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 21 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,090 2,179 2,696
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.15% 16.26% 12.87%
As % of the General category 27.15% 26.65% 23.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,951 1,284 1,776
10th Percentile £313 £305 £285
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.77% -1.17%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £609
90th Percentile £688 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -1.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 62 135
10th Percentile £13.87 £17.35 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £13.39
Median hourly rate £22.00 £28.25 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.12% +41.25% -40.37%
75th Percentile £25.00 £62.81 £40.31
90th Percentile £54.20 £78.37 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £22.57
% change year-on-year -32.86% +55.06% -9.71%

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 11,383 8,177 11,673
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 55.80% 61.03% 55.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,903 4,790 6,974
10th Percentile £207 £209 £205
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £476 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -4.80% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £684
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,238 461 1,388
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £16.00 £19.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +8.50% -
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.62 £51.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £72.50 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £29.90 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.08% +15.00% -5.80%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 +2 998 £475 -0.42% 644
South East -1 560 £500 -4.76% 1,008
Midlands -2 555 £490 -2.00% 394
North West +4 503 £450 -3.54% 370
Yorkshire 0 447 £500 -2.44% 216
Scotland 0 393 £475 - 115
West Midlands -1 351 £509 -7.41% 222
South West -1 307 £512 -2.57% 270
East Midlands 0 200 £450 +7.14% 172
East of England -2 189 £533 +1.43% 210
Wales +35 103 £413 +1.54% 72
North East -11 49 £488 +5.41% 71
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 40
Channel Islands +3 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
1 155 (5.02%) Confluence
2 106 (3.43%) SharePoint
3 37 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 25 (0.81%) Apache
6 19 (0.61%) SAS
7 11 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
7 11 (0.36%) CMS
7 11 (0.36%) TPMS
8 8 (0.26%) CICS
9 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.16%) JBoss
11 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.13%) IIS
11 4 (0.13%) Mattermost
11 4 (0.13%) Skype for Business
12 3 (0.097%) iPlanet
12 3 (0.097%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.097%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 246 (7.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (4.98%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (3.75%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (2.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 54 (1.75%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.45%) Sketch
8 12 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.29%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.23%) InVision
11 6 (0.19%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.19%) Trello
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.097%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.032%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.032%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 144 (4.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.75%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.49%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (1.17%) Oracle General Ledger
5 32 (1.04%) SAP FI
6 31 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 29 (0.94%) Oracle Assets
7 29 (0.94%) Oracle Cash Management
8 22 (0.71%) SAP CO
8 22 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
9 21 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
9 21 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
10 17 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
10 17 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
10 17 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
11 15 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
11 15 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
12 14 (0.45%) NetSuite
13 13 (0.42%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 390 (12.62%) AWS
1 390 (12.62%) Azure
2 180 (5.83%) GCP
2 180 (5.83%) Power Platform
3 130 (4.21%) Microsoft 365
4 85 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
5 78 (2.52%) GitHub
6 74 (2.39%) Serverless
7 73 (2.36%) SaaS
8 62 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
9 56 (1.81%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.52%) OCI
11 42 (1.36%) OpenShift
12 39 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (1.20%) Snowflake
14 35 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
15 34 (1.10%) Figma
16 32 (1.04%) Amazon S3
17 30 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (0.97%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.52%) Firewall
2 34 (1.10%) WAN
3 29 (0.94%) DNS
4 25 (0.81%) VPN
5 24 (0.78%) Network Security
6 22 (0.71%) Skype
6 22 (0.71%) Wireless
7 19 (0.61%) SSL
8 17 (0.55%) LAN
9 16 (0.52%) SD-WAN
10 15 (0.49%) SSH
10 15 (0.49%) TCP/IP
11 12 (0.39%) DHCP
11 12 (0.39%) Kerberos
12 11 (0.36%) SNMP
13 10 (0.32%) Internet
14 8 (0.26%) Cisco IOS
15 7 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
16 6 (0.19%) BGP
16 6 (0.19%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (5.50%) Power BI
2 80 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (2.14%) NoSQL
5 48 (1.55%) Relational Database
6 39 (1.26%) Metadata
7 38 (1.23%) Tableau
8 29 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
8 29 (0.94%) SQL Server
9 26 (0.84%) Big Data
10 25 (0.81%) Data Lake
11 24 (0.78%) DynamoDB
12 21 (0.68%) Power Query
13 19 (0.61%) BigQuery
14 17 (0.55%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.49%) MySQL
16 15 (0.49%) Oracle Database
17 13 (0.42%) Hadoop
18 12 (0.39%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 287 (9.29%) JIRA
2 143 (4.63%) Jenkins
3 89 (2.88%) GitLab
4 57 (1.84%) Git
5 37 (1.20%) JUnit
5 37 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
6 33 (1.07%) Cucumber
7 23 (0.74%) Liquibase
8 20 (0.65%) Selenium
9 18 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 14 (0.45%) Gradle
10 14 (0.45%) Postman
11 11 (0.36%) Maven
12 10 (0.32%) JMeter
13 9 (0.29%) Hudson
14 8 (0.26%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.26%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.26%) SonarQube
15 7 (0.23%) Cypress.io
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
General
1 1,125 (36.41%) Social Skills
2 513 (16.60%) Banking
3 390 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
4 346 (11.20%) Public Sector
5 177 (5.73%) Manufacturing
6 168 (5.44%) Telecoms
7 151 (4.89%) Marketing
8 130 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
9 105 (3.40%) Electronics
10 104 (3.37%) Financial Institution
11 97 (3.14%) Legal
12 94 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
13 68 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
13 68 (2.20%) Local Government
14 61 (1.97%) General Ledger
15 56 (1.81%) Retail
16 52 (1.68%) Investment Banking
17 50 (1.62%) Billing
18 47 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
19 32 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 481 (15.57%) Analyst
2 287 (9.29%) Project Manager
3 250 (8.09%) Architect
4 242 (7.83%) Senior
5 225 (7.28%) Lead
6 220 (7.12%) Consultant
7 217 (7.02%) Business Analyst
8 212 (6.86%) Developer
9 107 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 96 (3.11%) Programme Manager
11 83 (2.69%) Data Analyst
12 67 (2.17%) Senior Manager
13 64 (2.07%) Accountant
13 64 (2.07%) Finance Manager
14 61 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
15 59 (1.91%) Functional Consultant
16 56 (1.81%) Designer
17 55 (1.78%) Java Developer
18 53 (1.72%) Administrator
19 51 (1.65%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (3.98%) REST
2 82 (2.65%) Spring
3 75 (2.43%) Spring Boot
4 69 (2.23%) Kafka
4 69 (2.23%) RESTful
5 67 (2.17%) Oracle Fusion
6 49 (1.59%) Middleware
7 45 (1.46%) React
8 42 (1.36%) .NET
9 38 (1.23%) Node.js
10 34 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
11 33 (1.07%) JSON
12 31 (1.00%) SOAP
13 30 (0.97%) OAuth
14 28 (0.91%) HTML
15 25 (0.81%) AngularJS
16 24 (0.78%) CSS
16 24 (0.78%) OpenTelemetry
17 23 (0.74%) XML
18 19 (0.61%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 151 (4.89%) Onboarding
2 131 (4.24%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.37%) Cloud Native
4 83 (2.69%) Data Centre
5 80 (2.59%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
7 71 (2.30%) Public Cloud
8 65 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
9 64 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 42 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
10 42 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 33 (1.07%) PMI
12 32 (1.04%) CMDB
12 32 (1.04%) Mobile App
12 32 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 31 (1.00%) Virtual Team
14 24 (0.78%) Mainframe
15 22 (0.71%) NHS
16 19 (0.61%) Credit Risk
16 19 (0.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 133 (4.30%) Linux
2 116 (3.75%) Windows
3 41 (1.33%) Unix
4 39 (1.26%) Mac OS
5 37 (1.20%) Windows 10
6 31 (1.00%) Android
7 17 (0.55%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.16%) AIX
10 5 (0.16%) Solaris
10 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.13%) VMS
11 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.097%) zOS
13 1 (0.032%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.032%) MVS
13 1 (0.032%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (22.07%) Agile
2 600 (19.42%) Stakeholder Management
3 519 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
4 424 (13.72%) Migration
5 399 (12.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 361 (11.68%) Project Management
7 335 (10.84%) ERP
8 332 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 326 (10.55%) DevOps
10 313 (10.13%) Business Intelligence
11 301 (9.74%) CI/CD
12 275 (8.90%) Change Management
13 229 (7.41%) Project Delivery
14 221 (7.15%) Decision-Making
15 212 (6.86%) Analytics
16 207 (6.70%) Roadmaps
17 205 (6.63%) Programme Management
18 198 (6.41%) Data Modelling
18 198 (6.41%) User Acceptance Testing
19 194 (6.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 333 (10.78%) SQL
2 294 (9.51%) Python
3 197 (6.38%) Java
4 78 (2.52%) PowerShell
5 42 (1.36%) TypeScript
6 41 (1.33%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.23%) Go
8 29 (0.94%) C#
9 26 (0.84%) Bash
10 22 (0.71%) PL/SQL
11 20 (0.65%) Shell Script
11 20 (0.65%) VBA
12 18 (0.58%) R
13 12 (0.39%) Perl
14 11 (0.36%) Rust
15 10 (0.32%) COBOL
16 9 (0.29%) ABAP
16 9 (0.29%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.29%) Ruby
16 9 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 332 (10.74%) Degree
2 295 (9.55%) Security Cleared
3 198 (6.41%) SC Cleared
4 81 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 76 (2.46%) ACCA
5 76 (2.46%) Master's Degree
6 75 (2.43%) PMI Certification
6 75 (2.43%) PMP
7 71 (2.30%) CIMA
7 71 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
8 55 (1.78%) DV Cleared
9 49 (1.59%) CISSP
10 48 (1.55%) AWS Certification
11 36 (1.17%) CISM
12 31 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
13 24 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
14 17 (0.55%) MBA
15 16 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 14 (0.45%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 157 (5.08%) PMO
2 136 (4.40%) QA
3 130 (4.21%) Data Quality
4 113 (3.66%) GDPR
5 54 (1.75%) NIST
6 50 (1.62%) PCI DSS
7 49 (1.59%) SLA
8 42 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (1.13%) Accessibility
11 28 (0.91%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.84%) IFRS
13 22 (0.71%) PSD2
14 19 (0.61%) GRC
15 15 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.45%) SEPA
17 13 (0.42%) Basel III
17 13 (0.42%) GAAP
18 11 (0.36%) GLBA
19 10 (0.32%) NCSC
System Software
1 134 (4.34%) Docker
2 99 (3.20%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (0.55%) vSphere
5 10 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (0.29%) GPFS
7 8 (0.26%) NFS
8 6 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
9 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.097%) HDFS
10 3 (0.097%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.065%) ACF2
11 2 (0.065%) Firmware
11 2 (0.065%) KVM
11 2 (0.065%) RACF
11 2 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
11 2 (0.065%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 168 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 97 (3.14%) Terraform
3 85 (2.75%) Ansible
4 64 (2.07%) Grafana
5 59 (1.91%) Prometheus
6 20 (0.65%) SCCM
7 18 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.36%) Nessus
11 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.29%) vRealize
12 8 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 8 (0.26%) Kiali
13 6 (0.19%) Control-M
14 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.16%) CASB
14 5 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
15 4 (0.13%) Argo
Vendors
1 456 (14.76%) Microsoft
2 376 (12.17%) SAP
3 250 (8.09%) Oracle
4 163 (5.28%) ServiceNow
5 90 (2.91%) Splunk
6 88 (2.85%) Google
7 82 (2.65%) Cisco
8 53 (1.72%) IBM
9 47 (1.52%) VMware
10 44 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.39%) Databricks
12 41 (1.33%) Workday
13 38 (1.23%) Sage
14 34 (1.10%) HP
15 33 (1.07%) Dell
16 26 (0.84%) Adobe
16 26 (0.84%) Apple
17 25 (0.81%) Citrix
18 23 (0.74%) Remedy
19 22 (0.71%) CyberArk