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 31 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,549 2,248 2,592
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.18% 17.32% 12.51%
As % of the General category 28.14% 27.72% 23.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,165 1,459 1,581
10th Percentile £333 £302 £280
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £508
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -2.56% -3.24%
75th Percentile £601 £588 £625
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 142 64 207
10th Percentile £13.98 £16.00 £12.41
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.73 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.83 £44.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.86% +57.15% -39.46%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.90 £75.88 £57.75
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £43.08 £26.97
% change year-on-year -41.08% +59.71% +0.47%

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 12,610 8,111 11,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.38% 62.48% 53.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,244 5,008 6,347
10th Percentile £263 £210 £206
25th Percentile £394 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,498 608 1,689
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.65 £15.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £24.42 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +18.76% -13.56% +2.73%
75th Percentile £61.18 £52.38 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.02 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £28.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% -6.67% -7.69%

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 31 May 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 31 May 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 31 May 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 +3 1,213 £492 +5.47% 664
South East 0 655 £500 -4.31% 790
North West +5 641 £465 +3.33% 393
Midlands -1 608 £492 +3.58% 399
Yorkshire +2 532 £519 +9.16% 213
Scotland 0 432 £500 +5.26% 165
West Midlands 0 416 £500 -2.13% 248
South West -2 364 £525 - 278
East of England +1 198 £520 -9.57% 197
East Midlands 0 187 £468 +6.36% 151
Wales +11 85 £475 +16.92% 64
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +17.65% 83
North East -13 41 £488 +7.73% 67
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
1 159 (4.48%) Confluence
2 109 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.59%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.48%) Apache
5 13 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.31%) CICS
6 11 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
7 8 (0.23%) CMS
7 8 (0.23%) SAS
8 6 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.17%) IIS
9 5 (0.14%) TPMS
9 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.056%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.056%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.056%) JBoss
11 2 (0.056%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 244 (6.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (3.32%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (3.07%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (2.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.32%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) InVision
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 3 (0.085%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.056%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.056%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.056%) Trello
11 1 (0.028%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.028%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.028%) UXPin
11 1 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 191 (5.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.16%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 34 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 32 (0.90%) NetSuite
7 23 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.56%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
9 17 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
10 16 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
11 15 (0.42%) SAP CO
11 15 (0.42%) SAP GRC
12 14 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
12 14 (0.39%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
14 12 (0.34%) NEC Housing
14 12 (0.34%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 428 (12.06%) Azure
2 319 (8.99%) AWS
3 213 (6.00%) Power Platform
4 167 (4.71%) GCP
5 100 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
6 96 (2.70%) SaaS
7 88 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.28%) GitHub
9 71 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
10 63 (1.78%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.30%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.18%) Snowflake
13 38 (1.07%) Serverless
14 34 (0.96%) Microsoft Copilot
15 31 (0.87%) OCI
16 25 (0.70%) Power Automate
17 24 (0.68%) Google Workspace
18 23 (0.65%) Amazon S3
19 22 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
19 22 (0.62%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.40%) Firewall
2 49 (1.38%) Network Security
3 40 (1.13%) DNS
4 39 (1.10%) WAN
5 36 (1.01%) VPN
6 22 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 17 (0.48%) LAN
9 16 (0.45%) SSL
10 15 (0.42%) DHCP
11 12 (0.34%) VSAN
12 10 (0.28%) MPLS
13 9 (0.25%) Skype
14 8 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
15 7 (0.20%) BGP
15 7 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.20%) Internet
16 5 (0.14%) FTP
16 5 (0.14%) OSPF
16 5 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (5.27%) Power BI
2 70 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.72%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.69%) Metadata
4 60 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
5 47 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
6 45 (1.27%) SQL Server
7 39 (1.10%) Tableau
8 34 (0.96%) NoSQL
9 26 (0.73%) DynamoDB
10 25 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.68%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
13 20 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 18 (0.51%) Big Data
16 17 (0.48%) DB2
17 16 (0.45%) Power Query
18 14 (0.39%) Data Vault
19 11 (0.31%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 291 (8.20%) JIRA
2 71 (2.00%) Jenkins
3 65 (1.83%) Git
4 29 (0.82%) GitLab
5 24 (0.68%) JUnit
6 22 (0.62%) Cucumber
7 20 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 19 (0.54%) Selenium
9 15 (0.42%) Hudson
10 14 (0.39%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.37%) Postman
12 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.23%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
14 6 (0.17%) Gradle
14 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.17%) Maven
15 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,130 (31.84%) Social Skills
2 501 (14.12%) Banking
3 459 (12.93%) Analytical Skills
4 258 (7.27%) Public Sector
5 133 (3.75%) Legal
5 133 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
6 119 (3.35%) Retail
7 116 (3.27%) Manufacturing
8 104 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
9 94 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
9 94 (2.65%) Local Government
10 77 (2.17%) Financial Institution
11 68 (1.92%) General Ledger
11 68 (1.92%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 61 (1.72%) Marketing
14 55 (1.55%) Billing
15 44 (1.24%) Law
16 39 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 36 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 522 (14.71%) Analyst
2 350 (9.86%) Project Manager
3 329 (9.27%) Architect
4 318 (8.96%) Lead
5 307 (8.65%) Senior
6 247 (6.96%) Consultant
7 240 (6.76%) Business Analyst
8 237 (6.68%) Developer
9 151 (4.25%) Solutions Architect
10 134 (3.78%) Accountant
11 98 (2.76%) Senior Manager
12 89 (2.51%) Programme Manager
13 84 (2.37%) Systems Accountant
14 76 (2.14%) IT Manager
15 75 (2.11%) Finance Manager
16 69 (1.94%) Financial Analyst
17 68 (1.92%) Java Developer
18 65 (1.83%) Data Analyst
19 61 (1.72%) Data Engineer
20 59 (1.66%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (2.70%) Oracle Fusion
2 88 (2.48%) REST
3 84 (2.37%) Middleware
4 67 (1.89%) Spring Boot
5 66 (1.86%) Kafka
6 65 (1.83%) Spring
7 48 (1.35%) React
8 46 (1.30%) .NET
9 44 (1.24%) RESTful
10 32 (0.90%) OAuth
11 31 (0.87%) Node.js
12 28 (0.79%) JSON
13 26 (0.73%) AngularJS
13 26 (0.73%) OpenID
14 25 (0.70%) XML
15 22 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
16 19 (0.54%) SailPoint
17 18 (0.51%) OAuth2
17 18 (0.51%) SAML
17 18 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.20%) Product Ownership
2 147 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 123 (3.47%) Cloud Native
4 113 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
6 88 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 85 (2.40%) Data Centre
8 63 (1.78%) Public Cloud
9 62 (1.75%) Data Structures
10 51 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
11 39 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
12 38 (1.07%) Mainframe
12 38 (1.07%) Security Posture
13 36 (1.01%) Virtual Team
14 28 (0.79%) PMI
15 24 (0.68%) CMDB
16 23 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
17 21 (0.59%) Mobile App
17 21 (0.59%) Operational Technology
18 20 (0.56%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.41%) Windows
2 103 (2.90%) Linux
3 50 (1.41%) Unix
4 30 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.76%) Solaris
6 23 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (0.48%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.37%) AIX
8 13 (0.37%) zOS
9 10 (0.28%) Android
10 9 (0.25%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.11%) HPUX
13 4 (0.11%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.11%) MVS
13 4 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.11%) SUSE
13 4 (0.11%) VMS
14 1 (0.028%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 742 (20.91%) Stakeholder Management
2 667 (18.79%) Agile
3 538 (15.16%) Problem-Solving
4 527 (14.85%) Migration
5 474 (13.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 470 (13.24%) ERP
7 456 (12.85%) Continuous Improvement
8 403 (11.36%) Project Management
9 349 (9.83%) DevOps
10 314 (8.85%) Change Management
11 309 (8.71%) CI/CD
12 296 (8.34%) Decision-Making
13 285 (8.03%) Project Delivery
14 271 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
15 262 (7.38%) Roadmaps
16 259 (7.30%) AI
17 253 (7.13%) Validation
18 249 (7.02%) Risk Management
19 238 (6.71%) Business Intelligence
20 222 (6.26%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 331 (9.33%) SQL
2 255 (7.19%) Python
3 215 (6.06%) Java
4 82 (2.31%) PowerShell
5 38 (1.07%) Bash
6 35 (0.99%) C#
7 34 (0.96%) JavaScript
8 29 (0.82%) TypeScript
9 22 (0.62%) PL/SQL
10 19 (0.54%) C++
10 19 (0.54%) Go
11 17 (0.48%) Shell Script
11 17 (0.48%) VBA
12 14 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 12 (0.34%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.34%) Rust
14 11 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 10 (0.28%) COBOL
16 9 (0.25%) Perl
17 8 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 326 (9.19%) Security Cleared
2 323 (9.10%) Degree
3 209 (5.89%) SC Cleared
4 132 (3.72%) ACCA
5 128 (3.61%) CIMA
6 111 (3.13%) PMP
7 98 (2.76%) PMI Certification
8 87 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
9 75 (2.11%) CISSP
10 57 (1.61%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.30%) CISM
12 38 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
12 38 (1.07%) Master's Degree
13 33 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 26 (0.73%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 23 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
16 21 (0.59%) Azure Certification
17 16 (0.45%) DBS Check
18 15 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 15 (0.42%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (5.07%) Data Quality
2 160 (4.51%) PMO
3 140 (3.94%) QA
4 134 (3.78%) GDPR
5 64 (1.80%) NIST
6 48 (1.35%) SLA
7 43 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 42 (1.18%) GRC
9 39 (1.10%) PCI DSS
10 36 (1.01%) IFRS
11 35 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.96%) Accessibility
13 15 (0.42%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.39%) IFRS 17
15 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.34%) PSD2
17 11 (0.31%) Basel III
17 11 (0.31%) NCSC
18 9 (0.25%) GAAP
18 9 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 99 (2.79%) Docker
2 69 (1.94%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.45%) vSphere
6 14 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.23%) RACF
9 7 (0.20%) GPFS
9 7 (0.20%) NFS
10 5 (0.14%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.11%) KVM
12 3 (0.085%) Firmware
13 2 (0.056%) ACF2
13 2 (0.056%) HDFS
13 2 (0.056%) ISA Server
13 2 (0.056%) SRDF
14 1 (0.028%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.028%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 166 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 84 (2.37%) Terraform
3 68 (1.92%) Ansible
4 41 (1.16%) Grafana
5 33 (0.93%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.45%) SCCM
9 13 (0.37%) FortiGate
10 11 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.28%) HP ALM
11 10 (0.28%) Nessus
12 9 (0.25%) vRealize
13 8 (0.23%) Istio
13 8 (0.23%) Kiali
14 7 (0.20%) Control-M
14 7 (0.20%) VxRail
15 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 6 (0.17%) Argo
16 5 (0.14%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 440 (12.40%) Microsoft
2 384 (10.82%) SAP
3 307 (8.65%) Oracle
4 142 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 96 (2.70%) Google
6 59 (1.66%) Databricks
6 59 (1.66%) IBM
7 54 (1.52%) Sage
8 53 (1.49%) Cisco
8 53 (1.49%) Splunk
9 51 (1.44%) VMware
10 39 (1.10%) IFS
11 37 (1.04%) Salesforce
12 32 (0.90%) Workday
13 31 (0.87%) Ariba
14 24 (0.68%) HP
15 23 (0.65%) Red Hat
16 19 (0.54%) Adobe
17 18 (0.51%) Citrix
17 18 (0.51%) Fortinet