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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,860 2,679 2,599
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.29% 17.64% 14.07%
As % of the General category 27.72% 28.91% 26.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,324 1,771 1,593
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.57% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £626
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 218 73 158
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.00 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.44 £17.55 £22.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +60.58% -28.19% +17.29%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £40.06
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £70.05
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +39.94%

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 13,923 9,268 9,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.53% 61.02% 53.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,748 5,589 5,676
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £650 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,842 832 1,203
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.08 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.00 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £46.51 £59.76
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £70.24
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 1,317 £500 +6.61% 1,143
South East -2 743 £501 -5.42% 1,151
North West 0 694 £498 +9.46% 649
Midlands -1 629 £525 +16.67% 600
Yorkshire 0 559 £518 +8.69% 373
Scotland 0 498 £475 -5.00% 313
West Midlands 0 478 £525 +5.85% 371
South West -4 372 £525 -4.55% 485
East of England +6 207 £525 -7.89% 299
East Midlands -3 145 £500 +20.85% 228
Wales +2 70 £525 +13.51% 115
Northern Ireland -1 62 £475 +1.06% 170
North East -13 57 £500 +13.64% 130
Channel Islands +4 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
1 142 (3.68%) Confluence
2 98 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) CMS
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) Apache
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) CICS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
10 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.078%) Camunda
12 3 (0.078%) Mule
12 3 (0.078%) Mule ESB
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 245 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 109 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (2.33%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (1.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (1.01%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.13%) Trello
10 3 (0.078%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (5.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (1.24%) Oracle ERP
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.06%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.65%) Unit4 Business World
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
9 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
11 20 (0.52%) SAP GRC
12 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
13 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
14 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
16 12 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
16 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
17 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
17 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
18 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 470 (12.18%) Azure
2 309 (8.01%) AWS
3 226 (5.85%) Power Platform
4 215 (5.57%) GCP
5 103 (2.67%) SaaS
6 91 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
8 88 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
9 83 (2.15%) GitHub
10 68 (1.76%) Entra ID
11 50 (1.30%) OCI
12 45 (1.17%) Snowflake
13 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
13 39 (1.01%) OpenShift
14 38 (0.98%) Serverless
15 26 (0.67%) Power Automate
15 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
16 23 (0.60%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 22 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.05%) Firewall
2 64 (1.66%) Network Security
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 19 (0.49%) LAN
7 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 11 (0.28%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.16%) MPLS
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.79%) Power BI
2 78 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 65 (1.68%) SQL Server
6 52 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
7 48 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 36 (0.93%) Tableau
10 29 (0.75%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
12 23 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
13 22 (0.57%) NoSQL
13 22 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
15 18 (0.47%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 16 (0.41%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 247 (6.40%) JIRA
2 98 (2.54%) Git
3 53 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.60%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) Claude Code
8 13 (0.34%) GitLab
8 13 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 6 (0.16%) Liquibase
14 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.13%) Gradle
14 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,226 (31.76%) Social Skills
2 552 (14.30%) Analytical Skills
3 530 (13.73%) Banking
4 286 (7.41%) Public Sector
5 225 (5.83%) Legal
6 217 (5.62%) Organisational Skills
7 148 (3.83%) Retail
8 129 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.88%) Manufacturing
10 107 (2.77%) Local Government
11 99 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
12 81 (2.10%) General Ledger
13 78 (2.02%) Financial Institution
14 77 (1.99%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.87%) Billing
16 70 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (1.42%) Marketing
18 53 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (1.37%) Telecoms
19 48 (1.24%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 521 (13.50%) Analyst
2 424 (10.98%) Lead
3 359 (9.30%) Senior
4 327 (8.47%) Project Manager
5 310 (8.03%) Architect
6 286 (7.41%) Developer
7 259 (6.71%) Consultant
8 242 (6.27%) Business Analyst
9 174 (4.51%) Accountant
10 136 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
11 106 (2.75%) Systems Accountant
12 100 (2.59%) IT Manager
13 97 (2.51%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.31%) Financial Analyst
15 83 (2.15%) Java Developer
16 72 (1.87%) Administrator
16 72 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 67 (1.74%) Finance Manager
18 66 (1.71%) Data Analyst
19 64 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.83%) Oracle Fusion
2 82 (2.12%) REST
3 81 (2.10%) Middleware
4 63 (1.63%) Kafka
5 61 (1.58%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.55%) Spring
7 59 (1.53%) .NET
8 58 (1.50%) React
9 36 (0.93%) OAuth
9 36 (0.93%) RESTful
10 33 (0.85%) Node.js
11 31 (0.80%) XML
12 30 (0.78%) JSON
13 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
14 25 (0.65%) OpenID
14 25 (0.65%) SAML
15 22 (0.57%) Redux
15 22 (0.57%) SailPoint
16 21 (0.54%) HTML
17 19 (0.49%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.99%) Product Ownership
2 153 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 147 (3.81%) Cloud Native
4 125 (3.24%) Virtual Team
5 110 (2.85%) Management Information System
6 107 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
7 100 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
8 79 (2.05%) Podcast
8 79 (2.05%) Web Conferencing
9 70 (1.81%) Data Structures
10 56 (1.45%) Data Centre
10 56 (1.45%) Public Cloud
11 52 (1.35%) Mainframe
11 52 (1.35%) Security Posture
12 47 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
13 39 (1.01%) AI Agents
14 38 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
14 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
15 34 (0.88%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.19%) Windows
2 108 (2.80%) Linux
3 62 (1.61%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 26 (0.67%) Solaris
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 12 (0.31%) AIX
8 11 (0.28%) Android
9 10 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.078%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
15 1 (0.026%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 914 (23.68%) Stakeholder Management
2 704 (18.24%) Agile
3 545 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
4 541 (14.02%) Continuous Improvement
5 526 (13.63%) Migration
6 517 (13.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 510 (13.21%) ERP
8 359 (9.30%) Decision-Making
8 359 (9.30%) Project Management
9 345 (8.94%) DevOps
10 343 (8.89%) CI/CD
11 341 (8.83%) Change Management
12 340 (8.81%) AI
13 312 (8.08%) Project Delivery
14 290 (7.51%) Roadmaps
15 285 (7.38%) User Acceptance Testing
16 276 (7.15%) Validation
17 269 (6.97%) Risk Management
18 266 (6.89%) Analytics
19 241 (6.24%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 326 (8.45%) SQL
2 307 (7.95%) Python
3 213 (5.52%) Java
4 67 (1.74%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.45%) C#
6 52 (1.35%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.22%) Bash
8 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.96%) TypeScript
9 31 (0.80%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.60%) C++
10 23 (0.60%) Go
11 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 13 (0.34%) ABAP
14 11 (0.28%) Bicep
14 11 (0.28%) PHP
14 11 (0.28%) VBA
15 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
16 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 364 (9.43%) Security Cleared
2 283 (7.33%) Degree
3 221 (5.73%) SC Cleared
4 142 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 116 (3.01%) ACCA
6 113 (2.93%) CIMA
7 103 (2.67%) PMP
8 89 (2.31%) PMI Certification
9 88 (2.28%) DV Cleared
10 69 (1.79%) CISSP
11 41 (1.06%) CISM
12 33 (0.85%) AWS Certification
12 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 32 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
14 30 (0.78%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
16 23 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
17 22 (0.57%) Master's Degree
18 20 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (5.75%) Data Quality
2 176 (4.56%) PMO
3 138 (3.58%) QA
4 134 (3.47%) GDPR
5 49 (1.27%) SLA
6 47 (1.22%) NIST
7 46 (1.19%) GRC
8 35 (0.91%) IFRS
8 35 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 33 (0.85%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 11 (0.28%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) NCSC
16 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 74 (1.92%) Active Directory
2 73 (1.89%) Docker
3 37 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) vSphere
9 6 (0.16%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.078%) ACF2
12 3 (0.078%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.052%) KVM
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 160 (4.15%) Kubernetes
2 104 (2.69%) Terraform
3 70 (1.81%) Ansible
4 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (0.67%) Grafana
6 25 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.52%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.47%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.39%) SCCM
10 13 (0.34%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.26%) Control-M
12 9 (0.23%) Argo
12 9 (0.23%) Istio
12 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
13 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.18%) Nessus
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 5 (0.13%) CASB
15 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 520 (13.47%) Microsoft
2 399 (10.34%) SAP
3 383 (9.92%) Oracle
4 173 (4.48%) ServiceNow
5 103 (2.67%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 77 (1.99%) Databricks
8 58 (1.50%) Salesforce
9 55 (1.42%) VMware
10 50 (1.30%) Sage
11 42 (1.09%) Cisco
12 36 (0.93%) Workday
13 32 (0.83%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Ariba
15 30 (0.78%) Splunk
16 23 (0.60%) MuleSoft
16 23 (0.60%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.52%) HP
17 20 (0.52%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) CyberArk