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 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,838 2,433 2,588
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.51% 16.64% 13.35%
As % of the General category 26.88% 27.73% 24.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,845 1,441 1,766
10th Percentile £310 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £518
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -2.99% -1.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 73 67
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £16.02
Median hourly rate £22.00 £29.00 £26.99
Median % change year-on-year -24.14% +7.45% -15.66%
75th Percentile £24.50 £65.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £40.00 £77.00 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.79 £29.23 £28.75
% change year-on-year -18.62% +1.67% +15.00%

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 10,559 8,773 10,783
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 57.72% 60.02% 55.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,499 4,969 6,763
10th Percentile £204 £210 £210
25th Percentile £363 £358 £375
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 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,142 534 901
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.40 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.01 £15.75
Median hourly rate £21.97 £26.06 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.70% -14.56% +37.64%
75th Percentile £45.00 £55.19 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £27.39 £33.00
% change year-on-year -13.91% -17.02% +32.00%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025. 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 +1 889 £475 -5.00% 615
South East -1 539 £508 -3.56% 770
Midlands -4 478 £475 -9.52% 294
North West +1 428 £450 -8.16% 330
Yorkshire 0 419 £500 -2.91% 230
Scotland +1 390 £488 +8.33% 117
West Midlands -7 301 £525 -4.55% 180
South West -3 286 £525 - 209
East Midlands +1 178 £420 +1.45% 114
East of England -1 166 £550 +4.76% 188
Wales +19 74 £400 -14.67% 49
Northern Ireland -1 60 £494 +51.92% 24
North East -7 42 £481 +1.32% 68
Channel Islands +2 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
1 129 (4.55%) Confluence
2 95 (3.35%) SharePoint
3 32 (1.13%) Apache
4 31 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 29 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
6 18 (0.63%) SAS
7 17 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 15 (0.53%) CMS
9 11 (0.39%) JBoss
10 9 (0.32%) IIS
11 8 (0.28%) TPMS
11 8 (0.28%) WebSphere
12 7 (0.25%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.25%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.25%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.18%) CICS
14 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.11%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 244 (8.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 150 (5.29%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (3.56%) Microsoft Project
4 89 (3.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.63%) Sketch
8 13 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.32%) InVision
10 7 (0.25%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.25%) Chatbot
11 6 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.21%) Trello
12 3 (0.11%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.11%) Snagit
13 2 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 108 (3.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.83%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.55%) Oracle EBS
4 43 (1.52%) Oracle Receivables
5 36 (1.27%) Oracle General Ledger
5 36 (1.27%) SAP FI
6 32 (1.13%) Oracle Cash Management
7 28 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
8 27 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
8 27 (0.95%) SAP CO
9 26 (0.92%) SAP FI/CO
10 23 (0.81%) Oracle EBS R12
11 21 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 20 (0.70%) SAP ERP
13 15 (0.53%) NetSuite
14 14 (0.49%) Workday HCM
15 13 (0.46%) Oracle AGIS
15 13 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
15 13 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 385 (13.57%) AWS
2 348 (12.26%) Azure
3 193 (6.80%) Power Platform
4 182 (6.41%) GCP
5 102 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
7 76 (2.68%) Serverless
8 65 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
9 64 (2.26%) GitHub
10 51 (1.80%) SaaS
11 50 (1.76%) OCI
12 43 (1.52%) Figma
13 42 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 41 (1.44%) Entra ID
15 38 (1.34%) OpenShift
16 36 (1.27%) Snowflake
17 33 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
18 31 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
19 29 (1.02%) Amazon S3
20 21 (0.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 61 (2.15%) Firewall
2 23 (0.81%) DNS
3 21 (0.74%) Network Security
3 21 (0.74%) WAN
3 21 (0.74%) Wireless
4 20 (0.70%) Skype
5 18 (0.63%) VPN
6 17 (0.60%) SSH
6 17 (0.60%) SSL
7 16 (0.56%) Kerberos
7 16 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 15 (0.53%) LAN
9 12 (0.42%) DHCP
10 10 (0.35%) Internet
11 9 (0.32%) HTTP
12 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (0.28%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.28%) SNMP
13 6 (0.21%) Unified Communications
13 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (6.41%) Power BI
2 74 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
4 70 (2.47%) NoSQL
5 56 (1.97%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.62%) Tableau
7 35 (1.23%) SQL Server
8 34 (1.20%) Big Data
9 32 (1.13%) Power Query
10 30 (1.06%) Metadata
11 26 (0.92%) Data Lake
12 25 (0.88%) Hadoop
12 25 (0.88%) MongoDB
12 25 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
13 21 (0.74%) BigQuery
14 20 (0.70%) MySQL
15 17 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
15 17 (0.60%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.56%) DB2
17 15 (0.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 251 (8.84%) JIRA
2 147 (5.18%) Jenkins
3 89 (3.14%) GitLab
4 74 (2.61%) Git
5 44 (1.55%) JUnit
6 36 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
7 32 (1.13%) Liquibase
8 30 (1.06%) Cucumber
9 29 (1.02%) Bitbucket
10 21 (0.74%) Selenium
11 13 (0.46%) Postman
12 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
12 11 (0.39%) Gradle
13 9 (0.32%) JMeter
13 9 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 8 (0.28%) Bitbucket Server
14 8 (0.28%) CA Release Automation
14 8 (0.28%) Hudson
14 8 (0.28%) PyCharm
15 7 (0.25%) Maven
General
1 1,058 (37.28%) Social Skills
2 521 (18.36%) Banking
3 430 (15.15%) Analytical Skills
4 335 (11.80%) Public Sector
5 210 (7.40%) Manufacturing
6 197 (6.94%) Telecoms
7 176 (6.20%) Marketing
8 141 (4.97%) Electronics
9 118 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
10 107 (3.77%) Financial Institution
11 94 (3.31%) Legal
12 88 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
13 60 (2.11%) Investment Banking
14 59 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
15 54 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
16 51 (1.80%) General Ledger
17 49 (1.73%) Retail
18 43 (1.52%) Billing
19 38 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 38 (1.34%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 474 (16.70%) Analyst
2 271 (9.55%) Project Manager
3 232 (8.17%) Senior
4 209 (7.36%) Developer
5 204 (7.19%) Consultant
6 183 (6.45%) Architect
7 180 (6.34%) Business Analyst
8 167 (5.88%) Lead
9 105 (3.70%) Data Analyst
10 84 (2.96%) Programme Manager
11 76 (2.68%) Solutions Architect
12 63 (2.22%) Accountant
13 58 (2.04%) IT Support
14 57 (2.01%) Senior Manager
15 56 (1.97%) Designer
15 56 (1.97%) Java Developer
16 54 (1.90%) IT Manager
17 52 (1.83%) Functional Consultant
17 52 (1.83%) SAP Consultant
17 52 (1.83%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.55%) REST
2 89 (3.14%) Spring
3 82 (2.89%) RESTful
4 76 (2.68%) Spring Boot
5 64 (2.26%) Oracle Fusion
6 59 (2.08%) Kafka
7 53 (1.87%) .NET
8 42 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
9 41 (1.44%) React
10 39 (1.37%) Node.js
11 35 (1.23%) SOAP
12 34 (1.20%) HTML
12 34 (1.20%) OAuth
13 30 (1.06%) CSS
14 29 (1.02%) AngularJS
14 29 (1.02%) JSON
15 25 (0.88%) JMS
16 22 (0.78%) Middleware
17 21 (0.74%) SAML
17 21 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 146 (5.14%) Onboarding
2 119 (4.19%) Product Ownership
3 95 (3.35%) Cloud Native
4 78 (2.75%) Data Centre
5 71 (2.50%) Public Cloud
6 62 (2.18%) Distributed Systems
7 61 (2.15%) Management Information System
8 54 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 52 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
10 49 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
11 39 (1.37%) Mobile App
12 34 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
13 33 (1.16%) Data Structures
14 31 (1.09%) CMDB
15 29 (1.02%) Virtual Team
16 25 (0.88%) Mainframe
17 24 (0.85%) NHS
17 24 (0.85%) PMI
18 20 (0.70%) Enterprise Software
19 19 (0.67%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 159 (5.60%) Linux
2 127 (4.47%) Windows
3 45 (1.59%) Unix
4 42 (1.48%) Mac OS
5 38 (1.34%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.13%) Android
7 17 (0.60%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.14%) VMS
11 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.070%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.070%) Windows 8
12 2 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.035%) MVS
13 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.035%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (24.03%) Agile
2 502 (17.69%) Stakeholder Management
3 496 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
4 351 (12.37%) Business Intelligence
5 347 (12.23%) Migration
6 331 (11.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 317 (11.17%) Project Management
8 313 (11.03%) DevOps
9 293 (10.32%) CI/CD
10 292 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 284 (10.01%) ERP
12 240 (8.46%) Change Management
13 237 (8.35%) Programme Management
14 216 (7.61%) Decision-Making
15 201 (7.08%) Project Delivery
16 199 (7.01%) Analytics
17 181 (6.38%) Roadmaps
18 175 (6.17%) Risk Management
19 167 (5.88%) ITIL
20 165 (5.81%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 332 (11.70%) SQL
2 312 (10.99%) Python
3 191 (6.73%) Java
4 68 (2.40%) PowerShell
5 50 (1.76%) JavaScript
6 48 (1.69%) Go
7 47 (1.66%) TypeScript
8 45 (1.59%) C#
9 30 (1.06%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.88%) Bash
10 25 (0.88%) PL/SQL
11 22 (0.78%) R
12 21 (0.74%) VBA
13 17 (0.60%) Groovy
14 15 (0.53%) Perl
15 10 (0.35%) ABAP
16 9 (0.32%) PHP
16 9 (0.32%) Ruby
17 8 (0.28%) COBOL
17 8 (0.28%) JCL
Qualifications
1 292 (10.29%) Degree
2 260 (9.16%) Security Cleared
3 174 (6.13%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.64%) Master's Degree
5 70 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 66 (2.33%) PMP
7 65 (2.29%) PMI Certification
8 62 (2.18%) AWS Certification
9 55 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
10 54 (1.90%) ACCA
11 52 (1.83%) CISSP
12 50 (1.76%) DV Cleared
13 47 (1.66%) CIMA
14 38 (1.34%) CISM
15 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
16 20 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 19 (0.67%) Azure Certification
18 14 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
19 12 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
19 12 (0.42%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (5.07%) PMO
2 128 (4.51%) QA
3 110 (3.88%) Data Quality
4 104 (3.66%) GDPR
5 53 (1.87%) NIST
5 53 (1.87%) SLA
6 52 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 49 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 44 (1.55%) PCI DSS
9 31 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 24 (0.85%) PSD2
11 23 (0.81%) ISO 20022
12 21 (0.74%) IFRS
13 15 (0.53%) GRC
14 14 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.46%) NCSC
16 12 (0.42%) COBIT
16 12 (0.42%) SEPA
17 10 (0.35%) P3O
18 9 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 127 (4.47%) Docker
2 102 (3.59%) Active Directory
3 25 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.39%) vSphere
6 8 (0.28%) GPFS
7 7 (0.25%) NFS
7 7 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.18%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) HDFS
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.11%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.11%) Firmware
11 3 (0.11%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.070%) ACF2
12 2 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.070%) RACF
Systems Management
1 157 (5.53%) Kubernetes
2 121 (4.26%) Terraform
3 95 (3.35%) Ansible
4 61 (2.15%) Grafana
5 54 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.85%) SCCM
7 17 (0.60%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
9 13 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.32%) vRealize
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.25%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.25%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.25%) Tivoli
14 6 (0.21%) Argo
15 5 (0.18%) CA Endevor
15 5 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 5 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 459 (16.17%) Microsoft
2 380 (13.39%) SAP
3 270 (9.51%) Oracle
4 145 (5.11%) ServiceNow
5 90 (3.17%) Splunk
6 74 (2.61%) Google
7 72 (2.54%) Cisco
8 50 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 43 (1.52%) IBM
10 38 (1.34%) VMware
11 37 (1.30%) Workday
12 34 (1.20%) Databricks
12 34 (1.20%) Dell
13 33 (1.16%) Adobe
13 33 (1.16%) HP
14 29 (1.02%) Apple
15 25 (0.88%) Citrix
16 22 (0.78%) IFS
17 21 (0.74%) Remedy
18 20 (0.70%) CyberArk