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 11 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,343 2,196 2,632
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.49% 17.32% 12.60%
As % of the General category 27.76% 27.92% 23.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,096 1,400 1,647
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 £598 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £526 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.48% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 69 191
10th Percentile £13.98 £18.12 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.92 £22.50 £14.13
Median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%
75th Percentile £35.00 £73.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.07 £78.47 £52.78
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%

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 12,042 7,864 11,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.18% 62.03% 54.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,244 4,879 6,623
10th Percentile £240 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £577 £588 £600
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 1,348 547 1,588
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.60 £17.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £27.00 £25.28
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +6.82% -17.51%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.67 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £26.61 £28.88 £26.73
% change year-on-year -7.86% +8.02% -23.63%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 1,086 £475 - 695
South East -1 661 £503 -7.59% 1,010
North West +6 582 £460 -1.08% 371
Midlands -1 577 £475 -5.00% 423
Yorkshire 0 456 £500 +2.30% 253
Scotland 0 389 £500 +5.26% 161
West Midlands 0 386 £492 -7.73% 251
South West -2 333 £525 +4.90% 302
East of England -2 201 £515 -6.36% 271
East Midlands 0 186 £447 +0.90% 171
Wales +25 105 £413 +6.45% 89
North East -6 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +46.43% 58
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 155 (4.64%) Confluence
2 112 (3.35%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 26 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (0.66%) Apache
6 13 (0.39%) SAS
7 9 (0.27%) CICS
8 8 (0.24%) TPMS
8 8 (0.24%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.21%) CMS
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
11 5 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.090%) Camunda
13 3 (0.090%) IIS
13 3 (0.090%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.060%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.060%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 255 (7.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 134 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
3 115 (3.44%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (2.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (1.17%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.18%) InVision
8 6 (0.18%) Sketch
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.12%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.060%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
12 1 (0.030%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.030%) UXPin
12 1 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 158 (4.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (1.56%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.38%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 39 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
6 33 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
7 32 (0.96%) Oracle General Ledger
8 30 (0.90%) SAP FI
9 28 (0.84%) Oracle Assets
10 25 (0.75%) Oracle Cash Management
11 24 (0.72%) NetSuite
12 20 (0.60%) SAP CO
13 19 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
13 19 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
14 18 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
15 14 (0.42%) SAP BRIM
15 14 (0.42%) SAP Hybris
15 14 (0.42%) SAP PSCD
16 13 (0.39%) NEC Housing
17 12 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 413 (12.35%) Azure
2 347 (10.38%) AWS
3 208 (6.22%) Power Platform
4 156 (4.67%) GCP
5 119 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
6 91 (2.72%) GitHub
7 85 (2.54%) SaaS
8 80 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
9 71 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
10 57 (1.71%) Serverless
11 56 (1.68%) Entra ID
12 47 (1.41%) OpenShift
13 45 (1.35%) OCI
14 38 (1.14%) Snowflake
15 37 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
16 35 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 31 (0.93%) Amazon S3
19 27 (0.81%) Microsoft Copilot
20 26 (0.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 81 (2.42%) Firewall
2 37 (1.11%) DNS
2 37 (1.11%) Network Security
2 37 (1.11%) WAN
3 31 (0.93%) VPN
4 20 (0.60%) SD-WAN
5 18 (0.54%) Skype
6 17 (0.51%) LAN
7 16 (0.48%) SSL
7 16 (0.48%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.36%) Internet
9 11 (0.33%) DHCP
9 11 (0.33%) Wireless
10 10 (0.30%) SSH
11 9 (0.27%) MPLS
12 8 (0.24%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (0.24%) SNMP
12 8 (0.24%) VSAN
13 7 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.18%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (5.68%) Power BI
2 76 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
5 51 (1.53%) Metadata
6 45 (1.35%) Relational Database
7 38 (1.14%) NoSQL
7 38 (1.14%) SQL Server
8 35 (1.05%) Tableau
9 29 (0.87%) DynamoDB
10 26 (0.78%) Data Lake
11 25 (0.75%) Big Data
12 22 (0.66%) Oracle ODI
12 22 (0.66%) Power Query
13 15 (0.45%) MongoDB
14 14 (0.42%) BigQuery
15 13 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
15 13 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 12 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
16 12 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 299 (8.94%) JIRA
2 100 (2.99%) Jenkins
3 60 (1.79%) Git
4 50 (1.50%) GitLab
5 37 (1.11%) JUnit
6 33 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
7 28 (0.84%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.60%) Selenium
9 14 (0.42%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.39%) Hudson
10 13 (0.39%) Postman
11 12 (0.36%) Bitbucket
12 8 (0.24%) Gradle
12 8 (0.24%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.24%) JMeter
12 8 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.18%) IntelliJ
13 6 (0.18%) Maven
13 6 (0.18%) Snyk
13 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,122 (33.56%) Social Skills
2 493 (14.75%) Banking
3 444 (13.28%) Analytical Skills
4 332 (9.93%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.70%) Manufacturing
6 130 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
6 130 (3.89%) Telecoms
7 117 (3.50%) Marketing
8 115 (3.44%) Legal
9 100 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
10 86 (2.57%) Local Government
11 77 (2.30%) Retail
12 76 (2.27%) Electronics
12 76 (2.27%) Financial Institution
13 75 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
14 64 (1.91%) General Ledger
15 52 (1.56%) Billing
16 48 (1.44%) Investment Banking
17 41 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
18 35 (1.05%) Law
Job Titles
1 496 (14.84%) Analyst
2 335 (10.02%) Project Manager
3 296 (8.85%) Architect
4 294 (8.79%) Lead
5 264 (7.90%) Senior
6 239 (7.15%) Consultant
7 224 (6.70%) Business Analyst
8 215 (6.43%) Developer
9 125 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
10 110 (3.29%) Accountant
11 89 (2.66%) Programme Manager
12 86 (2.57%) Senior Manager
13 81 (2.42%) Finance Manager
14 72 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 68 (2.03%) SAP Consultant
16 66 (1.97%) Systems Accountant
17 60 (1.79%) Data Engineer
17 60 (1.79%) Java Developer
18 57 (1.71%) Functional Consultant
18 57 (1.71%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (2.87%) REST
2 84 (2.51%) Spring
3 80 (2.39%) Spring Boot
4 75 (2.24%) Oracle Fusion
5 71 (2.12%) Kafka
6 68 (2.03%) Middleware
7 42 (1.26%) RESTful
8 39 (1.17%) .NET
9 36 (1.08%) Node.js
10 34 (1.02%) React
11 32 (0.96%) JSON
12 31 (0.93%) OAuth
13 28 (0.84%) XML
14 27 (0.81%) SOAP
15 26 (0.78%) HTML
16 24 (0.72%) AngularJS
17 23 (0.69%) CSS
18 20 (0.60%) OpenID
19 19 (0.57%) PySpark
19 19 (0.57%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 148 (4.43%) Onboarding
2 124 (3.71%) Product Ownership
3 104 (3.11%) Cloud Native
4 103 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.45%) Data Centre
6 80 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
6 80 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
7 57 (1.71%) Public Cloud
8 53 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (1.44%) Data Structures
10 40 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 36 (1.08%) Virtual Team
12 35 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
13 34 (1.02%) PMI
14 32 (0.96%) Mainframe
15 31 (0.93%) CMDB
16 30 (0.90%) Mobile App
17 23 (0.69%) Security Posture
18 19 (0.57%) Operational Technology
19 18 (0.54%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.56%) Linux
2 106 (3.17%) Windows
3 49 (1.47%) Unix
4 27 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 24 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 22 (0.66%) Android
7 20 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 12 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.36%) Solaris
9 10 (0.30%) AIX
10 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.15%) zOS
12 4 (0.12%) VMS
13 3 (0.090%) MVS
14 2 (0.060%) HPUX
14 2 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.060%) SUSE
15 1 (0.030%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 657 (19.65%) Stakeholder Management
2 638 (19.08%) Agile
3 543 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
4 486 (14.54%) Migration
5 449 (13.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 412 (12.32%) ERP
7 409 (12.23%) Project Management
8 387 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 340 (10.17%) DevOps
10 313 (9.36%) Business Intelligence
11 298 (8.91%) Project Delivery
12 297 (8.88%) CI/CD
13 289 (8.64%) Change Management
14 246 (7.36%) Decision-Making
15 236 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
16 227 (6.79%) Analytics
17 220 (6.58%) Roadmaps
18 217 (6.49%) AI
19 214 (6.40%) Risk Management
20 212 (6.34%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 330 (9.87%) SQL
2 237 (7.09%) Python
3 200 (5.98%) Java
4 67 (2.00%) PowerShell
5 30 (0.90%) TypeScript
6 29 (0.87%) JavaScript
7 24 (0.72%) Bash
8 22 (0.66%) C#
8 22 (0.66%) VBA
9 21 (0.63%) PL/SQL
10 16 (0.48%) Shell Script
11 14 (0.42%) Go
12 12 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 12 (0.36%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.33%) COBOL
14 10 (0.30%) ABAP
14 10 (0.30%) C++
14 10 (0.30%) Perl
15 9 (0.27%) R
16 8 (0.24%) Rust
Qualifications
1 344 (10.29%) Security Cleared
2 323 (9.66%) Degree
3 215 (6.43%) SC Cleared
4 110 (3.29%) PMP
5 104 (3.11%) PMI Certification
6 103 (3.08%) ACCA
7 99 (2.96%) CIMA
8 95 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 73 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 64 (1.91%) CISSP
11 53 (1.59%) Master's Degree
12 44 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
13 41 (1.23%) CISM
14 37 (1.11%) AWS Certification
15 27 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 21 (0.63%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 19 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
18 16 (0.48%) MBA
19 14 (0.42%) APMP
19 14 (0.42%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (5.41%) PMO
2 158 (4.73%) Data Quality
3 141 (4.22%) QA
4 136 (4.07%) GDPR
5 63 (1.88%) NIST
6 51 (1.53%) SLA
7 46 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 44 (1.32%) PCI DSS
9 27 (0.81%) GRC
10 26 (0.78%) Accessibility
10 26 (0.78%) IFRS
11 23 (0.69%) ISO 20022
11 23 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.54%) PSD2
13 14 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.36%) Basel III
14 12 (0.36%) SEPA
14 12 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 10 (0.30%) GAAP
16 9 (0.27%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 108 (3.23%) Docker
2 72 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.63%) vSphere
5 15 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 12 (0.36%) GPFS
8 11 (0.33%) NFS
9 7 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.12%) KVM
11 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.090%) ACF2
12 3 (0.090%) Firmware
12 3 (0.090%) RACF
12 3 (0.090%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.060%) HDFS
13 2 (0.060%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 2 (0.060%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 156 (4.67%) Kubernetes
2 77 (2.30%) Terraform
3 70 (2.09%) Ansible
4 41 (1.23%) Grafana
5 32 (0.96%) Prometheus
6 17 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (0.45%) SCCM
8 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.42%) vRealize
9 12 (0.36%) Progress Chef
10 9 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 9 (0.27%) Nessus
11 8 (0.24%) Kiali
12 6 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 6 (0.18%) VxRail
13 5 (0.15%) Argo
13 5 (0.15%) CASB
13 5 (0.15%) Control-M
13 5 (0.15%) Istio
Vendors
1 434 (12.98%) Microsoft
2 371 (11.10%) SAP
3 296 (8.85%) Oracle
4 163 (4.88%) ServiceNow
5 91 (2.72%) Google
6 73 (2.18%) Cisco
7 58 (1.73%) Sage
8 57 (1.71%) Splunk
9 55 (1.65%) IBM
10 54 (1.62%) Databricks
11 53 (1.59%) VMware
12 44 (1.32%) Salesforce
13 34 (1.02%) IFS
14 32 (0.96%) Workday
15 26 (0.78%) HP
16 25 (0.75%) Dell
17 20 (0.60%) Citrix
18 19 (0.57%) Adobe
18 19 (0.57%) Ariba
18 19 (0.57%) Remedy