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 6 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,867 2,632 2,765
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.99% 16.46% 13.72%
As % of the General category 27.04% 28.26% 24.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,888 1,543 1,912
10th Percentile £309 £306 £310
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £508 £524
Median % change year-on-year -2.99% -3.10% -0.24%
75th Percentile £591 £625 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £706
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 81 73
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.13 £13.60
25th Percentile £16.50 £23.60 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.00 £28.00 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +5.66% -20.99%
75th Percentile £25.00 £55.25 £49.00
90th Percentile £54.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £29.00 £28.75
% change year-on-year -17.24% +0.87% +11.82%

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 common skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 10,604 9,312 11,274
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 59.13% 58.25% 55.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,524 5,183 7,095
10th Percentile £204 £210 £213
25th Percentile £360 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,155 621 929
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.78 £16.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £26.13 £28.92
Median % change year-on-year -15.79% -9.66% +31.45%
75th Percentile £43.92 £55.00 £56.58
90th Percentile £69.65 £70.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £27.50 £31.71
% change year-on-year -12.73% -13.28% +26.84%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 0 903 £475 -6.31% 1,622
South East 0 535 £515 -1.90% 2,304
Midlands -5 475 £475 -9.52% 1,258
North West -1 451 £450 -10.89% 844
Scotland +1 418 £475 +5.56% 391
Yorkshire 0 418 £500 -2.91% 639
West Midlands -7 300 £525 -4.55% 689
South West -3 288 £525 - 809
East Midlands +1 174 £413 -0.36% 514
East of England -1 160 £541 +3.10% 921
Wales +10 66 £396 -2.46% 210
Northern Ireland -1 63 £481 +6.94% 120
North East -5 34 £450 -5.26% 152
Channel Islands -3 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
1 128 (4.46%) Confluence
2 91 (3.17%) SharePoint
3 30 (1.05%) Apache
4 29 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 27 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.70%) SAS
7 17 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.56%) CMS
9 13 (0.45%) JBoss
10 10 (0.35%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.31%) IIS
12 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
12 7 (0.24%) Mattermost
12 7 (0.24%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
13 6 (0.21%) CICS
13 6 (0.21%) TPMS
14 5 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 5 (0.17%) WebLogic
15 2 (0.070%) HCL Domino
Applications
1 236 (8.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (5.37%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (3.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 89 (3.10%) Microsoft Project
5 47 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.49%) Sketch
8 10 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.24%) Trello
10 6 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.17%) InVision
12 3 (0.10%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.10%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.10%) Snagit
13 2 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.035%) Adobe Premiere
14 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 114 (3.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.53%) Oracle Payables
3 38 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (1.26%) Oracle Receivables
5 32 (1.12%) SAP FI
6 31 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (1.01%) Oracle ERP
8 28 (0.98%) Oracle Cash Management
9 26 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
10 24 (0.84%) Oracle Assets
10 24 (0.84%) SAP CO
11 23 (0.80%) SAP FI/CO
12 20 (0.70%) Oracle EBS R12
12 20 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 19 (0.66%) SAP ERP
14 16 (0.56%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.42%) SAP BRIM
15 12 (0.42%) SAP Hybris
15 12 (0.42%) SAP PSCD
15 12 (0.42%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 379 (13.22%) AWS
2 335 (11.68%) Azure
3 179 (6.24%) Power Platform
4 172 (6.00%) GCP
5 93 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
6 74 (2.58%) Serverless
7 72 (2.51%) Dynamics 365
8 66 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
9 64 (2.23%) GitHub
10 57 (1.99%) SaaS
11 48 (1.67%) OCI
12 40 (1.40%) Entra ID
13 39 (1.36%) Figma
14 37 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 34 (1.19%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.15%) OpenShift
17 30 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.91%) Amazon S3
19 21 (0.73%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 58 (2.02%) Firewall
2 22 (0.77%) DNS
3 21 (0.73%) Wireless
4 20 (0.70%) Network Security
5 17 (0.59%) Kerberos
5 17 (0.59%) Skype
5 17 (0.59%) SSL
6 16 (0.56%) VPN
7 15 (0.52%) SSH
7 15 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.52%) WAN
8 14 (0.49%) LAN
9 11 (0.38%) DHCP
9 11 (0.38%) HTTP
10 10 (0.35%) Internet
11 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
12 6 (0.21%) SNMP
12 6 (0.21%) Unified Communications
12 6 (0.21%) VoIP
13 5 (0.17%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 168 (5.86%) Power BI
2 73 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
3 68 (2.37%) NoSQL
3 68 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (2.20%) Relational Database
5 44 (1.53%) Tableau
6 40 (1.40%) SQL Server
7 34 (1.19%) Power Query
8 30 (1.05%) Big Data
9 29 (1.01%) Metadata
10 26 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.87%) Hadoop
12 24 (0.84%) Data Lake
13 23 (0.80%) DB2
14 22 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
15 21 (0.73%) BigQuery
15 21 (0.73%) Oracle Database
16 19 (0.66%) MySQL
17 16 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
18 15 (0.52%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 248 (8.65%) JIRA
2 148 (5.16%) Jenkins
3 85 (2.96%) GitLab
4 83 (2.90%) Git
5 46 (1.60%) JUnit
6 37 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
7 33 (1.15%) Bitbucket
8 32 (1.12%) Liquibase
9 28 (0.98%) Cucumber
10 22 (0.77%) Selenium
11 15 (0.52%) Postman
12 13 (0.45%) PyCharm
13 12 (0.42%) IntelliJ
14 11 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 11 (0.38%) Gradle
14 11 (0.38%) Hudson
14 11 (0.38%) Visual Studio Code
15 10 (0.35%) JMeter
15 10 (0.35%) SonarQube
15 10 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,076 (37.53%) Social Skills
2 514 (17.93%) Banking
3 477 (16.64%) Analytical Skills
4 336 (11.72%) Public Sector
5 215 (7.50%) Manufacturing
6 205 (7.15%) Telecoms
7 178 (6.21%) Marketing
8 141 (4.92%) Electronics
9 123 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
10 114 (3.98%) Financial Institution
11 101 (3.52%) Legal
12 92 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
13 69 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
13 69 (2.41%) Investment Banking
14 65 (2.27%) Presentation Skills
15 48 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 48 (1.67%) Retail
16 46 (1.60%) General Ledger
17 40 (1.40%) Local Government
18 39 (1.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 504 (17.58%) Analyst
2 266 (9.28%) Project Manager
3 226 (7.88%) Developer
4 224 (7.81%) Senior
5 210 (7.32%) Consultant
6 189 (6.59%) Business Analyst
7 179 (6.24%) Architect
8 175 (6.10%) Lead
9 106 (3.70%) Data Analyst
10 87 (3.03%) Programme Manager
11 64 (2.23%) Accountant
12 63 (2.20%) IT Support
13 61 (2.13%) IT Manager
14 60 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 60 (2.09%) Solutions Architect
15 56 (1.95%) SAP Consultant
15 56 (1.95%) Software Engineer
16 51 (1.78%) DevOps Engineer
16 51 (1.78%) Senior Manager
17 50 (1.74%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (4.53%) REST
2 91 (3.17%) Spring
3 84 (2.93%) RESTful
4 71 (2.48%) Spring Boot
5 63 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
6 55 (1.92%) Kafka
7 50 (1.74%) .NET
8 45 (1.57%) React
9 43 (1.50%) SOAP
10 42 (1.46%) Elastic Stack
11 38 (1.33%) OAuth
12 37 (1.29%) Node.js
13 35 (1.22%) HTML
14 33 (1.15%) CSS
15 30 (1.05%) AngularJS
16 27 (0.94%) JMS
16 27 (0.94%) JSON
17 25 (0.87%) SAML
18 21 (0.73%) PySpark
19 20 (0.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 145 (5.06%) Onboarding
2 120 (4.19%) Product Ownership
3 91 (3.17%) Cloud Native
4 83 (2.90%) Data Centre
5 77 (2.69%) Public Cloud
6 61 (2.13%) Management Information System
7 59 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
8 53 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
8 53 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 45 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
10 41 (1.43%) Mobile App
11 40 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
12 37 (1.29%) Virtual Team
13 35 (1.22%) Data Structures
14 28 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
15 27 (0.94%) CMDB
16 26 (0.91%) Mainframe
17 22 (0.77%) Credit Risk
17 22 (0.77%) NHS
18 18 (0.63%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 175 (6.10%) Linux
2 130 (4.53%) Windows
3 50 (1.74%) Unix
4 42 (1.46%) Mac OS
5 39 (1.36%) Android
6 33 (1.15%) Windows 10
7 17 (0.59%) Apple iOS
7 17 (0.59%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.14%) VMS
10 2 (0.070%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.070%) Windows 8
10 2 (0.070%) zOS
11 1 (0.035%) CentOS
11 1 (0.035%) MVS
11 1 (0.035%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.035%) SUSE
11 1 (0.035%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 708 (24.69%) Agile
2 508 (17.72%) Stakeholder Management
3 502 (17.51%) Problem-Solving
4 349 (12.17%) Migration
5 346 (12.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 338 (11.79%) Business Intelligence
7 312 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 309 (10.78%) Project Management
9 303 (10.57%) DevOps
10 291 (10.15%) CI/CD
11 257 (8.96%) ERP
12 250 (8.72%) Change Management
13 232 (8.09%) Decision-Making
14 230 (8.02%) Programme Management
15 218 (7.60%) Project Delivery
16 198 (6.91%) Analytics
17 188 (6.56%) ITIL
18 181 (6.31%) Risk Management
19 176 (6.14%) Roadmaps
20 162 (5.65%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 312 (10.88%) Python
1 312 (10.88%) SQL
2 193 (6.73%) Java
3 65 (2.27%) PowerShell
4 53 (1.85%) JavaScript
5 51 (1.78%) TypeScript
6 49 (1.71%) Go
7 48 (1.67%) C#
8 30 (1.05%) Shell Script
9 28 (0.98%) PL/SQL
10 23 (0.80%) R
11 22 (0.77%) Bash
12 20 (0.70%) VBA
13 18 (0.63%) Groovy
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
15 12 (0.42%) Apex Code
16 10 (0.35%) ABAP
16 10 (0.35%) PHP
17 9 (0.31%) COBOL
17 9 (0.31%) JCL
Qualifications
1 277 (9.66%) Degree
2 256 (8.93%) Security Cleared
3 173 (6.03%) SC Cleared
4 70 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 69 (2.41%) Master's Degree
6 60 (2.09%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.09%) PMP
7 59 (2.06%) ACCA
8 58 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
9 57 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 56 (1.95%) DV Cleared
11 54 (1.88%) CISSP
12 53 (1.85%) CIMA
13 39 (1.36%) CISM
14 37 (1.29%) ITIL Certification
15 20 (0.70%) Azure Certification
16 19 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 13 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 12 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (5.13%) PMO
2 125 (4.36%) QA
3 117 (4.08%) GDPR
4 107 (3.73%) Data Quality
5 59 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 55 (1.92%) NIST
7 48 (1.67%) SLA
8 46 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 39 (1.36%) PCI DSS
10 36 (1.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.80%) PSD2
12 22 (0.77%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.59%) IFRS
14 14 (0.49%) GRC
14 14 (0.49%) SEPA
15 13 (0.45%) NCSC
16 12 (0.42%) COBIT
16 12 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
17 10 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
18 9 (0.31%) P3O
System Software
1 114 (3.98%) Docker
2 99 (3.45%) Active Directory
3 27 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.38%) vSphere
6 10 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.28%) GPFS
8 7 (0.24%) NFS
9 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.17%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (0.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.14%) Time Sharing Option
11 4 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.10%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.10%) HDFS
12 3 (0.10%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.10%) RACF
13 2 (0.070%) Firmware
13 2 (0.070%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 150 (5.23%) Kubernetes
2 126 (4.39%) Terraform
3 100 (3.49%) Ansible
4 53 (1.85%) Grafana
5 47 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.80%) SCCM
7 19 (0.66%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.35%) Puppet
11 9 (0.31%) vRealize
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.24%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 7 (0.24%) QRadar
13 7 (0.24%) Tivoli
14 6 (0.21%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 501 (17.47%) Microsoft
2 386 (13.46%) SAP
3 270 (9.42%) Oracle
4 157 (5.48%) ServiceNow
5 83 (2.90%) Splunk
6 67 (2.34%) Google
7 65 (2.27%) Cisco
8 61 (2.13%) Salesforce
9 44 (1.53%) IBM
10 43 (1.50%) VMware
11 33 (1.15%) HP
11 33 (1.15%) Workday
12 32 (1.12%) Dell
13 29 (1.01%) Apple
14 28 (0.98%) Databricks
15 27 (0.94%) Citrix
16 26 (0.91%) IFS
17 25 (0.87%) Adobe
18 21 (0.73%) CyberArk
19 20 (0.70%) F5