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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,900 2,675 2,646
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.11% 17.47% 14.56%
As % of the General category 27.45% 28.62% 27.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 1,774 1,603
10th Percentile £350 £307 £290
25th Percentile £413 £399 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £494 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.66% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £737
UK median daily rate £550 £540 £575
% change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 69 145
10th Percentile £15.08 £13.46 £14.11
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +13.80%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £44.04
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.00 £70.82
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
% change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +34.62%

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 14,208 9,345 9,801
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.41% 61.04% 53.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,837 5,627 5,580
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.89% -1.15%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,981 879 1,073
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.08 £13.77
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.43 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.53% -36.74% +34.62%
75th Percentile £56.25 £45.40 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.15 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +27.47%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 1,342 £500 +6.38% 554
South East -2 738 £505 -3.81% 530
North West -1 693 £500 +9.89% 305
Midlands -1 624 £500 +11.11% 285
Yorkshire 0 570 £514 +5.71% 177
Scotland 0 514 £475 -0.52% 214
West Midlands +1 467 £500 - 183
South West -5 374 £550 -4.35% 556
East of England +6 210 £530 -6.19% 212
East Midlands -2 153 £500 +21.21% 101
North East -4 72 £500 +13.64% 82
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 45
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 64
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 4
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
1 156 (4.00%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.38%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.33%) SAS
6 12 (0.31%) CMS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
11 3 (0.077%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 2 (0.051%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.051%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 253 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 115 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 88 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.97%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 195 (5.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.23%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.97%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) 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
1 489 (12.54%) Azure
2 334 (8.56%) AWS
3 233 (5.97%) GCP
4 228 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 99 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
6 98 (2.51%) SaaS
7 97 (2.49%) GitHub
8 94 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
9 92 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
10 73 (1.87%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) OCI
12 44 (1.13%) Snowflake
13 41 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
14 38 (0.97%) Serverless
15 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 30 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
16 30 (0.77%) Power Automate
17 26 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
18 25 (0.64%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.05%) Firewall
2 71 (1.82%) Network Security
3 48 (1.23%) VPN
4 35 (0.90%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) 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%) HTTP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) Broadband
9 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
11 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (4.85%) Power BI
2 75 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
2 75 (1.92%) Relational Database
3 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
4 66 (1.69%) Metadata
5 44 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
6 41 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
7 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.90%) Tableau
9 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
10 27 (0.69%) Db2
11 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
12 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
14 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
17 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
18 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 251 (6.44%) JIRA
2 107 (2.74%) Git
3 54 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 17 (0.44%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 13 (0.33%) Cucumber
9 13 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Maven
11 9 (0.23%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,303 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 571 (14.64%) Banking
3 549 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 274 (7.03%) Public Sector
5 266 (6.82%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.62%) Legal
7 167 (4.28%) Retail
8 138 (3.54%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 98 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
11 95 (2.44%) Local Government
12 84 (2.15%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.97%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
14 74 (1.90%) Billing
15 73 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 55 (1.41%) Marketing
16 55 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (1.33%) Telecoms
18 49 (1.26%) Law
Job Titles
1 505 (12.95%) Analyst
2 416 (10.67%) Lead
3 355 (9.10%) Senior
4 323 (8.28%) Project Manager
5 309 (7.92%) Architect
6 285 (7.31%) Developer
7 264 (6.77%) Consultant
8 238 (6.10%) Business Analyst
9 159 (4.08%) Accountant
10 140 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 96 (2.46%) IT Manager
13 93 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
13 93 (2.38%) Senior Manager
14 87 (2.23%) Java Developer
15 77 (1.97%) Finance Manager
16 76 (1.95%) Administrator
17 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
18 68 (1.74%) Software Engineer
19 65 (1.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 153 (3.92%) Oracle Fusion
2 130 (3.33%) Terraform
3 86 (2.21%) REST
4 74 (1.90%) Middleware
5 70 (1.79%) Kafka
6 68 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 64 (1.64%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 59 (1.51%) React
10 41 (1.05%) OAuth
10 41 (1.05%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) JSON
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) OpenID
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.74%) SAML
14 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
15 24 (0.62%) HTML
16 23 (0.59%) OAuth2
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 159 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.95%) Virtual Team
4 146 (3.74%) Cloud Native
5 115 (2.95%) Data Protection Act
6 112 (2.87%) Podcast
6 112 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
7 108 (2.77%) Management Information System
8 101 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 66 (1.69%) Data Structures
10 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
11 54 (1.38%) Public Cloud
12 53 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
13 48 (1.23%) Mainframe
14 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
15 43 (1.10%) AI Agents
15 43 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 39 (1.00%) CMDB
17 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
18 37 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.03%) Windows
2 104 (2.67%) Linux
3 60 (1.54%) Unix
4 31 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.62%) Solaris
5 24 (0.62%) zOS
6 12 (0.31%) Android
6 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.26%) AIX
8 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.13%) HPUX
10 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.13%) SUSE
10 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 3 (0.077%) CentOS
11 3 (0.077%) MVS
11 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 986 (25.28%) Stakeholder Management
2 722 (18.51%) Agile
3 548 (14.05%) Continuous Improvement
4 526 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
5 522 (13.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 510 (13.08%) Migration
7 506 (12.97%) ERP
8 367 (9.41%) Decision-Making
9 366 (9.38%) CI/CD
10 362 (9.28%) AI
11 357 (9.15%) Project Management
12 352 (9.03%) DevOps
13 351 (9.00%) Change Management
14 305 (7.82%) Project Delivery
15 288 (7.38%) Roadmaps
16 280 (7.18%) Risk Management
17 274 (7.03%) Analytics
18 269 (6.90%) User Acceptance Testing
19 266 (6.82%) Validation
20 232 (5.95%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 331 (8.49%) SQL
2 319 (8.18%) Python
3 234 (6.00%) Java
4 77 (1.97%) PowerShell
5 58 (1.49%) JavaScript
6 57 (1.46%) C#
7 56 (1.44%) Bash
8 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
9 38 (0.97%) TypeScript
10 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 28 (0.72%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Bicep
14 13 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.33%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 11 (0.28%) ABAP
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
17 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 353 (9.05%) Security Cleared
2 265 (6.79%) Degree
3 214 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 172 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (2.85%) ACCA
6 107 (2.74%) CIMA
7 102 (2.62%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) DV Cleared
8 88 (2.26%) PMI Certification
9 72 (1.85%) CISSP
10 47 (1.21%) CISM
11 41 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
12 37 (0.95%) Azure Certification
13 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
14 31 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
15 29 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 27 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 25 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) CCSP
18 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 234 (6.00%) Data Quality
2 180 (4.62%) PMO
3 133 (3.41%) QA
4 120 (3.08%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 52 (1.33%) NIST
7 48 (1.23%) SLA
8 42 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 38 (0.97%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
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 74 (1.90%) Active Directory
2 67 (1.72%) Docker
3 45 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.23%) vSphere
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.051%) KVM
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) IAG
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 184 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.87%) Ansible
3 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (0.82%) Grafana
5 31 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
6 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
7 16 (0.41%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.38%) SCCM
9 11 (0.28%) Istio
10 10 (0.26%) Argo
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 5 (0.13%) VxRail
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 570 (14.62%) Microsoft
2 412 (10.56%) SAP
3 394 (10.10%) Oracle
4 172 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 111 (2.85%) Google
6 88 (2.26%) IBM
7 79 (2.03%) Databricks
8 66 (1.69%) Salesforce
9 60 (1.54%) VMware
10 43 (1.10%) Cisco
11 41 (1.05%) Sage
12 39 (1.00%) Splunk
13 37 (0.95%) Ariba
13 37 (0.95%) Workday
14 29 (0.74%) IFS
15 24 (0.62%) MuleSoft
15 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
16 20 (0.51%) Adobe
16 20 (0.51%) Sybase
17 18 (0.46%) HP