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 1 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,529 2,249 2,597
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.14% 17.29% 12.50%
As % of the General category 28.11% 27.69% 23.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,155 1,460 1,576
10th Percentile £332 £303 £280
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.89% -0.89% -4.76%
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 140 64 207
10th Percentile £13.95 £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% -41.05%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.88 £57.75
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £43.08 £27.00
% change year-on-year -41.08% +59.54% +5.02%

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 12,556 8,121 11,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.30% 62.45% 53.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,210 5,013 6,337
10th Percentile £263 £210 £205
25th Percentile £395 £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 1,495 614 1,690
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.65 £15.00
Median hourly rate £29.07 £24.34 £28.34
Median % change year-on-year +19.43% -14.10% +3.04%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.88 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.03 £75.00 £67.39
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.94 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.37% -6.87% -7.12%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1,207 £492 +5.47% 885
South East -1 647 £500 -4.31% 925
North West +5 637 £465 +3.33% 517
Midlands -1 604 £492 +3.58% 514
Yorkshire +2 530 £519 +9.16% 292
Scotland 0 432 £500 +5.26% 208
West Midlands 0 415 £500 -2.13% 306
South West -2 362 £525 - 350
East of England +1 198 £520 -9.57% 253
East Midlands 0 184 £468 +6.36% 208
Wales +12 85 £475 +16.92% 79
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +17.65% 132
North East -16 41 £488 +7.73% 84
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
1 158 (4.48%) Confluence
2 108 (3.06%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.60%) 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 (0.057%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.057%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.057%) JBoss
11 2 (0.057%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 243 (6.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 118 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (3.06%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (2.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.33%) 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 (0.057%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.057%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.057%) 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 (5.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.16%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 34 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 32 (0.91%) NetSuite
7 23 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.57%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
9 17 (0.48%) Unit4 Business World
10 16 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
11 15 (0.43%) SAP CO
11 15 (0.43%) SAP GRC
12 14 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
12 14 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
13 13 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
14 12 (0.34%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.31%) NEC Housing
15 11 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 425 (12.04%) Azure
2 312 (8.84%) AWS
3 211 (5.98%) Power Platform
4 167 (4.73%) GCP
5 100 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
6 96 (2.72%) SaaS
7 86 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
8 80 (2.27%) GitHub
9 70 (1.98%) Dynamics 365
10 59 (1.67%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.30%) OpenShift
12 42 (1.19%) Snowflake
13 38 (1.08%) Serverless
14 34 (0.96%) Microsoft Copilot
15 31 (0.88%) OCI
16 25 (0.71%) Power Automate
17 24 (0.68%) Google Workspace
18 23 (0.65%) Amazon S3
19 22 (0.62%) Google Sheets
19 22 (0.62%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.41%) Firewall
2 49 (1.39%) Network Security
3 40 (1.13%) DNS
4 39 (1.11%) WAN
5 36 (1.02%) VPN
6 22 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.57%) SD-WAN
8 17 (0.48%) LAN
9 16 (0.45%) SSL
10 15 (0.43%) DHCP
11 12 (0.34%) VSAN
12 10 (0.28%) MPLS
13 9 (0.26%) 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
1 185 (5.24%) Power BI
2 70 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.73%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.70%) Metadata
5 59 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
6 47 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
7 45 (1.28%) SQL Server
8 39 (1.11%) Tableau
9 34 (0.96%) NoSQL
10 26 (0.74%) DynamoDB
11 25 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 24 (0.68%) Data Lake
13 22 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
14 20 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
15 19 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 18 (0.51%) Big Data
17 17 (0.48%) DB2
18 16 (0.45%) Power Query
19 14 (0.40%) Data Vault
20 11 (0.31%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 288 (8.16%) JIRA
2 70 (1.98%) Jenkins
3 65 (1.84%) Git
4 29 (0.82%) GitLab
5 23 (0.65%) JUnit
6 21 (0.60%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.54%) Selenium
7 19 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.40%) Hudson
8 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
9 13 (0.37%) Postman
10 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
10 8 (0.23%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.17%) Maven
13 5 (0.14%) Axure RP
13 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,125 (31.88%) Social Skills
2 498 (14.11%) Banking
3 457 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (7.17%) Public Sector
5 132 (3.74%) Organisational Skills
6 131 (3.71%) Legal
7 119 (3.37%) Retail
8 113 (3.20%) Manufacturing
9 103 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
10 94 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
10 94 (2.66%) Local Government
11 77 (2.18%) Financial Institution
12 68 (1.93%) General Ledger
12 68 (1.93%) Investment Banking
13 64 (1.81%) Telecoms
14 59 (1.67%) Marketing
15 55 (1.56%) Billing
16 43 (1.22%) Law
17 39 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 36 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 520 (14.74%) Analyst
2 349 (9.89%) Project Manager
3 326 (9.24%) Architect
4 315 (8.93%) Lead
5 306 (8.67%) Senior
6 245 (6.94%) Consultant
7 240 (6.80%) Business Analyst
8 232 (6.57%) Developer
9 151 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 134 (3.80%) Accountant
11 98 (2.78%) Senior Manager
12 88 (2.49%) Programme Manager
13 84 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
14 76 (2.15%) IT Manager
15 75 (2.13%) Finance Manager
16 69 (1.96%) Financial Analyst
17 65 (1.84%) Data Analyst
17 65 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 61 (1.73%) Data Engineer
19 59 (1.67%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (2.72%) Oracle Fusion
2 86 (2.44%) REST
3 84 (2.38%) Middleware
4 65 (1.84%) Kafka
5 63 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 62 (1.76%) Spring
7 48 (1.36%) React
8 46 (1.30%) .NET
9 44 (1.25%) RESTful
10 31 (0.88%) Node.js
11 30 (0.85%) OAuth
12 28 (0.79%) JSON
13 26 (0.74%) AngularJS
13 26 (0.74%) OpenID
14 25 (0.71%) XML
15 22 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
16 18 (0.51%) SailPoint
16 18 (0.51%) SAML
16 18 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
17 17 (0.48%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 146 (4.14%) Onboarding
1 146 (4.14%) Product Ownership
2 123 (3.49%) Cloud Native
3 113 (3.20%) Management Information System
4 94 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
5 87 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
6 85 (2.41%) Data Centre
7 63 (1.79%) Public Cloud
8 62 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 51 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
10 39 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
11 38 (1.08%) Security Posture
12 37 (1.05%) Mainframe
13 36 (1.02%) Virtual Team
14 26 (0.74%) PMI
15 24 (0.68%) CMDB
16 23 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
17 21 (0.60%) Operational Technology
18 20 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
19 19 (0.54%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.43%) Windows
2 103 (2.92%) Linux
3 50 (1.42%) Unix
4 30 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.77%) 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 (0.26%) 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
1 741 (21.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 661 (18.73%) Agile
3 533 (15.10%) Problem-Solving
4 524 (14.85%) Migration
5 470 (13.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 469 (13.29%) ERP
7 449 (12.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 402 (11.39%) Project Management
9 346 (9.80%) DevOps
10 313 (8.87%) Change Management
11 307 (8.70%) CI/CD
12 295 (8.36%) Decision-Making
13 285 (8.08%) Project Delivery
14 267 (7.57%) User Acceptance Testing
15 257 (7.28%) AI
15 257 (7.28%) Roadmaps
16 251 (7.11%) Validation
17 249 (7.06%) Risk Management
18 234 (6.63%) Business Intelligence
19 222 (6.29%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 329 (9.32%) SQL
2 255 (7.23%) Python
3 210 (5.95%) Java
4 81 (2.30%) PowerShell
5 38 (1.08%) Bash
6 35 (0.99%) C#
7 34 (0.96%) JavaScript
8 29 (0.82%) TypeScript
9 21 (0.60%) 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 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 12 (0.34%) Rust
14 11 (0.31%) T-SQL
15 10 (0.28%) COBOL
15 10 (0.28%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.26%) Perl
17 8 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 322 (9.12%) Security Cleared
2 321 (9.10%) Degree
3 207 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 132 (3.74%) ACCA
5 128 (3.63%) CIMA
6 110 (3.12%) PMP
7 96 (2.72%) PMI Certification
8 87 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
9 73 (2.07%) CISSP
10 54 (1.53%) DV Cleared
11 45 (1.28%) CISM
12 38 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
13 37 (1.05%) Master's Degree
14 30 (0.85%) AWS Certification
15 25 (0.71%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 23 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
17 21 (0.60%) Azure Certification
18 16 (0.45%) DBS Check
19 15 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 15 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (5.10%) Data Quality
2 159 (4.51%) PMO
3 137 (3.88%) QA
4 134 (3.80%) GDPR
5 62 (1.76%) NIST
6 48 (1.36%) SLA
7 42 (1.19%) GRC
7 42 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 39 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 36 (1.02%) IFRS
10 35 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 34 (0.96%) Accessibility
12 15 (0.43%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.40%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.34%) PSD2
16 10 (0.28%) Basel III
17 9 (0.26%) GAAP
17 9 (0.26%) ISO 8583
17 9 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 99 (2.81%) Docker
2 68 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.45%) vSphere
6 14 (0.40%) 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 (0.057%) ACF2
13 2 (0.057%) HDFS
13 2 (0.057%) ISA Server
13 2 (0.057%) SRDF
14 1 (0.028%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.028%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 165 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 81 (2.30%) Terraform
3 68 (1.93%) Ansible
4 41 (1.16%) Grafana
5 33 (0.94%) 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 (0.26%) 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
1 438 (12.41%) Microsoft
2 382 (10.82%) SAP
3 306 (8.67%) Oracle
4 141 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 96 (2.72%) Google
6 59 (1.67%) Databricks
6 59 (1.67%) IBM
7 54 (1.53%) Sage
8 53 (1.50%) Cisco
8 53 (1.50%) Splunk
9 51 (1.45%) VMware
10 38 (1.08%) IFS
11 37 (1.05%) Salesforce
12 32 (0.91%) Workday
13 31 (0.88%) Ariba
14 24 (0.68%) HP
15 23 (0.65%) Red Hat
16 19 (0.54%) Adobe
17 18 (0.51%) Fortinet
17 18 (0.51%) Palo Alto