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 21 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,892 2,703 2,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.12% 17.66% 14.52%
As % of the General category 27.45% 28.86% 26.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,332 1,790 1,612
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.59% -3.95% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £541 £575
% change year-on-year +1.57% -5.83% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 72 150
10th Percentile £15.18 £13.62 £14.44
25th Percentile £22.31 £16.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £37.81
Median % change year-on-year +66.80% -30.30% +13.25%
75th Percentile - £55.99 £42.94
90th Percentile £75.82 £75.00 £70.29
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £36.80
% change year-on-year +50.19% -20.46% +40.19%

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 14,176 9,367 9,853
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.43% 61.19% 54.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,843 5,648 5,621
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
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 £680 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,963 854 1,121
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £13.75
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.33 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -37.39% +41.44%
75th Percentile £57.50 £47.41 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £36.50
% change year-on-year +25.25% -31.10% +32.73%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 1,339 £500 +6.38% 791
South East -3 734 £505 -3.81% 1,089
North West 0 693 £500 +10.01% 410
Midlands 0 627 £500 +11.11% 406
Yorkshire 0 568 £514 +6.20% 266
Scotland 0 509 £475 -2.86% 141
West Midlands +1 476 £500 - 251
South West -5 381 £550 -1.60% 381
East of England +4 204 £525 -8.70% 280
East Midlands -4 147 £500 +21.21% 153
North East -3 71 £500 +12.36% 130
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -1.30% 50
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 92
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 2
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
1 154 (3.96%) Confluence
2 94 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.39%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
13 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 246 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 85 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
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%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 192 (4.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 39 (1.00%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 27 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
12 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
13 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
14 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 481 (12.36%) Azure
2 328 (8.43%) AWS
3 228 (5.86%) GCP
4 225 (5.78%) Power Platform
5 101 (2.60%) SaaS
6 95 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
7 93 (2.39%) GitHub
8 91 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
8 91 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
9 71 (1.82%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.21%) OCI
11 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
12 40 (1.03%) Serverless
13 38 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
14 36 (0.92%) OpenShift
15 28 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
15 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.08%) Firewall
2 72 (1.85%) Network Security
3 45 (1.16%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.57%) LAN
7 22 (0.57%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) Broadband
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (4.78%) Power BI
2 75 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.80%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.72%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.67%) Metadata
6 47 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
7 40 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 35 (0.90%) Tableau
10 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
15 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
17 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
18 13 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 249 (6.40%) JIRA
2 105 (2.70%) Git
3 52 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) GitLab
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 10 (0.26%) Postman
9 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) Gradle
13 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
13 6 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 1,289 (33.12%) Social Skills
2 554 (14.23%) Analytical Skills
3 552 (14.18%) Banking
4 276 (7.09%) Public Sector
5 258 (6.63%) Legal
6 257 (6.60%) Organisational Skills
7 166 (4.27%) Retail
8 138 (3.55%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 98 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
11 96 (2.47%) Local Government
12 84 (2.16%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Financial Institution
14 76 (1.95%) Investment Banking
15 75 (1.93%) Billing
16 73 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 56 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (1.39%) Marketing
19 52 (1.34%) Telecoms
20 51 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 505 (12.98%) Analyst
2 417 (10.71%) Lead
3 355 (9.12%) Senior
4 326 (8.38%) Project Manager
5 309 (7.94%) Architect
6 276 (7.09%) Developer
7 264 (6.78%) Consultant
8 240 (6.17%) Business Analyst
9 162 (4.16%) Accountant
10 138 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.57%) Systems Accountant
12 99 (2.54%) IT Manager
13 95 (2.44%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.31%) Financial Analyst
15 82 (2.11%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.98%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.90%) Administrator
18 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.67%) Software Engineer
20 62 (1.59%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (3.96%) Oracle Fusion
2 123 (3.16%) Terraform
3 85 (2.18%) REST
4 75 (1.93%) Middleware
5 66 (1.70%) Kafka
6 63 (1.62%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.59%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 54 (1.39%) React
10 38 (0.98%) OAuth
11 37 (0.95%) RESTful
12 32 (0.82%) Node.js
13 30 (0.77%) JSON
13 30 (0.77%) XML
14 29 (0.75%) SAML
15 27 (0.69%) OpenID
15 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
18 20 (0.51%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 163 (4.19%) Onboarding
2 159 (4.09%) Product Ownership
3 155 (3.98%) Virtual Team
4 144 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 113 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 112 (2.88%) Podcast
6 112 (2.88%) Web Conferencing
7 109 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
8 102 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
9 62 (1.59%) Data Centre
9 62 (1.59%) Data Structures
10 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
11 50 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
12 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
12 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
13 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
14 38 (0.98%) CMDB
14 38 (0.98%) Mobile App
14 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 37 (0.95%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.11%) Windows
2 105 (2.70%) Linux
3 59 (1.52%) Unix
4 33 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (0.82%) Windows Server
6 25 (0.64%) Solaris
7 24 (0.62%) zOS
8 12 (0.31%) Android
8 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.28%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.051%) CentOS
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 976 (25.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 711 (18.27%) Agile
3 543 (13.95%) Continuous Improvement
4 522 (13.41%) Problem-Solving
5 518 (13.31%) Migration
6 516 (13.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 504 (12.95%) ERP
8 368 (9.46%) Decision-Making
9 359 (9.22%) CI/CD
10 356 (9.15%) AI
11 355 (9.12%) Project Management
12 351 (9.02%) Change Management
13 346 (8.89%) DevOps
14 309 (7.94%) Project Delivery
15 289 (7.43%) Roadmaps
16 278 (7.14%) Risk Management
17 275 (7.07%) User Acceptance Testing
18 270 (6.94%) Analytics
19 261 (6.71%) Validation
20 233 (5.99%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 326 (8.38%) SQL
2 319 (8.20%) Python
3 222 (5.70%) Java
4 76 (1.95%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.46%) C#
6 55 (1.41%) Bash
7 54 (1.39%) JavaScript
8 38 (0.98%) PL/SQL
9 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 36 (0.92%) TypeScript
11 23 (0.59%) C++
11 23 (0.59%) Go
12 15 (0.39%) Bicep
13 14 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 11 (0.28%) ABAP
16 11 (0.28%) Scala
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
17 9 (0.23%) VBA
Qualifications
1 363 (9.33%) Security Cleared
2 267 (6.86%) Degree
3 222 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.88%) ACCA
6 108 (2.77%) CIMA
7 100 (2.57%) PMP
8 89 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 86 (2.21%) PMI Certification
10 73 (1.88%) CISSP
11 45 (1.16%) CISM
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 38 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 37 (0.95%) Azure Certification
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
17 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
20 20 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (5.91%) Data Quality
2 178 (4.57%) PMO
3 132 (3.39%) QA
4 122 (3.13%) GDPR
5 52 (1.34%) GRC
6 50 (1.28%) NIST
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 39 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (0.92%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) COBIT
15 9 (0.23%) GAAP
16 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS 17
17 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
17 7 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
2 70 (1.80%) Docker
3 46 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) KVM
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) IAG
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 177 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.90%) Ansible
3 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 31 (0.80%) Grafana
4 31 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
5 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
6 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
7 15 (0.39%) SCCM
8 11 (0.28%) Istio
9 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.23%) Argo
10 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
11 7 (0.18%) vRealize
12 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 5 (0.13%) Puppet
13 5 (0.13%) VxRail
14 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 556 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 403 (10.35%) SAP
3 392 (10.07%) Oracle
4 174 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.90%) Google
6 83 (2.13%) IBM
7 77 (1.98%) Databricks
8 64 (1.64%) Salesforce
9 62 (1.59%) VMware
10 45 (1.16%) Cisco
11 43 (1.10%) Sage
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 35 (0.90%) Splunk
14 34 (0.87%) Ariba
15 29 (0.75%) IFS
16 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.51%) HP
18 20 (0.51%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) Adobe