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 23 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,360 2,235 2,631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.32% 17.43% 12.65%
As % of the General category 27.82% 28.02% 23.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,092 1,434 1,626
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £530 £570 £575
% change year-on-year -7.02% -0.87% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 69 196
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.20 £11.94
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.50 £14.10
Median hourly rate £22.20 £52.50 £31.47
Median % change year-on-year -57.72% +66.83% -33.75%
75th Percentile £39.75 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.47 £53.50
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £27.50
% change year-on-year -39.00% +42.02% -10.58%

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 12,079 7,976 11,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.48% 62.21% 54.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,207 4,935 6,573
10th Percentile £243 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £581 £580 £595
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,372 575 1,629
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.95 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.38 £26.28 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.42% -2.67% -14.65%
75th Percentile £60.65 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £28.55 £28.18 £28.50
% change year-on-year +1.31% -1.12% -18.57%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 1,122 £475 - 594
South East -1 645 £503 -3.83% 895
North West +6 603 £465 - 316
Midlands -2 576 £475 -5.00% 379
Yorkshire +1 477 £500 - 206
Scotland 0 391 £500 +3.09% 132
West Midlands 0 385 £492 -6.29% 219
South West -2 336 £520 +3.90% 296
East of England 0 199 £525 -4.55% 219
East Midlands 0 186 £450 +0.67% 157
Wales +23 100 £413 +10.00% 60
Northern Ireland -1 43 £500 +25.00% 80
North East -10 43 £488 +11.94% 83
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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 (4.61%) Confluence
2 114 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 24 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (0.65%) Apache
6 14 (0.42%) SAS
7 9 (0.27%) CICS
8 8 (0.24%) CMS
8 8 (0.24%) TPMS
9 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.18%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
10 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.12%) IIS
12 3 (0.089%) Camunda
12 3 (0.089%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.089%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 256 (7.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 129 (3.84%) Microsoft Office
3 112 (3.33%) Microsoft Project
4 85 (2.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.15%) InVision
8 5 (0.15%) Sketch
8 5 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.060%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.030%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.030%) UXPin
11 1 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 160 (4.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 37 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
6 35 (1.04%) Oracle EBS
7 29 (0.86%) Oracle General Ledger
8 27 (0.80%) SAP FI
9 25 (0.74%) NetSuite
9 25 (0.74%) Oracle Assets
10 21 (0.63%) Oracle Cash Management
11 19 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
12 17 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
12 17 (0.51%) SAP CO
13 16 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 13 (0.39%) NEC Housing
15 12 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
15 12 (0.36%) SAP ERP
15 12 (0.36%) Workday HCM
16 11 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 412 (12.26%) Azure
2 345 (10.27%) AWS
3 212 (6.31%) Power Platform
4 160 (4.76%) GCP
5 113 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
6 90 (2.68%) GitHub
7 85 (2.53%) SaaS
8 78 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
9 74 (2.20%) Dynamics 365
10 58 (1.73%) Entra ID
11 51 (1.52%) Serverless
12 49 (1.46%) OpenShift
13 40 (1.19%) OCI
14 38 (1.13%) Snowflake
15 34 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (0.92%) Amazon S3
16 31 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
17 30 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.80%) Microsoft Copilot
19 24 (0.71%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.35%) Firewall
2 39 (1.16%) DNS
2 39 (1.16%) Network Security
3 36 (1.07%) WAN
4 32 (0.95%) VPN
5 19 (0.57%) SD-WAN
6 18 (0.54%) Skype
6 18 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.48%) LAN
7 16 (0.48%) SSL
8 13 (0.39%) DHCP
9 12 (0.36%) Internet
10 10 (0.30%) SSH
11 9 (0.27%) MPLS
12 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (0.24%) SNMP
13 7 (0.21%) VSAN
13 7 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.18%) BGP
14 6 (0.18%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (5.77%) Power BI
2 72 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
4 55 (1.64%) Metadata
5 50 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
6 48 (1.43%) Relational Database
7 39 (1.16%) NoSQL
8 38 (1.13%) Tableau
9 35 (1.04%) SQL Server
10 30 (0.89%) DynamoDB
11 24 (0.71%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.65%) Big Data
12 22 (0.65%) Oracle ODI
12 22 (0.65%) Power Query
13 20 (0.60%) MongoDB
14 14 (0.42%) Snowflake Schema
15 13 (0.39%) DB2
15 13 (0.39%) MySQL
15 13 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 11 (0.33%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 300 (8.93%) JIRA
2 93 (2.77%) Jenkins
3 60 (1.79%) Git
4 45 (1.34%) GitLab
5 35 (1.04%) JUnit
6 28 (0.83%) Cucumber
7 27 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
8 21 (0.63%) Selenium
9 14 (0.42%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.39%) Hudson
10 13 (0.39%) Postman
11 9 (0.27%) Bitbucket
12 8 (0.24%) Gradle
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 7 (0.21%) JMeter
13 7 (0.21%) Maven
14 6 (0.18%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.18%) Snyk
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,120 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 486 (14.46%) Banking
3 458 (13.63%) Analytical Skills
4 302 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 143 (4.26%) Manufacturing
6 129 (3.84%) Organisational Skills
7 115 (3.42%) Legal
8 104 (3.10%) Telecoms
9 100 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
9 100 (2.98%) Marketing
10 92 (2.74%) Retail
11 82 (2.44%) Local Government
12 80 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
13 74 (2.20%) Financial Institution
14 67 (1.99%) General Ledger
15 57 (1.70%) Electronics
16 51 (1.52%) Investment Banking
17 45 (1.34%) Billing
18 43 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
19 34 (1.01%) Law
Job Titles
1 479 (14.26%) Analyst
2 338 (10.06%) Project Manager
3 307 (9.14%) Architect
4 286 (8.51%) Lead
5 271 (8.07%) Senior
6 235 (6.99%) Consultant
7 218 (6.49%) Business Analyst
8 217 (6.46%) Developer
9 131 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
10 117 (3.48%) Accountant
11 90 (2.68%) Programme Manager
12 86 (2.56%) Senior Manager
13 78 (2.32%) Finance Manager
14 67 (1.99%) Systems Accountant
15 64 (1.90%) Data Analyst
16 62 (1.85%) Java Developer
16 62 (1.85%) SAP Consultant
17 60 (1.79%) Data Engineer
18 58 (1.73%) IT Manager
19 56 (1.67%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (2.68%) REST
2 81 (2.41%) Spring
3 79 (2.35%) Spring Boot
4 72 (2.14%) Middleware
5 71 (2.11%) Kafka
6 70 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
7 43 (1.28%) RESTful
8 38 (1.13%) .NET
9 35 (1.04%) React
10 33 (0.98%) Node.js
11 31 (0.92%) OAuth
12 29 (0.86%) JSON
13 27 (0.80%) XML
14 25 (0.74%) HTML
15 24 (0.71%) AngularJS
16 22 (0.65%) CSS
16 22 (0.65%) SOAP
17 21 (0.63%) OpenID
18 20 (0.60%) OpenTelemetry
18 20 (0.60%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 150 (4.46%) Onboarding
2 129 (3.84%) Product Ownership
3 110 (3.27%) Management Information System
4 108 (3.21%) Cloud Native
5 83 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
5 83 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
6 79 (2.35%) Data Centre
7 58 (1.73%) Public Cloud
8 55 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
9 52 (1.55%) Data Structures
10 40 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
11 35 (1.04%) Mainframe
11 35 (1.04%) Virtual Team
12 34 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
12 34 (1.01%) PMI
13 30 (0.89%) Mobile App
14 29 (0.86%) CMDB
15 24 (0.71%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.57%) Operational Technology
17 16 (0.48%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 112 (3.33%) Linux
2 109 (3.24%) Windows
3 51 (1.52%) Unix
4 27 (0.80%) Windows 10
4 27 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 19 (0.57%) Solaris
6 16 (0.48%) Android
7 15 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.42%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.36%) AIX
10 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.21%) zOS
11 6 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.12%) HPUX
13 4 (0.12%) MVS
13 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.12%) SUSE
13 4 (0.12%) VMS
14 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 664 (19.76%) Stakeholder Management
2 643 (19.14%) Agile
3 543 (16.16%) Problem-Solving
4 496 (14.76%) Migration
5 453 (13.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 431 (12.83%) ERP
7 411 (12.23%) Project Management
8 410 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 338 (10.06%) DevOps
10 302 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 295 (8.78%) Change Management
11 295 (8.78%) Project Delivery
12 290 (8.63%) Business Intelligence
13 262 (7.80%) Decision-Making
14 247 (7.35%) User Acceptance Testing
15 236 (7.02%) Roadmaps
16 234 (6.96%) AI
17 227 (6.76%) Risk Management
18 226 (6.73%) Analytics
19 223 (6.64%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 329 (9.79%) SQL
2 245 (7.29%) Python
3 205 (6.10%) Java
4 67 (1.99%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.86%) Bash
5 29 (0.86%) JavaScript
6 28 (0.83%) TypeScript
7 22 (0.65%) C#
7 22 (0.65%) VBA
8 17 (0.51%) PL/SQL
9 16 (0.48%) Shell Script
10 15 (0.45%) Go
11 14 (0.42%) C++
12 12 (0.36%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.33%) COBOL
13 11 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 10 (0.30%) ABAP
15 9 (0.27%) Perl
16 8 (0.24%) Rust
16 8 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 329 (9.79%) Security Cleared
2 325 (9.67%) Degree
3 204 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 116 (3.45%) ACCA
5 113 (3.36%) PMP
6 112 (3.33%) CIMA
7 105 (3.13%) PMI Certification
8 92 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.02%) DV Cleared
10 65 (1.93%) CISSP
11 52 (1.55%) Master's Degree
12 43 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
13 41 (1.22%) CISM
14 33 (0.98%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
16 24 (0.71%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 18 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
18 16 (0.48%) MBA
19 14 (0.42%) APMP
19 14 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (5.36%) PMO
2 167 (4.97%) Data Quality
3 142 (4.23%) QA
4 137 (4.08%) GDPR
5 63 (1.88%) NIST
6 44 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 44 (1.31%) SLA
7 43 (1.28%) PCI DSS
8 31 (0.92%) GRC
9 27 (0.80%) Accessibility
9 27 (0.80%) IFRS
10 23 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 21 (0.63%) ISO 20022
12 16 (0.48%) PSD2
13 13 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.36%) Basel III
14 12 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.36%) SEPA
15 10 (0.30%) GAAP
16 9 (0.27%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 107 (3.18%) Docker
2 74 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.51%) vSphere
5 13 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.27%) GPFS
8 8 (0.24%) NFS
9 7 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.12%) ACF2
10 4 (0.12%) KVM
10 4 (0.12%) RACF
11 3 (0.089%) Firmware
11 3 (0.089%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.089%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.060%) HDFS
12 2 (0.060%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 2 (0.060%) SRDF
12 2 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 158 (4.70%) Kubernetes
2 76 (2.26%) Terraform
3 69 (2.05%) Ansible
4 42 (1.25%) Grafana
5 32 (0.95%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.45%) SCCM
8 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 11 (0.33%) Progress Chef
10 10 (0.30%) Nessus
10 10 (0.30%) vRealize
11 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.24%) Kiali
13 7 (0.21%) Control-M
13 7 (0.21%) HP ALM
14 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.15%) Argo
15 5 (0.15%) CASB
15 5 (0.15%) Istio
15 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 441 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 357 (10.63%) SAP
3 283 (8.42%) Oracle
4 162 (4.82%) ServiceNow
5 91 (2.71%) Google
6 61 (1.82%) Cisco
7 59 (1.76%) Sage
8 55 (1.64%) Splunk
9 54 (1.61%) Databricks
10 52 (1.55%) IBM
11 49 (1.46%) VMware
12 42 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 38 (1.13%) IFS
14 35 (1.04%) Workday
15 24 (0.71%) HP
16 20 (0.60%) Citrix
17 19 (0.57%) Ariba
17 19 (0.57%) Red Hat
17 19 (0.57%) Remedy
18 18 (0.54%) Dell