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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 5 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,872 2,537 2,784
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.49% 17.55% 13.29%
As % of the General category 28.21% 28.57% 24.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,344 1,655 1,695
10th Percentile £340 £308 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
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 180 75 205
10th Percentile £14.81 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.80 £14.50
Median hourly rate £43.13 £28.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +51.33% -11.26% -16.26%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £75.00 £56.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% -6.67%

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 13,727 8,880 11,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.37% 61.44% 53.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,744 5,396 6,342
10th Percentile £263 £213 £208
25th Percentile £400 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £473 £489
Median % change year-on-year +5.81% -3.37% -2.20%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £598
90th Percentile £677 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,697 749 1,651
10th Percentile £13.67 £13.08 £12.70
25th Percentile £17.35 £15.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.13% -25.81% +19.46%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.00 £54.27
90th Percentile £81.13 £72.50 £68.75
UK median hourly rate £32.36 £27.22 £31.89
% change year-on-year +18.91% -14.65% +6.28%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 1,301 £500 +7.18% 778
South East 0 729 £500 -5.21% 933
North West +4 675 £475 +5.56% 398
Midlands +1 663 £500 +11.11% 442
Yorkshire 0 579 £525 +7.42% 284
West Midlands +1 490 £500 - 241
Scotland 0 487 £475 -2.06% 165
South West -3 387 £525 -4.55% 319
East of England +5 209 £525 -8.70% 244
East Midlands 0 165 £500 +17.65% 200
Wales +4 87 £525 +13.21% 73
Northern Ireland -1 58 £475 +11.76% 112
North East -20 48 £500 +13.64% 104
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 158 (4.08%) Confluence
2 99 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
5 13 (0.34%) Apache
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
7 11 (0.28%) CICS
7 11 (0.28%) CMS
8 10 (0.26%) SAS
9 6 (0.15%) IIS
10 5 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 5 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.10%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
13 2 (0.052%) JBoss
13 2 (0.052%) Mule
13 2 (0.052%) Mule ESB
13 2 (0.052%) TPMS
Applications
1 237 (6.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (2.35%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (1.16%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.052%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.026%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.026%) UXPin
10 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 204 (5.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (1.03%) NetSuite
3 40 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 38 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 22 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
7 19 (0.49%) Unit4 Business World
8 18 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
9 17 (0.44%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.44%) SAP GRC
9 17 (0.44%) SAP PSCD
10 14 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
11 13 (0.34%) NEC Housing
11 13 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
12 12 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 12 (0.31%) SAP Hybris
13 11 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
13 11 (0.28%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.28%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 478 (12.35%) Azure
2 330 (8.52%) AWS
3 222 (5.73%) Power Platform
4 210 (5.42%) GCP
5 102 (2.63%) SaaS
6 94 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
7 93 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
8 87 (2.25%) GitHub
9 73 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
10 72 (1.86%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) Snowflake
12 44 (1.14%) OpenShift
13 42 (1.08%) Serverless
14 41 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
15 39 (1.01%) OCI
16 25 (0.65%) PaaS
16 25 (0.65%) PowerApps
17 24 (0.62%) Power Automate
18 23 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (0.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Firewall
2 65 (1.68%) Network Security
3 38 (0.98%) DNS
4 36 (0.93%) VPN
5 30 (0.77%) WAN
6 27 (0.70%) SSL
7 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.46%) LAN
9 14 (0.36%) DHCP
10 12 (0.31%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.31%) VSAN
11 9 (0.23%) BGP
11 9 (0.23%) MPLS
12 8 (0.21%) Internet
12 8 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
14 6 (0.15%) BIG-IP
14 6 (0.15%) Wireless
15 5 (0.13%) Cisco ASA
15 5 (0.13%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (4.75%) Power BI
2 80 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.91%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.78%) Metadata
5 61 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
5 61 (1.58%) SQL Server
6 54 (1.39%) Oracle Reports
7 37 (0.96%) Data Lake
8 35 (0.90%) Tableau
9 31 (0.80%) NoSQL
10 27 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 24 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
13 21 (0.54%) Db2
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (0.49%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.46%) Data Vault
15 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
16 16 (0.41%) Power Query
17 15 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 272 (7.02%) JIRA
2 91 (2.35%) Git
3 73 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 27 (0.70%) JUnit
5 23 (0.59%) Selenium
6 22 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.54%) GitLab
8 19 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 14 (0.36%) Hudson
10 13 (0.34%) Postman
10 13 (0.34%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) Gradle
12 8 (0.21%) Maven
13 7 (0.18%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Liquibase
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
14 6 (0.15%) IntelliJ
15 5 (0.13%) Bitbucket
15 5 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 1,230 (31.77%) Social Skills
2 532 (13.74%) Banking
3 519 (13.40%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 185 (4.78%) Legal
6 163 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 132 (3.41%) Retail
8 113 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 111 (2.87%) Local Government
10 108 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 85 (2.20%) Financial Institution
12 85 (2.20%) General Ledger
13 82 (2.12%) Investment Banking
14 71 (1.83%) Billing
15 61 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 58 (1.50%) Telecoms
17 51 (1.32%) Marketing
18 47 (1.21%) Aerospace
19 46 (1.19%) Law
Job Titles
1 530 (13.69%) Analyst
2 382 (9.87%) Lead
3 351 (9.07%) Architect
4 344 (8.88%) Senior
5 341 (8.81%) Project Manager
6 290 (7.49%) Developer
7 255 (6.59%) Consultant
8 245 (6.33%) Business Analyst
9 170 (4.39%) Accountant
10 152 (3.93%) Solutions Architect
11 107 (2.76%) Systems Accountant
12 101 (2.61%) IT Manager
13 100 (2.58%) Senior Manager
14 90 (2.32%) Programme Manager
15 87 (2.25%) Java Developer
16 83 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
17 72 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 69 (1.78%) Administrator
19 66 (1.70%) Data Engineer
20 64 (1.65%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (3.41%) Oracle Fusion
2 92 (2.38%) Middleware
3 88 (2.27%) REST
4 70 (1.81%) Kafka
5 69 (1.78%) Spring
5 69 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 60 (1.55%) React
7 57 (1.47%) .NET
8 42 (1.08%) RESTful
9 35 (0.90%) OAuth
10 32 (0.83%) JSON
11 30 (0.77%) Node.js
12 29 (0.75%) OpenID
13 26 (0.67%) SailPoint
13 26 (0.67%) SAP Fiori
13 26 (0.67%) XML
14 23 (0.59%) Redux
15 21 (0.54%) AngularJS
16 20 (0.52%) HTML
16 20 (0.52%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (4.13%) Onboarding
2 157 (4.05%) Product Ownership
3 149 (3.85%) Cloud Native
4 119 (3.07%) Management Information System
5 107 (2.76%) Data Protection Act
6 106 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 77 (1.99%) Virtual Team
8 75 (1.94%) Data Centre
9 67 (1.73%) Data Structures
9 67 (1.73%) Public Cloud
10 51 (1.32%) Mainframe
11 50 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
12 47 (1.21%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 34 (0.88%) Web Conferencing
15 33 (0.85%) Podcast
16 30 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
17 29 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
18 28 (0.72%) AI Agents
19 27 (0.70%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 121 (3.13%) Windows
2 104 (2.69%) Linux
3 62 (1.60%) Unix
4 30 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) Solaris
6 25 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.65%) zOS
7 14 (0.36%) AIX
8 10 (0.26%) Android
9 9 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.026%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 881 (22.75%) Stakeholder Management
2 708 (18.29%) Agile
3 565 (14.59%) Problem-Solving
4 552 (14.26%) Migration
5 527 (13.61%) Continuous Improvement
6 521 (13.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 508 (13.12%) ERP
8 398 (10.28%) Project Management
9 368 (9.50%) DevOps
10 356 (9.19%) Decision-Making
11 353 (9.12%) CI/CD
12 348 (8.99%) Change Management
13 320 (8.26%) Project Delivery
14 314 (8.11%) AI
15 296 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
16 292 (7.54%) Roadmaps
17 271 (7.00%) Validation
18 262 (6.77%) Risk Management
19 247 (6.38%) Analytics
20 239 (6.17%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 360 (9.30%) SQL
2 299 (7.72%) Python
3 229 (5.91%) Java
4 75 (1.94%) PowerShell
5 55 (1.42%) C#
6 45 (1.16%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.01%) Bash
8 37 (0.96%) PL/SQL
9 33 (0.85%) TypeScript
10 26 (0.67%) Shell Script
11 24 (0.62%) Go
12 20 (0.52%) C++
13 16 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 15 (0.39%) VBA
15 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
16 11 (0.28%) COBOL
17 10 (0.26%) ABAP
17 10 (0.26%) Kotlin
17 10 (0.26%) PHP
17 10 (0.26%) Rust
Qualifications
1 357 (9.22%) Security Cleared
2 303 (7.83%) Degree
3 221 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 130 (3.36%) ACCA
5 127 (3.28%) CIMA
6 118 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 114 (2.94%) PMP
8 100 (2.58%) PMI Certification
9 77 (1.99%) CISSP
10 67 (1.73%) DV Cleared
11 46 (1.19%) CISM
12 39 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
13 35 (0.90%) AWS Certification
14 30 (0.77%) Azure Certification
14 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 29 (0.75%) Master's Degree
16 28 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
17 22 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.49%) DBS Check
19 17 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (5.35%) Data Quality
2 164 (4.24%) PMO
3 147 (3.80%) GDPR
4 145 (3.74%) QA
5 55 (1.42%) NIST
6 48 (1.24%) SLA
7 46 (1.19%) GRC
8 38 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 35 (0.90%) IFRS
10 34 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.80%) Accessibility
11 31 (0.80%) PCI DSS
12 18 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 11 (0.28%) PSD2
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
15 10 (0.26%) IFRS 17
15 10 (0.26%) NCSC
15 10 (0.26%) SEPA
16 8 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (2.27%) Docker
2 78 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.52%) RACF
5 19 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.36%) vSphere
7 12 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.15%) GPFS
9 6 (0.15%) NFS
9 6 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.10%) KVM
11 2 (0.052%) ACF2
11 2 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
11 2 (0.052%) SRDF
11 2 (0.052%) zsh
12 1 (0.026%) Firmware
12 1 (0.026%) Job Entry Subsystem
12 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 172 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 98 (2.53%) Terraform
3 80 (2.07%) Ansible
4 37 (0.96%) Grafana
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 23 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (0.52%) SCCM
9 17 (0.44%) OMEGAMON
10 12 (0.31%) Control-M
10 12 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 11 (0.28%) Argo
11 11 (0.28%) Istio
12 10 (0.26%) HP ALM
12 10 (0.26%) Nessus
13 8 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.21%) vRealize
14 7 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
15 6 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 486 (12.55%) Microsoft
2 400 (10.33%) SAP
3 365 (9.43%) Oracle
4 166 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 109 (2.82%) Google
6 78 (2.01%) IBM
7 74 (1.91%) Databricks
8 62 (1.60%) VMware
9 56 (1.45%) Sage
10 46 (1.19%) Cisco
10 46 (1.19%) Salesforce
10 46 (1.19%) Splunk
11 34 (0.88%) IFS
12 32 (0.83%) Ariba
13 31 (0.80%) Workday
14 24 (0.62%) HP
15 22 (0.57%) Red Hat
16 20 (0.52%) MuleSoft
17 19 (0.49%) Sybase
18 18 (0.46%) Foundry