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 14 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,199 2,144 2,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.78% 16.77% 12.84%
As % of the General category 27.34% 27.28% 23.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,015 1,330 1,742
10th Percentile £319 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.48% -3.33%
75th Percentile £600 £593 £623
90th Percentile £688 £688 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 65 173
10th Percentile £13.87 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.69 £22.50 £14.13
Median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £26.99
Median % change year-on-year -58.10% +94.52% -28.03%
75th Percentile £25.25 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £63.59 £78.47 £55.56
UK median hourly rate £23.66 £36.00 £26.73
% change year-on-year -34.27% +34.68% -4.89%

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 11,701 7,860 11,670
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 54.06% 61.47% 55.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,085 4,811 6,901
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £373 £359 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,277 486 1,501
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £18.78 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.97 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% +11.88% -13.79%
75th Percentile £56.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.19 £30.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.37% +15.38% -21.21%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 1,041 £475 - 733
South East -2 604 £500 -8.26% 1,055
Midlands -1 583 £475 -5.00% 425
North West +4 545 £450 -3.23% 389
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 - 271
West Midlands +1 383 £500 -9.09% 252
Scotland 0 365 £475 +0.26% 166
South West -3 327 £524 +2.75% 307
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +5.88% 172
East of England 0 188 £513 -6.82% 244
Wales +27 106 £413 +6.45% 83
North East -8 47 £488 +3.72% 87
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +61.54% 46
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 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
1 157 (4.91%) Confluence
2 112 (3.50%) SharePoint
3 29 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 28 (0.88%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.75%) Apache
6 13 (0.41%) SAS
7 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (0.31%) TPMS
9 8 (0.25%) CICS
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 6 (0.19%) CMS
11 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.13%) Ethereum
12 4 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 3 (0.094%) IIS
14 2 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
14 2 (0.063%) Camunda
14 2 (0.063%) HCL Notes
14 2 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
14 2 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 251 (7.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (4.56%) Microsoft Office
3 118 (3.69%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.22%) Chatbot
9 6 (0.19%) InVision
9 6 (0.19%) Sketch
10 5 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.16%) Trello
11 4 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.094%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.031%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 148 (4.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.59%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.41%) Oracle Receivables
4 38 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
5 37 (1.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 34 (1.06%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.91%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.88%) Oracle Assets
9 27 (0.84%) Oracle Cash Management
10 24 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
11 23 (0.72%) Oracle EBS R12
12 19 (0.59%) SAP CO
13 18 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
13 18 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
14 15 (0.47%) NetSuite
14 15 (0.47%) SAP BRIM
14 15 (0.47%) SAP Hybris
14 15 (0.47%) SAP PSCD
15 13 (0.41%) NEC Housing
15 13 (0.41%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 398 (12.44%) Azure
2 379 (11.85%) AWS
3 186 (5.81%) Power Platform
4 170 (5.31%) GCP
5 116 (3.63%) Microsoft 365
6 83 (2.59%) GitHub
7 77 (2.41%) SaaS
8 75 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 73 (2.28%) Serverless
10 72 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
11 53 (1.66%) Entra ID
12 42 (1.31%) OCI
12 42 (1.31%) OpenShift
13 37 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
14 36 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
15 35 (1.09%) Snowflake
16 33 (1.03%) Amazon S3
17 32 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
19 24 (0.75%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.66%) Firewall
2 40 (1.25%) WAN
3 36 (1.13%) DNS
4 33 (1.03%) Network Security
5 29 (0.91%) VPN
6 22 (0.69%) LAN
7 21 (0.66%) Wireless
8 19 (0.59%) SD-WAN
9 18 (0.56%) Skype
9 18 (0.56%) SSL
9 18 (0.56%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.44%) Internet
10 14 (0.44%) SSH
11 12 (0.38%) DHCP
12 10 (0.31%) SNMP
13 9 (0.28%) Kerberos
14 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
14 8 (0.25%) MPLS
15 7 (0.22%) BGP
15 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (5.60%) Power BI
2 89 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
3 81 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 58 (1.81%) NoSQL
5 42 (1.31%) Metadata
6 41 (1.28%) Relational Database
6 41 (1.28%) Tableau
7 38 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
8 34 (1.06%) SQL Server
9 26 (0.81%) DynamoDB
10 24 (0.75%) Big Data
10 24 (0.75%) Data Lake
11 23 (0.72%) Power Query
12 20 (0.63%) BigQuery
13 18 (0.56%) MongoDB
14 16 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
15 14 (0.44%) MySQL
16 12 (0.38%) Snowflake Schema
17 11 (0.34%) RDBMS
17 11 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 310 (9.69%) JIRA
2 126 (3.94%) Jenkins
3 75 (2.34%) GitLab
4 55 (1.72%) Git
5 37 (1.16%) JUnit
6 36 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 31 (0.97%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.63%) Selenium
9 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 14 (0.44%) Liquibase
11 13 (0.41%) Postman
12 12 (0.38%) Gradle
13 10 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 9 (0.28%) Hudson
14 9 (0.28%) JMeter
15 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
15 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
16 7 (0.22%) Maven
17 6 (0.19%) Snyk
18 5 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 1,124 (35.14%) Social Skills
2 511 (15.97%) Banking
3 402 (12.57%) Analytical Skills
4 352 (11.00%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.50%) Manufacturing
6 157 (4.91%) Telecoms
7 141 (4.41%) Marketing
8 130 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
9 103 (3.22%) Legal
10 98 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
11 97 (3.03%) Financial Institution
12 95 (2.97%) Electronics
13 76 (2.38%) Local Government
14 68 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (1.94%) Retail
16 57 (1.78%) General Ledger
17 50 (1.56%) Billing
18 49 (1.53%) Investment Banking
19 48 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
20 32 (1.00%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 483 (15.10%) Analyst
2 318 (9.94%) Project Manager
3 275 (8.60%) Architect
4 258 (8.07%) Senior
5 257 (8.03%) Lead
6 226 (7.06%) Consultant
7 213 (6.66%) Business Analyst
8 194 (6.06%) Developer
9 114 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 95 (2.97%) Programme Manager
11 80 (2.50%) Accountant
12 79 (2.47%) Data Analyst
13 78 (2.44%) Senior Manager
14 71 (2.22%) Finance Manager
15 62 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
16 56 (1.75%) Java Developer
17 55 (1.72%) Administrator
17 55 (1.72%) Functional Consultant
18 54 (1.69%) IT Manager
19 53 (1.66%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (3.56%) REST
2 83 (2.59%) Spring
3 78 (2.44%) Spring Boot
4 71 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
5 66 (2.06%) Kafka
6 58 (1.81%) Middleware
6 58 (1.81%) RESTful
7 38 (1.19%) Node.js
8 36 (1.13%) .NET
9 35 (1.09%) React
10 34 (1.06%) JSON
11 31 (0.97%) OAuth
11 31 (0.97%) SOAP
12 29 (0.91%) XML
13 25 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
14 24 (0.75%) HTML
15 23 (0.72%) OpenTelemetry
16 21 (0.66%) AngularJS
17 20 (0.63%) CSS
18 19 (0.59%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.97%) Onboarding
2 124 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 100 (3.13%) Cloud Native
4 96 (3.00%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.81%) Data Centre
6 71 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
7 67 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
7 67 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
8 65 (2.03%) Public Cloud
9 40 (1.25%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
11 37 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.09%) PMI
13 34 (1.06%) Mobile App
14 32 (1.00%) Virtual Team
15 25 (0.78%) CMDB
16 24 (0.75%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.59%) NHS
18 18 (0.56%) Security Posture
19 17 (0.53%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 128 (4.00%) Linux
2 106 (3.31%) Windows
3 42 (1.31%) Unix
4 32 (1.00%) Windows 10
5 31 (0.97%) Android
6 28 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.66%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 6 (0.19%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.13%) VMS
13 3 (0.094%) zOS
14 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.031%) MVS
14 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 675 (21.10%) Agile
2 642 (20.07%) Stakeholder Management
3 521 (16.29%) Problem-Solving
4 454 (14.19%) Migration
5 427 (13.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 386 (12.07%) Project Management
7 351 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 347 (10.85%) ERP
9 345 (10.78%) DevOps
10 323 (10.10%) Business Intelligence
11 298 (9.32%) CI/CD
12 279 (8.72%) Change Management
13 268 (8.38%) Project Delivery
14 226 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
15 225 (7.03%) Decision-Making
16 219 (6.85%) Analytics
17 213 (6.66%) Roadmaps
18 200 (6.25%) AI
19 197 (6.16%) Data Modelling
20 187 (5.85%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 331 (10.35%) SQL
2 282 (8.82%) Python
3 195 (6.10%) Java
4 72 (2.25%) PowerShell
5 36 (1.13%) TypeScript
6 34 (1.06%) JavaScript
7 29 (0.91%) Go
8 25 (0.78%) Bash
9 22 (0.69%) C#
10 21 (0.66%) VBA
11 20 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 19 (0.59%) Shell Script
13 12 (0.38%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.38%) Perl
13 12 (0.38%) R
14 11 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 10 (0.31%) ABAP
15 10 (0.31%) COBOL
15 10 (0.31%) Rust
16 9 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 336 (10.50%) Security Cleared
2 324 (10.13%) Degree
3 215 (6.72%) SC Cleared
4 93 (2.91%) PMI Certification
5 91 (2.84%) PMP
6 84 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 79 (2.47%) ACCA
8 74 (2.31%) CIMA
9 68 (2.13%) Master's Degree
10 65 (2.03%) DV Cleared
11 62 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
12 60 (1.88%) CISSP
13 42 (1.31%) CISM
14 41 (1.28%) AWS Certification
15 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
16 24 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
17 18 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 17 (0.53%) MBA
19 14 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.44%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (5.50%) PMO
2 145 (4.53%) QA
3 140 (4.38%) Data Quality
4 125 (3.91%) GDPR
5 56 (1.75%) NIST
6 52 (1.63%) SLA
7 45 (1.41%) PCI DSS
8 41 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 30 (0.94%) Accessibility
10 29 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 26 (0.81%) IFRS
12 24 (0.75%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.69%) PSD2
14 19 (0.59%) GRC
15 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.41%) GAAP
16 13 (0.41%) SEPA
17 12 (0.38%) Basel III
18 10 (0.31%) GLBA
19 9 (0.28%) NCSC
System Software
1 123 (3.84%) Docker
2 80 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 35 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.63%) vSphere
5 13 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.34%) GPFS
7 10 (0.31%) NFS
8 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.16%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.13%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.094%) Firmware
11 3 (0.094%) HDFS
11 3 (0.094%) KVM
11 3 (0.094%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.063%) ACF2
12 2 (0.063%) RACF
12 2 (0.063%) SRDF
12 2 (0.063%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 165 (5.16%) Kubernetes
2 85 (2.66%) Terraform
3 83 (2.59%) Ansible
4 56 (1.75%) Grafana
5 51 (1.59%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.56%) SCCM
6 18 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (0.44%) Progress Chef
8 12 (0.38%) vRealize
9 11 (0.34%) Nessus
10 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
11 8 (0.25%) Kiali
12 6 (0.19%) Control-M
13 5 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
13 5 (0.16%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.16%) Puppet
13 5 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 431 (13.47%) Microsoft
2 373 (11.66%) SAP
3 267 (8.35%) Oracle
4 156 (4.88%) ServiceNow
5 94 (2.94%) Google
6 80 (2.50%) Cisco
7 75 (2.34%) Splunk
8 49 (1.53%) Sage
8 49 (1.53%) VMware
9 48 (1.50%) IBM
10 45 (1.41%) Databricks
11 44 (1.38%) Salesforce
12 36 (1.13%) HP
12 36 (1.13%) Workday
13 34 (1.06%) Dell
14 25 (0.78%) IFS
15 23 (0.72%) Adobe
16 21 (0.66%) CyberArk
17 19 (0.59%) Ariba
17 19 (0.59%) Citrix