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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,916 2,678 2,686
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.92% 17.31% 14.96%
As % of the General category 26.72% 28.38% 27.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,350 1,768 1,589
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.37% -3.41% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 61 124
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.46 £13.98
25th Percentile £20.28 £15.50 £20.56
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -22.91% +21.52%
75th Percentile - £33.75 £53.19
90th Percentile £75.12 £73.75 £70.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.89 £34.25
% change year-on-year +47.10% -12.74% +33.22%

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 14,656 9,436 9,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.09% 60.98% 54.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,980 5,668 5,463
10th Percentile £263 £213 £210
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 £684 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,130 899 972
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.25% -42.96% +44.23%
75th Percentile £56.00 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.65 £71.48
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +19.28% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 1,345 £507 +9.62% 1,275
South East -2 743 £500 -3.38% 1,557
North West -1 673 £500 +11.11% 692
Midlands -1 614 £500 +6.61% 706
Yorkshire 0 590 £514 +5.17% 428
Scotland 0 539 £463 -5.42% 652
West Midlands 0 460 £514 +0.29% 432
South West -7 351 £550 -4.35% 693
East of England +5 222 £555 -0.22% 483
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.05% 274
North East -9 75 £488 +11.43% 171
Northern Ireland -1 66 £510 +4.62% 188
Wales 0 61 £525 +13.51% 128
Channel Islands +2 7 £550 - 4
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
1 152 (3.88%) Confluence
2 97 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) Apache
5 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.051%) JBoss
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
12 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 256 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (1.40%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
5 38 (0.97%) NetSuite
6 29 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 26 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
11 17 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 489 (12.49%) Azure
2 348 (8.89%) AWS
3 250 (6.38%) GCP
4 229 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.60%) GitHub
5 102 (2.60%) SaaS
6 100 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
7 98 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
8 75 (1.92%) Entra ID
9 46 (1.17%) OCI
10 45 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
11 42 (1.07%) OpenShift
11 42 (1.07%) Serverless
11 42 (1.07%) Snowflake
12 35 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
12 35 (0.89%) Power Automate
13 30 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
14 28 (0.72%) PowerApps
15 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.97%) Firewall
2 76 (1.94%) Network Security
3 42 (1.07%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 24 (0.61%) WAN
6 22 (0.56%) SSL
7 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.46%) LAN
9 16 (0.41%) Broadband
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 9 (0.23%) VSAN
12 8 (0.20%) BIG-IP
12 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.72%) Power BI
2 73 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
2 73 (1.86%) Relational Database
3 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
4 63 (1.61%) Metadata
5 39 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
6 37 (0.94%) Data Lake
7 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 33 (0.84%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 19 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
12 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (0.43%) BigQuery
14 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
14 16 (0.41%) Oracle ODI
15 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 235 (6.00%) JIRA
2 110 (2.81%) Git
3 55 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 25 (0.64%) JUnit
5 20 (0.51%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Selenium
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.31%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.28%) Hudson
11 11 (0.28%) Maven
12 9 (0.23%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 9 (0.23%) Postman
13 8 (0.20%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
15 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
15 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,342 (34.27%) Social Skills
2 584 (14.91%) Banking
3 550 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.18%) Organisational Skills
5 280 (7.15%) Public Sector
6 259 (6.61%) Legal
7 170 (4.34%) Retail
8 146 (3.73%) Influencing Skills
9 97 (2.48%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.45%) Local Government
11 90 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.20%) General Ledger
13 78 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 78 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 76 (1.94%) Billing
15 73 (1.86%) Financial Institution
16 64 (1.63%) Marketing
17 56 (1.43%) Telecoms
18 55 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
19 51 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 506 (12.92%) Analyst
2 402 (10.27%) Lead
3 363 (9.27%) Senior
4 312 (7.97%) Project Manager
5 310 (7.92%) Architect
6 305 (7.79%) Developer
7 278 (7.10%) Consultant
8 234 (5.98%) Business Analyst
9 152 (3.88%) Accountant
10 145 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.55%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
13 92 (2.35%) Systems Accountant
14 91 (2.32%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.32%) Senior Manager
15 82 (2.09%) Administrator
16 79 (2.02%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.79%) Data Analyst
17 70 (1.79%) Programme Manager
18 67 (1.71%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.80%) Oracle Fusion
2 144 (3.68%) Terraform
3 101 (2.58%) REST
4 78 (1.99%) Kafka
5 70 (1.79%) Middleware
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 63 (1.61%) React
7 63 (1.61%) Spring
8 57 (1.46%) .NET
9 47 (1.20%) RESTful
10 46 (1.17%) OAuth
11 35 (0.89%) JSON
11 35 (0.89%) OpenID
12 32 (0.82%) Node.js
13 30 (0.77%) SAML
14 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
15 27 (0.69%) XML
16 26 (0.66%) OAuth2
17 25 (0.64%) HTML
17 25 (0.64%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 169 (4.32%) Product Ownership
2 165 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 161 (4.11%) Cloud Native
4 156 (3.98%) Virtual Team
5 121 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
6 120 (3.06%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 100 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
10 65 (1.66%) Data Structures
11 62 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
12 58 (1.48%) Data Centre
13 53 (1.35%) AI Agents
13 53 (1.35%) Public Cloud
14 50 (1.28%) Security Posture
15 49 (1.25%) Mainframe
16 47 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
17 43 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (1.07%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 113 (2.89%) Windows
2 110 (2.81%) Linux
3 61 (1.56%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.69%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.66%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.38%) Android
8 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (25.97%) Stakeholder Management
2 720 (18.39%) Agile
3 550 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
4 533 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
5 510 (13.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 499 (12.74%) Migration
7 491 (12.54%) ERP
8 393 (10.04%) CI/CD
9 389 (9.93%) AI
10 377 (9.63%) Decision-Making
11 352 (8.99%) Change Management
11 352 (8.99%) Project Management
12 350 (8.94%) DevOps
13 305 (7.79%) Roadmaps
14 292 (7.46%) Risk Management
15 287 (7.33%) Project Delivery
16 277 (7.07%) Analytics
17 269 (6.87%) Validation
18 265 (6.77%) User Acceptance Testing
19 234 (5.98%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 339 (8.66%) Python
2 330 (8.43%) SQL
3 244 (6.23%) Java
4 82 (2.09%) PowerShell
5 71 (1.81%) JavaScript
6 61 (1.56%) C#
7 60 (1.53%) Bash
8 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
8 40 (1.02%) TypeScript
9 37 (0.94%) Shell Script
10 35 (0.89%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 15 (0.38%) Scala
14 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) Perl
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 8 (0.20%) X++
Qualifications
1 356 (9.09%) Security Cleared
2 257 (6.56%) Degree
3 219 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 184 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (2.76%) ACCA
6 105 (2.68%) CIMA
7 98 (2.50%) PMP
8 87 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 80 (2.04%) PMI Certification
10 73 (1.86%) CISSP
11 46 (1.17%) CISM
12 44 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
13 42 (1.07%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 24 (0.61%) CCSP
16 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 243 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.44%) PMO
3 136 (3.47%) QA
4 106 (2.71%) GDPR
5 56 (1.43%) GRC
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 41 (1.05%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.02%) SLA
9 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.79%) IFRS
11 26 (0.66%) 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 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 8 (0.20%) ISO 20022
18 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 75 (1.92%) Docker
2 71 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 47 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
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%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 206 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.86%) Ansible
3 39 (1.00%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.56%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.49%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) 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 (0.20%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 584 (14.91%) Microsoft
2 424 (10.83%) SAP
3 378 (9.65%) Oracle
4 172 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.91%) Google
6 89 (2.27%) IBM
7 77 (1.97%) Databricks
8 68 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.56%) VMware
10 47 (1.20%) Splunk
11 42 (1.07%) Ariba
11 42 (1.07%) Cisco
12 40 (1.02%) Workday
13 32 (0.82%) Sage
14 26 (0.66%) MuleSoft
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 21 (0.54%) IFS
18 20 (0.51%) Sybase