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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,899 2,660 2,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.37% 17.64% 13.94%
As % of the General category 27.89% 28.93% 26.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,346 1,754 1,617
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £494 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.27% -2.23% -3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £686 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 220 75 166
10th Percentile £15.69 £14.78 £14.18
25th Percentile £22.15 £16.98 £19.17
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +60.58% -28.19% +15.72%
75th Percentile £45.76 £60.00 £38.59
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.09
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +31.49%

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 13,980 9,194 10,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.52% 60.96% 53.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,789 5,563 5,807
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
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 1,834 820 1,276
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.08 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.20 £15.27 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.25 £22.50 £38.06
Median % change year-on-year +47.78% -40.88% +46.38%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.00 £58.71
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.81 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +30.44% -32.93% +22.87%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 1,334 £500 +6.38% 787
South East -2 751 £503 -5.19% 965
North West 0 700 £495 +9.45% 419
Midlands 0 638 £514 +14.22% 454
Yorkshire 0 571 £518 +6.95% 271
West Midlands +1 491 £525 +10.53% 276
Scotland 0 491 £475 -5.00% 205
South West -3 383 £525 -4.55% 375
East of England +7 211 £525 -8.70% 235
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 178
Wales +2 73 £525 +13.51% 95
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 91
North East -14 56 £500 +13.64% 107
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 141 (3.62%) Confluence
2 98 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.28%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
9 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 3 (0.077%) Camunda
13 3 (0.077%) Mule
13 3 (0.077%) Mule ESB
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.051%) JBoss
Applications
1 241 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.39%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (1.80%) 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 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (5.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.15%) 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 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
10 20 (0.51%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
12 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
13 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
15 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
15 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
15 12 (0.31%) Workday HCM
16 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
17 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 10 (0.26%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.26%) Azure
2 323 (8.28%) AWS
3 225 (5.77%) Power Platform
4 224 (5.75%) GCP
5 103 (2.64%) SaaS
6 91 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
8 88 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
9 86 (2.21%) GitHub
10 70 (1.80%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) OCI
12 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 43 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
15 39 (1.00%) Serverless
16 26 (0.67%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (0.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 22 (0.56%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.08%) Firewall
2 65 (1.67%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 37 (0.95%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.64%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) LAN
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) MPLS
15 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.74%) Power BI
2 78 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.85%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
5 64 (1.64%) SQL Server
6 52 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
7 50 (1.28%) Oracle Reports
8 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
9 36 (0.92%) Tableau
10 29 (0.74%) 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 (0.56%) 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 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 248 (6.36%) JIRA
2 97 (2.49%) Git
3 60 (1.54%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.38%) GitLab
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 11 (0.28%) Claude Code
10 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Liquibase
15 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
15 5 (0.13%) Gradle
15 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,236 (31.70%) Social Skills
2 545 (13.98%) Analytical Skills
3 532 (13.64%) Banking
4 290 (7.44%) Public Sector
5 229 (5.87%) Legal
6 219 (5.62%) Organisational Skills
7 145 (3.72%) Retail
8 129 (3.31%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.85%) Local Government
9 111 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 100 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
11 80 (2.05%) General Ledger
12 79 (2.03%) Financial Institution
13 78 (2.00%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.87%) Billing
15 67 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 55 (1.41%) Marketing
17 53 (1.36%) Telecoms
18 52 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.28%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 525 (13.46%) Analyst
2 421 (10.80%) Lead
3 356 (9.13%) Senior
4 332 (8.52%) Project Manager
5 317 (8.13%) Architect
6 294 (7.54%) Developer
7 250 (6.41%) Consultant
8 244 (6.26%) Business Analyst
9 175 (4.49%) Accountant
10 138 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.74%) Systems Accountant
12 103 (2.64%) IT Manager
13 99 (2.54%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.28%) Financial Analyst
15 88 (2.26%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Administrator
18 69 (1.77%) Data Analyst
18 69 (1.77%) Finance Manager
19 64 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (3.69%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.15%) Middleware
3 83 (2.13%) REST
4 68 (1.74%) Kafka
5 65 (1.67%) Spring Boot
6 63 (1.62%) Spring
7 60 (1.54%) React
8 59 (1.51%) .NET
9 37 (0.95%) OAuth
9 37 (0.95%) RESTful
10 34 (0.87%) Node.js
11 31 (0.80%) JSON
12 29 (0.74%) XML
13 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
14 26 (0.67%) OpenID
15 25 (0.64%) SAML
16 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
17 22 (0.56%) Redux
18 21 (0.54%) HTML
19 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.95%) Cloud Native
1 154 (3.95%) Onboarding
2 152 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 126 (3.23%) Virtual Team
4 112 (2.87%) Management Information System
5 106 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
6 103 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
7 79 (2.03%) Web Conferencing
8 78 (2.00%) Podcast
9 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
10 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 53 (1.36%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.33%) Security Posture
14 50 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
15 39 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 34 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 34 (0.87%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.15%) Windows
2 110 (2.82%) Linux
3 64 (1.64%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (0.69%) Solaris
7 26 (0.67%) zOS
8 13 (0.33%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
15 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 909 (23.31%) Stakeholder Management
2 708 (18.16%) Agile
3 555 (14.23%) Problem-Solving
4 550 (14.11%) Continuous Improvement
5 534 (13.70%) Migration
6 512 (13.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (13.03%) ERP
8 372 (9.54%) Project Management
9 362 (9.28%) Decision-Making
10 353 (9.05%) CI/CD
11 352 (9.03%) DevOps
12 343 (8.80%) Change Management
13 340 (8.72%) AI
14 315 (8.08%) Project Delivery
15 294 (7.54%) Roadmaps
16 284 (7.28%) User Acceptance Testing
17 278 (7.13%) Validation
18 268 (6.87%) Risk Management
19 260 (6.67%) Analytics
20 240 (6.16%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 329 (8.44%) SQL
2 312 (8.00%) Python
3 222 (5.69%) Java
4 70 (1.80%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) C#
6 52 (1.33%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.21%) Bash
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 30 (0.77%) Shell Script
10 24 (0.62%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.28%) PHP
15 11 (0.28%) VBA
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 371 (9.52%) Security Cleared
2 284 (7.28%) Degree
3 226 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 146 (3.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 118 (3.03%) ACCA
6 114 (2.92%) CIMA
7 109 (2.80%) PMP
8 95 (2.44%) PMI Certification
9 85 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.80%) CISSP
11 43 (1.10%) CISM
12 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 32 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
16 22 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
17 20 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 217 (5.57%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.51%) PMO
3 144 (3.69%) QA
4 135 (3.46%) GDPR
5 49 (1.26%) SLA
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 45 (1.15%) GRC
8 37 (0.95%) IFRS
9 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 34 (0.87%) Accessibility
11 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.33%) GAAP
13 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.28%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
17 8 (0.21%) WCAG
18 7 (0.18%) COBIT
18 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 77 (1.97%) Docker
2 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.28%) vSphere
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
11 3 (0.077%) KVM
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
1 167 (4.28%) Kubernetes
2 107 (2.74%) Terraform
3 74 (1.90%) Ansible
4 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (0.77%) Grafana
6 25 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (0.56%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 13 (0.33%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
12 10 (0.26%) Control-M
12 10 (0.26%) Istio
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
16 5 (0.13%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 521 (13.36%) Microsoft
2 398 (10.21%) SAP
3 383 (9.82%) Oracle
4 174 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 105 (2.69%) Google
6 86 (2.21%) IBM
7 78 (2.00%) Databricks
8 59 (1.51%) VMware
9 55 (1.41%) Salesforce
10 53 (1.36%) Sage
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 35 (0.90%) Workday
13 33 (0.85%) Ariba
13 33 (0.85%) IFS
13 33 (0.85%) Splunk
14 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
15 22 (0.56%) MuleSoft
16 20 (0.51%) HP
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase
17 19 (0.49%) CyberArk