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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,922 2,275 2,729
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.20% 16.58% 13.04%
As % of the General category 27.01% 27.06% 23.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,863 1,324 1,825
10th Percentile £313 £305 £288
25th Percentile £402 £404 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £608
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 59 120
10th Percentile £14.09 £17.25 £11.60
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £13.29
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.53%
75th Percentile £24.50 £56.59 £45.43
90th Percentile £50.00 £77.69 £60.50
UK median hourly rate £22.85 £28.25 £21.50
% change year-on-year -19.12% +31.40% -14.00%

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 10,819 8,406 11,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 56.30% 61.26% 55.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,660 4,788 7,065
10th Percentile £204 £210 £208
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,154 473 1,288
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £12.77
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £21.13 £26.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.28% +6.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.00 £67.29
UK median hourly rate £22.50 £28.60 £26.00
% change year-on-year -21.33% +10.00% +4.00%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +2 931 £475 -3.06% 648
South East -1 537 £501 -4.52% 1,024
Midlands -3 518 £485 -7.62% 427
North West +3 462 £450 -5.26% 348
Yorkshire 0 420 £500 -2.91% 232
Scotland 0 382 £475 +1.66% 128
West Midlands -5 322 £514 -6.55% 257
South West -7 288 £524 -2.06% 302
East Midlands 0 194 £438 +2.94% 170
East of England 0 172 £525 - 217
Wales +29 86 £413 -12.00% 81
Northern Ireland -1 56 £494 +45.22% 40
North East -7 50 £488 +8.33% 74
Channel Islands +1 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
1 160 (5.48%) Confluence
2 103 (3.52%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
4 31 (1.06%) Apache
5 26 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.65%) SAS
7 13 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.44%) CMS
8 11 (0.38%) TPMS
9 10 (0.34%) JBoss
10 9 (0.31%) IIS
11 8 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 7 (0.24%) CICS
12 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
13 6 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.14%) Ethereum
14 4 (0.14%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 240 (8.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (5.51%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (3.59%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (3.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (1.75%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.55%) Sketch
8 11 (0.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) InVision
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.21%) Trello
11 4 (0.14%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.068%) Camtasia
12 2 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.068%) Snagit
13 1 (0.034%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.034%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 127 (4.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (1.92%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.54%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (1.23%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.10%) SAP FI
7 30 (1.03%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (0.99%) Oracle Assets
9 28 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 24 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
11 23 (0.79%) Oracle EBS R12
11 23 (0.79%) SAP CO
12 22 (0.75%) SAP FI/CO
13 17 (0.58%) SAP ERP
14 16 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
14 16 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
14 16 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
14 16 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
15 15 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
16 14 (0.48%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 389 (13.31%) AWS
2 368 (12.59%) Azure
3 173 (5.92%) Power Platform
4 162 (5.54%) GCP
5 122 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
7 74 (2.53%) GitHub
7 74 (2.53%) Serverless
8 63 (2.16%) SaaS
9 61 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
10 49 (1.68%) Entra ID
11 42 (1.44%) OCI
12 40 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
12 40 (1.37%) OpenShift
13 37 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (1.23%) Snowflake
15 34 (1.16%) Figma
16 32 (1.10%) Amazon S3
17 29 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.89%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 67 (2.29%) Firewall
2 34 (1.16%) WAN
3 24 (0.82%) Network Security
4 23 (0.79%) Skype
4 23 (0.79%) VPN
5 22 (0.75%) Wireless
6 20 (0.68%) DNS
7 18 (0.62%) LAN
8 16 (0.55%) Kerberos
8 16 (0.55%) SD-WAN
9 15 (0.51%) SSH
9 15 (0.51%) SSL
10 13 (0.44%) DHCP
11 11 (0.38%) Internet
11 11 (0.38%) SNMP
11 11 (0.38%) TCP/IP
12 8 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (0.24%) HTTP
13 7 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (5.58%) Power BI
2 71 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
2 71 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
3 63 (2.16%) NoSQL
4 50 (1.71%) Relational Database
5 39 (1.33%) Tableau
6 31 (1.06%) SQL Server
7 30 (1.03%) Metadata
8 27 (0.92%) Big Data
9 26 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 22 (0.75%) Data Lake
10 22 (0.75%) Power Query
11 21 (0.72%) DynamoDB
12 19 (0.65%) BigQuery
13 18 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
14 16 (0.55%) MongoDB
14 16 (0.55%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.51%) Hadoop
15 15 (0.51%) MySQL
16 12 (0.41%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 289 (9.89%) JIRA
2 144 (4.93%) Jenkins
3 87 (2.98%) GitLab
4 68 (2.33%) Git
5 40 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
6 39 (1.33%) JUnit
7 34 (1.16%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.89%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.82%) Selenium
10 21 (0.72%) Liquibase
11 14 (0.48%) Gradle
11 14 (0.48%) Postman
12 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
12 11 (0.38%) Maven
13 10 (0.34%) JMeter
13 10 (0.34%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.27%) Bitbucket Server
14 8 (0.27%) CA Release Automation
14 8 (0.27%) Hudson
14 8 (0.27%) Jaeger
General
1 1,093 (37.41%) Social Skills
2 510 (17.45%) Banking
3 380 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 337 (11.53%) Public Sector
5 192 (6.57%) Manufacturing
6 181 (6.19%) Telecoms
7 165 (5.65%) Marketing
8 123 (4.21%) Electronics
9 120 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
10 103 (3.52%) Financial Institution
11 97 (3.32%) Legal
12 90 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
13 62 (2.12%) General Ledger
14 56 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
15 55 (1.88%) Retail
16 52 (1.78%) Local Government
17 50 (1.71%) Investment Banking
18 45 (1.54%) Billing
19 43 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 456 (15.61%) Analyst
2 277 (9.48%) Project Manager
3 229 (7.84%) Architect
4 220 (7.53%) Senior
5 212 (7.26%) Consultant
6 206 (7.05%) Developer
7 194 (6.64%) Business Analyst
8 191 (6.54%) Lead
9 101 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 90 (3.08%) Programme Manager
11 83 (2.84%) Data Analyst
12 61 (2.09%) Senior Manager
13 58 (1.98%) SAP Consultant
14 55 (1.88%) Finance Manager
14 55 (1.88%) Java Developer
15 54 (1.85%) Designer
16 53 (1.81%) Accountant
17 52 (1.78%) Functional Consultant
18 50 (1.71%) Administrator
18 50 (1.71%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.38%) REST
2 91 (3.11%) Spring
3 81 (2.77%) Spring Boot
4 75 (2.57%) RESTful
5 62 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
6 61 (2.09%) Kafka
7 52 (1.78%) .NET
8 44 (1.51%) React
9 39 (1.33%) Middleware
10 37 (1.27%) Node.js
11 34 (1.16%) OAuth
11 34 (1.16%) SOAP
12 31 (1.06%) Elastic Stack
13 30 (1.03%) JSON
14 29 (0.99%) AngularJS
15 28 (0.96%) HTML
16 24 (0.82%) CSS
17 23 (0.79%) JMS
18 22 (0.75%) XML
19 20 (0.68%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 145 (4.96%) Onboarding
2 129 (4.41%) Product Ownership
3 90 (3.08%) Cloud Native
4 81 (2.77%) Data Centre
5 69 (2.36%) Management Information System
6 68 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
7 67 (2.29%) Public Cloud
8 62 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
9 57 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
10 47 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 35 (1.20%) Data Structures
12 34 (1.16%) Mobile App
13 33 (1.13%) CMDB
14 32 (1.10%) Virtual Team
15 31 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 30 (1.03%) PMI
17 25 (0.86%) SWIFT Messaging Network
18 22 (0.75%) NHS
19 21 (0.72%) Credit Risk
20 19 (0.65%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 132 (4.52%) Linux
2 125 (4.28%) Windows
3 43 (1.47%) Mac OS
4 39 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 37 (1.27%) Unix
6 30 (1.03%) Android
7 21 (0.72%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.14%) VMS
10 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.034%) AIX
11 1 (0.034%) Kali Linux
11 1 (0.034%) Solaris
11 1 (0.034%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.034%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (23.34%) Agile
2 557 (19.06%) Stakeholder Management
3 485 (16.60%) Problem-Solving
4 375 (12.83%) Migration
4 375 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 333 (11.40%) Project Management
6 325 (11.12%) DevOps
7 320 (10.95%) Business Intelligence
8 305 (10.44%) ERP
9 300 (10.27%) CI/CD
10 294 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
11 250 (8.56%) Change Management
12 225 (7.70%) Programme Management
13 210 (7.19%) Decision-Making
14 208 (7.12%) Analytics
15 203 (6.95%) Project Delivery
16 192 (6.57%) User Acceptance Testing
17 182 (6.23%) Roadmaps
18 177 (6.06%) Risk Management
19 174 (5.95%) AI
Programming Languages
1 339 (11.60%) SQL
2 282 (9.65%) Python
3 197 (6.74%) Java
4 78 (2.67%) PowerShell
5 43 (1.47%) TypeScript
6 42 (1.44%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.33%) C#
8 35 (1.20%) Go
9 24 (0.82%) Shell Script
10 22 (0.75%) PL/SQL
11 21 (0.72%) Bash
12 19 (0.65%) VBA
13 18 (0.62%) R
14 13 (0.44%) Groovy
15 12 (0.41%) Perl
16 11 (0.38%) Rust
17 9 (0.31%) ABAP
17 9 (0.31%) COBOL
17 9 (0.31%) Ruby
18 8 (0.27%) C++
Qualifications
1 320 (10.95%) Degree
2 266 (9.10%) Security Cleared
3 186 (6.37%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 73 (2.50%) PMP
6 72 (2.46%) Master's Degree
6 72 (2.46%) PMI Certification
7 69 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 64 (2.19%) ACCA
9 59 (2.02%) CIMA
10 51 (1.75%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.64%) DV Cleared
12 46 (1.57%) CISSP
13 40 (1.37%) CISM
14 34 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 21 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 15 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.51%) MBA
17 14 (0.48%) FFIEC
18 13 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (4.86%) PMO
2 133 (4.55%) QA
3 114 (3.90%) Data Quality
4 103 (3.52%) GDPR
5 54 (1.85%) NIST
6 48 (1.64%) SLA
7 47 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 43 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 39 (1.33%) Accessibility
10 32 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 30 (1.03%) ISO 20022
12 27 (0.92%) PSD2
13 22 (0.75%) GRC
14 21 (0.72%) IFRS
15 18 (0.62%) SEPA
16 14 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.41%) Basel III
18 11 (0.38%) COBIT
18 11 (0.38%) GLBA
18 11 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 132 (4.52%) Docker
2 101 (3.46%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.48%) vSphere
6 9 (0.31%) GPFS
6 9 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.27%) NFS
8 7 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.10%) HDFS
13 2 (0.068%) ACF2
13 2 (0.068%) Firmware
13 2 (0.068%) RACF
13 2 (0.068%) Time Sharing Option
14 1 (0.034%) XenApp
14 1 (0.034%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 154 (5.27%) Kubernetes
2 99 (3.39%) Terraform
3 85 (2.91%) Ansible
4 58 (1.98%) Grafana
5 53 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.79%) SCCM
7 18 (0.62%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
10 10 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.31%) vRealize
12 8 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.27%) Kiali
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.17%) HP ALM
14 5 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 447 (15.30%) Microsoft
2 379 (12.97%) SAP
3 257 (8.80%) Oracle
4 147 (5.03%) ServiceNow
5 94 (3.22%) Splunk
6 83 (2.84%) Cisco
7 79 (2.70%) Google
8 48 (1.64%) IBM
9 47 (1.61%) Salesforce
10 43 (1.47%) VMware
11 40 (1.37%) Workday
12 36 (1.23%) HP
13 35 (1.20%) Databricks
14 34 (1.16%) Dell
15 29 (0.99%) Apple
16 27 (0.92%) Adobe
17 25 (0.86%) Citrix
18 24 (0.82%) Sage
19 21 (0.72%) Remedy
20 19 (0.65%) IFS