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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,913 2,625 2,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.81% 16.91% 15.25%
As % of the General category 26.31% 27.76% 27.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,299 1,744 1,531
10th Percentile £337 £308 £301
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 66 100
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.27 £15.49 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +22.74%
75th Percentile - £31.12 £55.06
90th Percentile £72.50 £58.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.16 £33.00
% change year-on-year +56.12% -14.67% +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 14,875 9,455 9,739
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.51% 60.92% 56.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,934 5,713 5,262
10th Percentile £263 £206 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £599 £575 £588
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 2,269 931 846
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.01 £21.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.62% -38.89% +29.68%
75th Percentile £54.40 £42.21 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.31% -28.14% +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 30 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 30 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 30 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 1,349 £514 +11.08% 1,677
South East -1 746 £500 -2.58% 1,650
North West -2 643 £506 +12.44% 916
Yorkshire 0 628 £519 +3.70% 568
Midlands -2 616 £514 +8.21% 996
Scotland 0 547 £463 -7.50% 823
West Midlands -3 461 £518 -0.43% 624
South West -5 350 £525 -4.55% 848
East of England +4 203 £555 -3.48% 498
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 372
North East -5 71 £538 +22.51% 205
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 400
Wales +1 63 £525 +20.69% 181
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 19
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
1 140 (3.58%) Confluence
2 96 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 20 (0.51%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 11 (0.28%) CMS
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) JBoss
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 261 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 210 (5.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.33%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 34 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
5 33 (0.84%) NetSuite
6 30 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
7 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 24 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
11 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
12 20 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
12 20 (0.51%) Workday HCM
13 16 (0.41%) SAP BRIM
14 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
14 13 (0.33%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
14 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 472 (12.06%) Azure
2 359 (9.17%) AWS
3 258 (6.59%) GCP
4 222 (5.67%) Power Platform
5 110 (2.81%) GitHub
6 105 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
8 95 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
8 95 (2.43%) SaaS
9 76 (1.94%) Entra ID
10 48 (1.23%) Serverless
11 47 (1.20%) OpenShift
12 45 (1.15%) Snowflake
13 44 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 43 (1.10%) OCI
15 37 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 33 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
18 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
19 28 (0.72%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.12%) Firewall
2 82 (2.10%) Network Security
3 43 (1.10%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.43%) Broadband
9 15 (0.38%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 11 (0.28%) 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%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (4.57%) Power BI
2 73 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.81%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.79%) Metadata
4 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 43 (1.10%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.87%) Tableau
8 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
9 30 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 22 (0.56%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 17 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
15 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 218 (5.57%) JIRA
2 121 (3.09%) Git
3 67 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.69%) GitLab
5 23 (0.59%) JUnit
6 19 (0.49%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
7 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.36%) Maven
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Gradle
10 10 (0.26%) Hudson
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 8 (0.20%) Mockito
12 8 (0.20%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,359 (34.73%) Social Skills
2 610 (15.59%) Banking
3 541 (13.83%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.28%) Organisational Skills
4 285 (7.28%) Public Sector
5 258 (6.59%) Legal
6 160 (4.09%) Retail
7 143 (3.65%) Influencing Skills
8 109 (2.79%) Manufacturing
9 92 (2.35%) Billing
10 91 (2.33%) General Ledger
11 90 (2.30%) Local Government
12 83 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
13 80 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 73 (1.87%) Investment Banking
15 67 (1.71%) Marketing
16 63 (1.61%) Financial Institution
17 59 (1.51%) Telecoms
18 57 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 45 (1.15%) Law
Job Titles
1 478 (12.22%) Analyst
2 391 (9.99%) Lead
3 386 (9.86%) Senior
4 312 (7.97%) Developer
5 299 (7.64%) Architect
6 298 (7.62%) Project Manager
7 277 (7.08%) Consultant
8 224 (5.72%) Business Analyst
9 155 (3.96%) Accountant
10 144 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.50%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.45%) Java Developer
13 93 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
14 90 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 89 (2.27%) Administrator
16 87 (2.22%) Senior Manager
17 81 (2.07%) Finance Manager
18 73 (1.87%) Data Analyst
19 69 (1.76%) Software Engineer
20 66 (1.69%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.86%) Terraform
2 145 (3.71%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.02%) REST
4 80 (2.04%) Kafka
5 75 (1.92%) React
6 73 (1.87%) Spring Boot
7 72 (1.84%) Middleware
8 68 (1.74%) Spring
9 60 (1.53%) .NET
10 54 (1.38%) RESTful
11 49 (1.25%) OAuth
12 45 (1.15%) JSON
13 38 (0.97%) OpenID
14 33 (0.84%) Node.js
15 30 (0.77%) HTML
15 30 (0.77%) SAML
15 30 (0.77%) SAP Fiori
16 29 (0.74%) OAuth2
16 29 (0.74%) SOAP
16 29 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 174 (4.45%) Onboarding
2 172 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 163 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 158 (4.04%) Virtual Team
5 129 (3.30%) Data Protection Act
6 123 (3.14%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.86%) Podcast
9 94 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
10 69 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 66 (1.69%) Data Centre
13 62 (1.58%) AI Agents
14 54 (1.38%) Mainframe
15 52 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
16 50 (1.28%) Public Cloud
17 49 (1.25%) Security Posture
18 48 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
19 44 (1.12%) Mobile App
20 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.02%) Linux
2 107 (2.73%) Windows
3 60 (1.53%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 17 (0.43%) Android
8 16 (0.41%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,058 (27.04%) Stakeholder Management
2 731 (18.68%) Agile
3 539 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
4 536 (13.70%) Problem-Solving
5 498 (12.73%) Migration
6 485 (12.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 471 (12.04%) ERP
8 425 (10.86%) CI/CD
9 414 (10.58%) AI
10 376 (9.61%) Decision-Making
11 351 (8.97%) DevOps
12 344 (8.79%) Project Management
13 334 (8.54%) Change Management
14 319 (8.15%) Roadmaps
15 297 (7.59%) Project Delivery
16 285 (7.28%) Analytics
17 283 (7.23%) Validation
18 282 (7.21%) Risk Management
19 273 (6.98%) User Acceptance Testing
20 231 (5.90%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 361 (9.23%) Python
2 358 (9.15%) SQL
3 254 (6.49%) Java
4 82 (2.10%) JavaScript
5 78 (1.99%) PowerShell
6 65 (1.66%) C#
7 61 (1.56%) Bash
8 50 (1.28%) TypeScript
9 39 (1.00%) Go
9 39 (1.00%) PL/SQL
10 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 22 (0.56%) C++
12 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 18 (0.46%) Scala
14 16 (0.41%) Perl
15 13 (0.33%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.20%) JCL
Qualifications
1 351 (8.97%) Security Cleared
2 249 (6.36%) Degree
3 215 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 182 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 108 (2.76%) ACCA
6 106 (2.71%) CIMA
7 92 (2.35%) PMP
8 89 (2.27%) DV Cleared
9 76 (1.94%) PMI Certification
10 63 (1.61%) CISSP
11 44 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.02%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) CISM
15 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
16 31 (0.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 29 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.61%) CCSP
19 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.59%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 257 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.50%) PMO
3 142 (3.63%) QA
4 90 (2.30%) GDPR
5 56 (1.43%) GRC
6 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
7 42 (1.07%) NIST
8 40 (1.02%) SLA
9 32 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.72%) IFRS
11 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) 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%) Actionable Recommendations
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 79 (2.02%) Docker
2 69 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.33%) 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
7 11 (0.28%) vSphere
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 218 (5.57%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.02%) Ansible
3 39 (1.00%) Grafana
4 37 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.64%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 12 (0.31%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.23%) Control-M
14 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
15 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
16 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
17 4 (0.10%) Kibana
17 4 (0.10%) logstash
17 4 (0.10%) Puppet
17 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 592 (15.13%) Microsoft
2 441 (11.27%) SAP
3 367 (9.38%) Oracle
4 169 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.89%) Google
6 98 (2.50%) IBM
7 84 (2.15%) Databricks
8 67 (1.71%) VMware
9 65 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 48 (1.23%) Splunk
11 47 (1.20%) Ariba
12 46 (1.18%) Workday
13 41 (1.05%) Cisco
14 31 (0.79%) Sage
15 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.61%) Adobe
16 24 (0.61%) Snow
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 18 (0.46%) Sybase
19 17 (0.43%) NetApp