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 17 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,900 2,718 2,598
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.17% 17.64% 14.30%
As % of the General category 27.48% 28.82% 26.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,343 1,796 1,607
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £544 £575
% change year-on-year +1.20% -5.48% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 69 157
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.41 £23.63
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £40.50
90th Percentile £76.68 £75.00 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +46.62%

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 14,194 9,432 9,766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.58% 61.21% 53.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,856 5,680 5,631
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £657 £689
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,958 854 1,151
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.00 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.63 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +52.48%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.12 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £31.56 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.47% -34.02% +38.62%

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 17 August 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 17 August 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 17 August 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 £500 +6.50% 1,387
South East -1 737 £500 -4.76% 1,409
North West 0 695 £500 +11.11% 827
Midlands 0 636 £500 +11.11% 652
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +6.20% 396
Scotland 0 496 £475 -5.00% 664
West Midlands +1 479 £520 +4.00% 395
South West -4 384 £538 -4.44% 682
East of England +4 200 £525 -8.70% 444
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +21.21% 257
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 - 274
North East -10 66 £500 +11.11% 181
Wales 0 65 £528 +14.05% 149
Channel Islands +5 4 £500 - 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
1 151 (3.87%) Confluence
2 95 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.38%) CMS
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.051%) JBoss
13 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 246 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 114 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
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
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (5.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
4 45 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.05%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
14 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.26%) Azure
2 323 (8.28%) AWS
3 227 (5.82%) GCP
4 226 (5.79%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 94 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
6 94 (2.41%) GitHub
7 91 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
8 90 (2.31%) Microsoft 365
9 68 (1.74%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.21%) OCI
11 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
12 41 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
12 41 (1.05%) Serverless
13 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
14 29 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
15 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
18 24 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.00%) Firewall
2 69 (1.77%) Network Security
3 44 (1.13%) VPN
4 34 (0.87%) DNS
5 27 (0.69%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.56%) LAN
7 22 (0.56%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
11 8 (0.21%) Broadband
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (4.77%) Power BI
2 76 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.72%) Metadata
5 66 (1.69%) SQL Server
6 47 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
7 42 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.97%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.87%) Tableau
10 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
17 14 (0.36%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 249 (6.38%) JIRA
2 106 (2.72%) Git
3 55 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.38%) GitLab
6 15 (0.38%) Hudson
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
15 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,255 (32.18%) Social Skills
2 560 (14.36%) Analytical Skills
3 545 (13.97%) Banking
4 280 (7.18%) Public Sector
5 246 (6.31%) Organisational Skills
6 245 (6.28%) Legal
7 163 (4.18%) Retail
8 137 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
9 113 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 101 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
11 99 (2.54%) Local Government
12 83 (2.13%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
14 76 (1.95%) Financial Institution
15 74 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 73 (1.87%) Billing
17 55 (1.41%) Marketing
17 55 (1.41%) Telecoms
18 52 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
19 51 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 514 (13.18%) Analyst
2 421 (10.79%) Lead
3 364 (9.33%) Senior
4 327 (8.38%) Project Manager
5 305 (7.82%) Architect
6 279 (7.15%) Developer
7 267 (6.85%) Consultant
8 243 (6.23%) Business Analyst
9 166 (4.26%) Accountant
10 135 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.59%) IT Manager
11 101 (2.59%) Systems Accountant
12 99 (2.54%) Senior Manager
13 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
14 80 (2.05%) Java Developer
15 77 (1.97%) Finance Manager
16 75 (1.92%) Administrator
17 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
18 67 (1.72%) Software Engineer
19 66 (1.69%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.82%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.15%) REST
3 77 (1.97%) Middleware
4 65 (1.67%) Kafka
5 62 (1.59%) Spring Boot
6 61 (1.56%) Spring
7 58 (1.49%) .NET
8 55 (1.41%) React
9 36 (0.92%) OAuth
10 33 (0.85%) Node.js
10 33 (0.85%) RESTful
11 30 (0.77%) JSON
11 30 (0.77%) XML
12 28 (0.72%) SAML
13 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
14 25 (0.64%) OpenID
15 22 (0.56%) SailPoint
16 20 (0.51%) HTML
16 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
16 20 (0.51%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 161 (4.13%) Onboarding
2 156 (4.00%) Product Ownership
3 150 (3.85%) Cloud Native
4 145 (3.72%) Virtual Team
5 113 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 107 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
7 105 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 101 (2.59%) Podcast
8 101 (2.59%) Web Conferencing
9 68 (1.74%) Data Structures
10 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 50 (1.28%) Mainframe
12 50 (1.28%) Security Posture
13 49 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
14 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
15 39 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
17 36 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.05%) Windows
2 105 (2.69%) Linux
3 56 (1.44%) Unix
4 31 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
8 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.051%) CentOS
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 951 (24.38%) Stakeholder Management
2 714 (18.31%) Agile
3 546 (14.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 531 (13.62%) Problem-Solving
5 520 (13.33%) Migration
5 520 (13.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 512 (13.13%) ERP
7 369 (9.46%) Decision-Making
8 365 (9.36%) AI
9 359 (9.21%) CI/CD
10 351 (9.00%) Project Management
11 350 (8.97%) DevOps
12 342 (8.77%) Change Management
13 312 (8.00%) Project Delivery
14 285 (7.31%) Roadmaps
15 280 (7.18%) Risk Management
16 275 (7.05%) User Acceptance Testing
17 274 (7.03%) Analytics
18 267 (6.85%) Validation
19 236 (6.05%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 324 (8.31%) SQL
2 321 (8.23%) Python
3 218 (5.59%) Java
4 75 (1.92%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) Bash
6 55 (1.41%) C#
7 53 (1.36%) JavaScript
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.59%) C++
10 23 (0.59%) Go
11 14 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 13 (0.33%) Bicep
12 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
13 12 (0.31%) ABAP
13 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 11 (0.28%) Scala
14 11 (0.28%) VBA
15 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 367 (9.41%) Security Cleared
2 269 (6.90%) Degree
3 224 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 158 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 113 (2.90%) ACCA
6 109 (2.79%) CIMA
7 100 (2.56%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 85 (2.18%) PMI Certification
10 72 (1.85%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) CISM
12 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
12 36 (0.92%) Azure Certification
12 36 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
13 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (5.79%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.51%) PMO
3 134 (3.44%) QA
4 129 (3.31%) GDPR
5 51 (1.31%) GRC
6 50 (1.28%) NIST
7 47 (1.21%) SLA
8 38 (0.97%) Accessibility
8 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 32 (0.82%) IFRS
10 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) GAAP
15 8 (0.21%) COBIT
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
16 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (1.85%) Active Directory
2 71 (1.82%) Docker
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) 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%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) KVM
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
15 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 172 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 119 (3.05%) Terraform
3 74 (1.90%) Ansible
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (0.77%) Grafana
6 29 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
8 17 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Argo
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) Puppet
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 555 (14.23%) Microsoft
2 407 (10.44%) SAP
3 389 (9.97%) Oracle
4 177 (4.54%) ServiceNow
5 115 (2.95%) Google
6 88 (2.26%) IBM
7 77 (1.97%) Databricks
8 62 (1.59%) Salesforce
9 58 (1.49%) VMware
10 46 (1.18%) Sage
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 36 (0.92%) Splunk
14 31 (0.79%) Ariba
14 31 (0.79%) IFS
15 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) Adobe