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 9 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,855 2,664 2,713
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.71% 16.81% 15.51%
As % of the General category 25.90% 27.72% 27.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,228 1,766 1,574
10th Percentile £339 £308 £303
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £618
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £530 £570
% change year-on-year +3.77% -7.02% -4.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 285 73 99
10th Percentile £14.27 £13.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.73 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%
75th Percentile - £30.15 £55.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £57.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%

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 14,882 9,612 9,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.92% 60.66% 56.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,840 5,822 5,370
10th Percentile £256 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £680
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,352 968 797
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.60 £15.98
Median hourly rate £27.50 £21.35 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +28.84% -33.23% +21.79%
75th Percentile £53.88 £42.18 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.00% -23.08% +18.18%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 1,338 £514 +9.13% 1,851
South East -1 735 £500 -2.72% 1,886
North West -2 640 £512 +13.78% 959
Yorkshire 0 620 £516 +3.18% 664
Midlands -3 603 £525 +10.53% 1,056
Scotland 0 538 £463 -6.00% 1,031
West Midlands -3 449 £507 -1.55% 638
South West -6 335 £538 -2.27% 794
East of England +2 200 £539 -4.69% 636
East Midlands -2 148 £525 +25.00% 419
North East -11 71 £538 +22.51% 243
Wales +2 67 £525 +20.34% 194
Northern Ireland 0 62 £486 -7.38% 434
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 13
South Coast - 1 £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
1 141 (3.66%) Confluence
2 98 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 24 (0.62%) Apache
4 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.31%) CMS
4 12 (0.31%) SAS
5 11 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
6 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.21%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.16%) Camunda
9 5 (0.13%) CICS
9 5 (0.13%) IIS
9 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.078%) JBoss
11 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.052%) Mule
12 2 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 255 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 86 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.95%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.10%) Trello
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
8 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.026%) Maple
Business Applications
1 205 (5.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.30%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.75%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 23 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
8 23 (0.60%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
10 21 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.52%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 20 (0.52%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.44%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.34%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 472 (12.24%) Azure
2 355 (9.21%) AWS
3 253 (6.56%) GCP
4 215 (5.58%) Power Platform
5 111 (2.88%) GitHub
6 104 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
7 103 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
8 98 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
9 90 (2.33%) SaaS
10 75 (1.95%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) Serverless
12 45 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
13 44 (1.14%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.09%) OCI
15 40 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
16 38 (0.99%) OpenShift
17 32 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
19 30 (0.78%) Anthropic Claude
20 29 (0.75%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.18%) Network Security
2 83 (2.15%) Firewall
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 28 (0.73%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
5 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.52%) WAN
7 18 (0.47%) Broadband
8 15 (0.39%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 11 (0.29%) BGP
11 10 (0.26%) DHCP
12 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 7 (0.18%) OSPF
12 7 (0.18%) SAN
12 7 (0.18%) VSAN
12 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 174 (4.51%) Power BI
2 77 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.84%) Metadata
4 70 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.69%) Relational Database
6 44 (1.14%) Data Lake
7 34 (0.88%) Tableau
8 33 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
9 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
10 29 (0.75%) Db2
11 23 (0.60%) BigQuery
12 22 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
15 18 (0.47%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
17 16 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
17 16 (0.42%) Data Vault
17 16 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 230 (5.97%) JIRA
2 122 (3.16%) Git
3 75 (1.95%) Jenkins
4 31 (0.80%) GitLab
5 21 (0.54%) JUnit
6 20 (0.52%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 13 (0.34%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
13 8 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,346 (34.92%) Social Skills
2 613 (15.90%) Banking
3 529 (13.72%) Analytical Skills
4 288 (7.47%) Organisational Skills
5 280 (7.26%) Public Sector
6 257 (6.67%) Legal
7 157 (4.07%) Retail
8 145 (3.76%) Influencing Skills
9 109 (2.83%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.49%) Billing
11 93 (2.41%) General Ledger
12 85 (2.20%) Local Government
13 82 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 79 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
15 73 (1.89%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.84%) Marketing
17 64 (1.66%) Financial Institution
18 62 (1.61%) Telecoms
19 59 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
20 46 (1.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 472 (12.24%) Analyst
2 386 (10.01%) Lead
3 378 (9.81%) Senior
4 295 (7.65%) Architect
5 293 (7.60%) Developer
6 286 (7.42%) Project Manager
7 261 (6.77%) Consultant
8 225 (5.84%) Business Analyst
9 145 (3.76%) Accountant
10 141 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.62%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.46%) Administrator
13 91 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
13 91 (2.36%) Java Developer
14 87 (2.26%) Systems Accountant
15 83 (2.15%) Senior Manager
16 79 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 75 (1.95%) Programme Manager
18 72 (1.87%) Data Analyst
19 64 (1.66%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (3.89%) Terraform
2 148 (3.84%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.06%) REST
4 79 (2.05%) Kafka
5 74 (1.92%) React
6 70 (1.82%) Middleware
7 66 (1.71%) Spring Boot
8 60 (1.56%) Spring
9 57 (1.48%) .NET
10 52 (1.35%) RESTful
11 48 (1.25%) JSON
12 46 (1.19%) OAuth
13 34 (0.88%) OpenID
14 33 (0.86%) SAP Fiori
15 32 (0.83%) Node.js
16 31 (0.80%) XML
17 30 (0.78%) SOAP
18 28 (0.73%) HTML
18 28 (0.73%) OAuth2
19 27 (0.70%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 181 (4.70%) Onboarding
2 175 (4.54%) Cloud Native
3 166 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 158 (4.10%) Virtual Team
5 135 (3.50%) Data Protection Act
6 123 (3.19%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.93%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.88%) Podcast
9 85 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 71 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.76%) AI Agents
12 67 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 66 (1.71%) Data Centre
14 60 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
15 52 (1.35%) Public Cloud
16 48 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (1.22%) Mainframe
18 43 (1.12%) Security Posture
19 40 (1.04%) Mobile App
19 40 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 111 (2.88%) Linux
2 107 (2.78%) Windows
3 54 (1.40%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.70%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 19 (0.49%) Solaris
8 14 (0.36%) Android
9 13 (0.34%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) AIX
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 3 (0.078%) CentOS
14 3 (0.078%) HPUX
14 3 (0.078%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.078%) SUSE
15 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) MVS
16 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,093 (28.35%) Stakeholder Management
2 745 (19.33%) Agile
3 541 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
4 529 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
5 491 (12.74%) Migration
6 482 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 452 (11.73%) ERP
8 426 (11.05%) AI
9 425 (11.02%) CI/CD
10 387 (10.04%) Decision-Making
11 347 (9.00%) DevOps
12 340 (8.82%) Project Management
13 333 (8.64%) Roadmaps
14 323 (8.38%) Change Management
15 305 (7.91%) Project Delivery
16 300 (7.78%) Analytics
17 290 (7.52%) Validation
18 289 (7.50%) Risk Management
19 270 (7.00%) User Acceptance Testing
20 226 (5.86%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 373 (9.68%) Python
2 354 (9.18%) SQL
3 245 (6.36%) Java
4 84 (2.18%) JavaScript
5 80 (2.08%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.71%) C#
7 62 (1.61%) Bash
8 50 (1.30%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.04%) Go
10 38 (0.99%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.57%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 16 (0.42%) Perl
15 14 (0.36%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 7 (0.18%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 354 (9.18%) Security Cleared
2 237 (6.15%) Degree
3 218 (5.65%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 98 (2.54%) ACCA
6 97 (2.52%) CIMA
7 92 (2.39%) DV Cleared
8 91 (2.36%) PMP
9 80 (2.08%) PMI Certification
10 59 (1.53%) CISSP
11 43 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 41 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 39 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.01%) CISM
14 29 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 29 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 22 (0.57%) CCSP
18 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 183 (4.75%) PMO
3 133 (3.45%) QA
4 82 (2.13%) GDPR
5 52 (1.35%) GRC
6 45 (1.17%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.01%) NIST
7 39 (1.01%) SLA
8 31 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.73%) IFRS
10 25 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.29%) WCAG
13 10 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.26%) COBIT
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 9 (0.23%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
14 9 (0.23%) NCSC
14 9 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 76 (1.97%) Docker
2 71 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 18 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.29%) vSphere
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.10%) GPFS
9 4 (0.10%) NFS
9 4 (0.10%) zsh
10 3 (0.078%) ACF2
10 3 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 214 (5.55%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.05%) Ansible
3 39 (1.01%) Grafana
4 36 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.47%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.39%) SCCM
10 10 (0.26%) Argo
10 10 (0.26%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 8 (0.21%) Control-M
11 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
12 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
13 6 (0.16%) logstash
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) Kibana
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 593 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 447 (11.60%) SAP
3 357 (9.26%) Oracle
4 161 (4.18%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.93%) Google
6 93 (2.41%) IBM
7 79 (2.05%) Databricks
8 70 (1.82%) VMware
9 68 (1.76%) Salesforce
10 53 (1.37%) Splunk
11 50 (1.30%) Ariba
12 45 (1.17%) Workday
13 43 (1.12%) Cisco
14 29 (0.75%) Sage
15 25 (0.65%) Adobe
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.60%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 20 (0.52%) Dynatrace
20 19 (0.49%) F5