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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,902 2,645 2,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.78% 16.88% 15.27%
As % of the General category 26.18% 27.77% 27.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,291 1,762 1,557
10th Percentile £335 £308 £302
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 68 100
10th Percentile £14.35 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £15.50 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +25.15%
75th Percentile - £30.54 £55.06
90th Percentile £72.50 £58.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
% change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +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 14,906 9,524 9,872
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.64% 60.76% 56.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,930 5,753 5,364
10th Percentile £260 £209 £205
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,294 943 850
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.27 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.91 £15.53 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.50 £21.39 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year +33.24% -36.96% +28.04%
75th Percentile £54.17 £42.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.26 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +12.35% -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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 1,351 £514 +9.36% 2,170
South East -2 745 £500 -2.72% 2,292
North West -2 642 £503 +11.78% 1,202
Yorkshire 0 630 £517 +3.36% 734
Midlands -3 612 £515 +8.42% 1,200
Scotland 0 544 £463 -7.50% 1,110
West Midlands -2 458 £515 -0.91% 735
South West -6 345 £525 -4.55% 1,078
East of England +3 205 £550 -4.35% 726
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +19.05% 465
North East -6 72 £500 +13.96% 249
Wales -1 63 £525 +20.69% 330
Northern Ireland 0 62 £510 -1.92% 416
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 19
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
1 142 (3.64%) Confluence
2 97 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.64%) Apache
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) SAS
5 11 (0.28%) CMS
5 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
6 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
7 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
8 6 (0.15%) CICS
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
9 5 (0.13%) 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%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 259 (6.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.77%) 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
1 210 (5.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
4 34 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
5 31 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
6 30 (0.77%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.67%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.51%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.51%) Workday HCM
12 16 (0.41%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.28%) Azure
2 361 (9.25%) AWS
3 260 (6.66%) GCP
4 223 (5.72%) Power Platform
5 112 (2.87%) GitHub
6 106 (2.72%) Dynamics 365
7 100 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
8 98 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
9 94 (2.41%) SaaS
10 77 (1.97%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.23%) Serverless
12 47 (1.20%) Snowflake
13 44 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
14 42 (1.08%) OCI
14 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
15 38 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
17 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
17 29 (0.74%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 83 (2.13%) Network Security
2 82 (2.10%) Firewall
3 42 (1.08%) VPN
4 27 (0.69%) DNS
5 21 (0.54%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 17 (0.44%) Broadband
9 15 (0.38%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 11 (0.28%) 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%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 6 (0.15%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 6 (0.15%) SAN
16 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.66%) Power BI
2 75 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) SQL Server
4 69 (1.77%) Metadata
4 69 (1.77%) Relational Database
5 45 (1.15%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
7 34 (0.87%) Tableau
8 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
9 29 (0.74%) Db2
10 26 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
11 21 (0.54%) BigQuery
12 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
12 20 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.41%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.38%) Data Vault
15 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 220 (5.64%) JIRA
2 122 (3.13%) Git
3 68 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.77%) GitLab
5 23 (0.59%) JUnit
6 19 (0.49%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.38%) Selenium
8 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.26%) Gradle
13 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.21%) ERwin
14 8 (0.21%) Mockito
15 7 (0.18%) Bitbucket
15 7 (0.18%) JMeter
15 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
15 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,365 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 612 (15.68%) Banking
3 541 (13.86%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.36%) Organisational Skills
5 281 (7.20%) Public Sector
6 255 (6.54%) Legal
7 162 (4.15%) Retail
8 146 (3.74%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.84%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.43%) Billing
11 92 (2.36%) General Ledger
12 89 (2.28%) Local Government
13 81 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
13 81 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 72 (1.85%) Investment Banking
15 68 (1.74%) Marketing
16 66 (1.69%) Financial Institution
17 61 (1.56%) Telecoms
18 60 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 44 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 478 (12.25%) Analyst
2 392 (10.05%) Lead
3 387 (9.92%) Senior
4 306 (7.84%) Developer
5 302 (7.74%) Architect
6 292 (7.48%) Project Manager
7 270 (6.92%) Consultant
8 227 (5.82%) Business Analyst
9 150 (3.84%) Accountant
10 146 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 99 (2.54%) IT Manager
12 94 (2.41%) Administrator
13 93 (2.38%) Java Developer
14 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
15 90 (2.31%) Systems Accountant
16 86 (2.20%) Senior Manager
17 81 (2.08%) Finance Manager
18 74 (1.90%) Data Analyst
19 71 (1.82%) Programme Manager
20 68 (1.74%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.90%) Terraform
2 147 (3.77%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.02%) REST
4 79 (2.02%) Kafka
5 75 (1.92%) React
6 72 (1.85%) Middleware
6 72 (1.85%) Spring Boot
7 66 (1.69%) Spring
8 60 (1.54%) .NET
9 52 (1.33%) RESTful
10 46 (1.18%) OAuth
11 45 (1.15%) JSON
12 35 (0.90%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
14 32 (0.82%) SAP Fiori
15 31 (0.79%) HTML
16 30 (0.77%) SOAP
17 29 (0.74%) XML
18 28 (0.72%) AngularJS
18 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 179 (4.59%) Onboarding
2 176 (4.51%) Cloud Native
3 162 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.07%) Virtual Team
5 130 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
6 124 (3.18%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.87%) Podcast
9 91 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 65 (1.67%) Data Centre
13 64 (1.64%) AI Agents
14 54 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
15 53 (1.36%) Mainframe
15 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
16 49 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.23%) Security Posture
18 43 (1.10%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.02%) Linux
2 106 (2.72%) Windows
3 60 (1.54%) Unix
4 35 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 27 (0.69%) Windows Server
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 17 (0.44%) Android
9 16 (0.41%) 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%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,070 (27.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 740 (18.96%) Agile
3 544 (13.94%) Continuous Improvement
4 538 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
5 494 (12.66%) Migration
6 488 (12.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 463 (11.87%) ERP
8 432 (11.07%) CI/CD
9 421 (10.79%) AI
10 382 (9.79%) Decision-Making
11 355 (9.10%) DevOps
12 346 (8.87%) Project Management
13 331 (8.48%) Change Management
14 322 (8.25%) Roadmaps
15 301 (7.71%) Project Delivery
16 289 (7.41%) Analytics
17 285 (7.30%) Risk Management
18 283 (7.25%) Validation
19 273 (7.00%) User Acceptance Testing
20 226 (5.79%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 364 (9.33%) Python
2 354 (9.07%) SQL
3 251 (6.43%) Java
4 83 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 77 (1.97%) PowerShell
6 66 (1.69%) C#
7 62 (1.59%) Bash
8 51 (1.31%) TypeScript
9 39 (1.00%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 16 (0.41%) Perl
15 14 (0.36%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 349 (8.94%) Security Cleared
2 247 (6.33%) Degree
3 214 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 181 (4.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 102 (2.61%) ACCA
6 100 (2.56%) CIMA
7 96 (2.46%) PMP
8 90 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 81 (2.08%) PMI Certification
10 62 (1.59%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 41 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
13 40 (1.03%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.00%) CISM
15 32 (0.82%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
17 28 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 22 (0.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 257 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 179 (4.59%) PMO
3 141 (3.61%) QA
4 87 (2.23%) GDPR
5 57 (1.46%) GRC
6 45 (1.15%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 29 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.72%) IFRS
10 23 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
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
System Software
1 79 (2.02%) Docker
2 69 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
8 5 (0.13%) GPFS
8 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 4 (0.10%) ACF2
9 4 (0.10%) zsh
10 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) KVM
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 216 (5.54%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.02%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 36 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
5 34 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) 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%) CEMLI
17 4 (0.10%) Kibana
17 4 (0.10%) logstash
17 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 596 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 445 (11.40%) SAP
3 362 (9.28%) Oracle
4 167 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.92%) Google
6 97 (2.49%) IBM
7 84 (2.15%) Databricks
8 67 (1.72%) VMware
9 66 (1.69%) Salesforce
10 50 (1.28%) Ariba
11 48 (1.23%) Splunk
12 46 (1.18%) Workday
13 43 (1.10%) Cisco
14 31 (0.79%) Sage
15 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.62%) Adobe
16 24 (0.62%) Snow
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 17 (0.44%) Dynatrace
18 17 (0.44%) Foundry