01%) Product Ownership
2 152 (3.93%) Onboarding
3 147 (3.80%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 109 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
6 105 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
7 103 (2.66%) Virtual Team
8 68 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 66 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 58 (1.50%) Public Cloud
11 56 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
12 55 (1.42%) Podcast
13 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
15 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 35 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 33 (0.85%) AI Agents
18 32 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
19 30 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.18%) Windows
2 109 (2.82%) Linux
3 64 (1.65%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) 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 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 893 (23.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 711 (18.38%) Agile
3 554 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
4 541 (13.99%) Continuous Improvement
5 537 (13.88%) Migration
6 521 (13.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 498 (12.87%) ERP
8 380 (9.82%) Project Management
9 363 (9.38%) DevOps
10 357 (9.23%) Decision-Making
11 351 (9.07%) Change Management
12 348 (9.00%) CI/CD
13 322 (8.32%) AI
14 320 (8.27%) Project Delivery
15 290 (7.50%) Roadmaps
16 282 (7.29%) User Acceptance Testing
17 271 (7.01%) Validation
18 261 (6.75%) Risk Management
19 246 (6.36%) Analytics
20 229 (5.92%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 342 (8.84%) SQL
2 306 (7.91%) Python
3 226 (5.84%) Java
4 75 (1.94%) PowerShell
5 58 (1.50%) C#
6 47 (1.22%) JavaScript
7 45 (1.16%) Bash
8 39 (1.01%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.65%) Go
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
14 13 (0.34%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
16 10 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 362 (9.36%) Security Cleared
2 293 (7.57%) Degree
3 227 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 128 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 120 (3.10%) ACCA
6 116 (3.00%) CIMA
7 109 (2.82%) PMP
8 95 (2.46%) PMI Certification
9 73 (1.89%) CISSP
10 69 (1.78%) DV Cleared
11 43 (1.11%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 35 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
14 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 32 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
17 25 (0.65%) Master's Degree
18 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
20 18 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 211 (5.46%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.52%) PMO
3 145 (3.75%) QA
4 139 (3.59%) GDPR
5 49 (1.27%) NIST
6 47 (1.22%) SLA
7 44 (1.14%) GRC
8 37 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (0.93%) IFRS
10 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
12 26 (0.67%) PCI DSS
13 14 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.31%) GAAP
16 10 (0.26%) EMIR
17 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
18 8 (0.21%) NCSC
18 8 (0.21%) WCAG
19 7 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 84 (2.17%) Docker
2 78 (2.02%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.16%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) KVM
13 3 (0.078%) ACF2
14 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 2 (0.052%) zsh
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 170 (4.40%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.79%) Terraform
3 79 (2.04%) Ansible
4 35 (0.90%) Grafana
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.70%) Prometheus
7 26 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) SCCM
9 14 (0.36%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
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 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 501 (12.95%) Microsoft
2 385 (9.95%) SAP
3 367 (9.49%) Oracle
4 161 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 106 (2.74%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 75 (1.94%) Databricks
8 64 (1.65%) VMware
9 54 (1.40%) Sage
10 49 (1.27%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.11%) Cisco
12 41 (1.06%) Splunk
13 34 (0.88%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Ariba
15 28 (0.72%) Workday
16 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 19 (0.49%) Adobe