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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,425 2,231 2,613
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.25% 17.45% 12.59%
As % of the General category 27.99% 28.02% 23.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,123 1,425 1,596
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £405 £400 £404
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 £745
UK median daily rate £535 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -6.14% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 71 192
10th Percentile £14.01 £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% -26.59%
75th Percentile £50.00 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £78.47 £56.03
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% -11.48%

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 12,235 7,961 11,346
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.92% 62.28% 54.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,248 4,919 6,475
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £378 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £576 £596
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,387 580 1,658
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.90 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.80 £16.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £27.24 £24.71 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% -11.75% -8.32%
75th Percentile £61.18 £55.42 £52.78
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% -14.29%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 1,139 £480 +1.05% 724
South East -2 656 £503 -2.30% 946
North West +5 617 £465 - 396
Midlands -1 590 £475 -5.00% 442
Yorkshire +1 483 £510 +2.05% 256
Scotland +1 414 £500 +2.15% 140
West Midlands 0 394 £492 -9.14% 258
South West -2 342 £503 -4.29% 318
East of England -4 197 £525 -4.55% 244
East Midlands 0 192 £463 +3.47% 182
Wales +24 95 £413 +10.00% 53
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 48
North East -11 40 £488 +3.72% 82
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 (4.47%) Confluence
2 115 (3.36%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 23 (0.67%) Apache
5 21 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.32%) SAS
7 10 (0.29%) CICS
8 9 (0.26%) CMS
9 8 (0.23%) TPMS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
12 4 (0.12%) IIS
12 4 (0.12%) WebSphere
13 3 (0.088%) Camunda
13 3 (0.088%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.058%) Mule
Applications
1 256 (7.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 123 (3.59%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (3.39%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.73%) 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 (0.088%) 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
1 166 (4.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.23%) 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 (0.53%) 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%) Workday HCM
17 11 (0.32%) Oracle AGIS
17 11 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
17 11 (0.32%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 405 (11.82%) Azure
2 349 (10.19%) AWS
3 220 (6.42%) Power Platform
4 160 (4.67%) GCP
5 108 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
6 89 (2.60%) SaaS
7 85 (2.48%) GitHub
8 84 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
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 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (0.88%) Amazon S3
18 29 (0.85%) Microsoft Copilot
19 28 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
20 25 (0.73%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 76 (2.22%) Firewall
2 40 (1.17%) Network Security
3 39 (1.14%) DNS
4 36 (1.05%) WAN
5 31 (0.91%) VPN
6 20 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.47%) Skype
9 15 (0.44%) LAN
9 15 (0.44%) SSL
10 14 (0.41%) DHCP
11 10 (0.29%) SSH
12 9 (0.26%) Internet
12 9 (0.26%) MPLS
13 8 (0.23%) SNMP
13 8 (0.23%) VSAN
14 7 (0.20%) HTTP
14 7 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
15 6 (0.18%) BGP
15 6 (0.18%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (5.87%) Power BI
2 69 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (1.58%) Relational Database
5 49 (1.43%) Metadata
6 48 (1.40%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.23%) SQL Server
8 38 (1.11%) Tableau
9 37 (1.08%) 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 13 (0.38%) MySQL
18 11 (0.32%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 296 (8.64%) JIRA
2 84 (2.45%) Jenkins
3 66 (1.93%) Git
4 41 (1.20%) GitLab
5 32 (0.93%) JUnit
6 26 (0.76%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
7 18 (0.53%) 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 (0.18%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.18%) JMeter
15 5 (0.15%) Axure RP
15 5 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,130 (32.99%) Social Skills
2 487 (14.22%) Banking
3 459 (13.40%) Analytical Skills
4 293 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 134 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
6 131 (3.82%) Manufacturing
7 122 (3.56%) Legal
8 103 (3.01%) Retail
9 102 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
10 94 (2.74%) Telecoms
11 88 (2.57%) Marketing
12 84 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
13 80 (2.34%) Local Government
14 74 (2.16%) Financial Institution
15 67 (1.96%) General Ledger
16 54 (1.58%) Investment Banking
17 48 (1.40%) Billing
18 46 (1.34%) Electronics
18 46 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
19 35 (1.02%) Law
Job Titles
1 491 (14.34%) Analyst
2 350 (10.22%) Project Manager
3 310 (9.05%) Architect
4 294 (8.58%) Lead
5 284 (8.29%) Senior
6 234 (6.83%) Developer
7 233 (6.80%) Consultant
8 223 (6.51%) Business Analyst
9 136 (3.97%) Solutions Architect
10 120 (3.50%) Accountant
11 90 (2.63%) Senior Manager
12 89 (2.60%) Programme Manager
13 75 (2.19%) Finance Manager
14 70 (2.04%) Systems Accountant
15 65 (1.90%) Data Engineer
15 65 (1.90%) Java Developer
16 62 (1.81%) Data Analyst
17 57 (1.66%) IT Manager
17 57 (1.66%) SAP Consultant
18 56 (1.64%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (2.66%) REST
2 82 (2.39%) Spring
3 81 (2.36%) Spring Boot
4 76 (2.22%) Middleware
5 75 (2.19%) Kafka
6 69 (2.01%) Oracle Fusion
7 44 (1.28%) RESTful
8 41 (1.20%) .NET
9 35 (1.02%) React
10 34 (0.99%) Node.js
10 34 (0.99%) OAuth
11 30 (0.88%) JSON
12 27 (0.79%) XML
13 24 (0.70%) HTML
14 23 (0.67%) AngularJS
14 23 (0.67%) OpenID
15 22 (0.64%) SOAP
16 21 (0.61%) CSS
17 20 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
17 20 (0.58%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 147 (4.29%) Onboarding
2 138 (4.03%) Product Ownership
3 118 (3.45%) Cloud Native
4 111 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 84 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
5 84 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.31%) Data Centre
7 58 (1.69%) Public Cloud
8 57 (1.66%) Data Structures
9 56 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
10 39 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
11 37 (1.08%) Virtual Team
12 36 (1.05%) Mainframe
13 34 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
13 34 (0.99%) PMI
14 28 (0.82%) Mobile App
15 25 (0.73%) CMDB
16 24 (0.70%) Security Posture
17 20 (0.58%) Operational Technology
18 16 (0.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 110 (3.21%) Linux
2 105 (3.07%) Windows
3 55 (1.61%) Unix
4 26 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.73%) Windows 10
6 21 (0.61%) Solaris
7 15 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.41%) Android
9 13 (0.38%) AIX
10 10 (0.29%) Mac OS
11 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
12 8 (0.23%) zOS
13 6 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.12%) HPUX
15 4 (0.12%) MVS
15 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.12%) SUSE
15 4 (0.12%) VMS
16 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 688 (20.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 673 (19.65%) Agile
3 545 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
4 509 (14.86%) Migration
5 459 (13.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 441 (12.88%) ERP
7 432 (12.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 408 (11.91%) Project Management
9 340 (9.93%) DevOps
10 308 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 295 (8.61%) Project Delivery
12 288 (8.41%) Change Management
13 283 (8.26%) Business Intelligence
14 272 (7.94%) Decision-Making
15 258 (7.53%) User Acceptance Testing
16 250 (7.30%) AI
17 242 (7.07%) Risk Management
18 238 (6.95%) Roadmaps
19 228 (6.66%) Validation
20 226 (6.60%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 329 (9.61%) SQL
2 255 (7.45%) Python
3 214 (6.25%) Java
4 67 (1.96%) PowerShell
5 30 (0.88%) Bash
6 28 (0.82%) JavaScript
7 27 (0.79%) TypeScript
8 21 (0.61%) C#
8 21 (0.61%) VBA
9 20 (0.58%) PL/SQL
10 17 (0.50%) Shell Script
11 15 (0.44%) Go
11 15 (0.44%) Kotlin
12 14 (0.41%) C++
13 12 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 11 (0.32%) COBOL
15 9 (0.26%) Perl
15 9 (0.26%) Rust
16 8 (0.23%) Apex Code
16 8 (0.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 331 (9.66%) Security Cleared
2 328 (9.58%) Degree
3 206 (6.01%) SC Cleared
4 117 (3.42%) ACCA
5 112 (3.27%) CIMA
6 111 (3.24%) PMP
7 103 (3.01%) PMI Certification
8 91 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 69 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.93%) CISSP
11 52 (1.52%) Master's Degree
12 44 (1.28%) CISM
13 42 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
14 33 (0.96%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.76%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 22 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
17 18 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
18 17 (0.50%) MBA
19 14 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
19 14 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 188 (5.49%) PMO
2 172 (5.02%) Data Quality
3 142 (4.15%) GDPR
3 142 (4.15%) QA
4 63 (1.84%) NIST
5 44 (1.28%) PCI DSS
6 43 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 42 (1.23%) SLA
8 34 (0.99%) GRC
9 30 (0.88%) Accessibility
10 28 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 27 (0.79%) IFRS
12 20 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.44%) PSD2
14 13 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.35%) Basel III
15 12 (0.35%) SEPA
16 11 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 10 (0.29%) GAAP
18 9 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 104 (3.04%) Docker
2 72 (2.10%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.53%) vSphere
5 15 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.29%) GPFS
8 9 (0.26%) NFS
9 7 (0.20%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.15%) RACF
11 4 (0.12%) ACF2
11 4 (0.12%) KVM
12 3 (0.088%) Firmware
12 3 (0.088%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.088%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.058%) HDFS
13 2 (0.058%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 2 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 165 (4.82%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.31%) Terraform
3 63 (1.84%) Ansible
4 40 (1.17%) Grafana
5 30 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.44%) SCCM
8 14 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 11 (0.32%) vRealize
10 10 (0.29%) Nessus
10 10 (0.29%) Progress Chef
11 8 (0.23%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.23%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.23%) Kiali
12 7 (0.20%) Control-M
13 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.18%) VxRail
14 5 (0.15%) CASB
14 5 (0.15%) Istio
14 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 439 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 358 (10.45%) SAP
3 290 (8.47%) Oracle
4 148 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 93 (2.72%) Google
6 56 (1.64%) Cisco
6 56 (1.64%) Databricks
6 56 (1.64%) Sage
7 53 (1.55%) IBM
7 53 (1.55%) Splunk
8 48 (1.40%) VMware
9 42 (1.23%) Salesforce
10 38 (1.11%) IFS
11 32 (0.93%) Workday
12 22 (0.64%) HP
13 19 (0.55%) Citrix
14 18 (0.53%) Adobe
14 18 (0.53%) Ariba
14 18 (0.53%) Red Hat
14 18 (0.53%) Remedy