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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,889 2,627 2,687
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.79% 17.01% 14.98%
As % of the General category 26.43% 27.97% 26.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,311 1,746 1,576
10th Percentile £345 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -3.66% -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 270 58 115
10th Percentile £14.65 £13.35 £13.75
25th Percentile £20.22 £15.48 £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 £54.50
90th Percentile £75.04 £61.02 £74.50
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 14,717 9,391 9,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.19% 60.81% 55.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,913 5,651 5,467
10th Percentile £260 £210 £209
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% 0.00%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,225 908 934
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.29 £35.02
Median % change year-on-year +40.94% -39.21% +27.33%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.65 £72.20
UK median hourly rate £29.60 £25.15 £35.03
% change year-on-year +17.69% -28.20% +27.38%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 1,334 £514 +11.74% 1,795
South East -3 733 £500 -2.20% 2,069
North West -1 652 £500 +11.11% 1,004
Yorkshire 0 602 £525 +5.00% 577
Midlands -3 596 £500 +5.26% 1,059
Scotland 0 554 £467 -4.50% 939
West Midlands -2 441 £525 +1.01% 660
South West -5 358 £525 -8.70% 886
East of England +3 210 £550 -2.44% 643
East Midlands -4 152 £500 +19.05% 399
North East -6 73 £500 +14.29% 229
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.92% 350
Wales +1 61 £525 +20.69% 185
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
1 148 (3.81%) Confluence
2 93 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) 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%) WebSphere
7 8 (0.21%) 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%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.051%) JBoss
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
12 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 260 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) 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
1 205 (5.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 36 (0.93%) 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 (0.57%) SAP FI
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.44%) 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
1 471 (12.11%) Azure
2 346 (8.90%) AWS
3 250 (6.43%) GCP
4 226 (5.81%) Power Platform
5 105 (2.70%) GitHub
6 103 (2.65%) SaaS
7 101 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
8 94 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
10 75 (1.93%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.21%) OCI
12 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
13 45 (1.16%) Serverless
13 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
15 35 (0.90%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
18 28 (0.72%) Anthropic Claude
19 27 (0.69%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.01%) Firewall
2 76 (1.95%) Network Security
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 25 (0.64%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.51%) WAN
7 17 (0.44%) Broadband
8 16 (0.41%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) BGP
10 9 (0.23%) BIG-IP
10 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 8 (0.21%) VSAN
12 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) SAN
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco IOS
14 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.68%) Power BI
2 72 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
2 72 (1.85%) Relational Database
3 69 (1.77%) Metadata
3 69 (1.77%) SQL Server
4 40 (1.03%) Data Lake
5 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
6 36 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
6 36 (0.93%) Tableau
7 33 (0.85%) MongoDB
8 29 (0.75%) Db2
9 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
10 19 (0.49%) BigQuery
10 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
10 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 15 (0.39%) Data Vault
12 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
12 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 14 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 230 (5.91%) JIRA
2 117 (3.01%) Git
3 61 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) GitLab
5 22 (0.57%) JUnit
6 17 (0.44%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.39%) 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 (0.21%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
15 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,350 (34.71%) Social Skills
2 595 (15.30%) Banking
3 555 (14.27%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.23%) Organisational Skills
5 279 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 258 (6.63%) Legal
7 164 (4.22%) Retail
8 148 (3.81%) Influencing Skills
9 100 (2.57%) Manufacturing
10 93 (2.39%) Local Government
11 89 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.19%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 78 (2.01%) Billing
15 75 (1.93%) Investment Banking
16 67 (1.72%) Financial Institution
17 65 (1.67%) Marketing
18 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
19 54 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
20 50 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 496 (12.75%) Analyst
2 394 (10.13%) Lead
3 370 (9.51%) Senior
4 312 (8.02%) Developer
5 307 (7.89%) Architect
6 299 (7.69%) Project Manager
7 271 (6.97%) Consultant
8 232 (5.97%) Business Analyst
9 150 (3.86%) Accountant
10 147 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.60%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
13 94 (2.42%) Java Developer
14 88 (2.26%) Systems Accountant
15 86 (2.21%) Administrator
15 86 (2.21%) Senior Manager
16 80 (2.06%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.85%) Data Analyst
18 67 (1.72%) Programme Manager
19 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (3.75%) Oracle Fusion
1 146 (3.75%) Terraform
2 108 (2.78%) REST
3 80 (2.06%) Kafka
4 71 (1.83%) Middleware
5 70 (1.80%) Spring Boot
6 68 (1.75%) React
7 66 (1.70%) Spring
8 57 (1.47%) .NET
9 51 (1.31%) RESTful
10 48 (1.23%) OAuth
11 41 (1.05%) JSON
12 38 (0.98%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
14 31 (0.80%) SAML
15 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
16 28 (0.72%) SOAP
16 28 (0.72%) XML
17 27 (0.69%) HTML
17 27 (0.69%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.29%) Onboarding
2 162 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 160 (4.11%) Product Ownership
4 156 (4.01%) Virtual Team
5 124 (3.19%) Data Protection Act
6 122 (3.14%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.91%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 98 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
10 66 (1.70%) Data Structures
11 64 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
12 60 (1.54%) Data Centre
13 59 (1.52%) AI Agents
14 55 (1.41%) Mainframe
15 49 (1.26%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
16 47 (1.21%) Public Cloud
17 46 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 112 (2.88%) Linux
2 109 (2.80%) Windows
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 36 (0.93%) 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 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
11 8 (0.21%) 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%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,033 (26.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 720 (18.51%) Agile
3 537 (13.81%) Continuous Improvement
3 537 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
4 500 (12.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 490 (12.60%) Migration
6 488 (12.55%) ERP
7 406 (10.44%) CI/CD
8 402 (10.34%) AI
9 377 (9.69%) Decision-Making
10 345 (8.87%) Project Management
11 343 (8.82%) Change Management
11 343 (8.82%) DevOps
12 305 (7.84%) Roadmaps
13 287 (7.38%) Project Delivery
13 287 (7.38%) Risk Management
14 285 (7.33%) Analytics
15 273 (7.02%) Validation
16 264 (6.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 235 (6.04%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 349 (8.97%) SQL
2 347 (8.92%) Python
3 245 (6.30%) Java
4 80 (2.06%) PowerShell
5 76 (1.95%) JavaScript
6 63 (1.62%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 45 (1.16%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 37 (0.95%) Go
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 18 (0.46%) Bicep
14 16 (0.41%) Scala
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 13 (0.33%) Perl
15 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 350 (9.00%) Security Cleared
2 251 (6.45%) Degree
3 212 (5.45%) SC Cleared
4 182 (4.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (2.78%) ACCA
6 105 (2.70%) CIMA
7 94 (2.42%) PMP
8 90 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 77 (1.98%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.75%) CISSP
11 45 (1.16%) AWS Certification
12 43 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
12 43 (1.11%) CISM
13 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 31 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
18 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 22 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (6.38%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.50%) PMO
3 139 (3.57%) QA
4 97 (2.49%) GDPR
5 57 (1.47%) GRC
6 47 (1.21%) NIST
7 43 (1.11%) Accessibility
8 41 (1.05%) SLA
9 37 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 31 (0.80%) 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 (1.95%) Docker
2 71 (1.83%) 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 (0.21%) 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%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 208 (5.35%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.88%) Ansible
3 38 (0.98%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.57%) 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
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) Tivoli
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 582 (14.97%) Microsoft
2 427 (10.98%) SAP
3 374 (9.62%) Oracle
4 171 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.88%) Google
6 95 (2.44%) IBM
7 80 (2.06%) Databricks
8 66 (1.70%) Salesforce
9 62 (1.59%) VMware
10 45 (1.16%) Splunk
11 44 (1.13%) Workday
12 43 (1.11%) Ariba
13 41 (1.05%) Cisco
14 31 (0.80%) Sage
15 25 (0.64%) MuleSoft
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 23 (0.59%) Adobe
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 19 (0.49%) IFS
17 19 (0.49%) Sybase