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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,867 2,597 2,707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.34% 17.45% 13.70%
As % of the General category 27.92% 28.73% 25.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,330 1,700 1,659
10th Percentile £341 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 76 177
10th Percentile £15.03 £14.81 £13.79
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.26 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.51% -26.97% +13.83%
75th Percentile £50.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.61
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%

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 13,848 9,040 10,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.36% 60.73% 53.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,761 5,466 6,045
10th Percentile £263 £213 £210
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,746 801 1,402
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.08 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.28 £15.69
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.82% -35.34% +34.62%
75th Percentile £64.77 £50.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.81 £26.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.17% -25.71% +14.68%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 1,312 £500 +5.26% 821
South East -1 734 £503 -3.13% 899
North West 0 692 £492 +9.33% 436
Midlands +1 645 £500 +11.11% 465
Yorkshire 0 569 £518 +6.18% 285
West Midlands +1 495 £500 +2.67% 271
Scotland 0 489 £475 -3.46% 204
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 395
East of England +7 209 £530 -5.78% 224
East Midlands -3 144 £500 +19.05% 192
Wales +4 82 £525 +18.31% 79
Northern Ireland -1 61 £475 +1.06% 68
North East -18 51 £500 +14.29% 106
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2
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
1 143 (3.70%) Confluence
2 100 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.34%) CMS
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
9 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.078%) Camunda
14 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
15 2 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
15 2 (0.052%) Apache Superset
15 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 240 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.40%) Microsoft Project
4 75 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.09%) NetSuite
4 41 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
5 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
6 34 (0.88%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
9 21 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
10 20 (0.52%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.47%) SAP FI
12 17 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
13 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
16 10 (0.26%) NEC Housing
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
16 10 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.39%) Azure
2 333 (8.61%) AWS
3 224 (5.79%) Power Platform
4 213 (5.51%) GCP
5 104 (2.69%) SaaS
6 94 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.33%) Microsoft 365
8 87 (2.25%) Dynamics 365
9 86 (2.22%) GitHub
10 73 (1.89%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
12 40 (1.03%) OCI
12 40 (1.03%) Serverless
13 26 (0.67%) Power Automate
13 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
14 25 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 23 (0.59%) Amazon S3
15 23 (0.59%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.22%) Firewall
2 64 (1.66%) Network Security
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 39 (1.01%) DNS
5 25 (0.65%) SSL
5 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
5 25 (0.65%) WAN
6 18 (0.47%) LAN
7 14 (0.36%) DHCP
8 11 (0.28%) VSAN
9 9 (0.23%) BGP
9 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.21%) MPLS
10 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
11 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
12 6 (0.16%) HTTP
12 6 (0.16%) Wireless
13 5 (0.13%) Intranet
13 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.76%) Power BI
2 79 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.91%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.73%) Metadata
5 62 (1.60%) SQL Server
6 56 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
7 51 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
8 37 (0.96%) Data Lake
8 37 (0.96%) Tableau
9 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
10 25 (0.65%) NoSQL
11 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 20 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 252 (6.52%) JIRA
2 91 (2.35%) Git
3 62 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
7 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 15 (0.39%) GitLab
9 14 (0.36%) Hudson
10 12 (0.31%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.26%) Postman
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
13 7 (0.18%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.16%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) Toad
General
1 1,229 (31.78%) Social Skills
2 539 (13.94%) Analytical Skills
3 535 (13.84%) Banking
4 283 (7.32%) Public Sector
5 206 (5.33%) Legal
6 196 (5.07%) Organisational Skills
7 142 (3.67%) Retail
8 122 (3.15%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 107 (2.77%) Local Government
11 102 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
12 84 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 79 (2.04%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.04%) Investment Banking
14 71 (1.84%) Billing
15 63 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (1.47%) Marketing
17 53 (1.37%) Telecoms
18 50 (1.29%) Aerospace
18 50 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 537 (13.89%) Analyst
2 402 (10.40%) Lead
3 355 (9.18%) Senior
4 335 (8.66%) Project Manager
5 317 (8.20%) Architect
6 290 (7.50%) Developer
7 252 (6.52%) Business Analyst
8 238 (6.15%) Consultant
9 176 (4.55%) Accountant
10 133 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
11 109 (2.82%) Systems Accountant
12 101 (2.61%) Senior Manager
13 99 (2.56%) IT Manager
14 90 (2.33%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 84 (2.17%) Programme Manager
17 70 (1.81%) Finance Manager
18 69 (1.78%) Data Analyst
19 66 (1.71%) Administrator
20 63 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (3.54%) Oracle Fusion
2 85 (2.20%) Middleware
3 82 (2.12%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Spring Boot
5 69 (1.78%) Kafka
6 68 (1.76%) Spring
7 58 (1.50%) .NET
7 58 (1.50%) React
8 40 (1.03%) RESTful
9 36 (0.93%) OAuth
10 31 (0.80%) Node.js
11 30 (0.78%) JSON
12 28 (0.72%) XML
13 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
14 24 (0.62%) OpenID
14 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
15 22 (0.57%) Redux
15 22 (0.57%) SAML
16 20 (0.52%) AngularJS
17 19 (0.49%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 153 (3.96%) Product Ownership
2 151 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 149 (3.85%) Cloud Native
4 117 (3.03%) Management Information System
5 106 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
6 105 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.69%) Virtual Team
8 68 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 66 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 59 (1.53%) Public Cloud
11 56 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
12 55 (1.42%) Podcast
13 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 51 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
15 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 36 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 34 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
18 33 (0.85%) AI Agents
19 31 (0.80%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.18%) Windows
2 109 (2.82%) Linux
3 64 (1.66%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
15 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 900 (23.27%) Stakeholder Management
2 706 (18.26%) Agile
3 556 (14.38%) Problem-Solving
4 543 (14.04%) Migration
5 539 (13.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 521 (13.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 503 (13.01%) ERP
8 380 (9.83%) Project Management
9 362 (9.36%) DevOps
10 358 (9.26%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.10%) Change Management
12 348 (9.00%) CI/CD
13 331 (8.56%) AI
14 318 (8.22%) Project Delivery
15 294 (7.60%) Roadmaps
16 284 (7.34%) User Acceptance Testing
17 273 (7.06%) Validation
18 265 (6.85%) Risk Management
19 251 (6.49%) Analytics
20 238 (6.15%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 336 (8.69%) SQL
2 304 (7.86%) Python
3 227 (5.87%) Java
4 73 (1.89%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 46 (1.19%) JavaScript
7 45 (1.16%) Bash
8 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.91%) TypeScript
10 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.65%) Go
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) VBA
16 11 (0.28%) Bicep
16 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
16 11 (0.28%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 364 (9.41%) Security Cleared
2 292 (7.55%) Degree
3 225 (5.82%) SC Cleared
4 127 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 120 (3.10%) ACCA
6 116 (3.00%) CIMA
7 109 (2.82%) PMP
8 95 (2.46%) PMI Certification
9 75 (1.94%) DV Cleared
10 71 (1.84%) CISSP
11 41 (1.06%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 34 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
14 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
16 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
17 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
19 18 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 212 (5.48%) Data Quality
2 178 (4.60%) PMO
3 143 (3.70%) QA
4 138 (3.57%) GDPR
5 47 (1.22%) NIST
6 46 (1.19%) GRC
6 46 (1.19%) SLA
7 37 (0.96%) IFRS
8 36 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 34 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 32 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 14 (0.36%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) GAAP
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
17 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 86 (2.22%) Docker
2 76 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.10%) KVM
12 3 (0.078%) ACF2
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) SRDF
13 2 (0.052%) zsh
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 172 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.79%) Terraform
3 78 (2.02%) Ansible
4 35 (0.91%) Grafana
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.70%) Prometheus
7 25 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) SCCM
9 14 (0.36%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 512 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 393 (10.16%) SAP
3 376 (9.72%) Oracle
4 160 (4.14%) ServiceNow
5 104 (2.69%) Google
6 84 (2.17%) IBM
7 75 (1.94%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 55 (1.42%) Sage
10 50 (1.29%) Salesforce
11 42 (1.09%) Cisco
12 39 (1.01%) Splunk
13 34 (0.88%) IFS
14 33 (0.85%) Ariba
15 29 (0.75%) Workday
16 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 19 (0.49%) Adobe