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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,871 2,644 2,700
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.75% 16.77% 15.48%
As % of the General category 25.99% 27.70% 27.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,241 1,753 1,563
10th Percentile £340 £308 £303
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £530 £575
% change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 71 99
10th Percentile £14.30 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%
75th Percentile - £30.20 £55.13
90th Percentile £74.50 £57.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.54 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.62% -16.55% +28.35%

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 14,896 9,545 9,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.91% 60.56% 56.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,856 5,782 5,339
10th Percentile £256 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £483
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% -3.40%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £656 £681
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,341 957 802
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.42 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.60 £16.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%
75th Percentile £53.87 £42.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.08 £33.00
% change year-on-year +9.67% -24.02% +20.00%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 1,340 £514 +9.36% 1,863
South East -1 740 £500 -2.82% 1,866
North West -2 642 £509 +13.00% 982
Yorkshire +1 620 £515 +3.00% 662
Midlands -2 613 £525 +10.53% 1,088
Scotland 0 540 £463 -6.00% 1,016
West Midlands -2 455 £515 -0.91% 654
South West -6 337 £525 -4.55% 808
East of England +1 199 £550 -3.51% 680
East Midlands -2 152 £525 +25.00% 435
North East -9 71 £538 +22.86% 232
Wales +3 66 £525 +20.34% 206
Northern Ireland 0 60 £486 -7.38% 445
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 14
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
1 142 (3.67%) Confluence
2 97 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 24 (0.62%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) SAS
5 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) JBoss
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.052%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.96%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 209 (5.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 31 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
5 31 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
6 29 (0.75%) NetSuite
6 29 (0.75%) SAP FI
7 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
8 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
9 21 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 21 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.52%) Workday HCM
11 17 (0.44%) SAP BRIM
12 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.34%) SAP CO
12 13 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
12 13 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 471 (12.17%) Azure
2 356 (9.20%) AWS
3 254 (6.56%) GCP
4 218 (5.63%) Power Platform
5 109 (2.82%) GitHub
6 103 (2.66%) Azure DevOps
6 103 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
7 95 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
8 89 (2.30%) SaaS
9 76 (1.96%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.19%) Serverless
11 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 42 (1.08%) OCI
13 39 (1.01%) OpenShift
14 38 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
16 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
17 29 (0.75%) Anthropic Claude
18 28 (0.72%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.20%) Network Security
2 82 (2.12%) Firewall
3 39 (1.01%) VPN
4 27 (0.70%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 18 (0.46%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 7 (0.18%) VSAN
12 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
14 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 178 (4.60%) Power BI
2 77 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) SQL Server
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 67 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 44 (1.14%) Data Lake
7 35 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
9 30 (0.77%) Db2
10 24 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
11 21 (0.54%) BigQuery
11 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
14 16 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.39%) MySQL
15 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 232 (5.99%) JIRA
2 122 (3.15%) Git
3 71 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.77%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) JUnit
6 20 (0.52%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
14 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,352 (34.93%) Social Skills
2 615 (15.89%) Banking
3 534 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.41%) Organisational Skills
5 283 (7.31%) Public Sector
6 258 (6.66%) Legal
7 160 (4.13%) Retail
8 145 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.48%) Billing
11 94 (2.43%) General Ledger
12 87 (2.25%) Local Government
13 81 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 80 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
15 73 (1.89%) Investment Banking
16 69 (1.78%) Marketing
17 65 (1.68%) Financial Institution
18 62 (1.60%) Telecoms
19 57 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
20 46 (1.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 473 (12.22%) Analyst
2 392 (10.13%) Lead
3 383 (9.89%) Senior
4 297 (7.67%) Architect
5 293 (7.57%) Developer
6 288 (7.44%) Project Manager
7 264 (6.82%) Consultant
8 225 (5.81%) Business Analyst
9 149 (3.85%) Accountant
10 142 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.58%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.45%) Administrator
13 92 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
14 90 (2.32%) Java Developer
14 90 (2.32%) Systems Accountant
15 83 (2.14%) Senior Manager
16 80 (2.07%) Finance Manager
17 75 (1.94%) Programme Manager
18 73 (1.89%) Data Analyst
19 65 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.90%) Oracle Fusion
2 146 (3.77%) Terraform
3 117 (3.02%) REST
4 78 (2.01%) Kafka
5 73 (1.89%) React
6 69 (1.78%) Middleware
7 68 (1.76%) Spring Boot
8 62 (1.60%) Spring
9 57 (1.47%) .NET
10 52 (1.34%) RESTful
11 46 (1.19%) OAuth
12 44 (1.14%) JSON
13 34 (0.88%) OpenID
14 33 (0.85%) SAP Fiori
15 32 (0.83%) Node.js
16 30 (0.77%) SOAP
16 30 (0.77%) XML
17 29 (0.75%) HTML
18 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
19 27 (0.70%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 178 (4.60%) Onboarding
2 176 (4.55%) Cloud Native
3 162 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 158 (4.08%) Virtual Team
5 134 (3.46%) Data Protection Act
6 122 (3.15%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.92%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.87%) Podcast
9 89 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.76%) AI Agents
11 68 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 66 (1.70%) Data Centre
13 60 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
14 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
15 49 (1.27%) Mainframe
16 48 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
17 44 (1.14%) Security Posture
18 41 (1.06%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 114 (2.94%) Linux
2 107 (2.76%) Windows
3 57 (1.47%) Unix
4 34 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 22 (0.57%) Solaris
7 15 (0.39%) Android
8 14 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,089 (28.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 744 (19.22%) Agile
3 541 (13.98%) Continuous Improvement
4 533 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
5 497 (12.84%) Migration
6 482 (12.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 459 (11.86%) ERP
8 428 (11.06%) AI
9 423 (10.93%) CI/CD
10 388 (10.02%) Decision-Making
11 347 (8.96%) DevOps
12 344 (8.89%) Project Management
13 330 (8.52%) Roadmaps
14 326 (8.42%) Change Management
15 307 (7.93%) Project Delivery
16 302 (7.80%) Analytics
17 289 (7.47%) Validation
18 288 (7.44%) Risk Management
19 274 (7.08%) User Acceptance Testing
20 225 (5.81%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 370 (9.56%) Python
2 353 (9.12%) SQL
3 246 (6.35%) Java
4 83 (2.14%) JavaScript
5 78 (2.01%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.70%) C#
7 62 (1.60%) Bash
8 50 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) Go
10 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.57%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 18 (0.46%) Bicep
15 16 (0.41%) Perl
16 14 (0.36%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 354 (9.14%) Security Cleared
2 241 (6.23%) Degree
3 218 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 102 (2.63%) ACCA
6 101 (2.61%) CIMA
7 92 (2.38%) DV Cleared
7 92 (2.38%) PMP
8 81 (2.09%) PMI Certification
9 63 (1.63%) CISSP
10 44 (1.14%) AWS Certification
11 40 (1.03%) Azure Certification
11 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
11 40 (1.03%) CISM
12 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
13 29 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 27 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.59%) CCSP
17 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 182 (4.70%) PMO
3 137 (3.54%) QA
4 83 (2.14%) GDPR
5 56 (1.45%) GRC
6 44 (1.14%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.01%) NIST
7 39 (1.01%) SLA
8 31 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.72%) IFRS
10 25 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 10 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.26%) COBIT
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 9 (0.23%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
14 9 (0.23%) NCSC
14 9 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 77 (1.99%) Docker
2 69 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.10%) ACF2
9 4 (0.10%) GPFS
9 4 (0.10%) NFS
9 4 (0.10%) zsh
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 214 (5.53%) Kubernetes
2 77 (1.99%) Ansible
3 39 (1.01%) Grafana
4 36 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 10 (0.26%) Argo
10 10 (0.26%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
13 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
14 6 (0.15%) logstash
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
16 4 (0.10%) Kibana
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
Vendors
1 591 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 449 (11.60%) SAP
3 362 (9.35%) Oracle
4 160 (4.13%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.92%) Google
6 94 (2.43%) IBM
7 79 (2.04%) Databricks
8 70 (1.81%) VMware
9 67 (1.73%) Salesforce
10 51 (1.32%) Splunk
11 49 (1.27%) Ariba
12 45 (1.16%) Workday
13 41 (1.06%) Cisco
14 29 (0.75%) Sage
15 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
16 25 (0.65%) Adobe
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 19 (0.49%) Dynatrace
20 17 (0.44%) F5