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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 2,834 2,360 2,538
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.50% 16.73% 13.15%
As % of the General category 27.02% 27.81% 23.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,845 1,388 1,732
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £518
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -3.47% -0.77%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 70 68
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £12.14
25th Percentile £16.91 £23.66 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £29.00 £26.83
Median % change year-on-year -24.14% +8.11% -16.17%
75th Percentile £24.50 £67.06 £50.00
90th Percentile £41.00 £77.60 £61.50
UK median hourly rate £23.75 £30.30 £27.50
% change year-on-year -21.60% +10.16% +10.00%

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 10,490 8,487 10,692
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 57.38% 60.16% 55.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,487 4,798 6,675
10th Percentile £204 £210 £210
25th Percentile £363 £358 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.31% -1.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,119 512 922
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.36 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £18.10 £15.42
Median hourly rate £22.00 £26.42 £30.03
Median % change year-on-year -16.72% -12.01% +33.44%
75th Percentile £45.46 £55.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.46 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £27.50 £32.41
% change year-on-year -14.27% -15.15% +29.64%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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 +1 887 £475 -5.00% 614
South East -2 527 £508 -3.33% 957
Midlands -4 492 £475 -9.52% 379
North West +1 433 £450 -8.16% 307
Yorkshire 0 412 £490 -4.90% 228
Scotland 0 387 £500 +11.11% 120
West Midlands -6 307 £525 -4.55% 210
South West -2 284 £525 - 292
East Midlands +1 186 £420 +1.45% 166
East of England -2 168 £533 +1.43% 273
Wales +21 76 £400 -3.03% 85
Northern Ireland -1 58 £500 +53.85% 42
North East -7 42 £488 +2.63% 90
Channel Islands +2 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
1 134 (4.73%) Confluence
2 96 (3.39%) SharePoint
3 33 (1.16%) Apache
4 32 (1.13%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.64%) SAS
6 17 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 15 (0.53%) CMS
8 11 (0.39%) JBoss
9 9 (0.32%) IIS
9 9 (0.32%) TPMS
10 8 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 7 (0.25%) iPlanet
11 7 (0.25%) Mattermost
11 7 (0.25%) Skype for Business
11 7 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
12 5 (0.18%) CICS
13 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.11%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 241 (8.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 150 (5.29%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (3.63%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (3.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (1.66%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.60%) Sketch
8 12 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.28%) InVision
10 7 (0.25%) Chatbot
11 6 (0.21%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.21%) Trello
12 5 (0.18%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.11%) Camtasia
13 3 (0.11%) Snagit
14 2 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 113 (3.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.91%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (1.52%) Oracle Receivables
4 42 (1.48%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (1.34%) SAP FI
6 36 (1.27%) Oracle General Ledger
7 32 (1.13%) Oracle Cash Management
8 29 (1.02%) SAP CO
9 28 (0.99%) Oracle Assets
9 28 (0.99%) SAP FI/CO
10 27 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
10 27 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
11 23 (0.81%) Oracle EBS R12
12 22 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 19 (0.67%) SAP ERP
14 16 (0.56%) NetSuite
15 14 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
16 13 (0.46%) Oracle AGIS
16 13 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
16 13 (0.46%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 387 (13.66%) AWS
2 354 (12.49%) Azure
3 193 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 178 (6.28%) GCP
5 106 (3.74%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
7 75 (2.65%) Serverless
8 64 (2.26%) GitHub
9 63 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
10 54 (1.91%) SaaS
11 48 (1.69%) OCI
12 42 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
12 42 (1.48%) Entra ID
13 41 (1.45%) Figma
14 38 (1.34%) OpenShift
15 37 (1.31%) Snowflake
16 34 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
17 31 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (1.06%) Amazon S3
19 21 (0.74%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 64 (2.26%) Firewall
2 26 (0.92%) WAN
3 23 (0.81%) DNS
4 21 (0.74%) Network Security
4 21 (0.74%) Skype
4 21 (0.74%) Wireless
5 19 (0.67%) VPN
6 18 (0.64%) SSH
6 18 (0.64%) SSL
7 16 (0.56%) Kerberos
7 16 (0.56%) LAN
7 16 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.42%) DHCP
8 12 (0.42%) SD-WAN
9 10 (0.35%) Internet
10 9 (0.32%) HTTP
10 9 (0.32%) SNMP
11 8 (0.28%) Cisco IOS
12 6 (0.21%) Unified Communications
12 6 (0.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (6.46%) Power BI
2 75 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
4 69 (2.43%) NoSQL
5 54 (1.91%) Relational Database
6 41 (1.45%) Tableau
7 34 (1.20%) Big Data
8 33 (1.16%) SQL Server
9 29 (1.02%) Metadata
9 29 (1.02%) Power Query
10 25 (0.88%) Hadoop
11 24 (0.85%) Data Lake
11 24 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 23 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
13 21 (0.74%) BigQuery
14 19 (0.67%) MySQL
15 17 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
15 17 (0.60%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.60%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.53%) DB2
Development Applications
1 254 (8.96%) JIRA
2 146 (5.15%) Jenkins
3 87 (3.07%) GitLab
4 70 (2.47%) Git
5 43 (1.52%) JUnit
6 35 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
7 30 (1.06%) Liquibase
8 29 (1.02%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.95%) Bitbucket
10 19 (0.67%) Selenium
11 11 (0.39%) Cypress.io
11 11 (0.39%) Gradle
11 11 (0.39%) Postman
12 9 (0.32%) JMeter
13 8 (0.28%) Bitbucket Server
13 8 (0.28%) CA Release Automation
13 8 (0.28%) Hudson
13 8 (0.28%) SonarQube
13 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.25%) PyCharm
General
1 1,054 (37.19%) Social Skills
2 525 (18.53%) Banking
3 420 (14.82%) Analytical Skills
4 332 (11.71%) Public Sector
5 204 (7.20%) Manufacturing
6 192 (6.77%) Telecoms
7 172 (6.07%) Marketing
8 136 (4.80%) Electronics
9 115 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
10 106 (3.74%) Financial Institution
11 92 (3.25%) Legal
12 90 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
13 58 (2.05%) Investment Banking
14 57 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
15 51 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
16 50 (1.76%) General Ledger
17 49 (1.73%) Retail
18 43 (1.52%) Billing
19 38 (1.34%) Local Government
20 36 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 478 (16.87%) Analyst
2 274 (9.67%) Project Manager
3 228 (8.05%) Senior
4 209 (7.37%) Developer
5 207 (7.30%) Consultant
6 191 (6.74%) Architect
7 186 (6.56%) Business Analyst
8 162 (5.72%) Lead
9 98 (3.46%) Data Analyst
10 82 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
11 79 (2.79%) Programme Manager
12 60 (2.12%) Accountant
13 56 (1.98%) IT Support
13 56 (1.98%) Java Developer
13 56 (1.98%) Senior Manager
14 54 (1.91%) SAP Consultant
15 53 (1.87%) Designer
16 52 (1.83%) Functional Consultant
17 51 (1.80%) Software Engineer
18 50 (1.76%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.55%) REST
2 88 (3.11%) Spring
3 81 (2.86%) RESTful
4 76 (2.68%) Spring Boot
5 63 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
6 60 (2.12%) Kafka
7 55 (1.94%) .NET
8 41 (1.45%) React
9 40 (1.41%) Elastic Stack
10 39 (1.38%) Node.js
11 36 (1.27%) SOAP
12 35 (1.24%) OAuth
13 33 (1.16%) HTML
14 30 (1.06%) AngularJS
14 30 (1.06%) CSS
15 28 (0.99%) JSON
16 24 (0.85%) JMS
16 24 (0.85%) Middleware
17 22 (0.78%) XML
18 21 (0.74%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 145 (5.12%) Onboarding
2 118 (4.16%) Product Ownership
3 95 (3.35%) Cloud Native
4 82 (2.89%) Data Centre
5 70 (2.47%) Public Cloud
6 62 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 51 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
8 50 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
9 48 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
10 37 (1.31%) Mobile App
11 33 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
12 32 (1.13%) Data Structures
13 28 (0.99%) CMDB
14 27 (0.95%) Virtual Team
15 26 (0.92%) PMI
16 25 (0.88%) Mainframe
17 24 (0.85%) NHS
18 19 (0.67%) Credit Risk
18 19 (0.67%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 154 (5.43%) Linux
2 130 (4.59%) Windows
3 45 (1.59%) Unix
4 42 (1.48%) Mac OS
5 38 (1.34%) Windows 10
6 32 (1.13%) Android
7 19 (0.67%) Windows Server
8 11 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.14%) VMS
10 3 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.071%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.071%) Windows 8
11 2 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.035%) MVS
12 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.035%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 684 (24.14%) Agile
2 513 (18.10%) Stakeholder Management
3 493 (17.40%) Problem-Solving
4 348 (12.28%) Migration
5 347 (12.24%) Business Intelligence
6 337 (11.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 324 (11.43%) Project Management
8 309 (10.90%) DevOps
9 293 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
10 292 (10.30%) ERP
11 290 (10.23%) CI/CD
12 241 (8.50%) Change Management
13 233 (8.22%) Programme Management
14 212 (7.48%) Decision-Making
15 199 (7.02%) Analytics
16 198 (6.99%) Project Delivery
17 179 (6.32%) Roadmaps
18 176 (6.21%) Risk Management
19 166 (5.86%) ITIL
20 164 (5.79%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 330 (11.64%) SQL
2 306 (10.80%) Python
3 188 (6.63%) Java
4 70 (2.47%) PowerShell
5 49 (1.73%) JavaScript
6 47 (1.66%) TypeScript
7 46 (1.62%) Go
8 45 (1.59%) C#
9 29 (1.02%) Shell Script
10 26 (0.92%) Bash
11 25 (0.88%) PL/SQL
12 22 (0.78%) R
13 20 (0.71%) VBA
14 17 (0.60%) Groovy
15 15 (0.53%) Perl
16 10 (0.35%) ABAP
17 9 (0.32%) PHP
17 9 (0.32%) Ruby
18 8 (0.28%) COBOL
18 8 (0.28%) JCL
Qualifications
1 296 (10.44%) Degree
2 260 (9.17%) Security Cleared
3 174 (6.14%) SC Cleared
4 75 (2.65%) Master's Degree
5 66 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 65 (2.29%) PMP
7 64 (2.26%) PMI Certification
8 60 (2.12%) AWS Certification
9 58 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
10 57 (2.01%) ACCA
11 50 (1.76%) CIMA
11 50 (1.76%) CISSP
12 49 (1.73%) DV Cleared
13 36 (1.27%) CISM
14 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 19 (0.67%) Azure Certification
16 18 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
18 13 (0.46%) MBA
19 12 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (5.26%) PMO
2 127 (4.48%) QA
3 106 (3.74%) Data Quality
4 103 (3.63%) GDPR
5 55 (1.94%) NIST
5 55 (1.94%) SLA
6 51 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 47 (1.66%) Accessibility
7 47 (1.66%) PCI DSS
8 30 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 24 (0.85%) PSD2
10 23 (0.81%) IFRS
10 23 (0.81%) ISO 20022
11 14 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.49%) GRC
12 12 (0.42%) COBIT
12 12 (0.42%) NCSC
12 12 (0.42%) SEPA
13 11 (0.39%) Basel III
13 11 (0.39%) P3O
System Software
1 127 (4.48%) Docker
2 101 (3.56%) Active Directory
3 25 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.39%) vSphere
6 8 (0.28%) GPFS
7 7 (0.25%) NFS
7 7 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.21%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.18%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.14%) Firmware
10 4 (0.14%) HDFS
10 4 (0.14%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.11%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.11%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.071%) ACF2
12 2 (0.071%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.071%) RACF
Systems Management
1 153 (5.40%) Kubernetes
2 117 (4.13%) Terraform
3 92 (3.25%) Ansible
4 60 (2.12%) Grafana
5 53 (1.87%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.81%) SCCM
7 17 (0.60%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.32%) vRealize
12 8 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.28%) SCOM
13 7 (0.25%) CA Wily
13 7 (0.25%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.25%) HP SiteScope
13 7 (0.25%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.18%) CA Endevor
14 5 (0.18%) Nessus
14 5 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 452 (15.95%) Microsoft
2 380 (13.41%) SAP
3 266 (9.39%) Oracle
4 143 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 90 (3.18%) Splunk
6 77 (2.72%) Cisco
7 72 (2.54%) Google
8 50 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 44 (1.55%) IBM
10 38 (1.34%) VMware
11 37 (1.31%) Workday
12 35 (1.24%) Databricks
13 34 (1.20%) Dell
14 33 (1.16%) HP
15 31 (1.09%) Adobe
16 29 (1.02%) Apple
17 26 (0.92%) Citrix
18 22 (0.78%) IFS
18 22 (0.78%) Remedy
19 19 (0.67%) Sage