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 22 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,464 2,195 2,559
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.06% 17.24% 12.64%
As % of the General category 28.12% 27.63% 23.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,113 1,406 1,559
10th Percentile £331 £305 £284
25th Percentile £411 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year - -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £601 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £578
% change year-on-year - -4.84% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 66 200
10th Percentile £14.16 £16.90 £12.30
25th Percentile £17.00 £21.00 £14.20
Median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -52.25% +75.09% -40.00%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.40 £75.63 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £40.25 £26.97
% change year-on-year -37.89% +49.24% +0.47%

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 12,319 7,944 11,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 49.99% 62.38% 54.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,143 4,912 6,295
10th Percentile £263 £209 £207
25th Percentile £393 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £595
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £510 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,428 569 1,648
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £24.50 £28.13
Median % change year-on-year +18.37% -12.89% -1.59%
75th Percentile £61.18 £55.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.82
UK median hourly rate £30.08 £27.57 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.10% -7.69%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 +3 1,186 £492 +3.58% 683
South East -1 640 £500 -2.88% 875
North West +5 620 £465 - 381
Midlands 0 586 £492 +3.58% 377
Yorkshire +1 525 £519 +9.21% 236
Scotland 0 412 £500 +5.26% 153
West Midlands 0 396 £500 -4.76% 236
South West -2 354 £525 - 304
East of England +2 203 £516 -6.14% 216
East Midlands 0 186 £468 +5.87% 139
Wales +15 90 £450 +12.50% 59
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +28.05% 124
North East -16 42 £488 +4.84% 75
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 1
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
1 154 (4.45%) Confluence
2 109 (3.15%) SharePoint
3 21 (0.61%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.46%) Apache
5 15 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.32%) CICS
7 8 (0.23%) CMS
7 8 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 7 (0.20%) SAS
9 6 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.17%) IIS
9 6 (0.17%) TPMS
10 5 (0.14%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.14%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.12%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.087%) Apache Airflow
13 2 (0.058%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.058%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.058%) Hyperledger
13 2 (0.058%) JBoss
Applications
1 241 (6.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 117 (3.38%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (3.18%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.30%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.14%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.14%) InVision
8 5 (0.14%) Sketch
9 3 (0.087%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.087%) Trello
10 2 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.058%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.058%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.029%) MicroStation
11 1 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.029%) UXPin
11 1 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 185 (5.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 41 (1.18%) Oracle ERP
5 38 (1.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 31 (0.89%) NetSuite
7 28 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
8 25 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
9 22 (0.64%) Oracle Assets
10 19 (0.55%) Oracle Cash Management
11 18 (0.52%) SAP FI
12 17 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
13 15 (0.43%) SAP GRC
14 14 (0.40%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.38%) SAP FI/CO
16 12 (0.35%) Workday HCM
17 11 (0.32%) NEC Housing
18 10 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
18 10 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
18 10 (0.29%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 406 (11.72%) Azure
2 316 (9.12%) AWS
3 211 (6.09%) Power Platform
4 157 (4.53%) GCP
5 104 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
6 93 (2.68%) SaaS
7 87 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
8 80 (2.31%) GitHub
9 70 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
10 61 (1.76%) Entra ID
11 44 (1.27%) OpenShift
12 41 (1.18%) Snowflake
13 39 (1.13%) Serverless
14 35 (1.01%) OCI
15 32 (0.92%) Microsoft Copilot
16 25 (0.72%) Amazon S3
17 24 (0.69%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.69%) Power Automate
18 22 (0.64%) AWS CloudFormation
18 22 (0.64%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 77 (2.22%) Firewall
2 46 (1.33%) Network Security
3 40 (1.15%) DNS
4 38 (1.10%) WAN
5 35 (1.01%) VPN
6 22 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 17 (0.49%) LAN
9 16 (0.46%) DHCP
10 13 (0.38%) SSL
11 11 (0.32%) Skype
11 11 (0.32%) VSAN
12 9 (0.26%) MPLS
13 8 (0.23%) Internet
13 8 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.20%) BGP
15 6 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
15 6 (0.17%) SNMP
15 6 (0.17%) SSH
16 5 (0.14%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (5.37%) Power BI
2 64 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
3 60 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
4 58 (1.67%) Relational Database
5 57 (1.65%) Metadata
6 46 (1.33%) Oracle Reports
7 39 (1.13%) SQL Server
7 39 (1.13%) Tableau
8 33 (0.95%) NoSQL
9 28 (0.81%) DynamoDB
10 24 (0.69%) MongoDB
11 23 (0.66%) Data Lake
12 22 (0.64%) Oracle ODI
13 18 (0.52%) Big Data
13 18 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
14 16 (0.46%) DB2
14 16 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 15 (0.43%) Power Query
16 13 (0.38%) Data Vault
17 11 (0.32%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 287 (8.29%) JIRA
2 71 (2.05%) Jenkins
3 63 (1.82%) Git
4 28 (0.81%) GitLab
5 24 (0.69%) JUnit
6 21 (0.61%) Cucumber
7 18 (0.52%) Selenium
7 18 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (0.40%) Hudson
8 14 (0.40%) SonarQube
9 12 (0.35%) Postman
10 8 (0.23%) Jaeger
11 7 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 7 (0.20%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.20%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.17%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.17%) Gradle
12 6 (0.17%) IntelliJ
12 6 (0.17%) Maven
13 5 (0.14%) Axure RP
General
1 1,104 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 485 (14.00%) Banking
3 454 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 255 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 129 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
6 123 (3.55%) Legal
7 112 (3.23%) Retail
8 110 (3.18%) Manufacturing
9 105 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
10 93 (2.68%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (2.45%) Local Government
12 75 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 69 (1.99%) General Ledger
14 67 (1.93%) Telecoms
15 63 (1.82%) Marketing
16 61 (1.76%) Investment Banking
17 50 (1.44%) Billing
18 38 (1.10%) Law
19 36 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
20 34 (0.98%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 507 (14.64%) Analyst
2 347 (10.02%) Project Manager
3 317 (9.15%) Architect
4 300 (8.66%) Lead
5 284 (8.20%) Senior
6 239 (6.90%) Business Analyst
7 234 (6.76%) Consultant
8 233 (6.73%) Developer
9 149 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
10 131 (3.78%) Accountant
11 94 (2.71%) Senior Manager
12 89 (2.57%) Programme Manager
13 81 (2.34%) Systems Accountant
14 75 (2.17%) Finance Manager
15 66 (1.91%) IT Manager
16 65 (1.88%) Data Analyst
17 64 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 63 (1.82%) Financial Analyst
19 60 (1.73%) Data Engineer
20 55 (1.59%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (2.45%) Oracle Fusion
2 84 (2.42%) REST
3 80 (2.31%) Middleware
4 72 (2.08%) Spring Boot
5 70 (2.02%) Spring
6 66 (1.91%) Kafka
7 43 (1.24%) RESTful
8 42 (1.21%) .NET
9 40 (1.15%) React
10 34 (0.98%) OAuth
11 32 (0.92%) Node.js
12 26 (0.75%) JSON
13 25 (0.72%) AngularJS
13 25 (0.72%) OpenID
13 25 (0.72%) XML
14 22 (0.64%) OpenTelemetry
15 21 (0.61%) OAuth2
16 20 (0.58%) HTML
17 19 (0.55%) CSS
17 19 (0.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 149 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 143 (4.13%) Product Ownership
3 114 (3.29%) Cloud Native
4 108 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 91 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
6 86 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 84 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 61 (1.76%) Data Structures
9 58 (1.67%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
11 39 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 37 (1.07%) Virtual Team
13 34 (0.98%) Mainframe
14 30 (0.87%) Security Posture
15 29 (0.84%) PMI
16 26 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 24 (0.69%) CMDB
17 24 (0.69%) Mobile App
18 21 (0.61%) Operational Technology
19 15 (0.43%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 110 (3.18%) Windows
2 96 (2.77%) Linux
3 49 (1.41%) Unix
4 30 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.72%) Solaris
6 18 (0.52%) Windows 10
7 15 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.38%) AIX
9 12 (0.35%) Android
10 9 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.26%) zOS
11 7 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.17%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.12%) HPUX
13 4 (0.12%) MVS
13 4 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.12%) SUSE
13 4 (0.12%) VMS
14 1 (0.029%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 716 (20.67%) Stakeholder Management
2 652 (18.82%) Agile
3 535 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
4 512 (14.78%) Migration
5 461 (13.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 455 (13.14%) ERP
7 447 (12.90%) Continuous Improvement
8 406 (11.72%) Project Management
9 337 (9.73%) DevOps
10 308 (8.89%) Change Management
11 295 (8.52%) CI/CD
12 290 (8.37%) Decision-Making
13 285 (8.23%) Project Delivery
14 267 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
15 254 (7.33%) AI
16 246 (7.10%) Risk Management
17 243 (7.02%) Roadmaps
18 239 (6.90%) Business Intelligence
19 230 (6.64%) Validation
20 219 (6.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 312 (9.01%) SQL
2 240 (6.93%) Python
3 205 (5.92%) Java
4 70 (2.02%) PowerShell
5 29 (0.84%) Bash
6 25 (0.72%) JavaScript
7 24 (0.69%) C#
7 24 (0.69%) TypeScript
8 20 (0.58%) PL/SQL
9 18 (0.52%) Go
10 17 (0.49%) Shell Script
10 17 (0.49%) VBA
11 16 (0.46%) C++
12 15 (0.43%) Kotlin
13 14 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 12 (0.35%) Rust
15 10 (0.29%) COBOL
16 8 (0.23%) T-SQL
16 8 (0.23%) VB
17 7 (0.20%) Perl
Qualifications
1 332 (9.58%) Security Cleared
2 317 (9.15%) Degree
3 211 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 128 (3.70%) ACCA
5 124 (3.58%) CIMA
6 109 (3.15%) PMP
7 99 (2.86%) PMI Certification
8 86 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (1.93%) CISSP
10 62 (1.79%) DV Cleared
11 45 (1.30%) CISM
12 41 (1.18%) Master's Degree
13 37 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
14 27 (0.78%) AWS Certification
15 26 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
16 20 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
17 16 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
17 16 (0.46%) MBA
18 15 (0.43%) Azure Certification
18 15 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (4.91%) Data Quality
2 160 (4.62%) PMO
3 138 (3.98%) QA
4 129 (3.72%) GDPR
5 65 (1.88%) NIST
6 49 (1.41%) SLA
7 43 (1.24%) GRC
8 41 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 37 (1.07%) PCI DSS
10 35 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 34 (0.98%) IFRS
12 32 (0.92%) Accessibility
13 16 (0.46%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.38%) IFRS 17
14 13 (0.38%) PSD2
14 13 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.35%) GAAP
16 11 (0.32%) NCSC
17 10 (0.29%) Basel III
17 10 (0.29%) SEPA
System Software
1 92 (2.66%) Docker
2 69 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 38 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (0.49%) vSphere
6 14 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.23%) GPFS
7 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.23%) NFS
7 8 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.12%) KVM
8 4 (0.12%) RACF
8 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.087%) Firmware
9 3 (0.087%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.058%) ACF2
10 2 (0.058%) HDFS
10 2 (0.058%) SRDF
11 1 (0.029%) Job Entry Subsystem
11 1 (0.029%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 155 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 75 (2.17%) Terraform
3 64 (1.85%) Ansible
4 41 (1.18%) Grafana
5 33 (0.95%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 16 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (0.43%) SCCM
9 12 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 10 (0.29%) HP ALM
10 10 (0.29%) Nessus
10 10 (0.29%) vRealize
11 8 (0.23%) Kiali
12 7 (0.20%) Istio
12 7 (0.20%) VxRail
13 6 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.17%) Argo
13 6 (0.17%) Control-M
14 5 (0.14%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.14%) Puppet
Vendors
1 431 (12.44%) Microsoft
2 370 (10.68%) SAP
3 301 (8.69%) Oracle
4 148 (4.27%) ServiceNow
5 87 (2.51%) Google
6 54 (1.56%) IBM
7 53 (1.53%) Sage
8 52 (1.50%) Splunk
9 51 (1.47%) Cisco
10 49 (1.41%) Databricks
11 48 (1.39%) VMware
12 39 (1.13%) IFS
13 38 (1.10%) Salesforce
14 32 (0.92%) Workday
15 25 (0.72%) HP
16 23 (0.66%) Ariba
17 19 (0.55%) Adobe
18 17 (0.49%) Citrix
18 17 (0.49%) Red Hat
18 17 (0.49%) Remedy