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 27 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 5
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,761 2,411 2,746
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.43% 17.72% 13.00%
As % of the General category 28.28% 28.45% 24.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,301 1,561 1,661
10th Percentile £333 £308 £281
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £601 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 70 209
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.23 £12.70
25th Percentile £17.72 £18.51 £14.50
Median hourly rate £43.13 £29.27 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +47.35% -5.04% -35.63%
75th Percentile £54.00 £64.69 £38.12
90th Percentile £86.50 £75.00 £58.50
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £36.00 £28.00
% change year-on-year -2.78% +28.57% -8.96%

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 13,298 8,476 11,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.03% 62.30% 53.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,548 5,161 6,313
10th Percentile £272 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
75th Percentile £592 £575 £595
90th Percentile £686 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £517 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.33% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,636 695 1,684
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.18 £15.50 £15.17
Median hourly rate £31.50 £23.10 £31.13
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% -25.78% +19.71%
75th Percentile £63.38 £50.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.80
% change year-on-year +16.36% -13.52% +5.12%

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 +2 1,278 £500 +7.53% 611
South East -1 693 £500 -4.76% 895
North West +4 672 £471 +4.61% 320
Midlands 0 649 £500 +11.11% 367
Yorkshire 0 561 £525 +8.19% 216
West Midlands +1 478 £500 +0.81% 227
Scotland 0 478 £496 +4.32% 137
South West -3 376 £525 - 249
East of England +2 193 £516 -10.22% 213
East Midlands 0 164 £475 +13.77% 139
Wales +7 88 £528 +13.44% 66
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +11.76% 73
North East -18 46 £500 +13.96% 85
Channel Islands - 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
1 166 (4.41%) Confluence
2 102 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.48%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 13 (0.35%) Apache
7 11 (0.29%) CICS
8 10 (0.27%) CMS
9 9 (0.24%) SAS
10 6 (0.16%) IIS
11 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
12 4 (0.11%) TPMS
13 3 (0.080%) Apache Airflow
14 2 (0.053%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.053%) Camunda
14 2 (0.053%) Ethereum
14 2 (0.053%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 238 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.39%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.053%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.053%) InVision
9 2 (0.053%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.053%) Sketch
9 2 (0.053%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.027%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.027%) UXPin
10 1 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (5.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.01%) NetSuite
5 36 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 36 (0.96%) Oracle Receivables
6 20 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
7 18 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
8 17 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
8 17 (0.45%) SAP FI
8 17 (0.45%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.35%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 13 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
10 12 (0.32%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.32%) SAP Hybris
11 11 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.29%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 465 (12.36%) Azure
2 321 (8.53%) AWS
3 214 (5.69%) Power Platform
4 196 (5.21%) GCP
5 103 (2.74%) SaaS
6 94 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
7 90 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
8 83 (2.21%) GitHub
9 71 (1.89%) Entra ID
10 68 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 44 (1.17%) OpenShift
12 43 (1.14%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.09%) Serverless
14 40 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
15 36 (0.96%) OCI
16 25 (0.66%) PaaS
17 23 (0.61%) Power Automate
18 22 (0.58%) Amazon S3
18 22 (0.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 21 (0.56%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.18%) Firewall
2 64 (1.70%) Network Security
3 36 (0.96%) DNS
4 35 (0.93%) WAN
5 33 (0.88%) VPN
6 23 (0.61%) SSL
7 21 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.45%) LAN
8 17 (0.45%) SD-WAN
9 12 (0.32%) DHCP
10 11 (0.29%) VSAN
11 9 (0.24%) BGP
11 9 (0.24%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.19%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.19%) Internet
14 6 (0.16%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.16%) SSH
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (4.81%) Power BI
2 76 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 69 (1.83%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.81%) Metadata
5 58 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
6 54 (1.44%) SQL Server
7 52 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
8 35 (0.93%) Tableau
9 33 (0.88%) Data Lake
9 33 (0.88%) NoSQL
10 25 (0.66%) MongoDB
11 23 (0.61%) DynamoDB
11 23 (0.61%) Oracle ODI
11 23 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
12 20 (0.53%) Db2
12 20 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Database
14 16 (0.43%) Data Vault
14 16 (0.43%) Power Query
15 15 (0.40%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 278 (7.39%) JIRA
2 83 (2.21%) Git
3 75 (1.99%) Jenkins
4 28 (0.74%) JUnit
5 23 (0.61%) GitLab
6 20 (0.53%) Selenium
7 19 (0.51%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.37%) Hudson
9 13 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.32%) Postman
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.24%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.19%) ERwin
12 7 (0.19%) Gradle
12 7 (0.19%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.19%) Maven
13 6 (0.16%) IntelliJ
14 5 (0.13%) REST Assured
14 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,198 (31.85%) Social Skills
2 525 (13.96%) Banking
3 496 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
4 271 (7.21%) Public Sector
5 182 (4.84%) Legal
6 158 (4.20%) Organisational Skills
7 127 (3.38%) Retail
8 110 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 108 (2.87%) Local Government
10 104 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
10 104 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
11 84 (2.23%) Financial Institution
12 82 (2.18%) Investment Banking
13 79 (2.10%) General Ledger
14 66 (1.75%) Billing
15 59 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 56 (1.49%) Telecoms
17 48 (1.28%) Marketing
18 45 (1.20%) Aerospace
18 45 (1.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 520 (13.83%) Analyst
2 355 (9.44%) Lead
3 351 (9.33%) Architect
4 346 (9.20%) Project Manager
5 339 (9.01%) Senior
6 271 (7.21%) Developer
7 252 (6.70%) Consultant
8 235 (6.25%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
10 154 (4.09%) Accountant
11 99 (2.63%) Senior Manager
11 99 (2.63%) Systems Accountant
12 95 (2.53%) IT Manager
13 90 (2.39%) Programme Manager
14 79 (2.10%) Java Developer
15 77 (2.05%) Financial Analyst
16 69 (1.83%) Finance Manager
17 66 (1.75%) Administrator
18 63 (1.68%) Data Engineer
19 62 (1.65%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.24%) Oracle Fusion
2 89 (2.37%) Middleware
3 87 (2.31%) REST
4 70 (1.86%) Kafka
5 69 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 68 (1.81%) Spring
7 57 (1.52%) React
8 53 (1.41%) .NET
9 40 (1.06%) RESTful
10 32 (0.85%) JSON
10 32 (0.85%) OAuth
11 29 (0.77%) Node.js
12 26 (0.69%) OpenID
12 26 (0.69%) SailPoint
12 26 (0.69%) XML
13 25 (0.66%) SAP Fiori
14 23 (0.61%) AngularJS
14 23 (0.61%) Redux
15 19 (0.51%) SAML
16 18 (0.48%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 153 (4.07%) Product Ownership
3 139 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.19%) Management Information System
5 105 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
6 98 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
7 80 (2.13%) Data Centre
8 73 (1.94%) Virtual Team
9 67 (1.78%) Public Cloud
10 65 (1.73%) Data Structures
11 50 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
12 47 (1.25%) Mainframe
13 45 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 40 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.90%) Web Conferencing
16 33 (0.88%) Podcast
17 29 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
18 27 (0.72%) CMDB
19 25 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
19 25 (0.66%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 122 (3.24%) Windows
2 101 (2.69%) Linux
3 57 (1.52%) Unix
4 31 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.72%) Solaris
6 24 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.56%) zOS
8 13 (0.35%) AIX
9 10 (0.27%) Android
9 10 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.24%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) HPUX
12 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.11%) MVS
12 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.11%) SUSE
13 3 (0.080%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.027%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 850 (22.60%) Stakeholder Management
2 690 (18.35%) Agile
3 550 (14.62%) Problem-Solving
4 545 (14.49%) Migration
5 509 (13.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 501 (13.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 493 (13.11%) ERP
8 405 (10.77%) Project Management
9 359 (9.55%) DevOps
10 338 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 336 (8.93%) Change Management
12 334 (8.88%) Decision-Making
13 311 (8.27%) Project Delivery
14 300 (7.98%) AI
15 288 (7.66%) User Acceptance Testing
16 281 (7.47%) Roadmaps
17 271 (7.21%) Validation
18 261 (6.94%) Risk Management
19 239 (6.35%) Analytics
20 234 (6.22%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 355 (9.44%) SQL
2 283 (7.52%) Python
3 218 (5.80%) Java
4 78 (2.07%) PowerShell
5 49 (1.30%) C#
6 43 (1.14%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.01%) Bash
8 36 (0.96%) PL/SQL
9 32 (0.85%) TypeScript
10 22 (0.58%) Go
11 21 (0.56%) C++
11 21 (0.56%) Shell Script
12 16 (0.43%) VBA
13 14 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 12 (0.32%) T-SQL
15 11 (0.29%) COBOL
15 11 (0.29%) Rust
16 10 (0.27%) ABAP
16 10 (0.27%) PHP
17 9 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 347 (9.23%) Security Cleared
2 308 (8.19%) Degree
3 217 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.46%) ACCA
5 127 (3.38%) CIMA
6 121 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 115 (3.06%) PMP
8 100 (2.66%) PMI Certification
9 78 (2.07%) CISSP
10 62 (1.65%) DV Cleared
11 47 (1.25%) CISM
12 40 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
13 32 (0.85%) AWS Certification
13 32 (0.85%) Master's Degree
14 30 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 28 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
16 26 (0.69%) Azure Certification
17 20 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
18 18 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 18 (0.48%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 194 (5.16%) Data Quality
2 162 (4.31%) PMO
3 149 (3.96%) GDPR
4 135 (3.59%) QA
5 58 (1.54%) NIST
6 49 (1.30%) SLA
7 45 (1.20%) GRC
8 39 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 36 (0.96%) IFRS
10 35 (0.93%) PCI DSS
11 33 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.85%) Accessibility
13 18 (0.48%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.35%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 11 (0.29%) NCSC
15 11 (0.29%) PSD2
16 10 (0.27%) SEPA
17 9 (0.24%) GAAP
18 7 (0.19%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 88 (2.34%) Docker
2 80 (2.13%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.43%) RACF
6 13 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.35%) vSphere
7 12 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.16%) GPFS
8 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.16%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) KVM
11 2 (0.053%) ACF2
11 2 (0.053%) Firmware
11 2 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.053%) SRDF
11 2 (0.053%) zsh
12 1 (0.027%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 167 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 89 (2.37%) Terraform
3 76 (2.02%) Ansible
4 36 (0.96%) Grafana
5 30 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 28 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.51%) SCCM
9 13 (0.35%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.32%) Control-M
10 12 (0.32%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.29%) Istio
12 10 (0.27%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.27%) Nessus
13 9 (0.24%) Argo
14 8 (0.21%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
15 6 (0.16%) VxRail
16 5 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 465 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 399 (10.61%) SAP
3 351 (9.33%) Oracle
4 159 (4.23%) ServiceNow
5 105 (2.79%) Google
6 74 (1.97%) IBM
7 73 (1.94%) Databricks
8 57 (1.52%) VMware
9 55 (1.46%) Sage
10 52 (1.38%) Cisco
11 49 (1.30%) Splunk
12 37 (0.98%) Salesforce
13 35 (0.93%) IFS
14 32 (0.85%) Ariba
15 29 (0.77%) Workday
16 23 (0.61%) HP
17 22 (0.58%) Red Hat
18 19 (0.51%) MuleSoft
19 17 (0.45%) CyberArk
19 17 (0.45%) Sybase