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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,070 2,178 2,707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.15% 16.35% 12.94%
As % of the General category 27.21% 26.77% 23.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,939 1,282 1,778
10th Percentile £313 £305 £299
25th Percentile £405 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.20% -0.97%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £688 £678 £719
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 64 140
10th Percentile £13.87 £17.54 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £13.49
Median hourly rate £22.00 £29.12 £21.43
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% +35.86% -36.11%
75th Percentile £25.00 £60.94 £38.12
90th Percentile £54.20 £78.18 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
% change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -4.00%

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 11,281 8,135 11,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 55.68% 61.08% 55.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,846 4,760 6,974
10th Percentile £206 £210 £205
25th Percentile £363 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £681
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,223 458 1,405
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £16.01 £19.59 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.44 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.83% +9.77% -
75th Percentile £50.00 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.62 £65.15
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%

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 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 23 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 23 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 +2 988 £475 -0.42% 634
South East -1 557 £500 -4.76% 989
Midlands -2 556 £490 -2.00% 373
North West +4 496 £450 -3.23% 366
Yorkshire 0 444 £513 - 211
Scotland 0 391 £475 - 114
West Midlands -1 352 £514 -6.55% 213
South West -5 302 £512 -2.57% 248
East Midlands 0 200 £450 +7.14% 160
East of England -1 188 £533 +1.43% 202
Wales +33 103 £413 +1.54% 62
North East -10 49 £488 +5.41% 68
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 38
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
1 154 (5.02%) Confluence
2 106 (3.45%) SharePoint
3 34 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.88%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.78%) Apache
6 19 (0.62%) SAS
7 11 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
7 11 (0.36%) CMS
7 11 (0.36%) TPMS
8 8 (0.26%) CICS
9 6 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.13%) Mattermost
10 4 (0.13%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.098%) IIS
11 3 (0.098%) JBoss
11 3 (0.098%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.065%) HCL Notes
12 2 (0.065%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 245 (7.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (5.02%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (3.71%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (2.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 54 (1.76%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.46%) Sketch
8 12 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.26%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.23%) InVision
11 6 (0.20%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.20%) Trello
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.098%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.033%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.033%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 143 (4.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.76%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.50%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (1.17%) Oracle General Ledger
5 32 (1.04%) SAP FI
6 31 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 29 (0.94%) Oracle Assets
7 29 (0.94%) Oracle Cash Management
8 22 (0.72%) SAP CO
8 22 (0.72%) 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 (0.46%) NetSuite
13 13 (0.42%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 387 (12.61%) Azure
2 385 (12.54%) AWS
3 180 (5.86%) Power Platform
4 177 (5.77%) GCP
5 129 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
6 85 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
7 78 (2.54%) GitHub
8 74 (2.41%) SaaS
8 74 (2.41%) Serverless
9 62 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (1.79%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.53%) OCI
12 42 (1.37%) OpenShift
13 39 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (1.21%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (1.11%) Figma
17 32 (1.04%) Amazon S3
18 30 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.54%) Firewall
2 33 (1.07%) WAN
3 28 (0.91%) DNS
4 24 (0.78%) Network Security
5 22 (0.72%) Skype
5 22 (0.72%) VPN
5 22 (0.72%) Wireless
6 19 (0.62%) SSL
7 16 (0.52%) LAN
7 16 (0.52%) SD-WAN
8 15 (0.49%) SSH
8 15 (0.49%) TCP/IP
9 11 (0.36%) DHCP
9 11 (0.36%) Kerberos
9 11 (0.36%) SNMP
10 10 (0.33%) Internet
11 8 (0.26%) Cisco IOS
12 7 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
13 6 (0.20%) BGP
13 6 (0.20%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (5.54%) Power BI
2 80 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (2.15%) NoSQL
5 48 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 38 (1.24%) Tableau
7 37 (1.21%) Metadata
8 29 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
8 29 (0.94%) SQL Server
9 26 (0.85%) Big Data
10 25 (0.81%) Data Lake
11 24 (0.78%) DynamoDB
12 21 (0.68%) Power Query
13 19 (0.62%) BigQuery
14 17 (0.55%) MongoDB
15 16 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
16 15 (0.49%) MySQL
17 14 (0.46%) Oracle Database
18 13 (0.42%) Hadoop
19 12 (0.39%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 286 (9.32%) JIRA
2 140 (4.56%) Jenkins
3 89 (2.90%) GitLab
4 56 (1.82%) Git
5 37 (1.21%) JUnit
5 37 (1.21%) Sonatype Nexus
6 33 (1.07%) Cucumber
7 23 (0.75%) Liquibase
8 20 (0.65%) Selenium
9 18 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 14 (0.46%) Gradle
10 14 (0.46%) Postman
11 11 (0.36%) Maven
12 10 (0.33%) 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 (0.20%) Snyk
General
1 1,116 (36.35%) Social Skills
2 513 (16.71%) Banking
3 386 (12.57%) Analytical Skills
4 338 (11.01%) Public Sector
5 174 (5.67%) Manufacturing
6 165 (5.37%) Telecoms
7 149 (4.85%) Marketing
8 131 (4.27%) Organisational Skills
9 103 (3.36%) Financial Institution
10 102 (3.32%) Electronics
11 95 (3.09%) Legal
12 94 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
13 68 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
14 67 (2.18%) Local Government
15 60 (1.95%) General Ledger
16 56 (1.82%) Retail
17 52 (1.69%) Investment Banking
18 50 (1.63%) Billing
19 46 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 478 (15.57%) Analyst
2 283 (9.22%) Project Manager
3 248 (8.08%) Architect
4 242 (7.88%) Senior
5 223 (7.26%) Lead
6 219 (7.13%) Consultant
7 217 (7.07%) Business Analyst
8 211 (6.87%) Developer
9 107 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 96 (3.13%) Programme Manager
11 82 (2.67%) Data Analyst
12 67 (2.18%) Senior Manager
13 65 (2.12%) Accountant
14 64 (2.08%) Finance Manager
15 60 (1.95%) SAP Consultant
16 59 (1.92%) Functional Consultant
17 56 (1.82%) Designer
18 55 (1.79%) Java Developer
19 53 (1.73%) Administrator
20 51 (1.66%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.97%) REST
2 82 (2.67%) Spring
3 75 (2.44%) Spring Boot
4 69 (2.25%) Kafka
4 69 (2.25%) RESTful
5 67 (2.18%) Oracle Fusion
6 49 (1.60%) Middleware
7 45 (1.47%) React
8 40 (1.30%) .NET
9 38 (1.24%) Node.js
10 33 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
10 33 (1.07%) JSON
11 31 (1.01%) SOAP
12 29 (0.94%) OAuth
13 28 (0.91%) HTML
14 25 (0.81%) AngularJS
15 24 (0.78%) CSS
15 24 (0.78%) OpenTelemetry
16 22 (0.72%) XML
17 19 (0.62%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.85%) Onboarding
2 129 (4.20%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.39%) Cloud Native
4 81 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 79 (2.57%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
7 71 (2.31%) Public Cloud
8 65 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
9 64 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
10 42 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
11 41 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 33 (1.07%) PMI
13 32 (1.04%) CMDB
13 32 (1.04%) Mobile App
13 32 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
14 31 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 24 (0.78%) Mainframe
16 19 (0.62%) Credit Risk
16 19 (0.62%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 18 (0.59%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 131 (4.27%) Linux
2 112 (3.65%) Windows
3 41 (1.34%) Unix
4 38 (1.24%) Mac OS
5 37 (1.21%) Windows 10
6 31 (1.01%) Android
7 15 (0.49%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.16%) AIX
9 5 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.16%) Solaris
9 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.13%) VMS
10 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.098%) zOS
12 1 (0.033%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.033%) MVS
12 1 (0.033%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (22.08%) Agile
2 595 (19.38%) Stakeholder Management
3 514 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
4 417 (13.58%) Migration
5 394 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 358 (11.66%) Project Management
7 333 (10.85%) ERP
8 330 (10.75%) Continuous Improvement
9 325 (10.59%) DevOps
10 310 (10.10%) Business Intelligence
11 300 (9.77%) CI/CD
12 272 (8.86%) Change Management
13 225 (7.33%) Project Delivery
14 219 (7.13%) Decision-Making
15 212 (6.91%) Analytics
16 205 (6.68%) Roadmaps
17 202 (6.58%) Programme Management
18 198 (6.45%) User Acceptance Testing
19 195 (6.35%) Data Modelling
20 193 (6.29%) AI
Programming Languages
1 332 (10.81%) SQL
2 292 (9.51%) Python
3 195 (6.35%) Java
4 78 (2.54%) PowerShell
5 42 (1.37%) TypeScript
6 41 (1.34%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.24%) Go
8 28 (0.91%) C#
9 25 (0.81%) Bash
10 21 (0.68%) PL/SQL
11 20 (0.65%) VBA
12 19 (0.62%) Shell Script
13 18 (0.59%) R
14 12 (0.39%) Perl
15 11 (0.36%) Rust
16 10 (0.33%) COBOL
17 9 (0.29%) ABAP
17 9 (0.29%) Kotlin
17 9 (0.29%) Ruby
17 9 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 332 (10.81%) Degree
2 292 (9.51%) Security Cleared
3 195 (6.35%) SC Cleared
4 79 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 76 (2.48%) Master's Degree
6 75 (2.44%) ACCA
6 75 (2.44%) PMI Certification
6 75 (2.44%) PMP
7 71 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 70 (2.28%) CIMA
9 55 (1.79%) DV Cleared
10 49 (1.60%) CISSP
11 47 (1.53%) AWS Certification
12 36 (1.17%) CISM
13 30 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
14 24 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
15 17 (0.55%) MBA
16 16 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 14 (0.46%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 157 (5.11%) PMO
2 136 (4.43%) QA
3 127 (4.14%) Data Quality
4 113 (3.68%) GDPR
5 54 (1.76%) NIST
6 50 (1.63%) PCI DSS
7 49 (1.60%) SLA
8 42 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (1.14%) Accessibility
11 28 (0.91%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.85%) IFRS
13 22 (0.72%) PSD2
14 19 (0.62%) GRC
15 15 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.46%) SEPA
17 13 (0.42%) Basel III
17 13 (0.42%) GAAP
18 11 (0.36%) GLBA
19 10 (0.33%) NCSC
System Software
1 134 (4.36%) Docker
2 94 (3.06%) Active Directory
3 33 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (0.55%) vSphere
5 10 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (0.29%) GPFS
7 8 (0.26%) NFS
8 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
10 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.098%) HDFS
11 3 (0.098%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.065%) ACF2
12 2 (0.065%) Firmware
12 2 (0.065%) KVM
12 2 (0.065%) RACF
12 2 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.065%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 167 (5.44%) Kubernetes
2 96 (3.13%) Terraform
3 84 (2.74%) Ansible
4 64 (2.08%) Grafana
5 59 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 20 (0.65%) SCCM
7 18 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.36%) Nessus
11 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.29%) vRealize
12 8 (0.26%) Kiali
13 7 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (0.20%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) HP ALM
15 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
16 4 (0.13%) Argo
Vendors
1 450 (14.66%) Microsoft
2 371 (12.08%) SAP
3 248 (8.08%) Oracle
4 160 (5.21%) ServiceNow
5 89 (2.90%) Splunk
6 87 (2.83%) Google
7 82 (2.67%) Cisco
8 52 (1.69%) IBM
9 46 (1.50%) VMware
10 44 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.40%) Databricks
12 40 (1.30%) Workday
13 37 (1.21%) Sage
14 34 (1.11%) HP
15 33 (1.07%) Dell
16 26 (0.85%) Adobe
17 25 (0.81%) Apple
18 23 (0.75%) Citrix
18 23 (0.75%) Remedy
19 20 (0.65%) CyberArk