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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,887 2,704 2,629
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.12% 17.64% 14.45%
As % of the General category 27.44% 28.82% 26.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,338 1,795 1,603
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £540 £575
% change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 71 151
10th Percentile £15.18 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.21 £21.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%
75th Percentile - £56.50 £42.13
90th Percentile £76.60 £75.00 £70.18
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 14,167 9,382 9,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.45% 61.22% 53.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,845 5,665 5,611
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 £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £682 £656 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,949 845 1,123
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.03 £13.77
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.31 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.53% -41.92% +52.48%
75th Percentile £58.00 £48.71 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +25.25% -32.93% +36.36%

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 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 20 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 20 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 1,336 £500 +6.38% 1,419
South East -4 734 £505 -3.81% 1,484
North West 0 693 £500 +10.56% 823
Midlands 0 628 £500 +11.11% 651
Yorkshire 0 567 £514 +6.42% 415
Scotland 0 505 £475 -2.86% 638
West Midlands +1 473 £500 - 388
South West -4 381 £545 -1.44% 675
East of England +5 206 £525 -8.70% 475
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +21.21% 262
North East -8 69 £500 +11.11% 203
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 -1.30% 285
Wales -1 61 £525 +13.51% 144
Channel Islands +2 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 (3.96%) Confluence
2 93 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.39%) Apache
3 15 (0.39%) 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
1 246 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.91%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.93%) 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
1 192 (4.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 40 (1.03%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 27 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
12 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
13 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
14 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 482 (12.40%) Azure
2 327 (8.41%) AWS
3 228 (5.87%) GCP
4 226 (5.81%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
7 94 (2.42%) GitHub
8 90 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
8 90 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
9 71 (1.83%) Entra ID
10 49 (1.26%) OCI
11 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.05%) Serverless
13 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
14 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
15 29 (0.75%) GitHub Actions
16 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
17 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
18 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.08%) Firewall
2 73 (1.88%) Network Security
3 44 (1.13%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 27 (0.69%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.57%) LAN
7 22 (0.57%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) Broadband
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
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
1 187 (4.81%) Power BI
2 76 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.80%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.72%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.67%) Metadata
6 47 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
8 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.87%) Tableau
10 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
17 14 (0.36%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 249 (6.41%) JIRA
2 104 (2.68%) Git
3 54 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) GitLab
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
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%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 1,277 (32.85%) Social Skills
2 552 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
3 551 (14.18%) Banking
4 276 (7.10%) Public Sector
5 244 (6.28%) Legal
5 244 (6.28%) Organisational Skills
6 165 (4.24%) Retail
7 136 (3.50%) Influencing Skills
8 112 (2.88%) Manufacturing
9 99 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
10 95 (2.44%) Local Government
11 84 (2.16%) General Ledger
12 77 (1.98%) Financial Institution
13 76 (1.96%) Investment Banking
14 75 (1.93%) Billing
15 73 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (1.41%) Marketing
18 54 (1.39%) Telecoms
19 51 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 506 (13.02%) Analyst
2 417 (10.73%) Lead
3 357 (9.18%) Senior
4 327 (8.41%) Project Manager
5 308 (7.92%) Architect
6 277 (7.13%) Developer
7 266 (6.84%) Consultant
8 240 (6.17%) Business Analyst
9 163 (4.19%) Accountant
10 137 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.60%) IT Manager
12 100 (2.57%) Systems Accountant
13 98 (2.52%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.32%) Financial Analyst
15 82 (2.11%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.98%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.90%) Administrator
18 71 (1.83%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.67%) Software Engineer
20 62 (1.60%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 153 (3.94%) Oracle Fusion
2 120 (3.09%) Terraform
3 85 (2.19%) REST
4 75 (1.93%) Middleware
5 67 (1.72%) Kafka
6 63 (1.62%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.60%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 54 (1.39%) React
10 38 (0.98%) OAuth
11 35 (0.90%) RESTful
12 33 (0.85%) Node.js
13 30 (0.77%) JSON
13 30 (0.77%) XML
14 29 (0.75%) SAML
15 27 (0.69%) OpenID
15 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
18 20 (0.51%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 164 (4.22%) Onboarding
2 160 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 145 (3.73%) Cloud Native
3 145 (3.73%) Virtual Team
4 114 (2.93%) Management Information System
5 109 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
6 102 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (2.60%) Podcast
7 101 (2.60%) Web Conferencing
8 63 (1.62%) Data Structures
9 60 (1.54%) Data Centre
10 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
11 52 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
12 50 (1.29%) Security Posture
13 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
14 43 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 38 (0.98%) CMDB
15 38 (0.98%) Mobile App
15 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (0.95%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 120 (3.09%) Windows
2 106 (2.73%) Linux
3 58 (1.49%) Unix
4 32 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (0.80%) 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
1 972 (25.01%) Stakeholder Management
2 714 (18.37%) Agile
3 541 (13.92%) Continuous Improvement
4 526 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
5 518 (13.33%) Migration
6 515 (13.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 507 (13.04%) ERP
8 368 (9.47%) Decision-Making
9 359 (9.24%) CI/CD
10 355 (9.13%) AI
11 354 (9.11%) Change Management
12 352 (9.06%) Project Management
13 348 (8.95%) DevOps
14 307 (7.90%) Project Delivery
15 288 (7.41%) Roadmaps
16 277 (7.13%) Risk Management
17 276 (7.10%) User Acceptance Testing
18 273 (7.02%) Analytics
19 263 (6.77%) Validation
20 233 (5.99%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 327 (8.41%) SQL
2 321 (8.26%) Python
3 221 (5.69%) Java
4 75 (1.93%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 55 (1.41%) Bash
7 54 (1.39%) JavaScript
8 38 (0.98%) PL/SQL
8 38 (0.98%) Shell Script
9 36 (0.93%) TypeScript
10 23 (0.59%) C++
11 22 (0.57%) Go
12 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 14 (0.36%) Bicep
14 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 11 (0.28%) Scala
17 10 (0.26%) VBA
18 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 367 (9.44%) Security Cleared
2 268 (6.89%) Degree
3 225 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 159 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.88%) ACCA
6 108 (2.78%) CIMA
7 101 (2.60%) PMP
8 89 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.24%) PMI Certification
10 74 (1.90%) CISSP
11 45 (1.16%) CISM
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 38 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 36 (0.93%) 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 (5.87%) Data Quality
2 177 (4.55%) PMO
3 130 (3.34%) QA
4 125 (3.22%) GDPR
5 52 (1.34%) NIST
6 51 (1.31%) GRC
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 40 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (0.93%) 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 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
2 71 (1.83%) Docker
3 45 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) KVM
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) IAG
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 176 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.90%) Ansible
3 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Grafana
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
6 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
7 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.39%) SCCM
9 12 (0.31%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Argo
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Puppet
14 5 (0.13%) VxRail
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 557 (14.33%) Microsoft
2 404 (10.39%) SAP
3 394 (10.14%) Oracle
4 175 (4.50%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.91%) Google
6 83 (2.14%) IBM
7 78 (2.01%) Databricks
8 64 (1.65%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.57%) VMware
10 45 (1.16%) Cisco
10 45 (1.16%) Sage
11 38 (0.98%) Workday
12 35 (0.90%) Splunk
13 33 (0.85%) Ariba
14 30 (0.77%) IFS
15 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) Adobe