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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,942 2,232 2,744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.20% 16.52% 12.99%
As % of the General category 27.05% 26.99% 23.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,874 1,288 1,836
10th Percentile £313 £305 £286
25th Percentile £402 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -2.44% -1.44%
75th Percentile £600 £605 £613
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 59 125
10th Percentile £14.21 £17.25 £11.70
25th Percentile £16.55 £22.50 £13.31
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%
75th Percentile £24.88 £56.59 £44.74
90th Percentile £54.00 £77.69 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.25 £28.25 £20.50
% change year-on-year -17.70% +37.80% -18.00%

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 10,878 8,271 11,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.22% 61.22% 55.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,687 4,697 7,098
10th Percentile £204 £210 £206
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £599
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,163 466 1,332
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £12.74
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.30 £26.75 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% +7.00% +10.66%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.25 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £67.23
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £29.00 £25.79
% change year-on-year -22.41% +12.45% +3.16%

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 3 February 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 3 February 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 3 February 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 +2 941 £475 -2.56% 665
South East -1 546 £500 -4.76% 1,039
Midlands -3 521 £480 -6.80% 424
North West +3 462 £450 -5.26% 363
Yorkshire 0 430 £500 -2.91% 235
Scotland 0 379 £475 +1.33% 136
West Midlands -4 326 £509 -7.41% 252
South West -7 291 £525 - 296
East Midlands 0 193 £447 +5.80% 172
East of England -2 171 £525 - 216
Wales +29 87 £413 -12.00% 81
Northern Ireland -1 55 £500 +52.67% 41
North East -6 50 £488 +8.33% 73
Channel Islands +1 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 (5.40%) Confluence
2 105 (3.57%) SharePoint
3 35 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 31 (1.05%) Apache
5 26 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.65%) SAS
7 13 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.44%) CMS
8 11 (0.37%) TPMS
9 10 (0.34%) JBoss
10 9 (0.31%) IIS
11 8 (0.27%) CICS
11 8 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
13 6 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
14 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 239 (8.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 163 (5.54%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (3.54%) Microsoft Project
4 94 (3.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.54%) Sketch
8 11 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.20%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.20%) Trello
11 4 (0.14%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.034%) Camtasia
13 1 (0.034%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.034%) Snagit
13 1 (0.034%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 128 (4.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (1.87%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
5 35 (1.19%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.09%) SAP FI
7 30 (1.02%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 28 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
10 23 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
10 23 (0.78%) Oracle EBS R12
10 23 (0.78%) SAP CO
11 22 (0.75%) SAP FI/CO
12 17 (0.58%) SAP ERP
13 16 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
13 16 (0.54%) SAP BRIM
13 16 (0.54%) SAP Hybris
13 16 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
14 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
15 13 (0.44%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 390 (13.26%) AWS
2 369 (12.54%) Azure
3 173 (5.88%) Power Platform
4 164 (5.57%) GCP
5 125 (4.25%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
7 73 (2.48%) Serverless
8 72 (2.45%) GitHub
9 64 (2.18%) SaaS
10 60 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
11 50 (1.70%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.43%) OCI
13 41 (1.39%) OpenShift
14 40 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 36 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
15 36 (1.22%) Snowflake
16 34 (1.16%) Figma
17 31 (1.05%) Amazon S3
18 28 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
18 28 (0.95%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 68 (2.31%) Firewall
2 34 (1.16%) WAN
3 24 (0.82%) Network Security
4 23 (0.78%) Skype
4 23 (0.78%) VPN
5 22 (0.75%) DNS
5 22 (0.75%) Wireless
6 18 (0.61%) LAN
7 16 (0.54%) Kerberos
7 16 (0.54%) SD-WAN
8 15 (0.51%) SSH
8 15 (0.51%) SSL
9 13 (0.44%) DHCP
10 11 (0.37%) Internet
10 11 (0.37%) SNMP
10 11 (0.37%) TCP/IP
11 8 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
12 7 (0.24%) HTTP
12 7 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
13 6 (0.20%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (5.54%) Power BI
2 72 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (2.14%) NoSQL
5 51 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 39 (1.33%) Tableau
7 31 (1.05%) SQL Server
8 30 (1.02%) Metadata
9 27 (0.92%) Big Data
10 25 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
11 22 (0.75%) Data Lake
12 21 (0.71%) DynamoDB
12 21 (0.71%) Power Query
13 19 (0.65%) BigQuery
14 18 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
14 18 (0.61%) Oracle Database
15 16 (0.54%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.54%) MySQL
16 15 (0.51%) Hadoop
17 12 (0.41%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 287 (9.76%) JIRA
2 144 (4.89%) Jenkins
3 88 (2.99%) GitLab
4 69 (2.35%) Git
5 40 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 39 (1.33%) JUnit
7 35 (1.19%) Cucumber
8 25 (0.85%) Bitbucket
8 25 (0.85%) Selenium
9 21 (0.71%) Liquibase
10 14 (0.48%) Gradle
10 14 (0.48%) Postman
11 11 (0.37%) Maven
11 11 (0.37%) REST Assured
12 10 (0.34%) Cypress.io
12 10 (0.34%) JMeter
13 8 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
13 8 (0.27%) CA Release Automation
13 8 (0.27%) Hudson
13 8 (0.27%) Jaeger
General
1 1,094 (37.19%) Social Skills
2 509 (17.30%) Banking
3 378 (12.85%) Analytical Skills
4 340 (11.56%) Public Sector
5 192 (6.53%) Manufacturing
6 181 (6.15%) Telecoms
7 164 (5.57%) Marketing
8 123 (4.18%) Electronics
9 120 (4.08%) Organisational Skills
10 104 (3.54%) Financial Institution
11 98 (3.33%) Legal
12 90 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
13 62 (2.11%) General Ledger
14 57 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
15 55 (1.87%) Retail
16 54 (1.84%) Local Government
17 49 (1.67%) Investment Banking
18 45 (1.53%) Billing
19 43 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 457 (15.53%) Analyst
2 276 (9.38%) Project Manager
3 232 (7.89%) Architect
4 216 (7.34%) Senior
5 212 (7.21%) Consultant
6 205 (6.97%) Developer
7 198 (6.73%) Business Analyst
8 192 (6.53%) Lead
9 102 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 93 (3.16%) Programme Manager
11 84 (2.86%) Data Analyst
12 59 (2.01%) SAP Consultant
12 59 (2.01%) Senior Manager
13 57 (1.94%) Finance Manager
14 56 (1.90%) Java Developer
15 55 (1.87%) Designer
16 54 (1.84%) Accountant
17 53 (1.80%) IT Manager
18 52 (1.77%) Functional Consultant
19 49 (1.67%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.35%) REST
2 91 (3.09%) Spring
3 82 (2.79%) Spring Boot
4 76 (2.58%) RESTful
5 60 (2.04%) Kafka
5 60 (2.04%) Oracle Fusion
6 52 (1.77%) .NET
7 44 (1.50%) React
8 41 (1.39%) Middleware
9 36 (1.22%) Node.js
10 34 (1.16%) SOAP
11 33 (1.12%) OAuth
12 31 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
12 31 (1.05%) JSON
13 29 (0.99%) AngularJS
14 28 (0.95%) HTML
15 24 (0.82%) CSS
16 23 (0.78%) JMS
17 22 (0.75%) XML
18 21 (0.71%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 144 (4.89%) Onboarding
2 129 (4.38%) Product Ownership
3 90 (3.06%) Cloud Native
4 82 (2.79%) Data Centre
5 72 (2.45%) Management Information System
6 69 (2.35%) Public Cloud
7 68 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
8 65 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
9 58 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
10 46 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
11 36 (1.22%) Data Structures
12 34 (1.16%) Mobile App
13 33 (1.12%) CMDB
14 32 (1.09%) Virtual Team
15 31 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
16 29 (0.99%) PMI
17 25 (0.85%) SWIFT Messaging Network
18 22 (0.75%) NHS
19 21 (0.71%) Credit Risk
20 20 (0.68%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 132 (4.49%) Linux
2 124 (4.21%) Windows
3 43 (1.46%) Mac OS
4 39 (1.33%) Unix
4 39 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 30 (1.02%) Android
6 21 (0.71%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.14%) VMS
9 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.068%) AIX
10 2 (0.068%) Solaris
11 1 (0.034%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.034%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (23.18%) Agile
2 556 (18.90%) Stakeholder Management
3 486 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
4 379 (12.88%) Migration
5 376 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 335 (11.39%) Project Management
7 325 (11.05%) DevOps
8 321 (10.91%) Business Intelligence
9 306 (10.40%) ERP
10 298 (10.13%) CI/CD
10 298 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 252 (8.57%) Change Management
12 228 (7.75%) Programme Management
13 210 (7.14%) Project Delivery
14 208 (7.07%) Decision-Making
15 207 (7.04%) Analytics
16 193 (6.56%) User Acceptance Testing
17 186 (6.32%) Roadmaps
18 178 (6.05%) Risk Management
19 174 (5.91%) AI
Programming Languages
1 340 (11.56%) SQL
2 281 (9.55%) Python
3 200 (6.80%) Java
4 80 (2.72%) PowerShell
5 41 (1.39%) JavaScript
5 41 (1.39%) TypeScript
6 39 (1.33%) C#
7 34 (1.16%) Go
8 25 (0.85%) Shell Script
9 22 (0.75%) PL/SQL
10 21 (0.71%) Bash
11 18 (0.61%) R
11 18 (0.61%) VBA
12 12 (0.41%) Perl
13 11 (0.37%) Groovy
13 11 (0.37%) Rust
14 10 (0.34%) COBOL
15 9 (0.31%) ABAP
15 9 (0.31%) Ruby
16 8 (0.27%) JCL
Qualifications
1 317 (10.77%) Degree
2 271 (9.21%) Security Cleared
3 189 (6.42%) SC Cleared
4 74 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 72 (2.45%) Master's Degree
5 72 (2.45%) PMP
6 71 (2.41%) PMI Certification
7 69 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 66 (2.24%) ACCA
9 61 (2.07%) CIMA
10 51 (1.73%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.63%) DV Cleared
12 46 (1.56%) CISSP
13 40 (1.36%) CISM
14 34 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 21 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.51%) MBA
17 14 (0.48%) FFIEC
18 13 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (4.79%) PMO
2 134 (4.55%) QA
3 114 (3.87%) Data Quality
4 105 (3.57%) GDPR
5 54 (1.84%) NIST
6 48 (1.63%) SLA
7 47 (1.60%) PCI DSS
8 43 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (1.29%) Accessibility
10 32 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 30 (1.02%) ISO 20022
12 27 (0.92%) PSD2
13 22 (0.75%) GRC
14 21 (0.71%) IFRS
15 18 (0.61%) SEPA
16 14 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.41%) Basel III
18 11 (0.37%) COBIT
18 11 (0.37%) GLBA
18 11 (0.37%) NCSC
System Software
1 132 (4.49%) Docker
2 101 (3.43%) Active Directory
3 29 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.48%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
6 9 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.27%) NFS
8 7 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.10%) HDFS
13 2 (0.068%) ACF2
13 2 (0.068%) Firmware
13 2 (0.068%) RACF
13 2 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
14 1 (0.034%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.034%) Job Entry Subsystem
Systems Management
1 153 (5.20%) Kubernetes
2 98 (3.33%) Terraform
3 84 (2.86%) Ansible
4 57 (1.94%) Grafana
5 53 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.78%) SCCM
7 18 (0.61%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.31%) vRealize
12 8 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.27%) Kiali
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) Control-M
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 450 (15.30%) Microsoft
2 379 (12.88%) SAP
3 254 (8.63%) Oracle
4 151 (5.13%) ServiceNow
5 93 (3.16%) Splunk
6 83 (2.82%) Cisco
7 81 (2.75%) Google
8 49 (1.67%) IBM
9 47 (1.60%) Salesforce
10 44 (1.50%) VMware
11 40 (1.36%) Workday
12 36 (1.22%) HP
13 35 (1.19%) Databricks
14 34 (1.16%) Dell
15 29 (0.99%) Apple
16 26 (0.88%) Adobe
16 26 (0.88%) Sage
17 25 (0.85%) Citrix
18 21 (0.71%) Remedy
19 19 (0.65%) IFS