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 2 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,862 2,652 2,670
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.99% 17.40% 14.81%
As % of the General category 27.12% 28.50% 27.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,316 1,757 1,601
10th Percentile £350 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.56% -4.00% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £575
% change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 63 130
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.46 £14.44
25th Percentile £20.87 £15.50 £20.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +20.73%
75th Percentile - £34.16 £51.88
90th Percentile £75.40 £72.20 £70.29
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%

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 14,242 9,305 9,772
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.57% 61.04% 54.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,821 5,592 5,493
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.62% -0.40%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,004 870 1,021
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.08 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.40 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.53 £22.05 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.98% -38.75% +38.46%
75th Percentile £56.25 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.27 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £31.10 £25.15 £36.50
% change year-on-year +23.66% -31.10% +32.73%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2 September 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 0 1,329 £506 +10.60% 1,806
South East -2 738 £500 -4.76% 1,717
North West -1 676 £500 +11.11% 1,096
Midlands -1 613 £514 +11.44% 842
Yorkshire 0 574 £515 +6.40% 496
Scotland 0 523 £470 -3.89% 987
West Midlands +1 457 £525 +5.00% 527
South West -6 359 £550 -0.49% 1,056
East of England +6 208 £550 -1.21% 639
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +20.48% 314
North East -9 72 £500 +13.64% 233
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +2.56% 419
Wales -1 58 £525 +18.31% 161
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 4
South Coast - 1 £450 -
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
1 155 (4.01%) Confluence
2 93 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
4 15 (0.39%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.34%) SAS
7 12 (0.31%) CMS
8 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.21%) IIS
10 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.16%) Camunda
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.10%) CICS
12 4 (0.10%) nginx
13 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.052%) JBoss
14 2 (0.052%) Mule
Applications
1 249 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 114 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (2.20%) Microsoft Project
5 35 (0.91%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.16%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.078%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 196 (5.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.40%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 45 (1.17%) Oracle ERP
5 39 (1.01%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
10 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.26%) SAP CO
14 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 489 (12.66%) Azure
2 339 (8.78%) AWS
3 239 (6.19%) GCP
4 226 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 99 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
5 99 (2.56%) GitHub
5 99 (2.56%) SaaS
6 97 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
7 95 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
8 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
9 47 (1.22%) OCI
10 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
11 42 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
12 40 (1.04%) Serverless
13 38 (0.98%) OpenShift
14 31 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
15 27 (0.70%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.67%) Amazon EKS
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.02%) Firewall
2 74 (1.92%) Network Security
3 45 (1.17%) VPN
4 31 (0.80%) DNS
5 28 (0.73%) WAN
6 23 (0.60%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.57%) LAN
7 22 (0.57%) SSL
8 13 (0.34%) Broadband
9 12 (0.31%) DHCP
10 11 (0.28%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) VSAN
11 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
13 8 (0.21%) BGP
13 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
14 7 (0.18%) Internet
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.16%) Cisco ASA
15 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (4.82%) Power BI
2 76 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.86%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.76%) SQL Server
5 64 (1.66%) Metadata
6 39 (1.01%) Data Lake
6 39 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
7 36 (0.93%) Tableau
8 35 (0.91%) PostgreSQL
9 29 (0.75%) MongoDB
10 27 (0.70%) Db2
11 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle ODI
12 19 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 18 (0.47%) Data Vault
14 17 (0.44%) NoSQL
15 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
17 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 241 (6.24%) JIRA
2 108 (2.80%) Git
3 54 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 13 (0.34%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.34%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.26%) Maven
10 9 (0.23%) Gradle
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.16%) LoadRunner
13 6 (0.16%) Zephyr
General
1 1,305 (33.79%) Social Skills
2 569 (14.73%) Banking
3 546 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 269 (6.97%) Organisational Skills
5 268 (6.94%) Public Sector
6 258 (6.68%) Legal
7 166 (4.30%) Retail
8 142 (3.68%) Influencing Skills
9 100 (2.59%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.46%) Local Government
11 93 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
12 83 (2.15%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.99%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 72 (1.86%) Billing
14 72 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 59 (1.53%) Marketing
16 56 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (1.40%) Telecoms
18 49 (1.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 499 (12.92%) Analyst
2 401 (10.38%) Lead
3 353 (9.14%) Senior
4 316 (8.18%) Project Manager
5 309 (8.00%) Architect
6 291 (7.53%) Developer
7 267 (6.91%) Consultant
8 237 (6.14%) Business Analyst
9 156 (4.04%) Accountant
10 144 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
11 97 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 94 (2.43%) IT Manager
13 93 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
14 92 (2.38%) Senior Manager
15 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 78 (2.02%) Administrator
17 77 (1.99%) Finance Manager
18 70 (1.81%) Data Analyst
19 68 (1.76%) Programme Manager
19 68 (1.76%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.91%) Oracle Fusion
2 136 (3.52%) Terraform
3 89 (2.30%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Kafka
5 69 (1.79%) Middleware
6 68 (1.76%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.66%) Spring
8 60 (1.55%) React
9 57 (1.48%) .NET
10 42 (1.09%) OAuth
10 42 (1.09%) RESTful
11 34 (0.88%) Node.js
12 31 (0.80%) JSON
12 31 (0.80%) OpenID
13 29 (0.75%) SAML
13 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
14 28 (0.73%) XML
15 25 (0.65%) HTML
16 24 (0.62%) Redux
17 23 (0.60%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 166 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 162 (4.19%) Product Ownership
3 155 (4.01%) Virtual Team
4 154 (3.99%) Cloud Native
5 116 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
5 116 (3.00%) Management Information System
6 112 (2.90%) Podcast
6 112 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
7 100 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
9 53 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
10 52 (1.35%) Data Centre
10 52 (1.35%) Public Cloud
11 48 (1.24%) Security Posture
12 47 (1.22%) Mainframe
13 45 (1.17%) AI Agents
14 43 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
14 43 (1.11%) Mobile App
15 39 (1.01%) CMDB
15 39 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 117 (3.03%) Windows
2 109 (2.82%) Linux
3 60 (1.55%) Unix
4 35 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.73%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.62%) zOS
7 23 (0.60%) Solaris
8 15 (0.39%) Android
8 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.078%) CentOS
13 3 (0.078%) MVS
13 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (25.63%) Stakeholder Management
2 720 (18.64%) Agile
3 545 (14.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 524 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
5 509 (13.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 500 (12.95%) Migration
7 489 (12.66%) ERP
8 373 (9.66%) CI/CD
9 372 (9.63%) AI
10 367 (9.50%) Decision-Making
11 357 (9.24%) Project Management
12 350 (9.06%) DevOps
13 341 (8.83%) Change Management
14 294 (7.61%) Roadmaps
15 291 (7.53%) Project Delivery
16 279 (7.22%) Risk Management
17 272 (7.04%) Analytics
18 262 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
19 258 (6.68%) Validation
20 225 (5.83%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 331 (8.57%) SQL
2 330 (8.54%) Python
3 242 (6.27%) Java
4 82 (2.12%) PowerShell
5 65 (1.68%) JavaScript
6 60 (1.55%) Bash
7 59 (1.53%) C#
8 41 (1.06%) PL/SQL
9 40 (1.04%) TypeScript
10 37 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 30 (0.78%) Go
12 23 (0.60%) C++
13 17 (0.44%) Bicep
14 13 (0.34%) ABAP
14 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 10 (0.26%) Perl
18 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 342 (8.86%) Security Cleared
2 258 (6.68%) Degree
3 213 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 109 (2.82%) ACCA
6 105 (2.72%) CIMA
7 99 (2.56%) PMP
8 86 (2.23%) DV Cleared
9 84 (2.18%) PMI Certification
10 75 (1.94%) CISSP
11 48 (1.24%) CISM
12 42 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.04%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 31 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
16 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 29 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 23 (0.60%) CCSP
18 23 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (6.11%) Data Quality
2 171 (4.43%) PMO
3 134 (3.47%) QA
4 114 (2.95%) GDPR
5 56 (1.45%) GRC
6 50 (1.29%) NIST
7 44 (1.14%) SLA
8 39 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (0.98%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.83%) IFRS
11 29 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 8 (0.21%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 72 (1.86%) Active Directory
2 70 (1.81%) Docker
3 44 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 20 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.16%) vSphere
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) GPFS
10 4 (0.10%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.052%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 192 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.89%) Ansible
3 35 (0.91%) Grafana
4 32 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.47%) OMEGAMON
7 18 (0.47%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.41%) SCCM
9 11 (0.28%) Argo
9 11 (0.28%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 7 (0.18%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
14 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
14 4 (0.10%) Puppet
14 4 (0.10%) QRadar
14 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 570 (14.76%) Microsoft
2 409 (10.59%) SAP
3 382 (9.89%) Oracle
4 172 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.90%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 79 (2.05%) Databricks
8 67 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 58 (1.50%) VMware
10 42 (1.09%) Cisco
11 41 (1.06%) Splunk
12 39 (1.01%) Ariba
13 37 (0.96%) Workday
14 36 (0.93%) Sage
15 27 (0.70%) Red Hat
16 25 (0.65%) MuleSoft
17 24 (0.62%) IFS
18 21 (0.54%) Adobe
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 18 (0.47%) Foundry