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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,888 2,688 2,578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.32% 17.63% 14.04%
As % of the General category 27.77% 28.88% 26.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,337 1,776 1,591
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £626
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 74 157
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.74 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.69 £22.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +60.51% -28.15% +20.53%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £40.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +39.94%

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 13,999 9,309 9,844
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.54% 61.04% 53.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,791 5,616 5,677
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
75th Percentile £593 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,844 834 1,204
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.08 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.11 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%
75th Percentile £63.38 £47.41 £59.66
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £70.23
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 1,327 £500 +6.38% 959
South East -1 751 £501 -5.42% 1,107
North West 0 698 £495 +7.61% 507
Midlands -1 634 £514 +14.22% 530
Yorkshire 0 566 £515 +7.85% 342
Scotland 0 495 £475 -5.00% 262
West Midlands 0 487 £525 +6.71% 325
South West -4 379 £525 -5.01% 436
East of England +7 211 £525 -8.70% 275
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 204
Wales +3 72 £525 +13.51% 102
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 148
North East -12 56 £500 +13.64% 120
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 143 (3.68%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) CICS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
10 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) Mule
12 3 (0.077%) Mule ESB
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 241 (6.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.37%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.90%) 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 (5.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.18%) Oracle ERP
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.08%) NetSuite
5 41 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
9 20 (0.51%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.46%) SAP FI
11 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
11 14 (0.36%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 476 (12.24%) Azure
2 320 (8.23%) AWS
3 225 (5.79%) Power Platform
4 222 (5.71%) GCP
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 91 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
8 86 (2.21%) GitHub
9 85 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
10 69 (1.77%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.23%) OCI
12 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
13 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
14 39 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
14 39 (1.00%) Serverless
15 26 (0.67%) Power Automate
15 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
16 24 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (0.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 22 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.06%) Firewall
2 65 (1.67%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 35 (0.90%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 19 (0.49%) LAN
7 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 11 (0.28%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) MPLS
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.76%) Power BI
2 78 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
5 64 (1.65%) SQL Server
6 51 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
6 51 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
7 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
8 36 (0.93%) Tableau
9 29 (0.75%) MongoDB
10 24 (0.62%) Db2
10 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
11 23 (0.59%) NoSQL
11 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 22 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
14 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 16 (0.41%) DynamoDB
15 16 (0.41%) Oracle Database
15 16 (0.41%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 250 (6.43%) JIRA
2 96 (2.47%) Git
3 59 (1.52%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) GitLab
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) Claude Code
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.15%) Liquibase
14 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.13%) Gradle
14 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,237 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 549 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
3 534 (13.73%) Banking
4 293 (7.54%) Public Sector
5 228 (5.86%) Legal
6 218 (5.61%) Organisational Skills
7 146 (3.76%) Retail
8 130 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.88%) Manufacturing
10 109 (2.80%) Local Government
11 100 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
12 80 (2.06%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.01%) Financial Institution
14 77 (1.98%) Investment Banking
15 74 (1.90%) Billing
16 70 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (1.41%) Marketing
18 53 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (1.36%) Telecoms
19 48 (1.23%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 526 (13.53%) Analyst
2 424 (10.91%) Lead
3 361 (9.28%) Senior
4 331 (8.51%) Project Manager
5 315 (8.10%) Architect
6 293 (7.54%) Developer
7 255 (6.56%) Consultant
8 244 (6.28%) Business Analyst
9 173 (4.45%) Accountant
10 139 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
11 105 (2.70%) Systems Accountant
12 101 (2.60%) IT Manager
13 99 (2.55%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.29%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.24%) Java Developer
16 74 (1.90%) Programme Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Administrator
18 69 (1.77%) Finance Manager
19 67 (1.72%) Data Analyst
20 64 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (3.73%) Oracle Fusion
2 82 (2.11%) Middleware
2 82 (2.11%) REST
3 68 (1.75%) Kafka
4 64 (1.65%) Spring Boot
5 63 (1.62%) Spring
6 59 (1.52%) .NET
6 59 (1.52%) React
7 37 (0.95%) OAuth
8 36 (0.93%) RESTful
9 34 (0.87%) Node.js
10 30 (0.77%) JSON
11 28 (0.72%) XML
12 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
13 25 (0.64%) OpenID
13 25 (0.64%) SAML
14 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
15 22 (0.57%) Redux
16 21 (0.54%) HTML
17 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.01%) Onboarding
2 155 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 153 (3.94%) Cloud Native
4 126 (3.24%) Virtual Team
5 110 (2.83%) Management Information System
6 107 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
8 79 (2.03%) Web Conferencing
9 78 (2.01%) Podcast
10 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
11 58 (1.49%) Data Centre
12 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
13 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
13 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 50 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
15 39 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 38 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
17 34 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 34 (0.87%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.16%) Windows
2 109 (2.80%) Linux
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 26 (0.67%) Solaris
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 12 (0.31%) AIX
8 11 (0.28%) Android
9 10 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
12 4 (0.10%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 914 (23.51%) Stakeholder Management
2 712 (18.31%) Agile
3 555 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
4 546 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 532 (13.68%) Migration
6 513 (13.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 509 (13.09%) ERP
8 367 (9.44%) Project Management
9 365 (9.39%) Decision-Making
10 352 (9.05%) CI/CD
11 350 (9.00%) DevOps
12 344 (8.85%) Change Management
13 340 (8.74%) AI
14 313 (8.05%) Project Delivery
15 290 (7.46%) Roadmaps
16 283 (7.28%) User Acceptance Testing
17 275 (7.07%) Validation
18 271 (6.97%) Risk Management
19 263 (6.76%) Analytics
20 239 (6.15%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 328 (8.44%) SQL
2 312 (8.02%) Python
3 218 (5.61%) Java
4 68 (1.75%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) C#
6 52 (1.34%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.21%) Bash
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.75%) 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
17 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 370 (9.52%) Security Cleared
2 287 (7.38%) Degree
3 225 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 147 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (3.01%) ACCA
6 113 (2.91%) CIMA
7 108 (2.78%) PMP
8 94 (2.42%) PMI Certification
9 87 (2.24%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.80%) CISSP
11 43 (1.11%) 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 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
17 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
18 20 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 219 (5.63%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.53%) PMO
3 144 (3.70%) QA
4 134 (3.45%) GDPR
5 50 (1.29%) SLA
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 46 (1.18%) GRC
8 37 (0.95%) IFRS
9 36 (0.93%) 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 76 (1.95%) Docker
2 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.03%) 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
1 166 (4.27%) Kubernetes
2 107 (2.75%) 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 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.39%) 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%) CASB
16 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 518 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 402 (10.34%) SAP
3 383 (9.85%) Oracle
4 172 (4.42%) ServiceNow
5 103 (2.65%) Google
6 85 (2.19%) IBM
7 78 (2.01%) Databricks
8 60 (1.54%) Salesforce
9 58 (1.49%) VMware
10 51 (1.31%) Sage
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 33 (0.85%) Ariba
13 33 (0.85%) IFS
13 33 (0.85%) Splunk
14 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
15 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
16 20 (0.51%) HP
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase
17 19 (0.49%) CyberArk