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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,861 2,520 2,784
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.48% 17.50% 13.23%
As % of the General category 28.23% 28.46% 24.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 1,645 1,696
10th Percentile £337 £308 £287
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
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 181 75 205
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.80 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.42% -11.26% -20.56%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% -6.67%

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 13,676 8,853 11,301
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.30% 61.47% 53.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,702 5,379 6,347
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £489
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% -3.48% -2.20%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £597
90th Percentile £678 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,700 746 1,665
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.72
25th Percentile £17.25 £15.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +39.13% -26.40% +20.42%
75th Percentile £63.47 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.21 £31.97
% change year-on-year +17.60% -14.89% +6.57%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +1 1,296 £500 +7.53% 895
South East 0 725 £500 -4.76% 1,053
North West +4 672 £475 +5.56% 453
Midlands +1 661 £500 +11.11% 510
Yorkshire 0 578 £525 +7.69% 320
Scotland 0 488 £475 -1.61% 234
West Midlands +1 487 £500 - 272
South West -2 386 £525 -4.55% 383
East of England +4 207 £525 -8.70% 320
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 236
Wales +7 89 £525 +12.90% 102
Northern Ireland -1 58 £475 +11.76% 120
North East -22 47 £500 +13.64% 130
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1
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
1 159 (4.12%) Confluence
2 102 (2.64%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.47%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
6 13 (0.34%) Apache
7 11 (0.28%) CICS
7 11 (0.28%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.052%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Mule
13 2 (0.052%) TPMS
Applications
1 240 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.17%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.052%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 206 (5.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.04%) NetSuite
3 40 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
7 18 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.47%) Unit4 Business World
8 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
8 17 (0.44%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
10 12 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
11 11 (0.28%) SAP ERP
11 11 (0.28%) Workday HCM
12 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 473 (12.25%) Azure
2 326 (8.44%) AWS
3 223 (5.78%) Power Platform
4 207 (5.36%) GCP
5 101 (2.62%) SaaS
6 95 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
7 91 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
8 86 (2.23%) GitHub
9 73 (1.89%) Entra ID
10 72 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
11 46 (1.19%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.14%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
13 42 (1.09%) Serverless
14 38 (0.98%) OCI
15 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
16 24 (0.62%) PaaS
16 24 (0.62%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.60%) Amazon S3
17 23 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.23%) Firewall
2 65 (1.68%) Network Security
3 38 (0.98%) DNS
4 36 (0.93%) VPN
5 32 (0.83%) WAN
6 27 (0.70%) SSL
7 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.47%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) DHCP
9 14 (0.36%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.31%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.16%) Wireless
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.79%) Power BI
2 80 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.92%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.79%) Metadata
5 60 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
5 60 (1.55%) SQL Server
6 54 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.96%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.91%) Tableau
9 31 (0.80%) NoSQL
10 27 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) Db2
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.47%) Data Vault
15 18 (0.47%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 273 (7.07%) JIRA
2 90 (2.33%) Git
3 73 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.70%) JUnit
5 23 (0.60%) Selenium
6 22 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.54%) GitLab
8 19 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Hudson
10 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 12 (0.31%) Postman
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 8 (0.21%) Gradle
13 8 (0.21%) Maven
14 7 (0.18%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
16 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
16 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,226 (31.75%) Social Skills
2 527 (13.65%) Banking
3 513 (13.29%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (7.33%) Public Sector
5 185 (4.79%) Legal
6 163 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
7 131 (3.39%) Retail
8 113 (2.93%) Manufacturing
9 112 (2.90%) Local Government
10 108 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.20%) Financial Institution
12 85 (2.20%) General Ledger
13 82 (2.12%) Investment Banking
14 70 (1.81%) Billing
15 60 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.48%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.24%) Marketing
18 47 (1.22%) Aerospace
19 46 (1.19%) Law
Job Titles
1 529 (13.70%) Analyst
2 377 (9.76%) Lead
3 353 (9.14%) Architect
4 339 (8.78%) Senior
5 338 (8.75%) Project Manager
6 288 (7.46%) Developer
7 255 (6.60%) Consultant
8 244 (6.32%) Business Analyst
9 169 (4.38%) Accountant
10 154 (3.99%) Solutions Architect
11 106 (2.75%) Systems Accountant
12 99 (2.56%) IT Manager
13 98 (2.54%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.33%) Programme Manager
15 85 (2.20%) Java Developer
16 83 (2.15%) Financial Analyst
17 72 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 70 (1.81%) Administrator
19 66 (1.71%) Data Engineer
20 64 (1.66%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (3.37%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.38%) Middleware
3 88 (2.28%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Kafka
5 69 (1.79%) Spring
5 69 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.55%) React
7 57 (1.48%) .NET
8 42 (1.09%) RESTful
9 33 (0.85%) OAuth
10 32 (0.83%) JSON
11 30 (0.78%) Node.js
12 27 (0.70%) OpenID
13 26 (0.67%) SailPoint
13 26 (0.67%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.67%) XML
14 23 (0.60%) Redux
15 21 (0.54%) AngularJS
16 20 (0.52%) HTML
16 20 (0.52%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.14%) Onboarding
2 154 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 147 (3.81%) Cloud Native
4 118 (3.06%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
6 106 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 77 (1.99%) Virtual Team
8 75 (1.94%) Data Centre
9 67 (1.74%) Data Structures
9 67 (1.74%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.32%) Mainframe
11 48 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
12 47 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 34 (0.88%) Web Conferencing
15 33 (0.85%) Podcast
16 29 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
16 29 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
17 28 (0.73%) AI Agents
18 27 (0.70%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.19%) Windows
2 104 (2.69%) Linux
3 62 (1.61%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.73%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 877 (22.71%) Stakeholder Management
2 706 (18.29%) Agile
3 564 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
4 551 (14.27%) Migration
5 526 (13.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 519 (13.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 504 (13.05%) ERP
8 398 (10.31%) Project Management
9 365 (9.45%) DevOps
10 358 (9.27%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.12%) CI/CD
12 346 (8.96%) Change Management
13 320 (8.29%) Project Delivery
14 309 (8.00%) AI
15 295 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
16 291 (7.54%) Roadmaps
17 269 (6.97%) Validation
18 262 (6.79%) Risk Management
19 248 (6.42%) Analytics
20 239 (6.19%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 358 (9.27%) SQL
2 298 (7.72%) Python
3 227 (5.88%) Java
4 76 (1.97%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.42%) C#
6 45 (1.17%) JavaScript
7 38 (0.98%) Bash
8 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.85%) TypeScript
10 25 (0.65%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.62%) Go
12 20 (0.52%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.39%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Rust
Qualifications
1 356 (9.22%) Security Cleared
2 302 (7.82%) Degree
3 220 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.37%) ACCA
5 127 (3.29%) CIMA
6 118 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.95%) PMP
8 100 (2.59%) PMI Certification
9 77 (1.99%) CISSP
10 67 (1.74%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.19%) CISM
12 39 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.91%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.75%) Master's Degree
16 28 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.49%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (5.36%) Data Quality
2 166 (4.30%) PMO
3 147 (3.81%) GDPR
4 143 (3.70%) QA
5 55 (1.42%) NIST
6 49 (1.27%) SLA
7 46 (1.19%) GRC
8 38 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.91%) IFRS
10 34 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 31 (0.80%) PCI DSS
12 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.28%) PSD2
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
15 10 (0.26%) NCSC
15 10 (0.26%) SEPA
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (2.28%) Docker
2 81 (2.10%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.52%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.16%) GPFS
9 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 6 (0.16%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) ACF2
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) SRDF
11 2 (0.052%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 171 (4.43%) Kubernetes
2 97 (2.51%) Terraform
3 80 (2.07%) Ansible
4 37 (0.96%) Grafana
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (0.52%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 8 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 482 (12.48%) Microsoft
2 402 (10.41%) SAP
3 361 (9.35%) Oracle
4 168 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 108 (2.80%) Google
6 78 (2.02%) IBM
7 74 (1.92%) Databricks
8 61 (1.58%) VMware
9 56 (1.45%) Sage
10 48 (1.24%) Cisco
11 46 (1.19%) Splunk
12 44 (1.14%) Salesforce
13 34 (0.88%) IFS
14 32 (0.83%) Ariba
15 31 (0.80%) Workday
16 24 (0.62%) HP
17 22 (0.57%) Red Hat
18 20 (0.52%) MuleSoft
19 19 (0.49%) Sybase
20 18 (0.47%) Foundry