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 14 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,883 2,700 2,618
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.17% 17.66% 14.30%
As % of the General category 27.46% 28.84% 26.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 1,787 1,611
10th Percentile £348 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.25% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £547 £575
% change year-on-year +0.59% -4.91% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 68 159
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.54 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.31 £23.64
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +66.80% -30.86% +18.86%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £39.63
90th Percentile £83.40 £75.00 £70.04
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.53% -21.30% +46.62%

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 14,142 9,362 9,867
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.59% 61.22% 53.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,831 5,641 5,667
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £656 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,939 846 1,177
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.00 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.32 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +45.61% -41.45% +52.48%
75th Percentile £61.18 £46.92 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £31.53 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.36% -34.02% +38.62%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 August 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 1,341 £500 +6.50% 1,021
South East -1 732 £500 -5.66% 1,161
North West 0 691 £500 +10.56% 582
Midlands -1 635 £500 +11.11% 533
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +7.31% 322
Scotland 0 498 £473 -5.50% 332
West Midlands +1 480 £525 +5.00% 323
South West -4 381 £531 -4.34% 483
East of England +5 200 £525 -8.70% 300
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +21.21% 210
Wales -1 65 £528 +14.05% 129
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +0.53% 115
North East -14 62 £500 +11.11% 127
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 3
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
1 150 (3.86%) Confluence
2 97 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) CMS
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 244 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
3 84 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.13%) Trello
10 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (5.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 44 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.06%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.52%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
14 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 481 (12.39%) Azure
2 320 (8.24%) AWS
3 227 (5.85%) GCP
4 224 (5.77%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.63%) SaaS
6 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
7 91 (2.34%) GitHub
8 90 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
9 89 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
10 67 (1.73%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.21%) OCI
12 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.06%) Serverless
14 39 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
15 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
17 27 (0.70%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
20 24 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.03%) Firewall
2 69 (1.78%) Network Security
3 45 (1.16%) VPN
4 34 (0.88%) DNS
5 27 (0.70%) WAN
6 24 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 23 (0.59%) SSL
8 22 (0.57%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) DHCP
9 12 (0.31%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.21%) BGP
13 7 (0.18%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.18%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Broadband
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.71%) Power BI
2 80 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
3 69 (1.78%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.73%) Metadata
5 65 (1.67%) SQL Server
6 48 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
7 43 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
8 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.88%) Tableau
10 29 (0.75%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
14 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
14 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
14 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
17 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
17 15 (0.39%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 247 (6.36%) JIRA
2 104 (2.68%) Git
3 55 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) GitLab
6 15 (0.39%) Hudson
7 14 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
15 5 (0.13%) JMeter
General
1 1,243 (32.01%) Social Skills
2 556 (14.32%) Analytical Skills
3 545 (14.04%) Banking
4 281 (7.24%) Public Sector
5 235 (6.05%) Legal
6 233 (6.00%) Organisational Skills
7 162 (4.17%) Retail
8 134 (3.45%) Influencing Skills
9 114 (2.94%) Manufacturing
10 101 (2.60%) Local Government
11 100 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
12 83 (2.14%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Financial Institution
14 76 (1.96%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.85%) Billing
15 72 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
17 53 (1.36%) Marketing
18 51 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 517 (13.31%) Analyst
2 422 (10.87%) Lead
3 360 (9.27%) Senior
4 326 (8.40%) Project Manager
5 304 (7.83%) Architect
6 281 (7.24%) Developer
7 264 (6.80%) Consultant
8 243 (6.26%) Business Analyst
9 171 (4.40%) Accountant
10 135 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
11 104 (2.68%) Systems Accountant
12 103 (2.65%) IT Manager
13 97 (2.50%) Senior Manager
14 92 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
15 81 (2.09%) Java Developer
16 74 (1.91%) Finance Manager
17 73 (1.88%) Administrator
18 72 (1.85%) Programme Manager
19 66 (1.70%) Data Analyst
19 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.81%) Oracle Fusion
2 83 (2.14%) REST
3 75 (1.93%) Middleware
4 65 (1.67%) Kafka
5 62 (1.60%) Spring Boot
6 61 (1.57%) Spring
7 58 (1.49%) .NET
8 56 (1.44%) React
9 36 (0.93%) OAuth
10 34 (0.88%) RESTful
11 33 (0.85%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.75%) JSON
14 27 (0.70%) SAML
14 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
15 25 (0.64%) OpenID
16 22 (0.57%) SailPoint
17 20 (0.52%) HTML
17 20 (0.52%) OAuth2
17 20 (0.52%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.07%) Onboarding
2 157 (4.04%) Product Ownership
3 149 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 134 (3.45%) Virtual Team
5 113 (2.91%) Management Information System
6 108 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
7 107 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
8 90 (2.32%) Podcast
8 90 (2.32%) Web Conferencing
9 69 (1.78%) Data Structures
10 58 (1.49%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 51 (1.31%) Mainframe
12 51 (1.31%) Security Posture
13 49 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
14 41 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
15 40 (1.03%) AI Agents
16 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 38 (0.98%) Mobile App
18 35 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.17%) Windows
2 106 (2.73%) Linux
3 57 (1.47%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
8 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.052%) CentOS
16 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 943 (24.29%) Stakeholder Management
2 706 (18.18%) Agile
3 549 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
4 534 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
5 519 (13.37%) Migration
6 517 (13.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 510 (13.13%) ERP
8 366 (9.43%) Decision-Making
9 362 (9.32%) AI
10 356 (9.17%) CI/CD
11 351 (9.04%) Project Management
12 349 (8.99%) DevOps
13 341 (8.78%) Change Management
14 310 (7.98%) Project Delivery
15 284 (7.31%) Roadmaps
16 280 (7.21%) Risk Management
17 276 (7.11%) User Acceptance Testing
18 273 (7.03%) Analytics
19 269 (6.93%) Validation
20 238 (6.13%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 327 (8.42%) SQL
2 322 (8.29%) Python
3 219 (5.64%) Java
4 75 (1.93%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.42%) Bash
5 55 (1.42%) C#
6 52 (1.34%) JavaScript
7 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
7 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
8 35 (0.90%) Shell Script
9 23 (0.59%) C++
9 23 (0.59%) Go
10 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
12 13 (0.33%) Bicep
13 12 (0.31%) ABAP
13 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 11 (0.28%) VBA
15 9 (0.23%) Perl
15 9 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 365 (9.40%) Security Cleared
2 271 (6.98%) Degree
3 223 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 149 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (2.86%) ACCA
6 107 (2.76%) CIMA
7 100 (2.58%) PMP
8 88 (2.27%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.24%) PMI Certification
10 73 (1.88%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
12 36 (0.93%) Azure Certification
12 36 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
13 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (5.79%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.53%) PMO
3 133 (3.43%) QA
4 129 (3.32%) GDPR
5 50 (1.29%) GRC
5 50 (1.29%) NIST
6 47 (1.21%) SLA
7 38 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 35 (0.90%) Accessibility
9 32 (0.82%) IFRS
10 31 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) GAAP
15 8 (0.21%) COBIT
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
16 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (1.85%) Active Directory
1 72 (1.85%) Docker
2 40 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (0.54%) RACF
4 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) vSphere
8 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
12 2 (0.052%) KVM
12 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.052%) SRDF
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 170 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 116 (2.99%) Terraform
3 74 (1.91%) Ansible
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 28 (0.72%) Grafana
5 28 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
7 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
7 17 (0.44%) Prometheus
8 15 (0.39%) SCCM
9 11 (0.28%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Argo
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.15%) Puppet
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 546 (14.06%) Microsoft
2 404 (10.40%) SAP
3 386 (9.94%) Oracle
4 178 (4.58%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.94%) Google
6 87 (2.24%) IBM
7 80 (2.06%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) Salesforce
9 56 (1.44%) VMware
10 48 (1.24%) Sage
11 45 (1.16%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 35 (0.90%) Splunk
14 31 (0.80%) IFS
15 29 (0.75%) Ariba
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.52%) HP
18 20 (0.52%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe