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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,259 2,160 2,702
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.54% 17.13% 12.83%
As % of the General category 27.45% 27.80% 23.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,042 1,362 1,706
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £402 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 69 194
10th Percentile £13.98 £18.12 £11.91
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.29
Median hourly rate £22.32 £52.50 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year -57.50% +72.63% -22.37%
75th Percentile £34.25 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £73.00 £78.47 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year -40.81% +46.36% -12.36%

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 11,871 7,771 11,551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.96% 61.63% 54.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,163 4,836 6,748
10th Percentile £225 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,320 530 1,551
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.60 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.48 £18.10 £15.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £27.57 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.95% +10.28% -18.71%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £29.07 £26.00
% change year-on-year -12.69% +11.81% -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 31 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 31 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 31 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 - 695
South East -2 628 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands +1 577 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 568 £455 -2.26% 371
Yorkshire 0 452 £500 +3.63% 253
West Midlands +2 381 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 371 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -3 324 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England -2 198 £513 -4.65% 271
East Midlands 0 191 £449 +3.76% 171
Wales +27 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 42 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 153 (4.69%) Confluence
2 111 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.77%) Apache Spark
5 21 (0.64%) Apache
6 12 (0.37%) SAS
7 10 (0.31%) TPMS
8 8 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.25%) CICS
8 8 (0.25%) CMS
9 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.092%) Camunda
12 3 (0.092%) IIS
13 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
13 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 246 (7.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 131 (4.02%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (3.56%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (2.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (1.32%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.31%) 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 3 (0.092%) 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
1 148 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.66%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.47%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.26%) Oracle EBS
5 39 (1.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 35 (1.07%) Oracle General Ledger
7 31 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
8 29 (0.89%) Oracle Assets
8 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
9 27 (0.83%) Oracle Cash Management
10 21 (0.64%) NetSuite
10 21 (0.64%) Oracle EBS R12
11 19 (0.58%) SAP CO
12 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
12 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
13 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
15 12 (0.37%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 396 (12.15%) Azure
2 351 (10.77%) AWS
3 190 (5.83%) Power Platform
4 155 (4.76%) GCP
5 113 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 86 (2.64%) GitHub
7 82 (2.52%) SaaS
8 81 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 73 (2.24%) Dynamics 365
10 67 (2.06%) Serverless
11 51 (1.56%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.29%) OpenShift
13 39 (1.20%) OCI
14 34 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
15 33 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
15 33 (1.01%) Snowflake
16 32 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (0.92%) Microsoft Copilot
18 28 (0.86%) Amazon S3
19 25 (0.77%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.45%) Firewall
2 41 (1.26%) WAN
3 36 (1.10%) DNS
4 34 (1.04%) Network Security
5 29 (0.89%) VPN
6 21 (0.64%) LAN
6 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
7 18 (0.55%) Skype
8 17 (0.52%) SSL
9 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.43%) Internet
10 14 (0.43%) Wireless
11 13 (0.40%) 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%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.21%) OSPF
16 7 (0.21%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 178 (5.46%) Power BI
2 83 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 52 (1.60%) NoSQL
5 48 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
6 46 (1.41%) Metadata
7 42 (1.29%) Relational Database
8 36 (1.10%) SQL Server
9 34 (1.04%) Tableau
10 26 (0.80%) DynamoDB
11 25 (0.77%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.71%) Big Data
12 23 (0.71%) Power Query
13 19 (0.58%) Oracle ODI
14 16 (0.49%) BigQuery
15 13 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 13 (0.40%) MySQL
15 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
16 12 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 306 (9.39%) JIRA
2 120 (3.68%) Jenkins
3 69 (2.12%) GitLab
4 53 (1.63%) Git
5 35 (1.07%) JUnit
5 35 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 28 (0.86%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.58%) Selenium
8 13 (0.40%) Bitbucket
8 13 (0.40%) Postman
9 12 (0.37%) Liquibase
10 11 (0.34%) Hudson
10 11 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.28%) Gradle
11 9 (0.28%) JMeter
12 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.21%) Maven
14 6 (0.18%) Snyk
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,105 (33.91%) Social Skills
2 501 (15.37%) Banking
3 417 (12.80%) Analytical Skills
4 344 (10.56%) Public Sector
5 161 (4.94%) Manufacturing
6 147 (4.51%) Telecoms
7 127 (3.90%) Marketing
7 127 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
8 111 (3.41%) Legal
9 102 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
10 93 (2.85%) Financial Institution
11 84 (2.58%) Electronics
12 81 (2.49%) Local Government
13 70 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
14 68 (2.09%) Retail
15 60 (1.84%) General Ledger
16 50 (1.53%) Billing
17 48 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 40 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
19 32 (0.98%) Law
Job Titles
1 497 (15.25%) Analyst
2 324 (9.94%) Project Manager
3 284 (8.71%) Architect
4 271 (8.32%) Lead
5 252 (7.73%) Senior
6 234 (7.18%) Consultant
7 222 (6.81%) Business Analyst
8 191 (5.86%) Developer
9 119 (3.65%) Solutions Architect
10 94 (2.88%) Accountant
10 94 (2.88%) Programme Manager
11 84 (2.58%) Senior Manager
12 80 (2.45%) Finance Manager
13 73 (2.24%) Data Analyst
14 68 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
15 57 (1.75%) Systems Accountant
16 56 (1.72%) IT Manager
17 55 (1.69%) Administrator
17 55 (1.69%) Functional Consultant
18 54 (1.66%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (3.34%) REST
2 79 (2.42%) Spring
3 74 (2.27%) Spring Boot
4 73 (2.24%) Oracle Fusion
5 67 (2.06%) Kafka
6 64 (1.96%) Middleware
7 53 (1.63%) RESTful
8 35 (1.07%) Node.js
9 32 (0.98%) .NET
10 31 (0.95%) JSON
10 31 (0.95%) React
11 29 (0.89%) SOAP
12 27 (0.83%) OAuth
12 27 (0.83%) XML
13 24 (0.74%) HTML
14 23 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) AngularJS
15 20 (0.61%) CSS
15 20 (0.61%) OpenTelemetry
16 17 (0.52%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 153 (4.69%) Onboarding
2 125 (3.84%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.19%) Cloud Native
4 97 (2.98%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.52%) Data Centre
6 74 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
7 70 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 68 (2.09%) Public Cloud
9 67 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
10 44 (1.35%) Data Structures
11 40 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
12 35 (1.07%) PMI
13 34 (1.04%) Virtual Team
14 30 (0.92%) Mobile App
15 29 (0.89%) CMDB
16 26 (0.80%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.58%) NHS
17 19 (0.58%) Operational Technology
18 18 (0.55%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 128 (3.93%) Linux
2 107 (3.28%) Windows
3 44 (1.35%) Unix
4 28 (0.86%) Windows 10
5 23 (0.71%) Android
6 22 (0.68%) Mac OS
6 22 (0.68%) Windows Server
7 9 (0.28%) 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
1 657 (20.16%) Agile
2 656 (20.13%) Stakeholder Management
3 523 (16.05%) Problem-Solving
4 474 (14.54%) Migration
5 433 (13.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 387 (11.87%) Project Management
7 380 (11.66%) ERP
8 369 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
9 351 (10.77%) DevOps
10 316 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
11 288 (8.84%) CI/CD
12 283 (8.68%) Change Management
13 279 (8.56%) Project Delivery
14 240 (7.36%) Decision-Making
15 232 (7.12%) User Acceptance Testing
16 222 (6.81%) Analytics
17 215 (6.60%) Roadmaps
18 206 (6.32%) AI
19 200 (6.14%) Data Modelling
19 200 (6.14%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 324 (9.94%) SQL
2 252 (7.73%) Python
3 182 (5.58%) Java
4 67 (2.06%) PowerShell
5 28 (0.86%) Go
6 27 (0.83%) TypeScript
7 26 (0.80%) JavaScript
8 23 (0.71%) Bash
8 23 (0.71%) VBA
9 21 (0.64%) PL/SQL
10 20 (0.61%) C#
11 18 (0.55%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.34%) R
14 10 (0.31%) ABAP
14 10 (0.31%) COBOL
14 10 (0.31%) Perl
15 8 (0.25%) C++
15 8 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 343 (10.52%) Security Cleared
2 320 (9.82%) Degree
3 214 (6.57%) SC Cleared
4 99 (3.04%) PMP
5 98 (3.01%) PMI Certification
6 93 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 92 (2.82%) ACCA
8 86 (2.64%) CIMA
9 70 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 65 (1.99%) Master's Degree
11 60 (1.84%) CISSP
12 58 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
13 41 (1.26%) CISM
14 35 (1.07%) AWS Certification
15 29 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
16 20 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
17 16 (0.49%) MBA
17 16 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 14 (0.43%) Azure Certification
19 13 (0.40%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 185 (5.68%) PMO
2 151 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 137 (4.20%) QA
4 131 (4.02%) GDPR
5 60 (1.84%) NIST
6 51 (1.56%) SLA
7 46 (1.41%) PCI DSS
8 44 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (0.89%) IFRS
10 27 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.74%) ISO 20022
11 24 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.68%) GRC
13 19 (0.58%) PSD2
14 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
15 13 (0.40%) SEPA
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
16 12 (0.37%) SOC 2
17 10 (0.31%) GLBA
System Software
1 115 (3.53%) Docker
2 73 (2.24%) 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 Machines
10 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.092%) Firmware
11 3 (0.092%) KVM
11 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.061%) ACF2
12 2 (0.061%) HDFS
12 2 (0.061%) RACF
12 2 (0.061%) SRDF
12 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 160 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 84 (2.58%) Terraform
3 79 (2.42%) Ansible
4 54 (1.66%) Grafana
5 47 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 16 (0.49%) SCCM
7 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.40%) vRealize
9 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.28%) Nessus
10 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
10 8 (0.25%) Kiali
11 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.15%) CASB
12 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
12 5 (0.15%) Puppet
12 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 428 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 364 (11.17%) SAP
3 277 (8.50%) Oracle
4 155 (4.76%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.88%) Google
6 76 (2.33%) Cisco
7 74 (2.27%) Splunk
8 52 (1.60%) Sage
9 51 (1.56%) VMware
10 50 (1.53%) IBM
11 46 (1.41%) Databricks
12 45 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 32 (0.98%) Workday
14 29 (0.89%) HP
14 29 (0.89%) IFS
15 28 (0.86%) Dell
16 22 (0.68%) Adobe
17 19 (0.58%) Citrix
17 19 (0.58%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.58%) Remedy