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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,258 2,176 2,684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.79% 17.22% 12.78%
As % of the General category 27.62% 27.86% 23.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,046 1,370 1,687
10th Percentile £318 £305 £291
25th Percentile £402 £399 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £597 £625
90th Percentile £688 £678 £738
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 67 189
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.04 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £14.22
Median hourly rate £22.08 £48.82 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year -54.78% +58.36% -15.95%
75th Percentile £33.75 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £68.20 £77.89 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £28.00
% change year-on-year -35.70% +32.34% -8.96%

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 11,797 7,811 11,543
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.56% 61.80% 54.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,151 4,876 6,752
10th Percentile £220 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £673 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,302 504 1,523
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.20 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.58 £27.97 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.71% +11.88% -19.70%
75th Percentile £57.44 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +3 1,068 £475 +1.28% 662
South East -2 619 £503 -8.64% 957
Midlands -1 591 £475 -5.00% 408
North West +6 569 £452 -2.74% 360
Yorkshire 0 450 £500 +5.04% 229
West Midlands +2 387 £492 -6.29% 248
Scotland 0 367 £475 - 169
South West -4 322 £525 +2.94% 285
East Midlands 0 199 £450 +2.68% 159
East of England -2 199 £520 -5.45% 265
Wales +27 107 £413 +3.13% 81
North East -6 49 £488 +6.56% 89
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 1 - - 4
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
1 163 (5.00%) Confluence
2 115 (3.53%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.74%) Apache
6 13 (0.40%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.18%) CMS
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.092%) Camunda
13 3 (0.092%) IIS
14 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 247 (7.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 143 (4.39%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (3.65%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.031%) UXPin
11 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 151 (4.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.57%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.38%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
4 39 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 34 (1.04%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
7 28 (0.86%) Oracle Assets
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle Cash Management
8 26 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
9 22 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
10 19 (0.58%) SAP CO
11 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
12 17 (0.52%) NetSuite
13 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 401 (12.31%) Azure
2 370 (11.36%) AWS
3 187 (5.74%) Power Platform
4 163 (5.00%) GCP
5 120 (3.68%) Microsoft 365
6 85 (2.61%) GitHub
7 79 (2.42%) SaaS
8 77 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
9 76 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
10 73 (2.24%) Serverless
11 52 (1.60%) Entra ID
12 41 (1.26%) OpenShift
13 38 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
13 38 (1.17%) OCI
14 36 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
15 33 (1.01%) Amazon S3
15 33 (1.01%) Snowflake
16 32 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
17 29 (0.89%) Microsoft Copilot
18 25 (0.77%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.55%) Firewall
2 44 (1.35%) WAN
3 36 (1.10%) DNS
4 34 (1.04%) Network Security
5 31 (0.95%) VPN
6 24 (0.74%) LAN
7 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
7 21 (0.64%) Wireless
8 18 (0.55%) Skype
9 17 (0.52%) SSL
10 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.43%) Internet
11 14 (0.43%) SSH
12 11 (0.34%) DHCP
13 10 (0.31%) SNMP
14 9 (0.28%) MPLS
15 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.25%) Kerberos
15 8 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.21%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (5.43%) Power BI
2 84 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.63%) NoSQL
5 44 (1.35%) Metadata
6 41 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
6 41 (1.26%) Relational Database
7 35 (1.07%) SQL Server
7 35 (1.07%) Tableau
8 26 (0.80%) DynamoDB
9 24 (0.74%) Data Lake
10 23 (0.71%) Power Query
11 22 (0.68%) Big Data
12 17 (0.52%) BigQuery
13 14 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
13 14 (0.43%) MongoDB
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle ODI
14 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (0.37%) MySQL
15 12 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 315 (9.67%) JIRA
2 125 (3.84%) Jenkins
3 74 (2.27%) GitLab
4 54 (1.66%) Git
5 37 (1.14%) JUnit
5 37 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 31 (0.95%) Cucumber
7 20 (0.61%) Selenium
8 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
9 13 (0.40%) Postman
10 11 (0.34%) Gradle
10 11 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.31%) Hudson
12 9 (0.28%) JMeter
13 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
13 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 7 (0.21%) Maven
15 6 (0.18%) Snyk
16 5 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 1,123 (34.47%) Social Skills
2 513 (15.75%) Banking
3 410 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (10.83%) Public Sector
5 173 (5.31%) Manufacturing
6 159 (4.88%) Telecoms
7 139 (4.27%) Marketing
8 132 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
9 109 (3.35%) Legal
10 101 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
11 98 (3.01%) Financial Institution
12 94 (2.89%) Electronics
13 78 (2.39%) Local Government
14 67 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (1.90%) Retail
16 58 (1.78%) General Ledger
17 50 (1.53%) Billing
17 50 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 42 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
19 32 (0.98%) Law
Job Titles
1 494 (15.16%) Analyst
2 328 (10.07%) Project Manager
3 281 (8.62%) Architect
4 266 (8.16%) Lead
5 260 (7.98%) Senior
6 229 (7.03%) Consultant
7 220 (6.75%) Business Analyst
8 192 (5.89%) Developer
9 116 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 97 (2.98%) Programme Manager
11 89 (2.73%) Accountant
12 82 (2.52%) Senior Manager
13 75 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 75 (2.30%) Finance Manager
14 68 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
15 55 (1.69%) Java Developer
16 54 (1.66%) Administrator
16 54 (1.66%) Functional Consultant
16 54 (1.66%) IT Manager
16 54 (1.66%) Systems Accountant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (3.41%) REST
2 82 (2.52%) Spring
3 78 (2.39%) Spring Boot
4 70 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
5 65 (2.00%) Kafka
6 63 (1.93%) Middleware
7 57 (1.75%) RESTful
8 37 (1.14%) Node.js
9 34 (1.04%) .NET
9 34 (1.04%) JSON
10 32 (0.98%) React
11 31 (0.95%) OAuth
12 30 (0.92%) SOAP
13 28 (0.86%) XML
14 25 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
15 24 (0.74%) HTML
16 22 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
17 21 (0.64%) AngularJS
18 20 (0.61%) CSS
19 18 (0.55%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.88%) Onboarding
2 129 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 103 (3.16%) Cloud Native
4 100 (3.07%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.64%) Data Centre
6 75 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
7 69 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 69 (2.12%) Public Cloud
8 67 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
9 43 (1.32%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 38 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
12 35 (1.07%) PMI
13 34 (1.04%) Virtual Team
14 32 (0.98%) Mobile App
15 27 (0.83%) CMDB
16 22 (0.68%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.58%) NHS
18 17 (0.52%) Operational Technology
18 17 (0.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 130 (3.99%) Linux
2 108 (3.31%) Windows
3 43 (1.32%) Unix
4 30 (0.92%) Android
4 30 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 27 (0.83%) Mac OS
6 22 (0.68%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.21%) AIX
8 7 (0.21%) Solaris
9 5 (0.15%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.12%) VMS
11 3 (0.092%) zOS
12 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.031%) MVS
12 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (20.66%) Agile
2 654 (20.07%) Stakeholder Management
3 520 (15.96%) Problem-Solving
4 468 (14.36%) Migration
5 433 (13.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 390 (11.97%) Project Management
7 364 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
8 361 (11.08%) ERP
9 349 (10.71%) DevOps
10 325 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
11 297 (9.12%) CI/CD
12 284 (8.72%) Change Management
13 278 (8.53%) Project Delivery
14 242 (7.43%) Decision-Making
15 226 (6.94%) User Acceptance Testing
16 225 (6.91%) Analytics
17 216 (6.63%) Roadmaps
18 203 (6.23%) Data Modelling
19 201 (6.17%) AI
20 196 (6.02%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 327 (10.04%) SQL
2 272 (8.35%) Python
3 195 (5.99%) Java
4 70 (2.15%) PowerShell
5 32 (0.98%) TypeScript
6 31 (0.95%) JavaScript
7 29 (0.89%) Go
8 23 (0.71%) Bash
8 23 (0.71%) VBA
9 21 (0.64%) C#
10 19 (0.58%) PL/SQL
10 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
11 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
11 12 (0.37%) Perl
11 12 (0.37%) R
12 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 10 (0.31%) ABAP
13 10 (0.31%) COBOL
14 9 (0.28%) Ruby
14 9 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 345 (10.59%) Security Cleared
2 327 (10.04%) Degree
3 221 (6.78%) SC Cleared
4 95 (2.92%) PMI Certification
5 94 (2.89%) PMP
6 89 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 83 (2.55%) ACCA
8 77 (2.36%) CIMA
9 69 (2.12%) DV Cleared
10 67 (2.06%) Master's Degree
11 61 (1.87%) CISSP
12 60 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 42 (1.29%) CISM
14 38 (1.17%) AWS Certification
15 28 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
17 18 (0.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 16 (0.49%) MBA
19 13 (0.40%) DBS Check
19 13 (0.40%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (5.62%) PMO
2 152 (4.67%) Data Quality
3 144 (4.42%) QA
4 129 (3.96%) GDPR
5 55 (1.69%) NIST
6 52 (1.60%) SLA
7 45 (1.38%) PCI DSS
8 40 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.86%) Accessibility
11 26 (0.80%) IFRS
12 24 (0.74%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.68%) PSD2
14 20 (0.61%) GRC
15 15 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.40%) GAAP
16 13 (0.40%) SEPA
17 12 (0.37%) Basel III
18 11 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 10 (0.31%) GLBA
System Software
1 121 (3.71%) Docker
2 76 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.61%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.092%) Firmware
12 3 (0.092%) KVM
12 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.061%) ACF2
13 2 (0.061%) HDFS
13 2 (0.061%) RACF
13 2 (0.061%) SRDF
13 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 164 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 87 (2.67%) Terraform
3 83 (2.55%) Ansible
4 56 (1.72%) Grafana
5 50 (1.53%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.55%) SCCM
8 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.37%) vRealize
10 10 (0.31%) Nessus
11 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.25%) Kiali
13 5 (0.15%) CASB
13 5 (0.15%) Control-M
13 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.15%) Puppet
13 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 435 (13.35%) Microsoft
2 374 (11.48%) SAP
3 264 (8.10%) Oracle
4 154 (4.73%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.89%) Google
6 81 (2.49%) Cisco
7 76 (2.33%) Splunk
8 50 (1.53%) Sage
8 50 (1.53%) VMware
9 49 (1.50%) IBM
10 44 (1.35%) Databricks
10 44 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 35 (1.07%) HP
12 34 (1.04%) Dell
13 33 (1.01%) Workday
14 27 (0.83%) IFS
15 23 (0.71%) Adobe
16 19 (0.58%) Remedy
17 18 (0.55%) Ariba
17 18 (0.55%) Citrix