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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,430 2,227 2,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.19% 17.44% 12.57%
As % of the General category 28.01% 28.01% 23.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,122 1,421 1,574
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £406 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £535 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -6.14% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 71 193
10th Percentile £13.95 £17.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £17.00 £21.00 £14.13
Median hourly rate £22.50 £36.00 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year -37.50% +12.10% -24.44%
75th Percentile £50.00 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £78.47 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% +0.58%

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 12,247 7,951 11,234
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.68% 62.26% 54.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,225 4,912 6,411
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £675 £662 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,386 585 1,649
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.94 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.65 £16.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%
75th Percentile £61.18 £55.93 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.14%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 +3 1,143 £482 +1.39% 775
South East -1 653 £503 -2.36% 1,005
North West +5 617 £465 - 405
Midlands -1 587 £475 -4.04% 491
Yorkshire +1 487 £514 +2.80% 284
Scotland +1 422 £497 +1.70% 159
West Midlands 0 391 £492 -6.29% 270
South West -2 342 £505 -3.81% 375
East of England -4 198 £525 -4.55% 283
East Midlands 0 192 £463 +3.47% 219
Wales +21 93 £413 +10.00% 98
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 67
North East -14 40 £488 +3.72% 96
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2
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
1 153 (4.46%) Confluence
2 114 (3.32%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 23 (0.67%) Apache
5 19 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.32%) SAS
7 10 (0.29%) CICS
8 8 (0.23%) CMS
8 8 (0.23%) TPMS
9 6 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.12%) IIS
11 4 (0.12%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.087%) Camunda
12 3 (0.087%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.058%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 253 (7.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 121 (3.53%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.35%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.28%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.15%) InVision
8 5 (0.15%) Sketch
8 5 (0.15%) Trello
9 3 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.058%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.029%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.029%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.029%) UXPin
11 1 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 165 (4.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 37 (1.08%) Oracle ERP
6 33 (0.96%) Oracle EBS
7 29 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
8 27 (0.79%) NetSuite
9 25 (0.73%) Oracle Assets
10 22 (0.64%) SAP FI
11 21 (0.61%) Oracle Cash Management
12 18 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
13 17 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
13 17 (0.50%) SAP CO
14 16 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
15 13 (0.38%) NEC Housing
16 12 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
16 12 (0.35%) SAP Hybris
16 12 (0.35%) SAP PSCD
16 12 (0.35%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 406 (11.84%) Azure
2 346 (10.09%) AWS
3 221 (6.44%) Power Platform
4 157 (4.58%) GCP
5 106 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
6 89 (2.59%) SaaS
7 85 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
8 82 (2.39%) GitHub
9 75 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
10 59 (1.72%) Entra ID
11 50 (1.46%) Serverless
12 47 (1.37%) OpenShift
13 41 (1.20%) Snowflake
14 40 (1.17%) OCI
15 35 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (0.87%) Amazon S3
18 29 (0.85%) Microsoft Copilot
19 25 (0.73%) GitHub Actions
19 25 (0.73%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 77 (2.24%) Firewall
2 41 (1.20%) Network Security
3 39 (1.14%) DNS
4 37 (1.08%) WAN
5 31 (0.90%) VPN
6 21 (0.61%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.47%) LAN
8 16 (0.47%) SSL
9 14 (0.41%) DHCP
9 14 (0.41%) Skype
10 10 (0.29%) SSH
11 9 (0.26%) Internet
11 9 (0.26%) MPLS
11 9 (0.26%) VSAN
12 8 (0.23%) SNMP
13 7 (0.20%) BGP
13 7 (0.20%) HTTP
13 7 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.17%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 202 (5.89%) Power BI
2 69 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 64 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (1.57%) Relational Database
5 49 (1.43%) Metadata
6 48 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.22%) SQL Server
8 38 (1.11%) Tableau
9 36 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 32 (0.93%) DynamoDB
11 24 (0.70%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.64%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.61%) MongoDB
14 20 (0.58%) Big Data
15 19 (0.55%) Power Query
16 15 (0.44%) DB2
16 15 (0.44%) Snowflake Schema
16 15 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 11 (0.32%) DataStage
17 11 (0.32%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 295 (8.60%) JIRA
2 82 (2.39%) Jenkins
3 67 (1.95%) Git
4 41 (1.20%) GitLab
5 28 (0.82%) JUnit
6 25 (0.73%) Cucumber
6 25 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
7 17 (0.50%) Selenium
8 14 (0.41%) Hudson
9 13 (0.38%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.35%) Postman
11 9 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.26%) Gradle
12 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.20%) Maven
14 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.15%) Axure RP
15 5 (0.15%) JMeter
15 5 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,126 (32.83%) Social Skills
2 489 (14.26%) Banking
3 462 (13.47%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (8.37%) Public Sector
5 135 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
6 126 (3.67%) Legal
7 122 (3.56%) Manufacturing
8 104 (3.03%) Retail
9 102 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
10 86 (2.51%) Telecoms
11 84 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
12 82 (2.39%) Local Government
13 79 (2.30%) Marketing
14 74 (2.16%) Financial Institution
15 67 (1.95%) General Ledger
16 54 (1.57%) Investment Banking
17 48 (1.40%) Billing
18 44 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
19 37 (1.08%) Electronics
20 35 (1.02%) Law
Job Titles
1 489 (14.26%) Analyst
2 349 (10.17%) Project Manager
3 310 (9.04%) Architect
4 293 (8.54%) Lead
5 287 (8.37%) Senior
6 236 (6.88%) Consultant
7 232 (6.76%) Developer
8 225 (6.56%) Business Analyst
9 136 (3.97%) Solutions Architect
10 120 (3.50%) Accountant
11 92 (2.68%) Senior Manager
12 90 (2.62%) Programme Manager
13 74 (2.16%) Finance Manager
14 71 (2.07%) Systems Accountant
15 65 (1.90%) Data Engineer
16 63 (1.84%) Java Developer
17 62 (1.81%) Data Analyst
18 58 (1.69%) SAP Consultant
19 57 (1.66%) Administrator
19 57 (1.66%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (2.59%) REST
2 78 (2.27%) Spring
2 78 (2.27%) Spring Boot
3 77 (2.24%) Middleware
4 74 (2.16%) Kafka
5 70 (2.04%) Oracle Fusion
6 41 (1.20%) .NET
6 41 (1.20%) RESTful
7 34 (0.99%) Node.js
7 34 (0.99%) OAuth
8 32 (0.93%) React
9 30 (0.87%) JSON
10 27 (0.79%) XML
11 23 (0.67%) OpenID
12 22 (0.64%) AngularJS
13 21 (0.61%) HTML
13 21 (0.61%) SOAP
14 20 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
15 19 (0.55%) CSS
15 19 (0.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.34%) Onboarding
2 138 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 117 (3.41%) Cloud Native
4 111 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 85 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
6 84 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 81 (2.36%) Data Centre
8 58 (1.69%) Public Cloud
9 57 (1.66%) Data Structures
10 55 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 39 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
12 38 (1.11%) Mainframe
13 36 (1.05%) Virtual Team
14 34 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
14 34 (0.99%) PMI
15 26 (0.76%) Mobile App
16 25 (0.73%) CMDB
17 24 (0.70%) Security Posture
18 20 (0.58%) Operational Technology
19 16 (0.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 110 (3.21%) Linux
2 104 (3.03%) Windows
3 55 (1.60%) Unix
4 26 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.70%) Windows 10
6 22 (0.64%) Solaris
7 16 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.38%) AIX
9 12 (0.35%) Android
10 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.26%) zOS
11 8 (0.23%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.12%) HPUX
14 4 (0.12%) MVS
14 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.12%) SUSE
14 4 (0.12%) VMS
15 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 689 (20.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 666 (19.42%) Agile
3 549 (16.01%) Problem-Solving
4 507 (14.78%) Migration
5 463 (13.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 440 (12.83%) ERP
7 434 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 407 (11.87%) Project Management
9 339 (9.88%) DevOps
10 305 (8.89%) CI/CD
11 295 (8.60%) Project Delivery
12 291 (8.48%) Change Management
13 275 (8.02%) Business Intelligence
14 274 (7.99%) Decision-Making
15 260 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
16 247 (7.20%) AI
17 241 (7.03%) Risk Management
18 237 (6.91%) Roadmaps
19 228 (6.65%) Validation
20 227 (6.62%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 327 (9.53%) SQL
2 258 (7.52%) Python
3 208 (6.06%) Java
4 67 (1.95%) PowerShell
5 31 (0.90%) Bash
6 25 (0.73%) JavaScript
6 25 (0.73%) TypeScript
7 21 (0.61%) C#
7 21 (0.61%) VBA
8 20 (0.58%) PL/SQL
9 17 (0.50%) Shell Script
10 15 (0.44%) Go
10 15 (0.44%) Kotlin
11 14 (0.41%) C++
12 12 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.32%) COBOL
14 9 (0.26%) Perl
14 9 (0.26%) Rust
15 8 (0.23%) Apex Code
15 8 (0.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 326 (9.50%) Degree
2 324 (9.45%) Security Cleared
3 201 (5.86%) SC Cleared
4 117 (3.41%) ACCA
5 112 (3.27%) CIMA
6 111 (3.24%) PMP
7 103 (3.00%) PMI Certification
8 91 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 65 (1.90%) CISSP
11 52 (1.52%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.25%) CISM
13 42 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
14 33 (0.96%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.76%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 20 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
17 18 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
18 17 (0.50%) MBA
19 15 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
20 14 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 185 (5.39%) PMO
2 172 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 141 (4.11%) GDPR
3 141 (4.11%) QA
4 63 (1.84%) NIST
5 44 (1.28%) PCI DSS
5 44 (1.28%) SLA
6 43 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 34 (0.99%) GRC
8 29 (0.85%) Accessibility
9 28 (0.82%) IFRS
9 28 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 20 (0.58%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.44%) PSD2
12 13 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 12 (0.35%) Basel III
13 12 (0.35%) SEPA
14 11 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
15 10 (0.29%) GAAP
16 9 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 103 (3.00%) Docker
2 68 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.50%) vSphere
5 15 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.26%) GPFS
8 8 (0.23%) NFS
8 8 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.17%) RACF
11 4 (0.12%) ACF2
11 4 (0.12%) KVM
12 3 (0.087%) Firmware
12 3 (0.087%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.087%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.058%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 2 (0.058%) SRDF
13 2 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (4.78%) Kubernetes
2 78 (2.27%) Terraform
3 63 (1.84%) Ansible
4 40 (1.17%) Grafana
5 30 (0.87%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.44%) SCCM
7 15 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.29%) Nessus
8 10 (0.29%) vRealize
9 9 (0.26%) Progress Chef
10 8 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 8 (0.23%) HP ALM
10 8 (0.23%) Kiali
11 7 (0.20%) Control-M
12 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.17%) VxRail
13 5 (0.15%) Argo
13 5 (0.15%) IBM Guardium
13 5 (0.15%) Istio
Vendors
1 437 (12.74%) Microsoft
2 353 (10.29%) SAP
3 291 (8.48%) Oracle
4 145 (4.23%) ServiceNow
5 92 (2.68%) Google
6 56 (1.63%) Databricks
7 55 (1.60%) Cisco
7 55 (1.60%) Sage
7 55 (1.60%) Splunk
8 54 (1.57%) IBM
9 47 (1.37%) VMware
10 42 (1.22%) Salesforce
11 38 (1.11%) IFS
12 32 (0.93%) Workday
13 22 (0.64%) HP
14 19 (0.55%) Ariba
14 19 (0.55%) Citrix
15 18 (0.52%) Adobe
15 18 (0.52%) Red Hat
15 18 (0.52%) Remedy