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 11 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,879 2,691 2,589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.18% 17.64% 14.15%
As % of the General category 27.45% 28.85% 26.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,329 1,779 1,589
10th Percentile £348 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.02% -1.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £545 £575
% change year-on-year +0.93% -5.23% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 69 158
10th Percentile £15.11 £14.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.96 £16.41 £23.64
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +23.95%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £40.06
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £70.05
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.25 £38.12
% change year-on-year +45.32% -20.65% +46.62%

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 14,133 9,326 9,844
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.66% 61.14% 53.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,824 5,615 5,643
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.94% -1.10%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £690
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,931 843 1,179
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.08 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.69 £15.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%
75th Percentile £61.34 £46.24 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £32.11 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.68% -34.02% +29.22%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 1,321 £500 +7.12% 1,056
South East -1 742 £505 -4.72% 1,155
North West 0 686 £500 +9.29% 594
Midlands 0 633 £514 +14.22% 554
Yorkshire 0 569 £514 +8.21% 338
Scotland 0 507 £475 -5.00% 313
West Midlands +1 483 £525 +5.00% 335
South West -4 376 £525 -4.55% 452
East of England +5 203 £530 -7.83% 306
East Midlands -3 144 £500 +21.21% 219
Wales +1 68 £530 +14.59% 123
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 119
North East -14 59 £500 +11.11% 136
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 144 (3.71%) Confluence
2 96 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) CMS
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) IIS
8 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
10 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) Camunda
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.052%) JBoss
12 2 (0.052%) Mule
12 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 244 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 113 (2.91%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.95%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
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
1 200 (5.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (1.21%) Oracle ERP
3 46 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
4 42 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.06%) NetSuite
6 32 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
8 23 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
9 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 21 (0.54%) SAP FI
10 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
12 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.34%) SAP CO
12 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
13 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
13 12 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 471 (12.14%) Azure
2 310 (7.99%) AWS
3 221 (5.70%) Power Platform
4 220 (5.67%) GCP
5 104 (2.68%) SaaS
6 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
8 88 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
9 85 (2.19%) GitHub
10 63 (1.62%) Entra ID
11 50 (1.29%) OCI
12 44 (1.13%) Snowflake
13 40 (1.03%) Serverless
14 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
15 38 (0.98%) OpenShift
16 27 (0.70%) Power Automate
17 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
18 24 (0.62%) Anthropic Claude
18 24 (0.62%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.04%) Firewall
2 68 (1.75%) Network Security
3 43 (1.11%) VPN
4 33 (0.85%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) SSL
5 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.64%) WAN
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 10 (0.26%) HTTP
10 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 7 (0.18%) Internet
12 7 (0.18%) Wireless
13 6 (0.15%) Broadband
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
14 5 (0.13%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (4.64%) Power BI
2 78 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) Relational Database
4 66 (1.70%) Metadata
5 65 (1.68%) SQL Server
6 50 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
7 45 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 36 (0.93%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.52%) Data Vault
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 15 (0.39%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.39%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 244 (6.29%) JIRA
2 100 (2.58%) Git
3 52 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 22 (0.57%) JUnit
5 15 (0.39%) GitLab
5 15 (0.39%) Hudson
5 15 (0.39%) Selenium
6 14 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 13 (0.34%) Cucumber
7 13 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
10 8 (0.21%) ERwin
10 8 (0.21%) Postman
11 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
11 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
12 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.13%) Gradle
12 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
12 5 (0.13%) Liquibase
General
1 1,236 (31.86%) Social Skills
2 556 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
3 536 (13.82%) Banking
4 284 (7.32%) Public Sector
5 237 (6.11%) Legal
6 236 (6.08%) Organisational Skills
7 158 (4.07%) Retail
8 130 (3.35%) Influencing Skills
9 112 (2.89%) Manufacturing
10 103 (2.66%) Local Government
11 99 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
12 82 (2.11%) General Ledger
13 79 (2.04%) Financial Institution
14 78 (2.01%) Investment Banking
15 72 (1.86%) Billing
16 69 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 56 (1.44%) Marketing
17 56 (1.44%) Telecoms
18 50 (1.29%) Law
18 50 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 518 (13.35%) Analyst
2 419 (10.80%) Lead
3 356 (9.18%) Senior
4 321 (8.28%) Project Manager
5 308 (7.94%) Architect
6 283 (7.30%) Developer
7 264 (6.81%) Consultant
8 246 (6.34%) Business Analyst
9 173 (4.46%) Accountant
10 138 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
11 104 (2.68%) Systems Accountant
12 98 (2.53%) IT Manager
13 96 (2.47%) Senior Manager
14 89 (2.29%) Financial Analyst
15 83 (2.14%) Java Developer
16 76 (1.96%) Administrator
17 70 (1.80%) Programme Manager
18 69 (1.78%) Finance Manager
19 68 (1.75%) Data Analyst
20 64 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.84%) Oracle Fusion
2 80 (2.06%) REST
3 76 (1.96%) Middleware
4 63 (1.62%) Kafka
5 61 (1.57%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.55%) Spring
7 59 (1.52%) .NET
8 56 (1.44%) React
9 37 (0.95%) OAuth
10 33 (0.85%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 28 (0.72%) SAP Fiori
14 27 (0.70%) JSON
15 26 (0.67%) SAML
16 25 (0.64%) OpenID
17 22 (0.57%) SailPoint
18 20 (0.52%) HTML
18 20 (0.52%) OAuth2
18 20 (0.52%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 157 (4.05%) Onboarding
2 155 (4.00%) Product Ownership
3 149 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 135 (3.48%) Virtual Team
5 114 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 106 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
7 102 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
8 90 (2.32%) Podcast
8 90 (2.32%) Web Conferencing
9 70 (1.80%) Data Structures
10 56 (1.44%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.42%) Public Cloud
12 54 (1.39%) Security Posture
13 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
14 48 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
15 40 (1.03%) AI Agents
15 40 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 37 (0.95%) Mobile App
16 37 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
17 33 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 125 (3.22%) Windows
2 108 (2.78%) Linux
3 61 (1.57%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
8 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) CentOS
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 930 (23.98%) Stakeholder Management
2 705 (18.17%) Agile
3 547 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
4 540 (13.92%) Problem-Solving
5 524 (13.51%) Migration
6 516 (13.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 509 (13.12%) ERP
8 362 (9.33%) Decision-Making
9 357 (9.20%) AI
10 348 (8.97%) DevOps
10 348 (8.97%) Project Management
11 347 (8.95%) CI/CD
12 340 (8.77%) Change Management
13 306 (7.89%) Project Delivery
14 283 (7.30%) User Acceptance Testing
15 281 (7.24%) Roadmaps
16 275 (7.09%) Validation
17 274 (7.06%) Risk Management
18 268 (6.91%) Analytics
19 242 (6.24%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 325 (8.38%) SQL
2 312 (8.04%) Python
3 215 (5.54%) Java
4 71 (1.83%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) C#
6 53 (1.37%) Bash
7 50 (1.29%) JavaScript
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 33 (0.85%) Shell Script
11 23 (0.59%) C++
11 23 (0.59%) Go
12 15 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
14 13 (0.34%) ABAP
15 12 (0.31%) Bicep
16 11 (0.28%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) VBA
18 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 358 (9.23%) Security Cleared
2 274 (7.06%) Degree
3 217 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 151 (3.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 114 (2.94%) ACCA
6 111 (2.86%) CIMA
7 99 (2.55%) PMP
8 86 (2.22%) DV Cleared
8 86 (2.22%) PMI Certification
9 73 (1.88%) CISSP
10 42 (1.08%) CISM
11 34 (0.88%) AWS Certification
11 34 (0.88%) Azure Certification
11 34 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
12 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 29 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
15 22 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.52%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (5.80%) Data Quality
2 174 (4.49%) PMO
3 136 (3.51%) QA
4 133 (3.43%) GDPR
5 48 (1.24%) GRC
5 48 (1.24%) NIST
5 48 (1.24%) SLA
6 35 (0.90%) IFRS
7 34 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 33 (0.85%) Accessibility
8 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.44%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
11 11 (0.28%) GAAP
12 10 (0.26%) EMIR
12 10 (0.26%) ISO 20022
13 8 (0.21%) COBIT
13 8 (0.21%) IFRS 17
14 7 (0.18%) NCSC
14 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (1.86%) Active Directory
2 70 (1.80%) Docker
3 38 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.13%) GPFS
10 5 (0.13%) NFS
11 4 (0.10%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.10%) zsh
12 3 (0.077%) ACF2
13 2 (0.052%) KVM
13 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 1 (0.026%) Firmware
14 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 164 (4.23%) Kubernetes
2 110 (2.84%) Terraform
3 71 (1.83%) Ansible
4 32 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
6 25 (0.64%) Grafana
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
7 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
8 16 (0.41%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.39%) SCCM
10 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.23%) Argo
11 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 9 (0.23%) Istio
12 7 (0.18%) CASB
12 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 7 (0.18%) vRealize
13 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.15%) Nessus
13 6 (0.15%) Puppet
Vendors
1 528 (13.61%) Microsoft
2 403 (10.39%) SAP
3 386 (9.95%) Oracle
4 177 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 109 (2.81%) Google
6 82 (2.11%) IBM
7 79 (2.04%) Databricks
8 61 (1.57%) Salesforce
9 54 (1.39%) VMware
10 50 (1.29%) Sage
11 42 (1.08%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 32 (0.82%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Splunk
15 30 (0.77%) Ariba
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
18 20 (0.52%) HP
18 20 (0.52%) Sybase
19 19 (0.49%) CyberArk