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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,869 2,621 2,691
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.72% 16.78% 15.48%
As % of the General category 25.99% 27.72% 27.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,256 1,741 1,557
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 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £534 £575
% change year-on-year +3.04% -7.17% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 70 99
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.27 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +26.92%
75th Percentile - £30.22 £55.13
90th Percentile £72.50 £57.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
% change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +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 14,886 9,454 9,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.79% 60.53% 56.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,862 5,717 5,311
10th Percentile £255 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £361
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £683
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,328 952 818
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.46 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.80 £15.60 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £21.39 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.90% -34.18% +20.89%
75th Percentile £54.23 £42.18 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £25.08 £33.29
% change year-on-year +11.67% -24.67% +21.04%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,335 £514 +10.42% 2,224
South East -1 742 £500 -2.72% 2,440
North West -2 640 £507 +12.67% 1,159
Yorkshire +1 616 £514 +2.80% 783
Midlands -3 612 £525 +10.53% 1,325
Scotland 0 543 £463 -6.00% 1,224
West Midlands -2 455 £520 +0.97% 792
South West -6 336 £538 -4.44% 1,000
East of England +1 206 £550 -3.51% 856
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.05% 533
North East -4 72 £538 +22.86% 298
Wales -1 62 £525 +20.34% 329
Northern Ireland 0 58 £510 -2.86% 430
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 16
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
1 139 (3.59%) Confluence
2 96 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.65%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) SAS
5 11 (0.28%) CMS
5 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
6 10 (0.26%) Apache Spark
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.16%) Camunda
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.078%) JBoss
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 255 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
6 31 (0.80%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.078%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 210 (5.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.32%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 32 (0.83%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.83%) Oracle General Ledger
5 30 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
6 29 (0.75%) NetSuite
7 27 (0.70%) SAP FI
8 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
10 20 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.52%) Workday HCM
11 16 (0.41%) SAP BRIM
12 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
13 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 467 (12.07%) Azure
2 354 (9.15%) AWS
3 255 (6.59%) GCP
4 222 (5.74%) Power Platform
5 110 (2.84%) GitHub
6 102 (2.64%) Dynamics 365
7 100 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
8 95 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 89 (2.30%) SaaS
10 76 (1.96%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) Serverless
11 46 (1.19%) Snowflake
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 42 (1.09%) OCI
14 40 (1.03%) OpenShift
15 38 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 33 (0.85%) Power Automate
17 32 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (0.75%) Anthropic Claude
19 28 (0.72%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Network Security
2 82 (2.12%) Firewall
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 28 (0.72%) DNS
5 21 (0.54%) SSL
6 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 18 (0.47%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 8 (0.21%) VSAN
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.16%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (4.68%) Power BI
2 74 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.86%) SQL Server
4 70 (1.81%) Metadata
5 67 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 42 (1.09%) Data Lake
7 35 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.88%) Tableau
9 32 (0.83%) MongoDB
10 30 (0.78%) Db2
11 25 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
12 21 (0.54%) BigQuery
13 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (0.39%) MySQL
16 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 225 (5.82%) JIRA
2 121 (3.13%) Git
3 71 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.78%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) 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 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,341 (34.66%) Social Skills
2 612 (15.82%) Banking
3 536 (13.85%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.37%) Organisational Skills
5 280 (7.24%) Public Sector
6 254 (6.57%) Legal
7 160 (4.14%) Retail
8 143 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.89%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.48%) Billing
11 91 (2.35%) General Ledger
12 88 (2.27%) Local Government
13 83 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
13 83 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 71 (1.84%) Investment Banking
15 69 (1.78%) Marketing
16 66 (1.71%) Financial Institution
17 60 (1.55%) Telecoms
18 57 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
19 44 (1.14%) Law
Job Titles
1 474 (12.25%) Analyst
2 390 (10.08%) Lead
3 386 (9.98%) Senior
4 301 (7.78%) Developer
5 300 (7.75%) Architect
6 289 (7.47%) Project Manager
7 264 (6.82%) Consultant
8 224 (5.79%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.90%) Accountant
10 144 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.53%) IT Manager
12 92 (2.38%) Administrator
12 92 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
12 92 (2.38%) Java Developer
13 90 (2.33%) Systems Accountant
14 85 (2.20%) Senior Manager
15 82 (2.12%) Finance Manager
16 75 (1.94%) Programme Manager
17 74 (1.91%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.76%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
1 149 (3.85%) Terraform
2 115 (2.97%) REST
3 77 (1.99%) Kafka
4 74 (1.91%) React
5 71 (1.84%) Middleware
6 69 (1.78%) Spring Boot
7 63 (1.63%) Spring
8 58 (1.50%) .NET
9 52 (1.34%) RESTful
10 45 (1.16%) JSON
10 45 (1.16%) OAuth
11 34 (0.88%) OpenID
12 32 (0.83%) Node.js
12 32 (0.83%) SAP Fiori
13 31 (0.80%) HTML
14 30 (0.78%) SOAP
14 30 (0.78%) XML
15 27 (0.70%) AngularJS
15 27 (0.70%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 179 (4.63%) Onboarding
2 177 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 159 (4.11%) Virtual Team
4 158 (4.08%) Product Ownership
5 129 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
6 121 (3.13%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.92%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.87%) Podcast
9 89 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.76%) AI Agents
12 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
13 66 (1.71%) Data Centre
14 59 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
15 54 (1.40%) Public Cloud
16 49 (1.27%) Mainframe
17 48 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (1.19%) Security Posture
19 41 (1.06%) Mobile App
20 40 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 117 (3.02%) Linux
2 107 (2.77%) Windows
3 58 (1.50%) Unix
4 34 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 27 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 22 (0.57%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.21%) AIX
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 3 (0.078%) CentOS
14 3 (0.078%) MVS
15 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,074 (27.76%) Stakeholder Management
2 739 (19.10%) Agile
3 535 (13.83%) Continuous Improvement
4 532 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
5 496 (12.82%) Migration
6 479 (12.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 458 (11.84%) ERP
8 426 (11.01%) AI
8 426 (11.01%) CI/CD
9 382 (9.87%) Decision-Making
10 347 (8.97%) DevOps
11 346 (8.94%) Project Management
12 329 (8.50%) Change Management
13 317 (8.19%) Roadmaps
14 302 (7.81%) Project Delivery
15 291 (7.52%) Analytics
16 288 (7.44%) Validation
17 284 (7.34%) Risk Management
18 273 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
19 223 (5.76%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 361 (9.33%) Python
2 352 (9.10%) SQL
3 246 (6.36%) Java
4 82 (2.12%) JavaScript
5 76 (1.96%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.71%) C#
7 63 (1.63%) Bash
8 50 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 39 (1.01%) Go
10 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 18 (0.47%) Bicep
15 16 (0.41%) Perl
16 14 (0.36%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 350 (9.05%) Security Cleared
2 238 (6.15%) Degree
3 215 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 176 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (2.66%) ACCA
6 101 (2.61%) CIMA
7 92 (2.38%) PMP
8 91 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 79 (2.04%) PMI Certification
10 61 (1.58%) CISSP
11 43 (1.11%) AWS Certification
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.01%) Azure Certification
14 38 (0.98%) CISM
15 30 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 27 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.59%) CCSP
19 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 259 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 181 (4.68%) PMO
3 137 (3.54%) QA
4 83 (2.15%) GDPR
5 56 (1.45%) GRC
6 45 (1.16%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 39 (1.01%) NIST
9 29 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.72%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.23%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) P3O
System Software
1 76 (1.96%) Docker
2 69 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 55 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 215 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.04%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 34 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.47%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 6 (0.16%) logstash
16 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
17 4 (0.10%) Kibana
17 4 (0.10%) Puppet
17 4 (0.10%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 587 (15.17%) Microsoft
2 447 (11.55%) SAP
3 364 (9.41%) Oracle
4 162 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.95%) Google
6 95 (2.46%) IBM
7 80 (2.07%) Databricks
8 71 (1.84%) VMware
9 67 (1.73%) Salesforce
10 50 (1.29%) Splunk
11 49 (1.27%) Ariba
12 45 (1.16%) Workday
13 42 (1.09%) Cisco
14 30 (0.78%) Sage
15 27 (0.70%) Red Hat
16 25 (0.65%) Adobe
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 17 (0.44%) Dynatrace
19 17 (0.44%) F5