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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,816 2,444 2,768
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.47% 17.53% 13.10%
As % of the General category 28.33% 28.41% 24.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,320 1,594 1,676
10th Percentile £335 £308 £283
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £581 £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 180 73 209
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.05 £12.70
25th Percentile £17.93 £17.80 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £28.55 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +48.16% -7.38% -31.50%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £75.00 £58.50
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £33.45 £28.00
% change year-on-year +4.65% +19.45% -8.96%

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 13,470 8,602 11,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.08% 61.69% 53.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,615 5,241 6,328
10th Percentile £267 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £473 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.82% -3.57% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £518 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,666 715 1,683
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £15.50 £15.17
Median hourly rate £31.78 £23.00 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +38.16% -24.27% +20.88%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £53.88
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.35 £31.71
% change year-on-year +17.00% -13.75% +3.97%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +2 1,298 £500 +7.53% 864
South East -1 705 £500 -4.76% 1,012
North West +4 675 £475 +5.56% 467
Midlands 0 652 £500 +11.11% 469
Yorkshire 0 578 £525 +7.69% 297
Scotland 0 483 £475 -1.61% 195
West Midlands +1 481 £500 +2.15% 270
South West -3 382 £525 - 360
East of England +6 200 £513 -10.87% 261
East Midlands 0 164 £488 +14.71% 198
Wales +5 89 £525 +12.90% 74
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +11.76% 87
North East -17 46 £500 +13.96% 110
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 161 (4.22%) Confluence
2 102 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.47%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 13 (0.34%) Apache
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
8 10 (0.26%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.079%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.079%) TPMS
13 2 (0.052%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Mule
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 237 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.052%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 201 (5.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.13%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.05%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.02%) NetSuite
5 37 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 37 (0.97%) Oracle Receivables
6 21 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
7 19 (0.50%) SAP FI
8 18 (0.47%) Unit4 Business World
9 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
11 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
12 11 (0.29%) SAP CO
12 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.29%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 473 (12.40%) Azure
2 327 (8.57%) AWS
3 224 (5.87%) Power Platform
4 201 (5.27%) GCP
5 103 (2.70%) SaaS
6 94 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
7 91 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
8 84 (2.20%) GitHub
9 71 (1.86%) Entra ID
10 69 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 45 (1.18%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
12 44 (1.15%) OpenShift
13 41 (1.07%) Serverless
14 36 (0.94%) OCI
15 25 (0.66%) PowerApps
16 24 (0.63%) PaaS
16 24 (0.63%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.60%) Amazon S3
17 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.18%) Firewall
2 64 (1.68%) Network Security
3 36 (0.94%) DNS
4 34 (0.89%) WAN
5 32 (0.84%) VPN
6 27 (0.71%) SSL
7 21 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.47%) LAN
9 15 (0.39%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.31%) DHCP
11 11 (0.29%) VSAN
12 9 (0.24%) BGP
12 9 (0.24%) MPLS
13 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.18%) Internet
15 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
16 5 (0.13%) Intranet
16 5 (0.13%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (4.90%) Power BI
2 77 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.83%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.78%) Metadata
5 59 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
6 58 (1.52%) SQL Server
7 53 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
8 35 (0.92%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.89%) Tableau
10 32 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 26 (0.68%) MongoDB
12 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.55%) DynamoDB
13 21 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.52%) Db2
15 17 (0.45%) Data Vault
15 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.45%) Power Query
16 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 274 (7.18%) JIRA
2 86 (2.25%) Git
3 73 (1.91%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.71%) JUnit
5 22 (0.58%) GitLab
5 22 (0.58%) Selenium
6 21 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.37%) Hudson
9 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Gradle
13 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.18%) Maven
14 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
15 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,219 (31.94%) Social Skills
2 524 (13.73%) Banking
3 508 (13.31%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 187 (4.90%) Legal
6 160 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 131 (3.43%) Retail
8 109 (2.86%) Local Government
9 108 (2.83%) Manufacturing
10 107 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
10 107 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
11 86 (2.25%) Financial Institution
12 84 (2.20%) General Ledger
13 81 (2.12%) Investment Banking
14 67 (1.76%) Billing
15 60 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 55 (1.44%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.26%) Marketing
18 46 (1.21%) Aerospace
19 44 (1.15%) Law
Job Titles
1 522 (13.68%) Analyst
2 362 (9.49%) Lead
3 356 (9.33%) Architect
4 344 (9.01%) Project Manager
5 337 (8.83%) Senior
6 279 (7.31%) Developer
7 255 (6.68%) Consultant
8 239 (6.26%) Business Analyst
9 160 (4.19%) Accountant
10 155 (4.06%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.65%) Systems Accountant
12 99 (2.59%) IT Manager
13 98 (2.57%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.33%) Programme Manager
15 80 (2.10%) Financial Analyst
16 79 (2.07%) Java Developer
17 70 (1.83%) Finance Manager
18 69 (1.81%) Administrator
19 63 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
20 62 (1.62%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (3.25%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.41%) Middleware
3 89 (2.33%) REST
4 70 (1.83%) Kafka
5 68 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 67 (1.76%) Spring
7 58 (1.52%) .NET
8 57 (1.49%) React
9 40 (1.05%) RESTful
10 33 (0.86%) JSON
10 33 (0.86%) OAuth
11 30 (0.79%) Node.js
12 27 (0.71%) XML
13 26 (0.68%) OpenID
13 26 (0.68%) SailPoint
13 26 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
14 22 (0.58%) AngularJS
14 22 (0.58%) Redux
15 19 (0.50%) SAML
15 19 (0.50%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 154 (4.04%) Product Ownership
3 141 (3.69%) Cloud Native
4 119 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 104 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
6 103 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.07%) Data Centre
8 74 (1.94%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.76%) Data Structures
10 66 (1.73%) Public Cloud
11 51 (1.34%) Mainframe
12 49 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
13 47 (1.23%) Security Posture
14 41 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.89%) Web Conferencing
16 33 (0.86%) Podcast
17 29 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
18 28 (0.73%) AI Agents
18 28 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
19 27 (0.71%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.17%) Windows
2 103 (2.70%) Linux
3 58 (1.52%) Unix
4 31 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.71%) Solaris
6 25 (0.66%) zOS
7 24 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.34%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.24%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.10%) HPUX
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
13 4 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.10%) SUSE
14 3 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 867 (22.72%) Stakeholder Management
2 699 (18.32%) Agile
3 557 (14.60%) Problem-Solving
4 550 (14.41%) Migration
5 519 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
6 515 (13.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 495 (12.97%) ERP
8 402 (10.53%) Project Management
9 363 (9.51%) DevOps
10 349 (9.15%) Decision-Making
11 345 (9.04%) Change Management
12 343 (8.99%) CI/CD
13 318 (8.33%) Project Delivery
14 305 (7.99%) AI
15 288 (7.55%) User Acceptance Testing
16 287 (7.52%) Roadmaps
17 268 (7.02%) Validation
18 263 (6.89%) Risk Management
19 245 (6.42%) Analytics
20 236 (6.18%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 356 (9.33%) SQL
2 294 (7.70%) Python
3 219 (5.74%) Java
4 77 (2.02%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.44%) C#
6 43 (1.13%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.00%) Bash
8 36 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.86%) TypeScript
10 23 (0.60%) Go
10 23 (0.60%) Shell Script
11 21 (0.55%) C++
12 16 (0.42%) VBA
13 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 11 (0.29%) COBOL
15 11 (0.29%) Rust
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) PHP
17 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 352 (9.22%) Security Cleared
2 305 (7.99%) Degree
3 220 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 132 (3.46%) ACCA
5 129 (3.38%) CIMA
6 121 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 116 (3.04%) PMP
8 101 (2.65%) PMI Certification
9 77 (2.02%) CISSP
10 63 (1.65%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.21%) CISM
12 40 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.92%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.79%) Master's Degree
14 30 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.76%) Azure Certification
16 28 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
17 20 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
18 18 (0.47%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (5.29%) Data Quality
2 164 (4.30%) PMO
3 149 (3.90%) GDPR
4 140 (3.67%) QA
5 56 (1.47%) NIST
6 49 (1.28%) SLA
7 46 (1.21%) GRC
8 38 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (0.97%) IFRS
10 33 (0.86%) PCI DSS
11 32 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.76%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.47%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.31%) IFRS 17
16 11 (0.29%) PSD2
17 10 (0.26%) GAAP
17 10 (0.26%) NCSC
17 10 (0.26%) SEPA
18 7 (0.18%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 88 (2.31%) Docker
2 79 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.52%) RACF
5 18 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.34%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) ACF2
11 2 (0.052%) Firmware
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) SRDF
11 2 (0.052%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 170 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 95 (2.49%) Terraform
3 79 (2.07%) Ansible
4 37 (0.97%) Grafana
5 31 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 29 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.50%) SCCM
9 17 (0.45%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Argo
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.24%) FortiGate
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 7 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
16 6 (0.16%) VxRail
17 5 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 476 (12.47%) Microsoft
2 397 (10.40%) SAP
3 353 (9.25%) Oracle
4 166 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 109 (2.86%) Google
6 78 (2.04%) IBM
7 73 (1.91%) Databricks
8 57 (1.49%) VMware
9 56 (1.47%) Sage
10 50 (1.31%) Cisco
11 48 (1.26%) Splunk
12 40 (1.05%) Salesforce
13 34 (0.89%) IFS
14 33 (0.86%) Workday
15 31 (0.81%) Ariba
16 23 (0.60%) HP
17 22 (0.58%) Red Hat
18 20 (0.52%) MuleSoft
19 19 (0.50%) Foundry
20 18 (0.47%) Sybase