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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,896 2,654 2,660
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.91% 17.16% 14.94%
As % of the General category 26.67% 28.17% 27.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,329 1,758 1,555
10th Percentile £340 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £494 £515
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -4.13% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 58 117
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.35 £13.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £15.49 £18.89
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%
75th Percentile - £32.08 £54.00
90th Percentile £75.36 £61.02 £72.25
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +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 14,610 9,422 9,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.16% 60.91% 55.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,920 5,665 5,394
10th Percentile £263 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
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 2,157 903 939
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.22 £21.39 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +41.28% -39.51% +34.70%
75th Percentile £56.21 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.47 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £36.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -30.14% +30.91%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,338 £513 +11.41% 2,435
South East -2 734 £500 -2.82% 2,367
North West -1 661 £500 +11.11% 1,433
Midlands -1 606 £500 +6.61% 1,261
Yorkshire 0 595 £519 +6.14% 749
Scotland 0 545 £465 -4.91% 1,380
West Midlands -1 452 £515 +2.90% 807
South West -7 356 £525 -8.70% 1,139
East of England +3 214 £553 +0.45% 769
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.76% 454
North East -6 75 £500 +14.29% 284
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 554
Wales +1 61 £525 +13.51% 243
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 16
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
1 148 (3.80%) Confluence
2 95 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.15%) Camunda
7 6 (0.15%) CICS
7 6 (0.15%) IIS
7 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
8 4 (0.10%) nginx
9 3 (0.077%) IBM Transformation Extender
9 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.051%) JBoss
10 2 (0.051%) Mule
10 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) 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
1 205 (5.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
4 37 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
6 27 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
6 27 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
11 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 477 (12.24%) Azure
2 351 (9.01%) AWS
3 250 (6.42%) GCP
4 226 (5.80%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 101 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
7 100 (2.57%) GitHub
8 94 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
8 94 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
9 72 (1.85%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.21%) OCI
11 46 (1.18%) Serverless
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 43 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
15 35 (0.90%) Power Automate
16 34 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
17 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
18 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.98%) Firewall
2 74 (1.90%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 21 (0.54%) WAN
7 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
8 17 (0.44%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 9 (0.23%) BIG-IP
10 9 (0.23%) DHCP
10 9 (0.23%) VSAN
11 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
14 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (4.65%) Power BI
2 74 (1.90%) Relational Database
3 71 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) SQL Server
4 65 (1.67%) Metadata
5 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 33 (0.85%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.74%) Db2
10 19 (0.49%) BigQuery
10 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
10 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 19 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
11 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
13 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
13 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 231 (5.93%) JIRA
2 114 (2.93%) Git
3 61 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.56%) GitLab
4 22 (0.56%) JUnit
5 17 (0.44%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.39%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 12 (0.31%) Maven
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Hudson
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,348 (34.60%) Social Skills
2 586 (15.04%) Banking
3 548 (14.07%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.21%) Organisational Skills
4 281 (7.21%) Public Sector
5 259 (6.65%) Legal
6 166 (4.26%) Retail
7 149 (3.82%) Influencing Skills
8 98 (2.52%) Manufacturing
9 94 (2.41%) Local Government
10 88 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (2.21%) General Ledger
12 78 (2.00%) Investment Banking
13 77 (1.98%) Billing
13 77 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 71 (1.82%) Financial Institution
15 64 (1.64%) Marketing
16 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
17 54 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 500 (12.83%) Analyst
2 393 (10.09%) Lead
3 369 (9.47%) Senior
4 307 (7.88%) Architect
4 307 (7.88%) Developer
4 307 (7.88%) Project Manager
5 271 (6.96%) Consultant
6 235 (6.03%) Business Analyst
7 149 (3.82%) Accountant
8 145 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
9 102 (2.62%) IT Manager
10 96 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
11 92 (2.36%) Java Developer
11 92 (2.36%) Senior Manager
12 90 (2.31%) Systems Accountant
13 85 (2.18%) Administrator
14 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
15 70 (1.80%) Data Analyst
16 69 (1.77%) Programme Manager
17 66 (1.69%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (3.77%) Oracle Fusion
1 147 (3.77%) Terraform
2 105 (2.70%) REST
3 80 (2.05%) Kafka
4 70 (1.80%) Middleware
5 69 (1.77%) Spring Boot
6 66 (1.69%) React
7 65 (1.67%) Spring
8 58 (1.49%) .NET
9 48 (1.23%) RESTful
10 46 (1.18%) OAuth
11 36 (0.92%) JSON
11 36 (0.92%) OpenID
12 31 (0.80%) Node.js
13 30 (0.77%) SAML
14 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
15 28 (0.72%) SOAP
15 28 (0.72%) XML
16 26 (0.67%) AngularJS
16 26 (0.67%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 166 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 162 (4.16%) Cloud Native
2 162 (4.16%) Product Ownership
3 159 (4.08%) Virtual Team
4 124 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
5 118 (3.03%) Management Information System
6 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
7 112 (2.87%) Podcast
8 100 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
9 67 (1.72%) Data Structures
10 63 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
11 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
12 54 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 54 (1.39%) Mainframe
13 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 48 (1.23%) Security Posture
15 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
16 46 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
17 41 (1.05%) Mobile App
18 38 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.95%) Linux
2 112 (2.87%) Windows
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.39%) Android
8 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) 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 1,026 (26.33%) Stakeholder Management
2 725 (18.61%) Agile
3 542 (13.91%) Continuous Improvement
4 535 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
5 505 (12.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 495 (12.71%) Migration
7 485 (12.45%) ERP
8 406 (10.42%) CI/CD
9 397 (10.19%) AI
10 377 (9.68%) Decision-Making
11 350 (8.98%) Project Management
12 348 (8.93%) Change Management
13 347 (8.91%) DevOps
14 305 (7.83%) Roadmaps
15 291 (7.47%) Risk Management
16 288 (7.39%) Project Delivery
17 281 (7.21%) Analytics
18 272 (6.98%) Validation
19 264 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
20 231 (5.93%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 344 (8.83%) SQL
2 341 (8.75%) Python
3 246 (6.31%) Java
4 80 (2.05%) PowerShell
5 74 (1.90%) JavaScript
6 63 (1.62%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 43 (1.10%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 36 (0.92%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 18 (0.46%) Bicep
14 16 (0.41%) Scala
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 13 (0.33%) Perl
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 358 (9.19%) Security Cleared
2 254 (6.52%) Degree
3 220 (5.65%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 105 (2.70%) ACCA
6 102 (2.62%) CIMA
7 95 (2.44%) PMP
8 89 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 79 (2.03%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.75%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
12 43 (1.10%) CISM
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 31 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
18 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (6.29%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.47%) PMO
3 139 (3.57%) QA
4 99 (2.54%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) NIST
7 41 (1.05%) Accessibility
7 41 (1.05%) SLA
8 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.80%) IFRS
10 26 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 79 (2.03%) Docker
2 69 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.18%) vSphere
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.051%) IAG
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 212 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.93%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.49%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 13 (0.33%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Tivoli
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 578 (14.84%) Microsoft
2 426 (10.93%) SAP
3 375 (9.63%) Oracle
4 171 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.87%) Google
6 95 (2.44%) IBM
7 79 (2.03%) Databricks
8 68 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 63 (1.62%) VMware
10 47 (1.21%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Ariba
12 43 (1.10%) Workday
13 42 (1.08%) Cisco
14 33 (0.85%) Sage
15 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) IFS