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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,939 2,676 2,688
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.83% 16.82% 15.60%
As % of the General category 26.00% 27.72% 27.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,274 1,775 1,560
10th Percentile £345 £308 £302
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £573
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.30% -2.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 78 94
10th Percentile £14.26 £13.54 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.73 £15.53 £23.62
Median hourly rate £43.96 £21.38 £31.91
Median % change year-on-year +105.66% -33.02% +25.15%
75th Percentile - £29.16 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.80 £56.09 £74.63
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +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 15,148 9,654 9,716
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.19% 60.67% 56.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,981 5,864 5,297
10th Percentile £256 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £477
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -0.42% -4.60%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £662 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,412 976 763
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.42 £14.73
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.66 £15.95
Median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.56% -28.70% +11.11%
75th Percentile £54.29 £42.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.13 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.00
% change year-on-year +10.00% -21.88% +7.56%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 1,370 £513 +9.10% 1,121
South East -1 748 £500 -2.20% 1,047
North West -2 653 £502 +11.44% 600
Yorkshire +1 638 £514 +2.80% 390
Midlands -3 611 £515 +8.32% 572
Scotland +1 554 £463 -7.50% 582
West Midlands -2 451 £500 -4.28% 362
South West -6 343 £525 -4.55% 433
East of England +1 202 £530 -5.99% 337
East Midlands -2 154 £525 +25.00% 210
Wales +3 72 £525 +16.67% 105
North East -10 72 £538 +22.86% 136
Northern Ireland 0 63 £463 -11.90% 281
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 4
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
1 147 (3.73%) Confluence
2 99 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.63%) Apache
4 13 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 13 (0.33%) SAS
5 12 (0.30%) CMS
5 12 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.20%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) IIS
11 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.076%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.051%) Jupyter
Applications
1 262 (6.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 108 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 78 (1.98%) Microsoft Project
5 35 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
6 33 (0.84%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Trello
9 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.051%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.025%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.025%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.025%) Maple
Business Applications
1 207 (5.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
5 32 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
6 31 (0.79%) SAP FI
7 30 (0.76%) NetSuite
8 26 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
9 24 (0.61%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.53%) SAP PSCD
11 21 (0.53%) Workday HCM
12 20 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 17 (0.43%) SAP BRIM
14 14 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
15 13 (0.33%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
15 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 483 (12.26%) Azure
2 356 (9.04%) AWS
3 256 (6.50%) GCP
4 217 (5.51%) Power Platform
5 122 (3.10%) GitHub
6 108 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
8 97 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
9 89 (2.26%) SaaS
10 76 (1.93%) Entra ID
11 47 (1.19%) Serverless
11 47 (1.19%) Snowflake
12 45 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
13 43 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
14 42 (1.07%) OCI
15 40 (1.02%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.81%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (0.79%) Power Automate
18 30 (0.76%) Azure Data Factory
19 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.16%) Network Security
2 82 (2.08%) Firewall
3 41 (1.04%) VPN
4 28 (0.71%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
5 22 (0.56%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.51%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) Broadband
8 15 (0.38%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) HTTP
10 12 (0.30%) BIG-IP
11 11 (0.28%) BGP
12 10 (0.25%) DHCP
13 9 (0.23%) SAN
14 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 7 (0.18%) OSPF
14 7 (0.18%) VLAN
14 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (4.47%) Power BI
2 83 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.78%) Metadata
3 70 (1.78%) SQL Server
4 64 (1.62%) Relational Database
5 49 (1.24%) Data Lake
6 38 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
7 33 (0.84%) Tableau
8 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
9 28 (0.71%) Db2
10 26 (0.66%) BigQuery
11 23 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
12 22 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
13 20 (0.51%) NoSQL
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
15 17 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 240 (6.09%) JIRA
2 129 (3.27%) Git
3 76 (1.93%) Jenkins
4 39 (0.99%) GitLab
5 25 (0.63%) Claude Code
6 24 (0.61%) JUnit
7 17 (0.43%) Selenium
8 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
8 16 (0.41%) Maven
9 15 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
10 13 (0.33%) Gradle
10 13 (0.33%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Mockito
11 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 8 (0.20%) ERwin
12 8 (0.20%) SonarQube
13 7 (0.18%) JMeter
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Toad
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,378 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 639 (16.22%) Banking
3 543 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
4 290 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 288 (7.31%) Organisational Skills
6 262 (6.65%) Legal
7 156 (3.96%) Retail
8 148 (3.76%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.82%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.44%) Billing
10 96 (2.44%) General Ledger
11 87 (2.21%) Local Government
12 83 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 81 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
14 72 (1.83%) Investment Banking
14 72 (1.83%) Marketing
15 65 (1.65%) Financial Institution
16 63 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
16 63 (1.60%) Telecoms
17 47 (1.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 485 (12.31%) Analyst
2 395 (10.03%) Lead
3 386 (9.80%) Senior
4 301 (7.64%) Architect
5 291 (7.39%) Developer
6 286 (7.26%) Project Manager
7 263 (6.68%) Consultant
8 229 (5.81%) Business Analyst
9 153 (3.88%) Accountant
10 149 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 102 (2.59%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.49%) Administrator
13 95 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
14 91 (2.31%) Systems Accountant
15 90 (2.28%) Java Developer
16 84 (2.13%) Senior Manager
17 81 (2.06%) Programme Manager
18 80 (2.03%) Finance Manager
19 75 (1.90%) Data Analyst
20 66 (1.68%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (3.91%) Terraform
2 151 (3.83%) Oracle Fusion
3 126 (3.20%) REST
4 86 (2.18%) Kafka
5 77 (1.95%) React
6 73 (1.85%) Spring Boot
7 72 (1.83%) Middleware
8 66 (1.68%) Spring
9 58 (1.47%) .NET
10 55 (1.40%) RESTful
11 49 (1.24%) JSON
11 49 (1.24%) OAuth
12 36 (0.91%) OpenID
13 35 (0.89%) Node.js
14 33 (0.84%) SAP Fiori
15 32 (0.81%) XML
16 30 (0.76%) OAuth2
16 30 (0.76%) SOAP
17 28 (0.71%) HTML
17 28 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 185 (4.70%) Onboarding
2 182 (4.62%) Cloud Native
3 174 (4.42%) Product Ownership
4 162 (4.11%) Virtual Team
5 137 (3.48%) Data Protection Act
6 129 (3.27%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.87%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.82%) Podcast
9 85 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
10 76 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
11 72 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 69 (1.75%) Data Structures
13 67 (1.70%) Data Centre
14 64 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
15 52 (1.32%) Public Cloud
16 48 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.22%) Mainframe
17 47 (1.19%) Mobile App
18 43 (1.09%) Security Posture
19 40 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 113 (2.87%) Linux
2 108 (2.74%) Windows
3 54 (1.37%) Unix
4 34 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (0.66%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.66%) zOS
6 17 (0.43%) Android
6 17 (0.43%) Solaris
7 16 (0.41%) Apple iOS
8 9 (0.23%) macOS
9 7 (0.18%) AIX
10 6 (0.15%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.076%) CentOS
12 3 (0.076%) HPUX
12 3 (0.076%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.076%) SUSE
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.025%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.025%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,136 (28.84%) Stakeholder Management
2 764 (19.40%) Agile
3 556 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
4 548 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
5 508 (12.90%) Migration
6 491 (12.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 462 (11.73%) ERP
8 439 (11.14%) AI
9 437 (11.09%) CI/CD
10 402 (10.21%) Decision-Making
11 358 (9.09%) DevOps
12 348 (8.83%) Roadmaps
13 342 (8.68%) Project Management
14 329 (8.35%) Change Management
15 313 (7.95%) Project Delivery
16 311 (7.90%) Validation
17 308 (7.82%) Analytics
18 296 (7.51%) Risk Management
19 277 (7.03%) User Acceptance Testing
20 233 (5.92%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 386 (9.80%) Python
2 367 (9.32%) SQL
3 251 (6.37%) Java
4 90 (2.28%) JavaScript
5 82 (2.08%) PowerShell
6 69 (1.75%) C#
7 63 (1.60%) Bash
8 54 (1.37%) TypeScript
9 41 (1.04%) Go
10 37 (0.94%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.53%) C++
13 19 (0.48%) Bicep
13 19 (0.48%) Scala
14 17 (0.43%) Perl
15 14 (0.36%) ABAP
16 12 (0.30%) PHP
16 12 (0.30%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 362 (9.19%) Security Cleared
2 239 (6.07%) Degree
3 220 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 180 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 104 (2.64%) ACCA
6 103 (2.61%) CIMA
7 97 (2.46%) DV Cleared
8 96 (2.44%) PMP
9 85 (2.16%) PMI Certification
10 59 (1.50%) CISSP
11 42 (1.07%) AWS Certification
12 41 (1.04%) Azure Certification
13 39 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (0.99%) CISM
14 31 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
15 28 (0.71%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 26 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 22 (0.56%) CCSP
19 20 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 193 (4.90%) PMO
3 134 (3.40%) QA
4 83 (2.11%) GDPR
5 52 (1.32%) GRC
6 47 (1.19%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.02%) SLA
8 37 (0.94%) NIST
9 30 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.71%) IFRS
11 25 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.30%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.25%) COBIT
15 10 (0.25%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 9 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 87 (2.21%) Docker
2 71 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 54 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.56%) RACF
5 18 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 10 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) GPFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 3 (0.076%) ACF2
11 3 (0.076%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
13 1 (0.025%) Firmware
13 1 (0.025%) KVM
13 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.025%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 224 (5.69%) Kubernetes
2 80 (2.03%) Ansible
3 43 (1.09%) Grafana
4 37 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (0.76%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
10 11 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.25%) Argo
12 8 (0.20%) Control-M
12 8 (0.20%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.20%) Tivoli
13 6 (0.15%) logstash
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) Kibana
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 603 (15.31%) Microsoft
2 457 (11.60%) SAP
3 363 (9.22%) Oracle
4 159 (4.04%) ServiceNow
5 117 (2.97%) Google
6 96 (2.44%) IBM
7 81 (2.06%) Databricks
8 71 (1.80%) VMware
9 69 (1.75%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.40%) Splunk
11 50 (1.27%) Ariba
12 46 (1.17%) Workday
13 43 (1.09%) Cisco
14 30 (0.76%) Sage
15 25 (0.63%) Adobe
16 24 (0.61%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.58%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.56%) Dynatrace
18 22 (0.56%) Snow
19 20 (0.51%) F5