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 16 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,471 2,230 2,548
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.20% 17.40% 12.57%
As % of the General category 28.22% 27.90% 23.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,124 1,424 1,556
10th Percentile £331 £305 £283
25th Percentile £411 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £601 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £540 £553 £585
% change year-on-year -2.35% -5.47% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 68 195
10th Percentile £14.12 £17.25 £12.30
25th Percentile £17.00 £21.00 £14.18
Median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year -44.49% +39.23% -29.54%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.50 £76.92 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £38.11 £26.97
% change year-on-year -37.48% +41.31% +4.90%

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 12,299 7,993 11,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.31% 62.36% 54.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,179 4,931 6,299
10th Percentile £263 £210 £206
25th Percentile £388 £362 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £596
90th Percentile £675 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £505 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,402 585 1,642
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.57 £16.02 £15.00
Median hourly rate £28.09 £24.50 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +14.65% -13.27% -2.59%
75th Percentile £61.50 £54.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.97
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.72%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 +3 1,171 £488 +2.63% 754
South East -2 652 £503 -3.13% 953
North West +5 619 £465 - 406
Midlands -1 592 £490 +1.03% 407
Yorkshire +1 513 £514 +5.44% 265
Scotland +1 420 £500 +4.82% 161
West Midlands 0 399 £498 -5.24% 245
South West -2 352 £525 - 316
East of England 0 203 £520 -5.45% 237
East Midlands 0 189 £465 +4.55% 160
Wales +21 91 £450 +20.00% 72
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 60
North East -14 40 £488 +3.72% 91
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 1
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
1 155 (4.47%) Confluence
2 113 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 24 (0.69%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.52%) Apache
5 17 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
6 10 (0.29%) CICS
7 9 (0.26%) SAS
8 8 (0.23%) CMS
9 7 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.20%) TPMS
10 6 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.12%) IIS
12 4 (0.12%) WebSphere
13 3 (0.086%) Ethereum
13 3 (0.086%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.086%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.058%) JBoss
14 2 (0.058%) Mule
Applications
1 244 (7.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 121 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (3.23%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (2.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (1.27%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) InVision
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 4 (0.12%) Trello
10 3 (0.086%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.058%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.058%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.029%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.029%) UXPin
12 1 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 180 (5.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (1.09%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 30 (0.86%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
8 28 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
9 23 (0.66%) Oracle Assets
10 20 (0.58%) Oracle Cash Management
11 18 (0.52%) SAP FI
12 17 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
13 16 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
14 15 (0.43%) SAP CO
15 14 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
16 13 (0.37%) NEC Housing
16 13 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
16 13 (0.37%) Workday HCM
17 12 (0.35%) SAP GRC
18 11 (0.32%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 416 (11.99%) Azure
2 325 (9.36%) AWS
3 219 (6.31%) Power Platform
4 158 (4.55%) GCP
5 105 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
6 91 (2.62%) SaaS
7 89 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
8 79 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
9 78 (2.25%) GitHub
10 61 (1.76%) Entra ID
11 44 (1.27%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.18%) Snowflake
13 37 (1.07%) OCI
13 37 (1.07%) Serverless
14 31 (0.89%) Microsoft Copilot
15 26 (0.75%) Amazon S3
16 24 (0.69%) Google Workspace
16 24 (0.69%) OneDrive
17 23 (0.66%) AWS CloudFormation
17 23 (0.66%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 74 (2.13%) Firewall
2 43 (1.24%) Network Security
3 40 (1.15%) DNS
4 37 (1.07%) WAN
5 33 (0.95%) VPN
6 22 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.46%) LAN
9 15 (0.43%) DHCP
9 15 (0.43%) SSL
10 12 (0.35%) Skype
11 11 (0.32%) VSAN
12 9 (0.26%) MPLS
12 9 (0.26%) SSH
13 8 (0.23%) Internet
13 8 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.20%) BGP
14 7 (0.20%) SNMP
15 6 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
16 5 (0.14%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (5.65%) Power BI
2 65 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
3 59 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
4 58 (1.67%) Relational Database
5 53 (1.53%) Metadata
6 48 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.21%) SQL Server
8 39 (1.12%) Tableau
9 33 (0.95%) NoSQL
10 29 (0.84%) DynamoDB
11 23 (0.66%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.63%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.61%) MongoDB
14 19 (0.55%) Big Data
15 17 (0.49%) Power Query
16 16 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
16 16 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 14 (0.40%) DB2
18 11 (0.32%) Data Vault
18 11 (0.32%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 291 (8.38%) JIRA
2 72 (2.07%) Jenkins
3 62 (1.79%) Git
4 32 (0.92%) GitLab
5 24 (0.69%) JUnit
6 19 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 18 (0.52%) Selenium
7 18 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.40%) Hudson
8 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.35%) Postman
10 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
11 7 (0.20%) Maven
11 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.17%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.17%) Gradle
12 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.17%) Liquibase
12 6 (0.17%) Visual Studio
13 5 (0.14%) Axure RP
General
1 1,116 (32.15%) Social Skills
2 492 (14.17%) Banking
3 458 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
4 268 (7.72%) Public Sector
5 132 (3.80%) Organisational Skills
6 127 (3.66%) Legal
7 116 (3.34%) Manufacturing
8 112 (3.23%) Retail
9 106 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
10 89 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (2.51%) Local Government
12 75 (2.16%) Telecoms
13 74 (2.13%) Financial Institution
14 69 (1.99%) General Ledger
15 66 (1.90%) Marketing
16 59 (1.70%) Investment Banking
17 49 (1.41%) Billing
18 41 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
19 35 (1.01%) Law
20 32 (0.92%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 505 (14.55%) Analyst
2 351 (10.11%) Project Manager
3 310 (8.93%) Architect
4 297 (8.56%) Lead
5 282 (8.12%) Senior
6 239 (6.89%) Consultant
7 235 (6.77%) Developer
8 234 (6.74%) Business Analyst
9 144 (4.15%) Solutions Architect
10 130 (3.75%) Accountant
11 94 (2.71%) Programme Manager
11 94 (2.71%) Senior Manager
12 79 (2.28%) Systems Accountant
13 74 (2.13%) Finance Manager
14 64 (1.84%) Data Analyst
14 64 (1.84%) Data Engineer
15 63 (1.82%) IT Manager
16 61 (1.76%) Java Developer
17 57 (1.64%) Financial Analyst
18 55 (1.58%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (2.48%) REST
2 81 (2.33%) Middleware
3 76 (2.19%) Oracle Fusion
4 72 (2.07%) Spring Boot
5 70 (2.02%) Kafka
5 70 (2.02%) Spring
6 45 (1.30%) .NET
7 42 (1.21%) RESTful
8 36 (1.04%) React
9 32 (0.92%) Node.js
9 32 (0.92%) OAuth
10 29 (0.84%) JSON
10 29 (0.84%) XML
11 23 (0.66%) AngularJS
11 23 (0.66%) OpenID
12 20 (0.58%) HTML
12 20 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
12 20 (0.58%) SailPoint
13 19 (0.55%) CSS
13 19 (0.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.29%) Onboarding
2 144 (4.15%) Product Ownership
3 115 (3.31%) Cloud Native
4 110 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
7 84 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.79%) Data Structures
9 57 (1.64%) Public Cloud
10 53 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 39 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 39 (1.12%) Virtual Team
12 35 (1.01%) Mainframe
13 31 (0.89%) PMI
14 28 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
14 28 (0.81%) Security Posture
15 26 (0.75%) CMDB
16 24 (0.69%) Mobile App
17 21 (0.61%) Operational Technology
18 17 (0.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 110 (3.17%) Windows
2 101 (2.91%) Linux
3 52 (1.50%) Unix
4 29 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.72%) Solaris
6 21 (0.61%) Windows 10
7 16 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.37%) AIX
9 12 (0.35%) Android
10 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.23%) zOS
12 6 (0.17%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.12%) HPUX
14 4 (0.12%) MVS
14 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.12%) SUSE
15 3 (0.086%) VMS
16 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 713 (20.54%) Stakeholder Management
2 671 (19.33%) Agile
3 547 (15.76%) Problem-Solving
4 508 (14.64%) Migration
5 463 (13.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 454 (13.08%) ERP
7 446 (12.85%) Continuous Improvement
8 411 (11.84%) Project Management
9 336 (9.68%) DevOps
10 303 (8.73%) Change Management
11 293 (8.44%) CI/CD
12 290 (8.35%) Decision-Making
13 288 (8.30%) Project Delivery
14 271 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
15 255 (7.35%) AI
16 253 (7.29%) Business Intelligence
17 245 (7.06%) Risk Management
17 245 (7.06%) Roadmaps
18 226 (6.51%) Validation
19 219 (6.31%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 325 (9.36%) SQL
2 246 (7.09%) Python
3 202 (5.82%) Java
4 68 (1.96%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.84%) Bash
6 26 (0.75%) JavaScript
7 24 (0.69%) C#
7 24 (0.69%) PL/SQL
7 24 (0.69%) TypeScript
8 19 (0.55%) VBA
9 17 (0.49%) Go
9 17 (0.49%) Shell Script
10 15 (0.43%) Kotlin
11 14 (0.40%) C++
11 14 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 11 (0.32%) Rust
13 10 (0.29%) T-SQL
14 9 (0.26%) COBOL
15 8 (0.23%) Perl
15 8 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 337 (9.71%) Security Cleared
2 316 (9.10%) Degree
3 216 (6.22%) SC Cleared
4 124 (3.57%) ACCA
5 119 (3.43%) CIMA
6 115 (3.31%) PMP
7 106 (3.05%) PMI Certification
8 89 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (1.93%) CISSP
10 66 (1.90%) DV Cleared
11 45 (1.30%) CISM
12 42 (1.21%) Master's Degree
13 38 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
14 29 (0.84%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 19 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
17 18 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
18 16 (0.46%) MBA
18 16 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
19 15 (0.43%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (4.90%) PMO
2 166 (4.78%) Data Quality
3 137 (3.95%) QA
4 126 (3.63%) GDPR
5 65 (1.87%) NIST
6 47 (1.35%) SLA
7 41 (1.18%) GRC
7 41 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 38 (1.09%) PCI DSS
9 30 (0.86%) Accessibility
9 30 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.81%) IFRS
11 20 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.43%) PSD2
13 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.35%) SEPA
15 10 (0.29%) Basel III
15 10 (0.29%) GAAP
15 10 (0.29%) NCSC
16 9 (0.26%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 95 (2.74%) Docker
2 68 (1.96%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.52%) vSphere
5 17 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.29%) GPFS
8 9 (0.26%) NFS
9 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.12%) KVM
10 4 (0.12%) RACF
11 3 (0.086%) Firmware
11 3 (0.086%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.086%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.058%) ACF2
12 2 (0.058%) HDFS
12 2 (0.058%) SRDF
13 1 (0.029%) XenApp
13 1 (0.029%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 156 (4.49%) Kubernetes
2 71 (2.05%) Terraform
3 61 (1.76%) Ansible
4 39 (1.12%) Grafana
5 30 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.40%) SCCM
9 11 (0.32%) vRealize
10 10 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.29%) Nessus
11 9 (0.26%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.23%) Kiali
13 7 (0.20%) Istio
13 7 (0.20%) VxRail
14 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.17%) Control-M
15 5 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 5 (0.14%) Puppet
15 5 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 435 (12.53%) Microsoft
2 361 (10.40%) SAP
3 303 (8.73%) Oracle
4 150 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 88 (2.54%) Google
6 54 (1.56%) Databricks
6 54 (1.56%) IBM
6 54 (1.56%) Sage
7 53 (1.53%) Splunk
8 52 (1.50%) Cisco
9 46 (1.33%) VMware
10 39 (1.12%) IFS
11 37 (1.07%) Salesforce
12 33 (0.95%) Workday
13 26 (0.75%) HP
14 22 (0.63%) Ariba
15 19 (0.55%) Adobe
16 18 (0.52%) Citrix
16 18 (0.52%) Red Hat
16 18 (0.52%) Remedy