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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,882 2,580 2,660
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.77% 16.90% 15.08%
As % of the General category 26.40% 27.86% 27.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,313 1,710 1,566
10th Percentile £343 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £536 £575
% change year-on-year +2.61% -6.78% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 267 60 110
10th Percentile £14.55 £13.42 £14.43
25th Percentile £19.99 £15.48 £20.19
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +25.71%
75th Percentile - £31.63 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £60.34 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.55 £33.00
% change year-on-year +53.98% -13.48% +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 14,707 9,261 9,824
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.18% 60.67% 55.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,900 5,567 5,385
10th Percentile £260 £210 £209
25th Percentile £400 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £595
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,217 905 909
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.55
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.00 £35.03
Median % change year-on-year +42.86% -40.05% +28.79%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.10 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.78 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +18.41% -28.87% +28.58%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 1,337 £514 +10.72% 1,858
South East -1 728 £500 -2.44% 2,068
North West -1 645 £500 +11.11% 1,033
Yorkshire 0 612 £525 +5.00% 620
Midlands -3 598 £507 +6.74% 1,135
Scotland 0 550 £465 -6.06% 907
West Midlands -2 443 £525 +1.01% 713
South West -6 355 £525 -8.70% 870
East of England +3 208 £549 -4.52% 586
East Midlands -4 152 £500 +19.76% 421
North East -3 73 £500 +13.96% 219
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.21% 337
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.69% 208
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 13
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
1 144 (3.71%) Confluence
2 93 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.46%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (0.15%) CICS
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) Camunda
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 3 (0.077%) JBoss
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 257 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.88%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 203 (5.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (0.93%) NetSuite
4 36 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
6 27 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
7 25 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 23 (0.59%) SAP FI
8 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
10 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
11 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 470 (12.11%) Azure
2 350 (9.02%) AWS
3 254 (6.54%) GCP
4 224 (5.77%) Power Platform
5 105 (2.70%) GitHub
6 101 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
7 99 (2.55%) SaaS
8 94 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
9 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
10 75 (1.93%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
12 45 (1.16%) OCI
12 45 (1.16%) Serverless
12 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
13 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
14 35 (0.90%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (0.88%) Power Automate
16 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (0.70%) Anthropic Claude
17 27 (0.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.04%) Firewall
2 78 (2.01%) Network Security
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.21%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco Nexus
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.64%) Power BI
2 72 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.78%) Metadata
4 69 (1.78%) SQL Server
5 40 (1.03%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
9 28 (0.72%) Db2
10 20 (0.52%) BigQuery
10 20 (0.52%) NoSQL
10 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.39%) Data Vault
13 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
13 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 226 (5.82%) JIRA
2 118 (3.04%) Git
3 63 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) JUnit
6 18 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 12 (0.31%) Maven
10 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.26%) Hudson
11 10 (0.26%) Postman
12 9 (0.23%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) JMeter
15 6 (0.15%) REST Assured
General
1 1,348 (34.72%) Social Skills
2 597 (15.38%) Banking
3 549 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.24%) Public Sector
5 280 (7.21%) Organisational Skills
6 257 (6.62%) Legal
7 163 (4.20%) Retail
8 148 (3.81%) Influencing Skills
9 99 (2.55%) Manufacturing
10 93 (2.40%) Local Government
11 86 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (2.16%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.04%) Billing
13 79 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 73 (1.88%) Investment Banking
15 66 (1.70%) Financial Institution
16 64 (1.65%) Marketing
17 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
18 55 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
19 49 (1.26%) Law
Job Titles
1 490 (12.62%) Analyst
2 391 (10.07%) Lead
3 371 (9.56%) Senior
4 312 (8.04%) Developer
5 305 (7.86%) Architect
6 300 (7.73%) Project Manager
7 272 (7.01%) Consultant
8 230 (5.92%) Business Analyst
9 149 (3.84%) Accountant
10 145 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 102 (2.63%) IT Manager
12 97 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
13 94 (2.42%) Java Developer
14 88 (2.27%) Senior Manager
14 88 (2.27%) Systems Accountant
15 86 (2.22%) Administrator
16 80 (2.06%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.75%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (3.76%) Terraform
2 144 (3.71%) Oracle Fusion
3 109 (2.81%) REST
4 80 (2.06%) Kafka
5 71 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 69 (1.78%) Middleware
6 69 (1.78%) React
7 67 (1.73%) Spring
8 57 (1.47%) .NET
9 51 (1.31%) RESTful
10 49 (1.26%) OAuth
11 41 (1.06%) JSON
12 39 (1.00%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
14 31 (0.80%) SAML
15 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
15 29 (0.75%) SOAP
16 28 (0.72%) XML
17 27 (0.70%) AngularJS
17 27 (0.70%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 166 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 163 (4.20%) Cloud Native
3 161 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 157 (4.04%) Virtual Team
5 125 (3.22%) Data Protection Act
6 118 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.91%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.89%) Podcast
9 96 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 66 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.67%) Data Structures
12 63 (1.62%) Data Centre
13 59 (1.52%) AI Agents
14 55 (1.42%) Mainframe
15 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
16 47 (1.21%) Public Cloud
17 46 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
19 41 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 113 (2.91%) Linux
2 109 (2.81%) Windows
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 36 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (0.75%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.70%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
11 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.15%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 3 (0.077%) CentOS
14 3 (0.077%) MVS
15 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,036 (26.69%) Stakeholder Management
2 722 (18.60%) Agile
3 535 (13.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 534 (13.76%) Problem-Solving
5 496 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 488 (12.57%) Migration
7 478 (12.31%) ERP
8 408 (10.51%) CI/CD
9 404 (10.41%) AI
10 376 (9.69%) Decision-Making
11 345 (8.89%) Project Management
12 343 (8.84%) DevOps
13 339 (8.73%) Change Management
14 310 (7.99%) Roadmaps
15 291 (7.50%) Project Delivery
16 286 (7.37%) Risk Management
17 282 (7.26%) Analytics
18 272 (7.01%) Validation
19 260 (6.70%) User Acceptance Testing
20 230 (5.92%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 349 (8.99%) Python
1 349 (8.99%) SQL
2 246 (6.34%) Java
3 80 (2.06%) PowerShell
4 76 (1.96%) JavaScript
5 63 (1.62%) C#
6 60 (1.55%) Bash
7 45 (1.16%) TypeScript
8 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
9 37 (0.95%) Go
10 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 22 (0.57%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 16 (0.41%) Scala
14 14 (0.36%) Perl
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 351 (9.04%) Security Cleared
2 252 (6.49%) Degree
3 212 (5.46%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (2.68%) ACCA
6 102 (2.63%) CIMA
7 95 (2.45%) PMP
8 90 (2.32%) DV Cleared
9 77 (1.98%) PMI Certification
10 67 (1.73%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 43 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
13 42 (1.08%) CISM
14 40 (1.03%) Azure Certification
15 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 22 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (6.41%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.48%) PMO
3 137 (3.53%) QA
4 95 (2.45%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) NIST
7 43 (1.11%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.03%) SLA
9 35 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.80%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 76 (1.96%) Docker
2 71 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 50 (1.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) vSphere
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.052%) IAG
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 209 (5.38%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.93%) Ansible
3 38 (0.98%) Grafana
4 36 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.52%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) logstash
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
16 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 581 (14.97%) Microsoft
2 425 (10.95%) SAP
3 371 (9.56%) Oracle
4 172 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.91%) Google
6 95 (2.45%) IBM
7 80 (2.06%) Databricks
8 66 (1.70%) Salesforce
9 65 (1.67%) VMware
10 45 (1.16%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 43 (1.11%) Ariba
13 41 (1.06%) Cisco
14 30 (0.77%) Sage
15 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 19 (0.49%) Foundry
18 18 (0.46%) IFS