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 23 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,908 2,596 2,642
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.81% 16.90% 15.12%
As % of the General category 26.41% 27.86% 27.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,321 1,719 1,557
10th Percentile £340 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -1.48% -3.33%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £622
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.52% -6.70% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 60 106
10th Percentile £14.62 £13.42 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.69 £15.48 £20.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +25.71%
75th Percentile - £31.63 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £60.34 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.55 £33.00
% change year-on-year +53.98% -13.48% +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 14,795 9,319 9,733
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.28% 60.68% 55.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,937 5,608 5,332
10th Percentile £263 £209 £208
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £594
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,233 909 895
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.60
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.04% -39.23% +27.27%
75th Percentile £55.00 £42.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.70 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.50 £25.11 £35.00
% change year-on-year +17.48% -28.26% +27.27%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 1,343 £514 +10.42% 1,943
South East -1 739 £500 -2.72% 2,200
North West -1 645 £502 +11.44% 1,087
Yorkshire 0 618 £525 +5.00% 645
Midlands -3 602 £514 +8.21% 1,176
Scotland 0 554 £465 -7.00% 1,036
West Midlands -2 447 £525 +1.01% 732
South West -5 356 £525 -5.47% 996
East of England +2 209 £549 -3.68% 670
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.76% 442
North East -5 73 £500 +13.96% 224
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 360
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.69% 219
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 16
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
1 144 (3.68%) Confluence
2 94 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.46%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 8 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (0.15%) CICS
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) Camunda
10 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) JBoss
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 262 (6.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (2.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
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
Business Applications
1 203 (5.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 36 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
6 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
7 27 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 25 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 23 (0.59%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
11 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
12 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
14 12 (0.31%) Oracle Financials
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 476 (12.18%) Azure
2 351 (8.98%) AWS
3 254 (6.50%) GCP
4 228 (5.83%) Power Platform
5 106 (2.71%) GitHub
6 103 (2.64%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.51%) SaaS
8 97 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
9 96 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
10 76 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
11 46 (1.18%) Serverless
12 45 (1.15%) OCI
12 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
14 36 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
16 33 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (0.69%) Anthropic Claude
17 27 (0.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.05%) Firewall
2 78 (2.00%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.38%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.20%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco Nexus
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.68%) Power BI
2 73 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.79%) Metadata
4 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 42 (1.07%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 36 (0.92%) Tableau
8 35 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
9 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
11 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
11 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
14 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
14 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 226 (5.78%) JIRA
2 119 (3.05%) Git
3 63 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) GitLab
5 22 (0.56%) JUnit
6 18 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 12 (0.31%) Maven
10 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.26%) Hudson
11 10 (0.26%) Postman
12 9 (0.23%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 8 (0.20%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) JMeter
15 6 (0.15%) REST Assured
General
1 1,362 (34.85%) Social Skills
2 599 (15.33%) Banking
3 552 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
4 284 (7.27%) Organisational Skills
5 283 (7.24%) Public Sector
6 257 (6.58%) Legal
7 163 (4.17%) Retail
8 149 (3.81%) Influencing Skills
9 101 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 92 (2.35%) Local Government
11 86 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (2.20%) General Ledger
12 80 (2.05%) Billing
13 79 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 73 (1.87%) Investment Banking
15 66 (1.69%) Financial Institution
16 64 (1.64%) Marketing
17 57 (1.46%) Telecoms
18 56 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
19 49 (1.25%) Law
Job Titles
1 491 (12.56%) Analyst
2 395 (10.11%) Lead
3 375 (9.60%) Senior
4 314 (8.03%) Developer
5 306 (7.83%) Architect
6 301 (7.70%) Project Manager
7 275 (7.04%) Consultant
8 229 (5.86%) Business Analyst
9 152 (3.89%) Accountant
10 145 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
11 102 (2.61%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
13 94 (2.41%) Java Developer
14 90 (2.30%) Systems Accountant
15 88 (2.25%) Administrator
15 88 (2.25%) Senior Manager
16 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.84%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.74%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (3.76%) Terraform
2 144 (3.68%) Oracle Fusion
3 110 (2.81%) REST
4 80 (2.05%) Kafka
5 72 (1.84%) React
6 71 (1.82%) Spring Boot
7 70 (1.79%) Middleware
8 67 (1.71%) Spring
9 59 (1.51%) .NET
10 52 (1.33%) RESTful
11 49 (1.25%) OAuth
12 42 (1.07%) JSON
13 39 (1.00%) OpenID
14 33 (0.84%) Node.js
15 31 (0.79%) SAML
16 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 29 (0.74%) SOAP
17 28 (0.72%) HTML
17 28 (0.72%) XML
18 27 (0.69%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 169 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 165 (4.22%) Cloud Native
3 162 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 157 (4.02%) Virtual Team
5 126 (3.22%) Data Protection Act
6 119 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.87%) Podcast
9 96 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
10 67 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.66%) Data Structures
12 63 (1.61%) Data Centre
13 59 (1.51%) AI Agents
14 56 (1.43%) Mainframe
15 49 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
15 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
16 47 (1.20%) Public Cloud
17 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
18 41 (1.05%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 115 (2.94%) Linux
2 111 (2.84%) Windows
3 61 (1.56%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (0.74%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.38%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,048 (26.82%) Stakeholder Management
2 728 (18.63%) Agile
3 538 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
3 538 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
4 499 (12.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 491 (12.56%) Migration
6 481 (12.31%) ERP
7 413 (10.57%) CI/CD
8 407 (10.41%) AI
9 379 (9.70%) Decision-Making
10 348 (8.90%) DevOps
10 348 (8.90%) Project Management
11 340 (8.70%) Change Management
12 312 (7.98%) Roadmaps
13 295 (7.55%) Project Delivery
14 290 (7.42%) Risk Management
15 285 (7.29%) Analytics
16 274 (7.01%) Validation
17 261 (6.68%) User Acceptance Testing
18 233 (5.96%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 352 (9.01%) SQL
2 350 (8.96%) Python
3 246 (6.29%) Java
4 80 (2.05%) PowerShell
5 78 (2.00%) JavaScript
6 65 (1.66%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 48 (1.23%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Go
11 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.56%) C++
13 18 (0.46%) Bicep
14 16 (0.41%) Scala
15 15 (0.38%) Perl
16 13 (0.33%) ABAP
16 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
18 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.20%) JCL
Qualifications
1 353 (9.03%) Security Cleared
2 254 (6.50%) Degree
3 214 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (2.74%) ACCA
6 105 (2.69%) CIMA
7 97 (2.48%) PMP
8 90 (2.30%) DV Cleared
9 79 (2.02%) PMI Certification
10 67 (1.71%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 43 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
13 42 (1.07%) CISM
14 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
15 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 24 (0.61%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (6.50%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.50%) PMO
3 141 (3.61%) QA
4 96 (2.46%) GDPR
5 57 (1.46%) GRC
6 46 (1.18%) NIST
7 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
8 40 (1.02%) SLA
9 36 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.79%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 76 (1.94%) Docker
2 71 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 51 (1.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) vSphere
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 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 209 (5.35%) Kubernetes
2 76 (1.94%) Ansible
3 38 (0.97%) Grafana
4 36 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.56%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
16 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
16 4 (0.10%) logstash
16 4 (0.10%) Puppet
16 4 (0.10%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 593 (15.17%) Microsoft
2 427 (10.93%) SAP
3 373 (9.54%) Oracle
4 174 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.87%) Google
6 96 (2.46%) IBM
7 82 (2.10%) Databricks
8 67 (1.71%) Salesforce
9 66 (1.69%) VMware
10 45 (1.15%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Ariba
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco
13 31 (0.79%) Sage
14 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
15 24 (0.61%) Snow
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.49%) Foundry
18 18 (0.46%) IFS