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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,894 2,636 2,691
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.75% 16.77% 15.49%
As % of the General category 25.99% 27.68% 27.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,264 1,751 1,557
10th Percentile £339 £308 £303
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £535 £575
% change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 70 99
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £15.50 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%
75th Percentile - £30.22 £55.13
90th Percentile £72.50 £57.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
% change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +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 14,982 9,522 9,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.90% 60.56% 56.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,918 5,769 5,306
10th Percentile £255 £205 £206
25th Percentile £400 £358 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £486
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.31% -2.75%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £684
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,344 955 810
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.41 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.75 £15.60 £16.00
Median hourly rate £27.74 £21.39 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.69% -34.18% +25.00%
75th Percentile £53.90 £42.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.85 £25.08 £33.52
% change year-on-year +11.07% -25.19% +21.89%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 1,340 £514 +9.89% 1,979
South East -1 746 £500 -2.82% 2,250
North West -2 642 £507 +12.67% 1,045
Yorkshire +1 619 £514 +2.80% 704
Midlands -3 615 £525 +10.53% 1,179
Scotland 0 549 £463 -6.57% 1,037
West Midlands -2 456 £520 +0.97% 718
South West -6 340 £525 -6.67% 845
East of England +3 206 £550 -4.35% 717
East Midlands -2 154 £513 +22.02% 461
North East -6 72 £538 +22.86% 243
Wales +3 65 £525 +20.34% 228
Northern Ireland 0 58 £510 -2.86% 435
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 15
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
1 143 (3.67%) Confluence
2 98 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 25 (0.64%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) SAS
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
7 10 (0.26%) Apache Spark
8 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.15%) Camunda
10 6 (0.15%) IIS
11 5 (0.13%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
12 4 (0.10%) nginx
13 3 (0.077%) JBoss
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 260 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.95%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.077%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 212 (5.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 32 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
5 31 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
6 30 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
7 29 (0.74%) NetSuite
8 28 (0.72%) SAP FI
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.56%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 21 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
12 20 (0.51%) Workday HCM
13 17 (0.44%) SAP BRIM
14 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
14 13 (0.33%) SAP Hybris
15 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 472 (12.12%) Azure
2 358 (9.19%) AWS
3 256 (6.57%) GCP
4 224 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 111 (2.85%) GitHub
6 103 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
7 102 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
8 96 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
9 90 (2.31%) SaaS
10 78 (2.00%) Entra ID
11 48 (1.23%) Snowflake
12 47 (1.21%) Serverless
13 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
14 42 (1.08%) OCI
15 40 (1.03%) OpenShift
16 38 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
17 33 (0.85%) Power Automate
18 32 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
19 29 (0.74%) Anthropic Claude
20 28 (0.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.16%) Network Security
2 82 (2.11%) Firewall
3 41 (1.05%) VPN
4 28 (0.72%) DNS
5 22 (0.56%) SSL
6 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) WAN
8 18 (0.46%) Broadband
9 15 (0.39%) LAN
10 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 8 (0.21%) VSAN
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.67%) Power BI
2 77 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.85%) SQL Server
4 70 (1.80%) Metadata
5 68 (1.75%) Relational Database
6 43 (1.10%) Data Lake
7 35 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 31 (0.80%) MongoDB
9 30 (0.77%) Db2
10 24 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
11 21 (0.54%) BigQuery
11 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
13 17 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 16 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
15 15 (0.39%) MySQL
15 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 231 (5.93%) JIRA
2 123 (3.16%) Git
3 71 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.77%) GitLab
5 22 (0.56%) JUnit
6 20 (0.51%) Claude Code
7 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Maven
10 12 (0.31%) Postman
11 10 (0.26%) Gradle
11 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 8 (0.21%) Mockito
14 7 (0.18%) Hudson
14 7 (0.18%) JMeter
14 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,349 (34.64%) Social Skills
2 615 (15.79%) Banking
3 542 (13.92%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.37%) Organisational Skills
5 282 (7.24%) Public Sector
6 254 (6.52%) Legal
7 162 (4.16%) Retail
8 143 (3.67%) Influencing Skills
9 113 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 97 (2.49%) Billing
11 92 (2.36%) General Ledger
12 87 (2.23%) Local Government
13 83 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
13 83 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 73 (1.87%) Investment Banking
15 69 (1.77%) Marketing
16 66 (1.69%) Financial Institution
17 62 (1.59%) Telecoms
18 57 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 44 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 476 (12.22%) Analyst
2 391 (10.04%) Lead
3 389 (9.99%) Senior
4 303 (7.78%) Developer
5 300 (7.70%) Architect
6 292 (7.50%) Project Manager
7 265 (6.81%) Consultant
8 225 (5.78%) Business Analyst
9 152 (3.90%) Accountant
10 143 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.52%) IT Manager
12 94 (2.41%) Administrator
13 93 (2.39%) Financial Analyst
14 92 (2.36%) Java Developer
15 91 (2.34%) Systems Accountant
16 85 (2.18%) Senior Manager
17 79 (2.03%) Finance Manager
18 75 (1.93%) Programme Manager
19 74 (1.90%) Data Analyst
20 69 (1.77%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.83%) Terraform
2 148 (3.80%) Oracle Fusion
3 118 (3.03%) REST
4 79 (2.03%) Kafka
5 74 (1.90%) React
6 71 (1.82%) Middleware
7 69 (1.77%) Spring Boot
8 63 (1.62%) Spring
9 59 (1.52%) .NET
10 52 (1.34%) RESTful
11 46 (1.18%) OAuth
12 45 (1.16%) JSON
13 35 (0.90%) OpenID
14 32 (0.82%) Node.js
14 32 (0.82%) SAP Fiori
15 31 (0.80%) HTML
16 30 (0.77%) SOAP
16 30 (0.77%) XML
17 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
18 27 (0.69%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 179 (4.60%) Onboarding
2 178 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 161 (4.13%) Product Ownership
4 159 (4.08%) Virtual Team
5 132 (3.39%) Data Protection Act
6 122 (3.13%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.85%) Podcast
9 90 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
10 70 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
11 69 (1.77%) AI Agents
11 69 (1.77%) Data Structures
12 66 (1.69%) Data Centre
13 60 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
14 54 (1.39%) Public Cloud
15 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
16 48 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
17 46 (1.18%) Security Posture
18 41 (1.05%) Mobile App
19 40 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 118 (3.03%) Linux
2 108 (2.77%) Windows
3 58 (1.49%) Unix
4 34 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) zOS
6 22 (0.56%) Solaris
7 16 (0.41%) Android
8 15 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.21%) AIX
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
14 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,083 (27.81%) Stakeholder Management
2 748 (19.21%) Agile
3 540 (13.87%) Continuous Improvement
4 537 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
5 500 (12.84%) Migration
6 485 (12.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 458 (11.76%) ERP
8 435 (11.17%) AI
9 428 (10.99%) CI/CD
10 388 (9.96%) Decision-Making
11 351 (9.01%) DevOps
12 348 (8.94%) Project Management
13 330 (8.47%) Change Management
14 323 (8.29%) Roadmaps
15 305 (7.83%) Project Delivery
16 298 (7.65%) Analytics
17 293 (7.52%) Validation
18 288 (7.40%) Risk Management
19 275 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
20 227 (5.83%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 368 (9.45%) Python
2 357 (9.17%) SQL
3 248 (6.37%) Java
4 83 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 79 (2.03%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.72%) C#
7 63 (1.62%) Bash
8 50 (1.28%) TypeScript
9 40 (1.03%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 18 (0.46%) Bicep
15 16 (0.41%) Perl
16 14 (0.36%) ABAP
17 12 (0.31%) PHP
17 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
18 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 355 (9.12%) Security Cleared
2 242 (6.21%) Degree
3 219 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 103 (2.65%) ACCA
6 102 (2.62%) CIMA
7 94 (2.41%) PMP
8 91 (2.34%) DV Cleared
9 81 (2.08%) PMI Certification
10 62 (1.59%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) AWS Certification
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 39 (1.00%) Azure Certification
13 39 (1.00%) CISM
14 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 27 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 23 (0.59%) CCSP
18 20 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 261 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 181 (4.65%) PMO
3 137 (3.52%) QA
4 83 (2.13%) GDPR
5 56 (1.44%) GRC
6 45 (1.16%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) NIST
8 39 (1.00%) SLA
9 30 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.72%) IFRS
11 24 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 9 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.23%) EMIR
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
15 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) P3O
System Software
1 77 (1.98%) Docker
2 71 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 55 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 23 (0.59%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) vSphere
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.051%) IAG
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) KVM
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 215 (5.52%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.03%) Ansible
3 40 (1.03%) Grafana
4 35 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 14 (0.36%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
14 7 (0.18%) Tivoli
15 6 (0.15%) logstash
16 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
17 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
17 4 (0.10%) Kibana
17 4 (0.10%) Puppet
Vendors
1 592 (15.20%) Microsoft
2 450 (11.56%) SAP
3 361 (9.27%) Oracle
4 163 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.93%) Google
6 95 (2.44%) IBM
7 81 (2.08%) Databricks
8 72 (1.85%) VMware
9 67 (1.72%) Salesforce
10 50 (1.28%) Splunk
11 49 (1.26%) Ariba
12 45 (1.16%) Workday
13 42 (1.08%) Cisco
14 30 (0.77%) Sage
15 27 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 25 (0.64%) Adobe
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.56%) Snow
19 17 (0.44%) Dynatrace
19 17 (0.44%) F5