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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,196 2,150 2,706
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.78% 16.82% 12.84%
As % of the General category 27.41% 27.31% 23.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,008 1,346 1,733
10th Percentile £317 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £399 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.24%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £624
90th Percentile £688 £688 £728
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 67 175
10th Percentile £13.91 £18.04 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.71 £22.50 £14.18
Median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.10% +94.44% -22.86%
75th Percentile £25.35 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £63.49 £78.47 £54.86
UK median hourly rate £23.75 £36.00 £26.87
% change year-on-year -34.03% +34.00% -8.12%

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 11,662 7,874 11,642
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.94% 61.59% 55.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,060 4,863 6,872
10th Percentile £213 £210 £205
25th Percentile £373 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £591
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,272 495 1,505
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.94 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.33 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.64 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.33% +10.56% -16.67%
75th Percentile £56.30 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.23 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.19 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.37% +15.38% -24.64%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 1,039 £475 -0.42% 668
South East -3 604 £500 -9.09% 1,028
Midlands -2 581 £475 -5.00% 389
North West +5 546 £450 -3.23% 353
Yorkshire 0 446 £500 - 247
West Midlands +1 382 £500 -7.41% 232
Scotland 0 365 £475 - 161
South West -3 328 £524 +3.71% 288
East Midlands 0 194 £450 +5.88% 156
East of England -1 189 £513 -6.82% 239
Wales +27 106 £413 +6.45% 74
North East -8 47 £488 +3.72% 82
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 43
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 1
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
1 156 (4.88%) Confluence
2 112 (3.50%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 28 (0.88%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.75%) Apache
6 13 (0.41%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.19%) CMS
11 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.094%) IIS
14 2 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.063%) Camunda
14 2 (0.063%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 248 (7.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 144 (4.51%) Microsoft Office
3 116 (3.63%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 6 (0.19%) InVision
9 6 (0.19%) Sketch
10 5 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.16%) Trello
11 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.094%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.031%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 149 (4.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.60%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.41%) Oracle Receivables
4 38 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
5 37 (1.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 34 (1.06%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.91%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.88%) Oracle Assets
9 27 (0.84%) Oracle Cash Management
10 24 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
11 23 (0.72%) Oracle EBS R12
12 19 (0.59%) SAP CO
13 18 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
13 18 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
14 15 (0.47%) NetSuite
14 15 (0.47%) SAP BRIM
14 15 (0.47%) SAP Hybris
14 15 (0.47%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.41%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.41%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 393 (12.30%) Azure
2 375 (11.73%) AWS
3 186 (5.82%) Power Platform
4 166 (5.19%) GCP
5 115 (3.60%) Microsoft 365
6 83 (2.60%) GitHub
7 77 (2.41%) SaaS
8 75 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
9 72 (2.25%) Serverless
10 71 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
11 52 (1.63%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.31%) OpenShift
13 41 (1.28%) OCI
14 37 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
15 36 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
16 35 (1.10%) Snowflake
17 33 (1.03%) Amazon S3
18 32 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
19 30 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
20 24 (0.75%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 86 (2.69%) Firewall
2 42 (1.31%) WAN
3 36 (1.13%) DNS
4 35 (1.10%) Network Security
5 30 (0.94%) VPN
6 22 (0.69%) LAN
7 21 (0.66%) SD-WAN
7 21 (0.66%) Wireless
8 18 (0.56%) Skype
8 18 (0.56%) SSL
8 18 (0.56%) TCP/IP
9 15 (0.47%) Internet
10 14 (0.44%) SSH
11 12 (0.38%) DHCP
12 10 (0.31%) SNMP
13 9 (0.28%) Kerberos
13 9 (0.28%) MPLS
14 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
15 7 (0.22%) BGP
15 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (5.60%) Power BI
2 89 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
3 81 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 57 (1.78%) NoSQL
5 41 (1.28%) Metadata
5 41 (1.28%) Relational Database
6 40 (1.25%) Tableau
7 39 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
8 34 (1.06%) SQL Server
9 26 (0.81%) DynamoDB
10 24 (0.75%) Big Data
10 24 (0.75%) Data Lake
11 23 (0.72%) Power Query
12 20 (0.63%) BigQuery
13 18 (0.56%) MongoDB
14 16 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
15 14 (0.44%) MySQL
16 12 (0.38%) Snowflake Schema
17 11 (0.34%) RDBMS
17 11 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 310 (9.70%) JIRA
2 125 (3.91%) Jenkins
3 74 (2.32%) GitLab
4 55 (1.72%) Git
5 37 (1.16%) JUnit
6 36 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 31 (0.97%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.63%) Selenium
9 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.41%) Liquibase
10 13 (0.41%) Postman
11 12 (0.38%) Gradle
12 10 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.28%) Hudson
13 9 (0.28%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) Maven
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
17 5 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 1,119 (35.01%) Social Skills
2 508 (15.89%) Banking
3 403 (12.61%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (11.05%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.51%) Manufacturing
6 158 (4.94%) Telecoms
7 142 (4.44%) Marketing
8 130 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
9 104 (3.25%) Legal
10 100 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
11 96 (3.00%) Financial Institution
12 95 (2.97%) Electronics
13 77 (2.41%) Local Government
14 67 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
15 63 (1.97%) Retail
16 58 (1.81%) General Ledger
17 51 (1.60%) Billing
18 49 (1.53%) Investment Banking
19 48 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.00%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 483 (15.11%) Analyst
2 318 (9.95%) Project Manager
3 275 (8.60%) Architect
4 259 (8.10%) Senior
5 258 (8.07%) Lead
6 225 (7.04%) Consultant
7 212 (6.63%) Business Analyst
8 193 (6.04%) Developer
9 113 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 94 (2.94%) Programme Manager
11 82 (2.57%) Accountant
12 79 (2.47%) Data Analyst
12 79 (2.47%) Senior Manager
13 71 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 62 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
15 56 (1.75%) Java Developer
16 55 (1.72%) Administrator
16 55 (1.72%) Functional Consultant
17 54 (1.69%) IT Manager
18 53 (1.66%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (3.54%) REST
2 83 (2.60%) Spring
3 78 (2.44%) Spring Boot
4 72 (2.25%) Oracle Fusion
5 66 (2.07%) Kafka
6 58 (1.81%) Middleware
7 57 (1.78%) RESTful
8 38 (1.19%) Node.js
9 36 (1.13%) .NET
10 35 (1.10%) React
11 34 (1.06%) JSON
12 31 (0.97%) OAuth
12 31 (0.97%) SOAP
13 29 (0.91%) XML
14 24 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
14 24 (0.75%) HTML
15 23 (0.72%) OpenTelemetry
16 21 (0.66%) AngularJS
17 20 (0.63%) CSS
18 19 (0.59%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.94%) Onboarding
2 124 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 99 (3.10%) Cloud Native
4 97 (3.04%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.82%) Data Centre
6 71 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
7 67 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
8 66 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
9 64 (2.00%) Public Cloud
10 41 (1.28%) Data Structures
11 39 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
12 38 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
13 35 (1.10%) PMI
14 34 (1.06%) Mobile App
15 32 (1.00%) Virtual Team
16 25 (0.78%) CMDB
17 24 (0.75%) Mainframe
18 19 (0.59%) NHS
19 18 (0.56%) Security Posture
20 17 (0.53%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 127 (3.97%) Linux
2 105 (3.29%) Windows
3 42 (1.31%) Unix
4 32 (1.00%) Windows 10
5 31 (0.97%) Android
6 27 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.66%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 6 (0.19%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.094%) zOS
14 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.031%) MVS
14 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 668 (20.90%) Agile
2 642 (20.09%) Stakeholder Management
3 520 (16.27%) Problem-Solving
4 455 (14.24%) Migration
5 424 (13.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 384 (12.02%) Project Management
7 350 (10.95%) Continuous Improvement
8 349 (10.92%) ERP
9 340 (10.64%) DevOps
10 324 (10.14%) Business Intelligence
11 294 (9.20%) CI/CD
12 278 (8.70%) Change Management
13 268 (8.39%) Project Delivery
14 227 (7.10%) User Acceptance Testing
15 226 (7.07%) Decision-Making
16 220 (6.88%) Analytics
17 212 (6.63%) Roadmaps
18 199 (6.23%) AI
19 198 (6.20%) Data Modelling
20 187 (5.85%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 331 (10.36%) SQL
2 279 (8.73%) Python
3 193 (6.04%) Java
4 71 (2.22%) PowerShell
5 36 (1.13%) TypeScript
6 34 (1.06%) JavaScript
7 28 (0.88%) Go
8 24 (0.75%) Bash
9 22 (0.69%) C#
10 21 (0.66%) VBA
11 20 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 19 (0.59%) Shell Script
13 12 (0.38%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.38%) Perl
13 12 (0.38%) R
14 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 10 (0.31%) ABAP
15 10 (0.31%) COBOL
15 10 (0.31%) Rust
16 9 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 335 (10.48%) Security Cleared
2 321 (10.04%) Degree
3 214 (6.70%) SC Cleared
4 93 (2.91%) PMI Certification
5 91 (2.85%) PMP
6 85 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
7 81 (2.53%) ACCA
8 76 (2.38%) CIMA
9 66 (2.07%) Master's Degree
10 65 (2.03%) DV Cleared
11 60 (1.88%) CISSP
11 60 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
12 42 (1.31%) CISM
13 39 (1.22%) AWS Certification
14 29 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
15 23 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 18 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 16 (0.50%) MBA
18 13 (0.41%) DBS Check
18 13 (0.41%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (5.51%) PMO
2 144 (4.51%) QA
3 140 (4.38%) Data Quality
4 127 (3.97%) GDPR
5 56 (1.75%) NIST
6 52 (1.63%) SLA
7 45 (1.41%) PCI DSS
8 40 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 30 (0.94%) Accessibility
10 28 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.81%) IFRS
12 24 (0.75%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.69%) PSD2
14 19 (0.59%) GRC
15 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.41%) GAAP
16 13 (0.41%) SEPA
17 12 (0.38%) Basel III
18 10 (0.31%) GLBA
19 9 (0.28%) NCSC
System Software
1 121 (3.79%) Docker
2 79 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 34 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.63%) vSphere
5 13 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.34%) GPFS
7 10 (0.31%) NFS
8 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.094%) Firmware
11 3 (0.094%) HDFS
11 3 (0.094%) KVM
11 3 (0.094%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.063%) ACF2
12 2 (0.063%) RACF
12 2 (0.063%) SRDF
12 2 (0.063%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 162 (5.07%) Kubernetes
2 84 (2.63%) Terraform
3 82 (2.57%) Ansible
4 55 (1.72%) Grafana
5 50 (1.56%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.53%) SCCM
8 14 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
10 12 (0.38%) vRealize
11 11 (0.34%) Nessus
12 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
13 8 (0.25%) Kiali
14 6 (0.19%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) NetBackup
15 5 (0.16%) Puppet
15 5 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 427 (13.36%) Microsoft
2 371 (11.61%) SAP
3 268 (8.39%) Oracle
4 155 (4.85%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.94%) Google
6 80 (2.50%) Cisco
7 74 (2.32%) Splunk
8 48 (1.50%) IBM
8 48 (1.50%) Sage
8 48 (1.50%) VMware
9 45 (1.41%) Databricks
10 44 (1.38%) Salesforce
11 36 (1.13%) HP
12 35 (1.10%) Workday
13 34 (1.06%) Dell
14 26 (0.81%) IFS
15 23 (0.72%) Adobe
16 21 (0.66%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.59%) Ariba
18 18 (0.56%) Remedy