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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,515 2,218 2,578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.10% 17.31% 12.51%
As % of the General category 28.07% 27.70% 23.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,141 1,436 1,575
10th Percentile £333 £300 £280
25th Percentile £411 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.40% -0.40% -4.76%
75th Percentile £601 £582 £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 63 205
10th Percentile £13.95 £16.00 £12.37
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.46 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.83 £50.99 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year -53.27% +65.40% -36.11%
75th Percentile £54.00 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.00 £58.50
UK median hourly rate £25.38 £41.50 £26.97
% change year-on-year -38.84% +53.87% -3.61%

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 12,523 8,007 11,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 50.23% 62.49% 53.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,193 4,948 6,336
10th Percentile £263 £210 £210
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 1,489 602 1,680
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.62 £15.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £24.28 £28.13
Median % change year-on-year +19.46% -13.69% +2.27%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.13 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.01 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.41%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 1,198 £492 +4.90% 533
South East -1 653 £500 -3.61% 733
North West +5 631 £465 - 285
Midlands -1 600 £492 +3.58% 345
Yorkshire +2 529 £519 +9.21% 194
Scotland 0 426 £500 +4.28% 98
West Midlands 0 411 £500 -2.13% 211
South West -2 361 £525 - 243
East of England +3 198 £520 -9.57% 155
East Midlands 0 185 £466 +5.37% 134
Wales +11 85 £475 +18.75% 51
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +21.95% 24
North East -17 39 £488 +7.73% 63
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 (4.50%) Confluence
2 108 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.46%) 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%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.085%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.057%) Ethereum
12 2 (0.057%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.057%) JBoss
12 2 (0.057%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 240 (6.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 116 (3.30%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (3.10%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.34%) 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
1 189 (5.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.17%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 34 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 31 (0.88%) 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 (0.46%) 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%) NEC Housing
14 12 (0.34%) Workday HCM
15 11 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 11 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 422 (12.01%) Azure
2 317 (9.02%) AWS
3 208 (5.92%) Power Platform
4 165 (4.69%) GCP
5 100 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
6 95 (2.70%) SaaS
7 88 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.30%) GitHub
9 70 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
10 63 (1.79%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.31%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.17%) Snowflake
13 38 (1.08%) Serverless
14 34 (0.97%) Microsoft Copilot
15 33 (0.94%) OCI
16 24 (0.68%) Google Workspace
16 24 (0.68%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.65%) Amazon S3
18 22 (0.63%) AWS CloudFormation
18 22 (0.63%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 82 (2.33%) Firewall
2 49 (1.39%) Network Security
3 40 (1.14%) DNS
4 38 (1.08%) WAN
5 35 (1.00%) VPN
6 22 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.54%) SD-WAN
8 16 (0.46%) LAN
8 16 (0.46%) SSL
9 15 (0.43%) DHCP
10 12 (0.34%) VSAN
11 9 (0.26%) MPLS
11 9 (0.26%) Skype
12 7 (0.20%) BGP
12 7 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
12 7 (0.20%) Internet
12 7 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
13 5 (0.14%) FTP
13 5 (0.14%) OSPF
13 5 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (5.18%) Power BI
2 66 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
3 61 (1.74%) Relational Database
4 60 (1.71%) Metadata
4 60 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
5 46 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
6 43 (1.22%) SQL Server
7 38 (1.08%) Tableau
8 34 (0.97%) NoSQL
9 26 (0.74%) DynamoDB
10 25 (0.71%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.68%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.63%) Oracle ODI
13 19 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
14 18 (0.51%) Big Data
15 17 (0.48%) DB2
15 17 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 15 (0.43%) Power Query
17 14 (0.40%) Data Vault
18 11 (0.31%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 289 (8.22%) JIRA
2 71 (2.02%) Jenkins
3 64 (1.82%) Git
4 29 (0.83%) GitLab
5 24 (0.68%) JUnit
6 22 (0.63%) Cucumber
7 20 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 19 (0.54%) Selenium
9 15 (0.43%) Hudson
10 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.37%) Postman
12 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.23%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
14 6 (0.17%) Gradle
14 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
14 6 (0.17%) Maven
15 5 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,126 (32.03%) Social Skills
2 494 (14.05%) Banking
3 455 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
4 255 (7.25%) Public Sector
5 131 (3.73%) Legal
5 131 (3.73%) Organisational Skills
6 119 (3.39%) Retail
7 115 (3.27%) Manufacturing
8 104 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
9 94 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (2.56%) Local Government
11 77 (2.19%) Financial Institution
12 68 (1.93%) General Ledger
13 66 (1.88%) Telecoms
14 62 (1.76%) Investment Banking
15 60 (1.71%) Marketing
16 53 (1.51%) Billing
17 43 (1.22%) Law
18 36 (1.02%) Aerospace
18 36 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 517 (14.71%) Analyst
2 350 (9.96%) Project Manager
3 324 (9.22%) Architect
4 314 (8.93%) Lead
5 298 (8.48%) Senior
6 242 (6.88%) Consultant
7 238 (6.77%) Business Analyst
8 232 (6.60%) Developer
9 151 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
10 133 (3.78%) Accountant
11 97 (2.76%) Senior Manager
12 88 (2.50%) Programme Manager
13 83 (2.36%) Systems Accountant
14 77 (2.19%) Finance Manager
15 76 (2.16%) IT Manager
16 67 (1.91%) Financial Analyst
17 64 (1.82%) Data Analyst
18 62 (1.76%) Java Developer
19 61 (1.74%) Data Engineer
20 58 (1.65%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
2 87 (2.48%) REST
3 84 (2.39%) Middleware
4 67 (1.91%) Spring Boot
5 66 (1.88%) Kafka
6 65 (1.85%) Spring
7 45 (1.28%) .NET
8 44 (1.25%) RESTful
9 42 (1.19%) React
10 32 (0.91%) OAuth
11 31 (0.88%) Node.js
12 27 (0.77%) JSON
13 26 (0.74%) AngularJS
13 26 (0.74%) OpenID
14 25 (0.71%) XML
15 22 (0.63%) OpenTelemetry
16 19 (0.54%) SailPoint
17 18 (0.51%) OAuth2
17 18 (0.51%) SAML
17 18 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 148 (4.21%) Product Ownership
2 144 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 121 (3.44%) Cloud Native
4 110 (3.13%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 87 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 85 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.76%) Data Structures
8 62 (1.76%) Public Cloud
9 51 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
10 38 (1.08%) Mainframe
10 38 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
11 36 (1.02%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 28 (0.80%) PMI
13 24 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
13 24 (0.68%) CMDB
14 21 (0.60%) Mobile App
14 21 (0.60%) Operational Technology
15 16 (0.46%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.36%) Windows
2 101 (2.87%) Linux
3 50 (1.42%) Unix
4 30 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.77%) Solaris
6 21 (0.60%) 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
1 735 (20.91%) Stakeholder Management
2 661 (18.81%) Agile
3 533 (15.16%) Problem-Solving
4 523 (14.88%) Migration
5 470 (13.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 465 (13.23%) ERP
7 451 (12.83%) Continuous Improvement
8 401 (11.41%) Project Management
9 344 (9.79%) DevOps
10 311 (8.85%) Change Management
11 303 (8.62%) CI/CD
12 291 (8.28%) Decision-Making
13 285 (8.11%) Project Delivery
14 268 (7.62%) User Acceptance Testing
15 259 (7.37%) AI
16 257 (7.31%) Roadmaps
17 250 (7.11%) Validation
18 249 (7.08%) Risk Management
19 233 (6.63%) Business Intelligence
20 218 (6.20%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 326 (9.27%) SQL
2 250 (7.11%) Python
3 207 (5.89%) Java
4 78 (2.22%) PowerShell
5 36 (1.02%) Bash
6 28 (0.80%) C#
6 28 (0.80%) JavaScript
7 23 (0.65%) TypeScript
8 22 (0.63%) PL/SQL
9 19 (0.54%) Go
10 18 (0.51%) C++
11 17 (0.48%) Shell Script
11 17 (0.48%) VBA
12 14 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 12 (0.34%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.34%) Rust
14 10 (0.28%) COBOL
15 9 (0.26%) Perl
15 9 (0.26%) T-SQL
16 8 (0.23%) VB
Qualifications
1 325 (9.25%) Security Cleared
2 321 (9.13%) Degree
3 208 (5.92%) SC Cleared
4 132 (3.76%) ACCA
5 128 (3.64%) CIMA
6 111 (3.16%) PMP
7 98 (2.79%) PMI Certification
8 87 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 73 (2.08%) CISSP
10 56 (1.59%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.31%) CISM
12 39 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 37 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
14 31 (0.88%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 22 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
17 19 (0.54%) Azure Certification
18 16 (0.46%) DBS Check
19 15 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 15 (0.43%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (5.06%) Data Quality
2 158 (4.50%) PMO
3 137 (3.90%) QA
4 132 (3.76%) GDPR
5 64 (1.82%) NIST
6 48 (1.37%) SLA
7 43 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 42 (1.19%) GRC
9 38 (1.08%) PCI DSS
10 36 (1.02%) IFRS
11 35 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.97%) Accessibility
13 15 (0.43%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.40%) IFRS 17
15 13 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.34%) PSD2
17 11 (0.31%) Basel III
17 11 (0.31%) NCSC
18 9 (0.26%) GAAP
18 9 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 97 (2.76%) Docker
2 69 (1.96%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.46%) 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
1 164 (4.67%) Kubernetes
2 82 (2.33%) Terraform
3 68 (1.93%) Ansible
4 41 (1.17%) Grafana
5 33 (0.94%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.43%) SCCM
9 12 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 10 (0.28%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.28%) Nessus
11 9 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 9 (0.26%) vRealize
12 8 (0.23%) Istio
12 8 (0.23%) Kiali
13 7 (0.20%) Control-M
13 7 (0.20%) VxRail
14 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.17%) Argo
15 5 (0.14%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 436 (12.40%) Microsoft
2 381 (10.84%) SAP
3 307 (8.73%) Oracle
4 142 (4.04%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.67%) Google
6 59 (1.68%) IBM
7 56 (1.59%) Databricks
8 54 (1.54%) Sage
9 53 (1.51%) Splunk
10 52 (1.48%) Cisco
11 51 (1.45%) VMware
12 39 (1.11%) IFS
13 36 (1.02%) Salesforce
14 32 (0.91%) Workday
15 30 (0.85%) Ariba
16 24 (0.68%) HP
17 21 (0.60%) Red Hat
18 19 (0.54%) Adobe
19 18 (0.51%) Citrix
19 18 (0.51%) Palo Alto