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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,893 2,670 2,682
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.87% 17.31% 14.97%
As % of the General category 26.66% 28.33% 27.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,335 1,762 1,588
10th Percentile £347 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £495 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -3.41% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £575
% change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 60 123
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.42 £13.90
25th Percentile £20.19 £15.50 £20.37
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +17.94%
75th Percentile - £32.67 £53.38
90th Percentile £75.08 £64.44 £71.04
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.50
% change year-on-year +50.19% -12.63% +30.30%

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 14,604 9,425 9,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 52.03% 61.09% 55.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,946 5,672 5,468
10th Percentile £263 £210 £209
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £497
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.45% -0.58%
75th Percentile £595 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 898 965
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £21.35 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.55% -43.08% +44.23%
75th Percentile £56.00 £43.15 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.65 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £29.98 £25.15 £37.39
% change year-on-year +19.20% -32.74% +35.96%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 1,339 £508 +10.33% 1,292
South East -3 736 £500 -2.91% 1,552
North West -1 668 £500 +11.11% 711
Midlands -1 609 £500 +6.61% 718
Yorkshire 0 590 £515 +5.00% 423
Scotland 0 536 £463 -6.57% 645
West Midlands +1 455 £514 +1.53% 444
South West -6 349 £550 -4.35% 691
East of England +4 219 £555 -0.22% 486
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.05% 274
North East -6 74 £500 +14.29% 174
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 187
Wales 0 62 £525 +13.51% 120
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 8
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
1 151 (3.88%) Confluence
2 96 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
4 13 (0.33%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) Apache
5 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.26%) SAS
7 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 9 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
8 6 (0.15%) IIS
8 6 (0.15%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.13%) CICS
10 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.051%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.051%) JBoss
12 2 (0.051%) Mule
12 2 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 253 (6.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 116 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.077%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (5.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 46 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 40 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
5 37 (0.95%) NetSuite
6 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
6 28 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 26 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.64%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) SAP FI
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.46%) Workday HCM
12 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
13 13 (0.33%) SAP BRIM
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 481 (12.36%) Azure
2 343 (8.81%) AWS
3 247 (6.34%) GCP
4 224 (5.75%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.62%) SaaS
6 101 (2.59%) GitHub
7 100 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
8 97 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 96 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
10 73 (1.88%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.18%) OCI
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 42 (1.08%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.08%) Serverless
13 42 (1.08%) Snowflake
14 35 (0.90%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (0.87%) Power Automate
16 30 (0.77%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 77 (1.98%) Firewall
2 74 (1.90%) Network Security
3 42 (1.08%) VPN
4 26 (0.67%) DNS
5 24 (0.62%) WAN
6 22 (0.57%) SSL
7 20 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.46%) LAN
9 16 (0.41%) Broadband
10 12 (0.31%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) DHCP
11 9 (0.23%) VSAN
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) SAN
15 5 (0.13%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (4.65%) Power BI
2 73 (1.88%) Relational Database
3 71 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 70 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 63 (1.62%) Metadata
6 38 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.95%) Data Lake
8 36 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
9 34 (0.87%) Tableau
10 33 (0.85%) MongoDB
11 28 (0.72%) Db2
12 19 (0.49%) NoSQL
12 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 19 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
15 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
15 16 (0.41%) Oracle ODI
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 233 (5.99%) JIRA
2 109 (2.80%) Git
3 55 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 20 (0.51%) GitLab
6 16 (0.41%) Claude Code
7 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 13 (0.33%) Selenium
9 12 (0.31%) Cucumber
9 12 (0.31%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.28%) Maven
11 10 (0.26%) Hudson
12 9 (0.23%) Gradle
12 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 9 (0.23%) Postman
13 8 (0.21%) ERwin
14 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
15 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
15 6 (0.15%) Mockito
General
1 1,336 (34.32%) Social Skills
2 580 (14.90%) Banking
3 545 (14.00%) Analytical Skills
4 281 (7.22%) Organisational Skills
5 279 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 257 (6.60%) Legal
7 168 (4.32%) Retail
8 146 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
9 97 (2.49%) Manufacturing
10 94 (2.41%) Local Government
11 89 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.21%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 76 (1.95%) Billing
15 75 (1.93%) Investment Banking
16 72 (1.85%) Financial Institution
17 64 (1.64%) Marketing
18 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
19 54 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
20 51 (1.31%) Law
Job Titles
1 501 (12.87%) Analyst
2 399 (10.25%) Lead
3 364 (9.35%) Senior
4 309 (7.94%) Project Manager
5 308 (7.91%) Architect
6 303 (7.78%) Developer
7 276 (7.09%) Consultant
8 233 (5.99%) Business Analyst
9 154 (3.96%) Accountant
10 145 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
11 100 (2.57%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
13 93 (2.39%) Systems Accountant
14 91 (2.34%) Java Developer
14 91 (2.34%) Senior Manager
15 82 (2.11%) Administrator
16 79 (2.03%) Finance Manager
17 70 (1.80%) Data Analyst
17 70 (1.80%) Programme Manager
18 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.80%) Oracle Fusion
2 144 (3.70%) Terraform
3 99 (2.54%) REST
4 78 (2.00%) Kafka
5 69 (1.77%) Middleware
6 67 (1.72%) Spring Boot
7 63 (1.62%) React
8 62 (1.59%) Spring
9 57 (1.46%) .NET
10 47 (1.21%) RESTful
11 46 (1.18%) OAuth
12 35 (0.90%) JSON
12 35 (0.90%) OpenID
13 31 (0.80%) Node.js
14 30 (0.77%) SAML
15 29 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
16 27 (0.69%) XML
17 26 (0.67%) OAuth2
18 25 (0.64%) HTML
18 25 (0.64%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 167 (4.29%) Product Ownership
2 163 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 158 (4.06%) Cloud Native
4 156 (4.01%) Virtual Team
5 121 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
6 117 (3.01%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
8 112 (2.88%) Podcast
9 100 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
10 64 (1.64%) Data Structures
11 62 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
12 58 (1.49%) Data Centre
13 53 (1.36%) AI Agents
13 53 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
15 48 (1.23%) Security Posture
16 47 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 43 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (1.08%) Mobile App
19 39 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 112 (2.88%) Windows
2 110 (2.83%) Linux
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 36 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (0.69%) 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 5 (0.13%) HPUX
11 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.13%) SUSE
11 5 (0.13%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.077%) CentOS
12 3 (0.077%) MVS
13 2 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,014 (26.05%) Stakeholder Management
2 711 (18.26%) Agile
3 543 (13.95%) Continuous Improvement
4 528 (13.56%) Problem-Solving
5 505 (12.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 493 (12.66%) Migration
7 488 (12.54%) ERP
8 392 (10.07%) CI/CD
9 388 (9.97%) AI
10 374 (9.61%) Decision-Making
11 352 (9.04%) Project Management
12 351 (9.02%) Change Management
13 348 (8.94%) DevOps
14 304 (7.81%) Roadmaps
15 291 (7.47%) Risk Management
16 285 (7.32%) Project Delivery
17 275 (7.06%) Analytics
18 267 (6.86%) Validation
19 262 (6.73%) User Acceptance Testing
20 232 (5.96%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 337 (8.66%) Python
2 329 (8.45%) SQL
3 241 (6.19%) Java
4 81 (2.08%) PowerShell
5 70 (1.80%) JavaScript
6 61 (1.57%) C#
7 60 (1.54%) Bash
8 40 (1.03%) PL/SQL
8 40 (1.03%) TypeScript
9 37 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 34 (0.87%) Go
11 23 (0.59%) C++
12 18 (0.46%) Bicep
13 15 (0.39%) Scala
14 13 (0.33%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) Perl
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 8 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 355 (9.12%) Security Cleared
2 255 (6.55%) Degree
3 219 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 184 (4.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (2.75%) ACCA
6 104 (2.67%) CIMA
7 96 (2.47%) PMP
8 87 (2.23%) DV Cleared
9 78 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 70 (1.80%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
11 44 (1.13%) CISM
12 41 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 39 (1.00%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 30 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 24 (0.62%) CCSP
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 20 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.47%) PMO
3 134 (3.44%) QA
4 103 (2.65%) GDPR
5 55 (1.41%) GRC
6 48 (1.23%) NIST
7 40 (1.03%) Accessibility
7 40 (1.03%) SLA
8 38 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 31 (0.80%) IFRS
10 26 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 20 (0.51%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.28%) COBIT
12 11 (0.28%) WCAG
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 10 (0.26%) GAAP
14 9 (0.23%) ISO 9001
14 9 (0.23%) NCSC
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) P3O
System Software
1 75 (1.93%) Docker
2 69 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 47 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 20 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 12 (0.31%) 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 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) ACF2
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 2 (0.051%) IAG
12 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.026%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 206 (5.29%) Kubernetes
2 73 (1.88%) Ansible
3 39 (1.00%) Grafana
4 34 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.49%) 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 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 4 (0.10%) logstash
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
15 4 (0.10%) vRealize
Vendors
1 580 (14.90%) Microsoft
2 424 (10.89%) SAP
3 375 (9.63%) Oracle
4 171 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 113 (2.90%) Google
6 89 (2.29%) IBM
7 77 (1.98%) Databricks
8 68 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 61 (1.57%) VMware
10 47 (1.21%) Splunk
11 42 (1.08%) Ariba
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 41 (1.05%) Workday
13 32 (0.82%) Sage
14 26 (0.67%) MuleSoft
15 25 (0.64%) Red Hat
16 23 (0.59%) Snow
17 22 (0.57%) Adobe
18 20 (0.51%) IFS
18 20 (0.51%) Sybase