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 26 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,256 2,160 2,695
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.74% 17.15% 12.82%
As % of the General category 27.64% 27.78% 23.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,045 1,364 1,700
10th Percentile £325 £305 £281
25th Percentile £402 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 69 192
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.12 £11.88
25th Percentile £16.89 £22.50 £14.43
Median hourly rate £22.00 £48.82 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year -54.93% +52.00% -16.26%
75th Percentile £33.63 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £72.25 £77.69 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £38.11 £30.00
% change year-on-year -37.48% +27.03% -4.39%

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 11,781 7,775 11,562
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.34% 61.74% 55.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,121 4,862 6,773
10th Percentile £223 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £496
Median % change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £675 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,299 514 1,532
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.70 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.58 £27.70 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.89% +10.80% -19.70%
75th Percentile £57.50 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.12 £29.15 £26.00
% change year-on-year -13.83% +12.12% -25.71%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 1,066 £475 - 695
South East -2 620 £503 -7.80% 1,010
Midlands 0 581 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 568 £450 -3.23% 371
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 +4.71% 253
West Midlands +3 381 £496 -5.52% 251
Scotland 0 370 £488 +2.74% 161
South West -3 325 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England -1 199 £518 -4.83% 271
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +2.68% 171
Wales +27 108 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -3 49 £488 +4.84% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 1 - - 4
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
1 161 (4.94%) Confluence
2 113 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 28 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (0.77%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.74%) Apache
6 13 (0.40%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.18%) CMS
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.092%) Camunda
13 3 (0.092%) IIS
14 2 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.061%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.061%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
Applications
1 244 (7.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 136 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (3.65%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (2.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (1.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.092%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.031%) UXPin
11 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 149 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.63%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.44%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 39 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
6 35 (1.07%) Oracle General Ledger
7 30 (0.92%) Oracle Assets
8 29 (0.89%) SAP FI
9 28 (0.86%) Oracle Cash Management
9 28 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
10 22 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
11 19 (0.58%) SAP CO
12 18 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
12 18 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
13 17 (0.52%) NetSuite
14 15 (0.46%) SAP BRIM
14 15 (0.46%) SAP Hybris
14 15 (0.46%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 402 (12.35%) Azure
2 361 (11.09%) AWS
3 187 (5.74%) Power Platform
4 161 (4.94%) GCP
5 116 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
6 85 (2.61%) GitHub
7 80 (2.46%) SaaS
8 79 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
9 76 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
10 69 (2.12%) Serverless
11 53 (1.63%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.29%) OCI
13 39 (1.20%) OpenShift
14 34 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
15 32 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
15 32 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
16 31 (0.95%) Snowflake
17 29 (0.89%) Amazon S3
17 29 (0.89%) Microsoft Copilot
18 25 (0.77%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.49%) Firewall
2 42 (1.29%) WAN
3 36 (1.11%) DNS
4 34 (1.04%) Network Security
5 30 (0.92%) VPN
6 22 (0.68%) LAN
7 21 (0.64%) SD-WAN
8 18 (0.55%) Skype
9 17 (0.52%) SSL
10 16 (0.49%) TCP/IP
10 16 (0.49%) Wireless
11 14 (0.43%) Internet
11 14 (0.43%) SSH
12 11 (0.34%) DHCP
13 10 (0.31%) SNMP
14 9 (0.28%) MPLS
15 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (0.25%) Kerberos
15 8 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
16 7 (0.21%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (5.44%) Power BI
2 82 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.63%) NoSQL
5 45 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
6 44 (1.35%) Metadata
7 41 (1.26%) Relational Database
8 35 (1.07%) SQL Server
8 35 (1.07%) Tableau
9 26 (0.80%) DynamoDB
10 25 (0.77%) Data Lake
11 23 (0.71%) Power Query
12 22 (0.68%) Big Data
13 17 (0.52%) BigQuery
14 16 (0.49%) Oracle ODI
15 13 (0.40%) MongoDB
15 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
16 12 (0.37%) MySQL
16 12 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 312 (9.58%) JIRA
2 123 (3.78%) Jenkins
3 72 (2.21%) GitLab
4 52 (1.60%) Git
5 36 (1.11%) JUnit
6 35 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
7 29 (0.89%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.61%) Selenium
9 14 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
10 13 (0.40%) Postman
11 11 (0.34%) Gradle
11 11 (0.34%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.31%) Hudson
13 9 (0.28%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.21%) Maven
16 6 (0.18%) Snyk
16 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,113 (34.18%) Social Skills
2 510 (15.66%) Banking
3 412 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 346 (10.63%) Public Sector
5 165 (5.07%) Manufacturing
6 152 (4.67%) Telecoms
7 131 (4.02%) Marketing
7 131 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
8 109 (3.35%) Legal
9 100 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
10 97 (2.98%) Financial Institution
11 87 (2.67%) Electronics
12 80 (2.46%) Local Government
13 68 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
14 66 (2.03%) Retail
15 58 (1.78%) General Ledger
16 50 (1.54%) Billing
17 48 (1.47%) Investment Banking
18 40 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
19 31 (0.95%) Law
Job Titles
1 497 (15.26%) Analyst
2 325 (9.98%) Project Manager
3 282 (8.66%) Architect
4 262 (8.05%) Lead
5 258 (7.92%) Senior
6 230 (7.06%) Consultant
7 221 (6.79%) Business Analyst
8 194 (5.96%) Developer
9 117 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
10 93 (2.86%) Programme Manager
11 91 (2.79%) Accountant
12 83 (2.55%) Senior Manager
13 79 (2.43%) Finance Manager
14 75 (2.30%) Data Analyst
15 67 (2.06%) SAP Consultant
16 55 (1.69%) Administrator
16 55 (1.69%) Systems Accountant
17 54 (1.66%) Data Engineer
17 54 (1.66%) Functional Consultant
17 54 (1.66%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (3.38%) REST
2 79 (2.43%) Spring
3 76 (2.33%) Spring Boot
4 72 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 64 (1.97%) Kafka
6 63 (1.93%) Middleware
7 57 (1.75%) RESTful
8 35 (1.07%) Node.js
9 34 (1.04%) .NET
10 32 (0.98%) JSON
10 32 (0.98%) OAuth
10 32 (0.98%) React
11 29 (0.89%) SOAP
12 27 (0.83%) XML
13 25 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
14 24 (0.74%) HTML
15 21 (0.64%) AngularJS
15 21 (0.64%) OpenTelemetry
16 20 (0.61%) CSS
17 18 (0.55%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.88%) Onboarding
2 128 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.19%) Cloud Native
4 100 (3.07%) Management Information System
5 84 (2.58%) Data Centre
6 76 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
7 70 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 69 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
8 69 (2.12%) Public Cloud
9 44 (1.35%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 37 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
12 35 (1.07%) PMI
13 34 (1.04%) Virtual Team
14 31 (0.95%) Mobile App
15 27 (0.83%) CMDB
16 24 (0.74%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.58%) Operational Technology
18 18 (0.55%) NHS
19 17 (0.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 128 (3.93%) Linux
2 109 (3.35%) Windows
3 43 (1.32%) Unix
4 29 (0.89%) Windows 10
5 27 (0.83%) Android
6 24 (0.74%) Mac OS
7 22 (0.68%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.21%) AIX
9 7 (0.21%) Solaris
10 5 (0.15%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.12%) VMS
12 3 (0.092%) zOS
13 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.031%) MVS
13 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 662 (20.33%) Agile
2 653 (20.06%) Stakeholder Management
3 520 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
4 467 (14.34%) Migration
5 434 (13.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 391 (12.01%) Project Management
7 375 (11.52%) ERP
8 367 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
9 349 (10.72%) DevOps
10 319 (9.80%) Business Intelligence
11 294 (9.03%) CI/CD
12 286 (8.78%) Change Management
13 276 (8.48%) Project Delivery
14 242 (7.43%) Decision-Making
15 230 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
16 222 (6.82%) Analytics
17 217 (6.66%) Roadmaps
18 202 (6.20%) Data Modelling
19 200 (6.14%) AI
20 196 (6.02%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 327 (10.04%) SQL
2 264 (8.11%) Python
3 188 (5.77%) Java
4 70 (2.15%) PowerShell
5 30 (0.92%) TypeScript
6 29 (0.89%) Go
6 29 (0.89%) JavaScript
7 23 (0.71%) Bash
7 23 (0.71%) C#
7 23 (0.71%) VBA
8 19 (0.58%) PL/SQL
9 18 (0.55%) Shell Script
10 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
10 12 (0.37%) R
11 10 (0.31%) ABAP
11 10 (0.31%) COBOL
11 10 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 10 (0.31%) Perl
12 9 (0.28%) Rust
13 8 (0.25%) C++
Qualifications
1 343 (10.53%) Security Cleared
2 323 (9.92%) Degree
3 215 (6.60%) SC Cleared
4 97 (2.98%) PMI Certification
5 96 (2.95%) PMP
6 91 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 87 (2.67%) ACCA
8 81 (2.49%) CIMA
9 70 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 67 (2.06%) Master's Degree
11 62 (1.90%) CISSP
12 59 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
13 43 (1.32%) CISM
14 37 (1.14%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
17 16 (0.49%) MBA
17 16 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 14 (0.43%) Azure Certification
19 13 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (5.62%) PMO
2 153 (4.70%) Data Quality
3 142 (4.36%) QA
4 129 (3.96%) GDPR
5 59 (1.81%) NIST
6 51 (1.57%) SLA
7 45 (1.38%) PCI DSS
8 43 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 28 (0.86%) IFRS
9 28 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 27 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 24 (0.74%) ISO 20022
12 21 (0.64%) PSD2
13 20 (0.61%) GRC
14 15 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
15 13 (0.40%) SEPA
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
17 11 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 10 (0.31%) GLBA
System Software
1 117 (3.59%) Docker
2 77 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.61%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.092%) Firmware
12 3 (0.092%) KVM
12 3 (0.092%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.061%) ACF2
13 2 (0.061%) HDFS
13 2 (0.061%) RACF
13 2 (0.061%) SRDF
13 2 (0.061%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 160 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 87 (2.67%) Terraform
3 84 (2.58%) Ansible
4 55 (1.69%) Grafana
5 49 (1.50%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.52%) SCCM
8 14 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.40%) vRealize
10 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.28%) Nessus
11 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.25%) Kiali
12 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.15%) CASB
13 5 (0.15%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.15%) Puppet
13 5 (0.15%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 432 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 367 (11.27%) SAP
3 272 (8.35%) Oracle
4 153 (4.70%) ServiceNow
5 95 (2.92%) Google
6 78 (2.40%) Cisco
7 76 (2.33%) Splunk
8 51 (1.57%) Sage
8 51 (1.57%) VMware
9 48 (1.47%) IBM
10 44 (1.35%) Databricks
10 44 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 33 (1.01%) Workday
12 32 (0.98%) HP
13 31 (0.95%) Dell
14 27 (0.83%) IFS
15 22 (0.68%) Adobe
16 20 (0.61%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.58%) Remedy
18 18 (0.55%) Citrix