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

6 months to
4 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 2,628 2,640
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.03% 17.37% 14.87%
As % of the General category 27.16% 28.46% 27.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,321 1,735 1,579
10th Percentile £350 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -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 261 61 128
10th Percentile £14.88 £13.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.31 £15.50 £20.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +25.09%
75th Percentile - £32.31 £52.63
90th Percentile £75.40 £73.75 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +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 14,256 9,234 9,649
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.64% 61.03% 54.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,837 5,545 5,419
10th Percentile £263 £213 £211
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.62% -0.40%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,998 866 993
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.08 £14.06
25th Percentile £16.38 £15.32 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.16 £22.04 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +41.36% -42.18% +46.90%
75th Percentile £56.21 £43.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.00 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £30.50 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +21.27% -32.93% +36.36%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 1,337 £510 +12.15% 1,769
South East -1 737 £500 -4.76% 1,678
North West -1 677 £500 +11.11% 1,079
Midlands -1 609 £520 +11.83% 866
Yorkshire 0 579 £519 +9.03% 489
Scotland 0 525 £465 -6.53% 1,010
West Midlands +1 453 £525 +5.00% 535
South West -6 362 £550 -2.22% 1,030
East of England +2 206 £550 -1.21% 652
East Midlands -4 153 £500 +20.48% 330
North East -4 74 £500 +14.29% 219
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +2.56% 439
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 157
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 3
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
1 153 (3.95%) Confluence
2 95 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.34%) Apache
4 13 (0.34%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.21%) WebSphere
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
8 7 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.13%) CICS
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Mule
13 2 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (6.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 114 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 86 (2.22%) Microsoft Project
5 35 (0.90%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (5.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 43 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
5 39 (1.01%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 25 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
9 24 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
9 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.54%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
14 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 488 (12.60%) Azure
2 340 (8.78%) AWS
3 241 (6.22%) GCP
4 226 (5.84%) Power Platform
5 100 (2.58%) SaaS
6 99 (2.56%) GitHub
7 98 (2.53%) Dynamics 365
7 98 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
8 97 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
9 75 (1.94%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.19%) OCI
11 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
12 42 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
13 41 (1.06%) Serverless
14 38 (0.98%) OpenShift
15 32 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (0.83%) Power Automate
16 27 (0.70%) Amazon EKS
17 26 (0.67%) Anthropic Claude
17 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.99%) Firewall
2 73 (1.89%) Network Security
3 43 (1.11%) VPN
4 28 (0.72%) DNS
5 24 (0.62%) WAN
6 22 (0.57%) SSL
6 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 13 (0.34%) Broadband
9 11 (0.28%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) HTTP
10 10 (0.26%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.18%) BGP
13 7 (0.18%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Firepower
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.78%) Power BI
2 74 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.86%) Relational Database
4 71 (1.83%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.63%) Metadata
6 39 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
7 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
8 34 (0.88%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.88%) Tableau
9 30 (0.77%) MongoDB
10 28 (0.72%) Db2
11 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle ODI
13 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.44%) Data Vault
14 17 (0.44%) NoSQL
15 15 (0.39%) BigQuery
15 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
15 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 236 (6.10%) JIRA
2 108 (2.79%) Git
3 53 (1.37%) 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%) Mockito
General
1 1,317 (34.01%) Social Skills
2 577 (14.90%) Banking
3 546 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 274 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 272 (7.02%) Organisational Skills
6 258 (6.66%) Legal
7 167 (4.31%) Retail
8 143 (3.69%) Influencing Skills
9 99 (2.56%) Manufacturing
10 96 (2.48%) Local Government
11 93 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
12 83 (2.14%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.99%) Investment Banking
14 74 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 73 (1.89%) Billing
16 72 (1.86%) Financial Institution
17 59 (1.52%) Marketing
18 56 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (1.34%) Telecoms
20 49 (1.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 496 (12.81%) Analyst
2 402 (10.38%) Lead
3 356 (9.19%) Senior
4 315 (8.14%) Project Manager
5 307 (7.93%) Architect
6 295 (7.62%) Developer
7 273 (7.05%) Consultant
8 236 (6.10%) Business Analyst
9 156 (4.03%) Accountant
10 143 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 97 (2.51%) Systems Accountant
12 93 (2.40%) Financial Analyst
12 93 (2.40%) IT Manager
13 92 (2.38%) Senior Manager
14 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
15 80 (2.07%) Administrator
16 79 (2.04%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.81%) Data Analyst
18 68 (1.76%) Programme Manager
19 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (3.90%) Oracle Fusion
2 135 (3.49%) Terraform
3 91 (2.35%) REST
4 71 (1.83%) Kafka
5 67 (1.73%) Middleware
5 67 (1.73%) Spring Boot
6 63 (1.63%) Spring
7 60 (1.55%) React
8 57 (1.47%) .NET
9 44 (1.14%) RESTful
10 42 (1.08%) OAuth
11 32 (0.83%) JSON
11 32 (0.83%) Node.js
12 31 (0.80%) OpenID
13 29 (0.75%) SAML
13 29 (0.75%) SAP Fiori
13 29 (0.75%) XML
14 26 (0.67%) HTML
15 24 (0.62%) OAuth2
15 24 (0.62%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 168 (4.34%) Onboarding
2 164 (4.24%) Product Ownership
3 156 (4.03%) Virtual Team
4 154 (3.98%) Cloud Native
5 119 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
6 116 (3.00%) Management Information System
7 112 (2.89%) Podcast
7 112 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
8 100 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
9 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
10 56 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 54 (1.39%) Data Centre
12 50 (1.29%) Public Cloud
13 49 (1.27%) Mainframe
14 48 (1.24%) Security Posture
15 45 (1.16%) AI Agents
16 43 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
16 43 (1.11%) Mobile App
17 42 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
18 39 (1.01%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 114 (2.94%) Windows
2 108 (2.79%) Linux
3 60 (1.55%) Unix
4 35 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.67%) zOS
7 23 (0.59%) Solaris
8 15 (0.39%) Android
8 15 (0.39%) 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 1,001 (25.85%) Stakeholder Management
2 712 (18.39%) Agile
3 545 (14.08%) Continuous Improvement
4 529 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
5 508 (13.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 505 (13.04%) Migration
7 493 (12.73%) ERP
8 377 (9.74%) CI/CD
9 371 (9.58%) AI
10 367 (9.48%) Decision-Making
11 353 (9.12%) Project Management
12 344 (8.88%) DevOps
13 343 (8.86%) Change Management
14 296 (7.64%) Roadmaps
15 289 (7.46%) Project Delivery
16 282 (7.28%) Risk Management
17 273 (7.05%) Analytics
18 270 (6.97%) User Acceptance Testing
19 264 (6.82%) Validation
20 227 (5.86%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 329 (8.50%) Python
1 329 (8.50%) SQL
2 239 (6.17%) Java
3 80 (2.07%) PowerShell
4 67 (1.73%) JavaScript
5 60 (1.55%) C#
6 59 (1.52%) Bash
7 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
8 38 (0.98%) TypeScript
9 37 (0.96%) Shell Script
10 31 (0.80%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 17 (0.44%) Bicep
13 16 (0.41%) T-SQL
14 13 (0.34%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 11 (0.28%) Perl
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 340 (8.78%) Security Cleared
2 257 (6.64%) Degree
3 207 (5.35%) SC Cleared
4 171 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 110 (2.84%) ACCA
6 106 (2.74%) CIMA
7 99 (2.56%) PMP
8 86 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 84 (2.17%) PMI Certification
10 74 (1.91%) CISSP
11 47 (1.21%) CISM
12 43 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
13 41 (1.06%) Azure Certification
14 39 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 24 (0.62%) CCSP
17 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.49%) PMO
3 134 (3.46%) QA
4 109 (2.82%) GDPR
5 55 (1.42%) GRC
6 49 (1.27%) NIST
7 43 (1.11%) SLA
8 39 (1.01%) Accessibility
9 38 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 32 (0.83%) IFRS
11 28 (0.72%) 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%) WCAG
15 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
15 9 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.21%) ISO 20022
16 8 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 72 (1.86%) Active Directory
2 68 (1.76%) Docker
3 45 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 20 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.15%) vSphere
10 5 (0.13%) Hyper-V
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) GPFS
11 4 (0.10%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.052%) IAG
12 2 (0.052%) KVM
12 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 191 (4.93%) Kubernetes
2 72 (1.86%) Ansible
3 36 (0.93%) Grafana
4 33 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
7 18 (0.46%) Progress Chef
8 16 (0.41%) SCCM
9 10 (0.26%) Argo
9 10 (0.26%) Istio
9 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
13 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.10%) logstash
13 4 (0.10%) QRadar
13 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 572 (14.77%) Microsoft
2 411 (10.61%) SAP
3 380 (9.81%) Oracle
4 171 (4.42%) ServiceNow
5 110 (2.84%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 79 (2.04%) Databricks
8 68 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 59 (1.52%) VMware
10 43 (1.11%) Splunk
11 41 (1.06%) Cisco
12 40 (1.03%) Ariba
13 37 (0.96%) Workday
14 36 (0.93%) Sage
15 26 (0.67%) Red Hat
16 24 (0.62%) IFS
16 24 (0.62%) MuleSoft
17 21 (0.54%) Adobe
18 20 (0.52%) Sybase
19 18 (0.46%) Foundry