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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,911 2,685 2,689
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.88% 17.36% 14.97%
As % of the General category 26.68% 28.42% 27.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,348 1,774 1,590
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.65% -3.41% -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 268 60 124
10th Percentile £14.86 £13.42 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.31 £15.50 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +25.09%
75th Percentile - £33.23 £53.19
90th Percentile £75.40 £73.75 £70.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +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 14,660 9,446 9,860
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.04% 61.07% 54.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,987 5,676 5,463
10th Percentile £263 £213 £210
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,128 893 973
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.19% -42.93% +44.51%
75th Percentile £55.25 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.93 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £29.98 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +19.20% -32.93% +36.36%

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 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 11 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 11 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 1,336 £507 +10.16% 1,041
South East -2 743 £500 -4.76% 1,328
North West -1 671 £500 +11.11% 567
Midlands -1 619 £500 +6.61% 576
Yorkshire 0 584 £516 +5.83% 351
Scotland 0 536 £465 -3.53% 437
West Midlands 0 463 £514 +1.53% 356
South West -7 354 £550 -4.35% 593
East of England +5 222 £555 -0.22% 367
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +19.05% 220
North East -8 74 £500 +14.29% 138
Northern Ireland -1 66 £510 +4.62% 109
Wales 0 60 £525 +13.51% 98
Channel Islands +3 7 £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
1 153 (3.91%) Confluence
2 97 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.28%) Apache
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
13 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 255 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (5.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
5 38 (0.97%) NetSuite
6 29 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 26 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
11 16 (0.41%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 11 (0.28%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 487 (12.45%) Azure
2 342 (8.74%) AWS
3 246 (6.29%) GCP
4 227 (5.80%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.61%) SaaS
6 100 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
6 100 (2.56%) GitHub
7 97 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
7 97 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
8 75 (1.92%) Entra ID
9 46 (1.18%) OCI
10 44 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
11 42 (1.07%) Serverless
11 42 (1.07%) Snowflake
12 39 (1.00%) OpenShift
13 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
14 33 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 76 (1.94%) Firewall
1 76 (1.94%) Network Security
2 42 (1.07%) VPN
3 27 (0.69%) DNS
4 23 (0.59%) WAN
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 18 (0.46%) LAN
8 15 (0.38%) Broadband
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) DHCP
10 9 (0.23%) VSAN
11 8 (0.20%) BGP
11 8 (0.20%) BIG-IP
11 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
13 6 (0.15%) SD-WAN
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.70%) Power BI
2 73 (1.87%) Relational Database
3 72 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
4 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.61%) Metadata
6 38 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 33 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
10 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
11 28 (0.72%) Db2
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 17 (0.43%) Data Vault
15 17 (0.43%) NoSQL
15 17 (0.43%) Oracle ODI
16 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
17 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
17 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 236 (6.03%) JIRA
2 108 (2.76%) Git
3 54 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 25 (0.64%) JUnit
5 19 (0.49%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Selenium
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.31%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.28%) Hudson
12 10 (0.26%) Maven
13 9 (0.23%) Gradle
13 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 9 (0.23%) Postman
14 8 (0.20%) ERwin
15 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
16 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
16 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
16 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,337 (34.19%) Social Skills
2 583 (14.91%) Banking
3 548 (14.01%) Analytical Skills
4 279 (7.13%) Organisational Skills
4 279 (7.13%) Public Sector
5 260 (6.65%) Legal
6 171 (4.37%) Retail
7 145 (3.71%) Influencing Skills
8 97 (2.48%) Local Government
8 97 (2.48%) Manufacturing
9 90 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
10 86 (2.20%) General Ledger
11 78 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 78 (1.99%) Investment Banking
12 76 (1.94%) Billing
13 72 (1.84%) Financial Institution
14 64 (1.64%) Marketing
15 55 (1.41%) Telecoms
16 54 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
17 51 (1.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 505 (12.91%) Analyst
2 403 (10.30%) Lead
3 358 (9.15%) Senior
4 314 (8.03%) Project Manager
5 307 (7.85%) Architect
6 302 (7.72%) Developer
7 278 (7.11%) Consultant
8 236 (6.03%) Business Analyst
9 153 (3.91%) Accountant
10 145 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.56%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.43%) Financial Analyst
13 93 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
14 91 (2.33%) Senior Manager
15 89 (2.28%) Java Developer
16 82 (2.10%) Administrator
17 79 (2.02%) Finance Manager
18 71 (1.82%) Data Analyst
19 70 (1.79%) Programme Manager
20 66 (1.69%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.81%) Oracle Fusion
2 140 (3.58%) Terraform
3 96 (2.45%) REST
4 74 (1.89%) Kafka
5 69 (1.76%) Middleware
6 66 (1.69%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.59%) Spring
8 61 (1.56%) React
9 56 (1.43%) .NET
10 45 (1.15%) RESTful
11 44 (1.13%) OAuth
12 35 (0.89%) JSON
13 34 (0.87%) OpenID
14 31 (0.79%) Node.js
15 29 (0.74%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 28 (0.72%) XML
17 26 (0.66%) HTML
18 25 (0.64%) OAuth2
18 25 (0.64%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 168 (4.30%) Product Ownership
2 167 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 158 (4.04%) Cloud Native
4 157 (4.01%) Virtual Team
5 122 (3.12%) Data Protection Act
6 119 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 101 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
10 66 (1.69%) Data Structures
11 60 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
12 57 (1.46%) Data Centre
13 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 50 (1.28%) AI Agents
15 49 (1.25%) Mainframe
15 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
16 45 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
17 42 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
17 42 (1.07%) Mobile App
18 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 113 (2.89%) Windows
2 109 (2.79%) Linux
3 60 (1.53%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.69%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.66%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.38%) Android
8 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,014 (25.93%) Stakeholder Management
2 721 (18.44%) Agile
3 549 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
4 532 (13.60%) Problem-Solving
5 510 (13.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 501 (12.81%) Migration
7 491 (12.55%) ERP
8 386 (9.87%) CI/CD
9 383 (9.79%) AI
10 373 (9.54%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.00%) Change Management
11 352 (9.00%) Project Management
12 347 (8.87%) DevOps
13 307 (7.85%) Roadmaps
14 294 (7.52%) Risk Management
15 286 (7.31%) Project Delivery
16 273 (6.98%) Analytics
17 268 (6.85%) Validation
18 266 (6.80%) User Acceptance Testing
19 235 (6.01%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 333 (8.51%) Python
2 327 (8.36%) SQL
3 240 (6.14%) Java
4 82 (2.10%) PowerShell
5 71 (1.82%) JavaScript
6 61 (1.56%) C#
7 60 (1.53%) Bash
8 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
8 40 (1.02%) TypeScript
9 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 35 (0.89%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 13 (0.33%) ABAP
13 13 (0.33%) Scala
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 11 (0.28%) Perl
16 8 (0.20%) X++
Qualifications
1 354 (9.05%) Security Cleared
2 256 (6.55%) Degree
3 218 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 183 (4.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (2.76%) ACCA
6 105 (2.68%) CIMA
7 100 (2.56%) PMP
8 86 (2.20%) DV Cleared
9 82 (2.10%) PMI Certification
10 74 (1.89%) CISSP
11 47 (1.20%) CISM
12 43 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 24 (0.61%) CCSP
16 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (6.19%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.45%) PMO
3 134 (3.43%) QA
4 105 (2.68%) GDPR
5 56 (1.43%) GRC
6 49 (1.25%) NIST
7 41 (1.05%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.02%) SLA
9 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.79%) IFRS
11 26 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
13 11 (0.28%) WCAG
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.20%) ISO 20022
16 8 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 72 (1.84%) Docker
2 71 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 200 (5.11%) Kubernetes
2 71 (1.82%) Ansible
3 37 (0.95%) Grafana
4 33 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
7 18 (0.46%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.38%) SCCM
9 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 10 (0.26%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
14 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
14 4 (0.10%) logstash
14 4 (0.10%) QRadar
14 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 580 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 424 (10.84%) SAP
3 376 (9.61%) Oracle
4 172 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.89%) Google
6 88 (2.25%) IBM
7 77 (1.97%) Databricks
8 68 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 59 (1.51%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Splunk
11 42 (1.07%) Ariba
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco
13 39 (1.00%) Workday
14 33 (0.84%) Sage
15 26 (0.66%) MuleSoft
16 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.59%) Snow
18 22 (0.56%) Adobe
19 21 (0.54%) IFS
20 20 (0.51%) Sybase