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 18 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,061 2,196 2,683
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.17% 16.39% 12.88%
As % of the General category 27.15% 26.84% 23.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,941 1,272 1,768
10th Percentile £313 £305 £285
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year - -1.19% -1.75%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 61 131
10th Percentile £13.68 £17.25 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.47 £22.50 £13.31
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -43.61%
75th Percentile £25.00 £60.00 £43.62
90th Percentile £54.70 £78.47 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £20.97
% change year-on-year -32.86% +66.94% -16.14%

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 11,274 8,181 11,597
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 55.87% 61.05% 55.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,864 4,732 6,935
10th Percentile £206 £210 £205
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £476 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -4.80% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,223 448 1,364
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.24 £12.71
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.68 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.80 £27.13 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.63% +8.50% -
75th Percentile £46.00 £57.78 £52.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.82 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -21.34% +11.54% -3.70%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 +2 984 £475 - 635
South East -1 558 £503 -4.06% 1,028
Midlands -3 541 £488 -2.50% 395
North West +4 500 £450 -3.85% 353
Yorkshire 0 436 £513 - 221
Scotland 0 394 £475 +1.71% 125
West Midlands -3 344 £502 -8.82% 231
South West -5 302 £513 -2.38% 275
East Midlands 0 195 £449 +6.85% 163
East of England -1 191 £533 +1.43% 215
Wales +31 99 £413 +1.54% 74
Northern Ireland -2 50 £525 +61.54% 32
North East -6 49 £488 +8.33% 75
Channel Islands +2 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
1 155 (5.06%) Confluence
2 109 (3.56%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 26 (0.85%) Apache
4 26 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 19 (0.62%) SAS
6 11 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
6 11 (0.36%) TPMS
7 9 (0.29%) CMS
8 8 (0.26%) CICS
9 6 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.20%) JBoss
10 5 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.16%) Mattermost
10 5 (0.16%) Skype for Business
11 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.13%) iPlanet
11 4 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 249 (8.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 158 (5.16%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.76%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (2.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 55 (1.80%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.46%) Sketch
8 12 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.26%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.23%) InVision
11 6 (0.20%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.20%) Trello
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.098%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.033%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.033%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 138 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.76%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.50%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (1.18%) Oracle General Ledger
5 32 (1.05%) SAP FI
6 31 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 29 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
7 29 (0.95%) Oracle Cash Management
8 23 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.75%) SAP CO
9 22 (0.72%) SAP FI/CO
10 21 (0.69%) Oracle EBS R12
11 17 (0.56%) SAP BRIM
11 17 (0.56%) SAP Hybris
11 17 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
12 16 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
13 14 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
14 13 (0.42%) Oracle AGIS
14 13 (0.42%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 392 (12.81%) AWS
2 388 (12.68%) Azure
3 179 (5.85%) Power Platform
4 176 (5.75%) GCP
5 131 (4.28%) Microsoft 365
6 85 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
7 76 (2.48%) GitHub
8 75 (2.45%) Serverless
9 71 (2.32%) SaaS
10 61 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
11 57 (1.86%) Entra ID
12 43 (1.40%) OCI
13 42 (1.37%) OpenShift
14 39 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
15 37 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
15 37 (1.21%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.08%) Amazon S3
16 33 (1.08%) Figma
17 30 (0.98%) OneDrive
18 29 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 76 (2.48%) Firewall
2 34 (1.11%) WAN
3 28 (0.91%) DNS
4 24 (0.78%) VPN
5 23 (0.75%) Network Security
5 23 (0.75%) Skype
6 22 (0.72%) Wireless
7 19 (0.62%) SSL
8 17 (0.56%) LAN
9 16 (0.52%) SD-WAN
10 15 (0.49%) SSH
10 15 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 13 (0.42%) Kerberos
12 12 (0.39%) DHCP
13 11 (0.36%) SNMP
14 10 (0.33%) Internet
15 8 (0.26%) Cisco IOS
16 7 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
17 6 (0.20%) BGP
17 6 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (5.52%) Power BI
2 78 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (2.16%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.63%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.24%) Tableau
7 37 (1.21%) Metadata
8 29 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
9 28 (0.91%) SQL Server
10 26 (0.85%) Big Data
11 25 (0.82%) Data Lake
11 25 (0.82%) DynamoDB
12 20 (0.65%) Power Query
13 19 (0.62%) BigQuery
14 17 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (0.56%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.52%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.49%) MySQL
17 13 (0.42%) Hadoop
18 12 (0.39%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 288 (9.41%) JIRA
2 142 (4.64%) Jenkins
3 87 (2.84%) GitLab
4 60 (1.96%) Git
5 39 (1.27%) JUnit
6 38 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
7 34 (1.11%) Cucumber
8 22 (0.72%) Liquibase
8 22 (0.72%) Selenium
9 20 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 14 (0.46%) Gradle
10 14 (0.46%) Postman
11 11 (0.36%) Maven
12 10 (0.33%) JMeter
13 9 (0.29%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 8 (0.26%) Hudson
14 8 (0.26%) Jaeger
15 7 (0.23%) SonarQube
16 6 (0.20%) Snyk
General
1 1,131 (36.95%) Social Skills
2 510 (16.66%) Banking
3 385 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
4 350 (11.43%) Public Sector
5 181 (5.91%) Manufacturing
6 171 (5.59%) Telecoms
7 156 (5.10%) Marketing
8 129 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
9 111 (3.63%) Electronics
10 105 (3.43%) Financial Institution
11 96 (3.14%) Legal
12 93 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
13 66 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
13 66 (2.16%) Local Government
14 60 (1.96%) General Ledger
15 56 (1.83%) Retail
16 51 (1.67%) Billing
17 50 (1.63%) Investment Banking
18 48 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
19 32 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 480 (15.68%) Analyst
2 281 (9.18%) Project Manager
3 248 (8.10%) Architect
4 237 (7.74%) Senior
5 216 (7.06%) Business Analyst
5 216 (7.06%) Lead
6 214 (6.99%) Consultant
7 212 (6.93%) Developer
8 106 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
9 98 (3.20%) Programme Manager
10 82 (2.68%) Data Analyst
11 63 (2.06%) Senior Manager
12 62 (2.03%) Accountant
13 61 (1.99%) Finance Manager
14 60 (1.96%) SAP Consultant
15 58 (1.89%) Functional Consultant
16 57 (1.86%) Java Developer
17 54 (1.76%) Designer
18 53 (1.73%) Administrator
19 50 (1.63%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (4.15%) REST
2 88 (2.87%) Spring
3 80 (2.61%) Spring Boot
4 71 (2.32%) RESTful
5 69 (2.25%) Kafka
6 67 (2.19%) Oracle Fusion
7 48 (1.57%) Middleware
8 45 (1.47%) React
9 43 (1.40%) .NET
10 37 (1.21%) Node.js
11 34 (1.11%) JSON
12 33 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
13 32 (1.05%) SOAP
14 31 (1.01%) OAuth
15 28 (0.91%) HTML
16 26 (0.85%) AngularJS
17 24 (0.78%) CSS
17 24 (0.78%) OpenTelemetry
17 24 (0.78%) XML
18 20 (0.65%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.80%) Onboarding
2 132 (4.31%) Product Ownership
3 99 (3.23%) Cloud Native
4 84 (2.74%) Data Centre
5 76 (2.48%) Management Information System
6 72 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
7 69 (2.25%) Public Cloud
8 64 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
9 62 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 41 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 40 (1.31%) Data Structures
12 34 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
13 33 (1.08%) CMDB
13 33 (1.08%) Mobile App
13 33 (1.08%) PMI
14 30 (0.98%) Virtual Team
15 24 (0.78%) Mainframe
16 23 (0.75%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 22 (0.72%) NHS
18 21 (0.69%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 132 (4.31%) Linux
2 119 (3.89%) Windows
3 43 (1.40%) Unix
4 41 (1.34%) Mac OS
5 38 (1.24%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.98%) Android
7 18 (0.59%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.29%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.16%) AIX
9 5 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.16%) Solaris
9 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.13%) VMS
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.098%) zOS
12 1 (0.033%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.033%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 681 (22.25%) Agile
2 592 (19.34%) Stakeholder Management
3 517 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
4 413 (13.49%) Migration
5 390 (12.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 359 (11.73%) Project Management
7 326 (10.65%) ERP
8 324 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 323 (10.55%) DevOps
10 319 (10.42%) Business Intelligence
11 303 (9.90%) CI/CD
12 268 (8.76%) Change Management
13 222 (7.25%) Project Delivery
14 221 (7.22%) Decision-Making
15 215 (7.02%) Programme Management
16 208 (6.80%) Analytics
17 204 (6.66%) Roadmaps
18 203 (6.63%) User Acceptance Testing
19 191 (6.24%) Data Modelling
20 184 (6.01%) AI
Programming Languages
1 340 (11.11%) SQL
2 291 (9.51%) Python
3 202 (6.60%) Java
4 76 (2.48%) PowerShell
5 41 (1.34%) JavaScript
5 41 (1.34%) TypeScript
6 36 (1.18%) Go
7 31 (1.01%) C#
8 23 (0.75%) PL/SQL
9 22 (0.72%) Bash
10 21 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 18 (0.59%) R
11 18 (0.59%) VBA
12 12 (0.39%) Perl
13 11 (0.36%) Rust
14 10 (0.33%) COBOL
15 9 (0.29%) Ruby
15 9 (0.29%) VB
16 8 (0.26%) ABAP
16 8 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 330 (10.78%) Degree
2 288 (9.41%) Security Cleared
3 194 (6.34%) SC Cleared
4 80 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 78 (2.55%) PMP
6 77 (2.52%) PMI Certification
7 76 (2.48%) Master's Degree
8 74 (2.42%) ACCA
9 71 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
10 69 (2.25%) CIMA
11 54 (1.76%) DV Cleared
12 48 (1.57%) AWS Certification
12 48 (1.57%) CISSP
13 37 (1.21%) CISM
14 31 (1.01%) ITIL Certification
15 24 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
16 17 (0.56%) MBA
17 16 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 14 (0.46%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 157 (5.13%) PMO
2 143 (4.67%) QA
3 128 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 107 (3.50%) GDPR
5 51 (1.67%) NIST
6 50 (1.63%) PCI DSS
7 48 (1.57%) SLA
8 41 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (1.14%) Accessibility
11 32 (1.05%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.85%) IFRS
12 26 (0.85%) PSD2
13 20 (0.65%) GRC
14 18 (0.59%) SEPA
15 15 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.42%) Basel III
16 13 (0.42%) GAAP
17 11 (0.36%) GLBA
18 10 (0.33%) NCSC
System Software
1 136 (4.44%) Docker
2 104 (3.40%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (0.56%) vSphere
5 10 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (0.29%) GPFS
7 8 (0.26%) NFS
8 6 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
9 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.098%) HDFS
10 3 (0.098%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 3 (0.098%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.065%) ACF2
11 2 (0.065%) Firmware
11 2 (0.065%) KVM
11 2 (0.065%) RACF
11 2 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 167 (5.46%) Kubernetes
2 96 (3.14%) Terraform
3 85 (2.78%) Ansible
4 63 (2.06%) Grafana
5 58 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.69%) SCCM
7 17 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.36%) Nessus
11 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.29%) vRealize
12 8 (0.26%) Kiali
13 6 (0.20%) Control-M
14 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
14 5 (0.16%) SCOM
14 5 (0.16%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 461 (15.06%) Microsoft
2 378 (12.35%) SAP
3 253 (8.27%) Oracle
4 158 (5.16%) ServiceNow
5 91 (2.97%) Splunk
6 85 (2.78%) Google
7 83 (2.71%) Cisco
8 51 (1.67%) IBM
9 47 (1.54%) VMware
10 44 (1.44%) Salesforce
11 41 (1.34%) Databricks
12 39 (1.27%) Workday
13 34 (1.11%) HP
13 34 (1.11%) Sage
14 33 (1.08%) Dell
15 28 (0.91%) Apple
16 26 (0.85%) Adobe
17 25 (0.82%) Citrix
18 24 (0.78%) Remedy
19 21 (0.69%) CyberArk