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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,895 2,629 2,688
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.75% 16.85% 15.15%
As % of the General category 26.25% 27.71% 27.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,294 1,748 1,565
10th Percentile £338 £308 £301
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -1.38% -3.43%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £721
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 64 102
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.52 £15.50 £19.36
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.08 £29.91
Median % change year-on-year +75.31% -16.17% +15.05%
75th Percentile - £31.63 £55.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £62.38 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +54.25% -13.64% +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 14,837 9,488 9,909
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.37% 60.82% 55.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,927 5,730 5,375
10th Percentile £258 £209 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £594
90th Percentile £688 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,255 931 882
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.65
25th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.50 £21.40 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.85% -38.86% +29.63%
75th Percentile £55.00 £43.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.01 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.35% -28.14% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 1,338 £514 +10.72% 2,015
South East -1 744 £500 -2.72% 2,167
North West -1 641 £503 +11.78% 1,140
Yorkshire 0 619 £525 +5.00% 668
Midlands -3 606 £500 +5.26% 1,132
Scotland 0 547 £463 -6.00% 1,029
West Midlands -2 453 £515 -0.91% 691
South West -5 351 £525 -4.55% 986
East of England +3 204 £553 -3.91% 660
East Midlands -2 150 £500 +20.48% 439
North East -7 71 £538 +22.51% 217
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.21% 458
Wales 0 61 £525 +20.69% 228
Channel Islands +2 7 £550 - 14
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 (3.59%) Confluence
2 95 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 19 (0.49%) Apache
4 15 (0.39%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.33%) CMS
6 13 (0.33%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 6 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) JBoss
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 258 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.80%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 205 (5.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 44 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (0.92%) NetSuite
5 33 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
6 28 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
7 24 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 23 (0.59%) SAP FI
8 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
10 19 (0.49%) Workday HCM
11 18 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
12 14 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 473 (12.14%) Azure
2 355 (9.11%) AWS
3 256 (6.57%) GCP
4 224 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 108 (2.77%) GitHub
6 104 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
7 96 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
7 96 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
7 96 (2.46%) SaaS
8 75 (1.93%) Entra ID
9 47 (1.21%) OpenShift
9 47 (1.21%) Serverless
10 46 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
10 46 (1.18%) Snowflake
11 41 (1.05%) OCI
12 37 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
14 33 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
16 28 (0.72%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.11%) Firewall
2 80 (2.05%) Network Security
3 43 (1.10%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) 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 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Cisco IOS
16 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
16 5 (0.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.62%) Power BI
2 72 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.82%) Metadata
3 71 (1.82%) Relational Database
4 70 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 42 (1.08%) Data Lake
6 37 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
9 30 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.51%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.46%) 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 (5.60%) JIRA
2 120 (3.08%) Git
3 66 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.69%) GitLab
5 23 (0.59%) JUnit
6 18 (0.46%) 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 1,361 (34.94%) Social Skills
2 602 (15.46%) Banking
3 546 (14.02%) Analytical Skills
4 282 (7.24%) Public Sector
5 281 (7.21%) Organisational Skills
6 259 (6.65%) Legal
7 159 (4.08%) Retail
8 146 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
9 106 (2.72%) Manufacturing
10 90 (2.31%) General Ledger
10 90 (2.31%) Local Government
11 88 (2.26%) Billing
12 87 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
13 79 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 72 (1.85%) Investment Banking
15 67 (1.72%) Marketing
16 64 (1.64%) Financial Institution
17 58 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
17 58 (1.49%) Telecoms
18 47 (1.21%) Law
Job Titles
1 480 (12.32%) Analyst
2 394 (10.12%) Lead
3 382 (9.81%) Senior
4 311 (7.98%) Developer
5 300 (7.70%) Architect
6 297 (7.63%) Project Manager
7 274 (7.03%) Consultant
8 224 (5.75%) Business Analyst
9 149 (3.83%) Accountant
10 144 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.57%) IT Manager
12 95 (2.44%) Java Developer
13 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
14 89 (2.28%) Administrator
15 88 (2.26%) Systems Accountant
16 86 (2.21%) Senior Manager
17 78 (2.00%) Finance Manager
18 72 (1.85%) Data Analyst
19 68 (1.75%) Programme Manager
20 67 (1.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.88%) Terraform
2 144 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
3 115 (2.95%) REST
4 80 (2.05%) Kafka
5 73 (1.87%) React
6 71 (1.82%) Middleware
6 71 (1.82%) Spring Boot
7 66 (1.69%) Spring
8 58 (1.49%) .NET
9 54 (1.39%) RESTful
10 48 (1.23%) OAuth
11 45 (1.16%) JSON
12 37 (0.95%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
14 30 (0.77%) SAP Fiori
15 29 (0.74%) HTML
15 29 (0.74%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SOAP
15 29 (0.74%) XML
16 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 173 (4.44%) Onboarding
2 170 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 161 (4.13%) Product Ownership
4 156 (4.01%) Virtual Team
5 128 (3.29%) Data Protection Act
6 120 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 95 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
10 67 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 64 (1.64%) Data Centre
11 64 (1.64%) Data Structures
12 62 (1.59%) AI Agents
13 54 (1.39%) Mainframe
14 52 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
15 50 (1.28%) Security Posture
16 48 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.23%) Public Cloud
17 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
18 40 (1.03%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 117 (3.00%) Linux
2 108 (2.77%) Windows
3 62 (1.59%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 27 (0.69%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) 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 (0.15%) 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 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,053 (27.03%) Stakeholder Management
2 729 (18.72%) Agile
3 538 (13.81%) Continuous Improvement
4 537 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
5 494 (12.68%) Migration
6 489 (12.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 469 (12.04%) ERP
8 421 (10.81%) CI/CD
9 416 (10.68%) AI
10 379 (9.73%) Decision-Making
11 351 (9.01%) DevOps
12 340 (8.73%) Project Management
13 334 (8.58%) Change Management
14 314 (8.06%) Roadmaps
15 296 (7.60%) Project Delivery
16 288 (7.39%) Risk Management
17 287 (7.37%) Analytics
18 281 (7.21%) Validation
19 268 (6.88%) User Acceptance Testing
20 230 (5.91%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 357 (9.17%) SQL
2 356 (9.14%) Python
3 251 (6.44%) Java
4 80 (2.05%) JavaScript
5 77 (1.98%) PowerShell
6 63 (1.62%) C#
7 61 (1.57%) Bash
8 49 (1.26%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.00%) Go
11 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 20 (0.51%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Bicep
14 18 (0.46%) Scala
15 15 (0.39%) Perl
16 13 (0.33%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 10 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) JCL
Qualifications
1 347 (8.91%) Security Cleared
2 251 (6.44%) Degree
3 213 (5.47%) SC Cleared
4 180 (4.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (2.64%) ACCA
6 101 (2.59%) CIMA
7 94 (2.41%) PMP
8 87 (2.23%) DV Cleared
9 76 (1.95%) PMI Certification
10 64 (1.64%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 42 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.03%) Azure Certification
13 40 (1.03%) CISM
14 32 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 31 (0.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 29 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.59%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 256 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 175 (4.49%) PMO
3 141 (3.62%) QA
4 93 (2.39%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 43 (1.10%) Accessibility
6 43 (1.10%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 33 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (0.74%) IFRS
10 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 22 (0.56%) 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 (1.98%) Docker
2 68 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) 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 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) 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 (5.52%) Kubernetes
2 78 (2.00%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.64%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) 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%) Puppet
17 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 587 (15.07%) Microsoft
2 430 (11.04%) SAP
3 364 (9.35%) Oracle
4 169 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.93%) Google
6 97 (2.49%) IBM
7 84 (2.16%) Databricks
8 66 (1.69%) Salesforce
8 66 (1.69%) VMware
9 48 (1.23%) Splunk
10 46 (1.18%) Ariba
11 45 (1.16%) Workday
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco
13 32 (0.82%) Sage
14 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
15 24 (0.62%) Adobe
15 24 (0.62%) Snow
16 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.49%) Foundry
18 18 (0.46%) IFS