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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,911 2,645 2,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.81% 17.10% 14.98%
As % of the General category 26.44% 28.08% 27.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 1,753 1,572
10th Percentile £344 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £493 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.30% -3.90% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 58 115
10th Percentile £14.71 £13.35 £13.75
25th Percentile £19.69 £15.49 £18.58
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +23.39%
75th Percentile - £32.08 £54.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £61.02 £72.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +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 9,421 9,925
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.24% 60.89% 55.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,978 5,667 5,442
10th Percentile £263 £210 £209
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £658 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,222 911 937
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.30 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +40.85% -39.76% +30.56%
75th Percentile £56.00 £43.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.65 £71.35
UK median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +19.13% -28.87% +28.58%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 1,340 £513 +10.92% 1,874
South East -2 738 £500 -2.44% 2,106
North West -1 658 £500 +11.11% 1,050
Midlands -3 603 £507 +6.74% 1,076
Yorkshire 0 602 £520 +4.42% 597
Scotland 0 554 £467 -4.50% 953
West Midlands -2 445 £525 +2.19% 676
South West -6 358 £525 -6.67% 905
East of England +3 213 £550 -2.74% 663
East Midlands -4 155 £500 +20.48% 399
North East -12 73 £500 +14.29% 243
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -0.49% 357
Wales 0 62 £525 +13.51% 192
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 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
1 149 (3.81%) Confluence
2 94 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.43%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.15%) CICS
7 6 (0.15%) IIS
7 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
8 5 (0.13%) Camunda
9 4 (0.10%) nginx
10 3 (0.077%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.051%) JBoss
11 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 263 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (2.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) 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
1 208 (5.32%) 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
8 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) SAP FI
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.43%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
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
1 478 (12.22%) Azure
2 351 (8.97%) AWS
3 252 (6.44%) GCP
4 228 (5.83%) Power Platform
5 105 (2.68%) GitHub
6 104 (2.66%) SaaS
7 101 (2.58%) Dynamics 365
8 95 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
10 76 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.20%) OCI
12 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
13 45 (1.15%) Serverless
13 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
14 44 (1.13%) OpenShift
15 35 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 33 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
18 28 (0.72%) Anthropic Claude
19 27 (0.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 78 (1.99%) Firewall
2 76 (1.94%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 26 (0.66%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 21 (0.54%) WAN
7 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.43%) Broadband
8 17 (0.43%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 9 (0.23%) BIG-IP
10 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 8 (0.20%) VSAN
11 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
14 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.13%) Multicast
14 5 (0.13%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.68%) Power BI
2 72 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
2 72 (1.84%) Relational Database
3 71 (1.82%) SQL Server
4 69 (1.76%) Metadata
5 40 (1.02%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 36 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
7 36 (0.92%) Tableau
8 33 (0.84%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.74%) Db2
10 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (0.49%) BigQuery
11 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
13 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
13 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 232 (5.93%) JIRA
2 117 (2.99%) Git
3 62 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) GitLab
5 22 (0.56%) JUnit
6 17 (0.43%) 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%) LoadRunner
15 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,358 (34.72%) Social Skills
2 599 (15.32%) Banking
3 559 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 283 (7.24%) Organisational Skills
5 280 (7.16%) Public Sector
6 259 (6.62%) Legal
7 164 (4.19%) Retail
8 149 (3.81%) Influencing Skills
9 99 (2.53%) Manufacturing
10 93 (2.38%) Local Government
11 89 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.17%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 78 (1.99%) Billing
15 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
16 69 (1.76%) Financial Institution
17 66 (1.69%) Marketing
18 56 (1.43%) Telecoms
19 54 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
20 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 501 (12.81%) Analyst
2 396 (10.13%) Lead
3 372 (9.51%) Senior
4 312 (7.98%) Developer
5 308 (7.88%) Architect
6 300 (7.67%) Project Manager
7 273 (6.98%) Consultant
8 235 (6.01%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.86%) Accountant
10 147 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.58%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
13 94 (2.40%) Java Developer
14 89 (2.28%) Systems Accountant
15 87 (2.22%) Administrator
15 87 (2.22%) Senior Manager
16 80 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.84%) Data Analyst
18 70 (1.79%) Programme Manager
19 66 (1.69%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.78%) Terraform
2 146 (3.73%) Oracle Fusion
3 108 (2.76%) REST
4 80 (2.05%) Kafka
5 71 (1.82%) Middleware
6 70 (1.79%) Spring Boot
7 68 (1.74%) React
8 66 (1.69%) Spring
9 58 (1.48%) .NET
10 51 (1.30%) RESTful
11 48 (1.23%) OAuth
12 41 (1.05%) JSON
13 38 (0.97%) OpenID
14 33 (0.84%) Node.js
15 31 (0.79%) SAML
16 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
17 28 (0.72%) SOAP
17 28 (0.72%) XML
18 27 (0.69%) HTML
18 27 (0.69%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 169 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 163 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 160 (4.09%) Product Ownership
4 157 (4.01%) Virtual Team
5 124 (3.17%) Data Protection Act
6 121 (3.09%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 100 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
10 66 (1.69%) Data Structures
11 64 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
12 60 (1.53%) AI Agents
13 58 (1.48%) Data Centre
14 55 (1.41%) Mainframe
15 49 (1.25%) Public Cloud
15 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
17 46 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (1.07%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 114 (2.91%) Linux
2 110 (2.81%) Windows
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) 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
11 8 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.15%) 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 (0.077%) CentOS
14 3 (0.077%) MVS
15 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,038 (26.54%) Stakeholder Management
2 724 (18.51%) Agile
3 542 (13.86%) Continuous Improvement
4 540 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
5 502 (12.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 497 (12.71%) Migration
7 488 (12.48%) ERP
8 409 (10.46%) CI/CD
9 406 (10.38%) AI
10 380 (9.72%) Decision-Making
11 348 (8.90%) Project Management
12 347 (8.87%) DevOps
13 346 (8.85%) Change Management
14 307 (7.85%) Roadmaps
15 289 (7.39%) Risk Management
16 288 (7.36%) Project Delivery
17 286 (7.31%) Analytics
18 277 (7.08%) Validation
19 266 (6.80%) User Acceptance Testing
20 235 (6.01%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 351 (8.97%) Python
1 351 (8.97%) SQL
2 246 (6.29%) Java
3 81 (2.07%) PowerShell
4 76 (1.94%) JavaScript
5 63 (1.61%) C#
6 61 (1.56%) Bash
7 45 (1.15%) TypeScript
8 40 (1.02%) PL/SQL
9 37 (0.95%) Go
9 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.59%) C++
11 18 (0.46%) Bicep
12 16 (0.41%) Scala
13 13 (0.33%) ABAP
13 13 (0.33%) Perl
13 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 8 (0.20%) JCL
Qualifications
1 353 (9.03%) Security Cleared
2 255 (6.52%) Degree
3 216 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 182 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (2.76%) ACCA
6 105 (2.68%) CIMA
7 96 (2.45%) PMP
8 89 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 79 (2.02%) PMI Certification
10 69 (1.76%) CISSP
11 45 (1.15%) AWS Certification
12 44 (1.13%) CISM
13 43 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
14 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
15 33 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
16 31 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.61%) CCSP
19 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
20 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (6.37%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.45%) PMO
3 139 (3.55%) QA
4 99 (2.53%) GDPR
5 57 (1.46%) GRC
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
8 41 (1.05%) SLA
9 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.79%) IFRS
11 25 (0.64%) 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
15 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
17 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 78 (1.99%) Docker
2 71 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.20%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) ACF2
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 2 (0.051%) IAG
13 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 212 (5.42%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.92%) Ansible
3 40 (1.02%) Grafana
4 35 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 13 (0.33%) 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 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Tivoli
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 587 (15.01%) Microsoft
2 430 (10.99%) SAP
3 375 (9.59%) Oracle
4 173 (4.42%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.89%) Google
6 95 (2.43%) IBM
7 80 (2.05%) Databricks
8 66 (1.69%) Salesforce
9 62 (1.59%) VMware
10 47 (1.20%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Ariba
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco
13 32 (0.82%) Sage
14 26 (0.66%) Red Hat
15 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) IFS