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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,867 2,627 2,661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.31% 17.39% 13.88%
As % of the General category 27.82% 28.59% 25.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,336 1,722 1,633
10th Percentile £342 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £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 209 74 171
10th Percentile £15.10 £14.74 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.69 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +15.72%
75th Percentile £48.75 £59.69 £38.44
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +31.49%

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 13,899 9,188 10,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.44% 60.82% 53.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,796 5,556 5,892
10th Percentile £263 £213 £210
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £494
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.86% -1.20%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,775 820 1,318
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.08 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £22.32 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.85% -40.48% +42.86%
75th Percentile £63.75 £48.19 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £36.17
% change year-on-year +30.33% -29.99% +18.42%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 1,315 £500 +6.50% 791
South East -1 737 £501 -4.52% 902
North West +1 693 £492 +9.33% 412
Midlands 0 634 £500 +11.11% 467
Yorkshire 0 568 £517 +6.56% 274
Scotland 0 489 £475 -3.46% 177
West Midlands +1 488 £514 +8.21% 271
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 322
East of England +8 213 £530 -7.83% 210
East Midlands -3 141 £500 +19.05% 196
Wales +2 78 £525 +13.51% 84
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 69
North East -17 54 £500 +14.29% 112
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2
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
1 142 (3.67%) Confluence
2 100 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
10 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
11 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 3 (0.078%) Camunda
13 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.052%) JBoss
14 2 (0.052%) Mule
Applications
1 241 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.43%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle ERP
3 43 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.09%) NetSuite
5 40 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
6 33 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.52%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
10 18 (0.47%) SAP FI
11 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) Workday HCM
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 480 (12.41%) Azure
2 331 (8.56%) AWS
3 225 (5.82%) Power Platform
4 215 (5.56%) GCP
5 103 (2.66%) SaaS
6 94 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
8 87 (2.25%) Microsoft 365
9 86 (2.22%) GitHub
10 71 (1.84%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 43 (1.11%) OCI
13 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
13 40 (1.03%) Serverless
14 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
15 25 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 25 (0.65%) Power Automate
16 23 (0.59%) Amazon S3
16 23 (0.59%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Firewall
2 63 (1.63%) Network Security
3 39 (1.01%) VPN
4 38 (0.98%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
6 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.65%) WAN
7 18 (0.47%) LAN
8 13 (0.34%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
12 7 (0.18%) HTTP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) MPLS
13 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.16%) Wireless
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco Firepower
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.78%) Power BI
2 79 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.89%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.78%) Metadata
5 64 (1.66%) SQL Server
6 55 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
8 39 (1.01%) Tableau
9 36 (0.93%) Data Lake
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 23 (0.59%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
14 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
15 16 (0.41%) Power Query
16 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 253 (6.54%) JIRA
2 92 (2.38%) Git
3 61 (1.58%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) Selenium
6 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.39%) GitLab
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
13 5 (0.13%) Gradle
13 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,228 (31.76%) Social Skills
2 540 (13.96%) Analytical Skills
3 534 (13.81%) Banking
4 286 (7.40%) Public Sector
5 214 (5.53%) Legal
6 209 (5.40%) Organisational Skills
7 144 (3.72%) Retail
8 122 (3.15%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 107 (2.77%) Local Government
11 104 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
12 82 (2.12%) Financial Institution
13 78 (2.02%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.02%) Investment Banking
14 73 (1.89%) Billing
15 64 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 58 (1.50%) Marketing
17 54 (1.40%) Telecoms
18 51 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.29%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 531 (13.73%) Analyst
2 412 (10.65%) Lead
3 350 (9.05%) Senior
4 333 (8.61%) Project Manager
5 317 (8.20%) Architect
6 291 (7.53%) Developer
7 249 (6.44%) Business Analyst
8 244 (6.31%) Consultant
9 174 (4.50%) Accountant
10 131 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
11 106 (2.74%) Systems Accountant
12 100 (2.59%) IT Manager
13 98 (2.53%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.99%) Programme Manager
17 68 (1.76%) Administrator
17 68 (1.76%) Data Analyst
18 67 (1.73%) Finance Manager
19 63 (1.63%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (3.65%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.17%) Middleware
3 83 (2.15%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Kafka
5 69 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 67 (1.73%) Spring
7 59 (1.53%) .NET
8 58 (1.50%) React
9 39 (1.01%) RESTful
10 36 (0.93%) OAuth
11 31 (0.80%) Node.js
12 30 (0.78%) JSON
13 28 (0.72%) XML
14 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
15 24 (0.62%) OpenID
15 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
16 22 (0.57%) Redux
16 22 (0.57%) SAML
17 19 (0.49%) AngularJS
17 19 (0.49%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 153 (3.96%) Cloud Native
1 153 (3.96%) Onboarding
2 151 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 115 (2.97%) Management Information System
3 115 (2.97%) Virtual Team
4 105 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 103 (2.66%) Data Protection Act
6 68 (1.76%) Data Structures
7 67 (1.73%) Web Conferencing
8 66 (1.71%) Podcast
9 65 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 57 (1.47%) Public Cloud
11 52 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 51 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
12 51 (1.32%) Mainframe
13 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 37 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
15 36 (0.93%) AI Agents
16 35 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
17 32 (0.83%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 122 (3.15%) Windows
2 109 (2.82%) Linux
3 65 (1.68%) Unix
4 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.16%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
13 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 891 (23.04%) Stakeholder Management
2 710 (18.36%) Agile
3 557 (14.40%) Problem-Solving
4 540 (13.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 537 (13.89%) Migration
6 513 (13.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (13.14%) ERP
8 377 (9.75%) Project Management
9 360 (9.31%) DevOps
10 359 (9.28%) Decision-Making
11 347 (8.97%) CI/CD
12 343 (8.87%) Change Management
13 326 (8.43%) AI
14 316 (8.17%) Project Delivery
15 295 (7.63%) Roadmaps
16 284 (7.34%) User Acceptance Testing
17 270 (6.98%) Validation
18 262 (6.78%) Risk Management
19 251 (6.49%) Analytics
20 239 (6.18%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 328 (8.48%) SQL
2 307 (7.94%) Python
3 225 (5.82%) Java
4 71 (1.84%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 46 (1.19%) Bash
6 46 (1.19%) JavaScript
7 36 (0.93%) PL/SQL
8 35 (0.91%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.65%) Go
11 22 (0.57%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Bicep
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.28%) PHP
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 372 (9.62%) Security Cleared
2 284 (7.34%) Degree
3 227 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 138 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (3.03%) ACCA
6 113 (2.92%) CIMA
7 110 (2.84%) PMP
8 96 (2.48%) PMI Certification
9 82 (2.12%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.81%) CISSP
11 42 (1.09%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 29 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
16 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
18 18 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 213 (5.51%) Data Quality
2 183 (4.73%) PMO
3 145 (3.75%) QA
4 137 (3.54%) GDPR
5 46 (1.19%) SLA
6 45 (1.16%) GRC
6 45 (1.16%) NIST
7 37 (0.96%) IFRS
8 35 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 32 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 23 (0.59%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.34%) GAAP
12 13 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
15 8 (0.21%) WCAG
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 84 (2.17%) Docker
2 73 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.34%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 3 (0.078%) ACF2
12 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.052%) SRDF
12 2 (0.052%) zsh
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 169 (4.37%) Kubernetes
2 106 (2.74%) Terraform
3 77 (1.99%) Ansible
4 33 (0.85%) Grafana
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (0.65%) Prometheus
6 25 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 16 (0.41%) SCCM
9 13 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 11 (0.28%) Control-M
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 8 (0.21%) Nessus
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
15 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 516 (13.34%) Microsoft
2 392 (10.14%) SAP
3 379 (9.80%) Oracle
4 166 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 100 (2.59%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 74 (1.91%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 54 (1.40%) Salesforce
10 52 (1.34%) Sage
11 41 (1.06%) Cisco
12 36 (0.93%) Splunk
13 33 (0.85%) IFS
14 32 (0.83%) Ariba
15 31 (0.80%) Workday
16 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 19 (0.49%) Adobe