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 1 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,872 2,673 2,670
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.01% 17.44% 14.82%
As % of the General category 27.19% 28.56% 27.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,316 1,771 1,600
10th Percentile £350 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £396 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -4.00% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £575
% change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 63 132
10th Percentile £15.11 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.63 £15.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +20.73%
75th Percentile - £34.16 £50.63
90th Percentile £75.40 £72.20 £70.16
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%

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 14,241 9,358 9,771
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.53% 61.04% 54.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,810 5,626 5,492
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £499
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.71% -0.30%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £654 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,001 874 1,024
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.09 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.40 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.93 £22.06 £36.08
Median % change year-on-year +44.72% -38.86% +39.05%
75th Percentile £56.25 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.11 £71.43
UK median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £36.50
% change year-on-year +23.88% -31.10% +32.73%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1,334 £503 +8.65% 1,824
South East -1 739 £503 -4.29% 1,684
North West -1 676 £500 +11.11% 1,101
Midlands -1 612 £500 +8.40% 842
Yorkshire 0 579 £514 +6.20% 504
Scotland 0 526 £470 -2.49% 964
West Midlands +1 457 £515 +2.90% 533
South West -6 362 £550 -0.97% 1,048
East of England +5 207 £534 -4.04% 587
East Midlands -3 152 £500 +20.85% 309
North East -9 72 £500 +13.64% 241
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +3.90% 414
Wales -1 57 £525 +18.31% 170
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 6
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
1 157 (4.05%) Confluence
2 93 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
4 15 (0.39%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 13 (0.34%) SAS
7 12 (0.31%) CMS
8 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.21%) IIS
10 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.15%) Camunda
12 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) CICS
13 4 (0.10%) nginx
14 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
14 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
15 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
15 2 (0.052%) JBoss
15 2 (0.052%) Mule
Applications
1 247 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 86 (2.22%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.88%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 5 (0.13%) Trello
8 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.026%) Maple
11 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 194 (5.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 45 (1.16%) Oracle ERP
5 39 (1.01%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
10 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
12 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
13 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
14 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 491 (12.68%) Azure
2 337 (8.70%) AWS
3 237 (6.12%) GCP
4 228 (5.89%) Power Platform
5 101 (2.61%) SaaS
6 99 (2.56%) GitHub
7 97 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
7 97 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
8 95 (2.45%) Dynamics 365
9 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
10 47 (1.21%) OCI
11 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
12 42 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
13 39 (1.01%) Serverless
14 38 (0.98%) OpenShift
15 31 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
15 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 80 (2.07%) Firewall
2 72 (1.86%) Network Security
3 48 (1.24%) VPN
4 31 (0.80%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.57%) LAN
7 22 (0.57%) SSL
8 13 (0.34%) Broadband
9 12 (0.31%) DHCP
10 11 (0.28%) HTTP
11 10 (0.26%) VSAN
11 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
13 8 (0.21%) BGP
13 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
13 8 (0.21%) Internet
14 7 (0.18%) Wireless
15 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
15 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (4.86%) Power BI
2 77 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.89%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.78%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.68%) Metadata
6 39 (1.01%) Data Lake
6 39 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
7 35 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
7 35 (0.90%) Tableau
8 29 (0.75%) MongoDB
9 27 (0.70%) Db2
10 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 19 (0.49%) Oracle ODI
11 19 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
13 17 (0.44%) NoSQL
14 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 239 (6.17%) JIRA
2 108 (2.79%) Git
3 54 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.67%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
6 16 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 13 (0.34%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.34%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.26%) Maven
10 9 (0.23%) Gradle
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (0.23%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
13 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,306 (33.73%) Social Skills
2 571 (14.75%) Banking
3 548 (14.15%) Analytical Skills
4 274 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 267 (6.90%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.66%) Legal
7 170 (4.39%) Retail
8 143 (3.69%) Influencing Skills
9 102 (2.63%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
11 95 (2.45%) Local Government
12 83 (2.14%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.99%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 74 (1.91%) Billing
15 72 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 58 (1.50%) Marketing
17 57 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (1.39%) Telecoms
19 49 (1.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 498 (12.86%) Analyst
2 409 (10.56%) Lead
3 354 (9.14%) Senior
4 313 (8.08%) Project Manager
5 310 (8.01%) Architect
6 289 (7.46%) Developer
7 265 (6.84%) Consultant
8 237 (6.12%) Business Analyst
9 156 (4.03%) Accountant
10 144 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
11 97 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 93 (2.40%) IT Manager
13 92 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
13 92 (2.38%) Senior Manager
14 86 (2.22%) Java Developer
15 77 (1.99%) Finance Manager
16 76 (1.96%) Administrator
17 68 (1.76%) Data Analyst
17 68 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 67 (1.73%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.93%) Oracle Fusion
2 135 (3.49%) Terraform
3 91 (2.35%) REST
4 69 (1.78%) Kafka
4 69 (1.78%) Middleware
5 68 (1.76%) Spring Boot
6 64 (1.65%) Spring
7 59 (1.52%) React
8 58 (1.50%) .NET
9 41 (1.06%) OAuth
9 41 (1.06%) RESTful
10 32 (0.83%) Node.js
11 30 (0.77%) JSON
11 30 (0.77%) OpenID
12 29 (0.75%) SAML
12 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
13 28 (0.72%) XML
14 24 (0.62%) HTML
15 23 (0.59%) OAuth2
15 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 163 (4.21%) Product Ownership
3 154 (3.98%) Virtual Team
4 153 (3.95%) Cloud Native
5 115 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
6 112 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 112 (2.89%) Podcast
6 112 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
7 100 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
9 56 (1.45%) Data Centre
10 52 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
10 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
11 47 (1.21%) Mainframe
11 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
12 45 (1.16%) AI Agents
13 43 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
14 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
15 39 (1.01%) CMDB
15 39 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.07%) Windows
2 107 (2.76%) Linux
3 60 (1.55%) Unix
4 33 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (0.83%) Windows Server
6 24 (0.62%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 14 (0.36%) Android
8 14 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 999 (25.80%) Stakeholder Management
2 718 (18.54%) Agile
3 546 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
4 527 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
5 510 (13.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 500 (12.91%) Migration
7 496 (12.81%) ERP
8 370 (9.56%) CI/CD
9 369 (9.53%) AI
9 369 (9.53%) Decision-Making
10 355 (9.17%) Project Management
11 350 (9.04%) DevOps
12 345 (8.91%) Change Management
13 297 (7.67%) Roadmaps
14 294 (7.59%) Project Delivery
15 279 (7.21%) Risk Management
16 272 (7.02%) Analytics
17 265 (6.84%) User Acceptance Testing
18 260 (6.71%) Validation
19 227 (5.86%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 335 (8.65%) SQL
2 330 (8.52%) Python
3 237 (6.12%) Java
4 81 (2.09%) PowerShell
5 63 (1.63%) JavaScript
6 59 (1.52%) C#
7 58 (1.50%) Bash
8 41 (1.06%) PL/SQL
9 39 (1.01%) TypeScript
10 37 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 29 (0.75%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Bicep
14 13 (0.34%) ABAP
14 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 10 (0.26%) Perl
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 349 (9.01%) Security Cleared
2 258 (6.66%) Degree
3 216 (5.58%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 110 (2.84%) ACCA
6 106 (2.74%) CIMA
7 98 (2.53%) PMP
8 86 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 84 (2.17%) PMI Certification
10 73 (1.89%) CISSP
11 48 (1.24%) CISM
12 42 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 38 (0.98%) Azure Certification
14 37 (0.96%) AWS Certification
15 31 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
16 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 29 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 23 (0.59%) CCSP
18 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
19 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (6.10%) Data Quality
2 172 (4.44%) PMO
3 134 (3.46%) QA
4 118 (3.05%) GDPR
5 55 (1.42%) GRC
6 50 (1.29%) NIST
7 44 (1.14%) SLA
8 42 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 39 (1.01%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.83%) IFRS
11 29 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 10 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
16 8 (0.21%) NCSC
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
17 7 (0.18%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 75 (1.94%) Active Directory
2 68 (1.76%) Docker
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 20 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
10 4 (0.10%) ACF2
10 4 (0.10%) GPFS
10 4 (0.10%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 2 (0.052%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.026%) IAG
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 192 (4.96%) Kubernetes
2 74 (1.91%) Ansible
3 35 (0.90%) Grafana
4 34 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.41%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 569 (14.70%) Microsoft
2 405 (10.46%) SAP
3 384 (9.92%) Oracle
4 172 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 112 (2.89%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 80 (2.07%) Databricks
8 67 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 57 (1.47%) VMware
10 42 (1.08%) Cisco
11 41 (1.06%) Splunk
12 38 (0.98%) Ariba
13 37 (0.96%) Sage
13 37 (0.96%) Workday
14 25 (0.65%) IFS
14 25 (0.65%) MuleSoft
14 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
15 21 (0.54%) Adobe
16 20 (0.52%) Sybase
17 18 (0.46%) Foundry