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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,919 2,650 2,664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.83% 16.95% 15.25%
As % of the General category 26.32% 27.86% 27.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,298 1,765 1,543
10th Percentile £337 £308 £301
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
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% -4.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 67 100
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £15.49 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +22.74%
75th Percentile - £30.83 £55.06
90th Percentile £72.50 £58.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.89 £33.00
% change year-on-year +57.65% -15.50% +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 14,892 9,513 9,807
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.57% 60.86% 56.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,930 5,752 5,314
10th Percentile £263 £209 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £597 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,276 934 849
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.28 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.52 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £21.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.58% -38.89% +30.69%
75th Percentile £54.29 £42.23 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +13.32% -28.14% +27.27%

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 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 1 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 1 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 1,351 £514 +9.36% 1,921
South East -1 749 £500 -2.72% 1,857
North West -2 644 £507 +12.56% 1,084
Yorkshire 0 629 £519 +3.75% 635
Midlands -2 619 £507 +6.74% 1,072
Scotland 0 548 £464 -7.25% 969
West Midlands -2 463 £515 -0.91% 677
South West -5 348 £525 -4.55% 994
East of England +2 203 £550 -4.35% 572
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 395
North East -4 71 £538 +22.51% 217
Wales 0 63 £525 +20.69% 303
Northern Ireland 0 63 £510 -1.92% 384
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 19
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 (3.60%) Confluence
2 97 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.64%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 11 (0.28%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) JBoss
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 260 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 213 (5.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.33%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.82%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.51%) Workday HCM
12 16 (0.41%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.22%) Azure
2 362 (9.24%) AWS
3 261 (6.66%) GCP
4 225 (5.74%) Power Platform
5 111 (2.83%) GitHub
6 106 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
7 99 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
8 96 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 95 (2.42%) SaaS
10 77 (1.96%) Entra ID
11 49 (1.25%) Serverless
12 48 (1.22%) Snowflake
13 45 (1.15%) OCI
14 44 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 44 (1.12%) OpenShift
15 38 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 30 (0.77%) Amazon S3
18 29 (0.74%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.12%) Firewall
1 83 (2.12%) Network Security
2 43 (1.10%) VPN
3 27 (0.69%) DNS
4 22 (0.56%) SSL
5 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.48%) WAN
7 17 (0.43%) Broadband
8 15 (0.38%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 11 (0.28%) BIG-IP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 8 (0.20%) VSAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.64%) Power BI
2 75 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 68 (1.74%) Metadata
6 44 (1.12%) Data Lake
7 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.71%) Db2
11 27 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
12 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 17 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
15 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 219 (5.59%) JIRA
2 121 (3.09%) Git
3 68 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.77%) GitLab
5 23 (0.59%) JUnit
6 19 (0.48%) Claude Code
7 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 16 (0.41%) Selenium
8 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 11 (0.28%) Postman
10 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Hudson
13 8 (0.20%) ERwin
13 8 (0.20%) Mockito
13 8 (0.20%) REST Assured
14 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,365 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 608 (15.51%) Banking
3 539 (13.75%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.32%) Organisational Skills
5 284 (7.25%) Public Sector
6 256 (6.53%) Legal
7 163 (4.16%) Retail
8 145 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.86%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.42%) Billing
11 93 (2.37%) General Ledger
12 89 (2.27%) Local Government
13 83 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
14 81 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 72 (1.84%) Investment Banking
16 67 (1.71%) Marketing
17 64 (1.63%) Financial Institution
18 60 (1.53%) Telecoms
19 57 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
20 45 (1.15%) Law
Job Titles
1 478 (12.20%) Analyst
2 391 (9.98%) Lead
3 385 (9.82%) Senior
4 309 (7.88%) Developer
5 301 (7.68%) Architect
6 296 (7.55%) Project Manager
7 275 (7.02%) Consultant
8 224 (5.72%) Business Analyst
9 154 (3.93%) Accountant
10 145 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.50%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.42%) Java Developer
13 93 (2.37%) Administrator
14 92 (2.35%) Financial Analyst
14 92 (2.35%) Systems Accountant
15 86 (2.19%) Senior Manager
16 81 (2.07%) Finance Manager
17 73 (1.86%) Data Analyst
18 69 (1.76%) Software Engineer
19 68 (1.74%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 153 (3.90%) Terraform
2 145 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.01%) REST
4 81 (2.07%) Kafka
5 75 (1.91%) React
6 73 (1.86%) Spring Boot
7 72 (1.84%) Middleware
8 67 (1.71%) Spring
9 60 (1.53%) .NET
10 53 (1.35%) RESTful
11 49 (1.25%) OAuth
12 45 (1.15%) JSON
13 38 (0.97%) OpenID
14 33 (0.84%) Node.js
15 32 (0.82%) SAP Fiori
16 31 (0.79%) HTML
17 30 (0.77%) SAML
17 30 (0.77%) SOAP
18 29 (0.74%) OAuth2
18 29 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 177 (4.52%) Onboarding
2 176 (4.49%) Cloud Native
3 162 (4.13%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.06%) Virtual Team
5 130 (3.32%) Data Protection Act
6 123 (3.14%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.88%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 93 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
10 71 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 66 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 63 (1.61%) AI Agents
14 53 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
14 53 (1.35%) Mainframe
15 52 (1.33%) Public Cloud
16 49 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.22%) Security Posture
18 44 (1.12%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.01%) Linux
2 107 (2.73%) Windows
3 60 (1.53%) Unix
4 35 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.71%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.71%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 17 (0.43%) Android
8 16 (0.41%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,065 (27.18%) Stakeholder Management
2 735 (18.75%) Agile
3 543 (13.86%) Continuous Improvement
4 536 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
5 498 (12.71%) Migration
6 490 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 471 (12.02%) ERP
8 431 (11.00%) CI/CD
9 417 (10.64%) AI
10 379 (9.67%) Decision-Making
11 350 (8.93%) DevOps
12 347 (8.85%) Project Management
13 334 (8.52%) Change Management
14 321 (8.19%) Roadmaps
15 302 (7.71%) Project Delivery
16 288 (7.35%) Analytics
17 283 (7.22%) Risk Management
18 282 (7.20%) Validation
19 275 (7.02%) User Acceptance Testing
20 230 (5.87%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 365 (9.31%) Python
2 355 (9.06%) SQL
3 255 (6.51%) Java
4 82 (2.09%) JavaScript
5 78 (1.99%) PowerShell
6 65 (1.66%) C#
7 62 (1.58%) Bash
8 50 (1.28%) TypeScript
9 39 (1.00%) Go
10 37 (0.94%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.56%) C++
13 19 (0.48%) Bicep
13 19 (0.48%) Scala
14 16 (0.41%) 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 8 (0.20%) JCL
Qualifications
1 356 (9.08%) Security Cleared
2 249 (6.35%) Degree
3 218 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (2.73%) ACCA
6 105 (2.68%) CIMA
7 93 (2.37%) PMP
8 92 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 78 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 63 (1.61%) CISSP
11 44 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.02%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) CISM
15 33 (0.84%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 31 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
17 29 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.61%) CCSP
18 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
19 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 256 (6.53%) Data Quality
2 179 (4.57%) PMO
3 143 (3.65%) QA
4 88 (2.25%) GDPR
5 57 (1.45%) GRC
6 44 (1.12%) Accessibility
7 42 (1.07%) NIST
8 40 (1.02%) SLA
9 32 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.71%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 80 (2.04%) Docker
2 70 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
8 5 (0.13%) GPFS
8 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 4 (0.10%) ACF2
9 4 (0.10%) zsh
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 218 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 80 (2.04%) Ansible
3 40 (1.02%) Grafana
4 37 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 35 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.66%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 12 (0.31%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.23%) Control-M
14 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
15 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
16 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
17 4 (0.10%) Kibana
17 4 (0.10%) logstash
17 4 (0.10%) Puppet
17 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 595 (15.18%) Microsoft
2 446 (11.38%) SAP
3 366 (9.34%) Oracle
4 169 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.88%) Google
6 96 (2.45%) IBM
7 85 (2.17%) Databricks
8 67 (1.71%) VMware
9 65 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 50 (1.28%) Ariba
11 48 (1.22%) Splunk
12 46 (1.17%) Workday
13 42 (1.07%) Cisco
14 33 (0.84%) Sage
15 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.61%) Adobe
16 24 (0.61%) Snow
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 18 (0.46%) Sybase
19 17 (0.43%) NetApp