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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,874 2,594 2,758
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.35% 17.35% 13.68%
As % of the General category 27.95% 28.54% 25.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,329 1,695 1,687
10th Percentile £340 £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 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 75 184
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.78 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.98 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +7.69%
75th Percentile £50.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £70.13
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +25.09%

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 13,862 9,088 10,824
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.34% 60.80% 53.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,775 5,502 6,151
10th Percentile £269 £210 £208
25th Percentile £400 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £490
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,752 794 1,475
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.08 £12.88
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.25 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.90 £22.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +46.23% -31.95% +27.30%
75th Percentile £64.32 £49.69 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.81 £25.75 £34.23
% change year-on-year +27.40% -24.77% +12.16%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 1,306 £500 +6.38% 648
South East 0 730 £503 -3.83% 779
North West +3 689 £490 +8.89% 340
Midlands +1 650 £500 +11.11% 372
Yorkshire 0 567 £525 +7.69% 232
Scotland 0 498 £475 -1.09% 116
West Midlands +1 493 £500 +4.17% 208
South West -4 379 £525 -4.55% 236
East of England +7 209 £528 -4.09% 182
East Midlands -1 151 £500 +19.05% 163
Wales +2 85 £525 +18.31% 55
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 +5.56% 40
North East -19 51 £500 +14.29% 83
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
1 152 (3.92%) Confluence
2 97 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 17 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 14 (0.36%) Apache
6 13 (0.34%) CMS
7 12 (0.31%) SAS
8 10 (0.26%) CICS
9 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.18%) IIS
11 6 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
15 2 (0.052%) JBoss
15 2 (0.052%) Mule
15 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
15 2 (0.052%) nginx
Applications
1 239 (6.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (2.30%) Microsoft Project
4 75 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 6 (0.15%) 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
1 195 (5.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 41 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
6 35 (0.90%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 22 (0.57%) Unit4 Business World
8 21 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 20 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
10 19 (0.49%) SAP GRC
11 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
13 14 (0.36%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
15 11 (0.28%) NEC Housing
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 10 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
16 10 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 479 (12.36%) Azure
2 326 (8.42%) AWS
3 224 (5.78%) Power Platform
4 211 (5.45%) GCP
5 106 (2.74%) SaaS
6 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
7 88 (2.27%) GitHub
7 88 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
8 81 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
9 73 (1.88%) Entra ID
10 45 (1.16%) OpenShift
10 45 (1.16%) Snowflake
11 39 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
11 39 (1.01%) OCI
12 38 (0.98%) Serverless
13 25 (0.65%) Power Automate
13 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
14 24 (0.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 23 (0.59%) Amazon S3
16 22 (0.57%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Firewall
2 64 (1.65%) Network Security
3 40 (1.03%) VPN
4 39 (1.01%) DNS
5 26 (0.67%) WAN
6 25 (0.65%) SSL
6 25 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.49%) LAN
8 14 (0.36%) DHCP
9 11 (0.28%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) SD-WAN
13 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
13 6 (0.15%) HTTP
14 5 (0.13%) Intranet
14 5 (0.13%) OSPF
14 5 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.75%) Power BI
2 79 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
3 76 (1.96%) Relational Database
4 68 (1.76%) Metadata
5 62 (1.60%) SQL Server
6 56 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
7 53 (1.37%) Oracle Reports
8 38 (0.98%) Data Lake
9 37 (0.96%) Tableau
10 28 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 26 (0.67%) NoSQL
12 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
13 23 (0.59%) Db2
13 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
14 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 19 (0.49%) Data Vault
15 19 (0.49%) Oracle Database
16 17 (0.44%) DynamoDB
17 16 (0.41%) Power Query
18 14 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 260 (6.71%) JIRA
2 91 (2.35%) Git
3 63 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 24 (0.62%) JUnit
5 18 (0.46%) Selenium
6 17 (0.44%) Cucumber
6 17 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 14 (0.36%) GitLab
7 14 (0.36%) Hudson
8 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.31%) Postman
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 7 (0.18%) Claude Code
11 7 (0.18%) ERwin
11 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
11 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.15%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.15%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.13%) Maven
General
1 1,238 (31.96%) Social Skills
2 540 (13.94%) Analytical Skills
3 530 (13.68%) Banking
4 283 (7.31%) Public Sector
5 208 (5.37%) Legal
6 191 (4.93%) Organisational Skills
7 137 (3.54%) Retail
8 118 (3.05%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 106 (2.74%) Local Government
11 103 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (2.22%) Financial Institution
13 82 (2.12%) General Ledger
14 80 (2.07%) Investment Banking
15 71 (1.83%) Billing
16 62 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 58 (1.50%) Marketing
18 53 (1.37%) Telecoms
19 48 (1.24%) Aerospace
20 47 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 539 (13.91%) Analyst
2 391 (10.09%) Lead
3 357 (9.22%) Senior
4 339 (8.75%) Project Manager
5 318 (8.21%) Architect
6 291 (7.51%) Developer
7 256 (6.61%) Business Analyst
8 241 (6.22%) Consultant
9 176 (4.54%) Accountant
10 133 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
11 109 (2.81%) Systems Accountant
12 104 (2.68%) IT Manager
12 104 (2.68%) Senior Manager
13 90 (2.32%) Financial Analyst
14 88 (2.27%) Programme Manager
15 85 (2.19%) Java Developer
16 72 (1.86%) Finance Manager
17 67 (1.73%) Data Analyst
18 65 (1.68%) Administrator
19 64 (1.65%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (3.48%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.17%) Middleware
3 83 (2.14%) REST
4 69 (1.78%) Kafka
5 67 (1.73%) Spring Boot
6 65 (1.68%) Spring
7 59 (1.52%) .NET
8 58 (1.50%) React
9 41 (1.06%) RESTful
10 36 (0.93%) OAuth
11 33 (0.85%) JSON
12 31 (0.80%) Node.js
13 27 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
13 27 (0.70%) XML
14 25 (0.65%) OpenID
15 24 (0.62%) SailPoint
16 23 (0.59%) Redux
17 22 (0.57%) SAML
18 19 (0.49%) HTML
18 19 (0.49%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 156 (4.03%) Product Ownership
2 152 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 143 (3.69%) Cloud Native
4 120 (3.10%) Management Information System
5 110 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
6 106 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 105 (2.71%) Virtual Team
8 69 (1.78%) Data Centre
8 69 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 58 (1.50%) Public Cloud
10 56 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
11 55 (1.42%) Podcast
12 52 (1.34%) Mainframe
13 51 (1.32%) Security Posture
14 46 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
15 43 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
16 35 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 33 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
18 32 (0.83%) AI Agents
19 30 (0.77%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 119 (3.07%) Windows
2 108 (2.79%) Linux
3 64 (1.65%) Unix
4 31 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 27 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.65%) zOS
8 14 (0.36%) AIX
9 10 (0.26%) Android
10 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.21%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.15%) VMS
14 5 (0.13%) HPUX
14 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.13%) SUSE
14 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.10%) MVS
16 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
17 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 897 (23.15%) Stakeholder Management
2 713 (18.40%) Agile
3 563 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
4 547 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
5 543 (14.02%) Migration
6 529 (13.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 505 (13.04%) ERP
8 387 (9.99%) Project Management
9 362 (9.34%) DevOps
10 357 (9.22%) Decision-Making
11 354 (9.14%) Change Management
12 347 (8.96%) CI/CD
13 321 (8.29%) AI
14 319 (8.23%) Project Delivery
15 289 (7.46%) Roadmaps
16 287 (7.41%) User Acceptance Testing
17 273 (7.05%) Validation
18 265 (6.84%) Risk Management
19 245 (6.32%) Analytics
20 231 (5.96%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 346 (8.93%) SQL
2 304 (7.85%) Python
3 219 (5.65%) Java
4 74 (1.91%) PowerShell
5 57 (1.47%) C#
6 47 (1.21%) JavaScript
7 44 (1.14%) Bash
8 39 (1.01%) PL/SQL
9 35 (0.90%) TypeScript
10 29 (0.75%) Shell Script
11 25 (0.65%) Go
12 21 (0.54%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 14 (0.36%) VBA
15 13 (0.34%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Apex Code
17 10 (0.26%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 359 (9.27%) Security Cleared
2 294 (7.59%) Degree
3 223 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 124 (3.20%) ACCA
6 120 (3.10%) CIMA
7 112 (2.89%) PMP
8 98 (2.53%) PMI Certification
9 72 (1.86%) CISSP
10 69 (1.78%) DV Cleared
11 43 (1.11%) CISM
12 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
13 34 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
14 32 (0.83%) Azure Certification
14 32 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
16 25 (0.65%) Master's Degree
17 23 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 21 (0.54%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (5.42%) Data Quality
2 172 (4.44%) PMO
3 146 (3.77%) QA
4 141 (3.64%) GDPR
5 49 (1.26%) NIST
6 47 (1.21%) GRC
6 47 (1.21%) SLA
7 37 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 36 (0.93%) IFRS
9 33 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 26 (0.67%) PCI DSS
12 14 (0.36%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 12 (0.31%) GAAP
15 10 (0.26%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) IFRS 17
17 8 (0.21%) NCSC
17 8 (0.21%) WCAG
18 7 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 83 (2.14%) Docker
2 75 (1.94%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 16 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 13 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) KVM
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.052%) SRDF
14 2 (0.052%) zsh
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 169 (4.36%) Kubernetes
2 107 (2.76%) Terraform
3 80 (2.07%) Ansible
4 34 (0.88%) Grafana
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (0.70%) Prometheus
7 25 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) SCCM
9 13 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 9 (0.23%) HP ALM
13 9 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.18%) vRealize
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
16 5 (0.13%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 499 (12.88%) Microsoft
2 386 (9.96%) SAP
3 367 (9.47%) Oracle
4 165 (4.26%) ServiceNow
5 106 (2.74%) Google
6 84 (2.17%) IBM
7 75 (1.94%) Databricks
8 63 (1.63%) VMware
9 55 (1.42%) Sage
10 51 (1.32%) Salesforce
11 43 (1.11%) Cisco
12 41 (1.06%) Splunk
13 34 (0.88%) IFS
14 31 (0.80%) Ariba
15 29 (0.75%) Workday
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 22 (0.57%) HP
18 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
19 20 (0.52%) Sybase
20 19 (0.49%) Adobe