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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,893 2,631 2,651
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.86% 17.27% 14.92%
As % of the General category 26.63% 28.30% 27.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,335 1,739 1,558
10th Percentile £340 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -3.41% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £530 £575
% change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 59 121
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.39 £13.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £15.49 £20.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +23.39%
75th Percentile - £31.86 £53.75
90th Percentile £75.12 £60.68 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%

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 14,620 9,298 9,789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.06% 61.03% 55.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,951 5,589 5,398
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 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,146 891 949
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.39 £37.28
Median % change year-on-year +40.25% -42.62% +43.38%
75th Percentile £56.16 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.28
% change year-on-year +19.28% -32.54% +35.56%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 1,337 £511 +11.01% 2,306
South East -2 733 £500 -2.91% 2,129
North West -1 660 £500 +11.11% 1,364
Midlands -1 613 £500 +6.61% 1,211
Yorkshire 0 595 £518 +5.91% 703
Scotland 0 537 £463 -5.42% 1,347
West Midlands +1 459 £507 -1.07% 777
South West -7 352 £525 -8.70% 1,101
East of England +1 217 £555 +0.91% 726
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +20.48% 434
North East -6 75 £500 +14.29% 267
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 552
Wales +1 61 £525 +13.51% 229
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 15
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 (3.78%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Apache
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 11 (0.28%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 6 (0.15%) Camunda
7 6 (0.15%) IIS
7 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
8 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.13%) CICS
9 4 (0.10%) nginx
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.051%) JBoss
11 2 (0.051%) Mule
11 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 255 (6.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 115 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (2.03%) 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 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 204 (5.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
5 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
6 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
7 27 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
7 27 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) SAP FI
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 480 (12.33%) Azure
2 347 (8.91%) AWS
3 248 (6.37%) GCP
4 229 (5.88%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 101 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
7 99 (2.54%) GitHub
8 97 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
10 72 (1.85%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) OCI
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 44 (1.13%) Serverless
14 43 (1.10%) OpenShift
15 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
16 35 (0.90%) Power Automate
17 34 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
18 31 (0.80%) Amazon EKS
19 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.98%) Firewall
2 74 (1.90%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 21 (0.54%) WAN
7 20 (0.51%) 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%) BIG-IP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 9 (0.23%) VSAN
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.73%) Power BI
2 73 (1.88%) Relational Database
2 73 (1.88%) SQL Server
3 71 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (1.67%) Metadata
5 38 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
6 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 33 (0.85%) MongoDB
9 28 (0.72%) Db2
10 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
10 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 19 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
11 18 (0.46%) BigQuery
11 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
13 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
13 15 (0.39%) Oracle ODI
13 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 230 (5.91%) JIRA
2 111 (2.85%) Git
3 57 (1.46%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.57%) JUnit
5 21 (0.54%) GitLab
6 17 (0.44%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Selenium
9 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
10 12 (0.31%) Maven
11 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.26%) Hudson
13 9 (0.23%) Gradle
13 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 9 (0.23%) Postman
14 8 (0.21%) ERwin
15 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
16 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
16 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
16 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,339 (34.40%) Social Skills
2 579 (14.87%) Banking
3 549 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (7.27%) Public Sector
5 281 (7.22%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.63%) Legal
7 167 (4.29%) Retail
8 147 (3.78%) Influencing Skills
9 97 (2.49%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.44%) Local Government
11 89 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.21%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 76 (1.95%) Investment Banking
15 75 (1.93%) Billing
16 71 (1.82%) Financial Institution
17 63 (1.62%) Marketing
18 55 (1.41%) Telecoms
19 54 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
20 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 501 (12.87%) Analyst
2 397 (10.20%) Lead
3 371 (9.53%) Senior
4 309 (7.94%) Project Manager
5 306 (7.86%) Architect
6 303 (7.78%) Developer
7 276 (7.09%) Consultant
8 232 (5.96%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.88%) Accountant
10 145 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.59%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
13 92 (2.36%) Senior Manager
14 91 (2.34%) Systems Accountant
15 89 (2.29%) Java Developer
16 82 (2.11%) Administrator
17 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
18 70 (1.80%) Data Analyst
19 66 (1.70%) Programme Manager
19 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.80%) Oracle Fusion
2 145 (3.72%) Terraform
3 103 (2.65%) REST
4 78 (2.00%) Kafka
5 68 (1.75%) Middleware
6 66 (1.70%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.64%) React
8 61 (1.57%) Spring
9 58 (1.49%) .NET
10 48 (1.23%) RESTful
11 46 (1.18%) OAuth
12 36 (0.92%) JSON
12 36 (0.92%) OpenID
13 31 (0.80%) Node.js
14 30 (0.77%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 28 (0.72%) XML
17 26 (0.67%) HTML
17 26 (0.67%) OAuth2
17 26 (0.67%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.29%) Product Ownership
2 163 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 162 (4.16%) Cloud Native
4 157 (4.03%) Virtual Team
5 123 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
6 120 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 100 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
10 65 (1.67%) Data Structures
11 63 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
12 59 (1.52%) Data Centre
13 54 (1.39%) AI Agents
14 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
15 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
16 48 (1.23%) Security Posture
17 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
18 45 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
19 41 (1.05%) Mobile App
20 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 110 (2.83%) Windows
2 109 (2.80%) Linux
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.69%) 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 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (26.12%) Stakeholder Management
2 716 (18.39%) Agile
3 544 (13.97%) Continuous Improvement
4 532 (13.67%) Problem-Solving
5 504 (12.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 495 (12.72%) Migration
7 487 (12.51%) ERP
8 397 (10.20%) CI/CD
9 391 (10.04%) AI
10 375 (9.63%) Decision-Making
11 348 (8.94%) Change Management
11 348 (8.94%) Project Management
12 346 (8.89%) DevOps
13 304 (7.81%) Roadmaps
14 293 (7.53%) Risk Management
15 286 (7.35%) Project Delivery
16 278 (7.14%) Analytics
17 271 (6.96%) Validation
18 263 (6.76%) User Acceptance Testing
19 234 (6.01%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 339 (8.71%) Python
2 335 (8.61%) SQL
3 241 (6.19%) Java
4 81 (2.08%) PowerShell
5 73 (1.88%) JavaScript
6 63 (1.62%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 43 (1.10%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 35 (0.90%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 18 (0.46%) Bicep
14 16 (0.41%) Scala
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 13 (0.33%) Perl
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 353 (9.07%) Security Cleared
2 257 (6.60%) Degree
3 219 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 185 (4.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 106 (2.72%) ACCA
6 103 (2.65%) CIMA
7 95 (2.44%) PMP
8 85 (2.18%) DV Cleared
9 77 (1.98%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.75%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
12 43 (1.10%) CISM
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 40 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 29 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 24 (0.62%) CCSP
19 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
20 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (6.37%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.50%) PMO
3 136 (3.49%) QA
4 101 (2.59%) GDPR
5 55 (1.41%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) NIST
7 41 (1.05%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.03%) SLA
9 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.80%) IFRS
11 26 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 77 (1.98%) Docker
2 69 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) 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 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) 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
1 208 (5.34%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.90%) Ansible
3 39 (1.00%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.82%) 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
1 580 (14.90%) Microsoft
2 426 (10.94%) SAP
3 375 (9.63%) Oracle
4 171 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 111 (2.85%) Google
6 90 (2.31%) IBM
7 78 (2.00%) Databricks
8 68 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 62 (1.59%) VMware
10 47 (1.21%) Splunk
11 43 (1.10%) Workday
12 42 (1.08%) Ariba
12 42 (1.08%) Cisco
13 31 (0.80%) Sage
14 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
14 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
15 23 (0.59%) Adobe
15 23 (0.59%) Snow
16 20 (0.51%) IFS
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase