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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,766 2,380 2,718
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.47% 17.63% 12.80%
As % of the General category 28.40% 28.29% 24.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,315 1,536 1,643
10th Percentile £331 £308 £281
25th Percentile £410 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -4.76%
75th Percentile £603 £580 £619
90th Percentile £700 £675 £730
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 73 215
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.25 £12.54
25th Percentile £17.36 £18.51 £14.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £29.27 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.52% +4.54% -41.53%
75th Percentile £53.94 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £36.51 £28.00
% change year-on-year -4.14% +30.39% -6.67%

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 13,260 8,412 11,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.93% 62.32% 53.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,567 5,133 6,299
10th Percentile £275 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £594
90th Percentile £686 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,618 695 1,716
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.20 £15.53 £15.00
Median hourly rate £31.46 £24.34 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.25% -18.87% +17.19%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £54.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.76 £31.13
% change year-on-year +15.27% -10.81% +3.75%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 1,286 £500 +7.53% 588
South East -1 692 £500 -4.76% 841
North West +4 684 £466 +3.44% 307
Midlands 0 649 £500 +11.11% 379
Yorkshire 0 556 £525 +10.24% 212
West Midlands +1 475 £500 +1.63% 219
Scotland 0 471 £500 +4.38% 121
South West -3 379 £525 - 244
East of England +3 197 £516 -10.22% 191
East Midlands -1 167 £470 +12.57% 159
Wales +7 90 £530 +13.98% 72
Northern Ireland -1 54 £500 +17.65% 70
North East -20 47 £500 +13.96% 81
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 171 (4.54%) Confluence
2 102 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.50%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Apache
5 14 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.29%) CICS
7 9 (0.24%) CMS
7 9 (0.24%) SAS
8 6 (0.16%) IIS
9 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.11%) TPMS
11 3 (0.080%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.053%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.053%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.053%) JBoss
12 2 (0.053%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 245 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.60%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (1.27%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.053%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.053%) InVision
9 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.053%) Sketch
9 2 (0.053%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.027%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.027%) UXPin
10 1 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (5.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.04%) NetSuite
5 37 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 36 (0.96%) Oracle Receivables
7 20 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
8 19 (0.50%) SAP FI
8 19 (0.50%) Unit4 Business World
9 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
10 16 (0.42%) SAP PSCD
11 13 (0.35%) NEC Housing
11 13 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 13 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
11 13 (0.35%) SAP CO
12 12 (0.32%) SAP FI/CO
12 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
13 11 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
13 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 464 (12.32%) Azure
2 326 (8.66%) AWS
3 225 (5.97%) Power Platform
4 191 (5.07%) GCP
5 104 (2.76%) SaaS
6 94 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
7 89 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
8 78 (2.07%) GitHub
9 70 (1.86%) Entra ID
10 69 (1.83%) Dynamics 365
11 44 (1.17%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.12%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
14 40 (1.06%) Serverless
15 35 (0.93%) OCI
16 23 (0.61%) OneDrive
16 23 (0.61%) Power Automate
17 22 (0.58%) Amazon S3
17 22 (0.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 22 (0.58%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.12%) Firewall
2 59 (1.57%) Network Security
3 35 (0.93%) DNS
3 35 (0.93%) WAN
4 31 (0.82%) VPN
5 23 (0.61%) SSL
6 21 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.45%) LAN
7 17 (0.45%) SD-WAN
8 12 (0.32%) DHCP
9 11 (0.29%) VSAN
10 9 (0.24%) MPLS
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.19%) Cisco Nexus
12 7 (0.19%) Internet
13 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
13 6 (0.16%) SSH
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (5.12%) Power BI
2 74 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (1.78%) Relational Database
4 66 (1.75%) Metadata
5 58 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
6 53 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
7 51 (1.35%) SQL Server
8 36 (0.96%) Tableau
9 34 (0.90%) NoSQL
10 31 (0.82%) Data Lake
11 25 (0.66%) MongoDB
12 24 (0.64%) DynamoDB
13 23 (0.61%) Oracle ODI
14 22 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 19 (0.50%) Db2
16 18 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
17 17 (0.45%) Power Query
18 16 (0.42%) Data Vault
19 15 (0.40%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 287 (7.62%) JIRA
2 79 (2.10%) Git
3 74 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.80%) JUnit
5 23 (0.61%) GitLab
6 20 (0.53%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 18 (0.48%) Selenium
9 13 (0.35%) Hudson
9 13 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.32%) Postman
11 11 (0.29%) Visual Studio
12 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.19%) ERwin
13 7 (0.19%) Gradle
13 7 (0.19%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.19%) Maven
14 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
15 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,204 (31.97%) Social Skills
2 534 (14.18%) Banking
3 492 (13.06%) Analytical Skills
4 265 (7.04%) Public Sector
5 181 (4.81%) Legal
6 155 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
7 127 (3.37%) Retail
8 108 (2.87%) Manufacturing
9 107 (2.84%) Local Government
10 104 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
11 100 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
12 83 (2.20%) Investment Banking
13 81 (2.15%) Financial Institution
14 79 (2.10%) General Ledger
15 65 (1.73%) Billing
16 59 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (1.46%) Telecoms
18 49 (1.30%) Marketing
19 45 (1.19%) Aerospace
20 43 (1.14%) Law
Job Titles
1 529 (14.05%) Analyst
2 354 (9.40%) Lead
2 354 (9.40%) Project Manager
3 351 (9.32%) Architect
4 337 (8.95%) Senior
5 267 (7.09%) Developer
6 249 (6.61%) Consultant
7 237 (6.29%) Business Analyst
8 162 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
9 153 (4.06%) Accountant
10 98 (2.60%) Senior Manager
10 98 (2.60%) Systems Accountant
11 95 (2.52%) IT Manager
12 89 (2.36%) Programme Manager
13 80 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 77 (2.04%) Financial Analyst
15 72 (1.91%) Finance Manager
16 66 (1.75%) Administrator
17 64 (1.70%) Data Engineer
18 62 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.21%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.44%) Middleware
3 88 (2.34%) REST
4 71 (1.89%) Kafka
4 71 (1.89%) Spring Boot
5 69 (1.83%) Spring
6 59 (1.57%) React
7 53 (1.41%) .NET
8 42 (1.12%) RESTful
9 34 (0.90%) JSON
9 34 (0.90%) OAuth
10 29 (0.77%) Node.js
11 27 (0.72%) XML
12 26 (0.69%) OpenID
13 24 (0.64%) AngularJS
13 24 (0.64%) Redux
13 24 (0.64%) SailPoint
13 24 (0.64%) SAP Fiori
14 19 (0.50%) SAML
15 18 (0.48%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.14%) Onboarding
2 155 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 138 (3.66%) Cloud Native
4 121 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 106 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
6 94 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.10%) Data Centre
8 71 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.78%) Public Cloud
10 65 (1.73%) Data Structures
11 53 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
12 46 (1.22%) Mainframe
13 45 (1.19%) Security Posture
14 41 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.90%) Web Conferencing
16 33 (0.88%) Podcast
17 30 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
18 26 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
19 25 (0.66%) CMDB
20 23 (0.61%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.21%) Windows
2 102 (2.71%) Linux
3 56 (1.49%) Unix
4 31 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.72%) Solaris
6 24 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.56%) zOS
8 13 (0.35%) AIX
9 10 (0.27%) Android
9 10 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) HPUX
12 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.11%) MVS
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.11%) SUSE
12 4 (0.11%) VMS
13 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.027%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 847 (22.49%) Stakeholder Management
2 702 (18.64%) Agile
3 551 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
4 550 (14.60%) Migration
5 507 (13.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 501 (13.30%) ERP
7 499 (13.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 415 (11.02%) Project Management
9 362 (9.61%) DevOps
10 339 (9.00%) Change Management
11 335 (8.90%) CI/CD
12 331 (8.79%) Decision-Making
13 308 (8.18%) Project Delivery
14 299 (7.94%) AI
15 292 (7.75%) User Acceptance Testing
16 280 (7.43%) Roadmaps
17 273 (7.25%) Validation
18 255 (6.77%) Risk Management
19 237 (6.29%) Data Modelling
20 235 (6.24%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 357 (9.48%) SQL
2 280 (7.43%) Python
3 222 (5.89%) Java
4 80 (2.12%) PowerShell
5 50 (1.33%) C#
6 43 (1.14%) JavaScript
7 37 (0.98%) Bash
8 35 (0.93%) PL/SQL
9 34 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 23 (0.61%) C++
11 20 (0.53%) Go
12 18 (0.48%) Shell Script
13 17 (0.45%) VBA
14 14 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.29%) Rust
17 10 (0.27%) COBOL
17 10 (0.27%) PHP
18 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
19 8 (0.21%) VB
Qualifications
1 341 (9.05%) Security Cleared
2 315 (8.36%) Degree
3 215 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 135 (3.58%) ACCA
5 132 (3.51%) CIMA
6 126 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 117 (3.11%) PMP
8 101 (2.68%) PMI Certification
9 78 (2.07%) CISSP
10 60 (1.59%) DV Cleared
11 47 (1.25%) CISM
12 40 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
13 36 (0.96%) Master's Degree
14 31 (0.82%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.72%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
17 24 (0.64%) Azure Certification
18 19 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 18 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 17 (0.45%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 193 (5.12%) Data Quality
2 168 (4.46%) PMO
3 149 (3.96%) GDPR
4 139 (3.69%) QA
5 59 (1.57%) NIST
6 48 (1.27%) SLA
7 45 (1.19%) GRC
8 40 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (1.01%) IFRS
10 37 (0.98%) PCI DSS
11 33 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.85%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.48%) ISO 20022
14 15 (0.40%) IFRS 17
15 13 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 11 (0.29%) NCSC
17 10 (0.27%) PSD2
18 9 (0.24%) Basel III
18 9 (0.24%) GAAP
18 9 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 88 (2.34%) Docker
2 77 (2.04%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.42%) RACF
6 13 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.35%) vSphere
7 12 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) KVM
11 3 (0.080%) Firmware
12 2 (0.053%) ACF2
12 2 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.053%) SRDF
13 1 (0.027%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.027%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 164 (4.35%) Kubernetes
2 85 (2.26%) Terraform
3 75 (1.99%) Ansible
4 36 (0.96%) Grafana
5 31 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 21 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.50%) SCCM
9 13 (0.35%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.32%) Control-M
10 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.27%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.27%) Nessus
13 8 (0.21%) Argo
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 6 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (0.16%) VxRail
15 5 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 462 (12.27%) Microsoft
2 405 (10.75%) SAP
3 351 (9.32%) Oracle
4 154 (4.09%) ServiceNow
5 104 (2.76%) Google
6 73 (1.94%) IBM
7 70 (1.86%) Databricks
8 57 (1.51%) VMware
9 55 (1.46%) Sage
10 50 (1.33%) Splunk
11 49 (1.30%) Cisco
12 37 (0.98%) Salesforce
13 35 (0.93%) IFS
14 34 (0.90%) Ariba
15 29 (0.77%) Workday
16 23 (0.61%) HP
17 22 (0.58%) Red Hat
18 21 (0.56%) MuleSoft
19 17 (0.45%) Atlassian
20 16 (0.42%) Fortinet