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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,912 2,561 2,792
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.53% 17.45% 13.33%
As % of the General category 28.20% 28.53% 24.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,369 1,671 1,696
10th Percentile £340 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
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 190 76 206
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.82 £17.79 £15.18
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.95 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +57.28% -18.30% -10.80%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £32.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year +30.15% +6.86% +0.12%

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 13,874 8,977 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.55% 61.16% 53.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,839 5,455 6,337
10th Percentile £265 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £471 £488
Median % change year-on-year +6.15% -3.38% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,716 767 1,652
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.08 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.55 £15.43 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.84 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +42.29% -26.91% +20.42%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.74 £72.50 £69.98
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £26.75 £31.97
% change year-on-year +21.50% -16.33% +4.75%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,325 £500 +6.72% 804
South East 0 734 £500 -4.76% 956
North West +3 691 £475 +5.56% 423
Midlands 0 667 £500 +11.11% 456
Yorkshire 0 583 £525 +7.42% 277
Scotland 0 496 £475 -2.86% 190
West Midlands +1 493 £500 +0.81% 252
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 967
East of England +5 211 £525 -8.70% 254
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 203
Wales +4 85 £525 +13.51% 66
Northern Ireland -1 60 £475 +11.76% 88
North East -18 52 £500 +13.64% 111
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1
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
1 159 (4.06%) Confluence
2 99 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.28%) CICS
7 11 (0.28%) CMS
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) Mule ESB
13 2 (0.051%) TPMS
Applications
1 239 (6.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.33%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (1.18%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.051%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 207 (5.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.02%) NetSuite
3 40 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
3 40 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
4 38 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 22 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
6 19 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
7 18 (0.46%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.43%) SAP FI
8 17 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
9 14 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
10 13 (0.33%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.28%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.28%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.24%) Azure
2 335 (8.56%) AWS
3 223 (5.70%) Power Platform
4 212 (5.42%) GCP
5 103 (2.63%) SaaS
6 94 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
7 93 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
8 89 (2.28%) GitHub
9 75 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
10 72 (1.84%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.12%) OpenShift
13 43 (1.10%) Serverless
14 42 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
15 39 (1.00%) OCI
16 25 (0.64%) Amazon S3
16 25 (0.64%) PaaS
16 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.61%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.61%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.15%) Firewall
2 65 (1.66%) Network Security
3 39 (1.00%) DNS
4 37 (0.95%) VPN
5 30 (0.77%) WAN
6 27 (0.69%) SSL
7 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.49%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) DHCP
10 12 (0.31%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.31%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.20%) Internet
12 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.15%) Wireless
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.70%) Power BI
2 81 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
3 77 (1.97%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.76%) Metadata
5 62 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
5 62 (1.58%) SQL Server
6 53 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
7 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.89%) Tableau
9 31 (0.79%) NoSQL
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.64%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.56%) Db2
13 22 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.51%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
16 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
17 16 (0.41%) Power Query
18 15 (0.38%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 273 (6.98%) JIRA
2 93 (2.38%) Git
3 72 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.69%) JUnit
5 21 (0.54%) Selenium
6 20 (0.51%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.49%) GitLab
7 19 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 14 (0.36%) Postman
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.20%) Gradle
11 8 (0.20%) Maven
11 8 (0.20%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,248 (31.90%) Social Skills
2 543 (13.88%) Banking
3 530 (13.55%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.29%) Public Sector
5 197 (5.04%) Legal
6 178 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
7 138 (3.53%) Retail
8 114 (2.91%) Local Government
8 114 (2.91%) Manufacturing
9 112 (2.86%) Influencing Skills
10 106 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
11 85 (2.17%) Financial Institution
12 84 (2.15%) General Ledger
13 82 (2.10%) Investment Banking
14 72 (1.84%) Billing
15 61 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 59 (1.51%) Telecoms
17 54 (1.38%) Marketing
18 47 (1.20%) Aerospace
19 44 (1.12%) Law
Job Titles
1 540 (13.80%) Analyst
2 392 (10.02%) Lead
3 350 (8.95%) Architect
4 349 (8.92%) Senior
5 343 (8.77%) Project Manager
6 295 (7.54%) Developer
7 255 (6.52%) Consultant
8 252 (6.44%) Business Analyst
9 171 (4.37%) Accountant
10 151 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.74%) Systems Accountant
12 102 (2.61%) IT Manager
13 101 (2.58%) Senior Manager
14 93 (2.38%) Programme Manager
15 88 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 87 (2.22%) Financial Analyst
17 71 (1.81%) Finance Manager
18 67 (1.71%) Administrator
19 66 (1.69%) Data Engineer
20 65 (1.66%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (3.43%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.35%) Middleware
3 88 (2.25%) REST
4 71 (1.81%) Kafka
5 70 (1.79%) Spring
6 69 (1.76%) Spring Boot
7 60 (1.53%) React
8 58 (1.48%) .NET
9 43 (1.10%) RESTful
10 36 (0.92%) OAuth
11 32 (0.82%) JSON
12 31 (0.79%) Node.js
13 27 (0.69%) OpenID
13 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.66%) XML
15 24 (0.61%) SailPoint
16 23 (0.59%) Redux
17 22 (0.56%) AngularJS
18 21 (0.54%) HTML
19 20 (0.51%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.06%) Onboarding
2 158 (4.04%) Product Ownership
3 149 (3.81%) Cloud Native
4 119 (3.04%) Management Information System
5 109 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
6 107 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 91 (2.33%) Virtual Team
8 75 (1.92%) Data Centre
9 70 (1.79%) Data Structures
10 67 (1.71%) Public Cloud
11 51 (1.30%) Mainframe
12 49 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
13 47 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 45 (1.15%) Web Conferencing
15 44 (1.12%) Podcast
16 42 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
17 32 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
17 32 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
18 29 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
19 28 (0.72%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.09%) Windows
2 105 (2.68%) Linux
3 63 (1.61%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.64%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.15%) 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 Server 2012
12 4 (0.10%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 893 (22.83%) Stakeholder Management
2 719 (18.38%) Agile
3 570 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
4 552 (14.11%) Migration
5 532 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
6 527 (13.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (12.99%) ERP
8 399 (10.20%) Project Management
9 374 (9.56%) DevOps
10 360 (9.20%) Decision-Making
11 358 (9.15%) CI/CD
12 349 (8.92%) Change Management
13 324 (8.28%) Project Delivery
14 320 (8.18%) AI
15 301 (7.69%) User Acceptance Testing
16 293 (7.49%) Roadmaps
17 275 (7.03%) Validation
18 267 (6.83%) Risk Management
19 251 (6.42%) Analytics
20 243 (6.21%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 360 (9.20%) SQL
2 304 (7.77%) Python
3 228 (5.83%) Java
4 76 (1.94%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.43%) C#
6 46 (1.18%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.00%) Bash
8 38 (0.97%) PL/SQL
9 34 (0.87%) TypeScript
10 27 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.61%) Go
12 20 (0.51%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.38%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
18 9 (0.23%) Rust
Qualifications
1 356 (9.10%) Security Cleared
2 305 (7.80%) Degree
3 222 (5.67%) SC Cleared
4 129 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (3.22%) ACCA
6 123 (3.14%) CIMA
7 114 (2.91%) PMP
8 102 (2.61%) PMI Certification
9 77 (1.97%) CISSP
10 64 (1.64%) DV Cleared
11 47 (1.20%) CISM
12 39 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
13 37 (0.95%) AWS Certification
14 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 31 (0.79%) Azure Certification
16 30 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
18 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
20 17 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 212 (5.42%) Data Quality
2 167 (4.27%) PMO
3 148 (3.78%) GDPR
4 147 (3.76%) QA
5 54 (1.38%) NIST
6 48 (1.23%) GRC
6 48 (1.23%) SLA
7 37 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 36 (0.92%) IFRS
9 33 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.79%) Accessibility
11 30 (0.77%) PCI DSS
12 18 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.28%) GAAP
14 11 (0.28%) PSD2
15 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
15 10 (0.26%) SEPA
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 8 (0.20%) EMIR
System Software
1 89 (2.28%) Docker
2 78 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.51%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) GPFS
9 6 (0.15%) NFS
9 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.051%) ACF2
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.051%) SRDF
11 2 (0.051%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 174 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 103 (2.63%) Terraform
3 80 (2.04%) Ansible
4 37 (0.95%) Grafana
5 31 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.51%) SCCM
8 17 (0.43%) OMEGAMON
9 12 (0.31%) Control-M
9 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.26%) Nessus
12 8 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
12 8 (0.20%) vRealize
13 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 493 (12.60%) Microsoft
2 406 (10.38%) SAP
3 368 (9.41%) Oracle
4 166 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 108 (2.76%) Google
6 79 (2.02%) IBM
7 76 (1.94%) Databricks
8 62 (1.58%) VMware
9 55 (1.41%) Sage
10 47 (1.20%) Salesforce
11 46 (1.18%) Cisco
11 46 (1.18%) Splunk
12 34 (0.87%) IFS
13 33 (0.84%) Ariba
14 31 (0.79%) Workday
15 24 (0.61%) HP
16 22 (0.56%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.51%) MuleSoft
18 19 (0.49%) Sybase
19 18 (0.46%) Foundry