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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,864 2,608 2,679
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.75% 16.81% 15.16%
As % of the General category 26.25% 27.63% 27.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,274 1,734 1,551
10th Percentile £338 £308 £303
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £498 £503
Median % change year-on-year +2.51% -1.00% -4.29%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £620
90th Percentile £700 £688 £716
UK median daily rate £550 £536 £575
% change year-on-year +2.61% -6.78% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 66 102
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.00 £15.49 £20.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £29.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -19.77% +15.05%
75th Percentile - £31.12 £55.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £58.75 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.89 £33.00
% change year-on-year +57.65% -15.50% +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 14,721 9,438 9,879
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.37% 60.84% 55.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,847 5,695 5,357
10th Percentile £258 £206 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £489
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.86% -2.20%
75th Percentile £596 £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 2,259 935 864
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.29 £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% +29.63%
75th Percentile £54.40 £42.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £25.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.65% -28.36% +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 28 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 28 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 28 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 1,331 £514 +11.14% 1,661
South East -1 735 £500 -2.58% 1,685
North West -1 638 £505 +12.11% 913
Yorkshire 0 615 £525 +5.00% 556
Midlands -3 603 £514 +8.21% 963
Scotland 0 543 £463 -7.50% 819
West Midlands -2 451 £520 +0.05% 590
South West -4 348 £525 -4.55% 819
East of England +3 202 £555 -3.48% 505
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +19.76% 371
North East -5 71 £538 +22.51% 199
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 399
Wales +1 61 £525 +20.69% 179
Channel Islands +1 5 £600 - 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
1 140 (3.62%) Confluence
2 95 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.49%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) SAS
6 11 (0.28%) CMS
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.16%) Camunda
9 6 (0.16%) CICS
9 6 (0.16%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.078%) JBoss
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 257 (6.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.84%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.83%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.078%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 205 (5.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.32%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
4 34 (0.88%) NetSuite
5 31 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
6 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
7 27 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 24 (0.62%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.60%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) Workday HCM
12 18 (0.47%) SAP PSCD
13 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
14 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
15 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 468 (12.11%) Azure
2 355 (9.19%) AWS
3 256 (6.63%) GCP
4 219 (5.67%) Power Platform
5 108 (2.80%) GitHub
6 104 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
7 96 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
8 95 (2.46%) SaaS
9 94 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
10 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.22%) OpenShift
11 47 (1.22%) Serverless
12 44 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
12 44 (1.14%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.06%) OCI
14 37 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (0.88%) Power Automate
16 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (0.75%) Anthropic Claude
18 28 (0.72%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.12%) Firewall
2 80 (2.07%) Network Security
3 43 (1.11%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) BIG-IP
12 9 (0.23%) BGP
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
13 8 (0.21%) VSAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.16%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco IOS
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (4.58%) Power BI
2 72 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.81%) Metadata
3 70 (1.81%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 42 (1.09%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.88%) Tableau
8 32 (0.83%) MongoDB
9 30 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.52%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.47%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.39%) Data Vault
15 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 14 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
16 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 218 (5.64%) JIRA
2 119 (3.08%) Git
3 66 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.70%) GitLab
5 23 (0.60%) JUnit
6 18 (0.47%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.39%) Selenium
7 15 (0.39%) 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 (0.21%) ERwin
12 8 (0.21%) Mockito
12 8 (0.21%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,351 (34.96%) Social Skills
2 599 (15.50%) Banking
3 536 (13.87%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.27%) Public Sector
5 280 (7.25%) Organisational Skills
6 256 (6.63%) Legal
7 155 (4.01%) Retail
8 143 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
9 106 (2.74%) Manufacturing
10 90 (2.33%) Local Government
11 88 (2.28%) General Ledger
12 87 (2.25%) Billing
13 82 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
14 80 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 72 (1.86%) Investment Banking
16 67 (1.73%) Marketing
17 63 (1.63%) Financial Institution
18 57 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
18 57 (1.48%) Telecoms
19 45 (1.16%) Law
Job Titles
1 474 (12.27%) Analyst
2 385 (9.96%) Lead
3 381 (9.86%) Senior
4 309 (8.00%) Developer
5 298 (7.71%) Architect
6 292 (7.56%) Project Manager
7 270 (6.99%) Consultant
8 223 (5.77%) Business Analyst
9 151 (3.91%) Accountant
10 144 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.54%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.46%) Java Developer
13 90 (2.33%) Systems Accountant
14 89 (2.30%) Administrator
14 89 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 85 (2.20%) Senior Manager
16 79 (2.04%) Finance Manager
17 72 (1.86%) Data Analyst
18 67 (1.73%) Software Engineer
19 66 (1.71%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.91%) Terraform
2 143 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
3 115 (2.98%) REST
4 79 (2.04%) Kafka
5 73 (1.89%) React
6 71 (1.84%) Middleware
6 71 (1.84%) Spring Boot
7 66 (1.71%) Spring
8 58 (1.50%) .NET
9 54 (1.40%) RESTful
10 48 (1.24%) OAuth
11 45 (1.16%) JSON
12 37 (0.96%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
14 30 (0.78%) SAP Fiori
15 29 (0.75%) HTML
15 29 (0.75%) SAML
15 29 (0.75%) SOAP
15 29 (0.75%) XML
16 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 173 (4.48%) Onboarding
2 169 (4.37%) Cloud Native
3 161 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 156 (4.04%) Virtual Team
5 128 (3.31%) Data Protection Act
6 121 (3.13%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.92%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.90%) Podcast
9 94 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
10 67 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.68%) Data Centre
12 63 (1.63%) Data Structures
13 62 (1.60%) AI Agents
14 53 (1.37%) Mainframe
15 52 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
16 49 (1.27%) Security Posture
17 48 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.24%) Public Cloud
18 43 (1.11%) Mobile App
19 38 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 116 (3.00%) Linux
2 107 (2.77%) Windows
3 60 (1.55%) Unix
4 36 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.70%) zOS
7 23 (0.60%) Solaris
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.078%) CentOS
13 3 (0.078%) MVS
14 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,042 (26.97%) Stakeholder Management
2 724 (18.74%) Agile
3 532 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
4 528 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
5 490 (12.68%) Migration
6 483 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 462 (11.96%) ERP
8 419 (10.84%) CI/CD
9 410 (10.61%) AI
10 375 (9.70%) Decision-Making
11 348 (9.01%) DevOps
12 336 (8.70%) Project Management
13 329 (8.51%) Change Management
14 314 (8.13%) Roadmaps
15 291 (7.53%) Project Delivery
16 283 (7.32%) Analytics
17 282 (7.30%) Risk Management
18 279 (7.22%) Validation
19 266 (6.88%) User Acceptance Testing
20 228 (5.90%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 355 (9.19%) SQL
2 353 (9.14%) Python
3 251 (6.50%) Java
4 80 (2.07%) JavaScript
5 77 (1.99%) PowerShell
6 63 (1.63%) C#
7 61 (1.58%) Bash
8 49 (1.27%) TypeScript
9 39 (1.01%) Go
9 39 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 20 (0.52%) C++
12 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 18 (0.47%) Scala
14 15 (0.39%) Perl
15 13 (0.34%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 347 (8.98%) Security Cleared
2 249 (6.44%) Degree
3 212 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 179 (4.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 102 (2.64%) ACCA
6 100 (2.59%) CIMA
7 92 (2.38%) PMP
8 88 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 75 (1.94%) PMI Certification
10 63 (1.63%) CISSP
11 44 (1.14%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.04%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.01%) CISM
15 32 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
16 31 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 29 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) CCSP
19 23 (0.60%) Master's Degree
20 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (6.60%) Data Quality
2 173 (4.48%) PMO
3 140 (3.62%) QA
4 90 (2.33%) GDPR
5 55 (1.42%) GRC
6 42 (1.09%) Accessibility
6 42 (1.09%) NIST
7 40 (1.04%) SLA
8 32 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.72%) IFRS
10 23 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 77 (1.99%) Docker
2 68 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.60%) 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 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.052%) 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
1 215 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 78 (2.02%) Ansible
3 39 (1.01%) Grafana
4 35 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.65%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.47%) 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 (0.21%) 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%) QRadar
17 4 (0.10%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 584 (15.11%) Microsoft
2 430 (11.13%) SAP
3 361 (9.34%) Oracle
4 168 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.92%) Google
6 97 (2.51%) IBM
7 82 (2.12%) Databricks
8 66 (1.71%) VMware
9 65 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 48 (1.24%) Splunk
11 46 (1.19%) Ariba
12 45 (1.16%) Workday
13 41 (1.06%) Cisco
14 31 (0.80%) Sage
15 27 (0.70%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.62%) Adobe
17 23 (0.60%) MuleSoft
17 23 (0.60%) Snow
18 18 (0.47%) Sybase
19 17 (0.44%) NetApp