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 5 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,853 2,633 2,705
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.73% 16.78% 15.43%
As % of the General category 26.05% 27.70% 27.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,248 1,749 1,566
10th Percentile £339 £308 £302
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £714
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 69 99
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.27 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +26.92%
75th Percentile - £30.25 £55.13
90th Percentile £72.50 £58.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.54 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.62% -16.55% +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 14,792 9,504 9,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.70% 60.57% 56.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,816 5,738 5,361
10th Percentile £256 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £681
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,317 957 826
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.31 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.72 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £21.39 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.90% -35.18% +22.75%
75th Percentile £53.87 £42.16 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £25.08 £33.93
% change year-on-year +11.67% -26.10% +23.38%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 1,326 £514 +9.36% 2,111
South East -1 739 £500 -2.72% 2,253
North West -2 636 £507 +12.56% 1,081
Yorkshire +1 613 £514 +2.80% 748
Midlands -3 610 £525 +10.53% 1,236
Scotland 0 540 £463 -6.00% 1,354
West Midlands -2 453 £520 +0.97% 746
South West -4 340 £550 - 899
East of England +3 203 £553 -3.07% 703
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.05% 490
North East -6 70 £500 +13.96% 299
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.00% 366
Northern Ireland 0 58 £510 -2.86% 553
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 14
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
1 139 (3.61%) Confluence
2 96 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.65%) Apache
4 13 (0.34%) SAS
5 11 (0.29%) CMS
5 11 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
6 10 (0.26%) Apache Spark
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.16%) Camunda
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.078%) JBoss
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 255 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.92%) Microsoft Project
5 31 (0.80%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.078%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 210 (5.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.32%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 34 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.83%) Oracle General Ledger
6 30 (0.78%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.70%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
9 23 (0.60%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.52%) Workday HCM
12 16 (0.42%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 466 (12.09%) Azure
2 352 (9.14%) AWS
3 252 (6.54%) GCP
4 221 (5.74%) Power Platform
5 109 (2.83%) GitHub
6 102 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
7 99 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
8 95 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
9 89 (2.31%) SaaS
10 76 (1.97%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) Serverless
12 45 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
12 45 (1.17%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.09%) OCI
14 40 (1.04%) OpenShift
15 38 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
16 33 (0.86%) Power Automate
17 32 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (0.75%) Anthropic Claude
19 28 (0.73%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.13%) Network Security
2 81 (2.10%) Firewall
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 27 (0.70%) DNS
5 21 (0.55%) SSL
6 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 11 (0.29%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.21%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.16%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 6 (0.16%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 6 (0.16%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.67%) Power BI
2 72 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.84%) SQL Server
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 67 (1.74%) Relational Database
6 42 (1.09%) Data Lake
7 34 (0.88%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.88%) Tableau
8 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.75%) Db2
10 25 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
11 20 (0.52%) BigQuery
11 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
12 18 (0.47%) NoSQL
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.42%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 14 (0.36%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 219 (5.68%) JIRA
2 119 (3.09%) Git
3 68 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.78%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) JUnit
6 19 (0.49%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,342 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 605 (15.70%) Banking
3 536 (13.91%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.40%) Organisational Skills
5 279 (7.24%) Public Sector
6 254 (6.59%) Legal
7 159 (4.13%) Retail
8 143 (3.71%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.91%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.49%) Billing
11 93 (2.41%) General Ledger
12 88 (2.28%) Local Government
13 83 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 81 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
15 71 (1.84%) Investment Banking
16 68 (1.76%) Marketing
17 66 (1.71%) Financial Institution
18 60 (1.56%) Telecoms
19 57 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
20 44 (1.14%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 472 (12.25%) Analyst
2 389 (10.10%) Lead
3 385 (9.99%) Senior
4 301 (7.81%) Developer
5 297 (7.71%) Architect
6 285 (7.40%) Project Manager
7 266 (6.90%) Consultant
8 223 (5.79%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.92%) Accountant
10 142 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.54%) IT Manager
12 93 (2.41%) Administrator
13 92 (2.39%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
15 90 (2.34%) Systems Accountant
16 84 (2.18%) Senior Manager
17 83 (2.15%) Finance Manager
18 74 (1.92%) Data Analyst
19 73 (1.89%) Programme Manager
20 67 (1.74%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.84%) Terraform
2 147 (3.82%) Oracle Fusion
3 115 (2.98%) REST
4 77 (2.00%) Kafka
5 74 (1.92%) React
6 71 (1.84%) Middleware
7 69 (1.79%) Spring Boot
8 63 (1.64%) Spring
9 59 (1.53%) .NET
10 52 (1.35%) RESTful
11 45 (1.17%) JSON
11 45 (1.17%) OAuth
12 34 (0.88%) OpenID
13 32 (0.83%) Node.js
13 32 (0.83%) SAP Fiori
14 31 (0.80%) HTML
15 30 (0.78%) SOAP
15 30 (0.78%) XML
16 27 (0.70%) AngularJS
16 27 (0.70%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 178 (4.62%) Onboarding
2 173 (4.49%) Cloud Native
3 159 (4.13%) Virtual Team
4 158 (4.10%) Product Ownership
5 126 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
6 121 (3.14%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.93%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.88%) Podcast
9 87 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.76%) AI Agents
12 67 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 65 (1.69%) Data Centre
14 55 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
15 52 (1.35%) Public Cloud
16 49 (1.27%) Mainframe
17 48 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (1.19%) Security Posture
19 41 (1.06%) Mobile App
20 39 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.98%) Linux
2 107 (2.78%) Windows
3 58 (1.51%) Unix
4 34 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.73%) zOS
6 27 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 22 (0.57%) Solaris
8 16 (0.42%) Android
9 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.21%) AIX
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 3 (0.078%) CentOS
14 3 (0.078%) MVS
15 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,068 (27.72%) Stakeholder Management
2 731 (18.97%) Agile
3 533 (13.83%) Continuous Improvement
4 532 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
5 490 (12.72%) Migration
6 478 (12.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 460 (11.94%) ERP
8 425 (11.03%) AI
9 421 (10.93%) CI/CD
10 380 (9.86%) Decision-Making
11 343 (8.90%) DevOps
12 342 (8.88%) Project Management
13 329 (8.54%) Change Management
14 315 (8.18%) Roadmaps
15 302 (7.84%) Project Delivery
16 285 (7.40%) Analytics
16 285 (7.40%) Validation
17 281 (7.29%) Risk Management
18 273 (7.09%) User Acceptance Testing
19 221 (5.74%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 355 (9.21%) Python
2 351 (9.11%) SQL
3 246 (6.38%) Java
4 82 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 76 (1.97%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.71%) C#
7 62 (1.61%) Bash
8 50 (1.30%) TypeScript
9 38 (0.99%) Go
10 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.55%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 18 (0.47%) Bicep
15 16 (0.42%) Perl
16 14 (0.36%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 346 (8.98%) Security Cleared
2 240 (6.23%) Degree
3 211 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 176 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (2.67%) ACCA
6 101 (2.62%) CIMA
7 91 (2.36%) DV Cleared
7 91 (2.36%) PMP
8 77 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 61 (1.58%) CISSP
10 43 (1.12%) AWS Certification
11 40 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
12 39 (1.01%) Azure Certification
13 38 (0.99%) CISM
14 30 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 27 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 23 (0.60%) CCSP
18 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (6.62%) Data Quality
2 180 (4.67%) PMO
3 137 (3.56%) QA
4 83 (2.15%) GDPR
5 56 (1.45%) GRC
6 45 (1.17%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.04%) SLA
8 39 (1.01%) NIST
9 29 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.73%) IFRS
11 23 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.23%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 76 (1.97%) Docker
2 69 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.60%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 11 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 210 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 77 (2.00%) Ansible
3 40 (1.04%) Grafana
4 34 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.55%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.47%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.29%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) Kibana
16 4 (0.10%) logstash
16 4 (0.10%) QRadar
16 4 (0.10%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 586 (15.21%) Microsoft
2 446 (11.58%) SAP
3 364 (9.45%) Oracle
4 162 (4.20%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.91%) Google
6 94 (2.44%) IBM
7 80 (2.08%) Databricks
8 67 (1.74%) VMware
9 66 (1.71%) Salesforce
10 49 (1.27%) Ariba
11 48 (1.25%) Splunk
12 45 (1.17%) Workday
13 42 (1.09%) Cisco
14 29 (0.75%) Sage
15 27 (0.70%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.62%) Adobe
17 23 (0.60%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 17 (0.44%) Dynatrace
19 17 (0.44%) Sybase