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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,871 2,657 2,663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.85% 17.33% 14.91%
As % of the General category 26.64% 28.34% 27.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,320 1,755 1,568
10th Percentile £342 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -3.41% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 60 122
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.42 £13.83
25th Percentile £20.19 £15.50 £20.19
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%
75th Percentile - £32.67 £53.56
90th Percentile £75.08 £64.44 £71.14
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.25
% change year-on-year +50.19% -11.97% +29.33%

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 14,533 9,377 9,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.00% 61.15% 55.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,899 5,642 5,443
10th Percentile £263 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £652 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,135 896 957
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.30 £37.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.85% -42.43% +42.31%
75th Percentile £56.00 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £37.00
% change year-on-year +19.13% -32.03% +34.55%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 1,330 £509 +10.60% 1,962
South East -2 729 £500 -2.91% 1,885
North West -1 660 £500 +11.11% 1,165
Midlands -1 609 £500 +6.61% 987
Yorkshire 0 589 £515 +5.10% 599
Scotland 0 532 £464 -6.31% 1,168
West Midlands +1 455 £514 +2.80% 619
South West -7 349 £550 -4.35% 998
East of England +2 218 £555 -0.22% 648
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.76% 368
North East -6 74 £500 +14.29% 227
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 449
Wales 0 61 £525 +13.51% 169
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 9
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
1 147 (3.80%) Confluence
2 96 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.34%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) Apache
5 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.26%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.052%) JBoss
12 2 (0.052%) Mule
12 2 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 115 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (5.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.01%) Oracle ERP
5 37 (0.96%) NetSuite
6 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
7 27 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 26 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
9 25 (0.65%) Unit4 Business World
10 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
11 22 (0.57%) SAP FI
11 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
12 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
13 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
14 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
15 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 475 (12.27%) Azure
2 341 (8.81%) AWS
3 244 (6.30%) GCP
4 223 (5.76%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.63%) SaaS
6 99 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.53%) GitHub
8 96 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
9 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
10 71 (1.83%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) OCI
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.08%) Serverless
13 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
14 34 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
14 34 (0.88%) Power Automate
15 30 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (0.70%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.70%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.99%) Firewall
2 74 (1.91%) Network Security
3 42 (1.08%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 23 (0.59%) WAN
6 22 (0.57%) SSL
7 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.44%) LAN
9 16 (0.41%) Broadband
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 9 (0.23%) VSAN
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.65%) Power BI
2 73 (1.89%) Relational Database
3 71 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
4 70 (1.81%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.63%) Metadata
6 38 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.96%) Data Lake
8 36 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
9 34 (0.88%) Tableau
10 33 (0.85%) MongoDB
11 28 (0.72%) Db2
12 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 19 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
15 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle ODI
16 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 229 (5.92%) JIRA
2 107 (2.76%) Git
3 55 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.57%) JUnit
5 20 (0.52%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 13 (0.34%) Selenium
9 12 (0.31%) Cucumber
10 11 (0.28%) Maven
11 10 (0.26%) Hudson
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 9 (0.23%) Postman
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
15 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
15 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,329 (34.33%) Social Skills
2 576 (14.88%) Banking
3 545 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.26%) Organisational Skills
5 279 (7.21%) Public Sector
6 257 (6.64%) Legal
7 167 (4.31%) Retail
8 146 (3.77%) Influencing Skills
9 97 (2.51%) Manufacturing
10 94 (2.43%) Local Government
11 89 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.22%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 75 (1.94%) Billing
14 75 (1.94%) Investment Banking
15 71 (1.83%) Financial Institution
16 64 (1.65%) Marketing
17 56 (1.45%) Telecoms
18 54 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 500 (12.92%) Analyst
2 394 (10.18%) Lead
3 364 (9.40%) Senior
4 308 (7.96%) Project Manager
5 306 (7.90%) Architect
6 299 (7.72%) Developer
7 275 (7.10%) Consultant
8 232 (5.99%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.90%) Accountant
10 145 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.61%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
13 91 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 91 (2.35%) Systems Accountant
14 88 (2.27%) Java Developer
15 82 (2.12%) Administrator
16 80 (2.07%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.81%) Data Analyst
18 66 (1.70%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.82%) Oracle Fusion
2 144 (3.72%) Terraform
3 99 (2.56%) REST
4 78 (2.01%) Kafka
5 68 (1.76%) Middleware
6 64 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.60%) React
8 59 (1.52%) Spring
9 57 (1.47%) .NET
10 47 (1.21%) RESTful
11 45 (1.16%) OAuth
12 35 (0.90%) JSON
12 35 (0.90%) OpenID
13 31 (0.80%) Node.js
14 30 (0.77%) SAML
15 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
16 27 (0.70%) XML
17 25 (0.65%) HTML
17 25 (0.65%) OAuth2
17 25 (0.65%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.31%) Product Ownership
2 163 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 158 (4.08%) Cloud Native
4 156 (4.03%) Virtual Team
5 120 (3.10%) Data Protection Act
6 117 (3.02%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.92%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.89%) Podcast
9 100 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (1.65%) Data Structures
11 62 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
12 58 (1.50%) Data Centre
13 53 (1.37%) AI Agents
14 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
15 49 (1.27%) Mainframe
16 48 (1.24%) Security Posture
17 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
18 43 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
19 41 (1.06%) Mobile App
20 39 (1.01%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 110 (2.84%) Windows
2 108 (2.79%) Linux
3 61 (1.58%) Unix
4 36 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.70%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.39%) Android
8 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,008 (26.04%) Stakeholder Management
2 705 (18.21%) Agile
3 540 (13.95%) Continuous Improvement
4 526 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
5 500 (12.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 492 (12.71%) Migration
7 486 (12.55%) ERP
8 387 (10.00%) AI
8 387 (10.00%) CI/CD
9 371 (9.58%) Decision-Making
10 348 (8.99%) Change Management
11 347 (8.96%) Project Management
12 340 (8.78%) DevOps
13 302 (7.80%) Roadmaps
14 290 (7.49%) Risk Management
15 285 (7.36%) Project Delivery
16 275 (7.10%) Analytics
17 267 (6.90%) Validation
18 262 (6.77%) User Acceptance Testing
19 232 (5.99%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 334 (8.63%) Python
2 329 (8.50%) SQL
3 238 (6.15%) Java
4 81 (2.09%) PowerShell
5 69 (1.78%) JavaScript
6 61 (1.58%) C#
7 60 (1.55%) Bash
8 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
8 40 (1.03%) TypeScript
9 37 (0.96%) Shell Script
10 34 (0.88%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 15 (0.39%) Scala
14 13 (0.34%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) Perl
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 352 (9.09%) Security Cleared
2 254 (6.56%) Degree
3 218 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 184 (4.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (2.74%) ACCA
6 103 (2.66%) CIMA
7 95 (2.45%) PMP
8 85 (2.20%) DV Cleared
9 77 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.76%) CISSP
11 44 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
12 43 (1.11%) CISM
13 40 (1.03%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
16 29 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
18 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (6.25%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.49%) PMO
3 134 (3.46%) QA
4 102 (2.63%) GDPR
5 55 (1.42%) GRC
6 46 (1.19%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 36 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.80%) IFRS
10 26 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.28%) COBIT
12 11 (0.28%) WCAG
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
14 9 (0.23%) NCSC
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 75 (1.94%) Docker
2 68 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 47 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.052%) IAG
12 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 205 (5.30%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.89%) Ansible
3 39 (1.01%) Grafana
4 34 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.49%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 576 (14.88%) Microsoft
2 424 (10.95%) SAP
3 374 (9.66%) Oracle
4 171 (4.42%) ServiceNow
5 110 (2.84%) Google
6 89 (2.30%) IBM
7 77 (1.99%) Databricks
8 68 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.58%) VMware
10 47 (1.21%) Splunk
11 42 (1.08%) Ariba
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 41 (1.06%) Workday
13 31 (0.80%) Sage
14 25 (0.65%) MuleSoft
14 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
15 23 (0.59%) Snow
16 22 (0.57%) Adobe
17 20 (0.52%) IFS
17 20 (0.52%) Sybase