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 11 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,157 2,128 2,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.82% 16.68% 12.77%
As % of the General category 27.32% 27.04% 23.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,981 1,326 1,732
10th Percentile £315 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.05%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £688 £678 £725
UK median daily rate £526 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.48% - -2.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 67 168
10th Percentile £13.84 £17.25 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.64 £22.50 £14.10
Median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.86
Median % change year-on-year -38.89% +34.03% -23.26%
75th Percentile £25.25 £68.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £62.42 £78.47 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £26.86
% change year-on-year -32.39% +30.31% +4.47%

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 11,557 7,869 11,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 54.24% 61.70% 55.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,001 4,817 6,939
10th Percentile £213 £210 £205
25th Percentile £370 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,263 481 1,508
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.00 £12.52
25th Percentile £16.21 £18.51 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £27.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.05% +10.00% -7.63%
75th Percentile £55.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.32 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.06 £29.52 £25.90
% change year-on-year -18.48% +13.98% -20.32%

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 11 March 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 11 March 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 11 March 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 +4 1,025 £475 -0.42% 667
South East -2 593 £500 -8.05% 979
Midlands -1 580 £475 -5.00% 420
North West +6 534 £450 -3.85% 350
Yorkshire 0 445 £500 - 247
West Midlands 0 377 £500 -7.41% 247
Scotland 0 357 £500 +5.82% 155
South West -2 325 £513 -2.38% 302
East Midlands 0 198 £450 +5.88% 172
East of England 0 185 £518 -5.91% 220
Wales +30 105 £413 +6.45% 87
Northern Ireland -1 49 £525 +61.54% 45
North East -9 46 £488 +3.72% 79
Channel Islands +3 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
1 153 (4.85%) Confluence
2 110 (3.48%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 28 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.76%) Apache
6 12 (0.38%) SAS
7 11 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.32%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.19%) CMS
11 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.095%) IIS
13 2 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.063%) Camunda
13 2 (0.063%) HCL Notes
13 2 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 248 (7.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 144 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (3.71%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.32%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.22%) InVision
8 7 (0.22%) Sketch
9 5 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.16%) Trello
10 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.095%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.032%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.032%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 151 (4.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.58%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.39%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (1.08%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 33 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
7 30 (0.95%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.89%) Oracle Assets
9 27 (0.86%) Oracle Cash Management
10 22 (0.70%) Oracle EBS R12
10 22 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
11 20 (0.63%) SAP CO
12 19 (0.60%) SAP BRIM
12 19 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
12 19 (0.60%) SAP Hybris
12 19 (0.60%) SAP PSCD
13 18 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
14 14 (0.44%) NetSuite
15 13 (0.41%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.41%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 386 (12.23%) Azure
2 378 (11.97%) AWS
3 180 (5.70%) Power Platform
4 167 (5.29%) GCP
5 119 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.50%) GitHub
7 77 (2.44%) SaaS
8 74 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 73 (2.31%) Serverless
10 67 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
11 51 (1.62%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.33%) OCI
12 42 (1.33%) OpenShift
13 37 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
15 35 (1.11%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.05%) Amazon S3
17 31 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
17 31 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
18 24 (0.76%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.69%) Firewall
2 39 (1.24%) WAN
3 35 (1.11%) DNS
4 31 (0.98%) Network Security
5 29 (0.92%) VPN
6 21 (0.67%) LAN
6 21 (0.67%) Wireless
7 19 (0.60%) SD-WAN
8 18 (0.57%) Skype
8 18 (0.57%) SSL
8 18 (0.57%) TCP/IP
9 14 (0.44%) Internet
9 14 (0.44%) SSH
10 12 (0.38%) DHCP
11 10 (0.32%) SNMP
12 9 (0.29%) Kerberos
13 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
13 8 (0.25%) MPLS
14 7 (0.22%) BGP
14 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 174 (5.51%) Power BI
2 89 (2.82%) PostgreSQL
3 79 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 58 (1.84%) NoSQL
5 42 (1.33%) Relational Database
6 41 (1.30%) Tableau
7 40 (1.27%) Metadata
8 37 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
9 33 (1.05%) SQL Server
10 26 (0.82%) DynamoDB
11 25 (0.79%) Big Data
11 25 (0.79%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.70%) Power Query
13 20 (0.63%) BigQuery
14 18 (0.57%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
16 14 (0.44%) MySQL
17 12 (0.38%) Hadoop
18 11 (0.35%) RDBMS
18 11 (0.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 305 (9.66%) JIRA
2 128 (4.05%) Jenkins
3 76 (2.41%) GitLab
4 52 (1.65%) Git
5 36 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 34 (1.08%) JUnit
7 32 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.63%) Selenium
9 16 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 15 (0.48%) Liquibase
11 14 (0.44%) Postman
12 12 (0.38%) Gradle
13 10 (0.32%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Hudson
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) Maven
15 7 (0.22%) SonarQube
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
17 5 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 1,123 (35.57%) Social Skills
2 506 (16.03%) Banking
3 397 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
4 356 (11.28%) Public Sector
5 177 (5.61%) Manufacturing
6 163 (5.16%) Telecoms
7 142 (4.50%) Marketing
8 132 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
9 100 (3.17%) Legal
10 97 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
10 97 (3.07%) Financial Institution
11 96 (3.04%) Electronics
12 73 (2.31%) Local Government
13 71 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
14 58 (1.84%) Retail
15 57 (1.81%) General Ledger
16 52 (1.65%) Billing
17 48 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 48 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
18 28 (0.89%) Law
Job Titles
1 479 (15.17%) Analyst
2 310 (9.82%) Project Manager
3 271 (8.58%) Architect
4 259 (8.20%) Senior
5 249 (7.89%) Lead
6 225 (7.13%) Consultant
7 212 (6.72%) Business Analyst
8 191 (6.05%) Developer
9 113 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 93 (2.95%) Programme Manager
11 78 (2.47%) Data Analyst
11 78 (2.47%) Senior Manager
12 75 (2.38%) Accountant
13 70 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 66 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
15 57 (1.81%) Functional Consultant
15 57 (1.81%) IT Manager
16 54 (1.71%) Administrator
17 53 (1.68%) Java Developer
18 52 (1.65%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (3.58%) REST
2 79 (2.50%) Spring
3 74 (2.34%) Spring Boot
4 69 (2.19%) Oracle Fusion
5 66 (2.09%) Kafka
6 57 (1.81%) RESTful
7 56 (1.77%) Middleware
8 38 (1.20%) .NET
9 37 (1.17%) Node.js
10 35 (1.11%) React
11 34 (1.08%) JSON
12 31 (0.98%) SOAP
13 30 (0.95%) OAuth
14 28 (0.89%) XML
15 25 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
16 23 (0.73%) HTML
16 23 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
17 21 (0.67%) AngularJS
18 19 (0.60%) CSS
18 19 (0.60%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 155 (4.91%) Onboarding
2 121 (3.83%) Product Ownership
3 98 (3.10%) Cloud Native
4 94 (2.98%) Management Information System
5 91 (2.88%) Data Centre
6 70 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
7 68 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
8 66 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
9 65 (2.06%) Public Cloud
10 39 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
11 38 (1.20%) Data Structures
11 38 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.11%) PMI
13 33 (1.05%) Mobile App
14 32 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 26 (0.82%) CMDB
16 24 (0.76%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.60%) NHS
18 17 (0.54%) SWIFT Messaging Network
19 16 (0.51%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 126 (3.99%) Linux
2 109 (3.45%) Windows
3 42 (1.33%) Unix
4 33 (1.05%) Windows 10
5 31 (0.98%) Android
5 31 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 21 (0.67%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.22%) AIX
8 7 (0.22%) Solaris
9 6 (0.19%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.13%) VMS
12 3 (0.095%) zOS
13 1 (0.032%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.032%) MVS
13 1 (0.032%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 665 (21.06%) Agile
2 631 (19.99%) Stakeholder Management
3 519 (16.44%) Problem-Solving
4 446 (14.13%) Migration
5 419 (13.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 381 (12.07%) Project Management
7 346 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
8 344 (10.90%) ERP
9 337 (10.67%) DevOps
10 319 (10.10%) Business Intelligence
11 294 (9.31%) CI/CD
12 277 (8.77%) Change Management
13 266 (8.43%) Project Delivery
14 223 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
15 219 (6.94%) Decision-Making
16 218 (6.91%) Analytics
17 214 (6.78%) Roadmaps
18 200 (6.34%) AI
19 198 (6.27%) Data Modelling
20 187 (5.92%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 331 (10.48%) SQL
2 278 (8.81%) Python
3 190 (6.02%) Java
4 73 (2.31%) PowerShell
5 37 (1.17%) TypeScript
6 33 (1.05%) JavaScript
7 29 (0.92%) Go
8 27 (0.86%) Bash
9 24 (0.76%) C#
10 21 (0.67%) VBA
11 20 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.41%) R
14 12 (0.38%) Perl
15 11 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 11 (0.35%) Kotlin
16 10 (0.32%) ABAP
16 10 (0.32%) COBOL
16 10 (0.32%) Rust
17 9 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 331 (10.48%) Security Cleared
2 326 (10.33%) Degree
3 214 (6.78%) SC Cleared
4 87 (2.76%) PMI Certification
5 86 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 85 (2.69%) PMP
7 77 (2.44%) ACCA
8 72 (2.28%) CIMA
9 68 (2.15%) Master's Degree
10 63 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (2.00%) DV Cleared
11 55 (1.74%) CISSP
12 41 (1.30%) AWS Certification
13 39 (1.24%) CISM
14 29 (0.92%) ITIL Certification
15 24 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
16 17 (0.54%) MBA
16 17 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 14 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.41%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (5.51%) PMO
2 143 (4.53%) QA
3 137 (4.34%) Data Quality
4 125 (3.96%) GDPR
5 55 (1.74%) SLA
6 54 (1.71%) NIST
7 46 (1.46%) PCI DSS
8 41 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 26 (0.82%) IFRS
12 24 (0.76%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.70%) PSD2
14 19 (0.60%) GRC
15 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.41%) GAAP
16 13 (0.41%) SEPA
17 12 (0.38%) Basel III
18 10 (0.32%) GLBA
19 9 (0.29%) NCSC
System Software
1 124 (3.93%) Docker
2 80 (2.53%) Active Directory
3 37 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.63%) vSphere
5 13 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.35%) GPFS
8 10 (0.32%) NFS
9 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.095%) Firmware
12 3 (0.095%) HDFS
12 3 (0.095%) KVM
12 3 (0.095%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.063%) ACF2
13 2 (0.063%) RACF
13 2 (0.063%) SRDF
13 2 (0.063%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 164 (5.19%) Kubernetes
2 86 (2.72%) Terraform
3 83 (2.63%) Ansible
4 56 (1.77%) Grafana
5 51 (1.62%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.60%) SCCM
7 18 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
9 14 (0.44%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.38%) vRealize
11 11 (0.35%) Nessus
12 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 8 (0.25%) Kiali
14 6 (0.19%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.16%) Puppet
15 5 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 427 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 380 (12.04%) SAP
3 260 (8.24%) Oracle
4 157 (4.97%) ServiceNow
5 90 (2.85%) Google
6 81 (2.57%) Cisco
7 75 (2.38%) Splunk
8 51 (1.62%) VMware
9 49 (1.55%) IBM
10 47 (1.49%) Sage
11 45 (1.43%) Databricks
12 44 (1.39%) Salesforce
13 37 (1.17%) HP
13 37 (1.17%) Workday
14 34 (1.08%) Dell
15 24 (0.76%) IFS
16 23 (0.73%) Adobe
17 21 (0.67%) Citrix
17 21 (0.67%) CyberArk
18 19 (0.60%) Ariba