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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,880 2,702 2,644
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.04% 17.52% 14.55%
As % of the General category 27.36% 28.69% 26.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 1,787 1,602
10th Percentile £350 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -4.00% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £737
UK median daily rate £550 £540 £575
% change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 70 145
10th Percentile £15.18 £13.46 £14.11
25th Percentile £22.20 £16.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +4.84%
75th Percentile - £55.06 £44.04
90th Percentile £75.76 £75.00 £70.82
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
% change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +34.62%

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 14,180 9,417 9,808
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.32% 61.06% 53.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,825 5,676 5,587
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,982 872 1,080
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.08 £13.84
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.37 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.36 £22.14 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.17% -36.74% +34.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £46.21 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.68 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +27.47%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 1,340 £500 +6.50% 770
South East -3 729 £505 -3.81% 1,056
North West -1 691 £500 +10.01% 407
Midlands 0 624 £500 +11.11% 414
Yorkshire 0 570 £514 +5.98% 250
Scotland 0 508 £475 - 165
West Midlands +1 472 £500 - 255
South West -5 376 £550 -3.30% 528
East of England +4 204 £525 -7.89% 282
East Midlands -4 148 £500 +21.21% 158
North East -6 72 £500 +12.36% 126
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 49
Wales -1 61 £525 +13.51% 86
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 2
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 (3.89%) Confluence
2 95 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 15 (0.39%) Apache
4 14 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 12 (0.31%) CMS
5 12 (0.31%) SAS
6 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.21%) IIS
7 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (0.15%) CICS
10 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.077%) Camunda
11 3 (0.077%) nginx
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
11 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.052%) JBoss
12 2 (0.052%) Mule
12 2 (0.052%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 245 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 111 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
5 40 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.13%) Trello
9 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.10%) 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
1 193 (4.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 48 (1.24%) Oracle ERP
4 47 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.98%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 28 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
10 22 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 19 (0.49%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.39%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.34%) SAP PSCD
14 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
14 11 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
14 11 (0.28%) SAP CO
15 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.35%) Azure
2 325 (8.38%) AWS
3 226 (5.82%) GCP
4 225 (5.80%) Power Platform
5 98 (2.53%) SaaS
6 95 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
7 93 (2.40%) GitHub
7 93 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
8 91 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
9 71 (1.83%) Entra ID
10 46 (1.19%) OCI
11 43 (1.11%) Snowflake
12 40 (1.03%) Serverless
13 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
14 34 (0.88%) OpenShift
15 29 (0.75%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (0.75%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) PowerApps
17 25 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (0.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 78 (2.01%) Firewall
2 70 (1.80%) Network Security
3 45 (1.16%) VPN
4 34 (0.88%) DNS
5 28 (0.72%) WAN
6 23 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 22 (0.57%) LAN
7 22 (0.57%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) DHCP
8 12 (0.31%) VSAN
9 11 (0.28%) HTTP
10 10 (0.26%) Broadband
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.18%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (4.79%) Power BI
2 75 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
3 72 (1.86%) Relational Database
4 67 (1.73%) SQL Server
5 64 (1.65%) Metadata
6 45 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
7 41 (1.06%) PostgreSQL
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 34 (0.88%) Tableau
10 32 (0.82%) MongoDB
11 25 (0.64%) Db2
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 20 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
15 19 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
17 16 (0.41%) BigQuery
18 15 (0.39%) Oracle Database
19 14 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 243 (6.26%) JIRA
2 104 (2.68%) Git
3 49 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.39%) Claude Code
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) GitLab
9 12 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 10 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 9 (0.23%) Postman
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
14 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,290 (33.25%) Social Skills
2 555 (14.30%) Analytical Skills
3 553 (14.25%) Banking
4 276 (7.11%) Public Sector
5 258 (6.65%) Legal
5 258 (6.65%) Organisational Skills
6 167 (4.30%) Retail
7 139 (3.58%) Influencing Skills
8 109 (2.81%) Manufacturing
9 99 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
10 95 (2.45%) Local Government
11 85 (2.19%) General Ledger
12 77 (1.98%) Investment Banking
13 76 (1.96%) Financial Institution
14 74 (1.91%) Billing
14 74 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 55 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
16 54 (1.39%) Marketing
17 52 (1.34%) Telecoms
18 50 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 506 (13.04%) Analyst
2 419 (10.80%) Lead
3 352 (9.07%) Senior
4 328 (8.45%) Project Manager
5 308 (7.94%) Architect
6 275 (7.09%) Developer
7 263 (6.78%) Consultant
8 239 (6.16%) Business Analyst
9 158 (4.07%) Accountant
10 138 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
11 97 (2.50%) IT Manager
12 96 (2.47%) Systems Accountant
13 95 (2.45%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.32%) Financial Analyst
15 82 (2.11%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.98%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.91%) Administrator
18 69 (1.78%) Programme Manager
19 65 (1.68%) Software Engineer
20 63 (1.62%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (3.92%) Oracle Fusion
2 124 (3.20%) Terraform
3 85 (2.19%) REST
4 75 (1.93%) Middleware
5 67 (1.73%) Kafka
6 63 (1.62%) Spring Boot
7 62 (1.60%) Spring
8 60 (1.55%) .NET
9 55 (1.42%) React
10 39 (1.01%) OAuth
10 39 (1.01%) RESTful
11 32 (0.82%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) JSON
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 29 (0.75%) SAML
14 28 (0.72%) OpenID
15 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
16 23 (0.59%) SailPoint
17 21 (0.54%) HTML
17 21 (0.54%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 163 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 160 (4.12%) Product Ownership
3 155 (3.99%) Virtual Team
4 142 (3.66%) Cloud Native
5 112 (2.89%) Podcast
5 112 (2.89%) Web Conferencing
6 109 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
7 108 (2.78%) Management Information System
8 100 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
9 62 (1.60%) Data Centre
10 61 (1.57%) Data Structures
11 53 (1.37%) Public Cloud
12 51 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
13 49 (1.26%) Mainframe
14 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
15 43 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
16 39 (1.01%) AI Agents
17 38 (0.98%) CMDB
17 38 (0.98%) Mobile App
17 38 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 117 (3.02%) Windows
2 101 (2.60%) Linux
3 58 (1.49%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.64%) Solaris
7 24 (0.62%) zOS
8 12 (0.31%) Android
8 12 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.28%) 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%) MVS
13 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.052%) CentOS
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 974 (25.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 707 (18.22%) Agile
3 541 (13.94%) Continuous Improvement
4 523 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
5 515 (13.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 510 (13.14%) Migration
7 505 (13.02%) ERP
8 365 (9.41%) Decision-Making
9 357 (9.20%) CI/CD
9 357 (9.20%) Project Management
10 356 (9.18%) AI
11 350 (9.02%) Change Management
12 341 (8.79%) DevOps
13 304 (7.84%) Project Delivery
14 285 (7.35%) Roadmaps
15 280 (7.22%) Risk Management
16 273 (7.04%) User Acceptance Testing
17 268 (6.91%) Analytics
18 260 (6.70%) Validation
19 231 (5.95%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 324 (8.35%) SQL
2 312 (8.04%) Python
3 222 (5.72%) Java
4 74 (1.91%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 54 (1.39%) JavaScript
7 53 (1.37%) Bash
8 39 (1.01%) PL/SQL
9 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
10 35 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.64%) Go
12 23 (0.59%) C++
13 15 (0.39%) Bicep
14 13 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.31%) PHP
15 12 (0.31%) Scala
16 11 (0.28%) ABAP
17 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
17 9 (0.23%) Perl
Qualifications
1 357 (9.20%) Security Cleared
2 265 (6.83%) Degree
3 217 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 170 (4.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.89%) ACCA
6 108 (2.78%) CIMA
7 101 (2.60%) PMP
8 89 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.24%) PMI Certification
10 71 (1.83%) CISSP
11 46 (1.19%) CISM
12 40 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
13 36 (0.93%) AWS Certification
13 36 (0.93%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
16 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
19 20 (0.52%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 231 (5.95%) Data Quality
2 178 (4.59%) PMO
3 131 (3.38%) QA
4 119 (3.07%) GDPR
5 55 (1.42%) GRC
6 50 (1.29%) NIST
7 47 (1.21%) SLA
8 41 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (0.95%) Accessibility
10 32 (0.82%) IFRS
11 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 10 (0.26%) COBIT
14 10 (0.26%) EMIR
14 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
16 7 (0.18%) NCSC
16 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (1.91%) Active Directory
2 67 (1.73%) Docker
3 44 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.052%) KVM
14 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) IAG
15 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 177 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 71 (1.83%) Ansible
3 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (0.82%) Grafana
5 31 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
6 18 (0.46%) Prometheus
7 15 (0.39%) Progress Chef
7 15 (0.39%) SCCM
8 11 (0.28%) Istio
9 10 (0.26%) Argo
9 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.23%) Control-M
11 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
11 7 (0.18%) vRealize
12 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
13 5 (0.13%) VxRail
14 4 (0.10%) CEMLI
14 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 556 (14.33%) Microsoft
2 406 (10.46%) SAP
3 390 (10.05%) Oracle
4 171 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 110 (2.84%) Google
6 83 (2.14%) IBM
7 78 (2.01%) Databricks
8 65 (1.68%) Salesforce
9 60 (1.55%) VMware
10 43 (1.11%) Cisco
11 42 (1.08%) Sage
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 36 (0.93%) Splunk
14 34 (0.88%) Ariba
15 29 (0.75%) IFS
16 24 (0.62%) MuleSoft
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 20 (0.52%) Adobe
17 20 (0.52%) Sybase
18 18 (0.46%) HP