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 27 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,912 2,266 2,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.38% 16.69% 12.88%
As % of the General category 27.20% 27.24% 23.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,863 1,327 1,775
10th Percentile £313 £305 £298
25th Percentile £405 £404 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.77% -3.05%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £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 127 60 112
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.25 £11.23
25th Percentile £16.82 £22.50 £13.23
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%
75th Percentile £24.50 £56.26 £47.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £77.60 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £27.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -14.55% +27.91% -14.00%

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 10,706 8,320 11,395
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.56% 61.30% 55.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,594 4,718 6,936
10th Percentile £204 £210 £210
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.16% -2.90% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,135 480 1,222
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.35 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.47 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.62% +6.00% +11.56%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.06 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 +2 915 £475 -3.06% 891
South East -1 541 £503 -4.29% 1,663
Midlands -3 525 £492 -6.29% 616
North West +3 452 £450 -5.26% 398
Yorkshire 0 415 £500 -2.68% 368
Scotland 0 383 £500 +7.01% 178
West Midlands -4 321 £525 -4.55% 278
South West -5 288 £525 -1.87% 525
East Midlands 0 202 £447 +6.49% 331
East of England -2 170 £525 - 573
Wales +25 81 £406 -13.33% 212
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +42.86% 96
North East -7 49 £481 - 138
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
1 158 (5.43%) Confluence
2 102 (3.50%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 30 (1.03%) Apache
5 26 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.65%) SAS
7 13 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.45%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) JBoss
8 11 (0.38%) TPMS
9 9 (0.31%) IIS
10 8 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
11 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
11 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
11 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
12 6 (0.21%) CICS
13 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 233 (8.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (5.46%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (3.50%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (3.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.55%) Sketch
8 11 (0.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.21%) Trello
11 4 (0.14%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.069%) Camtasia
12 2 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.069%) Snagit
13 1 (0.034%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.034%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 136 (4.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (1.96%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.58%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (1.30%) SAP FI
6 37 (1.27%) Oracle General Ledger
7 31 (1.06%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (1.00%) Oracle Assets
8 29 (1.00%) SAP CO
9 28 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 28 (0.96%) SAP FI/CO
10 25 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
11 23 (0.79%) Oracle EBS R12
11 23 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
12 18 (0.62%) SAP ERP
13 16 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
13 16 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
13 16 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
14 15 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
14 15 (0.52%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 383 (13.15%) AWS
2 365 (12.53%) Azure
3 180 (6.18%) Power Platform
4 165 (5.67%) GCP
5 119 (4.09%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
7 75 (2.58%) Serverless
8 72 (2.47%) GitHub
9 61 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
10 60 (2.06%) SaaS
11 48 (1.65%) Entra ID
12 44 (1.51%) OCI
13 39 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
13 39 (1.34%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.30%) Snowflake
15 37 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
15 37 (1.27%) Figma
16 30 (1.03%) Amazon S3
17 29 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.89%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 62 (2.13%) Firewall
2 33 (1.13%) WAN
3 23 (0.79%) Network Security
4 22 (0.76%) Skype
4 22 (0.76%) VPN
4 22 (0.76%) Wireless
5 20 (0.69%) DNS
6 18 (0.62%) LAN
6 18 (0.62%) SSH
7 16 (0.55%) SD-WAN
7 16 (0.55%) SSL
8 15 (0.52%) Kerberos
9 13 (0.45%) DHCP
10 11 (0.38%) Internet
10 11 (0.38%) SNMP
10 11 (0.38%) TCP/IP
11 8 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
11 8 (0.27%) HTTP
12 6 (0.21%) BGP
12 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (5.84%) Power BI
2 73 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
3 69 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
4 65 (2.23%) NoSQL
5 51 (1.75%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.30%) Tableau
7 33 (1.13%) SQL Server
8 29 (1.00%) Metadata
9 27 (0.93%) Big Data
10 26 (0.89%) Data Lake
10 26 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 23 (0.79%) Power Query
12 20 (0.69%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.69%) DynamoDB
13 18 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
13 18 (0.62%) MongoDB
13 18 (0.62%) Oracle Database
14 16 (0.55%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.55%) MySQL
15 13 (0.45%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 281 (9.65%) JIRA
2 143 (4.91%) Jenkins
3 87 (2.99%) GitLab
4 69 (2.37%) Git
5 43 (1.48%) JUnit
6 38 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 35 (1.20%) Cucumber
8 27 (0.93%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.82%) Liquibase
9 24 (0.82%) Selenium
10 15 (0.52%) Gradle
11 13 (0.45%) Postman
12 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
12 11 (0.38%) Maven
13 10 (0.34%) JMeter
13 10 (0.34%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
14 8 (0.27%) CA Release Automation
14 8 (0.27%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,087 (37.33%) Social Skills
2 510 (17.51%) Banking
3 392 (13.46%) Analytical Skills
4 341 (11.71%) Public Sector
5 195 (6.70%) Manufacturing
6 185 (6.35%) Telecoms
7 163 (5.60%) Marketing
8 127 (4.36%) Electronics
9 114 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
10 103 (3.54%) Financial Institution
11 100 (3.43%) Legal
12 92 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
13 62 (2.13%) General Ledger
14 57 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
15 53 (1.82%) Investment Banking
16 51 (1.75%) Retail
17 49 (1.68%) Local Government
18 45 (1.55%) Billing
18 45 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 33 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 456 (15.66%) Analyst
2 283 (9.72%) Project Manager
3 224 (7.69%) Architect
3 224 (7.69%) Senior
4 218 (7.49%) Consultant
5 207 (7.11%) Developer
6 190 (6.52%) Business Analyst
7 186 (6.39%) Lead
8 101 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
9 95 (3.26%) Programme Manager
10 82 (2.82%) Data Analyst
11 61 (2.09%) Senior Manager
12 59 (2.03%) SAP Consultant
13 57 (1.96%) Java Developer
14 56 (1.92%) Finance Manager
15 55 (1.89%) Designer
16 54 (1.85%) Accountant
16 54 (1.85%) IT Manager
17 52 (1.79%) Functional Consultant
18 49 (1.68%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.43%) REST
2 90 (3.09%) Spring
3 79 (2.71%) Spring Boot
4 75 (2.58%) RESTful
5 67 (2.30%) Oracle Fusion
6 60 (2.06%) Kafka
7 52 (1.79%) .NET
8 45 (1.55%) React
9 39 (1.34%) Middleware
10 37 (1.27%) Node.js
11 35 (1.20%) SOAP
12 33 (1.13%) Elastic Stack
12 33 (1.13%) OAuth
13 30 (1.03%) AngularJS
13 30 (1.03%) JSON
14 28 (0.96%) HTML
15 24 (0.82%) CSS
16 23 (0.79%) JMS
16 23 (0.79%) XML
17 19 (0.65%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 143 (4.91%) Onboarding
2 128 (4.40%) Product Ownership
3 90 (3.09%) Cloud Native
4 78 (2.68%) Data Centre
5 71 (2.44%) Public Cloud
6 67 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
7 64 (2.20%) Management Information System
8 61 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
9 54 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
10 50 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
11 36 (1.24%) Data Structures
12 35 (1.20%) Mobile App
13 33 (1.13%) CMDB
14 30 (1.03%) PMI
14 30 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
14 30 (1.03%) Virtual Team
15 23 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 22 (0.76%) NHS
17 21 (0.72%) Credit Risk
18 20 (0.69%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 141 (4.84%) Linux
2 127 (4.36%) Windows
3 43 (1.48%) Mac OS
4 40 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 39 (1.34%) Unix
6 31 (1.06%) Android
7 20 (0.69%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.10%) VMS
10 3 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.069%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.069%) Windows 8
12 1 (0.034%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.034%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 680 (23.35%) Agile
2 557 (19.13%) Stakeholder Management
3 483 (16.59%) Problem-Solving
4 378 (12.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 374 (12.84%) Migration
6 333 (11.44%) Project Management
7 326 (11.20%) Business Intelligence
8 319 (10.95%) DevOps
9 310 (10.65%) ERP
10 296 (10.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 295 (10.13%) CI/CD
12 255 (8.76%) Change Management
13 232 (7.97%) Programme Management
14 216 (7.42%) Decision-Making
15 209 (7.18%) Project Delivery
16 208 (7.14%) Analytics
17 188 (6.46%) User Acceptance Testing
18 182 (6.25%) Risk Management
18 182 (6.25%) Roadmaps
19 170 (5.84%) AI
Programming Languages
1 341 (11.71%) SQL
2 282 (9.68%) Python
3 197 (6.77%) Java
4 76 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 44 (1.51%) JavaScript
5 44 (1.51%) TypeScript
6 41 (1.41%) C#
7 38 (1.30%) Go
8 25 (0.86%) PL/SQL
8 25 (0.86%) Shell Script
9 21 (0.72%) Bash
10 19 (0.65%) VBA
11 18 (0.62%) R
12 14 (0.48%) Groovy
13 13 (0.45%) Perl
14 11 (0.38%) Rust
15 9 (0.31%) ABAP
15 9 (0.31%) Ruby
16 8 (0.27%) C++
16 8 (0.27%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 318 (10.92%) Degree
2 265 (9.10%) Security Cleared
3 184 (6.32%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.58%) Master's Degree
5 71 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 71 (2.44%) PMI Certification
5 71 (2.44%) PMP
6 68 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 66 (2.27%) ACCA
8 60 (2.06%) CIMA
9 50 (1.72%) AWS Certification
10 49 (1.68%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.58%) CISSP
12 40 (1.37%) CISM
13 33 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
14 21 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
15 15 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.52%) MBA
16 14 (0.48%) FFIEC
17 13 (0.45%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (4.74%) PMO
2 133 (4.57%) QA
3 110 (3.78%) Data Quality
4 101 (3.47%) GDPR
5 54 (1.85%) NIST
6 51 (1.75%) SLA
7 46 (1.58%) PCI DSS
8 44 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 40 (1.37%) Accessibility
10 32 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 28 (0.96%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.89%) PSD2
13 23 (0.79%) IFRS
14 20 (0.69%) GRC
15 17 (0.58%) SEPA
16 14 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.41%) Basel III
17 12 (0.41%) COBIT
18 11 (0.38%) GLBA
18 11 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 128 (4.40%) Docker
2 103 (3.54%) Active Directory
3 26 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.45%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
7 8 (0.27%) NFS
7 8 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) Firmware
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.10%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.10%) HDFS
11 3 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.069%) ACF2
12 2 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.069%) RACF
12 2 (0.069%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 150 (5.15%) Kubernetes
2 103 (3.54%) Terraform
3 85 (2.92%) Ansible
4 58 (1.99%) Grafana
5 53 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.82%) SCCM
7 18 (0.62%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.34%) vRealize
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.27%) Kiali
12 8 (0.27%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
15 4 (0.14%) Control-M
Vendors
1 444 (15.25%) Microsoft
2 395 (13.56%) SAP
3 269 (9.24%) Oracle
4 144 (4.95%) ServiceNow
5 93 (3.19%) Splunk
6 83 (2.85%) Cisco
7 79 (2.71%) Google
8 48 (1.65%) IBM
9 47 (1.61%) Salesforce
10 41 (1.41%) Workday
11 40 (1.37%) VMware
12 35 (1.20%) Databricks
13 34 (1.17%) Dell
13 34 (1.17%) HP
14 29 (1.00%) Apple
15 25 (0.86%) Citrix
16 24 (0.82%) Adobe
17 23 (0.79%) Sage
18 21 (0.72%) Remedy
19 19 (0.65%) IFS