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 8 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,145 2,178 2,712
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.86% 16.69% 12.80%
As % of the General category 27.18% 27.03% 23.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,985 1,331 1,738
10th Percentile £315 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.56% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £688 £678 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 69 165
10th Percentile £13.95 £17.23 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.64 £22.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -38.89% +35.03% -23.83%
75th Percentile £25.06 £66.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £59.90 £78.47 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £26.66
% change year-on-year -32.64% +31.28% +3.70%

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 11,572 8,058 11,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 54.68% 61.74% 55.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,026 4,853 6,935
10th Percentile £213 £210 £205
25th Percentile £368 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £591
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 492 1,500
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.23 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.68 £27.37 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -17.13% +10.04% -6.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £29.07 £25.50
% change year-on-year -17.44% +14.00% -20.31%

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 8 March 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 8 March 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 8 March 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 +4 1,025 £475 -1.04% 716
Midlands -1 584 £475 -5.00% 427
South East -2 575 £500 -5.88% 1,022
North West +4 519 £450 -5.26% 384
Yorkshire 0 459 £513 +2.50% 261
West Midlands 0 381 £500 -7.41% 238
Scotland 0 363 £500 +6.38% 162
South West -3 321 £512 -2.57% 320
East Midlands 0 198 £449 +5.59% 185
East of England -1 184 £515 -6.36% 232
Wales +29 108 £413 +6.45% 90
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 46
North East -7 47 £488 +3.72% 79
Channel Islands +3 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
1 153 (4.86%) Confluence
2 110 (3.50%) SharePoint
3 31 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 22 (0.70%) Apache
6 11 (0.35%) SAS
7 10 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.32%) TPMS
8 9 (0.29%) CICS
9 7 (0.22%) CMS
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.064%) HCL Notes
12 2 (0.064%) IIS
12 2 (0.064%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.064%) Skype for Business
12 2 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 246 (7.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 148 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (3.59%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.29%) Sketch
9 8 (0.25%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.22%) InVision
11 5 (0.16%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.16%) Trello
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.095%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.032%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.032%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 145 (4.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.59%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.40%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.02%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 29 (0.92%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.89%) Oracle Assets
9 27 (0.86%) Oracle Cash Management
10 22 (0.70%) Oracle EBS R12
11 20 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
11 20 (0.64%) SAP CO
12 19 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
13 18 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
14 17 (0.54%) SAP BRIM
14 17 (0.54%) SAP Hybris
14 17 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.41%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.41%) Oracle AGIS
15 13 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 391 (12.43%) Azure
2 382 (12.15%) AWS
3 178 (5.66%) Power Platform
4 172 (5.47%) GCP
5 122 (3.88%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.51%) GitHub
6 79 (2.51%) SaaS
7 74 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
7 74 (2.35%) Serverless
8 68 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
9 52 (1.65%) Entra ID
10 42 (1.34%) OCI
10 42 (1.34%) OpenShift
11 38 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
12 36 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
13 35 (1.11%) Snowflake
14 32 (1.02%) Amazon S3
15 31 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
16 30 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (0.83%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.70%) Firewall
2 37 (1.18%) WAN
3 35 (1.11%) DNS
4 30 (0.95%) Network Security
5 28 (0.89%) VPN
6 21 (0.67%) Wireless
7 20 (0.64%) Skype
8 19 (0.60%) LAN
9 18 (0.57%) SD-WAN
10 17 (0.54%) SSL
11 16 (0.51%) TCP/IP
12 14 (0.45%) SSH
13 13 (0.41%) Internet
14 12 (0.38%) DHCP
15 10 (0.32%) SNMP
16 9 (0.29%) Kerberos
17 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
17 8 (0.25%) MPLS
18 7 (0.22%) BGP
18 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (5.47%) Power BI
2 89 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
3 76 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (2.00%) NoSQL
5 44 (1.40%) Relational Database
6 41 (1.30%) Tableau
7 40 (1.27%) Metadata
8 36 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
9 31 (0.99%) SQL Server
10 25 (0.79%) Big Data
10 25 (0.79%) DynamoDB
11 24 (0.76%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.73%) Power Query
13 20 (0.64%) BigQuery
14 19 (0.60%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
16 14 (0.45%) MySQL
17 12 (0.38%) Hadoop
17 12 (0.38%) RDBMS
18 11 (0.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 303 (9.63%) JIRA
2 132 (4.20%) Jenkins
3 80 (2.54%) GitLab
4 55 (1.75%) Git
5 35 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 34 (1.08%) JUnit
7 33 (1.05%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.64%) Selenium
9 17 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 17 (0.54%) Liquibase
10 15 (0.48%) Postman
11 13 (0.41%) Gradle
12 10 (0.32%) JMeter
13 9 (0.29%) Maven
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) SonarQube
16 6 (0.19%) Hudson
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
17 5 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 1,118 (35.55%) Social Skills
2 506 (16.09%) Banking
3 392 (12.46%) Analytical Skills
4 352 (11.19%) Public Sector
5 174 (5.53%) Manufacturing
6 162 (5.15%) Telecoms
7 145 (4.61%) Marketing
8 129 (4.10%) Organisational Skills
9 104 (3.31%) Financial Institution
10 97 (3.08%) Electronics
11 96 (3.05%) Legal
12 94 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
13 72 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (2.29%) Local Government
14 56 (1.78%) General Ledger
15 55 (1.75%) Retail
16 48 (1.53%) Billing
16 48 (1.53%) Investment Banking
17 47 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
18 29 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 488 (15.52%) Analyst
2 305 (9.70%) Project Manager
3 268 (8.52%) Architect
4 255 (8.11%) Senior
5 243 (7.73%) Lead
6 218 (6.93%) Consultant
7 215 (6.84%) Business Analyst
8 198 (6.30%) Developer
9 113 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
10 93 (2.96%) Programme Manager
11 78 (2.48%) Data Analyst
12 75 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 70 (2.23%) Accountant
14 68 (2.16%) Finance Manager
15 61 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
16 58 (1.84%) IT Manager
17 55 (1.75%) Functional Consultant
18 54 (1.72%) Administrator
18 54 (1.72%) Designer
18 54 (1.72%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (3.66%) REST
2 80 (2.54%) Spring
3 75 (2.38%) Spring Boot
4 68 (2.16%) Kafka
5 66 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
6 62 (1.97%) RESTful
7 56 (1.78%) Middleware
8 39 (1.24%) .NET
8 39 (1.24%) React
9 37 (1.18%) JSON
9 37 (1.18%) Node.js
10 32 (1.02%) SOAP
11 28 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
11 28 (0.89%) OAuth
12 25 (0.79%) XML
13 24 (0.76%) HTML
14 23 (0.73%) AngularJS
14 23 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
15 20 (0.64%) CSS
16 19 (0.60%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 155 (4.93%) Onboarding
2 126 (4.01%) Product Ownership
3 103 (3.28%) Cloud Native
4 91 (2.89%) Data Centre
5 90 (2.86%) Management Information System
6 69 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 69 (2.19%) Public Cloud
7 68 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
7 68 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
9 39 (1.24%) Data Structures
10 37 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
11 33 (1.05%) PMI
12 31 (0.99%) Mobile App
12 31 (0.99%) Virtual Team
13 27 (0.86%) CMDB
14 25 (0.79%) Mainframe
15 19 (0.60%) NHS
16 17 (0.54%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 16 (0.51%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 129 (4.10%) Linux
2 110 (3.50%) Windows
3 42 (1.34%) Unix
4 34 (1.08%) Windows 10
5 32 (1.02%) Mac OS
6 31 (0.99%) Android
7 20 (0.64%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 6 (0.19%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.13%) VMS
12 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.095%) zOS
14 1 (0.032%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.032%) MVS
14 1 (0.032%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (21.40%) Agile
2 626 (19.90%) Stakeholder Management
3 512 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
4 435 (13.83%) Migration
5 417 (13.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 375 (11.92%) Project Management
7 345 (10.97%) DevOps
8 342 (10.87%) Continuous Improvement
9 335 (10.65%) ERP
10 317 (10.08%) Business Intelligence
11 300 (9.54%) CI/CD
12 282 (8.97%) Change Management
13 262 (8.33%) Project Delivery
14 218 (6.93%) Analytics
14 218 (6.93%) Decision-Making
15 216 (6.87%) User Acceptance Testing
16 215 (6.84%) Roadmaps
17 201 (6.39%) AI
18 191 (6.07%) Data Modelling
19 190 (6.04%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 332 (10.56%) SQL
2 282 (8.97%) Python
3 189 (6.01%) Java
4 78 (2.48%) PowerShell
5 40 (1.27%) TypeScript
6 37 (1.18%) JavaScript
7 31 (0.99%) Go
8 28 (0.89%) Bash
9 26 (0.83%) C#
10 22 (0.70%) VBA
11 20 (0.64%) PL/SQL
12 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.41%) R
14 12 (0.38%) Perl
15 11 (0.35%) COBOL
15 11 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 10 (0.32%) ABAP
16 10 (0.32%) Rust
17 9 (0.29%) Ruby
17 9 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 328 (10.43%) Degree
2 325 (10.33%) Security Cleared
3 212 (6.74%) SC Cleared
4 85 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 84 (2.67%) PMI Certification
5 84 (2.67%) PMP
6 75 (2.38%) ACCA
7 70 (2.23%) CIMA
7 70 (2.23%) Master's Degree
8 65 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
9 61 (1.94%) DV Cleared
10 55 (1.75%) CISSP
11 44 (1.40%) AWS Certification
12 39 (1.24%) CISM
13 30 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
14 24 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
15 17 (0.54%) MBA
15 17 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 14 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 13 (0.41%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (5.37%) PMO
2 144 (4.58%) QA
3 137 (4.36%) Data Quality
4 121 (3.85%) GDPR
5 57 (1.81%) NIST
6 55 (1.75%) SLA
7 47 (1.49%) PCI DSS
8 45 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 29 (0.92%) Accessibility
11 25 (0.79%) IFRS
12 24 (0.76%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.70%) PSD2
14 19 (0.60%) GRC
15 14 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.41%) GAAP
16 13 (0.41%) SEPA
17 12 (0.38%) Basel III
18 10 (0.32%) GLBA
18 10 (0.32%) NCSC
System Software
1 130 (4.13%) Docker
2 85 (2.70%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.64%) vSphere
5 14 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.35%) GPFS
8 10 (0.32%) NFS
9 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.095%) Firmware
12 3 (0.095%) HDFS
12 3 (0.095%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.064%) ACF2
13 2 (0.064%) KVM
13 2 (0.064%) RACF
13 2 (0.064%) SRDF
13 2 (0.064%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 170 (5.41%) Kubernetes
2 89 (2.83%) Terraform
3 84 (2.67%) Ansible
4 58 (1.84%) Grafana
5 53 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.60%) SCCM
7 17 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.45%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.38%) vRealize
11 11 (0.35%) Nessus
12 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 8 (0.25%) Kiali
14 6 (0.19%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.16%) Puppet
15 5 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 435 (13.83%) Microsoft
2 373 (11.86%) SAP
3 254 (8.08%) Oracle
4 161 (5.12%) ServiceNow
5 91 (2.89%) Google
6 85 (2.70%) Cisco
7 80 (2.54%) Splunk
8 53 (1.69%) VMware
9 50 (1.59%) IBM
10 45 (1.43%) Sage
11 44 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 43 (1.37%) Databricks
13 39 (1.24%) Workday
14 38 (1.21%) HP
15 36 (1.14%) Dell
16 25 (0.79%) Adobe
17 23 (0.73%) Citrix
18 21 (0.67%) CyberArk
18 21 (0.67%) IFS
19 20 (0.64%) Remedy