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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,900 2,605 2,672
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.76% 16.83% 15.11%
As % of the General category 26.32% 27.74% 27.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,313 1,728 1,568
10th Percentile £339 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -1.72% -3.10%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £536 £575
% change year-on-year +2.61% -6.78% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 61 105
10th Percentile £14.62 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.69 £15.48 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +26.92%
75th Percentile - £31.41 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £33.00
% change year-on-year +54.11% -13.56% +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 14,819 9,392 9,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.30% 60.68% 55.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,946 5,664 5,366
10th Percentile £262 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £594
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,231 914 896
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.61
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.96 £21.30 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.66% -39.14% +29.63%
75th Percentile £55.50 £42.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.43 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 1,335 £514 +10.72% 1,863
South East -2 738 £500 -2.72% 2,036
North West -1 641 £502 +11.44% 1,035
Yorkshire 0 615 £525 +5.00% 621
Midlands -3 605 £515 +8.42% 1,125
Scotland 0 553 £463 -7.50% 961
West Midlands -2 453 £525 +1.01% 693
South West -5 357 £525 -5.01% 929
East of England +2 207 £550 -3.51% 592
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +19.76% 430
North East -7 72 £538 +22.51% 220
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 414
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.69% 206
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 15
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 (3.62%) Confluence
2 94 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.49%) Apache
4 15 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 13 (0.33%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) Camunda
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) JBoss
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 259 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.82%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 3 (0.077%) 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
Business Applications
1 202 (5.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (0.92%) NetSuite
4 36 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
5 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
6 25 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 23 (0.59%) SAP FI
7 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
8 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
9 18 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
9 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
10 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
11 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
12 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
12 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
12 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 474 (12.15%) Azure
2 353 (9.05%) AWS
3 252 (6.46%) GCP
4 227 (5.82%) Power Platform
5 105 (2.69%) GitHub
6 102 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.51%) SaaS
8 96 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
10 76 (1.95%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
11 46 (1.18%) Serverless
11 46 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 45 (1.15%) OCI
13 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
14 36 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
16 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
17 28 (0.72%) Amazon S3
18 27 (0.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.05%) Firewall
2 78 (2.00%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.38%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.21%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco IOS
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.69%) Power BI
2 73 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
4 69 (1.77%) SQL Server
5 43 (1.10%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 34 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
9 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
11 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
11 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
14 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
15 14 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
15 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 223 (5.72%) JIRA
2 118 (3.03%) Git
3 63 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) GitLab
5 22 (0.56%) JUnit
6 18 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 13 (0.33%) Maven
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
10 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Hudson
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) Mockito
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,354 (34.72%) Social Skills
2 598 (15.33%) Banking
3 549 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.31%) Public Sector
5 283 (7.26%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.62%) Legal
7 163 (4.18%) Retail
8 148 (3.79%) Influencing Skills
9 101 (2.59%) Manufacturing
10 92 (2.36%) Local Government
11 87 (2.23%) General Ledger
12 86 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
13 80 (2.05%) Billing
14 79 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 72 (1.85%) Investment Banking
16 66 (1.69%) Marketing
17 65 (1.67%) Financial Institution
18 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
19 56 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
20 47 (1.21%) Law
Job Titles
1 488 (12.51%) Analyst
2 395 (10.13%) Lead
3 376 (9.64%) Senior
4 314 (8.05%) Developer
5 303 (7.77%) Architect
6 297 (7.62%) Project Manager
7 276 (7.08%) Consultant
8 227 (5.82%) Business Analyst
9 152 (3.90%) Accountant
10 144 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.56%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
13 95 (2.44%) Java Developer
14 90 (2.31%) Systems Accountant
15 87 (2.23%) Administrator
15 87 (2.23%) Senior Manager
16 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.74%) Programme Manager
19 64 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.79%) Terraform
2 145 (3.72%) Oracle Fusion
3 110 (2.82%) REST
4 80 (2.05%) Kafka
5 72 (1.85%) React
6 71 (1.82%) Spring Boot
7 69 (1.77%) Middleware
8 67 (1.72%) Spring
9 58 (1.49%) .NET
10 54 (1.38%) RESTful
11 49 (1.26%) OAuth
12 42 (1.08%) JSON
13 39 (1.00%) OpenID
14 32 (0.82%) Node.js
15 31 (0.79%) SAML
16 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 29 (0.74%) SOAP
17 28 (0.72%) HTML
17 28 (0.72%) XML
18 27 (0.69%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 170 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 167 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 160 (4.10%) Product Ownership
4 156 (4.00%) Virtual Team
5 126 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
6 121 (3.10%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.87%) Podcast
9 95 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
10 68 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.67%) Data Structures
12 64 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 59 (1.51%) AI Agents
14 56 (1.44%) Mainframe
15 50 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
16 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
17 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (1.21%) Public Cloud
18 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
19 40 (1.03%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.95%) Linux
2 110 (2.82%) Windows
3 61 (1.56%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.38%) 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 1,047 (26.85%) Stakeholder Management
2 723 (18.54%) Agile
3 537 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
3 537 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
4 494 (12.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 491 (12.59%) Migration
6 477 (12.23%) ERP
7 413 (10.59%) CI/CD
8 411 (10.54%) AI
9 378 (9.69%) Decision-Making
10 346 (8.87%) DevOps
11 345 (8.85%) Project Management
12 334 (8.56%) Change Management
13 313 (8.03%) Roadmaps
14 294 (7.54%) Project Delivery
15 289 (7.41%) Analytics
16 287 (7.36%) Risk Management
17 275 (7.05%) Validation
18 262 (6.72%) User Acceptance Testing
19 230 (5.90%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 353 (9.05%) SQL
2 351 (9.00%) Python
3 248 (6.36%) Java
4 79 (2.03%) PowerShell
5 78 (2.00%) JavaScript
6 65 (1.67%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 48 (1.23%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 22 (0.56%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
12 18 (0.46%) Scala
13 15 (0.38%) Perl
14 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 351 (9.00%) Security Cleared
2 251 (6.44%) Degree
3 214 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 182 (4.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (2.74%) ACCA
6 105 (2.69%) CIMA
7 96 (2.46%) PMP
8 87 (2.23%) DV Cleared
9 78 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 65 (1.67%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 41 (1.05%) CISM
14 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 31 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
16 29 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.59%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (6.54%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.49%) PMO
3 139 (3.56%) QA
4 94 (2.41%) GDPR
5 57 (1.46%) GRC
6 45 (1.15%) NIST
7 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.03%) SLA
9 34 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.79%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 8 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 76 (1.95%) Docker
2 70 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 51 (1.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) vSphere
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 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 211 (5.41%) Kubernetes
2 76 (1.95%) Ansible
3 38 (0.97%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.56%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) 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
1 588 (15.08%) Microsoft
2 427 (10.95%) SAP
3 373 (9.56%) Oracle
4 171 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 111 (2.85%) Google
6 96 (2.46%) IBM
7 84 (2.15%) Databricks
8 67 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 66 (1.69%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Ariba
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco
13 31 (0.79%) Sage
14 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
15 24 (0.62%) Snow
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
17 22 (0.56%) MuleSoft
18 19 (0.49%) Foundry
19 18 (0.46%) IFS