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 24 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,098 2,154 2,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 15.17% 16.35% 12.98%
As % of the General category 27.22% 26.76% 23.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,959 1,274 1,783
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £405 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -0.49%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £614
90th Percentile £688 £685 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 63 141
10th Percentile £13.87 £17.44 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £13.50
Median hourly rate £22.00 £29.23 £21.43
Median % change year-on-year -24.73% +36.40% -38.03%
75th Percentile £25.00 £61.88 £38.12
90th Percentile £54.20 £78.27 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
% change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -4.00%

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 11,380 8,048 11,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 55.73% 61.10% 55.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,916 4,723 6,970
10th Percentile £209 £210 £205
25th Percentile £365 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
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 1,229 456 1,417
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £16.01 £19.51 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +10.00% -2.59%
75th Percentile £50.00 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.66 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 24 February 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 +2 999 £475 -0.21% 620
South East -1 563 £500 -4.76% 983
Midlands -2 560 £490 -2.00% 370
North West +4 503 £450 -3.23% 348
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 -2.44% 215
Scotland 0 393 £476 +0.21% 106
West Midlands 0 355 £514 -6.55% 209
South West -5 307 £513 -2.38% 252
East Midlands 0 201 £450 +7.14% 161
East of England -1 188 £529 +0.71% 205
Wales +34 103 £413 +1.54% 64
North East -10 48 £488 +5.41% 67
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 38
Channel Islands +3 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
1 157 (5.07%) Confluence
2 106 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 33 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.77%) Apache
6 19 (0.61%) SAS
7 11 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
7 11 (0.36%) CMS
7 11 (0.36%) TPMS
8 8 (0.26%) CICS
9 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.13%) Mattermost
10 4 (0.13%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.097%) IIS
11 3 (0.097%) JBoss
11 3 (0.097%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.065%) HCL Notes
12 2 (0.065%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 247 (7.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 156 (5.04%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.71%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (2.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 54 (1.74%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.45%) Sketch
8 12 (0.39%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.26%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.23%) InVision
11 6 (0.19%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.19%) Trello
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.097%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.032%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.032%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 143 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.74%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.48%) Oracle Receivables
4 36 (1.16%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
5 32 (1.03%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 32 (1.03%) SAP FI
6 29 (0.94%) Oracle Assets
6 29 (0.94%) Oracle Cash Management
7 22 (0.71%) SAP CO
7 22 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
8 21 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
9 20 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
10 17 (0.55%) SAP BRIM
10 17 (0.55%) SAP Hybris
10 17 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
11 15 (0.48%) NetSuite
11 15 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
11 15 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
12 13 (0.42%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 391 (12.62%) AWS
1 391 (12.62%) Azure
2 181 (5.84%) Power Platform
3 178 (5.75%) GCP
4 128 (4.13%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
6 79 (2.55%) GitHub
7 76 (2.45%) SaaS
8 74 (2.39%) Serverless
9 62 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (1.78%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.55%) OCI
12 44 (1.42%) OpenShift
13 39 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 37 (1.19%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (1.10%) Figma
17 32 (1.03%) Amazon S3
18 30 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.97%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.61%) Firewall
2 33 (1.07%) WAN
3 28 (0.90%) DNS
4 26 (0.84%) Network Security
5 22 (0.71%) Skype
5 22 (0.71%) VPN
5 22 (0.71%) Wireless
6 19 (0.61%) SSL
7 16 (0.52%) LAN
7 16 (0.52%) SD-WAN
8 15 (0.48%) SSH
8 15 (0.48%) TCP/IP
9 11 (0.36%) DHCP
9 11 (0.36%) Kerberos
9 11 (0.36%) SNMP
10 10 (0.32%) Internet
11 8 (0.26%) Cisco IOS
12 7 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
13 6 (0.19%) BGP
13 6 (0.19%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (5.52%) Power BI
2 81 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (2.13%) NoSQL
5 48 (1.55%) Relational Database
6 39 (1.26%) Tableau
7 38 (1.23%) Metadata
8 31 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
9 30 (0.97%) SQL Server
10 26 (0.84%) Big Data
11 25 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 24 (0.77%) DynamoDB
13 22 (0.71%) Power Query
14 20 (0.65%) BigQuery
15 17 (0.55%) MongoDB
16 16 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 15 (0.48%) MySQL
18 14 (0.45%) Oracle Database
19 13 (0.42%) Hadoop
20 12 (0.39%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 292 (9.43%) JIRA
2 143 (4.62%) Jenkins
3 89 (2.87%) GitLab
4 57 (1.84%) Git
5 38 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
6 37 (1.19%) JUnit
7 33 (1.07%) Cucumber
8 23 (0.74%) Liquibase
9 20 (0.65%) Selenium
10 18 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 15 (0.48%) Postman
12 14 (0.45%) Gradle
13 11 (0.36%) Maven
14 10 (0.32%) JMeter
15 9 (0.29%) Hudson
16 8 (0.26%) Jaeger
16 8 (0.26%) REST Assured
16 8 (0.26%) SonarQube
17 7 (0.23%) Cypress.io
18 6 (0.19%) Snyk
General
1 1,123 (36.25%) Social Skills
2 519 (16.75%) Banking
3 389 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
4 340 (10.97%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.68%) Manufacturing
6 166 (5.36%) Telecoms
7 149 (4.81%) Marketing
8 131 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
9 104 (3.36%) Financial Institution
10 102 (3.29%) Electronics
11 98 (3.16%) Legal
12 94 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
13 70 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
14 68 (2.19%) Local Government
15 59 (1.90%) General Ledger
16 56 (1.81%) Retail
17 52 (1.68%) Investment Banking
18 50 (1.61%) Billing
19 47 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 480 (15.49%) Analyst
2 284 (9.17%) Project Manager
3 251 (8.10%) Architect
4 246 (7.94%) Senior
5 226 (7.30%) Lead
6 220 (7.10%) Consultant
7 218 (7.04%) Business Analyst
8 212 (6.84%) Developer
9 108 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 98 (3.16%) Programme Manager
11 82 (2.65%) Data Analyst
12 67 (2.16%) Senior Manager
13 66 (2.13%) Accountant
14 64 (2.07%) Finance Manager
15 60 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
16 59 (1.90%) Functional Consultant
17 56 (1.81%) Designer
18 55 (1.78%) Java Developer
19 53 (1.71%) Administrator
19 53 (1.71%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.94%) REST
2 82 (2.65%) Spring
3 75 (2.42%) Spring Boot
4 70 (2.26%) Oracle Fusion
5 69 (2.23%) Kafka
5 69 (2.23%) RESTful
6 49 (1.58%) Middleware
7 45 (1.45%) React
8 40 (1.29%) .NET
9 38 (1.23%) Node.js
10 33 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
10 33 (1.07%) JSON
11 31 (1.00%) SOAP
12 29 (0.94%) OAuth
13 28 (0.90%) HTML
14 25 (0.81%) AngularJS
15 24 (0.77%) CSS
15 24 (0.77%) OpenTelemetry
16 22 (0.71%) XML
17 19 (0.61%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.81%) Onboarding
2 131 (4.23%) Product Ownership
3 109 (3.52%) Cloud Native
4 84 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.65%) Data Centre
6 74 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
7 71 (2.29%) Public Cloud
8 67 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
9 64 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 43 (1.39%) Data Structures
11 42 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
12 33 (1.07%) PMI
13 32 (1.03%) CMDB
13 32 (1.03%) Mobile App
13 32 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
14 31 (1.00%) Virtual Team
15 24 (0.77%) Mainframe
16 19 (0.61%) Credit Risk
16 19 (0.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
17 18 (0.58%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 135 (4.36%) Linux
2 115 (3.71%) Windows
3 43 (1.39%) Unix
4 38 (1.23%) Mac OS
5 36 (1.16%) Windows 10
6 31 (1.00%) Android
7 16 (0.52%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.16%) AIX
10 5 (0.16%) Solaris
10 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.13%) VMS
11 4 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.097%) zOS
13 1 (0.032%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.032%) MVS
13 1 (0.032%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 688 (22.21%) Agile
2 605 (19.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 517 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
4 426 (13.75%) Migration
5 399 (12.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 359 (11.59%) Project Management
7 335 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 334 (10.78%) ERP
9 332 (10.72%) DevOps
10 314 (10.14%) Business Intelligence
11 305 (9.85%) CI/CD
12 275 (8.88%) Change Management
13 230 (7.42%) Project Delivery
14 222 (7.17%) Decision-Making
15 216 (6.97%) Analytics
16 212 (6.84%) Roadmaps
17 203 (6.55%) Programme Management
18 201 (6.49%) User Acceptance Testing
19 198 (6.39%) Data Modelling
20 196 (6.33%) AI
Programming Languages
1 336 (10.85%) SQL
2 298 (9.62%) Python
3 195 (6.29%) Java
4 79 (2.55%) PowerShell
5 42 (1.36%) TypeScript
6 41 (1.32%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.23%) Go
8 28 (0.90%) C#
9 26 (0.84%) Bash
10 22 (0.71%) Shell Script
11 21 (0.68%) PL/SQL
11 21 (0.68%) VBA
12 18 (0.58%) R
13 12 (0.39%) Perl
14 11 (0.36%) Rust
15 10 (0.32%) COBOL
16 9 (0.29%) ABAP
16 9 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 9 (0.29%) Ruby
16 9 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 334 (10.78%) Degree
2 299 (9.65%) Security Cleared
3 200 (6.46%) SC Cleared
4 79 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 76 (2.45%) Master's Degree
6 75 (2.42%) PMI Certification
6 75 (2.42%) PMP
7 73 (2.36%) ACCA
8 71 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 68 (2.19%) CIMA
10 56 (1.81%) DV Cleared
11 53 (1.71%) CISSP
12 49 (1.58%) AWS Certification
13 37 (1.19%) CISM
14 31 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
15 24 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
16 17 (0.55%) MBA
17 16 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 14 (0.45%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 158 (5.10%) PMO
2 137 (4.42%) QA
3 128 (4.13%) Data Quality
4 116 (3.74%) GDPR
5 55 (1.78%) NIST
6 50 (1.61%) PCI DSS
7 49 (1.58%) SLA
8 42 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (1.13%) Accessibility
11 28 (0.90%) ISO 20022
12 26 (0.84%) IFRS
13 22 (0.71%) PSD2
14 19 (0.61%) GRC
15 15 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
16 14 (0.45%) SEPA
17 13 (0.42%) Basel III
17 13 (0.42%) GAAP
18 11 (0.36%) GLBA
19 10 (0.32%) NCSC
System Software
1 137 (4.42%) Docker
2 93 (3.00%) Active Directory
3 35 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (0.55%) vSphere
5 16 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 10 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.29%) GPFS
8 8 (0.26%) NFS
9 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.097%) HDFS
12 3 (0.097%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.065%) ACF2
13 2 (0.065%) Firmware
13 2 (0.065%) KVM
13 2 (0.065%) RACF
13 2 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.065%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 169 (5.46%) Kubernetes
2 96 (3.10%) Terraform
3 87 (2.81%) Ansible
4 64 (2.07%) Grafana
5 59 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 20 (0.65%) SCCM
7 18 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.55%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.36%) Nessus
11 9 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 9 (0.29%) vRealize
12 8 (0.26%) Kiali
13 7 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (0.19%) Control-M
15 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.16%) CASB
15 5 (0.16%) HP ALM
15 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
16 4 (0.13%) Argo
Vendors
1 454 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 371 (11.98%) SAP
3 253 (8.17%) Oracle
4 163 (5.26%) ServiceNow
5 90 (2.91%) Splunk
6 89 (2.87%) Google
7 84 (2.71%) Cisco
8 53 (1.71%) IBM
9 48 (1.55%) VMware
10 44 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.39%) Databricks
12 40 (1.29%) Workday
13 39 (1.26%) Sage
14 36 (1.16%) HP
15 35 (1.13%) Dell
16 26 (0.84%) Adobe
17 25 (0.81%) Apple
18 23 (0.74%) Citrix
18 23 (0.74%) Remedy
19 21 (0.68%) CyberArk