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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,889 2,653 2,634
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.37% 17.59% 13.88%
As % of the General category 27.92% 28.90% 25.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,338 1,754 1,619
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £492 £503
Median % change year-on-year +1.83% -2.04% -4.29%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 220 74 167
10th Percentile £15.69 £14.74 £14.24
25th Percentile £22.15 £16.69 £19.45
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +14.18%
75th Percentile £45.76 £59.69 £38.44
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +27.07%

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 13,930 9,180 10,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.49% 60.85% 53.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,788 5,562 5,829
10th Percentile £263 £213 £212
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% -4.40% -1.20%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,811 817 1,283
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.08 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.25 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.98 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +53.48% -41.92% +41.19%
75th Percentile £63.75 £48.75 £58.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +31.21% -32.93% +22.79%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 1,332 £500 +6.38% 764
South East -2 745 £503 -5.19% 936
North West 0 705 £495 +10.00% 402
Midlands 0 633 £514 +14.22% 440
Yorkshire 0 571 £519 +7.23% 265
Scotland 0 490 £475 -5.00% 190
West Midlands +1 489 £525 +10.53% 268
South West -4 383 £525 -4.55% 342
East of England +6 212 £528 -8.26% 218
East Midlands -2 139 £500 +19.05% 172
Wales +3 76 £525 +13.51% 89
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 73
North East -16 56 £500 +13.96% 106
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 3
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 (3.63%) Confluence
2 98 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) CICS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) Camunda
11 3 (0.077%) Mule
11 3 (0.077%) Mule ESB
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 239 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.75%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.39%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (5.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.16%) Oracle ERP
3 44 (1.13%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.08%) NetSuite
5 40 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
6 33 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
9 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
10 20 (0.51%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
11 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
14 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
14 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
14 12 (0.31%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.32%) Azure
2 324 (8.33%) AWS
3 225 (5.79%) Power Platform
4 222 (5.71%) GCP
5 103 (2.65%) SaaS
6 92 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
7 88 (2.26%) Dynamics 365
7 88 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
8 84 (2.16%) GitHub
9 70 (1.80%) Entra ID
10 45 (1.16%) OCI
10 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
11 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
12 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
13 39 (1.00%) Serverless
14 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
15 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 25 (0.64%) Power Automate
16 21 (0.54%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.19%) Firewall
2 65 (1.67%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 38 (0.98%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 18 (0.46%) LAN
7 13 (0.33%) DHCP
8 11 (0.28%) VSAN
9 9 (0.23%) HTTP
9 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 8 (0.21%) BGP
10 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
11 7 (0.18%) Internet
11 7 (0.18%) MPLS
11 7 (0.18%) Wireless
12 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
12 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.76%) Power BI
2 78 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.88%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
5 64 (1.65%) SQL Server
6 53 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
8 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
9 36 (0.93%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
11 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) NoSQL
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 22 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.41%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 248 (6.38%) JIRA
2 95 (2.44%) Git
3 58 (1.49%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) GitLab
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.15%) Liquibase
14 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.13%) Gradle
14 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,231 (31.65%) Social Skills
2 544 (13.99%) Analytical Skills
3 529 (13.60%) Banking
4 290 (7.46%) Public Sector
5 228 (5.86%) Legal
6 219 (5.63%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.70%) Retail
8 128 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
9 110 (2.83%) Local Government
9 110 (2.83%) Manufacturing
10 102 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
11 82 (2.11%) Financial Institution
12 80 (2.06%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.88%) Billing
15 66 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.44%) Marketing
17 54 (1.39%) Telecoms
18 51 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.29%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 527 (13.55%) Analyst
2 418 (10.75%) Lead
3 352 (9.05%) Senior
4 332 (8.54%) Project Manager
5 317 (8.15%) Architect
6 292 (7.51%) Developer
7 248 (6.38%) Consultant
8 247 (6.35%) Business Analyst
9 174 (4.47%) Accountant
10 136 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
11 106 (2.73%) Systems Accountant
12 102 (2.62%) IT Manager
13 98 (2.52%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.29%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.24%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 69 (1.77%) Administrator
17 69 (1.77%) Data Analyst
17 69 (1.77%) Finance Manager
18 64 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 143 (3.68%) Oracle Fusion
2 85 (2.19%) Middleware
3 83 (2.13%) REST
4 69 (1.77%) Kafka
5 65 (1.67%) Spring Boot
6 63 (1.62%) Spring
7 59 (1.52%) .NET
7 59 (1.52%) React
8 37 (0.95%) OAuth
8 37 (0.95%) RESTful
9 33 (0.85%) Node.js
10 31 (0.80%) JSON
11 29 (0.75%) XML
12 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
13 25 (0.64%) OpenID
14 24 (0.62%) SAML
15 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
16 22 (0.57%) Redux
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
18 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.96%) Cloud Native
1 154 (3.96%) Onboarding
2 152 (3.91%) Product Ownership
3 127 (3.27%) Virtual Team
4 111 (2.85%) Management Information System
5 105 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 103 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.03%) Web Conferencing
8 78 (2.01%) Podcast
9 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
10 63 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 56 (1.44%) Public Cloud
12 54 (1.39%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 50 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
15 40 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 36 (0.93%) AI Agents
18 34 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
19 33 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.19%) Windows
2 110 (2.83%) Linux
3 65 (1.67%) Unix
4 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.15%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 898 (23.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 710 (18.26%) Agile
3 554 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
4 548 (14.09%) Continuous Improvement
5 533 (13.71%) Migration
6 514 (13.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 507 (13.04%) ERP
8 373 (9.59%) Project Management
9 363 (9.33%) Decision-Making
10 353 (9.08%) DevOps
11 350 (9.00%) CI/CD
12 344 (8.85%) Change Management
13 335 (8.61%) AI
14 319 (8.20%) Project Delivery
15 294 (7.56%) Roadmaps
16 283 (7.28%) User Acceptance Testing
17 277 (7.12%) Validation
18 265 (6.81%) Risk Management
19 255 (6.56%) Analytics
20 239 (6.15%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 325 (8.36%) SQL
2 311 (8.00%) Python
3 222 (5.71%) Java
4 72 (1.85%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 50 (1.29%) JavaScript
7 46 (1.18%) Bash
8 36 (0.93%) PL/SQL
8 36 (0.93%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
10 24 (0.62%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.33%) Bicep
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 11 (0.28%) COBOL
14 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.28%) PHP
14 11 (0.28%) VBA
15 10 (0.26%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 372 (9.57%) Security Cleared
2 284 (7.30%) Degree
3 226 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 145 (3.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (3.01%) ACCA
6 113 (2.91%) CIMA
7 111 (2.85%) PMP
8 96 (2.47%) PMI Certification
9 85 (2.19%) DV Cleared
10 69 (1.77%) CISSP
11 42 (1.08%) CISM
12 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
13 34 (0.87%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
16 31 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
17 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
18 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
19 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
20 19 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (5.61%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.53%) PMO
3 144 (3.70%) QA
4 134 (3.45%) GDPR
5 48 (1.23%) SLA
6 44 (1.13%) NIST
7 43 (1.11%) GRC
8 37 (0.95%) IFRS
9 34 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 33 (0.85%) Accessibility
10 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.33%) GAAP
12 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 11 (0.28%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) COBIT
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 78 (2.01%) Docker
2 73 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.33%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) SRDF
12 2 (0.051%) zsh
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 168 (4.32%) Kubernetes
2 107 (2.75%) Terraform
3 74 (1.90%) Ansible
4 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (0.80%) Grafana
6 25 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (0.59%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 16 (0.41%) SCCM
10 13 (0.33%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Control-M
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
14 7 (0.18%) Nessus
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 520 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 396 (10.18%) SAP
3 381 (9.80%) Oracle
4 171 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 104 (2.67%) Google
6 86 (2.21%) IBM
7 77 (1.98%) Databricks
8 62 (1.59%) VMware
9 56 (1.44%) Salesforce
10 53 (1.36%) Sage
11 43 (1.11%) Cisco
12 34 (0.87%) Workday
13 33 (0.85%) Ariba
13 33 (0.85%) IFS
13 33 (0.85%) Splunk
14 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
15 22 (0.57%) MuleSoft
16 20 (0.51%) HP
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase
17 18 (0.46%) Foundry