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 28 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,864 2,615 2,655
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.29% 17.39% 13.86%
As % of the General category 27.77% 28.60% 25.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,329 1,717 1,629
10th Percentile £348 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £549 £575
% change year-on-year +0.14% -4.48% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 74 170
10th Percentile £15.10 £14.74 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.69 £18.41
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +11.49%
75th Percentile £48.75 £59.69 £38.59
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.02
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +25.49%

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 13,915 9,142 10,253
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.45% 60.79% 53.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,794 5,526 5,883
10th Percentile £263 £213 £210
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £493
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,788 819 1,317
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.08 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.25 £22.14 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.18% -40.96% +38.89%
75th Percentile £63.84 £48.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £36.33
% change year-on-year +30.33% -30.31% +18.97%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 1,315 £500 +6.38% 766
South East -1 739 £501 -4.52% 898
North West 0 696 £492 +9.33% 399
Midlands 0 632 £500 +11.11% 448
Yorkshire 0 566 £519 +6.96% 270
Scotland 0 487 £475 -4.04% 171
West Midlands +1 486 £515 +8.42% 263
South West -4 386 £525 -4.55% 324
East of England +6 212 £528 -8.26% 196
East Midlands -3 141 £500 +19.05% 185
Wales +3 77 £525 +13.51% 85
Northern Ireland -1 62 £475 +1.06% 70
North East -19 53 £500 +14.29% 106
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 3
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
1 140 (3.62%) Confluence
2 100 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) CMS
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) CICS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) IIS
10 6 (0.16%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.078%) Camunda
12 3 (0.078%) Mule
12 3 (0.078%) Mule ESB
12 3 (0.078%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.078%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 238 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (2.41%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.16%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) Maple
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle ERP
3 43 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.09%) NetSuite
5 40 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
6 33 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.52%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
10 18 (0.47%) SAP FI
11 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
12 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) Workday HCM
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 10 (0.26%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.40%) Azure
2 330 (8.54%) AWS
3 222 (5.75%) Power Platform
4 218 (5.64%) GCP
5 103 (2.67%) SaaS
6 93 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
8 88 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
9 83 (2.15%) GitHub
10 71 (1.84%) Entra ID
11 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.14%) OCI
13 40 (1.04%) Serverless
14 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
15 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
16 25 (0.65%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 25 (0.65%) Power Automate
17 23 (0.60%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Firewall
2 64 (1.66%) Network Security
3 39 (1.01%) VPN
4 38 (0.98%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
6 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.65%) WAN
7 18 (0.47%) LAN
8 13 (0.34%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
11 8 (0.21%) HTTP
11 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) MPLS
13 6 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.16%) Wireless
14 5 (0.13%) BIG-IP
14 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (4.71%) Power BI
2 78 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
3 73 (1.89%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.79%) Metadata
5 64 (1.66%) SQL Server
6 54 (1.40%) PostgreSQL
7 49 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
8 38 (0.98%) Tableau
9 35 (0.91%) Data Lake
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
13 23 (0.60%) Db2
13 23 (0.60%) Oracle ODI
14 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
14 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 14 (0.36%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 248 (6.42%) JIRA
2 92 (2.38%) Git
3 59 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.47%) Selenium
6 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.39%) GitLab
8 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 14 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
12 7 (0.18%) ERwin
12 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
12 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
13 5 (0.13%) Gradle
13 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,220 (31.57%) Social Skills
2 540 (13.98%) Analytical Skills
3 530 (13.72%) Banking
4 288 (7.45%) Public Sector
5 214 (5.54%) Legal
6 207 (5.36%) Organisational Skills
7 140 (3.62%) Retail
8 124 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
9 110 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 108 (2.80%) Local Government
11 103 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
12 81 (2.10%) Financial Institution
13 79 (2.04%) General Ledger
14 77 (1.99%) Investment Banking
15 74 (1.92%) Billing
16 64 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 57 (1.48%) Marketing
18 54 (1.40%) Telecoms
19 51 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
20 50 (1.29%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 528 (13.66%) Analyst
2 412 (10.66%) Lead
3 349 (9.03%) Senior
4 332 (8.59%) Project Manager
5 316 (8.18%) Architect
6 290 (7.51%) Developer
7 247 (6.39%) Business Analyst
8 246 (6.37%) Consultant
9 174 (4.50%) Accountant
10 133 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
11 106 (2.74%) Systems Accountant
12 102 (2.64%) IT Manager
13 96 (2.48%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.30%) Financial Analyst
15 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.97%) Programme Manager
17 71 (1.84%) Data Analyst
18 67 (1.73%) Administrator
18 67 (1.73%) Finance Manager
19 64 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (3.67%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.17%) Middleware
3 83 (2.15%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Kafka
5 68 (1.76%) Spring Boot
6 66 (1.71%) Spring
7 59 (1.53%) .NET
7 59 (1.53%) React
8 38 (0.98%) OAuth
8 38 (0.98%) RESTful
9 31 (0.80%) Node.js
10 30 (0.78%) JSON
11 28 (0.72%) XML
12 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.67%) OpenID
14 24 (0.62%) SAML
15 23 (0.60%) SailPoint
16 22 (0.57%) Redux
17 20 (0.52%) HTML
17 20 (0.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.04%) Cloud Native
2 154 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 153 (3.96%) Product Ownership
4 116 (3.00%) Virtual Team
5 114 (2.95%) Management Information System
6 104 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
7 103 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
8 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
8 67 (1.73%) Web Conferencing
9 66 (1.71%) Podcast
10 65 (1.68%) Data Centre
11 57 (1.48%) Public Cloud
12 52 (1.35%) Security Posture
13 51 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
13 51 (1.32%) Mainframe
14 42 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
15 37 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 36 (0.93%) AI Agents
17 35 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
18 32 (0.83%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 124 (3.21%) Windows
2 110 (2.85%) Linux
3 65 (1.68%) Unix
4 33 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.16%) VMS
13 5 (0.13%) HPUX
13 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.13%) SUSE
14 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 890 (23.03%) Stakeholder Management
2 712 (18.43%) Agile
3 553 (14.31%) Problem-Solving
4 542 (14.03%) Continuous Improvement
5 533 (13.79%) Migration
6 511 (13.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 505 (13.07%) ERP
8 378 (9.78%) Project Management
9 358 (9.27%) Decision-Making
10 356 (9.21%) DevOps
11 345 (8.93%) CI/CD
12 344 (8.90%) Change Management
13 324 (8.39%) AI
14 317 (8.20%) Project Delivery
15 296 (7.66%) Roadmaps
16 285 (7.38%) User Acceptance Testing
17 273 (7.07%) Validation
18 261 (6.75%) Risk Management
19 250 (6.47%) Analytics
20 237 (6.13%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 331 (8.57%) SQL
2 310 (8.02%) Python
3 223 (5.77%) Java
4 73 (1.89%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.48%) C#
6 47 (1.22%) Bash
6 47 (1.22%) JavaScript
7 36 (0.93%) PL/SQL
8 35 (0.91%) TypeScript
9 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
10 25 (0.65%) Go
11 22 (0.57%) C++
12 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 13 (0.34%) Bicep
13 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.31%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
15 11 (0.28%) PHP
16 10 (0.26%) ABAP
16 10 (0.26%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 373 (9.65%) Security Cleared
2 284 (7.35%) Degree
3 227 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 138 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (3.03%) ACCA
6 113 (2.92%) CIMA
7 110 (2.85%) PMP
8 95 (2.46%) PMI Certification
9 84 (2.17%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.81%) CISSP
11 42 (1.09%) CISM
12 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 33 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 33 (0.85%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 29 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
15 24 (0.62%) Master's Degree
16 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
17 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
18 18 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 216 (5.59%) Data Quality
2 180 (4.66%) PMO
3 144 (3.73%) QA
4 136 (3.52%) GDPR
5 46 (1.19%) SLA
6 43 (1.11%) GRC
6 43 (1.11%) NIST
7 37 (0.96%) IFRS
8 34 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 32 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 23 (0.60%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.34%) GAAP
12 13 (0.34%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
15 8 (0.21%) WCAG
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 82 (2.12%) Docker
2 73 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.34%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.13%) GPFS
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
9 5 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 3 (0.078%) ACF2
12 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.052%) SRDF
12 2 (0.052%) zsh
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
1 171 (4.43%) Kubernetes
2 108 (2.80%) Terraform
3 75 (1.94%) Ansible
4 32 (0.83%) Grafana
4 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
6 24 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 16 (0.41%) SCCM
9 13 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 11 (0.28%) Argo
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Control-M
12 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) HP ALM
14 7 (0.18%) Nessus
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.16%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.16%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 514 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 391 (10.12%) SAP
3 380 (9.83%) Oracle
4 167 (4.32%) ServiceNow
5 101 (2.61%) Google
6 85 (2.20%) IBM
7 76 (1.97%) Databricks
8 62 (1.60%) VMware
9 55 (1.42%) Salesforce
10 52 (1.35%) Sage
11 41 (1.06%) Cisco
12 34 (0.88%) Splunk
13 33 (0.85%) IFS
14 32 (0.83%) Ariba
15 31 (0.80%) Workday
16 25 (0.65%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) MuleSoft
18 21 (0.54%) HP
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 18 (0.47%) Adobe